AISC Technology Integration

Mozilla's X-Ray Goggles - Coding into Social Studies and Art Classrooms

2017-05-24T11:20:00.002+05:30

Just came across an awesome extension - Mozilla's X-Ray Goggles extension. In Social Studies classrooms, do you want the students to think critically and write/modify the news articles without taking sides, and publish them? In Art classes, do you want the students to change the code, play around and get a new art piece? Mozilla's X-Ray Goggles are the easiest way to design a powerful activity in your classrooms. Bonus: Teaching Coding in the classrooms in a fun way!

Watch the video:

How to do? Here is the link to the instructions:

Of course you need to download and install Firefox browser. No worries, it is free.
In the Firefox browser, view--> Bookmarks bar
Type in X-Ray Goggle Extension in the browser
Drag and Drop the Extension logo into the bookmarks
Open the news website or any website that you want the students to play around with
Click on X-Ray Goggle
Change the code and publish your very own news articles!

Here is the sample activity that you can try:

More ideas to teach in the classrooms:

Let me know if you need to set it up for your classrooms.....

MakeologySummit @ AISC - Top Tips

2017-05-24T11:06:00.001+05:30

Makeology Tweet Tips!

To be a better #inventor u hv to believe there's always a better way of doing things. Learning by iteration @sabarani #makeologysummit @aisc

We're born learners but we let school get in the way of that! @jaymesdec at #makeologysummit @AISChennai. #makered #chennai #edchat #making

Problems forms the basis for creative ideas and solutions.

#Coding is digital making #makology

Learn by iterating. Saba Ghole. Wisdom for school improvement? @makeology

Don't like your project? Turn it 90 degrees.

Learning to see through design and making. Saba Ghole.

"Being comfortable with engaged discomfort." #makeology @aischennai #maker #consilience @consiliencelrn #makeologysummit

Playing with Makey Makey at Makeology Summit,

Fuel your creativity. Saba Ghole

@makeology @AISChennai In a school where students are experts at process, would we care what the product looked like?

Makers innovate and grow their resilience. AISC Learner Vision frames a problem-solving mindset.

Professional learning in the science and discovery studio. Making means learning. @AISChennai @makeology

Achieving a personal long time goal today learning @LilyPad_Arduino to make wearable tech! #makersed #programming @AISChennai #makeology

Weabrable Tech: https://github.com/blhack/wearables

Lilypad
Arduino Programming
Conductive Thread
Adafruit Neo Pixel Lights
https://punchthrough.com/bean - arduino with cell phone
https://circuits.io/ - simulator for circuit teaching

#Learning2Asia@October 2016 #takeaways

2016-10-10T15:15:00.002+05:30

With lots of overwhelming ideas/thoughts reeling in my head,I am back from Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam "Reenergized" and ready to "Reimagine Learning". The theme of this Learning 2.0 Asia in Ho Chi Min City from October 6th to 8th 2016 is 'Reimagine Learning'. How can schools be redesigned to empower imagination, creativity and foster learning?

Personal Pride:

What could be more satisfying than seeing two of your students in the leadership (on their way to leadership) roles? One of them was leading the Student Workshops and gave an excellent Learning2 talks, the other one being the Technology Leader in the Middle School.

Learning in the Making Pre-conference:

Brian Smith provided

the instructions through his website: https://sites.google.com/a/briancsmith.org/learning/home (Hummingbird, Makey-Makey, Logo Programming, Resources)

the materials (All the kits + additional decorative stuff (cardboard)

4 hours

The groups struggled to figure out in the beginning. However, finally they came up with amazing projects! Will this be possible with younger students? Will this be possible with all the students?.. I wonder.

Robot in a Box:

Ringo spread his passion for Robots throughout the workshop. His Learning2 talk was on Robotic Costume which can play different songs.

His three hour long extended session was totally opposite to Brian's style. He gave step by step instructions to complete many Arduino projects. He gave code, step by step instructions through this instructable lesson. What blew me was the way in which he made it possible for the participants to complete a project without going into coding, electronics or any of the whys. This style is great when you want to introduce some complicated concepts and fire the thirst for deeper learning. Personally for me, even though I am a bottom to top style person, the satisfaction of having completed a working project and my confidence to learn the rest by myself left me very satisfied.

Rebrand Teaching (Tosco Killoran)

HERE is her presentation. Some quotes from her presentation:

"You cannot sell sameness"

Don't be a broken relationship (404 error): Video

"Little things done right, matter"

"Well designed moments build brand"

"A simple mistake can tell me what you aren't or remind me why I love you"
Rebrand Yourself and help your students strategize their successful branding:

contribute to a collective #ReBrandTeaching Magazine. Please bring a small prop of something that represents you outside of ‘teaching’. We will take photos in order to see teachers as more than their role in schools

create a personally branded website using About me - mine

create a personal brand or ReBrand on social media

share the successful branded student stories with your students: Examples MattyB, Nash Grier (Nash Grier. ABOUT Known for his comedic sketch videos on YouTube and Vine, he has over 12.4 million Vine followers and more than 4.7 million YouTube subscribers.)

Technology Tool: (courtesy Tosco Killoran)

Example: https://flipgrid.com/1b61ab62

Flipgrid is simple yet powerful. Educators create grids with topics and students respond with recorded videos to discuss, reflect, and share via webcam, tablet, or mobile device. The respondents can record one minute and 30 seconds video to share it with the group. 30 day trial and the yearly subscription costs $65.

TechnoPlot Predictions

2016-10-09T22:42:00.003+05:30

What words are displayed?

