Greg here. I know that my better-half loves Instagram. For Becky, it's a quick way to share updates about classroom and personal life, as well as to see what is going on in the lives of all the other #teachersofinstagram. 
I was recently doing some research on Instagram desktop schedulers and stumbled upon a new site: Wisel.it! A young start-up out of Venezuela, Wisel.it seems to be the real deal! 

I thought I'd quickly share how I used Wisel.It the first time and explain some of it's features. You can create your own login via Wisel.It, but I opted to sign-in with Instagram to streamline my accounts. 

Once you link your account to Wisel.It, the process is rather simply. Simply click "Schedule New Post" to get started.

Once your image is uploaded, you simply frame the sliding box around the portion of the image you want to appear. If you shoot the image in square before exporting it to your desktop, simply select the entire image. They have several filters, and a flip option, but I suggest doing all of your edits prior to the
upload to Wisel.

One of the cool things about this site is that you can sign in to multiple accounts (3 total). When you select the account and caption it (just like you would on your mobile device), you'll see a convenient preview on the right. Select the date and time you want to post and you're set!

Once scheduled, you will receive a notification in Instagram asking for verification because your account is being accessed elsewhere (our notification came from Finland). I was a bit skeptical at this point, but I trusted the system! It worked without flaw - it posted at the time scheduled!

If you would like to read more about Wisel.It, you can check out this blog post, which what led me to this new scheduler. So, how might this help you manage your Instagram account? Let me know what you think!

Hi everyone, it's Becky! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five For Friday! I know I'm a little late to the party, but we had a great week and it is just too good to not blog about it! So let's get this party started!

On Monday we finished up our First Birthday stories. One of the standards my students need to meet is to recall or gather information from a source, so I thought that writing about their first birthday would be perfect! Who doesn't like thinking about such a fun event, and I don't know any parent who doesn't like to take a walk down memory lane when it comes to their kids! So each of my students took home an interview sheet with questions about their first birthday. Once the interview was completed at home, we used the answers from mom/dad to write our story. My kids loved hearing about the funny things they did when they were one. The birthday cake answers were the best! You can see more about this product here in our TPT store!

Tuesday, of course, was St. Patrick's Day, so we HAD to write about how to catch a Leprechaun! This was a good way to incorporate how to/direction writing, and my kids just loved the cute craftivity by A Cupcake for the Teacher!

We also learned "ar" this week and practiced blending, reading, building, and writing words with "ar' all week, so of course Babbling Abby's "AR" pirate was a must!

We also read the story The Tree from Poppleton Forever and focused on story structure. I had my students think about the characters, setting, and plot. We then used the 30 Hands app on our iPads (the free version) to display our learning. This was only the second time my kids used this app, and you would have thought that they were old pros! I continue to be amazed at how quickly they pick up the process, and how engaged and excited they are to show their learning! This took only two 20-minute sessions to complete from start to finish! Take a look at one example of our finished products! I was so excited when I viewed them, and I can't wait for my kids to do another one! #nailedit!

We have joined The Creative Classroom for the March Blogger Match-Up! Our team is Xavier, and so far they have not let us down! Check out our blog post here for a product giveaway to celebrate March Maddness!

That's all for now! I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Hi everyone, it's Becky! I'm linking up with DoodleBugs Teaching for Five For Friday! MLK day and the snowy weather really made for a short week! Even though it was a short one, it was probably one of the busiest weeks I've had this year! 

Greg and I spent some of our time on Monday mapping out a presentation we will be giving at Elizabethtown College (our alma mater!) to the ed majors for their professional development day! I am honored that they have invited us to speak about technology in the classrooms, but also a bit nervous. Although Greg has done presentations like these many times, this will be my first...with hopefully more to come!

We had our "A Community Is..." movie premiere on Tuesday and invited our parents to come in and share in the excitement of watching our first movie together. Everyone loved it, and I really think the parents were surprised at the end product! This was definitely a memorable project for all involved. You can see my blog post on the movie making process here.

Since the movie was only 2 minutes long, and I had the parents in the room, I thought it would be a good idea to have the students show their parents how we use our iPads as learning tools. One goal of our district's move to a 1:1 environment is to educate the parents and public that our iPads are not to "play" on, but are used as a tool to create and showcase our learning. So I had my students do a QR code activity, as well as work on a journal writing and math app together. The parents were really into it!

And if the movie premiere wasn't enough, I had my formal observation on Wednesday. I decided to go big and have my principal see me introduce Educreations to my kids and use it to create a compare and contrast slide with the animal groups we had been reading about in our Journeys anthology. I was a little worried about how it would go because my kids had never even opened up the app before that lesson! I had my kids work in parnters to alleviate the anxiety that sometimes comes with trying something new. It also allowed for collaboration. We then went step-by-step in the beginning stages. I modeled how to do a step, and they did it. After modeling the stage one or two times, my kids were ready to do it on their own! I was pleasantly surprised at how well they grasped onto Educreations and could complete the rest on their own! I had been having nightmares of me having to run around to every set of partners fixing things the whole time...and it was NOTHING like that! Everything went so smoothly, and I have the confidence that my kiddos will be able to navigate through Educreations even better the next time! And, they LOVED it! I don't even think they realized they were doing school work! Check out two examples of their work! 

Due to our short days this week, I was only able to introduce our Primary Source Football Edition to my first graders. Although we only discussed the pictures for 10-15 minutes, my kids were hooked! They loved looking at the football pictures from long ago! My favorite question/discussion so far was when we were looking at the fan pictures. One of my little girls asked, "Where are all the girls?!" Another one then said, "I don't think they were into football long ago." I asked them where they thought the women were, and they thought the women were at home taking care of the kids! #probablyright!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check out the other great blog posts at the Five for Friday linky party!