Going Digital with Our Youngest Learners

It always makes me smile to walk into the classrooms of kindergarten children with spaces set up for learning and discovery, interactive writing hanging on the walls, as well as tools of learning placed carefully in areas for our youngest students.  These classrooms are always filled with math manipulatives to solve problems.  There are picture books around the room to help students take their first steps into our literate world.  These classrooms are full of markers, crayons, pens and a variety of styles of paper for our youngest learners to draw and write to tell their stories.  In addition, you'll find a variety of other tools for students to use to grow as learners.  Our youngest learners benefit from these concrete experiences, from being able to physically hold items and move them, from being able to test out their hypotheses, and from opportunities to learn beside friends.

What does all of this mean as we add iPads and digital tools to the classrooms of our youngest learners?  When I'm thinking about ways to grow digital opportunities for our youngest learners I like to consider applications that allow students to do the same things they like to with other tools found in a kindergarten classroom.  I look for tools that allow students to create, discover, talk, and solve.  I also consider how applications work across platforms and ease of sharing.

Here are a few of my favorite applications for our youngest learners:

VoiceThread:  
What It Does:  This is one of my favorites for the K-2 learner as it allows students to take pictures, create video, and use audio.  They can talk, write, or draw in VoiceThread.  This tool works best when wanting to share creations and connect with other learners.  Students can ask a question, as well as share a book, creation, or picture on VoiceThread.  Students can talk about what they are sharing, and then publish it to get comments from peers.

Benefits for Our Youngest Learners:  It's easy to create and navigate using VoiceThread.  It allows students to talk to share their thinking, build oral language skills and helps our youngest learners share all they know with greater ease.  You can create identities within the teacher account.  This was a game changer for me.  When Deb Frazier showed me how to put all of the students under my account I was then able to use this during our whole group lessons and small group lessons for students to share their thinking around topics as we talked together (and sharing this with parents was helpful).  This was a great way to begin before giving students their own VoiceThread accounts.  (Having district accounts is an additional benefit for our learners.)

This Tool Allows:  Creation, Connecting, Collaboration, Commenting, Curating, Embedding other media, Sharing

Here's an example of a VoiceThread I created for first graders as a geometry preassessment (nothing fancy, but it shows how the tool works):  

Kidblog
What It Does:  When we think about blogging, the first thing we think about is writing --- and let's be honest, writing isn't all that easy for our kindergarten students in the first weeks of school.  However, I like to think about Kidblog as a box as it can hold a variety of types of media.  Students can use Kidblog to share their creations with others.  Kidblog provides a place for students to share writing, video, images, and so much more with an audience.  When my K/1 students would begin to use this tool to write, I worked to maintain appropriate developmental expectations for their writing.  A K/1 blog will look like a K/1 student wrote it.

Benefits for Our Youngest Learners:  Kidblog allows students to share their thinking, work, and creations with others.  It is very intuitive and easy for our youngest learners to navigate.  Teachers can moderate posts and comments, and have the ability to set the preferred privacy for a class.  Students accounts stay grouped as a class, making it easy for young learners to find their friends' posts.  Kidblog gives our quietest learners space to share, and commenting helps to build community.

This Tool Allows:  Creation, Connecting, Collaboration, Commenting, Curating, Embedding other media, Sharing

Made in Kidblog:

Pixie
What It Does:  Pixie is one of my favorite applications for our youngest learners.  It's versatile allowing students to draw, take pictures, write, type, and use audio.  It is possible to put multiple pages together in Pixie to create a story or connect ideas.  When sharing creations in Pixie, it is possible to share as an image, a video, or a Podcast.

Benefis for Our Youngest Learners:  It is easy to use and has a variety of tools available for creation.   Students can create in a variety of ways.  It's an application that grows with students.  As they gain control over greater abilities to write and draw, Pixie will allow them to work in different ways.  Of course, I appreciate the ease of audio for our youngest learners.  Creations from Pixie can be shared in Kidblog or VoiceThread.

This Tool Allows:  Creation, Drawing, Typing, Writing, Inserting Image, Adding Audio, Making Multiple Pages and so much more.

Made with Pixie:

There are so many things that can be done using these three applications that they might be all a primary classroom would need.  Taking the time to use these applications in shared and interactive learning experiences before moving toward independence is a smart way to begin.  Just like shared reading and interactive writing, using these tools as a class to share thinking and to connect with others will help students begin to understand, not only the tool itself, but the significance of purpose and audience in selecting which tools to use.  

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