How are they sized?

What might be the main parts of the plot?

Do you know the title of this book?

If you said, Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe you are correct!

This lesson is adapted from Common Sense Media: Making Predictions about Plot Using Word Clouds.

To begin the lesson, you would want to make a word cloud with a book that students have already read. I used wordle.net to create my word cloud by copying and pasting the entire text of the book into the site. (There are other sites and apps available.) This will give students a chance to recognize how word clouds are created; the more the word is repeated the larger it is in the word cloud.

Next have students create or use a teacher created word cloud of a book they are going to read. Have students make connections between the words in the word cloud and the plot of the story. What might be your prediction for the summary of the plot based on the word cloud?

Students could also make word clouds as an alternative to a reading response. Have students think about the main idea or theme of the story using words in the book. Then have them create a word cloud to connect the plot with the words.

Do you have older students? Have students create word clouds in Google Slides for each chapter of their book. They can write a quick plot prediction. After reading the chapter, have students compare and contrast their predictions with the actual story. What parts did they predict accurately? Which parts were different?

Happy Wordling!

Google Slides with Laser Pointer and Q & A feature!-- Another Formative Assessment Tool!

2016-05-08T10:42:00.001+05:30

Google has added an awesome formative assessment feature in Google Slides! The Question and Answer feature is found in the presentation mode of Google Slides. With this feature enabled, you can send your audience to s specific URL at which they enter questions. Your audience can vote for their favorite questions. The presenter can choose to project the most favorite questions to answer or discuss.

The other fantastic update to Google Slides - addition of a "laster printer" feature int he presentation mode. This feature allows you to highlight portion of your slides for your audience.

Here is how?

What better and handy tool for formative assessment than this?

Book Marketing: A Different Way to Get Attention for a Book

2016-05-06T18:51:00.002+05:30

I have recently had the privilege of working with Allison, Brian, and Lauren on a book trailer project with the Grade 4 students.

It was so much fun to teach the students about the Art of Digital Storytelling. We began by using Bernajean Porter's description of images. This is the craftsmanship phase of digital storytelling. Here is the poster we used with students.

Then we went on to talk about the emotion of the music. Music is what creates the emotions and feelings in our digital stories. It can captivate an audience or make an audience feel confused. Students listened to several different pieces of music on Zaption and wrote the feelings that each piece evoked in them.

In conjunction with discussing these topics, we also began the process of synthesizing the messages in their books into a book trailer. Students watched several examples of book trailers and created a list of the items that a good book trailer contained. They then analyzed more book trailers with a rubric. At last they began their own journey of creating book trailers with their book club books.

Students began creating the book trailer by completing a story arc. Then they thought about the most important parts of the book; parts that were exciting, sad, or dramatic. Along with this, they chose quotes from the text that portrayed the character's traits. Finally, they completed a storyboard that was used to identify the media and script of their trailer. They are still in the process of finishing their videos but we have seen many close to completion and they are terrific.

I was lucky to accompany the teachers through the planning process and was present for many of these lessons. We will be making an Aurasma wall in the library so that the videos are available for our entire community. Look for this in about a week. We can't wait to show off the students wonderful work!

Fractured Fairy Tales- Exploring Different iPad Apps

2016-05-05T13:18:00.000+05:30

All people have creative abilities and we all have them differently. I know that when individuals find their creative strengths, it can have an enormous impact on self-esteem and on overall achievement. I experienced that last week as I created examples of the fractured fairytales using Toontastic and the comic feature in Book Creator.

The past two weeks have been an interesting week for me. Hilary and I have been working with Tiffany on creating fractured fairytales using iPad Apps. The entire experience for me personally has been challenging. After researching and seeing the pros and cons of different apps we finally decided on choosing Toontastic, Stop Motion, Powtoons, Puppet Pals and Book Creator. We worked hard on creating examples and in the process discovered how much planning it takes to create an effective digital story. You can view some of the examples here.

Creating a good digital story is definitely time consuming and made me realise that if it took me so much time to create an example it would take the students time to become familiar with a tool and then employ it for their project. We wanted to give students choices in order for them to decide which tool would serve them best. The solution was to allow the students to explore each tool with some guided practice.

We decided to do tech rotations by setting up different stations that would give the students the opportunity to come and explore the app for 20 minutes before they moved to the next station. Without this kind of exposure to different choices we could not expect our students to create meaningful pieces of work that showed their applied understanding of using a tech tool.

This project is in the process now and even though it is time consuming it makes it worthwhile as we know that it gave the students a chance to explore different apps and investigate questions they may have had in regards to the technology they used. By taking the time at the beginning, students saved time when they started creating their stories. Tiffany did an amazing job having the kids ready with their storyboards and completed fractured fairytales. Look at this space for the stories to come to life when they are finished. If you wish for us to come and work with your class in exploring these different apps please schedule a time to meet with Hilary. We would love to come and work with your kids and expose them to these apps that would bring their stories to life.

Padlet - A tool for Collaborative Sharing.

2016-04-28T10:42:00.002+05:30

Padlet - A tool for Collaborative Sharing.

I was looking for a place where I could project the work of all students in my class. I wanted my students to benefit from the work of other students and also to post their feedback. Ms.Geetha gave me few options and at this point of the year when I am busy with too many things happening I was kind of hesitant to try anything. But to my surprise it did not take much of my time, but at the same time I could place all that I wanted in one wall.

· Students work

· Students in action in class

· Feedback from students.

I am sure it will be good for parents also to see. This could be adapted for other purposes in my class.

