Instructional Technology - What's it all about?

Easy Web Printing with Print Friendly.com

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 15:36:00 +0000

As an English teacher and an administrator, I would often find great articles on the Internet that I wanted to share with the students or teachers. Typically, I would print them and there would be so many ads or the page breaks would come out difficult to follow. Usually, it lead to a giant waste of paper too! Because of this, I typically would share a link with the staff. This was annoying though because when trying to read something in a group or at a meeting, I would ask them to highlight, pick key words and in some deconstruct the article. Some were ok doing this on a computer or device, while others wanted a hard copy.

For this reason (and because I really do believe in the environment), I LOVE Print Friendly.com!! Print Friendly.com has been around for awhile but I just recently discovered it again! Basically, you can take any webpage url, post it into Print Friendly.com and it will create a printable version of the article, document, etc. It will also allow you to turn it in to a PDF or send as an email. In addition, you can change the text size to make it larger or smaller and you can choose to keep the images or remove them with a simple button click.

This is an article from the New York Post regarding the Cubs winning the World Series. Link: http://nypost.com/2016/11/03/this-was-exactly-how-cubs-had-to-win-world-series/

This is the same article from the Print Friendly.com site. So much cleaner for education purposes.

Try it out! It's free and SUPER easy to use. Also, it's one small way to help the environment!

Sketchfab for education

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 14:06:00 +0000

I recently was at a training session for Office 365. When I attend various workshops, I'm always looking for new tools and tips that I can bring back to our teachers to utilize in the classroom. It was at this session that the trainer was showcasing Sway and showed us an embedded 3-D human body model that could be manipulated. She shared that she had embedded it from Sketchfab. I spent some time on Sketchfab after that session.

Sketchfab is an online platform that displays and shares 3-D content. ALL SORTS OF CONTENT. They have a number of different categories: gaming, vehicles, animals, scenes, architecture, etc. As you select an object, it opens and you can then manipulate the image to change the view. For example, I selected an image of the Roman Colosseum (see below). This allowed me to click on various areas and information would come up. It was a great tour.

Coliseo de Roma / Roman Colosseum by Néstor F. Marqués on Sketchfab found at: https://sketchfab.com/models/544c64b6445e4899a17350c949b7766a

They do have an education edition, that will get you a free pro account. In addition, a number of the images will also work with VR. So, there may be places or scenes that you can manipulate with your VR headset on. I will warn you that a few different scenes would not fully load as my computer had met it's 3-D load and would then try and reboot.

Finally, I would be cautious as a teacher to let your students emerge themselves on the site with no guidance. I would probably use this to go and get images that I can embed into various projects. But, if you are working with high school students, it would be ok. I would suggest performing the search first to have an idea of the content. But, keep in mind, it's a community so the content is every changing - which also makes this a very powerful tool. Check out Sketchfab; it may be very worthwhile!

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 20:31:00 +0000

When working with people, I always try to keep written communication short and to the point. While working as a Director of Technology, I find that sometimes technicians want to get very technical explaining something but that the end users don't always need all of the technical detail. Therefore, I'm often trying to translate for our teachers, students and other administrators why they should use or do something, what went wrong, etc. This year, I've tried to work on keeping things succinct and creating very visual presentations that capture the heart of the matter with few words. This next year, one of my goals is to engage our customers (teachers, students and administrators) in new ways. One thing that I've been trying is to go more visual. I found a great tool, Pikotchart, that allows you to create visually stimulating content for free! And it's relatively easy to use.

Piktochart, allows you to create an Infographic, Presentation, Poster or Report. They provide for you a variety of templates in the free version. If you choose to level up, you can have access to over 600 templates. I found that the free version does everything you need for a newbie like me. They also provide a guided tour and have pop ups that highlight certain tools as you're beginning your project. Overall, very easy way to provide a visual guide or information for your students or families. Even better, have the students create a visual based on a topic you are teaching them, an end of the unit review, etc. Check it out! I think you'll really enjoy it!

Padlet... allows more open conversation

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 18:58:00 +0000

captured from: Padlet.com on 3/14/16

Recently, I have been asking people to share thoughts in a lot of group settings. I work with really talented and brilliant people but often times, I notice that adults (as are most children) are apprehensive to join the conversation unless they are very sure of their answer. I'm really working to stretch their thinking and sometimes there is no right or wrong answer. When I started, I would use the usual teacher strategies of turn and talks, write it down and post it, etc. However, I am also trying to share how easy it is to embed technology into the classroom seamlessly now that we have a strong robust WiFi network throughout our district. I've also been trying to help others understand the power of the mini computer most secondary students have in their pockets. One tool that I've recently introduced to some of my colleagues is Padlet.

