The Magic Resource… Well at Least a Quality Resource

By Jamie Guillaume

 

Recently PBS Learning Media (pbslearningmedia.org) was presented to me as a strong site to find, gather and organize subject area resources.  I was a bit skeptical at first because who hasn’t heard of PBS? I know this is a great learning organization and produces, Sid the Science Kid and Curious George by Why I am I just now hearing (or possibly listening) to information regarding this site, specifically designed for teachers?

 

Despite my reluctance, I approached this site with an open mind and found that it was incredibly useful and completely free to use.  You simply create a login and password, permitting access to tons of resources, including videos, lessons, assignments, projects and content related games!  

 

To use this site, you type in the subject area in which you are searching and tons of resources appear.  You are also able to categorize searches by grade level, which will narrow down the resources presented, making it a little less overwhelming.  My favorite feature of this site is that when you find a site that you like, you categorize it as one of your “Favorites,” allowing you to always be able to locate it.  Many times when searching for information I will find something useful but then have a difficult time relocating it.  PBS’s “Favorites” feature allows useful information you discover to be saved in one location for easy accessibility.  

 

Educators are presented with the challenge of pulling resources from a variety of locations. Mainly because we have yet to find a single location that houses intriguing lessons and rigorous assessments, aligned with the standards; hence requiring us to use a variety of resources.  PBS Learning Media is by no means the magic resource where you are going to find all of the information you need for all of your subjects, causing you to never have to search any other site again.  However it is a great source for quality content to store in your bag of tricks!

 

MAX is a PIRATE and He Increases Student Engagement?

By Phil Zellers

This blog kind of serves as a book review of a couple of different books I am currently reading.  One is the MAX Teaching book Jody gave us in department meetings and the other is a book the eLearning coaches are reading called, “Teach Like a PIRATE.”  Both have to do with increasing student engagement and nothing to do with Max the Pirate.    

 Collecting Content
Over the last couple of years, I have begun to realize the importance of incorporating literacy standards into my classroom on an everyday basis.  I am in the early stages of doing this and still have a lot to learn but I would like to share some of my experiences along with some of what I have learned from the two books listed above.  In my Social Studies classes, the students complete about 8 PBL units (each representing a particular theme) per year.   I have begun to create text sets for each project or theme we do.  This is far from being done but I have a good start.  Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day (I know, typical history teacher saying!) and text sets shouldn’t be either.  I gather interesting articles, videos, maps, graphs, etc. throughout the year and organize them by theme.  This allows me to have and build on these resources from year to year.  We don’t have to build our content from scratch, there are a lot of great resources out there to help with this process.  A simple Google search is a great place to start.  

 “Hooking” Students

In “Teach Like a PIRATE,” the author talks about creating a “hook” to grab students’ attention.  Moving away from the textbook has been a freeing experience for me.  The last couple of years I have just used the textbook as a resource.  It has freed me up to incorporate a lot of engaging content into my classes.  I have pulled in articles from books like “,Oh Yikes!  History’s Grossest Wackiest Moments.”  From some of these articles, which are written in a language the students can understand, students have learned the process for mummification in ancient Egypt.  They especially like the part where it talks about removing the brains through the nose!  I use articles like these as a “hook” to grab their attention and get them engaged.  Gross, weird, or shocking always grabs their attention (especially 7^th graders!) but we can also “hook” them by making the content relevant or by showing them the real world uses of the material. 

 Teaching Students to Learn

A quote from MAX Teaching that I really liked was, “I learned how to facilitate active learning from students.”   I have begun to realize the importance of becoming a facilitator of their learning rather than being the content expert that just tells them all the right answers.  Another way to put it is “students learn better when they are coached through a process in which they are active in trying to make sense of something.”  Being a coach, I can’t go hit or throw a pitch for a player.  I have to coach them through the process of learning how to do it themselves.  To me, this makes a lot of sense in the classroom as well.  Teaching students how to learn is just as important, if not more, than the content we teach.  MAX teaching is a three step process where students are first Motivated to engage in learning, second Acquire new information, and third eXtend beyond the text.  With the right content and strategies, students can be engaged in reading in the content areas and learn how to learn.

