One of my favorite digital tools is Padlet. Padlet is a collaborative digital cork board and classroom response system that let’s you collect and organize virtual stickies of information including text, images, audio and video. At the recent 21st Century Learning Symposium I shared some strategies for using Padlet in support of Formative Assessment. During this session my intent was to model the versatility of Padlet whether you have a single internet connected device, a small set of 5-8 devices, or 1:1 student devices. I also modeled how Padlet can be used to support formative assessment strategies such as entry/exit tickets and cooperative learning structures. The resources for this session are embedded below. It includes guides and tips for creating your own Padlet boards.
I've also been developing a Student Guide that includes presentation slides and a video tutorial to help students begin using Padlet as a tool for research, presentations, and collaborative communication. I invite you to utilize this guide for use with your own students if you like.
St. Clair County RESA has been producing educational videos and news segments for many years. They've recently published a RESA TV Youtube channel that has many great resources for schools and the classroom.
One video worth checking out features teachers and students at Belle River Elementary showcasing their Digital Learning Day activities and celebrations.
As I was watching some of the videos from the RESA TV channel I came across this April 2011 Dateline Schools interview of myself discussing our Tools for Teaching Digital Natives technology integration pilot program that we ran during the 2010-11 school year. I was surprised to hear how much of what we did in this pilot that is still relevant today. You can hear my reflections about this program from the 5-17 minutes mark and also hear how this program impacted one of our participants, Jill Parrot from Port Huron Area School District. Jill is an amazing educator who has gone on to do some amazing work in her classroom. Thanks for watching.
I love student created content especially when I learn from it too. Check out the Tech Sherpas blog (students from Central Maine at Nokomis Regional High) for informative student created video webcasts covering all number of education technology topics. The kids are Smart with a capital "S". This week they covered the sharing features in Google Drive. This could be a great jumping off point for having your own students creating meaningful content for the world to see.
I'm a big fan of graphic organizers to help students visualize their learning and organize their thinking. I like this article by Ryan Knoblauch that unpacks how he is using graphic organizers to support his students. He has tons of resources for templates you can use plus a great glimpse into the methods he is using in his classroom.
MASSP iPad Summit March 26 (MSU Henry Center) - Only 50 seats left for the Michigan Association of Secondary Schools Prinicipals iPad Summit conference. If your district is implementing or planning to implement iPads at the Secondary level then you won't want to miss this opportunity to learn how schools in Michigan are transforming student learning using iPads. I'm honored to have been asked to keynote this exciting event and look forward to setting the stage for the day with what I think will be a very fun theme: "iPad Magic - How to Wrangle the Unicorns"
Save the date. April 20, 2013 Jackson ISD will be hosting an innovative conference that plans to be half edcamp half brain trust (bringing in the REMC Connected Educators from around the state). It's sure to be a can't miss. Details to follow.
Another date worth saving will be Thursday August 22, 2013. That's the tentative date for this year's 21st Century Learning Symposium hosted by St. Clair County RESA. This annual event has been host to some of education's leading thinkers including Yong Zhao, Will Richardson, Mark Prensky, and Stephen Heppell. This year we are excited to have Kevin Honeycutt join this impressive list along with 600+ of Michigan's best.
Last call for MACUL - Michigan's premier education technology conference is just around the corner March 20-22. This statewide event is an awesome opportunity to learn and network with some of the most innovative educators in our state. This year's MACUL conference is hosted in Detroit at the Cobo center. I'm facilitating two sessions this year - The Appcessible iPad (UDL strategies for the iPad) and co-presenting with Laura Chambless - Cooperative Learning and the iPad.
Science teachers - Take a look at Color Uncovered and Sound Uncovered to provide inquiry based resources that are sure to pique your students' curiosity. The interactive, hands-on manipulatives and informative accompanying articles are incredibly well done and very interesting. I'd keep my eye out for more apps from the Exploritorium Museum in San Francisco that developed these apps to accompany their brick and mortar exhibits.
