Earlier this week I was at the annual ITEC conference in Des Moines and had the opportunity to try out one of the Breakout Edu Challenges. (http://www.breakoutedu.com/) If you have not heard about Breakout Edu, head to their site to check it out. It is basically a classroom version of the breakout room challenges that…
We are less than a week away from ITEC, Iowa’s biggest educational technology conference. This is a great time for educators to come together from across the state, and even those from outside the state, to share how they are transforming their learning environments through the use of technology. Whether you are at the conference…
Google Calendar is now integrated with Google Classroom. If you go to classroom.google.com and click on the three horizontal lines, you should see Calendar as an option. You can also get to it by going to the About part of your Classroom. It will be listed towards the bottom. If you have not…
I remember as a student teacher at ISU that I had to record myself teaching using an audio recorder. The purpose of this was so that I could go back and listen to myself teach so that I could analyze what I heard and reflect in order to improve. This is an important procedure that…
One of the biggest things I wish I had been told when I started teaching was to only expect to see what we were focusing on learning in the classroom. Too often we assume our students know how to do something and then are surprised when they don’t. Working collaboratively as a group is one…
To be an effective learner today, you need to know how to curate resources. There is a tremendous amount of information out there and if you do not curate your resources, selecting those that are relevant and useful, you will be overwhelmed by what you find. There are a lot of curation tools out there…
Last year I had to replace my kitchen faucet. I had never done this before so I did what I do a lot when faced with a problem for the first time, I do my research online which includes a lot of YouTube videos. In most of the videos they showed the people using a…
While a textbook can be a good resource, it no longer has to be our only resource. Curation tools, like Flipboard, can help you to put together resources to help your students learn. There are many resources out there are that are more up to date than a textbook or more engaging. We can find…
Animated GIFs are great tools to show students/teachers/others how to do something without having to create a full video to host online. You can quickly create animated GIFs using Snagit for Chrome,https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/techsmith-snagit-extensio/annopcfmbiofommjmcmcfmhklhgbhkce?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon, by doing a quick screencast and then converting it into an animated GIFs. There are other extensions, like MakeGif (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/makegif-video-capture/cnhdjbfjheoohmhpakglckehdcgfffbl), that allow you…
One new thing we are trying at my building this year is the use of Google Classroom to assist the work that our PLCs are doing. As our PLCs work together to collect data from common formative assessments and collaborate to improve student learning, we needed a way they could easily do this in a…
Donovanscience 