New Blog!

This year I transitioned from a site technology coach to a district math/technology integration coach. I started a new blog that focuses on math & technology integration in our district. I will no longer be posting on this blog, so please follow me at:

http://cusdmathtech.blogspot.com/

Hope to see you there!

Shakeel Uses Technology Stations

Is the joy and sheer excitement of testing combined with the end-of-the year itch making your students a little restless? Kinza Shakeel has found an excellent way to harness her students' energy and effectively integrate technology into instruction! In her third trimester of pregnancy (translation: with no caffeine to fuel here), Shakeel continues to be a super-star teacher by planning fun and engaging instruction for her students.

Integration Idea
For any lesson that requires either group or independent practice, stations can be used. Today she used stations to practice the math skills that students were introduced to in an Engage New York lesson on expanding multiplication expressions. Click here to view the Google Doc with directions for each station.

 

"My students love stations, especially the ones that use technology. The stations keep them focused by providing variety in their activities, but also give them motivation to stay on task and complete their work with timed rotations. Technology adds a bonus engagement piece that paper/pencil activities can sometimes lack." -Kinza

How to...

• Create a directions sheet in Google Docs. You can either print this sheet to physically have at stations, have it displayed on a device at the station, or have students access it in Google Classroom if they will be bringing their own device to the station.
• Research games, lessons, online practice, and videos that support the skill you are practicing. Not sure where to start? Click here to learn! Okay, sorry, I couldn't resist. But yes, Google is indeed a good starting point.
• Test the websites on the devices you intend to use them on! For example, if students have access to iPads, test them on iPads (iPads are especially finicky because if Flash issues). It is also a good idea to test the website while connected to the District network to ensure that there aren't blocks on the site.
• You've selected a quality site that supports your instruction, you've tested it out, and now you are ready for your students to access it! In order to avoid half of the rotation being spent on typing in a complicated URL, quickly drop the URL into a URL shortener. My personal favorite is Bit.ly. When you sign up for a free account, you can customize URLs so they are easy for students to type in.
• Want more tech station ideas that don't involve websites? 
• Create a station where students annotate PDFs (mark up and article with highlights, text or images, complete a digital worksheet) using the Notability app on an iPad, DocHub on a Chromebook, or Preview on a Mac.
• Run a station where students create a screencast explaining a topic or problem associated with the learning objective.
• Ask me- I've got many more! :)

Please let me know if you would like to try incorporating technology into stations and I am happy to help out! 

Weekend Learning

Happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you cozy in your PJs, sipping coffee, enjoying the company of loved ones while exploring new tech tools! I mean, that's what we all do on our weekends, right?! This weekend Tech Heather and I met with some of our fellow nerds from all over the Bay Area at EdCampSJ, a fabulous event where tech interested educators come together to share, learn, and talk tech. We picked up some fun tools that I wanted to pass along to our staff to explore.

EdCamp SJ Resources

• Voxer: Download the Voxer app on your cell phone and use it to send photos, videos, messages, and most importantly voice memos. Join a Voxer Ed Tech group to listen to what your techie colleagues are talking about. Similar to Podcasts, but more interactive. Send me a Voxer message (lblass548) and let's start a CMS Ed Tech Voxer group.

• Flippity: Need a fun and engaging SBAC review idea? Use Flippity to turn spreadsheets into Flashcards. Use Flippity Quiz Show to turn a Google Sheet into a Jeapardy style quiz show!

• Peardeck: The Nearpod of Google Apps, Peardeck allow you to turn your Google Slides into an interactive presentation for your students. Deliver your lesson on their devices, collect data instantly, and boost student interest and engagement! 

• Diigo: Collect information online from any device and store it in a central location. Add digital highlights and sticky notes. Share information with others. Similar to Evernote tool, but more robust annotating features that you and your students can use.

• TimelineJS: Create visually rich, interactive timelines using Google Sheets.

• Kaizena: Give your students valuable and meaningful voice feedback from within a Google Doc!

