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This year has been one of the most successful years in implementing technology in our classroom. My students were able to see the value of using technology as a tool, rather than just another platform to study vocabulary words or take quizzes and tests from our book adoptions. This has been a year where I have let the students take more ownership of their learning and simply provided them with the basic knowledge of Scratch and Makey Makey kits. The kiddos worked so hard this year and were blew me away with their creations. They enhanced their learning science learning through programming interactive STAAR Reviews, that is right, interactive. I was amazed with what Santiago developed for our class to help the students review their Water Cycle vocabulary. Next, we had another student write a code to detect conductors and insulators using Scratch and the Makey Makey Kits. The days of me having to replace light bulbs may be over, maybe. I was floored when he showed me the program in class

I was recently introduced to Swivl's IO platform. I am always looking for technology that will not only benefit my fifth grade classroom, but also benefit me as an educator. Let us face the fact that as educators we are not fond of having people come and observe us other than our principal for our yearly observation. One of the problems of not having more observations is that we never get any feed back from others. As educators, many of us are set in our ways and do the same thing every year thinking that what worked 10 years ago may work today. I understand that in some cases it may, but we also have to realize that the education system is continually changing and our learners are very different from year to year. Using Swivl's IO has allowed me to observe my students as we go through presentations. The video that is attached to this post is using Swivl's IO in a minimum way. Due to technical difficulties in our network infrastructure, I was not able to connect multiple de

Today I was working 1 on 1 with Mr. Alvarez who is a kindergarten student at Shimotsu Elementary. We sat down and worked through several of our Scratch cards. Mr. Alvarez's reading level has not fully developed, but he adapted very well to sight words, and color. He had no problem inputting positive and negative numbers either. Although, he may not fully understand the math or terminology, the use of colors and numbers were simple enough for him to work through the cards and start developing his Scratch skills. Please click on the link:   Abdiel Using Scratch