Here is the link to our class work. Much more could be added to this!

http://padlet.com/vlakshmi/IVFDEBATE

Inform, Engage and Hook your Viewers with Infographics

2016-04-15T10:41:00.002+05:30

3 ways to REDUCE information OVERLOAD with INFOGRAPHICS

Source: http://piktochart.com/blog/3-ways-reduce-information-overload-infographics/

1. Less Text, More Data

2. Layout Guides the Flow

http://image.slidesharecdn.com/fas64keyrecipesforkillerinfographics-140325160557-phpapp02/95/friday-session-64-key-recipes-for-killer-infographics-58-638.jpg?cb=1395900363
R

Resources for making the best out of Visual Arrangement:

3. Visual Appeal

Appeal to your audience by considering basic graphic design principles – color, icons, and white space – and using them to your advantage. More on color, icons and white space

Final word....

An infographic’s main goal is to inform, but in order to do that, it needs to engage.

Get straight to the data in order to hook your viewers at first sight. A
Arrange it into a logical flow reflected in your layout and an overarching visual metaphor.
Reel the viewer’s gaze in with appropriately used graphic design principles.

The Takeaway: Clean up the Clutter

Technology integration in the Spanish classroom

2016-04-13T08:44:00.002+05:30

I wanted to share what Middle School students are producing not only becoming fluent with the Spanish language, but also becoming fluent using a variety of tools and integrating technology.

Click PLAY and enjoy!

Subject: Disregard That Last Email... OR Some Tips for Email Etiquette

2016-04-11T10:34:00.000+05:30

I've done it and maybe you have to — sent an email that I immediately realized I didn't need to, that I shouldn't have or that I might have sent to the wrong recipient. Or, what I do too many times to recall, send it so quickly that I forget to attach the document that was the purpose of the email in the first place.

Photo Credit: midwest.communications via Compfight cc

Regardless of the types of etiquette faux pas we might have made, it helps to sometimes think about how we use our email to try to avoid mistakes and keep it professional, especially because email continues to be an essential part of our daily work. In fact, one study found that answering and replying to emails takes up about 25% of our work week.

Image from mckinsey.com

I recently found an article, "15 Email-etiquette Rules Every Business Professional Should Know," on the Business Insider website. It gives a few quick tips to help keep your email professional and some that might help you avoid making a mistake. I especially like the reminder about considering whether to "Reply All" and the tip to enter the addresses into the recipient field after composing the email.

This is worth the quick read, as both a reminder and maybe for a new tip or two.

Dance Along With Chemistry

2016-03-29T10:17:00.000+05:30

This is what happens when you ask General Chemistry students to make a music video (or teaching with humor)!

Check out these creative youtube videos that are chocked full of learning.

Here is the playlist

Here is the rubric

What the students had to say

"I thought it was a good project with the right amount of time to complete it. The project allowed us to use more creativity as well as demonstrate our knowledge of chemistry."

"I think it was an interesting and helpful way to learn and understand content better, especially when you have to apply it."

"First, I was worried about if we could sing or not however, while we were doing, it was really fun and if I have chance to do it again, it will be pleasure."

"I think all of us worked together well as a group, and I really enjoyed it. I hope this goes on next year."

"It was an overall fun experience and I was able to learn and better remember the concepts we demonstrated in our video in a fun manner."

Gamify Learning in Your Classroom

2016-03-11T13:02:00.001+05:30

What a great afternoon we had on Wednesday, sharing on different aspects of Inquiry in the Digital Age. I had a great time discussing principles and strategies for gamifying your classroom. If you were in a different session or want to revisit some of the information I shared, check out the resources below or schedule some time and I can help you work some of these concepts into your next unit or lesson sequence.

Paul Andersen, from bozemanscience.com, discusses how he turned his AP Biology class into a video game:

Douglass Kiang — Using Gaming Principles to Engage Students
Vicki Davis — A Guide to Game Based Learning
Eduptopia's Game Based Learning Resource Roundup
My slide deck from our recent PD session — Gamification - Principles and Strategies

And look for some more PD opportunities around AISC about particular aspects of gamifying learning in your classroom.

Play Hard and Level Up, Everyone.

12 Great Virtual Field Trip Ideas

2016-03-08T11:07:00.003+05:30

Getting out of the classroom and into the world has never been easier, at least virtually. Technologies have improved rapidly to bring immersive imagery and live video into reach for schools. Whether you want to visit a city, a mountaintop, a watering hole, or a space station, there is a virtual field trip out there waiting for you to explore it. These days, getting there is the easy part, the challenging part is structuring the inquiry around it to make the experience powerful for your learners. Leave a comment if you have any great ideas for supporting inquiry with these experiences.

Check out these great sites for virtual experiences.

Virtual Field Trips

Structured Interactive Tours

Google Street View
Google can take you almost anywhere, street or no street. These structured tours are great for open-ended explorations and are practically inexhaustible.
London Virtual Tour - visitlondon.com
Visit key sites in London and learn about the importance of each to Britain's history.
Discovery VR | A new way to see your world
This site uses interactive video to tour different points of interest around the world. As the video plays, click around the video to pan and zoom in a 360° view. The ads can be a little annoying, but you can skip through them.
Thing Link - Train like an astronaut with Samantha Cristoforetti
Thing link is not so "panoramic", but has other videos and links embedded in an image to learn more about what you are looking at, much like a museum display might have.
India Virtual Reality Tours
Uses anchors built into the 360° tour to illuminate key areas of important historical sites in India. Look for the little red pins to find the next point of interest.

