Blog Love or Neglect?

I was re-evaluating my performance as a Connected Educator today and decided I need to refocus some of my effort on keeping up with my own blog and reflecting on my practices as a digital leader and technology integrationist.

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Lately I have found myself sharing ideas via Voxer and Twitter much more than through this blog. I was prompted to compare my blog, Twitter, and Voxer by John Spencer's blog post Five Reasons The Conversations Have Moved From Twitter To Voxer.

I think the purpose of why I use each is very different. For me, Voxer is more of a tool for a conversational dialogue with a small group of educators from Minnesota, Iowa, and Canada where we share the educational endeavors that we're currently engaged with in our respective positions. Twitter is much more of a consumption-based tool for me as I connect with and learn from a broader group of colleagues, friends, educators, and like-minded individuals who represent a variety of careers and interests as well as geographic locations. Blogger is my content sharing tool of choice as well as a forum for reflective thought around improving my own practice as well as sharing resources with others.

As a Connected Educator, I don't think that one tool is better than the others as they are all different and allow me to connect with and reach different groups and audiences for different purposes.

So while I may have been sharing and connecting more via Twitter and Voxer lately, Blogger is still a critical tool for me as it allows me to tie together not only my thinking but resources that I would like to share with others.

TEDx Burnsville Video Released - Real World Ready

The long-awaited TEDx Burnsville videos have been released and I'm excited to share mine below.

Please watch why I believe we need to start recognizing that our students learn differently than most of their teachers did and that traditional classrooms must change in order to retain our students' interest and develop their academic skills.

The amount of screen time that our students devote to their interests and hobbies online could impact their academic learning if schools tapped into using more digital resources and online delivery formats that could extend the school day beyond the classroom walls and typical school day bells.

The amount of technology from previous generations still being used in our schools today seemed to hit home with the audience as a humorous walk down the path of instructional technology used during my K-12 educational years. If you missed an earlier blog post I wrote about some of the inspirations for my TEDx Talk, it's worth noting that the idea for sharing the timeline of educational technology was spurred by this 2011 Edudemic article by Jeff Dunn on the "Evolution of Classroom Technology" and has been a topic that I have poked fun at in some of my previous ISTE presentations over the years.

A popular flat icon graphic from my presentation was the depiction below created by my amazing colleague David Freeburg based on an Apple presentation showing the timeline of our current students' lives and the immersive availability of technology that has developed throughout their short lifetimes.

Image Credit: David Freeburg

I would be remiss if I also did not give credit to another of my talented colleagues, Lee Vang, whose images below not only demonstrate her eye for layout and skill with Photoshop, but also represent visuals for two of the primary initiatives in my school district that the department I am working in supports.

Image Credit: Lee Vang

I hope that watching my TEDx video inspires other educators to see the need for change in the classroom to better engage our students today.

Teach100 Blog

Today I received the Twitter notification that my blog is now a Teach100 Blog.

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I'm hoping that this will not only help me to build my network connections with other educators but that it will also help motivate me to build in time on a regular weekly basis to keep up with reflections and sharing information on my blog. My efforts to keep up a daily blog entry as part of #BlogJune were challenging and my goal of blogging once a week since then has also been a goal that has been difficult to meet on a regular basis.

I think that being a connected educator prompts us all to push ourselves to find time to share resources, ideas, and questions and to be more reflective ourselves, which results in self-improvement.

In honor of Connected Educator month, I'm renewing my goal to blog on a weekly basis every weekend. Let's see how I do in terms of keeping up!

TEDxBurnsvilleED Only One Week Away

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With only a little over a week to go until my TED Talk, I'm rehearsing constantly in preparation for my time on the stage at the Minnesota History Center.

I'm looking forward to hearing the other speakers and am humbled to have been chosen for such an honor. I'm also excited to share some of the same concepts that have been driving the work in my district to empower students and to ensure that we are providing the access to devices and other technology that they need in order to be well-prepared for life and studies after leaving my school district.

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In my opinion, it's imperative that we as educators are providing the access to devices and support needed for how to use them for educational purposes in order to ensure that all of our students are real world ready and can navigate through life after high school and be successful, no matter where that path may lead them.

iPad Training - Basic Introduction Level

I created this handout for an upcoming training on iPads for participants who have never used an iPad before or who have very little use of one. Due to bandwidth limitations, we also are not able to have participants download any apps to the iPads during the initial training. Given those parameters, you can see the outline of the training below that I came up with. This training will focus on the basic functions and settings of the iPad to try to familiarize users with those so that they know where to go later and how to make changes in the settings.

