Happy holidays, you guys! Here are a few links before we all head over the river and through the woods. Be safe, have fun (in that order, please), and we'll see you in 2014!
I provide a lot of professional development to others. I also attend a lot of professional development. I enjoy learning and love when I can help facilitate the learning of others. Recently, someone said something to me that made me really think about the methods of professional development that I typically deliver.
I've noticed that when attending tech type PD, STI PD generally rates skill sets for beginners, intermediates, or advanced. I am going to begin to host my PD sessions the same way. I do not want teachers to feel like I am assuming that they don't know certain things, but I want those that are struggling to feel like they can safely ask questions and have time to reflect. I also want our rock stars to be pushed to another level of excellence.
By now you are probably asking yourself as to why the heck I am saying all this. I do have a point and it IS tied to tech, I swear.
Recently I attended the ALEX Lesson Plan Summit sponsored by the Alabama State Department of Education. During that session, teachers from across the state were asked to submit lesson plans. Each lesson went through a very rigorous process of submission. The lessons we submitted had to be tied to standards, have clear outcomes, and include a technology component. You may find those lessons here. You may search by content area, then find your standard, and then find lessons that may help you to teach those standards.
While some of you are experts and may not need any additional lessons, some of you may be like me and like to glean ideas off others. If you are nervous about integrating technology into your lessons, just take a peek at these for lessons that infuse technology in a very easy way.
Shannon Bogert is a secondary curriculum specialist with the Tuscaloosa City Schools. Email her at the address mentioned above or connect with her on Twitter (@shannonbogert1).
Through our Submit a Question page, Northridge High School teacher Susan Newell recently asked the following:
What is the best and easiest app or tool students can use to create short video to enhance a research project - i.e. Is Animoto the best? Can a video from Animoto be embedded in a Prezi?
This weekend's links offer resources to help you and your students choose the right tool for video presentations.
The short answer to the last of Ms. Newell's questions is no, an Animoto video cannot be directly embedded into a Prezi. However, Animoto videos can be shared in a variety of ways. Users can post their videos to YouTube (and then embed them in a Prezi) or share them via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
The questions regarding what tools are the best require slightly more complex answers. When selecting a tool for a job, there are a number of criteria to consider:
Purpose: What type of video or presentation do you want your students to create? A how-to? An animation or stop-motion? A skit or clip of student action? Some tools are better suited for certain tasks than others, so it's important to keep your overall purpose in mind to select the right one for the job.
Ease of Use: Unless you're teaching a video production class, the focus of your video project will be on the content and your students' ability to present it effectively, not on the process of video editing itself. As a result, you're not likely to want to devote much class time to teaching the tool. Intuitive, easy-to-use resources are the way to go.
Length: How much "footage" is required for your students to accomplish their objective? Unless you're willing to pay, some tools will limit the length of the videos you're able to create.
Cost: Do you need to stick with free options, or are you or your students able to spend a little on apps? Many tools are completely free, some have free versions with limited features, others require a purchase.
Embed/Share Options: One of the greatest benefits of offering students opportunities to create digital products is the ability to share those products with an audience outside the walls of your classroom. Where do you want your students' work to go? Most online tools have sharing features, so it's important to do a little investigating as you plan your projects to make sure the tools you choose allow you access to the embedding and sharing options you need.
Below you'll find guidance on some commonly used video creation and presentation tools. This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but it might provide a place to start when you're ready to create video presentations with your students.
Animoto
For ease of use, it can be tough to beat Animoto. A gallery of themes and a library of curated music tracks offer a slick final product, and adding in photos, videos, and text is quite simple. Student feedback, however, suggests that the free version of this tool, which keeps final videos at a brief 30 seconds, can be extremely limiting for some projects. Additionally, the character limit on each "slide" (40 for titles, 50 for subtitles) may not allow students the space they need for sharing a research project. Students recommend this tool for quick, teaser-style projects like book trailers. Here's an example:
Vine & Instagram
Because most of our classes don't have access to stand-alone cameras, it's likely that students will be filming their videos on phones or tablets. If what's needed is a quick demonstration (a step in a science lab, for example), a Vine or Instagram video might be the way to go, particularly since students may already be familiar with these free apps and have accounts. Here's a side-by-side comparison from Tech Crunch that may help you decide which best meets your students' needs. Of particular note for classroom use are video length (Instagram = 15 seconds; Vine = 6 seconds), sharing options (Vine = Facebook and Twitter only; Instagram = a few more options including email), and embedding (Instagram = no; Vine = yes). Here's a Vine created as part of a 6-word memoir activity:
iMovie (for Mac or iOS)
When I surveyed the RQMS Student Tech Leaders about their preferred video creation tools, the landslide winner was iMovie. Users can play with numerous templates for making video trailers or their own movies, which can then be shared via email and other means or published to sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook, and the length limitations that must be considered with other tools are non-issues here. Two things to keep in mind: the app is not free ($4.99 in the app store), and students recommend using the iPad version rather than iPhone, as the extra screen space makes editing easier.
