Reader’s Workshop – The Sway Way!

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At Wissahickon Middle School, we have been using Sway in a variety of ways for demostrations of learning, teacher presentations, and communication, collaboration and project-based learning.  Another great way that our teachers and students are using Sway is through reading portfolios.  Read on to find out how Language Arts teacher Chad Towarnicki and his students have used Sway to not only keep track of the books they have read, but to use stunning graphics, videos, and text to highlight their “big reads”.

During the third marking period our eighth grade students conduct a large scale Reading Workshop/Genre Study. This year, with Office 365 available to each student, we were able to use Sway as a singular portfolio housing for the variety of assignments that the students produce over a period of ten weeks.  From the standpoint of the educator, students were able to generate several formal written assessments of varying length, multi-media formatted creative projects, and a formal log of book reviews all in one spot. From the student perspective, it was a single large-scale project where they could infuse whatever theme format they chose, creatively displaying their work while flexing their tech-savvy muscles.

The beauty of Sway was that formatting options work in sets of three, so students have enough wiggle room to manipulate the visuals when loading in different assignments, but there aren’t so many options that they get overwhelmed. In the end the students remained invested in the reading workshop for the long-term, due in part to the visually appealing one-stop-presentation of Sway.

Check out this Sway to view seven student examples from this project.  Very cool!



Project Communication and Collaboration with Sway

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I had the honor of being a guest blogger once again on the Microsoft in Education blog.  This time I wrote about how the students and staff of Wissahickon Middle School are using Sway for project communication and collaboration.  As of today, the post was not only posted on the Microsoft in Education blog, but also their “Firehouse” blog, and today, the Microsoft in UK blog.  In addition, I’m feeling the social media love for the post as it has circulated around the Twitter and Facebook circles.

Check it out below!



Hour of Code

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In honor of Computer Science Education Week next week, students in Wissahickon School District and across the globe will be participating in activities for the Hour of Code.

Below is a Sway that I put together to introduce the Hour of Code and to get students started on activities.  Our 8th graders will be completing two coding activities and then creating a presentation (via Sway or another medium) to reflect upon their experience and review the activities they completed.

If you like this Sway below, feel free to borrow it and share with others to spread the coding love!