Cell Phones in the Classroom

Eeek! What a subject! I am completely bamboozled while I try to read through the lab in our CEP812 class. Cell phones in 5th grade would be a distraction... Hands down (at least in my room). Our school has a strict policy for elementary students that cell phones stay in the locker (mostly this is prevent them from losing them....). the one time I have used cell phoens is as timers. I know that sounds odd but sometimes when we need to time something then I pull out my iPhone and the kids run and get their cells.

That said, I move onto other portable devices.

KINDLES! Yeah! Our school has a wonderful reading program called Golden Dragon, where they read a specific amount of books and get to go to a great party. All the books they pick are incredible, but the added twist was this year they could check out Kindles! With parent permission my 5th graders have excitedly received an email and been able to go pick up their Kindle from the library that is filled with all the Golden Dragon books! Amazing! What was even better was how many of them came back from Christmas break with their very own Kindle... From this teachers point of view, anything we can do to have them read more and feel excited about it, then let's do it!

We also have "Playaway's" in the library which are little mp3 players that contain one book for the kids to listen to. This is particularly popular with the ELL population at our school.
iPads are all around our school now. We just got a new iPad cart which is great, I have yet to check it out as the list to do so is incredibly long and my kids all have their own lap top, so I don't want to get overly greedy, but that guilt will pass soon!!
Flip cameras are great. My kids love to post movies they make and we have a great video project called "Day int he Life" where the kids make movies of one day int heir life and then edit them using Movie Maker. it is a beloved 5th grade project that may get thrown out as we are heading towards the Common Core and it is hard to battle to fit the project into our new standards... pity... Flip cameras are very easy to use, the one problem I tend to have with them is the sound can be not great. But we are getting quite adept at voice overs...
I am planning on trying to use Poll Everywhere with my kids next week. I was thinking of asking them which program they like the best of the ones we are trying for my Wicked Problem Project.