What is your brand?

No, I don’t mean are you a Coke or Pepsi person (even we all know Coke is the better choice). What I am asking is, when a student found out that they were going to be in your classroom for this school year, what do you think their reaction was? Was it, “Yes! I’m in Mrs. Batchko’s class she’s the funny, loud science teacher!”, “Awman! I’m in Mrs.Batchko’s class she’s always yelling and all I see kids do in her class is sit with papers infront of them!” How do you think the parents of your students reacted? “I’m glad they are in Batchko’s room I hear she’s strict but is a great teacher.” “I wonder if my child can switch rooms, I hear not much happens in Mrs. Batchko’s class and last year at field day I sure did see her on her phone a lot.” and lastly, What you think your peers thought about having you on their team? “I’m excited to have Batchko on our team she is a hard worker but seems to be pretty easy going and funny” or is it “Welp sounds like I am going to have to do a lot this year, Batchko is full of complaints, has a negative attitude and never wants to share her work.”

What do you want your brand to be? How do you want others to describe your style of teaching?

In my role as the Elementary Technology Coach I want teachers to know that I am approachable, that I am here to help them and their students succeed, that I am easy going but also extremely organized, that I talk fast but have no problem repeating myself or being told to slow down, that I am funny because education should be fun, that I am professional, that I am a mentor and a great listener but also know that I am a problem solver. I want teacher’s to be excited to plan with me and feed off my passion for education.

How do/will you communicate your brand?

• Do you smile in the hallway? 
• Do you greet your students at the door with a smile each morning? 
• Do you send personal notes home to parents and students? 
• Do you have an updated classroom website? 
• Do send a newsletter home? 
• Do you write personal thank you notes to parents, students and peers? 
• What does your email signature look like? 
• Do you have an updated photo outside of your classroom, on newsletters or posted on your webpage?

How-To Update your SharpSchool Teacher Webpage

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I absolutely love Popplet! My students and I will be using it on a weekly basis to create anchor charts, organize thoughts, assess understanding or help students create connections of concepts.

What is Popplet? (directly from their website) "In the classroom and at home, students use Popplet for learning. Used as a mind-map, Popplet helps students think and learn visually. Students can capture facts, thoughts, and images and learn to create relationships between them."

What I did for a Tech Infused Lesson:

While discussing force with my 5th graders I wanted to them to organize their thoughts during the week, in order to Tech Up my lesson decided that my students were going to use Popplet to be the medium through which students would organize and developed their thoughts.

Since it was my first time using Popplet as a class I didn't want to purchase the Group Subscription because I wasn't sure how it was all going to work out. What I ended up doing was creating 11 (you read correctly... 11!!) different Gmail school accounts and Popplet accounts so that each student could save their work. If you remember from above... I would highly recommending looking into Popplet Groups.

I checked out the netbook cart from our Media Center for the week since this was going to be an ongoing lesson. I walked students through signing on (after the first 2 days they got the hang of it!). On Monday I started my lesson by explaining what force is and the students independently watched a Brain Pop Jr. video about force. Then we went through together and listed the 5 kinds of force that we were going to discuss for the week (magnetism, push, pull, gravity, friction). Each day we focused on a specific kind of force and added definitions, examples and pictures (from Flickr) to our Popplets. On Friday I took the students to the computer lab and we printed our Popplets and they glued them in their science journals.

Student Samples:

Lesson Reflection:

I thought the lesson went pretty smoothly and students really enjoyed creating their Popplets. I wish I would have had students collaborate on Popplets so that they didn't take as much time to create and then they could have taught each other from their one Popplet. Many students gave examples that truly showed that they applied their academic vocabulary and understood the content. I did not think ahead of time about modifying the assignment for specific students but on the spot I was able to tell them my expectations (Ex: I had a special education student that provided only pictures for examples). In the future I would also like to provide students with a rubric and have them proof read each others work.

A few random notes:

1. For the iPads/iPods: Popplet Lite App is what you have to use due to flash... it works well but I personally prefer the website

2. I would highly recommend looking into Popplet Groups

3. Sometimes the pictures from Flickr can be inappropriate, ahead of time be sure you have discussed digital citizenship and what to do if you happen to be presented with inappropriate content

Do you know of any other mind map apps that are K-5th grade friendly?