I'm taking a second look at the Davinci Note app after coming across another interesting web app called tackk.com. Both iPad friendly programs provide a beautiful templates for mashing up pictures and text to create high impact informative writing. I'm drawn to the simple user interface of the Davinci Note app for the potential to create attractive research reports, quick writes, and other blog like reflections with students. Tackk is similar but is web based, giving it the advantage of working on multiple devices and has the distinct advantage of not requiring a student login for creating and sharing. One key piece is that e-mail sharing feature does NOT use the iPad's native e-mail to send and therefor let's students e-mail their work to the teacher without needing their own e-mail.
This week someone tweeted out something along the lines of "we don't send kids to the pencil lab". On Wednesday I was challenged to model some lessons across a K-5 building that put technology into the students' hands the entire time. To be honest it felt a bit forced, and had I not felt the pressure to model in this manner I might have dropped the tech from certain parts of some of the lessons. At the heart of my lessons was a very non-techy modified think, pair, share strategy for keeping all students accountable and engaged. Had I left this out I think my lessons would have been a disaster. What if I had left out the technology? The answer is that the delivery of content to each child's device via Nearpod personalized the information and helped hold their attention. The formative classroom response tools helped me gauge mastery of the concepts, increased accountability, and made the lesson fun. But these tools could have been less front and center and been just as effective. It didn't need to be a tech lesson. It merely needed to be an opportunity for everyone to learn. The technology went a long way in supporting this goal of reaching "everyone". Until it didn't. Until the technology became the focus. We don't glue pencils onto our students' hands, right?
I'd like to share with you a brand new app that was developed by a fellow Michigan educator, Brad Wilson. Brad was a 4th grade teacher before taking a position with Jackson ISD as an Education Technology Consultant.
The app costs $2.99 and is primarily targeting grades 2-5 but could easily be used in other grades, both younger and older as well. I could see this being used whole class as a quick write activity by displaying the app from the teacher's iPad or having students rotate through a single or small set of iPads. It could also be purchased for an entire cart using the Volume Purchase Program.
Finally, as a matter of full disclosure, Brad is a friend of mine, and he consulted me for feedback and suggestions during the development of this app. That being said, I'm confident that this app is worth purchasing for your classroom if you want to help students become more active and engaged writers. If you decide to download and use this app with your students please share your impressions with me or with Brad on how it is working and how it might improve.
Without making any promises, I hope to begin sending out a weekly update of news, events, and reflection. Yup, a newsletter. But if you've made it here for the first time or been following my blog for a while then why not. Don't forget that you can subscribe to my blog via your favorite format by clicking on the subscribe button on the side bar.
Another great participant driven professional development event happening on Michigan's west side.
New Apps to check out
Do you need a presentation app, but can't afford to put Keynote on all of your student devices. Take a look at Haiku Deck and ScrollShow for some free alternatives.
Graphic organizers are a proven method for helping students grasp and retain information. Trading Cards is a high quality FREE app from the folks at Read/Write/Think. Think of these as digital baseball cards for vocabulary, characters, and historical events.
Roll your own Professional Development
Have you been thinking about getting started with Google Apps for Education and it's suite of online document creation tools (Drive), website builder (Sites), and calendar? I've created this overview page to help teachers new to Google Apps for Education understand what it is, why schools are using it, and how to sign in for the first time if their school has a Google Apps for Education account. The page includes a screencast and step-by-step notes to help you or your staff get started.
Thought for the week
I've been focussed on gratitude this week. As I sat in my parked car on the shore of Lake Huron last night I reflected on the magnificence of water and let the sounds of the waves remind me of the simple beauty of nature. Take time to be aware and present in the moment, calm your thoughts of past and future, and be grateful for whatever it is that you have to be grateful for.
Copyright, Creative Commons, Fair Use? As educators we should be familiar with these terms as well as our obligations to use and properly cite the work of other individuals. But in the flury of getting lessons together or beating out another presentation it can be extremely difficult to credit others in this age of instant digital media, not to mention helping our students do the same.
Thankfully, a new tool has arrived that helps to streamline the proper citation of creative commons images - ImageCoder.org. What ImageCoder does is help you find images licensed under the various creative commons licenses on Flickr, presents you with a concise overview of what the license does and does not allow, and then provides you with an embeddable html code that properly cites the image for your blog or website.
Here's a screenshot of the license information and embed code for the image above.
Unfortunately, this won't work on Word documents or PowerPoint but would great for classroom and student websites or blogs.