Live Web Cams

Your Zoo View | The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium
Great timing for India as Australia is 5 1/2 hours ahead. Catch feeding times and other interactive moments if you plan ahead. The cameras allow users to even pan and zoom in on a live zoo or aquarium installation.
Wild Animal and Zoo Live Webcams on LiveAnimals.tv
This service shows animals in the wild through a variety of webcams. There is no guarantee of seeing anything on some of the cams, much like a real safari, but with persistence the rewards can be thrilling. Also, keep time differences in mind when planning with your class.

Webcams - Dublin Zoo, Ireland.
Elephants, wolves, penguins, and African savannah webcams at decent times for india and in English.
Snow Monkeys Live
Though this site leads to a zoo in Edinborough where they feed the monkeys every day at 11:30 am, you could easily have your students find webcams of their favorite spots in their home countries.

Interactive Panoramas

Mountainpanoramas - Home - Mountain Panoramas from Around the World
Surreal 360° views from the top of many different mountains. Think through the pros and cons of this kind of field trip!
Google Maps - Photo Shpere
Simpler than Google Street View, Photo sphere offers mildly interactive panoramas of almost anywhere. You can use Google images and maps to go anywhere!
Best Panoramas | | 360° Aerial Panoramas, 3D Virtual Tours Around the World
Some of the most amazing and striking panoramas on the web. Go stand on the rim of a volcanic in Russia or visit the new 7 wonders of the world. These are not live, but they are impressive.

Language of Social Media - Twitter, Hashtags and Memes in Classrooms:

2016-03-03T14:21:00.002+05:30

As a sequel to Tom’s blog post on twitter, I would like to share one of my takeaways from “ASB Unplugged”. Here is my little effort in bringing you a Grade 10 English classroom lesson on “The language of Social Media” particularly ‘hashtag”ging history and “meme”ing to you

The warm up exercise included the following hashtag and twitter activities.

Hashtag Exercise:

Choose two historical events that you studied in History class. Create hashtags that would have been effective in trending these boycotts, strikes, and instances of civil disobedience.

Tweeting Exercises

Define yourselves in a tweet. Don’t think too hard about it
our school’s (ASB) mission statement is currently 148 characters. Shorten the statement without compromising its meaning and so that you can also use hastag #asbindia at the end.

The class shared a few of the student examples.

Hashtagging Rules:

Don’t overuse 2 or 3 hashtags for one post
Keep them short
Define your tag using https://tagdef.com/ to be visible on Internet
No punctuation in hashtags

The class was asked to read one of the following articles and discuss.

The Limits of Hashtag Activitism

Do Hashtags Court as Activism

Evaluating Hashtags:

Discussions on whether or not hashtags are effective means of instigating social change?

Next the class went on to explore “Memes”

If you want to know more about “Memes” and how to use them to connect your classroom, read this.

The students were asked to create their own memes regarding their life at ASB using

http://memegenerator.net/. Just like the “Lays” advertisement, “No one could stop with one”, the students wanted to do more memes.

As we, the educators always do, let us innovate new ways we can incorporate twitter, hashtags and memes to make learning more effective and fun!

Digital Storytelling- What's your story?

2016-03-03T13:41:00.000+05:30

Digital Storytelling has always fascinated me as a child and continues to do so as an adult. I had the privilege to spend a considerable amount of time learning from Bernajean Porter. In Bernajeans words, "Digital Storytelling takes the ancient art of oral storytelling and engages a palette of technical tools to weave personal tales using images, graphics, music and sound mixed together with the author's own story voice." Her work reflects a belief that technology can accelerate all students in rediscovering their joy and personal success as learners. Her enthusiasm and vivacious presentations create an energetic climate for all learners.

I got to participate in her sessions and with a group of other educators and got to create stories that had structure, character, pace, voice, timing and setting. Storytelling both positive and negative, is one of the most powerful tools of humankind. We have all experienced how story telling has grown so much just in its scope and power to influence the common mass due to the amount of information being generated and the way media portrays it. It is a way of organizing knowledge. Telling the story in words versus doing it digitally made us see the difference and the impact it had on the audience. There were a lot of resources that she shared with us that help in making stories come alive.

This week in fourth grade Hilary taught a lesson on finding the right image that would make their poem stand out. We worked with the students on turning their poems into a story using images that should influence, inspire, and inform. Images can be categorized into 3 categories: decorating, illustrating, and illuminating. In Brian's class, we also worked on how music impacts the story that is being told. The students got to analyze different kinds of music. The mini lesson was well received by the teachers and students alike and we are looking forward to some amazing poems that children have written and turned into awesome digital projects. If you would like to book a time with us to come and work with your students, send us a request. Team Prilary would love to work with all of you.

Why Twitter? Because We Are Lifelong Learner's, That's Why.

2016-03-02T12:44:00.000+05:30

Having just returned from ASB Unplugged, I have many ideas I want to share with you from the sessions I attended, and I will do so over the next few weeks. However, I am going to begin with Twitter.

Why Twitter? Well, Twitter had a strong presence at ASB Unplugged; it was a layer that brought the entire conference—its dozens of sessions across two campuses—into one place. But it also brought more than just the sessions together; it brought together like-minded participants who might not have met otherwise, allowing them to share ideas online and later connect in person. In fact, Ken Shelton (@k_shelton) and Chris Betcher (@betchaboy), who co-presented the GAFE Summit at ASB Unplugged, knew and collaborated with each other for two years prior to meeting face-to-face and, eventually, working with one another. And Twitter can do this for you, too.

