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We are honored to be able to run this guest post from EdTechTeacher Summit presenter, Michael Cohen (@TheTechRabbi). Do you remember your first plane ride? As young children, we remember the excitement of preparing for our trip, the adrenaline as the plane sped down the runway, and the occasional turbulence that met us with surprise or perhaps fear. All in all, our first plane ride was an experience, and it might have been a big part of what we shared with others about our trip. What about the second trip? What about the tenth or the fifteenth? At some point, the flight…
This week, we continued with end-of-year professional development workshops and kicked off our first Full-Year program for 2014-15. Our team of instructors criss-crossed half of the country, working with schools in North Carolina, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Next week officially marks the start of our Summer Workshop series in Atlanta. We still have space in a number of our other workshops, so check out the Course Catalog and come join us! ETT Summit Update Each week, we get more excited about the July 28-30 EdTechTeacher Summit in Chicago. We have added presenter showcase to the schedule to include…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. Helping kids show what they understand by making their thinking visible should be at the heart of most pedagogically sound technology integration. Chrome apps can help you do just that if you choose the right ones. Here are some of my top picks for achieving this in the Chromebook classroom. BookTrack This ingenious platform puts an entirely new spin on reading and writing. It allows students to create amazing ‘book’ adventures by adding background music to written pieces – turning reading into a completely new and fun experience. What makes it so innovative is…
Sugata Mitra painted a picture of a School in the Cloud during his 2013 TED Prize Talk. Gary Stager, in his book Invent to Learn, calls on schools to become engineering labs where students construct problems and solutions. Howard Gardner has proposed curricula based on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. While these major transformations of the education system could Someday be possible, what does Monday bring? Justin Reich and Shawn McCusker explored this Someday/Monday dichotomy in a recent webinar for ISTE Connects. >>> Listen to the recording
This post first appeared on Edudemic. I was fortunate to teach in a 1:1 laptop classroom for seven years. In my classes, students took daily notes on computers, did research, wrote essays, created various multimedia publications, and worked on collaborative projects. Yet I knew that if I wasn’t watching their screens, my students would at some point be doing something they were not supposed to be doing. So, while I was thrilled with the tremendous educational content available to my students, I was concerned with the less-than-desirable elements pervasive on the Internet. Today, I stroll through many schools that are…
We’re back and better than ever! This week, we would like to give you a tour of the all NEW EdTechTeacher. With over 250 pages of content, there are tons of resources to explore. NEW Resources Start Here Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a defined starting point when looking for educational technology resources? We thought so, too. That’s why we created a new landing page aptly called Start Here. While some of the content can also be accessed from other points in the site, we wanted to make a single landing page to begin the exploration process. …
This post first appeared on Edudemic. A class set of novels, binders, poster boards, and enough post-it notes to wallpaper a school…. all supplies associated with a traditional middle school book club model. With the addition of iPads, Google Apps, and other educational technology, the age of the “traditional” book club requires a change. Digital book clubs allow for connected, flexible, and customized literacy instruction that engages all learners. From reading digital novels, to participating in online discussions, and annotating text with categorical tags to expressing ideas through transliteracy (multi-media tools), students will interact with the text, the teacher, and…
Special thanks to ETT Summit Presenter, Sabba Quidwai (@askmsq). She will be presenting Cast a Spell to Flip Your Class with TouchCast. In the Passenger Seat Placing students in the driver’s seat, guiding their own learning as the educator facilitates from the sidelines is sometimes uncomfortable. If you have taught anyone how to drive, you know the feeling quite well. It’s easy to have the new driver in the passenger seat showing them what all the different gears and buttons are for. It’s easy to be driving and explaining why you are yielding or why you are turning your indicator light…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. A challenge of raising a connected generation of students is figuring out how to be a connected learner yourself. This requires learning about the tools that support connections and connected learning, and to accomplish this goal you may want to consider Google Certification. Which one is the best option? Here are two great ways you can accomplish this task. First you need to know what the difference is between a Google Certified Teacher and a Google Certified Trainer? Since there are some Google Teacher Academies coming up soon, it is time to break down…
Recently, Lisa Johnson has been writing and presenting on Device Agnostic Tools for the classroom. Yester, she published this great ThingLink on her TechChef4U blog. We just had to share! To learn more, read 5 Tools for the Device Agnostic Classroom and watch her webinar from a few weeks ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYADLBery5I&list=PLLldUVH7KOPcqSjKFU8SFWmD7kilPE6Rq&feature=share&index=8 To learn more from Lisa, come hear her at the EdTechTeacher Summit in Chicago or attend The iPad Classroom in Austin.
This is guest post from ETT Summit presenter Sabba Quidwai (@askmsq) first appeared on Free Technology for Teachers. At the top of my list these days is an app called TouchCast. How many times have you watched a video where they point out a great resource only to say that you’ll come back to it later and never do? Or, have you ever shared a great resource and wanted to provide a variety of links for someone to choose from to extend their knowledge? It’s happened to me lots of times, and either I forget the links, or get distracted…
This post first appeared in Edudemic. Providing timely and effective feedback on student work is a critical component to any classroom. As students increasingly operate and create in a digital environment, emerging tools provide unique new opportunities for teachers to provide feedback on both written work and video projects. Feedback on Written Work With the increased adoption of Google Apps for Education, student writing often occurs within Google Docs. While teachers can provide feedback in the form of typed comments, media-rich options exist. By incorporating audio and video feedback, teachers have even more opportunities to connect with their students as…
This post first appeared on Edudemic. Selecting apps and planning projects in a BYOD can be a formidable endeavor. What device does Gavin have? Does this website work on Caroline’s iPad? Is there a comparable collage or cartoon application on Hayden’s device? “Device Agnostic” tools can alleviate the stress that is associated with student performance tasks in a BYOD. “A device-agnostic mobile application (app), for example, is compatible with most operating systems and may also work on different types of devices, including notebooks, tablet PCs and smartphones.” – Margaret Rouse In a recent webinar focusing on tools for a BYOD,…
This post, Use Your Voice to Give Students Feedback on Google Drive – Cool Kaizena Updates, first appeared on Free Technology for Teachers. Kaizena is an outstanding web based tool that allows teachers to provide audio feedback on student work that has been created and shared through as Google Docs. Kaizena is not a native tool in a Google Drive account, but can be added through the Google Drive apps store. Alternatively, teachers and students can go to the Kaizena website and connect the app to an existing Google Drive account. Providing students with audio as well as text-based feedback,…
May 19, 2014: SCRATCH is a fantastic, FREE platform for teaching students about coding. Samantha and Douglas had some great ideas for how to integrate it into the curriculum.May 19th at 8pm ESTSpeakers: Douglas Kiang (@dkiang) and Samantha Morra (@sammorra) Webinar Resources Chat Transcript