Technology and Reading in Content Areas

It’s really not about the technology here.  Creating an engaging content area reading lesson could be done with no technology at all.  Since we have it though, there are some great ways to incorporate it and take engagement to another level.  Students can deliver what they know through creation tools such as Animoto, Easel.ly, Prezi, and others.  The discussion feature on MBC could serve as open dialogue for the class to discuss the reading.  If you are reading a novel or a nonfiction book in your class it could also serve as a host for a book club.   Some online resources for gathering content are Google, YouTube, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Edutopia, Thinkfinity, as well as others. 

Like I said, I am not an expert about this but have a lot of good resources to help.  I would like to work with you to help in any way I can.  Together, we can find engaging content, find strategies and activities that work best for your class and content, and help find creative ways for your students to show you what they know.  The eLearning department would be happy to help with any of this or any of the tech tools listed above. 

How to Become a Twithead Part 2

By Kris Walsh

Last week I blogged about how to get your account up and running, this week is more about getting the most out of your Twitter account. I will talk about list curation, Twitter terminology, Twitter chats, and the power of the hashtag.

It has been said that getting information from the internet is like trying to take a drink from a fire hose.

The internet is a wealth of good information. But if you type a search term into Google, you will get all kinds of information shooting at you, and it can be hard to decide which information is most useful. Nothing out there can help with this problem better than a well-curated Twitter account.

If you have a Twitter account up and running, you probably have a list of people who you follow. It is important to make sure that the list of people that you follow contains people who have opinions and ideas that you respect and that they can be trusted sources of information on a given topic. I have many people that I follow on my Twitter account who I don’t even know personally, I have participated in Twitter chats with them or other people have retweeted what they have said and that compelled me to find out more about them and follow them.

Last week I touched on several terms and ideas linked to having a Twitter account, and this week I wanted to explore them more in depth.

Tweet- This is the message that you or other users send out to their follwers. These messages can only be 140 characters in length including spaces and punctuation. This leads to some interesting grammar, but it forces you to get to the point quickly. If you want to share links on Twitter, it is a good idea to use a URL shortener to save you some characters. (we can help you with this or it may be explained in a later blog) You can also share pictures on Twitter.

Hashtag- In Twitter, this is represented by a #. This is a way of tagging information so that it can be found easily. When searching for information on a particular topic, instead of searching for a person, enter a hashtag and then the topic (ex- #inelearn, this will bring up all tweets that have this hashtag in them. (this is the hashtag that the state has established for tweets about elearning in Indiana) This will show you anyone’s tweets on the searched topic no matter if you follow them or not)

When you Tweet, this makes your topics searchable and lets people find what you are talking about. If you tweet without a hashtag, it is likely that the only people who will ever see your tweet are the people who follow you. If you want to reach a wider audience, always use a hashtag.

Retweet- This is often abbreviated with RT. This is a way of sharing a tweet that you like with your followers. You simply click the retweet button at the bottom of the tweet (looks like 2 arrows going in a circle) to retweet a tweet that you like. You share “credit” for the tweet with the original tweeter, and your followers get to see the tweet, link or article that you shared. The original author of the tweet gets a notification that they were retweeted and they can feel all warm and fuzzy inside :)

Mention-If you are mentioned in a tweet or if you mention someone in your tweet using their handle, the person being mentioned in the tweet gets a notification that they are being talked about. It is a good way to get someone to chime in on a conversation that you are having or to give thanks for a good idea that you got from a fellow twithead.

Favorite- If you see something that you like, but you do not want to share it with your followers, but you want to have quick access to it, you can click the star at the bottom of the tweet to favorite it. This will notify the author that their tweet was favorited, but your followers will not see the tweet. It will put the tweet on your favorites list so that you can see it again or look more into something when it is more convenient.

Reply- Somewhat self-explanatory, but you can reply to the author of a tweet directly. If you reply from the tweet itself, it will be part of your feed and your followers can see it. If you want to have a more private conversation with someone you can…..

Direct Message- This is an option to send a message to a particular user that is not published on either of your Twitter feeds. It is a way to keep a conversation private. It is still subject to the 140 character limit though.

Twitter Chat- Often, there are scheduled times when groups are on Twitter to have a discussion. To participate, you will need to know the chat’s hashtag and search it during the time of the discussion. This way you can keep up with the conversation going on even if you do not follow all of the participants of the chat. I will post a schedule of education Twitter chats and their hashtags below.

I promise that I have tried to keep both of these blog posts as short as possible. It is tough to cover all of the possibilities of Twitter though. Please feel free to contact any of us if you are interested in using Twitter more. I was not sold on it right away, but now, as I have learned more about using it, I find it to be a very useful tool.

