Mrs. Tech

As the year ends, I encourage you to reflect on both your personal and professional life. I am not super into "New Years Resolutions" because I know the statistics that say that most people have given up on them before the end of January. That being said, I decided to not set resolutions, but to set goals to meet that will further my career as an educator. I hope that this desire to get better will drive me to complete the tasks that I choose. I have wanted to become Google Educator Certified for quite some time. This year, I got my Apple Teacher certification for both iPads and Macs and I became a Google Innovative Educator. Both of these courses are free and are a nice introduction to what these other courses are like. I continue to use the educator resources available to me through these certifications in my classroom often. If you have not done either of these courses, I encourage you to start with these. Since I conquered these in the fall of this year, I am mov...

Similar to Clips, iMovie is the perfect tool to have your students create book trailers. All of the reading they do will be put to good use when they get a chance to make a trailer for their book by combining pictures and videos of their friends or classmates. There are many different options to choose from when it comes to book trailers, and then you can even add credits and titles to make it match the students book. On the Storyboard tab, it gives the students exactly how long their clips should be in order to keep their trailer moving and their audience engaged. If you aren't into book trailers, you can also just have your students combine video & music to create a video. The editing levels are much higher than clips, so I typically use this with my Middle School students unless we are using them for book trailers in upper elementary. Do you use iMovie? How have you used it in your classroom? - Hilary 

Clips is such a great way to create videos in the classroom. I used to be an iMovie lover, but I have recently fallen in love with the simplicity of Clips. My 1st graders have been successful with Clips and have created great short videos using this app. Clips is a more simplistic version of a video creation app that anything I have ever used. You can essentially take any picture/video that you have to use, or film it right from the app. For pictures, you just hold down the red button for as long as you want that picture to show. If you are taking a picture or video right in the app, you have the ability to add a filter to it. There are simple and creative slide transitions that you can use as title slides or to share more information about the video. You can also add "stickers" or clip art to decorate the pictures/videos. At the end, you have the ability to add any music from your iTunes library, or you can pick one of their preadded songs. There are many ways to shar...

We are all so busy, but also looking for a way to better ourselves, right? Well I started to do research on what I could do to learn more about technology and better myself as an educator and I just wanted to share some of my findings with you.  For those of you that don't know, I have a bachelors in Elementary & Special Education. I started my teaching career teaching 6th grade math and science. After I got my Masters in Educational Technology in 2016, I stepped out of the classroom (in a sense) and now am the Educational Technology Specialist. Basically, it's a really fancy title for the fact that I oversee the iPad lab for K-5 and oversee online learning for the 6-12 students.  Anyways, back to bettering myself. I found 3 really great certifications that I'm sure you have heard of, but maybe haven't researched yourself. Today I am going to talk about the Apple Teacher certification, with information coming on Google & Microsoft Office Certificatio...

It's that time of year again! I love Christmas and wanted to share with you some of my favorite online Christmas activities that my students enjoy each year! These are all kid-friendly websites and most of them are free of any ads. Some are educational and others are just fun for early finishers or Christmas parties! Did I miss any? Let me know in the comments below! Ho Ho Ho! - Mrs. Tech Christmas Tree Creator  Decorate a Christmas Tree Dress a Snowman Christmas Word Search Reindeer Orchestra Reindeer Cafe A Blocky Christmas Christmas Tree Light Up Christmas Coloring Pages Rudolph Tic Tac Toe The Gingerbread Man Game Present Stacker

I originally heard about Moose Math from Research & Play on her "Tech Tuesday" Instagram Story. I saw her showing how she uses it in her classroom and I loved the content that they offered. I decided that I wanted to try it out in my 1st grade tech classes the next week and they CANNOT GET ENOUGH. The harder it gets (as the levels go on), the more they love it. There are essentially 5 math games within the app - Moose Juice: Counting ingredients to add to a smoothie   Puck's Pets - Bingo: using adding and subtracting to find the answer then trying to match answers to get Bingo  Puck's Pets - Counting/Colors: Look at the spots on the larger animal and use them to make her child look just like her  Lost & Found - Skip Counting: Counting forwards and backwards by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's  Lost & Found - Shapes & Sides: Find certain shapes, sides or colors and drag them into the answer boxes  Each time they complete ...

I know this is a crazy time of year and that you are probably spending more time with family than with reading blog posts (which you totally should be!). But I wanted to THANK YOU for following me on my blog and for supporting my teaching journey with your sweet comments. I LOVE hearing about your classroom journey! I just wanted to make this short & sweet for you. As a way to say THANK YOU, I wanted to share with you some Graphic Organizers that I love to use in my classroom. I use them both with Google Classroom and with PicCollage. I hope that you find them useful too! If you are looking for other ones, don't hesitate to hit me up to add some new ones to the pack. I am always looking for great ways for students to share and organize information. Here's the link to the freebie ! Enjoy!  Happy Thanksgiving y'all!  Hilary 

Hey y'all! Can you believe Thanksgiving is almost here? Here are some of my favorite sites to use in class with my elementary tech students. I also enjoy using my Thanksgiving Digital Resource  to start off my class on the days leading up to Thanksgiving. I love to listen to students and the things they are thankful for and watch them research and find new facts about Thanksgiving that they didn't know before!   Happy Holiday Season!  Be Thankful. Mrs.Tech  The First Thanksgiving:  Thanksgiving Dinner Problem : Thanksgiving Puzzle:   Scholastic - The First Thanksgiving :  Thanksgiving Word Search :  Learn to Talk like a Pilgrim :  Turkey Tic Tac Toe :  Turkey Shoot :  Thanksgiving Coloring Pages : *Originally posted on 11/6/2016 on MrsTech's blog

We are big into AR (Accelerated Reader) at our school and the teachers love to see students meet their AR goals. Since I'm not in the classroom full time, I have little to do with AR and goal meeting. I had a teacher ask me, though, if I had something that would allow students to "report" on books they were reading through the use of the iPads and an app. At the time, I didn't have anything made or really anything in mind, but I knew that I could come up with something. If you follow Teaching With Appitude , you will see that she uses Pic Collage to do so many wonderful things in her classroom. Well I decided that I was going to make a Book Report Rubric to use with Pic Collage . I posted it FREE in my Teacher Pay Teachers store, so I just wanted to share it with you! I ended up using this in many of my classes for them to share about a book that they have read that they really like. I just love reading their opinions on the books (and their summaries)! Sna...

Can you even believe that fall is here and that Halloween has already passed? We are in full holiday time and I couldn't be more excited. How many of you have already starting Christmas shopping!? I know I have (even though my husband think's I'm insane). Well I just wanted to stop by and share with you some of the new products that I have in my store.  This year, I got a new job as the iPad specialist (of sorts) at my new school. I am working on so many great iPad 1:1 activities, as well as lots of Digital Resources and my regular Webquest favorites. I share about what I am doing in my classroom with iPads very often on my blog . Check it out if you to see iPad tips, digital resources at work, and tips and tricks for your classroom.  These are a few of the products that I am most excited about: This bundle has 9 character qualities that the students should exude and has webquest links and iPad focused activities to learn about each one and show you what they ha...

As we prep for Halloween, I wanted to share with you some super easy costume ideas that I have found that I think our students would enjoy. I have linked them all to their original source (if I could find it) so you can read any helpful hints they might have posted. Emojis Smarty Pants If You Give A Mouse a Cookie (& friends) Monsters University Winnie the Pooh Crew Cookie Monster Thing 1 & 2 M&Ms What are you dressing up as for Halloween? - Hilary