Krissy Venosdale {Venspired}

10 Ways to Use Haiku Deck In Education

Krissy Venosdale — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:53:22 +0000

Looking for a GREAT presentation app for your iPad? Check out Haiku Deck. It’s a great way to create a quick presentation using the IPad! I’m already loving how easy it is to use. I love that you can import a pic or snap one right around you, and add it right to your slides. It speaks to the visual learner inside me.

Here are a few ideas of using Haiku Deck in education…

1.) Open House Presentation or Meet the Teacher.

2.) Develop a school tour, or even town tour, to share with classes that you Skype with.

3.) Students develop a digital portfolio by snapping photos of projects they have done throughout the year and adding text to reflect.

4.) Take the Ipad on a field trip and pass around for each student to create a slide throughout the day.

5.) Photograph classroom and make a classroom tour. Better yet, have the kids create it and take ownership.

6.) Create a Haiku Deck to start off a project. Include some cropped photos to build interest and mix in some essential questions. Share the Haiku Deck from your website so parents can see, too.

7.) Encourage students to create one about a school staff after interviewing them.

8.) Develop one Haiku Deck every week by having teams of students work on it, and share the story of your school year.

9.) Encourage kids to summarize a book in a Haiku deck. Book reviews could be linked on a school library blog to encourage others to read the book, too.

10.) Take a geometry scavenger hunt around the school with cameras. Create a Haiku Deck to display the findings.

I guess I should have added, make Haikus. The simple nature of the app allows kids (and teachers!) to get started with it right away. Best of all, you don’t need an app or special program to view.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Your Story

Krissy Venosdale — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:07:16 +0000

What’s your story? Your school’s story? Are you telling it? If you aren’t, someone else probably is. Someone who doesn’t live it and breathe it the way you do. At the end of the day? Our story is all we have. It’s the only link we have to tomorrow, and it’s today’s only link to yesterday. It’s a tiny piece of the impact we all hope to leave. When you look around in a school, you are surrounded by so many little miracles each and every day. Inspiring moments. Triumphant experiences. You don’t even have to look hard to see them. You just have to keep your eyes, and your heart, wide open. They are there. Just waiting to be celebrated. Just waiting for the story to be told.

Learning Is Not a Game

Krissy Venosdale — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:23:34 +0000

We’ve made learning into a game. Hoops to jump through. Levels to pass. Things to know. We’ve set it up so kids play the game to earn points. Even worse, we sort and resort those points and assume it all means something. We give kids awards for getting 100%, even when that 100% doesn’t actually mean they learned anything if it’s something they already knew. We over-emphasize grades, and under-emphasize real problem solving. We talk about changing education. A lot. But, ‘what’s always been done’ can be so comfortable. That game? It’s what we know. It’s what we all grew up playing.

But learning? It’s not a game. Learning is life. All the points in the world mean nothing if you don’t have the experience in struggle or the practice in collaborating with others. It’s time to break out of the game. Change things. Stop getting bogged down in the details that don’t really change HOW we teach. Start rewriting the design of daily learning experiences. The way we present material. The way we need to allow kids the time to uncover material. Rethinking the questions we ask and the problems we are presenting to kids. It’s time to throw a glitch in to the system. A spark. A way for our kids to break out of the game and get into real learning. Life.

Build Each Other Up Every Day

Krissy Venosdale — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:49:53 +0000

Open Learning, Open Minds

Krissy Venosdale — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:52:46 +0000

Sometimes our very words, and the way we present them, can fence in our kids’ thinking. In our effort to guide our students, we have to be careful that we don’t just set up situations where we are looking for just ”right answers.” We also need to allow kids practice and experience with looking for new answers. Innovative solutions. Creative discoveries. Thinking outside the box in a way that will get them to a place where they can navigate life in the future. As we always hear, it’s a future that we can’t even predict, filled with problems we can’t even imagine. I watched this video and wonder how many times I’ve limited my students’ creativity just by the way I phrased a question. Too many probably. This is a reminder to keep the learning open, because that allows their minds to open, too.

Give Me A Break

Krissy Venosdale — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 02:10:29 +0000

I underestimate it every time. That feeling when you just escape? You just go somewhere and do something you absolutely love. Something that feeds your soul. Something creative. An escape to a place where you view the world from a different lens. Where it’s just me, my camera, and the world. I can’t help but wonder if we provide enough of this time for our students. In the search for “rigor,” has education become all push, push, push, go, go, go? Sometimes, I just need a little break. We all do. And if we remember what a little break does for us, we can remember what a little break might do for our students. Enhance collaboration. Clear the mind and make learning time more productive. Improved school engagement. Able to see new perspectives. A little break that just might be a lot when it comes to learning.

