The Time is Now

A few weeks ago, I attended the 2017 CUE National Conference and I had the opportunity and privilege of taking eight teachers and two administrators with me.  It was an outstanding learning experience for all.  If you ever have the chance to attend a CUE National Conference - I highly recommend it.

I always come home with some fun and useful things I've learned, but this year I came home with much more than that - in fact, my whole team did.  It is an overwhelming sense of urgency.  The time is now.

I think we can all recognize that there are some significant shifts happening in education right now.  The way our students learn and relate to their world, the skills they will need to be successful in their future jobs, and the way teaching and learning need to change due to the presence of technology.  This list can go on and on.  We are irrefutably in the midst of a huge transformation in our education system.  At this point, we can agree technology isn't a fad - it isn't going anywhere.  Our students learn differently and have different needs because of the way our world has changed.  Don't we owe it to them to change the way we educate them to match the world we are educating them for?

We are at the point where we can no longer wait and see how things go.  We can't keep saying, "I'll try it next year, next unit, next time."  The time is now.  Right now.  We cannot continue to stand on the sidelines and watch others do the changing.  It is time to jump into the trenches as fellow teachers and figure this stuff out!  We are told our students need more collaboration - it's true - but so do we!  Let's hunker down together and try new things, share our successes and our failures, observe each other and learn from one another.  The time has come to take our toes out of the water and dive in.  The time has come to try new things and learn through all the victories and the mistakes.

"The best chance you have to change the future walks through your classroom doors every morning." - James Sanders 

Look at your students as they walk through the door.  They need us.  They need us to climb out of our comfort zones, set aside our fears - of failure, of technology, of going "off the lesson plan".  They need us today.  The time is now.

Just Do It

"That's so cool!  I'd like to try that."
"Yeah, that seemed neat.  I should check it out."
"I really need to learn to do that."
"I'll try it after report cards...after parent conferences...after this project is graded...maybe during summer...maybe once my year gets started..."

Sound familiar?  We've all said it.  I know I have.  To address this issue, I'm going to borrow some advice from our friends at Nike.  JUST DO IT!

When it comes to those things we view as extras in our teaching, they often get pushed aside for "later", but later never seems to come around.  The problem is that many of those extras that have to do with technology can no longer afford to be seen as extras.  They are necessary.  Innovation in the classroom is necessary.

My advice to you today is to just do it.  Pick something that you've been wanting to try or look into that is related to technology and take an hour, or more if you have it, and check it out.  Plan for how you can use it with your students next year.  Go for it.  Take the time.  Do it now.  You won't regret it.

Having just finished the CUE Rock Star conference, I have a few ideas for you on things you can check out in case you have misplaced your "I need to check into this later" list.

Student Response Tools
Want to increase engagement and get every student involved?  Hear every voice?  Check out these online student response systems.  They are easy and oh so much fun!

• Kahoot
• Socrative
• Go Formative
• Google Forms fits in this category too, but Google Forms is so much more.  Google Forms is a teacher's best friend.  My students used it almost daily.  If you are only going to look at one tool this summer - this is the one you should look at.  Here is a link to my Google Forms 101 blog post.  There are some links at the bottom of the post to give ideas on how to use Google Forms in the classroom.  I've got more Google Forms posts planned for you as the school year gets closer.  

iPad Apps for Teachers and Students

• Paper 53 - Amazing drawing app for making art as well as sketch notes.  This app is free.  Available only for iOS.
• Explain Everything - This is a whiteboard app which allows you to draw like you would on a whiteboard and make a video recording.  It allows you to import images, video, text, etc. and include them all in a video with your voice over.  Very handy to make instructional videos or for students to create movies and show evidence of learning.  This app is worth every penny of the $2.99!  Available for iOS and Android.
• Tellagami - This allows you or your students to take a photo, a stock picture, or a background you create, and make a little animated character to go in it.  You can record your voice and make your character "talk" and turn it into a video.  It's pretty neat!  This app is free, but does offer in app purchases. Available for iOS and Android. 