Twitter is a great tool for you to connect and access information as you develop your practice. In the screenshot above, you can see my Twitter feed on TweetDeck, which allows me to see my main feed and particular conversations I follow with the hashtags #edchat and #edcoach. I regularly make new connections and have a steady stream of ideas coming into my practice via Twitter.

If you want to read more about why Twitter matters, check out "The Teachers Guide to Twitter" on edudemic.com. And when you get started, let us know and we can help you build this tool into a meaningful part of your practice.

Digital Citizenship in Elementary

2016-02-23T12:17:00.003+05:30

Recently, we received our Common Sense Media certification. Common Sense Media was developed because of research conducted by Howard Gardner and The Harvard School of Education. They conducted a study on youth and digital ethics. Their findings were that youth did not have sufficient knowledge regarding digital ethics. Common Sense partnered with The Harvard School of Education to develop the Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship Curriculum and the website. Currently, their website is the most comprehensive website online and offers advice on a variety of issues regarding digital citizenship. I encourage both parents and educators to look at all the information they have provided for educating youths. This is the curriculum that we have been using at American International School Chennai to teach our students.

In the lower grades, we begin by teaching about Going Online Safely.

Ms. Laura's class coded BeeBots to show safe and unsafe online behaviors.

Grade 3 classes have focused on the difference between Personal and Private information. Did you know a thief only needs 3 pieces of private information to begin identity theft?

Last week, Tiffany taught a Common Sense Media lesson on sending emails using Nearpod. This is a tool that can be used for individual learning or whole class learning.

As we move into the older grades we begin to talk about self image and the media's influence on how we view ourselves and gender.

Please make time for us to come to your classes and teach your students. We would love to work with all of you.

High School Technology Communication - 1st June 2015

2015-06-01T10:02:00.001+05:30

Important Announcements:

Thank you for a productive year! Thank you for all your support throughout this year! We will be back with new vigor, new enthusiasm for another great year, even better than this!

Thanks to for those who filled out the form for Moodle Roll over for next year. Still I need to get the information from many. kindly take a few minutes to complete the form which is linked below:

Here is a repeat of the announcement from last week:

Moodle Roll over Information - Kindly fill out this form for your requirements on Moodle Roll Over for the year 2015-2016

Departing Staff: your Google Account Information

Here is the video on how to transfer AISC emails to your personal Gmail account. This version shows you how to automatically archive all incoming messages and bypass your inbox.

Google Takeout

Google takeout allows you to download a copy of your data stored within Google products. The one drawback is it will only archive files in Drive that you own. If you wish to have access to other shared documents, those will need to be either downloaded separately or shared with your new account and then a copy of those files will need to be created. In this video you will see how to use Google Takeout. It's worth the 5:30 min. it takes just to get an idea.

If you plan to upload all your data to a personal account, please make sure you have enough free storage. It will not upload your Google Takeout file if you do not have enough space. You are given 15 GB of free storage to share across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos on a personal account. If you are going to a Google Apps for Education school, there is unlimited storage. You can check your storage by going to https://www.google.com/settings/storage.

Here is a link to the playlist for easy access later on. (Thanks Carlina)

Technology Hotspots@ HS-AISC

Tom Myers Research Project - Inclusion of multimedia element - How can you change your research paper from a simple written assessment to a multi-modal presentation mode?

In Tom’s words:

Modern World History 2

Back in January, each student was required to choose a world history topic that offered two different points of view. Once the topic had been approved, the research paper was to be organized around the following divisions: Introduction (with thesis), Historical Background, Perspectives, Historiography, Individual Perspective, and Conclusion.
The student was expected to apply a multi-media component to one of the divisions mentioned above. He or she was encouraged to be creative and use a multi-media format that would enhance the overall quality of the assignment.
As you might expect, the quality of the multi-media component varied greatly from one student to another. Several students took the time to create a multi-media format that added creativity and depth of thought to the topic being researched, while others used it to duplicate what was already written in the body of the paper, thus not adding anything of value in support of the student’s thesis.
In the future, it would be beneficial to offer a series of mini-workshops that would expose students to new multi-media formats and encourage them to take a risk in their use.
As it turned out, a variety of multi-media formats were used such as Prezi, infographic, tiki-toki, piktochart, and padlet. Rather than take a risk and try something new, most students fell back on what they already knew (understandably) due to the struggles they had over meeting deadlines associated with the research project.
Ms. Geetha’s contribution was to add the multi-media criteria to the rubric and assist in the scoring of this component for students in all three classes.
The links below are representative of students’ work at the Modification/Redefinition level of the SAMR model.
https://docs.google.com/a/aisch.org/file/d/0ByOsvVvl63giZWpXNUFnMFZVUHM/edit
https://prezi.com/41tuwwgldcvp/introduction/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
https://magic.piktochart.com/output/5479832-infograph-mwh2-fabian-lange

Cool Resource and Tool/s:
Favorite Tech Tools For Social Studies Classes:

Draggo	Bookmarking Tool suitable for students.
Explee	Video Scribing and project creation tool for students
MackinVIA	free database of primary sources with the “backpack” feature, which allows students to save books or excerpts that they want to come back to and can be great way to keep track of research materials
Recite.com	Helps students to type in a quote and create a stylized version
CK-12 Flexbooks	Lets the teachers create their own content or look at high quality content that’s already added
Tubechop	easy way to cut Youtube videos. Short url is created for the sorter videos which can be shared with the students. Helpful for making units shorter and crispier.
For More........	http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/05/21/favorite-tech-tools-for-social-studies-classes/

I was reading an article titled “Using Technology to Help Students Show Their Thinking” by Dan Gorden (Link). In this article, Mark Hammons, the educational technology coordinator at the Fresno County Office of Education, shares a great short tip for us to use in classrooms:

THE Journal: What would be an example of a strategy you’ve adopted to allow students to show their thinking process through technology?

