Thursday, August 28, 2014

Document your year in pictures




It's the beginning of the school year and it's a good time to think about documenting your class' journey. Here is an IOS app that would be great for that: Project 365 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/project-365/id321175920?mt=8. Use Project 365 to take a picture each day so you will have them for end of the year slideshows, videos, and projects.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

WSNH: Quick Key Scanner App



Here is a cool tool for you iPhone/iPad users! Quick Key (http://get.quickkeyapp.com/) is an app for your device that lets you scan and grade student quizzes.

Go to the website and create a free account. You can setup your students at the site or from the app. Setup a quiz by creating a new quiz and making the key. Download the Quick Key Tickets and use them like scantrons in your class. Scan each student quiz from their completed Ticket and it will grade and save the results for you!

Thursday, August 21, 2014

A Pep Talk from Kid President

As we embark on a new school year, remember what you do matters. You are leaving indelible marks on each child you teach. Teach them to be awesome!!


App Smash: Great Internet Search Activity Using Kahoot


So I have been using Kahoot a lot this week in my introduction sessions as well as a session at the Region 3 ESC REAL Conference. As I was discussing the tool with some teachers I told them not to give kids enough time that they could google the answer and then I thought "Why Not?!?" Why not use Google and Kahoot together?


This is an activity I would want to do with students on computers, laptops, Chromebooks, etc where they could easily use a browser with multiple tabs open at the same time. Might even incorporate some Chrome tips in the lesson.

First I would find a random trivia quiz. Just google it. There are tons of sites that have trivia quizzes in specific categories or just general knowledge. Find one that has questions they wouldn't already know. Maybe use pop culture from before they were born. I would aim at 10-20 questions based on the age of the group and their experience with web searching.

Setup a Kahoot quiz using the trivia questions and answers. For this activity I would give each question between 60-120 seconds for response. Give them enough time to do several searches to find the answer. Since Kahoot will move on once all players have responded it might be wise to allow for the full 120 seconds.

As each correct answer is revealed, discuss who got the answer right. Ask them their strategies. What site did they find the answer on? Did they just type in the exact question? Use Boolean, keywords, phrases? The teachable moments here are endless.

Once the lesson is over, download the results for your documentation and to assess how each student did. This might be an activity (with new questions, of course) that you could use sporadically throughout the year!

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Kahoot Tutorial

There has been interest in Kahoot! so I made a video tutorial for it:


Monday, August 18, 2014

First session of the year

This week I am meeting with teachers at all five of our campuses. Here is the presentation:

 

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

The Power of the IT Work Order

My new job on the other side of the IT desk has taught me new things already. As a teacher with a tech problem I would grab the technician in the hall and tell him/her my issues and ask for them to visit my room. Or maybe I would email them with my request. If I was really friendly with my campus tech I might call or text them. They would come fix my machine and all would be right with the world. I never considered the process from their perspective.

Here are 5 things I have learned since joining the IT side:

1. Work orders help with tracking issues: If I have the same problem over and over, it needs to be addressed differently than a quick fix. It might indicate a big problem or be warning signs of a meltdown. If I just grab a tech in the hall and they fix my machine, they may not be keeping track of how often my machine has the same problem. Submitting work orders creates a paper trail for future use.

2. Work orders help in finding trends: Let's pretend I have a network issue and I tell the first tech I see. Then someone at another school has the same issue and tells the first tech they see which isn't the one I told. And what if each tech in the district heard about this same issue from one other person. In our situation 5 different people told 5 different people that they are having the same problem. To each tech it seems like an isolated incident, but if you look at the bigger picture, it appears to be a trend. Submitting work orders lets your IT department track those trends and treat them differently than if they were an isolated event.

3. People are human and they forget: We all forget things from time to time and your hardworking IT folks are no different. When 5 people tell them they need things fixed in one trip down the hall, it is easy to forget something when there is no paper trail to follow. An email can easily get lost in the shuffle and overlooked. Submitting work orders guarantees that someone in IT will see my issue and come fix it for me.

4. I get the right person for the job: Each person has their own talents. One person may be better at fixing one issue than someone else. If I grab the tech in the hall and they haven't seen this problem before, they may have to try more options. Submitting work orders means my issue can be assigned to the most knowledgeable tech on that specific problem.

5.  It makes IT's life easier: When all of the issues are gathered into one stack, they are easier to organize, assign, manage, etc. Submitting work orders helps IT be more efficient which helps my computer get fixed faster.