2012 Summer Technology Institute

We are having the most FABULOUS week at our 2012 Institute!  We are at the middle school learning all about iPads, blogs, wikis, Discovery Education, Google Apps for Education, Google Chromebooks, MovieMaker, iMovie, Green Screening, Flipping the classroom, and MUCH more!
These teachers are doing a SPECTACULAR job this week!  I am almost out of Discovery Education prizes!  LOL  Did someone say Discovery Education?

Their outstanding work can be found here...

Building Web Search Skills the Fun Way – with a Google a Day | Powerful Learning Practice

Building Web Search Skills the Fun Way – with a Google a Day | Powerful Learning Practice:

'via Blog this'

LOVE this!  It's very interesting to learn the answers to some of these questions!  Give 'A Google a Day' a try!

My DEN Summer Institute Application

I made it!  I am pumped and can't wait to meet new friends and learn lots of new ideas to bring back to Oregon!!!

INFOGRAPHIC: Teens and Texting Are The New Milk and Cookies | Mobile Marketing Watch

INFOGRAPHIC: Teens and Texting Are The New Milk and Cookies | Mobile Marketing Watch:

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Well, as a mom of a tween, I am living this, but I really like how the graphic depicts this message.

ICTmagic - Science

ICTmagic - Science
Anyone looking for a science site??  Yowza!

ICTmagic - Maths

ICTmagic - Maths
If you are looking for a Math site - I think you may have some success here! :)

When you're not the smartest person in the room...

When you're not the smartest person:
I love the messages in this presentation.
Are you a networked teacher?

Think about how you could do ONE little thing to evolve into a networked teacher...


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Scribble Press

If you aren't using this app yet, I would get it downloaded pronto!

Great app for book creation. You can add drawings, pictures, text, etc...

It creates an epub file that you can read online or download on the iPad. Once it's downloaded in iBooks, you can tap on the words and have it "speak" to you.

NICE!

Here is the iEar Review.

Here is the book I created about my dad!

Flying by the seat of your pants...

Jon shared an article with us today and this statement really stood out to me:

"It requires a totally different skill set on the teacher's part," Stutzman says. "We have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, because we don't know the exact direction that a class will go when we walk in. Depending on student questions, reflections, or activities, our plans could quickly morph into something we never dreamed would happen at the outset."

 I think this is a part of the change we face as educators.  Teachers 

guide students on their "chosen route" to their individual learning.  The students become more involved in their own learning process, therefore making it more meaningful to them and keeping them engaged in learning.  

I am excited for this venture.  I really look forward to seeing what the students come up with.  They have some great ideas.  We all learn from each other!

Sample Podcast

Give up some control...

As teachers, we like our classroom to run exactly as we planned in our lesson. Unfortunately, students don't learn in the same manner as they used to. They are MUCH more "wired" than we are.

I think we try so hard to keep up with technology, we sometimes forget to give some of the responsibility to the students.

For example:

Challenge:I want to be able to share a google doc with my 3rd hour class. I don't want to have to type in all of their addresses manually. That would take a lot of MY time.

Solution: Have a computer set up in a wordprocessing document. When students walk in (or as part of a center) have them type their school email address on the page and then press enter. Once the class is done, you now have a document with the email addresses of each student. You can copy/paste this into the share box or even use it to email all the students.

Benefits: Students have taken ownership. If they didn't type it or type it in correctly, they won't be getting the documents they need. The teacher has just saved a lot of time, especially if they teacher several classes. We are modeling the fact that we all have to work together as we journey towards success!

You can't do it all! Just do your best job at what you can do!

Don't sweat the small stuff :)