Webinar Resources
Our fellow techie Gloria was hoping to join at EdCamp, but instead found herself stuck at home with a cold watching tech webinars. Gloria passed along the tools she discovered this weekend, which are featured below.

• Google Earth Pro (free subscription): Click here for a Livebinder with more information on this tool to take virtual field trips! Ask Gloria about using layers.

• Google Cultural Institute: Explored mapped museums and art collections from all over the world online!

Tech challenge!!!
Recently Jacobi discovered dubsmash.com, a tool that allows you to put your face to any audio. We love this tool, but are at a loss for how it could be used to support instruction. Any ideas?! Perhaps this one is too much of a stretch? Watch this video to witness Jacobi's Dubsmash skills:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! As always, please let me know how I can support you in technology integration.

Petra Uses Common Sense Media

Happy Techie Tuesday! As we are integrating new technology tools into instruction, a big question that arises is, "Are my students ready for this?" Being "ready" for a technology integrated lesson can mean any number of things. Do students have the tech skills necessary to complete the assignment successfully? Are they prepared for the responsibility that comes with demonstrating proper digital citizenship and interacting in a digital space? Do they know how to give credit where credit is due?

This year's Resourceful Educator With Minimal Access to Technology award goes to our dear Petra Morales (alright fine, I made up the award, but I truly believe she deserves it!). Making due with access to just a few iPads, Petra has been persistent in negotiating technology use with her colleagues and consistently advocating for her students to have more access to technology. She regularly attends professional development to gather any morsels of technology she can for her classroom, and is dedicated to providing her students with 21st Century skills.

Integration Idea
Petra was recently preparing her students for an assignment where they were tasked with creating iMovies as a culminating project. She wanted her students to be aware that as creators they have certain rights, but that the creators of other work they choose to access and use online have rights as well, especially when copyright is involved. Rather than recreating the wheel, Petra turned to Common Sense Media to find a lesson on Fair Use. She located the lesson Rework, Reuse, Remix, which walks students through the concept of fair use, or using copyrighted work without permission. The lesson includes all resources needed to teach the concept, including videos, handouts, and discussion prompts.

How to...
The Common Sense Media Scope and Sequence has detailed lessons that cover all of the topics below:

It is free to sign up and download as many lessons as you would like. You can access the lessons from two places:

1. The CUSD Digital Literacy Skills site- Last summer, a group of CUSD teachers went through all of the Common Sense Media lessons and pulled the ones that provide the strongest support to the digital literacy skills we believe our students need the most. 
2. The Common Sense Media Scope and Sequence- this page hosts all of their lessons broken down by topic and grade-level span.

Next Level Ideas
Common Sense isn't just for digital citizenship anymore! Use Common Sense Graphite to get ideas on technology app and tool integration! In the last Instructional Services department newsletter, teachers were encouraged to consider applying to become a Graphite Certified Educator (click here to learn more), where they can share integration ideas and become part of a larger community of technology using educators. I just sent in my application today... who's with me?!

As always, please let me know how I can continue to support you in effective technology integration!

Gloria McGriff Uses Funny Movie Maker

Happy Friday! I hope your last day before break is full of happiness and middle school humor. Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with my fellow techie, Gloria McGriff. Gloria is always looking for new ways to effectively integrate technology into instruction, and she regularly attends PDs and webinars where she snags new resources. One of Gloria's new favorite tech tools is Funny Movie Maker, a fantastic app that can bring much needed humor into instruction and presentations.

Integration Idea
Funny Movie Maker is a free app that allows you to put video of your own speaking lips as an overlay to any picture. It can be used anytime you want to promote increased engagement and a bit of humor. Gloria often uses it to give her students messages or directions, knowing they will focus more on directions when they are engaged. She used the funny movie below to remind her students about grade checks.