Other Cool Stuff

• Doctopus - This is an awesome free tool with a strange name.  To quote the Chrome Web Store - "Doctopus gives teachers the ability to mass-copy (from a starter template), share, monitor student progress, and manage grading and feedback for student projects in Google Drive."  If you don't use Google Classroom or Hapara to manage student work in Google Drive, then Doctopus is a pretty handy tool!  It is an add on that you put in Google Sheets.  It used to be a script you had to install for each individual sheet and it was pretty messy.   It is much nicer now that it is an add on and you only have to do it once.  Here is a little video about how it works.  The New Doctopus  I'm not generally a huge fan of video tutorials, but this is a good one and is only about 12 and a half minutes long.
• Videonot.es - This allows you to make notes to go with a video and synchronize the notes with the time in the video where they are applicable.  You can click on the notes and it takes you to that part of the video as well.  This seems really cool and it can connect with your Google Drive so you can store your videos there.  
• ThingLink - This is a fun one.  This website allows you to take a picture, and make it interactive.  You can place little "buttons" on your photo and make text pop up, a video can play, or it can even be a link to a website.  This has many possibilities.  You can create one on a certain topic for your students to explore, or you can have the students make one as part of a project of some sort.  
• Padlet - Padlet is a great collaboration space.  It gives you a sharable poster board so to speak.  You can share the link and others can then post things on it that are like little digital sticky notes.  They can share ideas as a brain storm, post links, photos, or videos to "turn in" an assignment of some sort.  There are many possibilities for this tool.

Ok.  That should be enough to at least get you started with something.  No excuses now.  Take the time to check out those things you've always thought of using, but have never taken the time to learn.  Just do it.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog today.  I hope you found something helpful.  See you again soon for more helpful tech tips! 

It's Not the Tech, it's the Teacher

I'm writing this today from the CUE Rock Star conference in La Jolla, CA.  If you have the chance to attend a CUE Rock Star event, I'd highly recommend it.  Limited attendance allows for great ratio between speaker and attendees.  This provides an amazing opportunity for learning and networking.  You can check the website here to see if there are any events coming up in your area.

My biggest thought today is a thought I've had during all the ed tech conferences I've attended lately.

It's not the tech you use, it's how you use it.

So if you feel like you can't possibly keep up with all the new apps and tools out there - that's ok.  You won't be a terrible teacher because you don't know all the cool new tricks.  Should you have a good foundation with the basics of what is out there?  Absolutely.  If your students have Google Apps, commit to learn all about Google Apps.  You can do amazing things just by utilizing the basics in meaningful ways.  Then you can work on learning more a little at a time.  Technology won't automatically make you a good teacher.  Don't lose sight of the instincts that make you good at what you do.  Just because we have all this amazing technology at our fingertips, it doesn't mean that we give up everything we know about good teaching, throw out all the textbooks, hand each kid a device, and sit back to watch the test scores rise.

It's true that there are many new devices, websites, and apps out there that allow teachers and students to do incredibly creative things.  How we structure our lessons and assignments should be changing in dramatic ways because of it.  If we allow the available technology to transform the way we think about what students can and should be doing for their assignments, learning can be impacted in amazing ways.  The hard thing is, this can easily lead to you feeling overwhelmed by all that is out there.  It can make you feel like you are doing everything all wrong when you see some of the advanced things others are doing.  Should some of those things be goals for you?  Yes.  Should you expect to do them tomorrow with confidence and ease?  Not necessarily.

I say start with the basics.  Whatever platform your students are using - Google, Microsoft, etc. - learn it, and learn it well.  Unless you have a good feel for what you can do with it, it won't begin to change the design of your lessons and assignments in truly meaningful ways.  Start with the basics, use those great teacher instincts about what will help your students connect with the content, and never be afraid to ask for help.

Technology alone is fun and interesting.  Technology in the hands of a great teacher becomes incredibly powerful.

Take a Risk

I returned from the annual CUE (Computer Using Educators) conference on Saturday afternoon.  It is now Wednesday evening, and my brain is still spinning.  I have so many great things I could tell you about!  From tips and tricks, to apps and web tools, I learned some really fun stuff.  As amazing as all those things are, it isn't what I want to focus on for this post.  Many of those cool tips, tricks, and web tools I will tell you about in later posts, but for today, I want to focus on my biggest takeaway.

The overarching idea, the thing that had attendees buzzing in the hallways is the shift that is beginning to occur in education.  Some are fully engaged and others are knee deep, but most teachers are still standing around the edges of the water, not even daring to dip a toe into the educational shift that is rising.  Something that we've been talking about for a while now, is that our kids are different.  The world they are growing up in is quite different from the world most teachers grew up in.  We are preparing students for jobs that don't even exist yet.  How is it that we plan to prepare these leaders of tomorrow with the education system of yesterday?  I am not saying that everything about that system is wrong, because I don't believe it is, however I do believe that the needs of our students today are very different from the needs we all had as students.

