Runners in Scoring Position

Runner in Scoring Position

The “runner in scoring position” phrase is a baseball/softball term meaning that because the team has a runner on second base (generally) or even third base…that if the next batter gets a hit, that there is a real possibility that they will score.

Well after three days of this new EDPD class, Integrating Technology in the Classroom, the overwhelmed feelings are slowly diminishing and “we have runners in scoring positions.”  There is a diverse group of learners that signed on for the summer class; elementary, middle and high school teachers…teachers with varying degrees of comfort with using computers and the technology tools.  Some get frustrated quicker than others, but all are determined to see it through to the end. 

As we move from day to day, we are building on the previous day and allowing practical use of the tools taught.  With familiarity comes comfort.  With comfort comes the willingness to take risks.  With risk-taking comes the learning.  With the learning comes the application in the classroom.

Our concentration this week is with Google and Google Classroom.  By the end of the week, teachers will know how to use, and get opportunities to practice using Docs, Sheets, Slides, Blogspot, YouTube, forms, shortener, and Google Grader.

Our students in grades 3-8 are moving into a one-to-one initiative using Google Chromebooks…and in grades 9-12 continuing with Dell laptops, and ALL of them will have access to our district’s institutional Google accounts.  We are excited about the Chromebook Initiative, and the Google Classroom tools, and we can’t wait to get all of our folks rounding third base and heading for home!

Digital Storytelling

Lately, we have been asked by several teachers, at several different schools, to share all of our favorite digital storytelling tools.  We of course, comply and try to assist teachers and students alike to be able to tell their story digitally.  There are so many tools out there that it’s sort of hard to keep up, but here, we’ll share a few of our favorites:

1.  Screencast-O-Matic  

A free tool that can be used right from the Internet without having to sign up for anything.  It allows you to create a video of anything that appears inside of the framed section on the screen of your laptop.  It has a neat pointer feature that puts a yellow circle around a moving mouse pointer, to allow the viewer to easily follow your “how-to” instructions.  When you click on a place or icon, it will turn blue in an outward radiating flow of blue.  Be careful not to move your move around too much during the recording, otherwise it could be distracting.

2.  Movie Maker                                                                                                  

Comes on most Window’s based laptops.  Easy to use and easy to edit as you insert both video clips and still images.  You can add title pages, insert text graphics, insert transitions and music where you want, and even fade it in and out.

3.  ZimmerTwins

It is all about creative storytelling. ZimmerTwins is a web2.0 tool that allows students to give vent to their imaginative powers and exercise their storytelling skills from early stages to advances ones.  This site is very intuitive.  Although a “basic” kind of animated cartoon, it has some good merit.

4.  Publisher                                                                                                    

This tool also comes on most Window’s based laptops.  It gives you templates for creating infographics or allows you to create from a blank canvas.  Easy to post pictures, articles, or pictures.  Sets itself up as a great tool for a newsletter or tri-fold bulletin.

5.  Capzles

This is where you and your students can create rich multimedia stories with videos, photos, music, blogs and documents. It is really awesome.

6.  Paper Slide Videos                                                                                           

An easy to create and easy to share project that is basic in its elements, but powerful as a teaching and learning tool.  Plenty of videos on You Tube on how to make a Paper Slide Video, but click HERE for one of our favorites.

7.  FlipSnack

FlipSnack allows you to save documents as a PDF, and upload them into their site, creating a digital book.  You can create a Title Page and make the pages front/back…you can share the book or use it as a study guide book.

Click the links below for some other great tools:

A Media Specialists’ Guide to the Internet

Levine: 50 Web 2.0 tools to tell a story

17 free digital storytelling apps for the iPad

Office 365. What are you waiting for?

Teachers and students alike, in the Georgetown County School District, have access to the Office 365 tools…compliments of our I.T. Department, our District Administration and ultimately, our Board of Education.  The Microsoft suite bundles many of the commonly used tools, along with some new ones, to enhance the teaching and learning experiences in our schools.

“But doesn’t it take a lot of time to teach the students how to use all of them?”  It doesn’t have to…many of the tools are intuitive…but an introduction including initial access is the best way to get started on the right foot.

