TCC 4-4 Computational Learning with Coding

There is a push for Computer Programming to be taught in our schools. MIT and Carnegie-Melon have developed tools which are simple enough for a digital immigrant to use or a kid. Mitchel Resnick of MIT and Scratch has written about the benefits of coding to computational thinking at EdSurgeNews. (A white paper link is also on the Scoop.It version @ scoop.it/t/tiontera 
This December Joe’s TAG class was invited to an Hour of Code event on Edmodo's LearnStreet app.  The event is designed to introduce students to computer programming using a dozen activities by several partners. The video link is from Code.org. Their goal is to interest students in computer science as a career; ours is math skills.
Day of Code began in 2011 during the same week (Computer Science Ed Week) with a goal of 20 cities. These 2 sites can give an overview. The links that follow are sites which provide tools which can be used to add coding to your students’ lives all through the year.
Tynker and Code.org both offer a course on coding simple enough for elementary students. Tynker and Scratch look alike in that they allow students to move bits around to create the “code” for animations.
Alice uses a drag and drop system of words to create animations. All are very visual you can see the immediate result of what you have done.
Creative problem solving in all these tools is a fit for computational thinking.

Since this article was written earlier this year I have also found a Google site CS First which has a ready to use 8 week after school club which teaches coding with Scratch.

Enjoy!

TCC 4-4 Apple-Less Classroom Alternatives

Our eyes have gotten used to Apps...no one wants to read the url for a site when they can click a cute little square. How can we achieve that look without the pricey hardware? Some free software is helping fill the void. In schools with monthly Cluster we have introduced both Chrome Apps and Symbaloo. Both help us with a white board display of links for use in the classroom with whole group or at a computer with small groups to narrow online choices.

Chrome Apps are purchased at the Chrome Store from Google. You will need a Google account (any, like g-mail) so that your Apps page(s) will be created just for your ID. These apps are available to you or your students from any computer which has a Chrome browser you can log into. This means you can use the apps for them to use in a center or at the white board.

Symbaloo is an online bookmarker, but the interface is tiles not URLs. You need an account at edu.symbaloo.com. This means that you can access them at any computer that has internet. This site has more control over the setup of the page than Chrome Apps. There are thousands of teacher-made webmixes for you to search through and use or modify. They have a distinct URL so that you can allow students to access your webmix from home or other places with internet. You can also embed them into a presentation/flipchart/notebook or add to your school page. OR you can teach your students how to make their own with a template they can add to with links, Google Docs, videos, vokis, other webmixes for a Personal Learning Environment (PLE).

Symbaloo also has webmixes with a $10 (and other) course to be Certified as a teacher which brings with it a webmix for your students to use to get certified...this one is free.

Enjoy!

TCC 4-4 Classroom Tech Infusion

Guest speakers, especially in a rural setting can be hard to find. But here are several sources where you can schedule a visit virtually. Some do interviews; some do field trips.
Skype has been our fall-back guy for awhile when we needed an online interview. They now have a whole new persona...education.skype.com. One of their new features is Mystery Skyping with another class which was an earlier article in volume 4 issue 1. They now have a place where you can schedule these meetings. Some speakers: Roger Day, Paul Czajak, Fossil EDU, Culture, Eileen Meyer, and Night Zookeeper Josh are being offered at this time. You may be one of several classes, but can ask questions. Or are you into sharks, coins, light, African penguins, or native Americans?
In addition to this old friend are NASA, Google Connected Classrooms, and NBC Learn.
DLN.NASA.Gov uses their own web tool for communicating between speaker and class. The above link has a video which explains what is possible. They have four areas at this time: Aeronautics Research, Space Operation, Science, and Exploration Systems.
The information about scheduling is also on that page. NASA TV also has other great resources.

Google’s tools use Hangouts and Google+ to moderate and even record your meetings. They only began in 2013, but are catching up fast. There is an archive of previous field trips. You click on the orange button near the bottom of the page for a calendar archive. Click o the date and it shows what was recorded that date. You wouldn’t be interacting, but other classes are asking questions. There is a video with samples on the page.

NBC Learn is a partner with Google for their events, but there are lots of other opportunities there also. There are Free Resources and Current Events links along with Webinars. Events, which is a little farther down the page, lists upcoming things you and your class can sign up for/join.
Enjoy!

TCC 4-4 Cindy's Links

This month we are looking at some odds and ends. First is related to the PBL post from this issue. After that we have Twitter, Slidedog, and other presentation apps. 

When collaborating with people outside school/US you need to know what time it is in where you are and at the other site. The app Time Zone Converter was recommended by Dyane Smokorowski (KA 2013 Teacher of the Year) on the Learning is Boundless webinar on Intel Engage. Some information for the PBL article also originated in this webinar also.
This is from Dennis T. O’Connor’s Scoops for E-Learning and Online Teaching. He spotlighted Using Twitter In the Primary Classroom which has some great ways to use Twitter to connect with others.
Some presentation additions:
Slidedog is not just another PPT replacer, according to their site you can “create seamless playlists from just about any type of presentation media.” It supports Word, Powerpoint, PDF, Excel, Prezi, video, photos, and webpages with Chrome. And emaze which uses Flash alternative HTML5 for use on Apple/PC without issues. This online slide presenter offers many templates and tools including a group for education.
And an App: CreatorVerse. Wikipedia says “Creatorverse is primarily focused on creativity and building...Inspiration for Creatorverse, including the logo, originates from the popular device, Newton’s cradle, which demonstrates conservation of momentum and energy via a series of swinging spheres.
It uses physics rather than code.”   

