Social Emotional Learning Projects

I am embedding social emotional learning into many of my technology projects this year, beginning with third and fourth graders. I am using Michelle Garcia Winner's work (socialthinking.com) on problem solving with my fourth grade students. This screenshot comes from Jill Kuzma (jillkuzma.wordpress.com) and is an example of the resources I am using.

Students began by brainstorming problems on a wall I created with padlet.com. They were very excited to use a shared digital space. After writing many ideas, I presented the idea of a continuum of problems. We categorized our problems into "small", "medium" and "big." 

Focusing on the small problems, students selected one to use in a comic strip. The students' task was to have two characters interacting to solve a small problem. We used Google APPs presentations, with each slide being a frame of the comic. The idea of using presentations for comics came from Eric Curts. Students used PNG formatted images from openclipart.org. Students were able to show their creativity with graphic design and idea generation.

Our next steps in this project will include peer review/commenting, group editing and design improvement. Each of these process will be accomplished by easily sharing documents.

Presentations in Google Apps

I just finished a rotation with fifth graders creating Google Apps Presentations, which I have never used before. In the past, I have used Power Point. I wanted to move to Google Apps to make it easier for students to work from any computer. The real benefit was the ability to share presentations.

Our content centered on the 50 State Quarters Program, statequarterguide.com. Students selected states to learn about by researching the symbols on the quarter reverses. A great resource is h.i.p. pocket change at usmint.gov/kids. Students created slides featuring the designs and their descriptions of them. They accompanied each with a separate slide that gave a fact about one of the symbols.

  

As students finished creating the slides, I assigned them to peer editing groups. The sharing and commenting features are awesome. Students were able to work on giving constructive, specific feedback to help their classmates. Here is a sample of the comments peers wrote to each other.

I also appreciated the ability to have each student share their presentation with me once, giving me the ability to track their progress as they worked in contrast to having each student submit only their finished project to my Dropbox.

Students enjoyed using Photo Booth effects to take a photograph of them holding their favorite quarter.