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Category Archives: documents

METC 2013 – Presentation links and resources

Posted on by Posted in 21st Century Education, cyberethics, documents, Education, Google Tools, Literacy, Making Connections, METC, presentations, Professional Development, projects, teaching, Technology, Tools, Video, web literacy Leave a comment

About a month ago the Midwest Education Technology Conference took place at the Convention Center in St. Charles, Missouri. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend this conference for the past few years and serve on their advisory board. The conference itself has made great strides over the years and I think it’s a really good conference. It’s not huge like other conferences I’ve attended but this year there were about 1800 educators who came to St. Charles to learn and share. This year I did two pre-conference workshops and 4 breakout session. Unfortunately, it took me this long to get a chance to post these here. I hope you find them useful.

Pre-Conference Workshops

 

 

This workshop was an advanced Google Docs session where we worked with some of the lesser known features of Google Docs and then moved into scripting and some of the other advanced functionality. This site is used for a variety of purposes but the content for this workshop can be found on the “METC 2013 Tab“.

 

 

This workshop centered around using YouTube in the classroom and was meant to take educators beyond simply watching videos online but using playlists to curate and create as well as a way to address literacy, privacy, and safety concerns for k-12 students.

Breakout sessions

Screencasting Your PD

My first breakout session centered around using screencasting software to deliver professional development to teachers. Through this session I spoke specifically about the TechSmith tools Camtasia and SnagIt. While I know that they are paid programs and that there are plenty of free alternatives, I also only had so much time and tried not to focus on the tools as much as the screencasting techniques that teachers should think about as they make their videos.

Today’s Students, Today’s Media

I did my second session with a colleague of mine, Kim Lindskog. This session was really about giving students opportunities to create videos in the classroom. We talked about how video projects don’t have to look the same anymore because there are so many tools available that can be used on mobile devices to tell stories. Despite internet issues, I was able to demonstrate Mozilla Popcorn Maker using a video of Ken Shelton talking about METC.

Augmented Reality in the Classroom

This breakout session was probably my favorite one to actually give because I find the topic fascinating. This presentation centered around how augmented reality is starting to be used in education and, with advances in technology, gives students and teachers the ability to create their own AR objects using tools like Aurasma and Layar. At the end of the session participants were able to try some examples using their own devices and we had a great discussion around how this might look in the future.

Speed Geeking – Digital Literacy

My final session was entitled Speed Geeking and is also one that I always enjoy. For the past three years Gina Hartman and I have organized this as about 5 different mini presentations given in small groups. It’s fast, frenzied and a lot of fun. This year we were joined by Greg Lawrence, Drew McAllister, and Cindy Lane as we each took on a topic around Digital Citizenship. All of our presentations can be found on the Speed Geeking wiki.

 

Hopefully some of these resources and presentations will be useful. If they are, I’d love to hear about them.

How-to Documents for Google Docs

Posted on by Posted in documents, Education, Google Tools, Technology Leave a comment

Over the last few years I’ve created a few documents around how to do some interesting things with Google Docs.  I don’t think I have ever actually posted them anywhere on my blog so here are the most recent versions of these documents. As time passes these processes may change but the ideas and techniques behind them are still valid for those who are interested in understanding formulas and functions in Google Spreadsheets. Going forward, I will archive these documents on the Documents page of this blog.

The first one is a process for how to set up a Google Form to email the information that has been put into the form to the email address included as a form field. It’s messy, but it works.

The second document demonstrates some of the functions and formulas that can be used in Google Spreadsheets with some interesting results.  It specifically targets Google Lookup and adding a gadget.

The last document shows how to create a self-grading quiz using formulas with a Google Form and corresponding Spreadsheet. The process can now be done with a script called Flubaroo but the process still works and is a good learning experience.

Tech Tools for Providing Feedback

Posted on by Posted in 21st Century Education, documents, Feedback, Professional Development, teaching Leave a comment

I, like many of you, became a teacher because of a teacher that I had when I was in school. During my senior year, my College Prep Writing instructor was that teacher. Part of it was his style, part of it was the size of my class, but most of it was what he got out of me. Before his class, I didn’t really like English. I enjoyed reading and I felt like I was an OK writer, but during that semester I learned more from him than I felt like I had in any other class I had taken. I know that’s not entirely true, but that’s what it felt like as a 17 year-old. I wrote and wrote and wrote for Mr. Graziano always trying to improve, not for the grade, but for his approval, my sense of accomplishment and for the sake of the writing. It was fun and madening all at the same time. Looking back at that time, he’s truly the reason I became an English major and ultimately got into education.

One of the things that he did masterfully was give me feedback on my writing. He didn’t make corrections for me, he pointed things out and allowed me to work through them. I wanted the grade, but that wasn’t my motivation. In his research Robert Marzano has identified feedback as “the most powerful single modification that enhances achievement”. In his book, Classroom Instruction that Works – Research based strategies for increasing student achievement, (Marzano, Pickering, Pollock, 2001), Marzano cites four generalizations to help us guide feedback.

Feedback should be:

  1. “Corrective” in nature.
  2. Timely
  3. Specific to criterion
  4. Students can effectively provide some of their own feedback

There are lots of ways to provide this feedback and technology and the web can greatly enhance the ease of providing and access to this feedback. The document below is a list of different tech tools that will allow for a variety of feedback types.

If you’re interested in trying any of these with your students, email me and we’ll set up a time to work on how to integrate this into your lesson.

Cross posted to Tech4Practice.