Padlet is a super easy way to create a "wall" where others can post their ideas or thoughts. It's very easy to use and takes less than a minute to create a page. I often will set up a series of "boards" with different questions and then I embed the URL into the presentation or OneNote page we are working with. They can click the link and go to the page to answer the questions or make comments.

captured from: http://padlet.com/wall/ftb0nsms57i9 on 3/14/16

The other day, I used Padlet as a back channel to get a sense of the way people were feeling towards a new initiative. I set it to anonymous so no one felt on the spot but they were able to share their feelings with little reservations. I don't know if I would do that with my students, but with the adults it worked really well.

Padlet has different accounts for school, business or if you just want to try it you don't need an account. Within your account, you have the ability to control some of the privacy settings. Therefore, you can hide the link from other users, put a password on it or keep it totally public in case you want different statistics. There is also a moderate posts setting that allows you to approve the items before they appear on the wall. Due to the nature of the work I was doing, I felt that would defeat the purpose but I can see that as a very real need in a high school setting.

I hope you enjoy the power and simplicity of this great tool within your work place.

Plickers - great formative assessment tool

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 20:43:00 +0000

So, I'm back. With a different flair. I hope that some folks still subscribe and use this blog to get information. Since I stopped writing, I have been a high school principal, with very little time to do anything - let alone follow technology and write about it. But, once again I have shifted roles and I'm now a Director of Technology who's trying to immerse myself in the world of educational technology. I hope many of you will continue to follow as I try to update weekly again.

Plickers

https://www.plickers.com/

Screen clipping taken: 11/12/2015 3:24 PM

One awesome tool that I've seen used by several teachers in the buildings I've been in is called Plickers. This tool was designed to simply and easily provide real time statistics for our teachers multiple times over the course of a class or lesson. This program is fantastic for both summative and formative assessments at really any grade level.

How it works: the teacher downloads the Plickers app, either on their Apple hand held device (IPad or IPhone) or their Google device. The teacher then prints out cards for every member for his/her class. They have a variety of card packs to choose from depending on what the teacher is looking for. The card becomes the student's to use during assessment times. Many of the teachers I work with, print one set for their classes and then laminate them so they hold up. The teacher can post a question on the board using the webpage. It can be a true/ false, yes/no, multiple choice, etc. Students hold their individual card up with their answer after some wait time. The teacher then uses his/her device to capture that information. Plickers then provides an overview of which student chose what. The teacher instantly has the feedback they need from the lesson to know how to adjust their pacing, instructional materials, etc.

One high school science teacher I worked with, used it daily to determine where her students were and then what next steps to take to adjust instruction. The students were very adept at it and it became very routine for them. On the other side, I watched a 1st grade teacher use it with her class as well. And the students LOVED it. They thought it was magical the way the Plicker cards worked with the teacher's IPad.

If I was back in the classroom, I would definitely be using Plicker as a formative assessment tool! To be honest, I do actually use it in meetings and during PD opportunities! Until next time!

Note - Image two - taken from:

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=In+the+Classroom+Plickers+App&view=detailv2&&id=7B2493375F658A6BB22119E80003D24901DA1D0F&selectedIndex=39&ccid=nU%2b5pKv%2b&simid=608013790456775036&thid=OIP.M9d4fb9a4abfef8e81658cecc88ce57ebo0&ajaxhist=0

Screen clipping taken: 11/12/2015 3:32 PM

Brief.ly

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 01:30:00 +0000

So, I'm in love with this site and I will be using it all the time. I just wish it had been around while I was teaching in the classroom. Brief.ly is a great website that allows you to create a simple web page with all of your links. Therefore, whenever you have a project for your students or teachers, rather than having to have several links for your students, you can create one web page, give them a "short code" link and instantly they have access to all of the links you've

previously selected for them. You can share up to three dozen links all on one page.

It is really easy to use and the finished product is very clean to look at.

When Brief.ly opens, you are given an empty dialogue box.

You can either copy and paste or type the links in from other web pages (see the image on the right). You can leave a space after the link and include a caption for the students of the various web pages.

When you have all of your links in, click on the scissors on the bottom on the page.