Additional trainings will be offered later on a set of core apps that has been identified. I spent a lot of time trying to think about how to ensure that the training was dynamic and engaging given that we would not be able to demonstrate any flashy cool apps.

Feedback welcomed.

iPad Basics Turnbull from cturnbull

Minnesota eLearning Summit Presentation - Easy Formative Assessment Options For Mobile Devices

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My first presentation at the Minnesota eLearning Summit is on Wednesday, July 30. The topic of the presentation is easy formative assessment options for mobile devices.

Participants in this session will experience quick online and app-based formative assessment and quizzing options on your iPad, Chromebook, or other mobile devices and learn how to engage your students and gauge their understanding of your lesson.

Session participants will learn about specific apps and online tools and how to repurpose other apps and online interactive tools to create collaborative learning opportunities that will allow you to gauge student learning on the spur of the moment.

Crowd Sourcing:
What apps and websites are you using for formative assessment in your classroom? Please take this quick survey

Results


Resources for this session:

Flipgrid - This is a fun app and web-based tool that allows you to pose questions for your students to respond to by recording a video response. 
Try it out - Click here to contribute to a Flipgrid
21 day free trial and then a fee
More information - http://flipgrid.com/info/
iOS app - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flipgrid./id756972930?mt=8
Video tutorial

Geddit - This website and app-based tool allows students to indicate their confidence level in terms of understanding content material as well as responding to quiz questions.
More information - http://letsgeddit.com
Resources - http://letsgeddit.com/public/articles/teacher-resources
Video tutorial

Google Forms - Free tool available from Google through the web or as an iOS app.
More Information - https://support.google.com/docs/answer/87809?hl=en
Video tutorial -

Kahoot - One of my colleagues jokingly refers to this student response system as being similar to bar trivia without the alcohol. Kahoot is website-based, but you can create a web clip icon on your iPad that links to the website and looks like an app icon.
More information - Sign up for a free account here - https://getkahoot.com
Link to website for students to join your quiz - https://kahoot.it/#/
Video tutorial - Creating A Kahoot  and Playing Kahoot
Quick Guide - https://getkahoot.com/tutorials/Kahoot_Tutorials.pdf

Plickers - Do you have just one iPad or Android device? This app/application lets you use your phone, iPad, Android device to scan paper cards that students hold up in one of four directions to indicate their multiple choice answer response.
More information - https://www.plickers.com
Plickers App for iOS
Video tutorial

Socrative - This tool is both web-based and an app. The teacher can create a quiz in advance and then gather and export student performance data.
More information - http://www.socrative.com
iOS Teacher app
iOS Student app
Video Tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/user/SocrativeVideos/videos
Creating a Quiz and Running a Quiz
User Guide - http://www.socrative.com/materials/SocrativeUserGuide.pdf

Voxer Walkie Talkie - This fun walkie talkie push and talk app can be used in many ways to gather quick and authentic performance data from students.
More information -http://voxer.com
iOS app - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voxer-walkie-talkie-ptt/id377304531?mt=8
Video tutorial and Overview

Minnesota eLearning Summit Presentations

I'm presenting at the Minnesota eLearning Summit coming up at the end of July.

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I will be doing two presentations. One will focus on easy ways to do formative assessment on iPads, Chromebooks, and other mobile devices with an assortment of fun and easy-to-use apps.

The second presentation will be about Bridging the Digital Divide and the efforts that have been underway this year by my department in my school district to accomplish more equitable access to devices, the implementation of personalized learning, and the role of student voice and choice in helping to engage students.

How Did We Remember Anything Before Facebook?

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Life has been hectic for me over this past week. Hectic might not even be an adequate enough word. Lots of memories of family gatherings, every day happenings, and precious moments bubbling to the surface during long travel to and from my father's funeral. I felt myself mentally straining to remember the names of some absent distant cousins and locations of vacation spots from long ago as I listened to random stories of his exploits great and small, unusual and commonplace, some familiar and others totally new to me.

Prior to Facebook, remembering or even knowing about all of the day-to-day events in a person's life, ranging from mundane occurrences to exciting events and vacations, depended upon either being present or sharing details afterwards during family or social gatherings or during the weekly or month phone call home. How many small details were forgotten by the time those calls were placed and how many details were remembered afterward?

Social networking tools like Facebook have created a fabric of memories that can be shared with family members, friends, and strangers alike, both near and far, and revisited and referenced afterward. How much richer will memories be for those with whom we choose to share the events of our lives enriched with photos and links to videos and websites compared to relying on the dendrites and synapses of our brains to record and retrieve the same information?