Screencast-o-matic
At some point, you or your students may want to create screencasts (videos of activity happening on your computer screen - a how-to video, for example). Screencast-o-matic is one of the favorite tools for this job. It offers a free version with up to fifteen minutes of recording time and publishing options that include YouTube HD and a variety of formats. One of the best features of this tool, in comparison to other screencasting tools, is that there is no installation required. A single click can get you and your students started. Check out the how-to by Bill Selak below:
WeVideo
Since TCS students now have Google accounts through our system's Google Apps for Education domain, WeVideo can be a great option for video creation. This app, which can be added via the Chrome web store, connects to Google Drive, and offers a variety of themes (including both graphics and music) to get you started. While the drag-and-drop process makes editing fairly easy for beginners,there are some significant limitations for the free version. First, you can only export a total of 15 minutes of video for sharing (links for posting on Twitter and Facebook). Downloads of your video are not an option without upgrading to a paid account, nor is collaboration on video projects (which is a bummer since that's one of the biggest benefits of many Google tools).
Again, because of the ubiquitous nature of Google tools in our daily lives, Google Hangouts on Air might be a great solution for your video needs. This tool allows users to broadcast life on Google+ and YouTube, and these broadcasts automatically post to your YouTube channel so that they can be viewed at any time and shared or embedded elsewhere. Hangouts on Air can be recorded using your computer's built-in webcam, can include multiple participants, and require very little setup. Keep in mind, though, that our system's Google Apps for Education currently has Google+ disabled. Since Hangouts are tied in to Google+, these videos must be made using non-TCS Google accounts. Rock Quarry Middle School currently streams video announcements daily, in addition to broadcasting them over the intercom. Check out an example below:
Lapse It
Want to create time-lapse videos of events going on in your classroom (building a project, staging a set for a play, setting up for a school celebration, etc)? Consider Lapse It, available for Android and iOS. The app is free and allows for sharing via social media, YouTube, and more. Visit this post at Leyden Techies for some additional usage ideas and an example.
What am I forgetting? What tools work best with your students? Share your ideas in the comments section below.
Many thanks to the RQMS Student Tech Leaders for offering the student perspective on a few of these video tools!
Want to submit your own question to the TCS Tech blog? Click here! Thank you to Susan Newell for being the first to submit a question.
Laren Hammonds is an 8th grade English teacher at Rock Quarry Middle School. She's @_clayr_ on Twitter and blogs about her classroom experiences at Game to Learn.
We as technicians are here to support you, the teachers, in your efforts to provide the best possible educational experience for the children in your classes. We are here to help you use the technology that you have available, helping you find new technology, or recommend technology for you when you ask.
We have the same goal that you do – educating children. We are limited in number, so sometimes we aren’t able to get to you or your problem as quickly as you would like us to. We are eight people (7 technicians and 1 Supervisor) taking care of 24 school sites, 800 or so teachers and administrators and 10,000 students. This works out to more than 8000 devices on our network that are in use on any given day – from desktop computers, to laptops, tablets, Chromebooks, smart phones, etc. We also support the entire infrastructure that makes all of this work – network switches and routers, wiring, the new telephone system, internet access, and whole lot more behind the scene that you may not even be aware of.
So, while it may not seem like we doing much for you at times, look around. Look at your classrooms and offices and see how large a part of your daily activities involve technology. We would like to do more for you and we will as we can. Remember, when you stop a technician in the hall because something isn’t working and he asks if you have put in a work order, he isn’t trying to put you off. We have to track our work just as you have to track what you are teaching your students. Submitting a work order gets your problem into the system and ensures that it won’t be forgotten. Please, work with us and we will be able to work with you better.
Sorry, I've been pressed for time this week. My next post should be much more interesting.
A lot of people are afraid of computers. They don’t want to use them, or interact with them, or even be in the same room with them. They’ll cross the street if one approaches them on the sidewalk. They may even be uneasy around technology in general. Some of people with that fear of the digital world can probably remember a time when the flashing 12:00 on the VCR taunted them, like a phantasmal beacon in the night daring them to press buttons.
It knows things!
In talking with some people that have admitted to being wary of computers, I’ve found the answer to the question “What are you afraid of?” has most often been “That I’ll break something.”
“I’ll mess something up.”
“I’ll click the wrong thing and it won’t go.”
Well… yeah. You’re probably going to do that. Chances are, if you get in there and play with the software on a computer, at some point you’re more than likely going to break it. Suddenly it won’t boot. Windows won’t load. Office is gone. Your default browser has been set to (gasp!) Internet Explorer. There’s a litany of things that could and probably will go wrong.
So?
How else are you going to figure out how to do stuff? Personally, I’m a kinetic learner. At a very young age I learned how our VCR worked… by completely dismantling it. I got in a little trouble, but thankfully it was hard for my parents to get mad at my curiosity. Along those same lines, if you play around with your computer and you do manage to break something, what’s the worst thing that could happen? The entire tech department will not -- contrary to popular opinion -- burst into your classroom astride our fiery warhorses, donning tattered ebon robes and demanding your very soul.
It would look like this if we did, though. That would be cool.