This brewing trend is seen as a shift away from feeding students large amounts of information and asking them to memorize it.  All the information they could ever need is available to them at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse.  We need to teach students to utilize this wealth of information in an appropriate way.  We need to teach them to tell good information from bad.  They need to learn to collate information and to apply it effectively.  They need to learn to collaborate and create, to be producers and not just consumers, to think critically and design purposefully.  Our students need us to engage them and to inspire them, to jump into the trenches and learn alongside them.  Are you ready?

The biggest thing I walked away with is the simple, yet not even close to easy, command of "Take a Risk".  It is easy to have conversations about all of this and think, "Yeah, this is great!  When I have some time I'll..." or "Next year I can...".  The time is now.  Take a risk.  Today, tomorrow, next week, or next month, just make sure it is sooner than later.  Start small.  Change one lesson, one unit, one subject.  Add something new.  Instead of requiring your students to write the same old 5 paragraph essay, let them pick the way they would like to show you evidence of their learning.  Instead of reading the Science or Social Studies text one day, ask students the big question of the lesson and let them research in groups to answer it.  Give them a time frame and make them present in some fashion what they learned.  Flip a lesson or even a chapter.  Start a genius hour or 20% project.  Maybe your risk for today is just Googling flipping the classroom, genius hour, and 20% project to figure out what they are.  Start somewhere, anywhere.  Start now.  Take a risk.

I took a risk and changed up a lesson on Monday.  It worked pretty well.  That doesn't always happen.  Don't be afraid to fail.  If we never model failure for our students, failure will devastate them instead of inspire them to do better the next time.  If you try something and it doesn't work, try something else.  Maybe even involve your students in conversations about what worked and what didn't and take their suggestions for how to make it better.  Taking a risk is just that, a risk.  You are educators, you know yourselves and your students, and you probably have a pretty good idea of how something will work.  I'm not suggesting you go off the deep end and try something extremely crazy that has little chance of success.  Do what you do best in the classroom, but take a little risk now and then.  Your students are worth it.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  Stop by again soon to hear about some of the neat tips, tricks, apps, and web tools I mentioned.  I can't wait to share them with you!

Drinking From a Firehose - iPad Summit Day 2

I was so worn out after "drinking from the firehose" for two days, that I didn't get this post written on day 2 of the conference.  Better late than never though, right?  If you missed my Drinking From a Firehose - iPad Summit Day 1 post, click here to read it.

Day 2 Takeaways

The big ideas remained the same as day 1, so I'll focus here on some of the little things that stuck out to me.  

• Be risk takers.  It is ok to try something new in the classroom that you think might be really wonderful for student learning, only to find out that it was a bust.  Kids didn't take to it like you thought, or maybe the technology didn't work the way you wanted it to.  It's ok!  We can't be great innovators and change-makers without making some mistakes along the way.  Involve the kids in that journey.  Let them know that you are going to try something out together.  Let them help you decide if the lesson or project is a keeper or not.  They LOVE to feel like they are taking part in the design of the classroom.
• Beth Holland is an instructor with EdTechTeacher and she is a really great speaker.  I went to a session with her called Reading, Writing, and Devices.  She talked about how some people are ready to throw out paper and move completely digital, while others are complaining about kids having so much screen time.  Paper is great!  It has served us well over the years.  It still does.  Some things are just better on paper.  Electronics are amazing and wonderful and can do really incredible things and kids can create some spectacular products.  Regardless of what you are doing and how, you need to find balance between the process and the product.  Both are important!  Ask yourself, is this activity/project/product appropriate?  Is it meaningful?  Is it empowering?
• You don't have to be a "techy" person to utilize technology well in your classroom.  The students are our biggest untapped resource.  They will be more than happy to help you figure out a technology.  Give them 5 minutes with it, and they very well may know more about it than you, even if you've been playing with it for 3 months.  Don't be afraid to let them help you figure stuff out.  Find something you want to try.  Become familiar enough with it to run your lesson or launch your project, and let them help you if you encounter issues along the way.

