The CUE conference was a great way to learn what was out there and how teachers and professionals are using it to inspire their kids. I met a lot of different professionals from various parts of California and the west coast. It was great to meet people who were passionate about teaching and curious about technology. There was a strong consensus that many teachers are a bit hesitant to try out new technology in their classrooms because they don’t feel comfortable about it. In many of the conferences and workshops, teachers said to their students, “Let’s try this new app and see if it works for us or not”. In many cases, if the teacher was stumped, the kids were able to discuss it and fix the problem and even offer how to use it in class. I have to admit that some of the workshops that I attended made me think, “wow, I have a lot of learning to do and this seems impossible”, however I already tried a few things and they worked out to be lovely and kid are already excited about it!
Here are my favorite take-aways:
- www.movenote.com This is a powerful tool! It allows you to upload videos or powerpoints into a template. Then you click through your powerpoint and record yourself via video (laptop or ipad with a video camera) This is still pretty new in the educational field for technology. Best part, its FREE and it is easy to do. The program converts the video into a link to share as a link, email etc.
- www.lucidchart.com Allows for you to make charts like you would a google doc. It allows for several users to work on a chart at the same time. Could be useful for math/science classes.
- http://learni.st Love Pinterest? Why not try this website to make learning boards for classes? It connects you to a wide variety of many professional networks for teaching. Type in an idea, there are tons of ideas to explore. You can follow other learner boards or vice versa. I have yet to try this, but it appears to be super cool.
- Need to make primary sources come to life? Use an IPAD with a video camera in class. Since we are a BYOD campus, have kids bring in IPADS. If you cannot do it during class, assign it as a group project. Break students up into 5 people. Have one kid be the newsreporter. Each other kid takes on the identity of the primary source. IE: Wife of a factory laborer, a factory laborer, a co-worker who is an immigrant that needed to work in the factory, the factory owner. Each person has to come up with questions that the news reporter is going to ask them. It allows each person in the group to look at the primary source and investigate. The kids are encouraged to do extra research and to also include an image from the time period. Long story short, the kids act the part, the news reporter goes to each student and interviews them about their conditions via Ipad video. The video is easy to share and it makes the primary source come to life.
- http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/calcultures/ Is a website dedicated to California History. More geared towards a middle school class, but it has great photos that tie into U.S. History and some world history. Focuses on a lot of multiculturalism
- www.edmodo.com is another interface that can be used like blackboard. Personally kids like it because the interface looks like facebook. It is important to instruct kids to use only images other than themselves for their edmodo photo. For my AP World class, students must upload a photo of a country. I talked to them about internet security. It is very important that we model digital citizenship to kids.
- Screencasting? This is when you can capture video etc. This works fantastic for math etc. You can use an IPAD for this and it allows you to draw on the ipad and voice over to explain and show things to students as you talk. This can be more intermediate and advances, but the websites recommended were http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html or http://www.screenr.com or http://www.screencast-o-matic.com
- For Fun: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chatterpix-kids-by-duck-duck/id734046126?mt=8 This app allows you to make objects talk. So for history, imagine uploading a picture of Napoleon and allowing him to talk for a short while. It’s for fun!
- Common Core discussion was everywhere. In one of my workshops common core was being discussed and edmodo has embedded the standards into the edmodo program which will be launching next month. https://www.edmodo.com/snapshot This is a big buzz in the world of common core and it shows you tools to assess your kids according to common core and the content that you teach them.
- Summer Programs are available for teachers in the summer for technology. If you want to become Certified in PBL (Project Based Learning) there are programs available. (4 core pieces of CCSS: collaborate, communication, critical thinking, creativity) Stop turning things in, PUBLISH IT! Twitter/Blogs/Weekly Log. GOALS are standards first, then figure out a project for it. Backwards design. Choice for kids.
- Google Forms is pretty powerful stuff! Yes, it is time consuming, but if you can learn a couple skills from it, you can make quizzes, get instant feedback from it, make surveys, polls etc. Learn how to use it!
- Powerpoints need to have LESS TEXT. Kids need to focus on YOU, not the slides and taking notes. New approaches to powerpoints are very similar to Steve Jobs presenations and Nancy Duarte. How are kids going to be good presenters, if we don’t model to them what powerful presentations look like? Two books recommended for powerful presenting skills are: Presentationzen by Gar Reynolds and Resonate, by Nancy Duarte. Show your kids youtube clips of their presentations and discuss as a class what they did that was powerful in their presentations.
