TCC 7-1 Old, but Golden

As usual we will begin our year by reviewing our logins and looking at some new features of these old friends. This Tech Professional Learning Community (PLC) topic has to do with a song learned in Brownies: new friends are silver, old friends are gold. The old friends are: ERO, SchoolInsites (web host), Outlook (email), Enrich, StreamlineSC (Learn 360 portal), Discus, We are also reviewing phone/voicemail setup and a password addition to our work order system, School Dude.
But as usual there is modeling involved with the session. The main new friend for the year is ClassFlow from Promethean. We will be looking at some of the features more closely next month when teachers join a class. At Google Classroom schools the “always start in Classroom” rule is in effect. Having to join two classes may seem tedious, but they will have access to all the archived lessons in our classroom site.
Now for some outside sites which have become important over the years..Chrome has eased the need for online bookmarking since with a login your browser looks the same on any connected device. But EDU.Symbaloo is still the most visual bookmarking tool which can be very helpful for younger students. This link is to a Twitter webmix which has ideas for following chats as part your personal learning network. Using Symbaloo as your Personal Learning Network (PLN) home can be shared with students, too.
Remind was the first “messaging to parents anonymously” site. There are several others now and Google Classroom has a share with parents email feature now that combines all classes the student is in-volved with in one message. Can be daily, weekly or monthly. And ClassFlow has an app called ClassFlow Moments which mimics many of Remind’s features. Parents must be invited to join. Remind has grown since beginning. You can now add attachments and apply read receipts for documentation. Link to the Top 10 Ways to Use Remind. Still free...still private! ClassDojo is another first of its kind site. This has also morphed due to copy cat sites. They offer support with student video series. There has been a yearly set for several years.. The new set is here.
Many old friends have moved to subscription/membership, but are still useful enough to invest in. Edu.Glogster is one of these. I have been an Ambassador and used it as my presentation tool some years back. This was one of the first curation tools online….it offered a digital poster format which allowed students/teachers to add video, pictures and text to a background. These had URLs and could be shared or used to present. $30 will get you a personal account. It is a onetime purchase not a yearly license. Voki is a talking avatar and is itself is still free, but it has many additional educational features Voki Classroom, Voki Presenter, and Voki Teach which are paid. These all have 15 day trial with various levels which include combinations of the products from $5/month for 50 students to $10/month for 150.
So that gets Florence 3 started for the year...ENJOY!

TCC 6-2 Google Classroom Comes to Town

For 2016-2017 at least four schools (LCHS, REMJHS, JPTIS, and JCLES) will have Apps for Education accounts which allow them to use Classroom. So every student has a G-mail account...how does that work? Student id’s are related to their login in a private domain for their school. That domain is needed to be a Google Apps for Education school...the only users of Classroom. All student information can be restricted to that domain...even parents without accounts can’t view things unless they are shared in some other way, like a Google Group.
Google Drive provides storage for all student work. When using Classroom folders are even set up automatically for your classes and for your student work. Work can be done on any of Google’s applications: Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and My Maps. Not only these, but photos, PDFs and videos can be stored in Drive., and other formats (Office) can be viewed and edited. Students can use Android, iOs, or Windows devices to participate. My Maps and Sites can also be used as alternative ways to make presentations.

TCC 6-2 Google Cardboard

This has been a learning school year. My status changed slightly and I become the mother of 150+ iPads that needed supervision, updating and redistribution...after the Configurator 2 was available. This was a steep learning curve for an Apple newbie.And now we have a school which is beginning the process for Google Classroom (on iPads). So I am again trying to gain a foothold by working on my Google Level 1 Certification.

That preface is to help you understand how I found the Google Cardboard appliances and app while looking for Google Groups to find uses for the discussion and mailing list. So hidden in the MORE of Google's matrix of tools was one I had never heard of...Google Cardboard?

TCC Summer: Summertime Fun?

I am a fan of Alice Keeler's blog, Teacher Tech, which is in My Blog List at the right. She is very knowledgeable in all things Google and shares tutorial information at Teacher Tech. Since our junior high and high schools are going one-to-one with Chromebooks things Google are helpful for those staff members who teach at those schools.
Another site new to me is Google for Education which offers training on the requirements to become a Google Educator. All courses listed are: Android Tablets for Education, Calendar, Chrome,  Chromebooks,  Classroom, Digital Citizenship, Docs Suite, Docs, Drawings, Drive, Forms, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Play for , .Education, Implementing Google Apps, Search, Sheets, Sites, Slides, and YouTube. The advanced portion of training for some of the offered lessons are required for the assessments for Certification, but the basic lessons are also there if you need that help  Each lesson also gives you an

TCC 5-5 Cindy's Links

Classmill describes its course creation site curated learning. It is another site which allows you to gather all the multimedia for your lesson/course for viewing from one site. MIT’s Future of Education report says, "The next generation of student life and learning, supporting the faculty with new instructional roles, introducing flexibility to the curriculum and in time to degree by modularizing course content"

Intel has some terrific Project Based Learning courses. During the one we facilitate with teachers yearly in our school district we look not only at self/formative assessment but we also look at technology to infuse. This Edudemic post, 5 Ways to Use Wordcloud Generators in the Classroom, has teacher contributed ideas including one which marries KWL charts and word clouds. Another Edudemic post, The Ultimate Twitter Guidebook, this with 100 sites giving lots of ideas and links for using Twitter from beginner tips and educator uses to cautions and student apps. Or 30 Innovative Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom  if that seems too much.

TCC 5-5 Project Based Learning with New Tech (PBL)

In August we move 2 more grades into New Tech which also means more PBL. Our district has been involved through Intel which has additional resources for PBL. Intel Engage site is a community which has tools and courses which are free to teaching professionals. Although not  directly connected to New Tech the basic information is convergent....just terminology is different. There is more information on Intel in TCC Issue 4-4.

At the site click circled for videos

I have had no formal New Tech training, but have been previewing the information at their network site: echo.newtechnetwork.org Even without a login it allows you to click on More About Echo above the login space.
  

There are videos covering schools, projects, samples, and reflections of teachers and students.  Two really good project samples are “The Cart Project” and “Cells Gone Wild” (featured) which were both real issue projects for which the students found real answers. If these aren’t part of official training they are worth a look. Several of the videos are student produced.

TCC 5-5 Producing InfoPics

Tony Vincent offers tutorials on lots of tech topics...beginning with Learning in Hand podcasts.

Screen Capture of Tony's Sample from Ted Talk

“A picture is worth a thousand words” may be true, but add a few words to a picture and you have something even more memorable. In his tutorial on infopic tools and how-to’s Tony features samples from Jonathan Nalder* and others. Students with various kinds of devices could use this skill to summarize, define, persuade, or advertise. His suggested tools are: Canva, Rhonna, Mextures, Over, Skitch, Pic Collage, PicLab, Phonto, Pathon, Color Effects, Color Splash Effects, presentation software (Power Point, KeyNote, or Slides), Pixlr, or PicsArt (has call-out speech bubbles to add). These tools are for various brands of devices so you would select what works on the tool you have. The one which works on the most types is Skitch...which also has a Chrome app for our New
Tech people.