The first thing we'll do is fix it, which automatically puts you ahead of my parents because they had to buy a new VCR. There's nothing you can do that we can't fix. I've said that time and time again, and it's still as true as it's ever been. The worst thing that can happen is that we'll have to re-image your computer. Since you save all your documents to your h: drive (RIGHT?) then you've not really lost anything at all, have you? Once we figure out what happened, we can talk about why it happened and hopefully help you get whatever result you were going for. Remember... we're here to help you teach those kids. Don't be afraid to ask for our help in getting that done, and don't be afraid to strike out on your own to see what you can do. It'll all be okay, I promise.
For me, as a former English Language Arts teacher, I did not have any trouble imagining the power of the Chromebooks for writing and editing in a collaborative classroom environment. But when I heard that the devices would be used in the math classrooms, I had no idea where to even start.
Our 8th grade math teacher here at the Magnet is excited to have the Chromebooks in her classroom but needed some help in finding apps, extensions, activities and the like that would enhance her sound instructional practices. Lucky for me, there is this thing called YouTube which houses Google Hangout recordings, made by tech-savvy educators from around the globe, who talk about and show their viewers all of the cool things they are doing with the Chromebooks.
Take, for instance, the vid I found below. Yes, it is 48 minutes long, but this one video contains a volume of helpful information for the middle school math teacher who has just been handed 30 Chromebooks. Do not bother with the first 3 minutes of the recording -- there are long introductions, technical difficulties, and sounds of babies or small children in the background audio at times -- or with the long stretch in the middle (see item 6). Skip straight to about 3:00 to start. Some highlights, in order of appearance:
1. (3:00-10:20) Google Draw for:
* math projects, posters, starter activities, collaborative assignments, student accountability using revision history tool, templates, graph paper
2. (10:21-11:20) Movenote (Movenote.com), Google app:
* These are "presentations with emotion"; recorded at students' desktops; saved and shared via email; examples and tutorials for Chromebook use of this app on movenote.com
3. (12:03) Daum equation editor, an extension available on Chrome web store
4. (15:00) Interesting discussion on problems and solutions of implementation of Chromebooks in math classroom
5. (17:54) Ideas for assessments of math concepts, such as triangle congruences. This is very cool. The author of fishing4tech.com discusses and shows his students' proofs of understanding on this website. Link: www.fishing4tech.com/triangle-congruences.html
6. (23:00-37:20) The participants discuss at length the problems and solutions of giving Chromebooks to teachers and students without training.
7. (37:20) Brief mention of Scoot and Doodle , a collaborative drawing tool to use with Google Hangout.
8. (40:20 - 43:40) Socrative for exit tickets. Participant refers to Mathy Cathy, a teacher with a blog and great ideas for math teachers. Follow her on Twitter: @mathycathy
9. (43:40) The Chrome extension, Lucid Chart, a tool to create the ubiquitous thinking maps and flowcharts we know and love.
Ideas for Chromebooks in the Middle School Math Classroom
Lavanda Wagenheim is the IB Coordinator for the Tuscaloosa Magnet School - Middle. Connect with her on Twitter, where her handle is @ELavanda.
Many educators, administrator, and other education stakeholders are aware of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and/or their Alabama incarnation, College and Career Ready Standards (CCRS). These standards bring with them many issues to be addressed not the least of which is how to assess the standards. Many bright people immediately volunteer, "Technology can help us assess the standards" and rightly so.
Unfortunately, for many other people, assessment equals standardized testing. In this post I offer an inside view into part of the quandary school districts face regarding implementing the CCRS.
As an aside, please let the record reflect:
high, challenging standards are good and
standardized tests are useful measures for assessing student performance.
Quality assessment consists of multiple measures to insure students have mastered standards. Various evidence artifacts should be gathered to prove students meet expectations. Students should take increasing ownership over the assessment process as they get older to show what they know, and just as importantly what they can do.
In order to assess the CCRS as a state, Alabama has partnered with ACT and Pearson to develop state-wide tests. The aim is to eventually deliver all the tests online. Providing these tests will take significant planning and resources.
At present, the system requirements for the existing tests from ACT require districts to maintain full-client desktop or laptop computers. iOS, Android, and Chrome OS devices cannot be used. Schools will need enough computers to test all students at one grade level on the same day. This feat can be accomplished but not without good planning. The plan must account for inevitable technical difficulties like catastrophic connectivity loss (e.g. Some guy on a backhoe digs up and re-buries your fiber optic cable). None of my thoughts above consider how test security must change in the individual rooms where testing takes place. That is a topic for a different blog.
Technology can help us assess. Student created electronic portfolios, digital products shared with community members, and foreign language dialogues with native speakers via video conference, are just a few ways technology can provide timely and durable feedback to students, teachers, parents, and others.
As school leaders decide how to access student learning, we must make sure we are having the right conversation. There are only so many resources to go around. If we again put too much emphasis on standardized testing, even if it appears on a computer, we will miss the power technology offers.
My thoughts are echoed from Sir Ken Robinson's TED Talk in 2006 about the need to change our thinking about education. If you have never heard it, here is my favorite version from RSA Animate:
Chris Jenks is the instructional technology coordinator for the Tuscaloosa City Schools. Follow him on Twitter, where he goes by @chrisjenks.