This action will then create your short codes that will link to the web page (see to the right.)

Share the link with your students by pasting it to a website, writing it on the board, typing it on to a worksheet, etc. The link below is a sample Brief.ly site I created on Shakespeare to show how easy this was to work with.

http://brief.ly/~0q29k

I strongly recommend checking out Brief.ly and trying it with your students. I plan to use it soon to share information!

Diigo for education

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:12:00 +0000

So it's summer time here in upstate New York and I've been a bit busy with my own school work and travelling around the state so I've sort of fallen off of the blog world a little bit. BUT, now Im back - sorry it's true... :)

Earlier this year I talked about social bookmarking and all of the benefits for bookmarking your websites using a web based tool versus the favorites bar on your stand alone computer. See that post here... I love social bookmarking because I am someone who moves from building to building, district to district, sharing great tools that are available to use with education. It's so much easier for me to login to one account and have all of these great articles, tools, pages etc. at the tip of my hands.

Diigo, which I have used for years for my own personal social bookmarking - see the side bar on the right for access to my Diigo account- has created a Diigo experience for educators now! I'm very excited for this because you can now create individual student accounts and class accounts. This means that each of your students can be sharing interesting articles, great reference materials, videos, podcasts, etc. with each other, at any time from any where they have an Internet connection! Yippee! Implications for education: they can comment on each other's resources. Great for teaching how to summarize or highlight key pieces of information. So, rather than using that textbook that was published 13 years ago, your students can create their own current text that has relevance to their lives.

In addition, in the educator accounts, students and teachers can communicate safely without outside people commenting and in the educator account mode, the advertisements are all educationally related. I tried it the other day for myself and can't wait to use it for professional development purposes with several groups of teachers I'll be working with this year. I strongly encourage all of you to check out the possibilities of social bookmarking in the near future.

PDF tips and tricks...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:37:00 +0000

In education, we always seem to have a lot of papers flying in and out. Sometimes, these are sent to us in PDF form and we are not able to edit them and make them our own. However, one of our middle school teachers, Kevin Krause, shared with me this site, PDF To Word, which will allow you to convert a PDF file to either a Word document or a Rich Text Document. It is simple to use and even better, completely free. What's great is that you then get an email doc version of your file and are free to edit as you please.

The second PDF resource I found that is also free and easy to use is called PDF Hammer. With PDF Hammer, you can upload multiple pdf documents and create one file. It also allows you to upload a pdf file with multiple pages and then you can rearrange the pages or delete pages that you no longer need.

Had to share...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:06:00 +0000

As many of you know, Im a huge fan of Apple. I love what they have done for hand held technology and truly believe that the Itouch and the Ipad are going to change eduction in a myriad of ways. So, when I saw this - I knew I had to share.

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Motivational quote maker...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:19:00 +0000

So, earlier this week I posted a Flickr group of Great Quotes About Learning and Change and the majority of the images were inspired to be motivational posters. After looking at that, I learned about this site that allows you to create your own motivational posters for FREE. AutoMotivator is really easy to use so it's great for all age levels. The site allows you to take an image from anywhere, your computer or the web, and then add words to create your own poster. When you have created your poster, you can save it to your computer, print it, share it, etc. I had a blast creating some different posters I can use for training.

Uses for Education:

One way to create a quick review. Have your students find an image they think exemplifies the topic. Then, use a one sentence summary to capture the content and the image.

Great way to introduce a topic.

Great way to introduce your kids to each other or you to them.

Great educational quotes....

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:28:00 +0000

Yesterday I was on Twitter when someone suggested checking out this Flickr page. The page, Great quotes about Learning and Change, is devoted to educational quotes that have been created into "posters". There are about 230 "posters" on there and I loved pretty much all of them. You should check them out because they really make you think a little about education, where it is and where we want it to go. Here are two of my favorites:

Social Media Kick

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:24:00 +0000

Lately, I think the worlds on a social media kick. It seems to be popping up EVERYWHERE I turn; take for example, all of the talk centered around Facebook's new privacy settings. That's been really big in the news and in the technology world because so many people are angry at the company and now want to boycott. So, I thought I would touch on Social Media for a moment today and I saw this great video: Social Media Revolution created by the authors of Socialnomics. If you have seen the video of Did You Know , which I showed earlier in the year to some of you, it's basically the same only with some new data and statistics. It's fascinating and while it's not directed specifically at education, though there are some very telling statistics in there. For example, 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum, in 2009 Boston College stopped giving incoming freshmen email addresses because the students consider email over. It's only about three minutes and I strongly encourage you to take a look at it with this thought, what does this mean for education? How can you harness the power in your classroom, school, or district? Social media is the new wave, and if we, educators don't jump in, we're going to get swallowed up. I found the video at Teachertube, but it's also on Youtube.