Enjoy!

TCC 4-4 Project Based Learning (PBL)

Intel Essentials Class has begun for Winter 2014, and I was reminded of all the amazing resources that Intel freely provides to teacher-members. Their emphasis on project based learning which adds 21st century tools to unit plans opens the classroom to a world of partners and real world projects. These projects are designed to encompass the standards you would teach but to integrate them into actual work on that over-arching essential question.
Teachers Engage is Intel’s site for teacher collaboration on PBL. We teach the Essentials face-to-face. The SC state department offers several other Intel courses on their elearningscpd.com site for graduate credit.(I believe there is now a rate for out of state.) The Intel site also offers these for re-certification credit. One of the other assets offered on this site is a set of tools for students’ use during the projects: the Visual Ranking Tool, the Seeing Reason Tool, and the Showing Evidence Tool. There is also an assessment library. All of these are available to the logged-in teacher. Intel also has a DLD page in their community. This is a specialized set of projects related to 21st century skills.

Another site with projects related to February 4. Digital Learning Day has 3 pages of project based learning links. Some best practice samples check out Australian site Digital School Solutions. 

Buck Institute for Education (BIE) also has many resources which teachers can use for PBL units. Another version of PBL is CBL or Challenge Based Learning. Their projects are challenges and the students are to find solutions Teachers are members with a support community.
The TCC 4-4 Tech Classroom Infusion post has three other sources for PBL.
One of the components of projects of this type is a real world connection. Google, NASA, NBC, and Skype provide a way to connect classes with others for collaboration, interviews, or field trips at minimal cost. Please see that article for details.
Another component is related to writing CCSS which ask that publishing be part of the product. The Essentials course provides ideas for publishing like: a wiki, a blog, Prezi, Glog, Sympaloo, Voki. or Google Drive as well as the more common Power Point or Publisher.
And don’t forget our own Teacher’s Toolbox. They have a newish Common Core Thinking item which is a PBL (week long) Project. This has supplied activities and plans.
PBL is an answer to the question, “what am I going to use this for” since the uses of the information are woven into the project. These are not your “grand-teacher’s” projects...begin with one. You’ll love the engagement.
Enjoy!

TCC 4-5 Classroom Tech Infusion

Our district uses Promethean boards so this is product related.

Template 63

Some features of ActivInspire to inspire you…
Did you know that there are templates which will allow you to set up an interactive bar graph instantly...students can take a survey and enter results at a click of the pen? These are found in the Resource Browser in the Activities and Templates or go to Insert/Page. Add title, change colors, fill in the axes...and you are ready to go! The one to the left is 63 of 64. 

Along with this are many others: an interactive scoreboard, a KWL setup (or 4 columns), alphabet spaces ready for words, 3 different “How do you feel” charts, and many, many more. The ActivTip 08 gives an overview of these. (Search for ActivTip 08 above the video box.)
There is an additional section which is reserved for LRS (learner response systems) questioning.
While the Templates are left to your own designing skills there are also Activities which are made to be used immediately and come with Notes about the activity which was planned. You find those in the Notes Browser or on some pages there is a Sticky Note button added with an action on the page showing that there are notes. You can add standards or other things to these notes.
The list at the right gives the folders of Activities found as a default on ActivInspire. Some have more choices than others. For example calendars are generic for yearly, monthly and weekly.
These are only the pages supplied by the software. Promethean Planet also supplies pages that are prepared by other teachers. I would suggest starting with a broad search and then narrowing. There may not be standard connections since this is an international company, but the concept you are teaching will probably show up. Many of these also have notes.
One tip is that you can extend any page you wish by going to View/Page Extender (near the bottom) Allows taller, scrollable pages.
Enjoy!

I learned most of this watching Janice Pranstatter's Channel on YouTube. She is a UKI employee of Promethean who produces, along with Samantha Clewes,  webinars on best practice and tools featuring real classroom experts.

*Photos produced with the camera tool.

TCC 4-5 Making Your Own E-Books

TikaTok makes ebooks simple for a price. TikaTok is software from Pearson who supplies our gradebook/attendance software or portal. TikaTok has templates for students to use to write a book and then publish it as an e-book or hard copy. The basic subscription is only $19/year and there is a free trial. Publishing is a fee also: $3 or $4 to publish an ebook and $15 for a softcover paper book which they ship.

But you can do something similar with either power point or word. You will need to design pages for books and then have students add pictures, drawings and text. When finished save as a pdf file. Any pdf can become an eBook.

There are online converters which will change pdf files to ebooks for specific ereaders. One I have used is Online ePub Converter which offers conversion to specific readers: iPad, Kindles, Nooks, and others.

Since we don’t get these books from online stores it requires some special handling to put them on the reader. Two were mentioned when I learned how to do this:

calibre (cost) and Digital Editions (free). These both allow you to make a library and share the ebooks to ereaders. This video from Goodereaders gives details on how the move the epub books to a nook. The video also used Windows Explorer which is the window on your PC where you look at files.
To bring your project to TikaTok levels you will need to create some templates for your students to use for the genre of book you wish them to produce. I would suggest looking at TikaTok to see what can be done. The kids will love it! Of course you can also print and bind the PPT slides, too.

Enjoy!