There is a Terabyte of storage offered for students inside the Office 365 One Drive…that’s equal to 1,000 GB of space. Storage there is easy and smooth.  Students can store Word documents, PDF documents, Excel spreadsheets, Power Point presentations, pictures and more.  Students can also do this on the drives or storage areas at school that they have access to such as the G Drive (school-wide storage) and the H Drive (student’s personal storage).  Both of the aforementioned are good alternatives, but they both have their drawbacks.  The G Drive, or the general drive is a whole school storage place.  That means that anyone at the school that is logged on as himself or herself (and not a generic login) can access anything else on there.  Hardy a secure place to put anything.  The H Drive on the other hand, while offering the security of just the one student to be able to access their storage, it is only accessible while at school on a school district device.

The One Drive is accessible anywhere you can get to the Internet from your device, at home, at the public library, at a friend’s house, at a grandparent’s house, in another state or even another country.  Student will have this Terabyte of storage all the way through until they graduate, as long as the District has a subscription for the Office 365.  Usually after the third month from graduation, those graduates’ accounts will be cleaned off and passed back to the newest students in Kindergarten.  But until then, the account goes with the student from school to school, as long as he or she is in a subscribing district.

Briefly, here are a few of the student uses and features:

• ·         1,000 GB of storage
• ·         Drag and Drop storage capabilities
• ·         Ability to download the Office Suite on a home computer if needed
• ·         Use of Online Word
• ·         Use of Online Excel
• ·         Use of Online Power Point
• ·         Collaboration Space Yammer
• ·         One Note – note taking digital notebooks
• ·         Forms for creating/filling out surveys
• ·         Calendar
• ·         Event Planner
• ·         Use of Office 365 email
• ·         Creation of Student folders
• ·         Creation of Teacher folders and share work by dropping in the folder.  That’s it!
• ·         Ability to share folders and projects “live” with other students and teachers
• ·         Ability to have several people working on the same project online at the same time from different locations
• ·         Ability to share outside the walls of the classroom for a more global outreach

The Tech Coaches highly recommend that you invite them into your classroom to have them introduce Office 365 to your students.  Many teachers already have, and their students are reaching new heights in technology and the skill set they will need for the future.  What are you waiting for…book your Tech Coach today!

Collaboration Nation

There are so many web tools out there that have educational value, are easy to work with, and are fun and engaging for students.  Students love the interaction with the computer.  Whether it’s a laptop, a touch-pad or a phone device, more and more interaction on these devices is becoming the norm.

What makes the difference, however, is whether or not the devices are being used as a way to occupy students’ “free time” in the classroom or for the early finishers, or used as reward for various things.  I put the words “free time” in quotes on purpose…I don’t believe in teachers giving students “free time” where there is supposed to be instruction or practice of newly learned objectives.  I am OK with the use of devices for early finishers, as long as it’s not to play some type of Arcade Game.  Having students earn time to work on devices should go hand in hand with past, present or future learning, and in an organized manner.  I like to call them ACD’s…or Activity Choice Days…but, I digress.

Since so many districts across the country have gone to a one-to-one system, where every student has their own device, doing their own work, research and projects.  I think it is more important than ever to teach them how to work together.  Expanding the number of devices is great, but let’s not lose the collaboration skill that we worked on so diligently before all of these devices became a part of our daily school activities.

Fortunately, there are tools out there that that have plenty of ways to share and collaborate.  Without trying to name all of them, for fear of not mentioning a good one that folks out there use and endorse, I will share the one we have made use of in our district.  We have the Microsoft Office 365 package. There are so many Apps in the O365 suite that allow for collaboration.  Just recently, a teacher asked me to help her in the classroom with having students create a group project.  Working and planning with the teacher, we shared the tools, created the groups, decided on the basic parameters of the project, and created the rubric.

We hoped the small groups would work together and figure a way to collaborate thoroughly on the project without us telling them exactly how…since some of the work would have to be done at home, meaning working independently…or did it?  Because of the previous work we’d done with Office 365, one student in the first class of the day, asked out loud if they could create their project and share it with each other using O365.  We were thrilled and told them ‘Certainly.”  It caught on like wildfire.  Those that were very comfortable with how to make this happen, readily helped all of the other groups get on board to collaborate online as well.  Watching this “help” session was so fulfilling, seeing them excited to lend a hand to their fellow classmates.  Leaving the classroom and mingling in the halls, the news spread quickly, and all of the classes for the rest of the day wanted to follow suit.