Apps

Plickers is really great for a low tech classroom.  If you are in a situation where your students don't have access to devices and you would like to use a student response system, this is for you!  This is a website and an app.  You sign up for free - the app is free too - and set up your activity.  You can also do impromptu questions.  You print "paper clickers" which are all different shapes and work sort of like QR codes.  The students hold them a certain way to designate A, B, C, D, True, False, Yes,  No type responses.  You simply scan the room with your iPhone, iPad, or Android device and it inputs the answers.  Each person has their own "paper clicker" so you can even know who answered what.  Very simple solution if your students don't have devices. 

Classkick is a free iPad app.  It allows you to create lessons and activities that include text, video, audio, photos, etc.  As the teacher you can see each child's progress individually and in real-time as they work on it.  Sounds very cool.  Makes me wish I had 1:1 iPads.

Web Tools

Kahoot is for game based learning.  It allows you to make quizzes, discussions, or surveys and your students can participate from any device that has internet access.  They can rack up points by answering quickly and correctly and compete against one another.  Your results are stored for you.  You can even save the results right to your Google Drive.  We did one in a session and I have to admit, it was pretty fun.  I'll be using this in class for sure.  

Socrative is one of my favorite tools.  It is also an App (all free), but my students are on Chromebooks so they just access it via the web.  I first learned about this from Jen Roberts.  She did a post about it on her blog, LitandTech.com.  You can read it here.  It is a way to give your students quizzes, short answer questions, exit tickets, tests, etc.  The students just browse to a webpage, or use the app, and type in a room code to access the activity you have created.  I love it especially for the voting feature that it has.  After students submit answers, you can hide the names of who submitted the answers and then ask the students to vote on their favorite.  Jen used this in her class as you can see in her blog post.  I used it in the same way, only scaled down for the 3rd graders and they LOVED it.  

Zaption is a website where you can turn online videos into interactive activities.  I haven't used this yet myself, but it definitely seems worth checking out.  You can insert questions into videos and require students to answer them as they watch.  Zaption is free.

EDpuzzle is similar to Zaption in that it allows you to add things to a video.  You can crop video, add voiceovers or audio notes, and add questions along the way.  Like Zaption, it is also free.

Club Academia is a website where students make tutorials for students.  Pretty neat. 

MathTrain.tv is another site where kids make instructional videos for other kids.

Well, there it is - Day 2 things to remember!  I hope you found something you can use in your classroom.  Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog!  

Drinking From a Firehose - iPad Summit Day 1

I spent the day at the EdTechTeacher iPad Summit in San Diego and will return for another full day tomorrow.  Driving home tonight in the quiet of my car, I could almost hear the neurons firing in my brain.  I was feeling that wonderfully inspiring, yet at the same time exhausting, post-conference buzz of information overload.  My husband works in technology and he often attends big tech conferences.  When I call him and ask how it is going, "I feel like I am drinking from a firehose" is among the responses I usually get.  This analogy is very fitting to how I feel today.  So much information is being fired at you all at once and you feel like you come home with only bits and pieces of the good stuff.  There is too much to get it all down and remember it all.  I find in that moment, when you are left drenched from the firehose of great tips, tools, and lesson ideas - immediate reflection is critical.

Today's post isn't a specific tip or trick.  I know it is straying a little bit from my pattern here on the TeachingTechNix blog, but I feel there is value in it.  My principal and school administrators are amazing and I am given the opportunity to attend conferences like this a few times each year.  I owe it to them, to my colleagues, and to myself to get the most out of these experiences as I can.  Part of that is bringing back all the goodness to share.  Since I started this blog for the colleagues at my school site, but for all of you as well, I figured a blog post as a reflection was fitting.  I want to share a few overarching themes I came away with as well as some neat tools and apps that I was introduced to today.  I left with my brain spinning and I hope that reading this post can help get your brain buzzing as well.


The Big Ideas

The big idea that seemed threaded throughout every session I went to today was about student creation.  Allowing students some choice and allowing them to show their understanding in a way that makes sense for who they are.  Shawn McCusker lead a session titled "Unleashing Creativity", but said he could have also called it "Unleashing Identity".  Giving students the option to showcase their learning in a way that allows their unique voice to shine through gives you a glimpse of the mind, and often heart, of a child that you never would have had otherwise.  Giving students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding in a meaningful way takes the learning to a whole new level.  That meaningful piece is important, too.  How can they take what they have learned and impact their school, their communities, their world in some way?  The wheels in my brain just start turning like crazy when I think about this.