Follow us! @mrkriswalsh @jguillaume1 @zellersp Our hashtag is #pcelearn please feel free to search that tag and use it when posting about technology use here at Perry Central.

Schedule of education based Twitter chats and their hashtags are located at this website

bit.ly/officialchatlist

A directory of specific indiana Twitter profiles can be found here:

http://inelearnchat.blogspot.com/p/inelearn-twitter-lists.html

 

How to Become a Twithead (has nothing to do with Mrs. Rowland)
By Kris Walsh

Happy Connected Educators Month!

October is connected educator month. To celebrate, we thought that our topics this month would share information about becoming more connected with other professionals and people that share passions that you do. Today’s Techy Tuesday is an intro to Twitter.

Why Tweet?

This is a question that I often hear when talking to people about Twitter. Many people are a part of Facebook or other social networks and wonder why they should follow something else. I love my Facebook and check and post to it on a daily basis, but I find that for most people, Facebook serves a more personal purpose than their Twitter accounts do. If you were to look at my Facebook page (feel free to friend me J ), you will find pics of my girls, funny stories about my girls, and posts about TV shows and video games that I like. I occasionally post stories about happenings that I am a part of at school. I also share professional articles that I hear about online, but you are more likely to see me share a comic or ecard.

On the other hand, my Twitter account (@mrkriswalsh- follow me J) is more professional. I follow people and topics that are of a personal interest to me, but the vast majority of my tweets are professional in nature. I use my account to follow other educators and tech professionals across the state, participate in professional Twitter chats, and get updates about news both in and out of the education field. Twitter is a great place to network with people who you may not know on a personal level and get their thoughts about specific topics that interest you.

First- Create an account

Twitter is a social network, much like Facebook. You simply go to Twitter.com and sign up for a free account. You can choose a username or “handle” and a password. You can (and should) write a short blurb about yourself for your profile and select a picture that you want to be your face on Twitter.

Second- Follow some users

This is the most important aspect of Twitter. Your Twitter feed is only as good as YOU make it. The more selective you are about who you follow, the better information you will receive. If you follow someone that you find is not meeting your needs on Twitter, simply unfollow them. If they have a large following, they will likely not realize that you have stopped following them.

Simply use the search bar to search for people that you know who use Twitter. You can type a name with no symbols (Kris Walsh) and it will list people who match or closely match that name. When looking for users and you know their username make sure to use the @ symbol first so Twitter knows that you are looking for a specific user. (@mrkriswalsh)

There are several of us “Twitheads” here at school, or you can search out professionals that you have interacted with at trainings or in classes that you have taken.  You can also follow news sites such as CNN, organizations like the DOE, sports teams, celebrities or other personal interests. When you find someone, simply click the follow button and you will start seeing their tweets. Unlike Facebook, typically you don’t have to be accepted by the person that you want to follow. You can set your account up to be private, but it is not the norm on Twitter.

Other ways to find users-

On the left side of the page, Twitter will list suggestions for people to follow based on the people that you currently follow. Simply click the follow button.

My favorite way to find users to follow is to “stalk” the following lists of other people with similar interests (It’s a common practice, anyone who says they don’t do this is lying). If you click on someone’s name and then click on following, you can see who they follow. If any users interest you, you can follow them too.

This is all that you need to do to get your Twitter account up and running. There are some more advanced ideas and tools available through Twitter that I will share at a later time.

Let any of the eLearning coaches know if you have questions about how to use Twitter. We would be glad to meet with you on an individual basis or in a small group to help you get an account up and running.

These are the basics that you need to know to get an account up and running. You can look forward to a sequel that will include information about hashtags, retweeting, mentioning, Twitter chats, and other Twitter jargon. Please let me know in the comments if you have any specific questions that you have that I may address in part 2 of Twithead.

Happy Tweeting!!

@mrkriswalsh, @Jamieguillaume1, @zellersp

This is not an all inclusive list, but a good place to start. Teachthought itself seems like a good organization to follow or like on Facebook.

http://www.teachthought.com/social-media/50-educator-twitter-accounts-worth-following/

 

Becoming Connected

By Jamie Guillaume

October 2013 is Connected Educators month, a celebration of online communities of practice and networks in education.   With September quickly ending, this is a great time to introduce this project being promoted by the Department of Education that is designed to help educators learn about online communities that share  the common goal of improving teacher and leader effectiveness as well as enhancing student learning.

