Many parents have contacted me asking for ideas for activities to keep the learning flowing during summer. Here are a few possibilities:
pvLearners/Google Apps - The student pvLearners accounts remain active all summer! My class has become pretty proficient with Google apps so students can continue creating documents, surveys, presentations, etc.
Digital Storytelling - This tech savvy group could use a variety of digital storytelling tools including text, photography, video, audio and graphic illustrations to put together stories this summer. Some good digital storytelling apps include Tellagami, ScreenChomp, ThingLink, Animoto and PuppetPals.
Read - All students have access to the school's online library all summer. It can be accessed here, and the kids all know their username and password.
Make a Movie - Movie creation is such an amazing learning experience! It would be a lot of fun to make a movie documenting the summer, a summer vacation or a topic of interest. Great movie-making tools include YouTube Editor, WeVideo and iMovie. There are lots of fun movie making apps too like Magisto or 1SecondEveryday that would activate some movie-making creativity.
Blog - The student KidBlog accounts are still active all summer or students can set up his or her own blog using a pvLearners account and blogger.
Foreign Language - Rosetta Stone accounts are still active through the month of June and can be extended for the rest of the summer. Just contact the PVUSD Community Ed Department to upgrade your account.
Khan Academy - Khan Academy provides a free, world class education for anyone! It is accessible on nearly any device.
Letter Writing - Writing is more fun with an authentic audience and a purpose. Summer is the perfect time for students to write letters or send emails to out of state relatives and friends.
Photo Journalism- In this day and age, everyone has a digital camera in his or her pocket at almost all times. Student photography offers a unique perspective and creates a nice summer memoir.
We have been working the last week or so on a special Valentine's Day project. First, students had to write a Valentine message in Google docs.
Next, I recorded each student wishing their Valentine recipient a happy Valentine's Day. Each movie was uploaded to YouTube and the privacy setting was changed to "anyone with link can view" (meaning it can't be searched or found, so the movies could remain a bit of a surprise!) I emailed each student their link and they went to goo.gl, shortened the URL and created a QR Code. Then, students copied the URL for the QR Code and pasted it into their document. We printed all docs and QR codes and glued them to our Valentine greeting.
A QR Code is a type of matrix bar code. QR stands for “quick response” and the code is able to hold significantly more data than a traditional bar code. Additionally, the code can link directly to text, a website, a telephone number, a vCard, a video and more!
We have been using QR Codes in the classroom all year, as it is one of my favorite learning and teaching tools! I did a TED Talk about QR Codes last year and still find them to be extremely engaging. The QR scanner app we use in the classroom is called i-nigma, but there are many other free QR scanner apps available. QR codes can be scanned using any smartphone and most tablets. If you don't have access to any of those devices, they can also be scanned on a Mac or PC using QReader, QuickMark or QR Code Reader.
If you have any challenges scanning your child's special Valentine QR Code, please shoot me an email and I will gladly help!
