June, 2014

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Change is a Mindset

A Principal's Reflections

'For many years New Milford High School was just like virtually every other public school in this country defined solely by traditional indicators of success such as standardized test scores, graduation rates, and acceptances to four year colleges. These indicators have become so embedded in the minds of those judging our schools and work that we, like everyone else, worked hard to focus only on initiatives that would hopefully produce favorable outcomes in those areas.

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This One's for You, Grandpa!

Tom Murray

'I can remember bouncing on your lap when I was about three. I remember the silly gifts you’d give, your incredible sense of humor, your amazing model of how to be a father and grandfather, and how to this day, I consider you the most brilliant man I’ve ever known. I remember your hugs and kisses; your tickles every time we were together. I remember your “I love you, Tommy.

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Google announces Google Educator Groups - great resource for educators

Educational Technology Guy

'Yesterday Google announced the launch of Google Educators Groups. This is a program made up of communities of educators who can connect with each other to learn, share, and help each other. While it is mainly online, there are real-world meetups and events as well. This is a great resource for educators. See below for more information and to sign up for a group or even create your own (I signed up for the NYC one as there isn''t one in Connecticut, YET).

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3 Simple Rules For Attending Any Conference

The Web20Classroom

'As the end of June approaches that means the annual ISTE (International Society for Technology In Education) Conference is around the corner. ISTE is one of my favorite conferences because I get to catch up face-to-face with those I haven''t seen in the past year, I get to learn with some incredible educators and I get to see the latests gadgets and must haves for the classroom.

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Quickly Create Personalized Learning Experiences that Work

How can we actively engage learners 24/7, on their level and according to their interests, while respecting their learning styles? It’s not impossible. In this guide: Explore how to transform traditional, one-way videos into two-way interactive learning experiences Understand different types of artificial intelligence (AI), including - Generative vs.

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To the Citizens of BC

Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts

'To the Citizens of British Columbia, Canada, How important is a good, free, public education system to you and to our society? How much should a collective ‘WE’ spend on creating the best possible public education for ALL of our children? Here are some graphs from Statistics Canada: Summary Elementary and Secondary School Indicators for Canada, the Provinces and Territories, 2006/2007 to 2010/2011. ( Catalogue-no-81-595-M-No-099-Statistics-Canada ).

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Education Research Meta Analysis from Hattie and Yates

Hapara

The Hapara team is reading Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn by John Hattie and Gregory Yates. The book is an easy to read distillation of Hattie’s work synthesizing the results from education research around the world.

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For My Prince and Princess on Father's Day

Tom Murray

'In two days, my little boy will be one. In a blink of an eye, he’s gone from a sweet newborn baby, to a crazy babbling toddler on the verge of taking steps of his own. My princess, now four, talks about her wedding day, what she wants to be when she grows up, and her favorite app of the day. I’m not quite sure where time went, but in a few blinks, life has moved on.

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Google Announces some great new features for Apps!

Educational Technology Guy

'Google just announced some great new features for Google Apps that make it even more useful and powerful. Schools, like ours, that use Google Apps for Education will be very pleased with these updates and new features. Google Apps Admins can now restore a user''s Google Drive files from the past 25 days. This is great for one someone deletes a file by mistake. https://support.google.com/a/answer/6052340 Google Drive: huge changes here.

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Quick Collection Of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Resources

The Web20Classroom

'More and more districts are realizing the power that Bring Your Own Device can have on teaching and learning. Students get the opportunity to use the technology they are familiar with and be exposed to how technology is being used by their peers. But while students are embracing BYOD with loud applause, educators are taking a step back and thinking about the impact BYOD has on their teaching.

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Stop saying "balance is key" when discussing technology

The Innovative Educator

'@InnovativeEdu Balance is key. — Herman Miller EDU (@HermanMillerEDU) May 28, 2014 The above tweet was sent to me in response to my post explaining why innovative educators should look down on upon a new video called, "Look Up." But I disagreed with this balance-seeking Tweeter. "Balance is key" is a common refrain heard by innovative educators and their students.

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Can Brain Science Actually Help Make Your Training & Teaching Stick?

Speaker: Andrew Cohen, Founder & CEO of Brainscape

The instructor’s PPT slides are brilliant. You’ve splurged on the expensive interactive courseware. Student engagement is stellar. So… why are half of your students still forgetting everything they learned in just a matter of weeks? It's likely a matter of cognitive science! With so much material to "teach" these days, we often forget to incorporate key proven principles into our curricula — namely active recall, metacognition, spaced repetition, and interleaving practice.

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Creating a Classic Cell Style Animation using Google Slides

My Paperless Classroom

'Links to the finished project: As Published at 1 FPS https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nVJPDYXItycWwFeFBIwMVniRE-xYfD_2wXfG19nJTkU/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=1000 On this link the delay has been modified to create a rate of 12 FPS https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nVJPDYXItycWwFeFBIwMVniRE-xYfD_2wXfG19nJTkU/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=0084 Here is the animation I mentioned.

