Money to Spend!

This year, I was very blessed to have the son of a prominent business owner in my classroom. I went to the parent when we (myself and my co-teacher) began planning our Fall Festival fundraiser and asked for a donation. He was extremely excited about the possibilities of earning lots of money for our classrooms and gave some very generous donations. We were able to sell items donated from his store and give away a shotgun as a door prize. This raised $2519 for our classrooms!!! So....off to shop I went with my half of the earnings.

I asked my students to write down topics/titles that they would like to see added to our classroom library. This is the list I got so I headed to McKay's.

I purchased as much as I could find buying about 95 books for $196. 

Next stop..WalMart. I have a futon in my room, and they all want to sit there during silent reading. I had discussed this with my class and they asked for a couple of bean bags. So, I bought two bean bags and a butterfly chair along with another floor lamp. Then, for the big purchase..the one they ALL wanted. I also bought two ipads. We already had four in our room, but it just wasn't enough to accommodate our groups of six.

I've already set up bookshelves for groups based on their guided reading level using Storia from Scholastic. I've used points to purchase books so far. The app comes with a dictionary and also allows them to highlight text. We're going to use this at the guided reading table.

You can create up to 10 bookshelves, so I made shelves for my personal kids too. :)

I do not want these iPads to be just about playing game apps so I've been looking at lots of creation type apps. So far, I've downloaded Pages, Comic Life, and Animoto.

And so our iPad in the classroom journey begins...I'd love to hear how other elementary classrooms are using them for creation!

Apple TV in the Elementary Classroom

Thinking of trying Apple TV in your classroom? I have heard about this tool for quite some time, but had not actually seen it in action until a recent conference. The keynote speaker did her entire presentation from her iPhone through Apple TV. I immediately emailed my tech coach and asked for one.

I have always loved and used my IWB in my classroom. I am a certified Promethean trainer so I support the boards wherever I go, however, I do like the possibilities that Apple TV brings. It is very easy to stream whatever is on your device through the TV. The first thing that occurred to me was that I could finally stream my ipad wirelessly and without my document camera. We have a set of 30 iPods in our school that we share. I would love to have the students create projects on the ipods (perhaps with Animoto or something else) and then let them stream their creations through the TV.

I'm very excited to explore the capabilities of this device. I read this post this morning that really gives a good argument for using the TV in place of an IWB. I'm not quite there, yet. I don't think I'll want to replace my board, but I think it will certainly be an exciting addition to my classroom.