SMART Board Goodies A Resource Blog by Amber Coggin 

I’ve been seeing “word clouds” around for the past couple of months, but wasn’t sure how I could use them until I read this blog post from Kevin Jarrett that referred to this Twitter post by @sammorra. @sammorra used Wordle.net to create holiday cards. I immediately thought about the Winter Wonderland Holiday Card page. I hadn’t planned on doing a card because we were barely able to get our monthly activities done, but I figured this would be the perfect tool to create something quick.

I went to Wordle, clicked on create, and typed in all of the 1st through 3rd grade teachers names. I also typed in my school’s name multiple times so it would show as the main word. I then changed my font, layout and colors by editing the custom color palette. I made a print screen of the image and pasted it into the Paint.net program (LOVE THIS PROGRAM!), added a title and some clip art images that I found here, and BAM- a quick and easy holiday card!

After Christmas break, I’m thinking of letting them fill out a Google Doc form telling me one thing they got for Christmas. I’ll then make a wordle out of the results to see what the most popular gift was!

The Winter Wonderland Project is now open for registration!

The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on Monday, November 17th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 29th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you cannot complete the Featured Activity we would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project.

Please visit the Winter Wonderland Wiki to register, learn about the planned activities, or to get more information about the project.

Thank you,
Winter Wonderland Project Coordinators
Amber Coggin, Nedra Isenberg, & Vicky Sedgwick

Nedra Isenberg and I have teamed up our 2nd (and some 3rd) grade computer lab classes during the month of October to participate in a project called Scary Spuds.

Project Description

This project is very similar to the Monster Exchange project and Monster Project Wikispace. However, for Scary Spuds the students use a flash activity found at Crick Web to create their Scary Spuds instead of a paint program.  I felt this would speed the project up a bit and make it more simplified and contained instead of giving the students free reign on a paint program.

More Details

The premise of the project is to create a Scary Spud, and then write a description of the Spud so that their partner classes can re-draw it, coming as close to the original as possible. The students from 3 different schools, 1 in Alabama and 2 in New York, have been paired up with a partner class. Each class will be split into about 6 groups with 3-4 students in each group. Each group will then be assigned a number. After creating their Spuds and writing their descriptions, the information will be posted to the Wiki so that the partner class may access it. After the Scary Spuds are re-drawn they will be uploaded to the Wiki for all to see. The students may then compare them to determine how close they came to the original Scary Spud.

Please visit the Scary Spuds Wiki for more information, including the lesson plans created for the project.