4 Tips for Integrating Social Media from Mashable

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:11:00 +0000

I just read this article 4 Tips for Integrating Social Media from Mashable, which came through on my Twitter and I LOVED it. The reason being, if you read the second tip, under the category of "Add Digital Citizenship to the Curriculum" it compares the importance of teaching digital citizenship to driving a car. And this quote is the piece that sold it for me: " Susan Brooks Young, a former educator who is now a technology consultant for schools, likens children’s social media usage to driving; neither activities are going away. “We really guide them through the process of driving to make it as safe as we can. Social media in a lot of ways parallels that. You would never just give that child a set of car keys," (Mashable 5/11/10.) In our district we just created a k-8 technology curriculum to help guide the teachers on curriculum skills. We utilized the ISTE standards (International Society for Technology in Education) as a starting point and we stressed the importance of digital citizenship. I can't wait to see where the teachers take it from here. Read the article - it's really quick and I love the quotes sprinkled throughout.

Cha Cha does it again!

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Fri, 07 May 2010 12:21:00 +0000

In January of 2009, I sent a Tech Tip about Cha Cha - a service where you can text a question on your cell phone to 242-242 and receive an answer back in a few minutes. See the previous post here. But the other day I was "visiting" one of the school's business teachers and she told me that Cha Cha has since expanded and are now offering some great video clips on a variety of topics as well. After looking over the site, it seems that the clips are all created with education in mind. There are a variety of topics covered, the clips are short (usually about 3 minutes), they are modern and more relevant to today's student sitting in front of you. There is no sign up or login required and they stream directly from the site - meaning no downloading to our network. However, two drawbacks - they stream directly from the site and there are advertisements that play before the actual video clip starts. What this means, is when there is high traffic on our network, the video may hiccup for a minute or two. But, I have yet to find that. The other piece is that there is an advertisement that will play at the beginning of the video clip but again, I haven't found anything inappropriate - but that doesn't mean it can't happen either.

For educational purposes, short video clips are a great way to access prior knowledge or to introduce a new topic to kids. Students love flashy things - we all know that - and video images allows us to meet them at their level. And for all of you math people who can never find any video content, there are quite a few math video's in the collection that you might want to check out as well. I strongly encourage you to check out the collection. You might be able to find a gem that you can use as soon as next week.

And if you see Jen Sawyer - thank her for the great tip!

Crocodoc - Great Way to Share and Revise and Edit docs online!

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:30:00 +0000

The other day I came across this pretty great site. Crocodoc would be great for both students and adults because it allows you to annotate, revise, edit, mark up, share and protect any document with other people. The document can be something sitting on your computer or out there on the web. It's really easy to upload or copy and paste a section of text on the site. Then, you can edit and mark up the document with notes, strike throughs, highlight a section, draw or type right into the document. I played with Crocodoc this morning and then shared it with another teacher who also added their "notes" and you can see every body's contributions. I wouldn't suggest doing this with a larger group of people - say a whole class of 30 students if they were all on their making their own notes because it may get confusing. However, if you had them in small groups, you can easily have each group contribute to the page. You could also upload a homework assignment and go over it as a class by having different kids make notes on various parts. In addition, Crocodoc is a great tool for professional development because you can share articles, curriculum documents, lesson plans, etc. Crocodoc is free and you don't necessarily need an account. However, if you want to store your documents, you can sign up for an account and it will store 20MB of documents.

Social Networking: should we, shouldn't we?

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:37:00 +0000

I was in a meeting earlier when the conversation shifted to a New Jersey Principal who is trying to "ban" his middle schoolers from joining social networking sites. Conversation went back and forth between two very divided parties arguing that it's a way of life and we need to get over it to we have to protect these kids from what's out there. Finally, there was a lull in the conversation and eyes started to turn towards me when someone asked, "you like kids using the Internet, how do you feel about this?" After a pause I said, I see why you would think that I like kids using the Internet and I do; but in actuality, I'm big into safe and responsible Internet use for students.