So now these students are working online, working as a group at school, working independently at home, yet working together online on a “live” project.

Because of the way this teacher was open to letting the students work in groups, and be innovative thinkers, they became a “Collaboration Nation.”

Getting Ready for a Tech Fair

A school district’s Technology Fair brings about many emotions for teachers and students.  Anxiousness, excitement, anxiety, and restlessness.  Now understand, that these can be both positive and negative…depending on how you spin it.

We typically hold our Technology Fair at the end of the school year.  Keep in mind that there are so many things going on at the end of the school year, and this issue in itself can cause one to be stressed about participating in the Tech Fair.  There is State Standardized testing, MAP testing, End of Course testing, teacher evaluation final reviews, teacher–administrative conferences, awards programs, District Art Shows, Academic Programs, Junior Scholars, and concerts and athletic banquets…not to mention having to get grades in and notes to the permanent records.

With the newer approach to testing online, computers are imaged, updated and sequestered for much of the testing time, which can last from two to four weeks.  When a school doesn’t have enough computers for all to test in a shorter time frame, or the infrastructure to handle the extreme band width, it is just going to take a longer time. 

That being said, computers may be held in a secure place to insure they are in proper working order for the testing, and kept away from students for a time.  If this time happens to coincide with the request for computers from teachers and student…it becomes stressful; especially if lessons, activities or technology projects are planned.

Well, take heart, there is good news.  Being involved in this process for several years now, I began to tell teachers that their Tech Fair projects, and those of the students should be happening all year long.  When you integrate technology in the classroom from the beginning of the school year, students benefit.  They are more familiar with the keyboard and shortcuts, they become more skilled at using programs and web tools, they become problem solvers and intuitive learners, and their confidence builds. 

I know many teachers, who not only start integrating technology in the first week of a new school year, but they start within the first month or school, talking about the Technology Fair.  They use the rubrics from the Tech Fair as the rubric for their class projects.  They invite the Tech Coaches into their classrooms to work with them and their students early and often.  They save projects all year long, and then as the Tech Fair season gets closer, they bring them out and have students take a look at them again…just tweaking them, and reviewing them enough to be sure they meet all of the criteria of a particular category for the big event. 

For all of the reasons above, some teachers might be hard pressed to participate, or even find that they have to drop out of events.  It is understandable with all that is going on at the end of any given school year.  By the same token, the ones that start planning for their Tech Fair in August and September, that plan with and invite their Tech Coaches into the classrooms, and that use the Tech Fair rubrics in their classrooms all year long, will be the ones that are less stressed, and more excited when it comes time to submit projects for themselves or their students, and even enter multiple projects.  Think about planning with your Tech Coach to integrate technology projects into your lesson plans early and often.  Good luck to all you enter Technology Fairs across the country, and across the world.

Get Out of Their Way

It is critical that we build a foundation in all of our educational content areas.  In Math, we teach whole numbers, fractions, and add, subtract, divide and of course the multiplication tables.  In ELA, we teach our students sight words, compound words, sentence structure and on to basic writing.  It’s the same with Social Studies and Science, Physical Education, Career Courses and Music.  So why do we assume that students know all of the basics for using technology?  Some might say that the students now are so much more familiar with technology and use it all the time.  Partly true, but it doesn’t apply equally to all of our young people.

We should try to steer our efforts toward the technology basics, and there are some things we need to be sure to cover, especially Digital Citizenship.  Too many of our students already have multiple Social Media accounts, and in reality, many are not ready to use them appropriately.  Well, many adults don’t use them appropriately for that matter.

