TCC 5-1 Ed Tech 2014 SUPER HERO

The fall issue of the Tech Cadre Corner always includes a “what I learned “ at Ed Tech article… This year’s conference was full of new things and new ideas. I usually don’t talk about the exhibits very much, but this year they were a boon to our needs. First we found answers which could be solved at local Barnes & Noble for Nook issues at the Nook booth, then at Promethean’s bus we not only renewed acquaintances, but also learned about their new board which is backlit and touch activated and new online ClassFlow. This is the newest iteration of Activsoft-ware...plus it’s online.
I went to sessions on:

•  games developed for adding action to reviews which were provided as well as links to money skills and math practice games to enhance your teaching at UNCW.edu, and content generators and links at blog on reasons for games in education; 
• animations to engage students featured tools for teachers and was submitted by the same presenter; (A Livebinder was offered, but I am substituting another since that one wasn’t found. Animation Palooza is the name of the original); 
• Leron Rahynes used tools for flipping classrooms in a 1-to-1 situation which are available for free to create videos with personality to engage his students in history;
•  and behavior management systems were featured in the session by Jennifer Spann who mainly looked at Class Dojo which works well when the teacher has mobile devices for rewarding incentives. (This site also includes a timer and a parent reporting system which enhances its effectiveness.)
• BO Haynes’ (CPCC) Power Point was an eye-opener. He used learning theory to build the perfect presentation with very little verbiage...but pictures and repetition to trick our memories. 
• Online teaching tools, apps and resources were shared by Corey Lee (CCU) who always packs in far more than you can take in. He gave fully functional templates for Weebly and Edmodo advice while adding other advice on setting up an online class. Another tip from him was to use Dropbox links to documents which are involved in your class so that when chang-es are made they are synced in one place.
• Mendy Ingiaimo (USC) was last on the schedule but powerful. She had hands-on activities using online tools to create activities. Class progressed in difficulty. She introduced podcasting, Voicethread, voice-over Power Points using Audacity, self learning modules, concept maps like Bubble.us and interactive crossword puzzles from Puzzled modeling how she would use them in class. 
• SC Future Minds was a surprise...it is a different look at funding. This is discussed in its own post.
• Office 365 is Microsoft’s answer to Google Drive. Another view of cloud storage and standards from another favorite presenter, Beth Goff from Clover School District, 
• Joe Woodbury and Marcel Marina from Florence 3 also presented two views of green screen photos/videos and using 3-D printers for projects.

TCC 5-1 CS First...We Were!

During Florence 3 summer school’s Tech Boot Camp for Kids we have been using lots of technology tools. This year we added a NEW national feature. The Charleston, SC area was piloting Computer Science First Clubs. This is a Google project and we were included. Scratch has been a favorite of mine for years and we had included it in the curriculum last summer.
This curriculum is complete for 8 weeks of after-school clubs. Two subjects were ready in the summer: Music & Sound and Game Design. There are now 3 additional modules: Art, Fashion & Design, and Story Telling.
We used the Music & Sound module and did 2 modules a day on 4 days of Boot Camp.
For those who don’t know Scratch it is a product of MIT which allows very young people to put together computer code snippets and program Sprites to perform.
There is training available from the website for all interested in having their own CS First Club. These are designed for outside volunteers to be the 2 Gurus with one teacher/staff person to over-see the tech use during club time, but they are very flexible...and did I mention all needed supplies are FREE including headsets on loan. All is shipped to you. Enjoy!

TCC 5-1 Money for Schools & Teachers

Many funding options are opening up for k-12 public school support. Universities ask others for donations and many are part of state budgets just as undergraduate institutions are. So why not donate? Teachers may appreciate help with projects instead of gifts at holidays or during teacher appreciation week. This can now be accomplished in several ways.
In SC we have a foundation which directs tax-free donations and all the paper-work associated to the school of your choice. SC Future Minds celebrates learners and learning in our state.They provide a button unique URL and to schools which have signed up.
 Bing, the search engine from Microsoft also allow you to give by selecting your school... but your use of their search engine supplies the Surface tablets to the school.
Donors Choose is another cash accepting site but this one is geared toward individual teacher projects which need funding. Teachers join and propose their need with the amount needed to fulfill the request. Then donors help pay for the project.
The last one I am reviewing here is slightly different. This is a site where teacher made items for school are offered for sale to other teachers. Many of the items teachers produce are shared free of charge to other teachers , but entrepreneurial teachers have begun offering cute, and useful items on a site called Teachers Pay Teachers.
Teachers have long financed needs in their classrooms with their own money...some states compensate with a supply check. Things are also supplied by the school or district, but with tighter budgets and in less well off districts this new funding is welcome.

TCC 5-1 Classroom Tech Infusion

Publishing is such an important part of standards that finding new ways to share student work is imperative. We are just finishing Technology Boot Camp’s session on podcasting and avatars. If you need some inspiration here is a first grade class’s video about making a podcast. This sample used a book review as the purpose. Other uses might be character analysis, interviews for research, doing a lab report, reading poetry, or reviewing textbook sections for classmates. The easiest possible tool for a podcast is ipadio.com. This is a free site which works with your phone. You register with them, get a toll-free number to call and a pin, and they record and post your podcast. They also provide embed code for you to add to your
class site and publish for parents or the world. The drawback to easy is that you may not edit. Sample Several free software programs will do recordings for you: Gargageband (Apple), Audacity (PC), and Movie Maker (PC). Audacity is audio only, but is a very good editor. We used this to record our script. You will have the most options if you save as an mp3. Once you have your recording you need a host site. Two free sites which are fairly simple to use are podbean and buzzsprout. Either of these will allow you to upload your recordings and provide your podcast’s homepage. They will also provide embed code for adding a player for your page. You can also produce a video podcast or vodcast. This can be done using Audacity for audio, Power Point for video display and Movie Maker to combine them. A really good demon-stration of how to do this is a Tony Vincent video using PC tools. In this sample about divisibility rules he uses voice enhancers to make it more interesting. This is a 13 minute video with explanations about all steps. Tony Vincent is an early advocate of pod-casts at his Learning in Hand site and has a blog which offers many more ideas and much more information. He also has an older booklet with all the information you need to do a podcast about your city...and a place to add it, too. Another way to add a little voice to class is with a Voki avatar...you can add recordings to them or more easily just type in what you want your “person” to say. Try some of these with your student authors or use them to flip.
Enjoy!

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!