Hammons: One way we’re doing this is through screencasting. For example, students will have two minutes to use an online manipulative to explain their thought process. This means that teachers don’t have to take valuable class time having everyone give a miniature presentation, and it allows them to see the individual thought processes of students, particularly those who don’t typically raise their hands in front of class. I’ve had a lot of teachers say they now know their students in a way they couldn’t before when those kids were so closed off in the more public setting.

--Have a great summer!!--

High School Technology Communication - 18th May 2015

2015-05-18T09:26:00.001+05:30

Important Announcements:

Thanks to for those who filled out the form for Moodle Roll over for next year. Others kindly take a few minutes to complete the form below:

Here is a repeat of the announcement from last week:

Moodle Roll over Information - Kindly fill out this form for your requirements on Moodle Roll Over for the year 2015-2016

Technology Hotspots@ HS-AISC

In continuation of PechaKucha resource, Tom Zuzulock has shared the following resource if you want to use them. Thanks Tom Z!

PechaKucha master slideshows designed for PowerPoint and Keynote, each with a title card, 20 content slides, and a place for works cited info. The slides have preset timings for auto-advance and also have a "practice timer," which is a small dot that moves across the screen starting at the 15 second mark to help students practice their PechaKuchas. You could add it to the resources folder if you want them. The key is, that they are downloaded and used in that format, or the timings/practice-timer may get broken, say if used in Google Docs. Here is the link to resource folder.

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Holly’s QR Fitness Project is a good exemplar to collect the student videos in an interesting way. Her Fitness class chose a fitness exercise, learned how to demonstrate the exercise correctly (form, cues and various ways to perform exercise), film a video of the student performing exercise. Upload the videos to the Youtube channel, make the privacy settings “unlisted”, create a QR Code for the video link and post in the shared document. Here is the document with the student work. Enjoy and see how you can modify it to suit your classroom. Thanks Holly for sharing the project idea and the student work with us. If you need more information on how to do this, kindly email me.

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

Online Rubric is a Google Spreadsheets Add-on that enables to you create rubrics, enter scores, and email scores to students all from one place. Online Rubric provides very clear instructions for each step of the processes of creating a roster sheet, creating a rubric, and emailing grades to students. For more information, click here.

As Semester Exams are almost here, here is https://www.goconqr.com/ which allows users to create mindmaps, notes, flashcards and quizzes and to share study materials with other goconqr users. Have students share their review materials with you so that you can make sure they're on the right track in their preparation for an exam.

--Have a wonderful week!--

High School Technology Communication - 11th May 2015

2015-05-11T14:16:00.001+05:30

Important Announcements:

Thank you for your class time for administering MAP Tests.
Moodle Roll over Information - Kindly fill out this form for your requirements on Moodle Roll Over for the year 2015-2016

Technology Hotspots@ HS-AISC

PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images. Here are the details if you want to learn more about this presentation format. However, Walter has altered to suit his requirement for his classroom. Here is the folder which contains rubrics and the template for his modified PechaKucha project. Thank you Walter, for letting me share with the our team! Lisa and Tom Z have used this presentation form in their English classes as well.

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

Review for Examinations the gamey way! Here are two of the game machine websites you can use to prepare review games:

What2Learn offers lots of review games on topics in math, science, social studies and language arts. Students don’t need to register on the site. You can build your own review games by clicking on ‘Make a Game’ tab, which takes you to http://www.what2learn.com/the-game-machine/. If you already have a list of questions and answers, perhaps from an old quiz, then building a review game on What2Learn Game Machine won't take long at all. The advantage of creating your own game compared to relying on pre-made games is that you can customize the content of the game to directly match your curriculum.
Create games, quizzes and diagrams in seconds - Use http://www.classtools.net/ .In fact, http://www.classtools.net/random-name-picker/ is a tool I use in my class to pick the student names randomly and the students love it!

Introducing the Make-a-Map™ Concept Map Tool by BrainPOP – Powered by Ideaphora

2015-03-06T08:55:00.001+05:30

Introducing the Make-a-Map™ Concept Map Tool by BrainPOP – Powered by Ideaphora

High School Technology Communication - 23rd February 2015

2015-02-23T16:49:00.002+05:30

Important Announcements:

If you have signed up for Robyn’s workshop, kindly take some time to do the pre requirements. Here is the excerpt from Kevin’s attachment:

Prior to the training complete the following:

Complete the survey: http://goo.gl/gJXb4y
Access Google Site with resources: http://goo.gl/vpHxc0
Register at

Common Sense Media http://goo.gl/Dj967R
Graphite https://graphite.org
Digital Bytes http://goo.gl/zQVbp5
Digital Passport http://goo.gl/wV75to

Install Evernote on computer and/or devices https://evernote.com/
Bring curriculum planning documents for subject or year level.
If you need help with any one of the processes above, kindly send me an email and I will walk you through the entire pre requirements.

Kindly impress upon your students to sign up for the Digital Citizenship Workshop during the afternoon of Feb 27th, 2015. The details are in Daily Bulletin. In a BYOT School, as a class teacher, you know how important for them to be educated about being a responsible Digital Citizen. I will send you a list of students who signed up for the afternoon soon. Please give the attendees some time to talk about Digital Citizenship in the class to the others. A little sacrifice of your class time will go a long way in creating responsible citizens (digital) and digital leaders!