But as we guide our student population down the path toward computer basics and digital citizenship, let’s be careful to NOT overstep our bounds…and be too rigid in our assignments.  Yes, direct students to be mindful of others’ feelings on social media.  Yes, warn students of the dangers of putting too much personal information out there for those with mal intent might want to use.  Yes, reinforce the no-bullying policy.  Yes, remind students that they are creating a “digital footprint” as they travel the cyber world.  Yes, reinforce using good grammar, correct spelling and punctuation. Yes, give students as much opportunity as possible to practice with laptops, so that they are familiar with the keys and the functions of the laptops.  Teach them to write…teach them how to drag and drop files and folders…teach them how to input files…teach them how to save, transfer and share files. No, we don’t want to impede their creativity or innovation.

When I was young, my mom used to let me use the cookie cutter to stamp out cookies in the shapes of animals and stars, and people.  The cookie cutter allowed me to make the cookie in a designated pattern, and pretty much they all looked alike. I liked the consistency.  However, when it comes to students, I prefer to avoid the “cookie cutter” approach.  All of the students don’t look like, don’t learn alike, and don’t produce academically like the next student.  We talk a lot about the techniques with differentiated instruction, and I think we need to be reminded to remember the differences in our kid’s personalities and styles as well.

As professional educators, it is imperative that we lead by example.  Try new tools, try new strategies that integrate technology, use the programs that are available by your district or company.  When we are teaching and facilitating, it is super important that we lead, guide and assist students…BUT…as soon as they catch the vision for their projects…as soon as you see the spark in their eye, and realize that they understand their assignment…that we are smart enough to “get out of their way.”  Give them some parameters, give them some structure, and give them a time frame…because that’s what they’ll see in the real world…but then, “get out of their way.”  Let them create.  Let them invent.  Let them be innovative.  Sometimes the more reluctant students, when given the opportunity to use computers, and be hands on…they will take on a new persona.  Give it a try…”get out of their way” and watch them shine. 

Follow the Georgetown County School District Tech Coaches on Twitter:
Keith @KTech8
Jenny @ItsThatJenny
Marc  @FrechetTech
Doug  @FreshD85

Be Thankful

So often times in schools, educators tend to focus on what’s NOT working…what’s NOT good…what we do NOT have.  Much of the educational news spotlights issues or sensationalizes stories where someone or some program has faltered.  It is understandable that we focus on the “NOT” kind of things.  Appropriate study of data and trends for the things NOT working enables us to design and implement new or different strategies to make improvements or fix things.

But now let’s take a look at the other side of that fence…and look at what we DO have.  Educators in the schools have a job.  Maybe not one of the highest paying jobs, but we are gainfully employed.  Be thankful.  We have cars and places to live before we come to work.  Be thankful.  We live in a country where we can live, work and play with freedoms that many around the world don’t enjoy.  Be thankful.

We come to work at buildings that are generally well kept, heated and cooled.  We have access to the school cafeteria where meals are available for students and staff members. Be thankful.
We have access to technology in the schools with laptops, tablets and phones.  Our students have access to that technology in the form of devices and the Internet.  Many of them have access at home, but far too many still do not have that access at their homes.  For those that have access away from school…so be thankful.

We have FREE web tools with which to enhance our lessons, and engage our students. We can use these tools to have students blog, be notified or reminded about upcoming events, post to online bulletin boards, partner with parents, create pictorial presentations, assess themselves, remediate, create videos, brainstorm, innovate, think critically, communicate and collaborate outside the walls of the classroom and with other students and schools across the state, nation and the world. Be thankful.

If we have a question, we can pretty much get anything answered through the various search engines on the world-wide-web.  We can organize and record data to show student progress within the programs like PowerSchool and School Net…to make life easier for us.  We have email accounts where we can communicate to virtually anyone anywhere. Be thankful.

I once held up a blank piece of paper at a conference that had only one black dot on it, near the bottom right side of the page. I asked people in the audience “What do you see?”  They replied, “I see a dot on the bottom right side of the page.”  I then told them, “I see the dot as well, and know that I need to work on that to make it mesh with the rest of the page…and that the rest of the page is my classroom.  The dot represents the negatives, the students that misbehave, the things we do NOT have.  I will choose to focus on the things I do have…and be mindful of those that either need my help, or try to drag me down.”

In the old riddle where you see a glass with water up at the midpoint, the question comes up, “Is the glass half empty or half full?”  I say whichever you see, there’s always room for more.  Be thankful.