Another thing that was discussed today was if you are sharing student work, which I think you should be, who is the audience?  Your own class?  Your school?  Parents?  The whole World Wide Web?  Be purposeful about who you share student work with.  Think carefully about sharing work and be sure it is careful and meaningful.  Shawn McCusker led a thought provoking session discussing this.

Something else I heard a lot about, was showcasing the end products that kids are creating, but also being sure to showcase the learning process itself.  There is so much that is lost if we only see the end product.  The learning happens in the midst of the process and value should be placed on the journey, not just the destination.  Kelly Scholten led a great discussion talking about process portfolios.

Makes complete sense that we would be talking student creations at an iPad Summit.  iPads are amazing tools for easily creating video, eBooks, audio, blogs, etc., no matter what the age of your students.  That saying..."There's an app for that"...well, it happens to be true!  There is an app for that, I can almost guarantee it!  I was a little worried about attending the conference because we don't have 1:1 iPads in our classrooms, in fact we only have one iPad per classroom and it is the one assigned to the teacher.  Kindergarten has 6 iPads per classroom, and the rest of us have Chromebooks.  I'm still glad I went.  I feel that the overarching idea is something I can take value from and my kids can use the devices I do have, along with my one iPad to create amazing things.


Apps

Speaking of apps, I was introduced to several cool ones today that I want to share with you.  Some of these apps I have heard of before and maybe even used, but many of them are new to me.  I can't guarantee they are the best apps out there, but someone who presented today uses them and loves them enough to recommend them, so I figure they are worth passing along.

Paper 53 -  Free - Sketching/Note Taking
This app I have known about for a long time.  I've been wanting to use it but I didn't want to pay for the individual art tools.  Now the app and the tools are free!  I used it today to take notes and I LOVED it!!  It is my new favorite note taking app so I figured I'd share it with you.  I'm NOT an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I tend to be a little bit of a doodler when I'm taking notes.  This gave me an outlet for that doodling urge with beautiful results.  Here is one of my notes pages from a session I had with Jodie Deinhammer.  She is phenomenal by the way.

Photo Editor by Aviary - Free (has in-App purchases)
I've never used this one, but it came highly recommended.

Explain Everything - $2.99 - An interactive whiteboard and screencasting tool (recording what is happening on your screen along with voiceover)
I haven't used it yet, but I have heard great things about this app before, and today someone said they have teachers tell them that if there was only one app they could have on their iPads in the classroom, it would be this one.

Draw and Tell - $1.99 - A creative tool for kids to draw and create and record their voices.
I have not used this App, but it was recommended because it allows kids to first make their drawings and then do the recording.  Some other apps require the kids to do this simultaneously, which can be tricky for younger kids.  I haven't used it, but it came highly recommended.

Book Creator - $4.99 (There is a free version) - Students can create their own iBooks using video, audio, text, photos, drawing, etc.
I played with the free version briefly today.  Seems pretty intuitive and easy for all ages.

Popplet - $4.99 - Allows you to capture and organize your ideas
Haven't used this one.  Seems handy for pre-writing and outlining.  Neat way for kids to take notes or showcase learning even.

Skitch - Free - Take a picture and add annotations
I've actually used this one and I like it a lot.  I use it to take pictures of student work and discuss it on the board, especially in math.  It is nice for students to be able to explain their thinking about something or use a picture with annotation to display their learning.


Web Tools

PowToon - Create animated videos and presentations
I haven't used this one, but I saw a presentation that was created with PowToon and I was impressed.  I am definitely going to play with this one.

BulbApp - This appeared to be a type of blog space for kids (or you) to publish your work for people to access.  I only saw it briefly, but it looked neat.

Thinglink - A website that allows you to take an image and make it interactive.  People can click in certain places and get explanations via text, audio, video, etc.  This seems really cool and I'll be checking it out for sure.

Padlet - On online bulletin board of sorts, but collaborative.  The examples that were given were students creating a padlet to display learning, or teachers having students all posting on a board to create discussion or even an exit ticket type activity.  I haven't used it yet.

Shoutkey - Shoutkey allows you to create a shortened URL.  If you need to know more about what a short URL is, read my post here.  Shoutkey does the same thing as goo.gl, but it makes a simple link using a word instead of an alphanumeric code that can sometimes be tricky to type in.


Well, I think that wraps up my reflection for day 1.  I'm looking forward to day 2 tomorrow!  I'll post another reflection tomorrow night.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog!  I hope you found something that got your brain buzzing and those neurons firing!