I see both sides of the issue but from the two very different perspectives. Yes, I believe that kids should be using the Internet - responsibly and appropriately. I also argue, that technologies - such as social networking and smart phone/cell phone use - are not going to go away; especially with the upcoming generations - they've grown up with it. They are accustomed to it more so than most adults and they believe they are entitled to it.

However, I don't disagree with the principal. Coming from the perspective of an administrator (which I am not) keeping middle schoolers off of social networking sites would prevent a lot of issues. Middle schoolers do not realize that when they put something out there for the world and even if the site is taken down, it's out there forever somewhere. Also, they don't realize that many times these actions, while done usually outside of school, tend to flow over into the school and thus, becomes a problem for teachers and administrators alike.

Yet - as a "Technology Instructional Specialist" my argument is one I continually come back to and that's educating kids. Rather than banning technologies, we need to educate and not just the students, but the adults responsible for them as well. Kids don't always realize the actions that they take until they are too late. That's not just in the technology field though. It's up to us, as the adults to guide them in the right direction.

Social bookmarking

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:03:00 +0000

I find myself doing presentations all over and when I go, I always have to pack up my computer files including some of my favorites to a flash drive or a cd. To avoid this, I really LOVE having the option to use social bookmarking. Social bookmarking is basically an online repository of all of your favorites but it lets you access it anytime and anywhere there is an Internet connection. Case in point, I was in Honduras when I had to get to my airline information and my email wouldn't open. Luckily, I had bookmarked the site in my Diigo account and I got all the information I had needed instantly from thousands of miles away. There are several social bookmarking sites available: Delicious, Socialmarker, and Diigo, which is the one I use. This link from Common Craft will give you a very brief introduction to what social bookmarking is. Also, on the right side of the blog, you will also see a link to all of my Diigo bookmarks. This is a great place to check for ideas, lessons, websites, etc. that I haven't sent out over tech tips (yet.)

Benefits for education: you can save all of your links that you want your students to be able to use, give them the link and they can access all of the websites anywhere they have an Internet connection (home, school, Panera's, etc.)

Google FUN!

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:14:00 +0000

One last time with Google - at least for this week- :)- I LOVE Google. We all know that. I wanted to share with you this free guide for 33 things you can do with Google. It mainly hits on Google Docs, Maps and Books but it gives some FANTASTIC ways to use Google for the classroom. Including using Google Docs for computer based quizzes, a Google word cloud, finding a reading level, etc. It's a really handy, easy to use guide. I strongly recommend you look it over and I bet you walk away with one cool new use.

I want to give a huge thank you to Mr. Byrne at the blog Free Technology for Teachers for creating and publishing this wonderful guide.

Google does it again...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:34:00 +0000

We all know I am a huge fan of Google. I love pretty much EVERYTHING they do. So, of course I follow them on Twitter and today I happened to login and saw this tweet from googlejobs
"Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning." And I couldn't help but think, YES! Students should be majoring in learning. They should be taught how to learn in schools. If we really want to help our students in the future, they need to learn to think and acquire new skills on their own. We have to teach them how to learn. The sage on the stage with all of the answers won't be following them on to their next phase in life, so we need to prepare them for how to survive. If you read the Google blog post that follows, they outlined 5 skills that students should learn that will help them latter on in life: analytical thinking, communication skills, a willingness to experiment, to be team players and passion and leadership. As a teacher, I know that I worked on how to be a team player, communication skills (I taught English) and I really tried to work on analytical thinking BUT - I never did get around to a willingness to experiment nor did I ever talk to them or teach them about passion. How many of these do you try to instill in your children? The blog post is not long; I strongly suggest you take a quick peek from one future employer who rely on us to change the future.

Summer fun...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:30:00 +0000

This summer bowling alleys across the United States are again offering a really great opportunity for kids. The Kids Bowl Free event, allows parents to register their child to bowl up to two games free for the entire summer - starting in late May and ending in mid September. It gives kids a chance to get out and do something safe and secure that is also fun. In addition, the bowling centers are offering a family pack where for a low price, up to four adults can go and bowl with the child as well. I just wanted to let folks know that this is happening and it's a fantastic chance for some free family fun.

Interactive Games...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:26:00 +0000

I LOVE the website Classtools.net. It's the website that gave us the Random Name Picker, which so many of you love to use with your Interactive Whiteboards with your students. But, now they have developed another cool tool. The Arcade Game Generator allows you to create five different games from a single set of data. You can type in multiple questions and answers or cut and paste them in from a Word file; for example: What color is the sky? *Blue. This will then create a series of games to use for review with your students. We all know how much kids LOVE games but now you get to develop the content. I created a quiz/content within ten minutes and had 5 different review activities to use. It's super easy to use and the instructions are right on the page.