There are many different avenues that allow teachers to be connected, but one network all Indiana Teachers need to become familiar with is the the Learning Connection (LC).  The primary reason is because this essential tool serves as the state’s platform to house academic standards, student growth model data, curriculum resources, and learning communities, just to name a few.  

            When you first go to the Learning Connection: learning connection.doe.in.gov, you are presented with information accessible to anyone, and very importantly the academic standards.  This is an easy way to access all of the standards for each grade level and subject matter. If you click on “Academic Standards,” you will first be taken to a page that gives background information regarding both the common core and the Indiana academic standards.  If you click on the tab that reads, “Standard Search, “ You will be given a  pulldown menu that allows you to pull down your subject matter and grade level in order to locate your standards.  Using this method ensures you are accessing the correct, and most up to date standards.

            Another important aspect of the learning connection, connects you with other educators of your interests and fields, called communities.  From the LC page,  you first must login.    After logging in, go to the tab at the top that reads, “Contacts and Communities.” Here you will see a list of the  communities in which you belong.  To find a community of your subject matter to belong to, click on the link, “Find Community.”  Here you will type in a  keyword search such as reading, math, science, high ability, learning disabilities, etc.  This will guide you to a list of communities which means a group of people who share resources and information on a particular topic.  Once you are a  member of a community, you will begin receiving emails with resources, information on possible workshops, and so forth.  This is a great way to become connected!

            Of course teachers are now working on writing Student Learning Objections (SLO’s) and the Learning Connection can be a huge help with this process.  When writing these objectives, a teacher always has a handful of students that fall on the line between high and middle or middle and low.  How do you decide?  When logged in to LC, if you go to “My Classes,” all of your classes you are currently teaching will appear.  Click on the class for which you are writing your SLO.  A list of students will appear on the right.  Click on the student you are questioning and look at their testing history.  This gives you a better picture of how this student has progressed over the last few years and aid in your decision.  

            Being a connected learner is becoming more and more pertinent for 21st Century Educators.   There is a wealth of information, resources, learning communities, etc available for educators.  It is difficult to try to decide what to use or follow and what to disregard. After all, there are only so many hours in a day.  I highly recommend starting with the Learning Connection.  It is specifically designed for Indiana Educators by the Department of Education.  

The Many Features of MBC     

By Phil Zellers       
 
        Most of us are becoming more and more familiar with the many uses of My Big Campus (MBC) as a learning tool.  Over the course of the last couple of years, I have been learning more about just how beneficial of a tool MBC really is.  In the beginning, it does take time to set up your classes and become familiar with all of the features, but it is time well spent.  Features such as being able to house your content in group pages to grading quizzes and tests for you will save time in the long run.  Here is an outline of some of the features MBC has to offer: (Some of which I’m sure many of you are already using and some of which may be new to those already familiar with MBC)

 ·         Digitally organize your content: You can create groups (for each class you teach) to serve as an online home base for your content.  Once you create a group you can develop folders within that group’s page to store all your content (articles, assignments made in Word documents, pdf scans, pictures, video clips from youtube, etc.).  It is always there to refer back to or for students who are absent to view.  Students can download this content to their own laptop and won’t even need the internet to access it later when they get home (good idea for those without internet at home).

·         Go paperless and save time: Creating a quiz, test, or assignment through MBC is easy and can save a lot of time.  MBC will grade multiple choice, T/F, and fill in the blank questions for you.  You can also export your Examview tests to MBC.  If your students need to send a Microsoft Office (Word, Power Point, Excel, etc.) file for an assignment, there is now a feature for that too.  They can just upload a file to the assignment you have created in Schoolwork and submit it to you.  So, you can deliver your content to your students, have them submit assignments, and take tests and quizzes without ever having to visit the copy machines (unless it is to scan something and send to yourself as a PDF so it can be uploaded to MBC).

·         Host discussions: There is a discussion feature within your group’s page.  You can set the topic and guide the discussion however you like.  It provides a safe place for students within that group to engage with one another to deepen their understanding of a topic.

·         Gather data: This is a feature I just learned about recently.  There is a lot of potential for gathering quality, student data.  MBC offers a “Live Reports” feature for any quiz or test you create.  It will put students’ scores in green, yellow, or red according to how well they did on that assessment (makes for a quick way to create intervention lists).  It also gives you question statistics to show you what percent of the class selected each possible answer (allows you to see what may need to be retaught).  I plan to start creating quick, mid class checks for understanding or exit slip quizzes to gather data to see where my classes are.  Along with giving you good information, this could help meet RISE indicators 1.1 Utilize Assessment Data to Plan, 1.3 Track Student Data and Analyze Progress, and 2.4 Check for Understanding and Modify Instruction.

As always, please contact one of the eLearning coaches if you need help using any of the features MBC has to offer.  We will be more than happy to help! 

 

 

 

Apple Keynotes- My personal geek World Series

By Kris Walsh

For most people, there are important events that they look forward to, Superbowl, The World Series, Sales, hunting seasons… As many of you know, I am a big geek and my occasions that I look forward to are not the same as many others. My occasions are E3, where new video games and consoles are announced, and Apple Keynotes, where new Apple products are presented and released. Today was one of those days, so I begged Phil to allow me to steal his turn to blog so I can blog about one of my favorite geeky days of the year. Reluctantly, he let me have his turn.

Today was the fall Apple keynote presentation. This is where the new versions of the iphone were released, along with a showing of the new features in ios7, the latest version of the operating system that runs the iphone, ipod touch, and ipad.

As expected, Apple released information regarding the new iphones, the 5s and the 5c.

The 5s is the new top of the line phone. It comes in these prices with 2 year contract- $199-16GB, $299-32GB, $399-64GB. It comes in 3 colors- space gray, silver and gold. It will be available on September 20th. This new iPhone contains some new technology. A fingerprint scanner in the home button that can be used to unlock the phone and to authenticate for purchases of apps or other content, so no passwords needed. In addition it has a new processor and upgraded camera.

The 5C replaces the 5 and is basically a more colorful version of the 5. It has all of the same specs and capabilities of the 5, but is wrapped in a seamless plastic shell that comes in several colors- green, white, blue, pink and yellow. While not as powerful as the 5S it is about half the price- $99-16GB, $199-32GB.

The 4S is now free with contract and the 4 and 5 have both been discontinued.

ios7 will be supported on iPhone 4 and up, iPad 2 and up (including mini), and 5th gen ipod touch. It will be a free update and will be released on September 18th. The most noticeable difference is the color and feel of the os as a whole has changed.

• The camera app has several improvements and allows content to be grouped by time and location when photos were taken. It includes filters like instagram right in the camera app. It also has burst mode (5s only) where you can take up to 10 frames a second and it helps you pick out the best frames to use as photos. Great for action shots! You can also take slow motion video.

• New and improved Notification Center and Control panel. Swipe down from any screen to see your notifications, swipe up to access many commonly used controls

• iTunes Radio is a new service that comes along with the update that is similar to Pandora

• Siri can now search Twitter and Wikipedia

• All 5 of the iWork apps are free for new device purchases (Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iPhoto, iMovie)

• There are many new behind the scenes features that can make managing multiple iPads much easier for businesses and schools

• Many 3rd party apps are being redesigned to include new features of ios7. Look out for app store updates for many other apps soon… wait, you won’t have to, ios7 will automatically take care of your updates for you. No more red numbers begging you to update!
  
  

I wanted to take this chance to review how to lock someone into a certain app.

This is a very helpful tool in the classroom and with young children who you want to have control over what they are viewing. I would be glad to help you with doing this if it is something that you are interested in. Here are some directions should you want to try on your own. This will not work on a first generation ipad. (You can skip this section if you already know how to do this.)

1. In settings, go to general, scroll almost all the way to the bottom and select accessibility. Halfway down that menu you will see something labeled guided access. Make sure that it is marked yes. You will have to select a 4 digit password.

2. Open the app that you want the student to use.

3. Click the home button 3 times and a frame comes up. To start guided access, click start in the upper right corner.

4. The student can use the app but not exit out and get into anything else.

5. When finished with the app, click 3 times again, enter the 4 digit code that you entered back in settings menu, and click end. The ipad will function normally again.

Advanced- If you are having a student use a website, when you do your first triple click to start the guided access and before you click start, circle the navigation bar at the top of the page. This will keep students from entering other web addresses, going back or setting up a new page.

I hope that you enjoyed this update about the new ios features coming our way. Most of the education focused improvements are behind the scenes, but I look forward to seeing what developers can do with the new tools that they have been given. Let us know if we can assist you in making this transition!