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Twitter as a Tool For Academic Discourse

A Principal's Reflections

'New Milford High School teachers Jessica Groff and Joanna Westbrook created a Common Core aligned English Language Arts (ELA) task that incorporated Twitter into their unit on Julius Caesar and built on content authentic to the Shakespeare''s history play – i.e. social media re-purposed with and for academic discourse. To accomplish their goal, these teachers began with an informational text on the history of the Roman Forum to ground their use of social media in historical discourse and academ

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5 Key Takeaways from #edcampusa

Tom Murray

'The energy at the end of the day was infectious. To hear Emily Davis from the US Department of Education speak with such passion about what had occurred at the DOE that day was both encouraging and inspiring. In lieu of the traditional edcamp smackdown to wrap up the day, 100 educators from around the nation discussed the day''s impact of the first ever EdCamp USA.

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Google for Education CT Summit - June 21-22, 2014, Greenwich, CT

Educational Technology Guy

'I will be presenting at the Google for Education CT Summit on June 21st, 2014 on Chromebook and Google Apps deployments. The Summit is two days, with presentations and workshops by a variety of educators, Google Certified Teachers, Google staff and more. It''s a great event with some great learning and sharing planned. Here is the event website: [link] Here is the event Google+ Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cdmsgr0sqmq20iaht6frk95ek6s?

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Reimagining Chickering & Gamson's Principles Post-Pandemic: Technology's Central Role in Modern Edu

This white paper examines and proposes revisions to the "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" introduced by Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson in 1987 for today's technology-driven world.

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Setting Up Your Google Classroom

The Electric Educator

'For the first time, Google has designed a product for a specific industry. Fortunately for educators, that product is for them! Google Classroom is a brand new tool designed to help ease the burden of sharing and receiving assignments from students. The excitement surrounding classroom has reached a fever pitch; teachers are ecstatic and can''t wait to get their hands on classroom.

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10 Ways Social Media Can Improve Writing in Your Classroom

The Innovative Educator

'Guest Post by Vicki Davis Editor’s note: Vicki Davis just wrote a new book called, Reinventing Writing. I asked her if she could contribute a post to The Innovative Educator explaining specifically how social media has reinvented writing. This is that post. As hall of fame baseball player, Babe Ruth said, “Yesterday’s home runs won’t win tomorrow’s games.

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Everything You Need To Know About WWDC 2014

SpeechTechie

'You may be thinking, "I don''t even know what WWDC is," which is fine. However, the Worldwide Developer''s Conference is one of Apple''s (usually 2) opportunities each year to announce what''s coming next (in this case, this fall). Yesterday''s Keynote featured a number of announcements that are important for SLPs and other language teachers to know about.

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Hey, We Started a School!

Philly Teacher

'It was 3:00pm on June 20th, the last day of school. The inaugural staff of SLA@Beeber sat around the huge conference table in the main office going over highlights and areas for growth for next year. We picked apart processes, events, successes, failures and made suggestions for next year. We discussed our capacity as a staff, the way our kids had grown so much since September, the way we stuck together as a staff and made some really hard decisions together.

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Behind the Bell: The Underlying Impact of Tardiness in K-12 Schools

Managing a K-12 campus with constant pressure to meet performance metrics is challenging. And tardiness can significantly limit a school from reaching these goals. Learn more about why chronic lateness matters, and key strategies to address the following impacts: Data errors caused by manual processes Low attendance and graduation rates that affect a school’s reputation Classroom disruption, which leads to poor academic performance High staff attrition and “The Teacher Exodus” Unmet LCAP goals t

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5 Things to Make your MakerSpace a Hub of Learning and Design

My Paperless Classroom

'Next year we are turning one of the two computer labs into a MakerSpace. We have been talking all year about how to mitigate the loss of 24 desktop PC''s and everything they do. While the conversations have been difficult, I think we have finally resolved to get a cart of Mac laptops, set up to emulate windows when needed. My excitement about the laptop cart is balanced by the relative unknown of what will be in our MakerSpace.

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Rescue ETAG—say no to FELTAG

Ed Tech Now

'The DfE should reject the FELTAG recommendations in order to ensure that all the same mistakes are not repeated by ETAG At the same time as the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG) got ready to submit its recommendations to government … Continue reading → Stategy Bob Harrison DfE diana laurillard edtech education ETAG FELTAG Matt Hancock michael gove Stephen Heppell Tom Bennett'

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Perplexing Problems in ACPA Student Technology Infographic

Mistakengoal.com

'I've whined about bad infographics and I try to avoid complaining about their continuing proliferation. But I can't bite my tongue about this ACPA infographic purporting to show information about technology usage by undergraduate students. It's bad not just because it's misrepresenting information but because it's doing so in the specific context of making a call for quality research and leadership in higher education.