My little break today? A trip with my camera to Missouri Botanical Gardens.

Learning In Zero G

Krissy Venosdale — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:47:14 +0000

Dear Global Friends,
Would you like to join us this summer and be virtually connected to our flight on the NASA ZeroG aircraft? We’ve been experimenting in our classrooms with a variety of fabrics and the absorbency of liquids. We’ll be performing the same experiment in reduced gravity. You can follow us at the hashtag #LearnZeroG on Twitter and read our blog at learninginzerog.blogspot.com. We can’t wait to share this experience with each other and show kids how amazing STEAM education really is. Would you like to sign up? Please enter your information by visiting the link HERE. We will add all participant classes to a virtual map, your class will receive a ‘Particpant Certificate’ and a postcard from Houston, Texas. Thank you for making this experience even more fun for all of our students!
Thank you!

Making Dreams Happen

Krissy Venosdale — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 12:19:56 +0000

I’m puzzled by two movements in education. It’s not that I don’t agree with them, it’s that I don’t see how these two things ever got separated from our classrooms and learning. Maker Spaces and the addition of “A” in STEM. The two things in my mind? They are like peanut butter and jelly. Peas and carrots. Apple pie and ice cream. They just fit together. A “Maker Space” is about discovery, exploration, innovation, and figuring out how things work… it’s about creativity being a part of learning, along with problem solving, thinking, and inquiry. The “A” in STEM to add creative arts to the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math reminds me that a maker space is all about creativity. When I look at the Saturn V rocket, a rocket that was able to launch into space, allow men to walk on the moon, and then safely return home, I wonder how creativity ever got lost in that equation. That’s science, technology, engineering, and math… but it’s also an amazing feat of creativity. I’m loving the maker movement that is sweeping the country and I’m glad that it’s becoming more common to see that “A” in STEAM. Learning is such a personal thing. It requires a connection, and providing kids the support and encouragement to get creative will help build those connections. Maybe one of your students will build the rocket that takes humans to Mars, or develop a surgical procedure that saves lives, or discover a passion for building computers. It’s not just about making “stuff,” it’s about making dreams happen, one day a time.

Is Your School Leaking?

Krissy Venosdale — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 16:34:52 +0000

I’ve worked in many different schools. I’ve seen schools where the culture is like a family. A place of love and learning. I’ve also seen schools where it’s not. Where tearing each other down is commonplace. I think sometimes the days go by, the weeks pass, and we wake up and things seem to have changed. It’s not something that happens overnight, but little by little. The positivity seeps through the cracks in the walls like air leaving a tiny hole in an inner-tube. It’s not even noticeable at first. It’s in the little, every day moments that you can see it. Are people spending more time gossiping, or building each other up? Are people celebrating each other’s accomplishments, or rolling their eyes at any recognition that occurs? Are people helping each other be better, or too busy trying to be better than everyone else? I’m convinced that if we let it, that slow leak becomes a big hole, and the inner-tube will eventually just sink. People will then be too busy treading water, that the focus will become on keeping themselves afloat. But there are other options. Everyone could come abandon their individual inner-tubes and come together to build an amazing raft that is indestructible. One created with the kind of collaboration that’s about improving each other so the entire school can be stronger. A raft that can survive any amount of rapids that are ahead. One that is built on love and learning.

When the Real Learning Begins

Krissy Venosdale — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:57:08 +0000

When I think back to what it was like when I went to school, I can remember some things so well. My comfort zone? It was everything. If I got an A- that was getting too close to a B, I worked harder. I didn’t necessarily learn more, I just played the game better. I memorized facts the night before tests. I rarely had to delve into a textbook to study. Elementary, Middle School, High School… it was, for lack of a better word, easy. Comfortable. I pushed myself to the get the A’s, played the game.

I just couldn’t wait to get to college.

But, then I went to college. It was hard. The studying? It was the real kind. The learning? I had to really learn. I found out then that I had spent so much time living in my comfort zone of pushing my A- grades up to A-plus, that I hadn’t really learned how to learn. The game I had played for 12 years in school? It no longer worked. School had failed to teach me life’s most important lesson… how to survive outside the comfort zone. When things got tough, I just didn’t have the experience to figure it out.

So here I am, years later, and graduate classes are now about learning. About reading articles that push my thinking. About having discussions with people that have different perspectives than I do. About understanding new ideas and connecting them with old ones. Shouldn’t school have been about that all along?

It’s not always easy. But it shouldn’t be. Because the lesson that your comfort zone is overrated is something that needs to be learned a lot earlier than when you go to college. Because it’s in that lesson that the real, true learning begins.