Virtual Planning Day on March 25th. To learn more please read more about the event in our full brochure HERE. I would like to bring your attention to the following promise that the School has made. Kindly let me know if you need my support in preparation of running the day successfully!

All classes on Moodle will have specific instructions for this day. Learning activities will involve three key components: • Print or multimedia content • Interaction with teacher • Short non-graded assessment

VoiceThread Workshops:

VoiceThread is hosting 7 free online sessions in the coming months to help both Higher Ed. and K-12 educators develop ideas for enhancing their classes. Each session will be led by George Haines, an expert VoiceThreader, Instructional Designer, and former K-12 educator. George will share his expertise, showcase some exemplary VoiceThreads, and facilitate an open discussion about lesson design. Sign up for those workshops through this link.

Thanks for signing up for Technology PDs on Blogs and Audio Tools. If you have forgotten to sign up, you can right now. Please CLICK HERE to access the signup form for our tech professional learning.

Again thanks to those who expressed your interest in attending the Professional Development/ Teacher Training program on LEGO Mindstorms Education(LME) NXT Robotics by external expert Lead Trainer is coming up on March 14th, 2015. Click here to know more about NXT Robotics. It is an amazing, hands-on workshop which will be useful to the teachers of Math and Science. If you are still interested in attending this, kindly send me an email.

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

I wanted to focus on Virtual Learning Resources. You can try and test them now in order to make sure that you are ready for our very first Virtual Learning Day on March 25th on our School.

Three key components of learning activities which we promised as a School to deliver to the students are:

Print or multimedia content
Interaction with teacher
Short non-graded assessment

Let us look at the tech tools which will help us with each categories:

Print or Multimedia Content:

Teacher prepared videos (using screencastify, or quicktimeplayer’s screencasting options or similar one)
Our own Library Resources: http://cic.aisch.org/index.php/high-school, links to databases with usernames and passwords: http://virtualschool.aisch.org/pluginfile.php/35370/mod_resource/content/5/DatabaseUNPW1114.pdf.
http://www.refseek.com/directory/educational_videos.html - 25 best educational videos for contents
http://www.watchknowlearn.org/ - with the categorized subjects and age filter
http://www.discoveryeducation.com//teachers/ - gradewise and subjectwise classified
http://www.neok12.com/ - Lots of videos, lessons and games

Interaction with the teacher:

Google Hangout
Skype
https://todaysmeet.com/ or https://appear.in/ - a simple backchannel for chatting. Offers permanent transcripts and embed, paused rooms, better access controls, and more!
12 Moodle Tools to interact with your students online. At Least pick a few from these tools and use them as you find fit. My favorites are Moodle Lesson, Moodle Journal, Database (The database activity module allows students to upload their notes or answers and access others’ after they have uploaded two of their own. This feature creates notes or question database and a useful resource for both teaching and learning. Requiring students to upload two first ensures that they’re taking their own notes and doing their own work before turning to someone else’s.

Short non-graded assessment:

Socrative - List of Socrative Quizzes already made and ready for you: HERE. (I shared with you quite a while ago. Thanks to Calley who reminded me of this collection of treasure).
Google Forms - Even math has an add on : g(Math) for Forms which helps the math teachers to Create graphs and complex math directly in the sidebar and insert them as Form items.
PollEverywhere.com - Just to test a quick understanding of the lessons.

High School Technology Communication - 16th February 2015

2015-02-17T11:00:00.001+05:30

Important Announcements:

Thanks for signing up for Technology PDs on Blogs and Audio Tools. If you have forgotten to sign up, you can right now. Please CLICK HERE to access the signup form for our tech professional learning.
Again thanks to those who expressed your interest in attending the Professional Development/ Teacher Training program on LEGO Mindstorms Education(LME) NXT Robotics by external expert Lead Trainer is coming up on March 14th, 2015. Click here to know more about NXT Robotics. It is an amazing, hands-on workshop which will be useful to the teachers of Math and Science. If you are still interested in attending this, kindly send me an email.

Feb 28th is approaching! Those who signed up for the Digital Citizenship Educator workshop with Robyn, look forward to an exciting and educative day!

Kindly share your student projects with the community through Tech Gallery Wall - ES/ MS CIC Meeting Area. Send me the email with the details and an exemplar and I will get them up there...

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

Less Travelled Google Roads

Don’t forget to quickly click through this slideshare presentation where you can learn about the Google features which you have never heard before: Examples: Google Cultural Institute (For History and Art Teachers, especially), Google Ideas (connecting users, experts and engineers around critical issues that people face in times of conflict, instability or repression), Google Keep (Google’s Notetaking and Note keeping facility) and many more...

Thanks Jennifer A for sending me the resource!

Did anyone try Stoodle (which I introduced in last week’s communication) with the following features:

- Real-time collaboration on a virtual whiteboard with infinite pages

- Real-time communication through voice conferencing and text chat

- Permanent storage of all classrooms for later access

- Support for image uploading

- Access to basic drawing tools and colors

==================THE END============================

High School Technology Communication - 15th December 2014

2014-12-15T07:52:00.001+05:30

Important Announcements:

Hour of Code was a great success! My sincere appreciation to Calley, Lakshmi Vijayaraghavan, Rema Vishwanath for coming and supporting the High School students/parents who participated in the Hour Of Code on 9th December. Thanks to Jayanthi Sethuraman, Viraj Takore, Kanthimathi Krishnamurthi, Krishna Chittur, Anand Suresh and Jared Sager for helping us with the elementary, middle and high school HOC. If you still want to work with your kids, here is the link: bit.ly/aischourofcode for some links. The list in the linked document is not exhaustive.
This week I will be coming around to meet most of you quickly to tech check.