Readability...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:30:00 +0000

Sometimes when I go to a webpage, I get bogged down with all of the ads and "other" items on there. Therefore, I don't always get to read the article or the piece of information that I set out to read in the first place. Through some of my research on the web, I stumbled on the site Readability. According to the site, "Readability — An Arc90 Laboratory Experiment
Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading." I played with it using a few different websites and found it to be quite useful and super easy. One thing I did notice though, is that if you go to a homepage or main page, it doesn't always work. It's not until you actually click into an article that it will give you the desired results. And sometimes, it's not any easier to read (like the Basketball article on who's in and who's out according to the USA Today.)

However, looking at Readability from the perspective of a teacher, if I have a particular student I know has a hard time concentrating because of the distracting items on a page, I might run it through the Readability site and then share the article that way.

The images on the right are an image of the USA Today article before going through Readability and then after.

Building a better teacher...

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:39:00 +0000

I was directed to this article from a principal in another district. It's out of the New York Times Magazine from Sunday March 7, 2010. I found it very interesting because it mainly focuses on Doug Lemov who developed his own taxonomy for successful teaching. I found it simple and engaging and enjoyed several of the tips in there. It also led to a great discussion among some educators because it hits on college prep programs for teachers and some very simple techniques. Take a look, you might enjoy it too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=all#

Digital footprint

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:10:00 +0000

A few weeks ago we had one of the district's SRO (School Resource Officers) come talk to our 7th graders regarding the Internet and their safety. The presentation made the kids think about the dangers of the Internet using real examples of things that have happened in our community. For the most part, I really think that the presentation was well done and gave the kids something to think about. But, one of my concerns was what the follow up might be from that conversation. We talked about things that had happened but we didn't really get to discuss how to safely utilize the web, which I personally think should be an ongoing discussion with students these days.

So, while doing some research, I came across the My Footprint site. And I have to say I was really pleased with what it does. For those of you not familiar, a digital footprint is the mark you leave on the internet while searching, posting ideas or pictures, listening to music, uploading music or games, etc. Every one of us has a digital footprint and it's up to you, as a user, to decide what that footprint looks like - whether it's good or bad. One of the things I've been working hard to do in this district is to make students realize that no matter what you post, it's out there for life. Therefore, you want the items you put out there to be a positive reflection of you.

Myfootprintsd.org walks you through an introductory movie explaining a footprint using two classic stories. It's a very SHORT movie and you should take a look at it because it's great. Then the site provides four short bios of students who have left digital footprints and what they would do differently. Finally, there's a site with lessons for parents and teachers to use with kids when showing them the site. I STRONGLY urge all of you to take a moment and look it over. I know we're all very busy with the curriculum we have to get through before the end of the year. But, as many of you know, we're here to teach our students life lessons too and for many of the young people sitting in front of us, if we don't talk to them about this with them, no one will.

Changing education

noreply@blogger.com (M. Julian) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:17:00 +0000

The other day I had the opportunity to work with a few student teachers. This doesn't happen very often but their host teachers thought they would have a valuable experience working with me to develop engaging and interactive lessons to use on the Interactive Whiteboards. I was flattered that the teachers felt that working with me would be a good use of the student teachers' time. I had less than half a day when all was said and done but it opened my eyes quite a bit.

These young adults have grown up with technology and while they know how to navigate with it, they weren't quite sure how to use it to engage the students. But, I aruge, this isn't their fault. Just because you use a tool well, doesn't mean you are going to be able to teach with it. I'd rather look at the programs that are getting these young professionals ready for the "real world." I was talking to one of the pre-service teachers and she mentioned that she had gotten to touch an Interactive Whiteboard once in her teaching program but had never actually created anything or really seen the software. I realize that Interactive Whiteboards are expensive and not all districts have them, but at some point in their lengthy careers, I'm willing to bet they will use one of these items.

So, my thought is this... where should they be learning the concepts and ideas of how to teach with technology. I have to argue that we need something sooner than a student teaching placement to prepare them for this invaluable skill. How will K-12 education change, if the teachers who are coming out of their preparation programs are taught to continue doing the same things our teachers were taught?

Image found at flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/my_new_wintercoat/415138363/ on 2.23.10