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16 Conference picks for innovative educators in the upcoming school year

The Innovative Educator

'The Innovative Educator in the Social Media Booth at NYSCATE 13 As the 13/14 school year comes to a close, it's time to think about what events and conferences to attend for the next year. While I certainly won't be attending all these conferences below are my top picks listed in chronological order. They include a link to the conference, brief description, approximate dates (if they are not yet scheduled) based on previous years and non-member, full costs (some are estimates based on

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The Battle of the Authoring Tools: A 10-Point Comparison for Picking the Right One

Speaker: Chris Paxton McMillin, President of D3 Training Solutions

There are plenty of great authoring tools for developing eLearning, but the one you select could directly impact your course's outcomes. Depending upon your learners’ needs and your organization’s performance goals, you could be overlooking considerations that impact the both effectiveness of your courses and how long it takes to finish them. From general capabilities to specific workflow structures, some aspects are critical when it comes to learning objectives and deadlines.

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World's Worst Pet-Vocabulary

SpeechTechie

'I am often asked about apps that build vocabulary and am at a loss for an easy answer. Are you looking for apps for basic or more advanced vocabulary? Do you mean semantics instead? There are many terrific apps that can be used to build semantic networks, categorization and description (take Bag Game , Naming TherAppy and Describe it to Me as a few examples), and though these skills provide the foundation for expanding vocabulary, this is sometimes not what the person was asking for.

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Writing 2.0: Technology-Rich Approach to Common Core Writing

wwwatanabe

'What skills are most desired by employers? On most lists , communicate effectively is the number one desired skill. How do we communicate? We communicate face-to-face, in writing, through various technologies, and multimedia. What is does it mean to be literate? Being literate is being able to effectively communicate. Therefore, every classroom must teach digital literacy as part of literacy, and not something separate.

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The Educational Value of StarWars in The Classroom

My Paperless Classroom

'This week on the Techeducator podcast we talked to the brains behind StarwarsintheClassroom.com and Shakespeare''s Star Wars about the value of Star wars in the classroom. Find links and shownotes on the Techeducator Site.

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Pause and Delete: Sometimes Our Best Response to Those Passionate Emails We Receive

The 21st Century Principal

'“Pause before sending an email. What do I want to see come out of this communication? The other party to feel diminished or encouraged?” Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace Email has made it quite easy to speak your mind. How many of us are guilty of pounding out a scathing response to an email that we received from someone else who wrote from a moment of passion?

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The Roses and Thorns of an LMS Strategy: How to Flourish with the Right LMS

Speaker: Amanda Davis, Chief Experience Officer and Liam O'Malley, VP of Association Solutions

The "new normal" is now a little less new, a little more normal. Does that mean your current LMS strategy is in need of a refresh? Is your organization or association leaning into the always-evolving eLearning environment to ensure you have the tools and content to remain relevant through all this change? There are many complex decision-making processes within your learning & development strategy and LMS lifecycle management, including: Selection.

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Teacher Voice at #EdcampUSA

Philly Teacher

'Today was an exciting day for the Edcamp Foundation and for edcampers all over the US. At around 7:00 am, a small group of educators walked across C Street and entered the Department of Education for a day of sharing and learning at Edcamp US DOE. After 4 years and thousands of hours of free, participant-driven professional development across the globe, Edcamp entered the halls that drive education policy in the US.

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Collaboration between companies + school district = Connected educators

The Innovative Educator

'Are you gaga over Google? Do you think Microsoft is magnificent? Do you excel at using Edmodo? Do you think PBS is the perfect platform for digital media content? Wouldn’t it be great to find others in your district using the same tools as you? Wouldn’t it be great to have a direct connection to the people who work at the companies of the very resources you are using for teaching and learning?

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Social Thinking Providers' Conference 2014

SpeechTechie

'This past weekend, I was thrilled to be part of the Social Thinking® Providers'' Conference in San Francisco, CA. I always leave this event (this was my third) with renewed energy and a ton of ideas informing my work, which nowadays centers around language therapy and a whole lot of social cognitive work with kids who have learning challenges in this area.

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How to Train Your (New) Principal

The Daring Librarian

'I hope that the blog title got your attention. It was designed to! But you may ultimately find it misleading. Please keep reading! Before any admins out there start sharpening their pitchforks for me, I gotta say that I really don''t think teachers need to train new principals. Principals come to us already accomplished, trained, vetted, and hand-picked.

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Building the Foundation for a Modern K-12 Classroom

K-12 looks different these days. But one thing remains the same: you need a reliable learning platform that serves as the foundation for teaching and learning––for all students, in a variety of learning experiences. Discover how the Instructure Learning Platform supports today's K-12 classroom through: A central, consistent, connected hub of the digital learning environment.