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

Google slides can be numbered now: Insert-->Slide Numbers--> On. http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.in/2014/12/slide-numbers-in-google-slides.html

Video is undoubtedly at the core of a modern mobile learning experience. Teachers need to be able to capture, upload, download, edit, slow down, speed up, annotate, curate, share, and otherwise “own” video content so that is fully merges with everything else. With that in mind, 25 of the best resources for teaching with YouTube are listed by TeachThought. Some are web-based, some are apps, and others are guides or tips. Here is the link: http://www.teachthought.com/technology/25-best-resources-teaching-youtube/
Using Preso.tv could be a good way to keep your students on the same slide that you're projecting. Likewise, Preso.tv provides a good way for students to share with classmates. A chat feature is built into Preso.tv. Students could use the chat feature to ask clarifying questions about each slide that they see.

==================THE END============================

AISC Technology Integration

Mozilla's X-Ray Goggles - Coding into Social Studies and Art Classrooms

MakeologySummit @ AISC - Top Tips

Makeology Tweet Tips!

#Learning2Asia@October 2016 #takeaways

Personal Pride:

Learning in the Making Pre-conference:

Brian Smith provided

Robot in a Box:

Rebrand Teaching (Tosco Killoran)

Technology Tool: (courtesy Tosco Killoran)

TechnoPlot Predictions

Google Slides with Laser Pointer and Q & A feature!-- Another Formative Assessment Tool!

Book Marketing: A Different Way to Get Attention for a Book

Fractured Fairy Tales- Exploring Different iPad Apps

Padlet - A tool for Collaborative Sharing.

Inform, Engage and Hook your Viewers with Infographics

1. Less Text, More Data

2. Layout Guides the Flow

3. Visual Appeal

Final word....

The Takeaway: Clean up the Clutter

Technology integration in the Spanish classroom

Subject: Disregard That Last Email... OR Some Tips for Email Etiquette

Dance Along With Chemistry

Gamify Learning in Your Classroom

12 Great Virtual Field Trip Ideas

Language of Social Media - Twitter, Hashtags and Memes in Classrooms:

Digital Storytelling- What's your story?

Why Twitter? Because We Are Lifelong Learner's, That's Why.

Digital Citizenship in Elementary

High School Technology Communication - 1st June 2015

Important Announcements:

Thanks to for those who filled out the form for Moodle Roll over for next year. Still I need to get the information from many. kindly take a few minutes to complete the form which is linked below:

Here is a repeat of the announcement from last week:

Moodle Roll over Information - Kindly fill out this form for your requirements on Moodle Roll Over for the year 2015-2016

Technology Hotspots@ HS-AISC

Tom Myers Research Project - Inclusion of multimedia element - How can you change your research paper from a simple written assessment to a multi-modal presentation mode?

Cool Resource and Tool/s:Favorite Tech Tools For Social Studies Classes:

Draggo

Bookmarking Tool suitable for students.

Explee

Video Scribing and project creation tool for students

MackinVIA

free database of primary sources with the “backpack” feature, which allows students to save books or excerpts that they want to come back to and can be great way to keep track of research materials

Recite.com

Helps students to type in a quote and create a stylized version

CK-12 Flexbooks

Lets the teachers create their own content or look at high quality content that’s already added

Tubechop

easy way to cut Youtube videos. Short url is created for the sorter videos which can be shared with the students. Helpful for making units shorter and crispier.

For More........

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/05/21/favorite-tech-tools-for-social-studies-classes/

I was reading an article titled “Using Technology to Help Students Show Their Thinking” by Dan Gorden (Link). In this article, Mark Hammons, the educational technology coordinator at the Fresno County Office of Education, shares a great short tip for us to use in classrooms:

THE Journal: What would be an example of a strategy you’ve adopted to allow students to show their thinking process through technology?

High School Technology Communication - 18th May 2015

Important Announcements:

Here is a repeat of the announcement from last week:

Moodle Roll over Information - Kindly fill out this form for your requirements on Moodle Roll Over for the year 2015-2016

Technology Hotspots@ HS-AISC

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

High School Technology Communication - 11th May 2015

Important Announcements:

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

Introducing the Make-a-Map™ Concept Map Tool by BrainPOP – Powered by Ideaphora

High School Technology Communication - 23rd February 2015

Important Announcements:

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

I wanted to focus on Virtual Learning Resources. You can try and test them now in order to make sure that you are ready for our very first Virtual Learning Day on March 25th on our School.

Three key components of learning activities which we promised as a School to deliver to the students are:

High School Technology Communication - 16th February 2015

Important Announcements:

Thanks for signing up for Technology PDs on Blogs and Audio Tools. If you have forgotten to sign up, you can right now. Please CLICK HERE to access the signup form for our tech professional learning.

Kindly share your student projects with the community through Tech Gallery Wall - ES/ MS CIC Meeting Area. Send me the email with the details and an exemplar and I will get them up there...

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

==================THE END============================

High School Technology Communication - 15th December 2014

Important Announcements:

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

Google slides can be numbered now: Insert-->Slide Numbers--> On. http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.in/2014/12/slide-numbers-in-google-slides.html

Cool Resource and Tool/s:
Favorite Tech Tools For Social Studies Classes: