On Monday my mind was BLOWN while hanging out in a 5th grade class at Fair Oaks Elementary. Mrs. Greenday invited me into her classroom as an extra set of hands. She had recently been introduced to Discovery Science and was told that there was a feature within Discovery Science called Board Maker. Last week we sat down together to try and figure out the ends and outs of Board Maker. We felt like Board Maker was a virtual bulletin board. We could stick all sorts of things on this board. Mrs. Greenday felt comfortable creating her own board so off she went to create.
This past Monday she invited me back in as an extra set of hands and to see Discover Science in motion. Students logged into the computers and accessed Discover Science using Clever. As of Monday students can now access Clever on their desktop. There were lots of issues with the Clever link being placed in Server Shortcuts so technology helped alleviate the problem by sticking an icon on their desktop. Now you should see a large blue and white C with the Clever link on each desktop. One awesome feature that Clever provides with Discovery Science is that students don’t have to log into Discovery Science. Clever takes their log in info and plugs it in for them! You can quickly pass through Clever and roll right into your Discovery Science lesson.
Students are also pre-loaded into your Discovery Science class based on your PowerSchool roster! Mrs. Greenday clicked less than 3 buttons and assigned her board to her students. When the students log into Discovery Science they click on their assignment tab and they are ready to roll.
Mrs. Greenday’s board was super unique. She included two short videos about the ocean floor, one reading passage (which had the read-aloud feature) and two interactive models where the students were able to label as well as drag and drop features onto the ocean floor. She found these resources by searching through Discovery Science and adding to her “My Content” tab.She then quickly pulled these resources right onto her board in Discovery Science. She also attached two Padlet walls to her board. Padlet is a virtual wall that allows students to post images, thoughts, sentences and videos in one central location for everyone to see. Mrs. Greenday added questions to the top of the Padlet wall and students simply double clicked and added their responses. They were AMAZED when their classmates answers and images started appearing on their screens. It was truly a collaborative effort. Mrs. Greenday deserves a HUGE pat on the back for getting this Discovery Science board up and running! I learned so much from her!
