Shrieks and Squeals of Excitement

Friday afternoon I had the craziest, funniest hour ever with a bunch of first graders.  They came bounding into the computer lab with such energy I was taken aback for a moment.  I need to let you in on a few things about what I believe led to this buzz of excitement.  It was the day of our school's Springtacular (spring carnival) and at lunch there was a tootsie roll raffle where they kids buy tootsie rolls by the handful to try and win a prize.  So these kids were hyped up on sugar and overflowing with bottled up anxiousness for the evening event.  And...it was their first time coming to the computer lab.

We started off by learning how to log onto the computer using their student account information.  Boring stuff, but necessary.  Then we got to the good part.  Exploring!  The students and I discussed what it meant to explore.  "Try it out" and "Find new things" were some of their answers.  So I set them loose to explore the application we were working with, Pixie.

You should have heard their shrieks and squeals when they discovered what different buttons could do!  You would hear someone scream "Oh Wow Cool!" and then about 5 kids would jump out of their seats and race over to the kid that shouted it out to see what they had discovered.  Then those 5 kids would speed back to their computer and try to recreate what they had seen.  This level of screeching, cheering and running around went on for about 20 minutes.  Then I gave the students an opportunity to share with everyone what they have uncovered during their exploration time.

This is what I love about my job.  Students excitement about using technology!  Yes, it got loud.  VERY LOUD!  But, I didn't mind because I knew it was because they were engaged in what we were doing!

Digital Storytelling with Kindergarten friends

Earlier in the year I created a post about Kindergarten students learning how to use Pixie through allowing them time to explore and play. Taking that time paid off BIG time recently when I had the chance to work with them again using Pixie to create stories.

As we all know little Kindergarten friends don't quite have the handwriting capabilities yet to write out stories. But...boy, do they have some stories to share! I heard stories about everything from pizza to Indiana Jones to playing tag with friends.

These little friends are just starting to learn about the craft of storytelling. The first session we worked together students were creating a drawing and then their story was something like “This is a picture of a cave.” The teacher and I chatted later that day and we discussed the importance of starting to talk to them about basic elements of a story: characters, setting, beginning, middle and ending. The second session we focused on having a quick class discussion to remind everyone of the elements and then made sure to have each student practice telling their story before recording it. At times it was helpful to guide students storytelling with some simple leading questions like:

Who was there?
Where were you?
What happened next?


Now, these stories are still on the basic level, but we could tell they got the idea of the difference between telling about the picture and telling a small story.

Here are a few examples to listen to and enjoy!


Snowman by Sarah from Mary Brothers on Vimeo.






New Clothes from Mary Brothers on Vimeo.

Little People Fear Nothing

I give all the credit in the world to the kindergarten teachers of the world! I spent one hour with two different kindergarten classes today and my eyes were open to a whole new light.

I was in the computer lab awaiting their arrival and trying my best not to worry about all these little persons coming in and scampering about. And then I heard it.... "Oh my goodness! There are COMPUTERS!!!" Those little ones were so overcome with excitement how could one not get pumped to be with them?!

The kindergarten teacher and I got them each settled at a computer with each child clutching in their hands a card with their first name, last name and student ID number, like it was the golden ticket to Willy Wonka's factory. The way our network is currently set up is that students can sign on to an individual account using this information. Well, let me tell you, this was a feat in itself just getting them logged in. Once we all got our names spelled right and the right ID numbers typed in we were good to go!

I keep coming back to the idea of play in technology to see what kids can figure out by exploring on their own. So first we talked about what it meant to explore something. The kids decided that it meant: look around and see what you can find out. So I let them loose to explore Pixie2. There truly are so many Possibilities with Pixie.

After they got over the shock of being asked to "just explore" it was not long until you heard the sounds of little voices full of joy and wonder. It seemed so natural to them to shout out "Look what I did!" and then the students around them look over and then exclaim "Cool! How did you do it?" And then the best thing happened - they started teaching each other what they had figured out through exploring. After awhile we came back together as a class and I had students take turns showing what they had learned to everyone.

These little people had NO FEAR in clicking buttons to see what would happen. In just a few minutes time they had figured out everything that probably would have taken me 30 minutes to talk about and show and they probably wouldn't remember. There is something to be said in setting them free and letting them guide you in what they need help with.

So....let the little people in our schools at that technology and sit back in amazement at what they can do!