Although ISTE 2017 was almost 2 1/2 months ago, I am still thinking about all of the great conversations I had with other educators after my Ingnite presentation. I was ecstatic to be able to share how my learning as a kid was affected by a piece of technology. Without that piece of technology, a…
Last night I got the chance to be a part of my first podcast as I joined the Friendly Disruption team. Craig Barnum and Maggie Pickett started the Friendly Disruption podcast to focus on accessibility with technology for students. Craig attended my session at ITEC this year where I focused on Making Learning Accessible for All…
Earlier this year we purchased Swivls for each building in our district to be used by our teachers in their work in the classroom, as well as their work with our instructional coaches. The Swivls are great when we want to record classroom situations to be shared with others, but they can also play a role…
This year at ITEC I presented about how to use some basic equations to do more with your data in a Google Sheet. There are about 10 equations that I use on a frequent basis when I am dealing with large amounts of data and I can easily move the data around to create the…
UPDATE! – It looks like you can’t publish Chrome Extensions for free anymore if you are just doing it in your school district accounts. The developer fee is $5. If anyone has a way around this, please feel free to tweet at me @donovanscience. I will add that the new interface for publishing extensions is…
This page will house the resources for the various presentations and sharing of our Esports adventure at Nevada CSD. We had our inaugural year of HS Esports at Nevada HS in Nevada, IA during the 2020-2021 school year. Esports programs are showing up across the country and it provides a large number of benefits to…
At the start of the 2020-2021 school year we started the inaguaral season for our high school esports team. As part of the IAHSEA league, the fall season consisted of Smash Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch and the winter season consisted of Overwatch. While getting students to join the team and compete against other schools…
Craig, Maggie, and I were able to get together to chat about our jobs and various topics related to education and the impact COVID had on accessibility and instructional design for our students. We may try to get together again this winter but watch the video below as we get back together to talk learning,…
I remember being bored a lot in school when I was a student, not because the teacher was not engaging or that I did not like the content, it was just that the pace was not right for me. The pace was slower than what I would have preferred but that is the problem when…
One of my favorite phrases that I have written on a board in my office is: “You can’t expect it if you don’t teach it, and model it”. Along those lines, I think there are two things that we really don’t do enough of but yet expect students to already know them. They are how…
With the move to online, hybrid, or other form of learning that is going to be put in place during this upcoming school year as we continue to traverse the unknown world of pandemic teaching, the amount of technology use is increasing immensely. For some, this is unknown areas where they have not had to…
Last year in iOS 12, Apple introduced a handy new feature called Screentime. Screen Time allows you to monitor your own usage of your smartphone and see which apps you use the most, as well as which ones cause the most notifications. Smartphones can be powerful tools for learning and work but they can also…
I love Chrome Extensions, especially when they make it easier to get things done as I work and learn online. I even make my own Chrome Extension for our students and staff (with an updated Extension coming this fall). The problem I have found as I keep installing and trying out new Chrome Extensions is…
This is a test podcast that I created using Soundtrap. Soundtrap recently released some new features, and in a way to test out these new features, I decided to record this quick podcast. I may be releasing more short podcasts like this in the future but this was a good test run. If you want…
Soundtrap recently released a slew of updates but my favorite has to be the Interactive Transcript feature. This will create a transcript of your spoken words so that you can more quickly edit your recording but can also use it to help students overcome various learning obstacles. The transcript feature is great if you want…
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