Imagine the possibilities. If students are doing a report on a famous historical figure, they could import a picture of that person and tell their history as a first person narrative. In math, students could "become the variable" and explain how the know what their value is. In science students could explain different phenomena by talking within an image or diagram. There are infinite opportunities to use this app within instruction. Gloria shared that she finds the app especially helpful for students that are timid to present and share. Theses students are able to find their voice and express themselves through using the app.

How to...
Using this app is as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1. Take your own picture, use one of theirs, or have a photo saved to your camera roll.
2. Use the scissor tool to cut out the mouth. 
3. Line up the space with your mouth and record!

Next level ideas
One of the best things about this app is that you can save it directly to your camera roll. Once a video is on your camera roll, there are many sharing opportunities.

• Insert the video into a Keynote presentation.
• Insert the video into an iMovie that is covering a larger theme. 
• Upload the video to Google Drive and generate a link. Create a QR code where others can access and view the movie!

Fostering Creativity with Voki, Piktochart, and Thinglink

Happy Wednesday! I hope your day is as peaceful and lovely as the Apple TV National Geographic screensaver. Yesterday I caught Terri for a quick tech chat and we were brainstorming "next level" ideas for students who had completed their Weebly websites and wanted to take their creativity/web-design skills to the next level (see previous post on student web design). Many applications now allow students to easily create graphic and animated elements that can be embedded directly onto a website. A few of our current favorites are Voki, Piktochart, and Thinglink.

Integration Idea
The three tools we are introducing today are great for challenge options to foster creativity, but they all serve very different purposes.

Voki
This tool allows your students to create speaking avatars. The avatars and backgrounds can be customized, and students can record their own voice or type and choose from a voice bank with various accents. View Terri's classroom site to see how she uses Voki for an introduction on her website. The Voki below was created to support a final student project.



Piktochart
Piktochart is an easy and free infographic creator. Students can drag and drop elements into pre-made templates for banners or infographics. This is a great way to visually show information, represent data, or make a persuasive argument.

Thinglink
Thinglink allows you to take a still image and place tags on it that link out to other websites, which could contain images, video, or anything else you can think of putting on a website! For student projects, try linking to items that they have uploaded to their Google Drive. The example below shows a basic Thinglink designed to support a student project.



How to...
Please let me know if I can support you in getting started with any of the tools described above. Once you have created your Voki, Piktochart, or Thinglink, you can embed it into a Weebly site by following the directions below (no coding experience needed!):

• Press the export arrow or publish button (depending on which application you are working in) to share the element you created.
• Select the embed code and copy it (keyboard shortcut for this is holding the  "Command ⌘" and "C" buttons at the same time). 

• In edit mode on your Weebly site, drag over the embed code element. 

                                                             

• Select "Edit Custom HTML" and paste the code in by using the keyboard shortcut "Command⌘" and "V".

• Publish your website, and look at the published view (not editing view). Your element should appear directly on the page!

Happy embedding! As always, let me know how I can support you in your tech integration endeavors.

PE Tech Integration Ideas with Steve Babcock

Hope this sunny Monday finds you happy and healthy! First, a shout out to the current CMS Fitbit champions, Kara and Terri (each busting 100,000 steps last week!). Thanks for keeping us all motivated to hit the pavement and get those extra steps. While we still don't have the budget to buy every student at CMS a Fitbit, today's blog post examines other ways that technology can be integrated into PE instruction.

Our fitness guru Steve Babcock completed his master's thesis on providing high-quality physical education in low income settings. When it comes to technology integration, Babcock realized that not all students will have the same access to technology, and designed his lessons accordingly. He shared with me details on how he uses simple video for performance assessment with sports skills.

Integration Idea
Babcock shared a lesson that he created for his class which incorporates skills instruction, technology, and formative assessment. Ready for the best part? Math is included in the performance tasks, which makes this lesson extra STEAMy!

If your class doesn't have access to devices that will travel well to the outdoors (i.e. iPods or iPads with very sturdy cases), then there is no harm in allowing students to use their own personal devices for this lesson.

How to...

• Create station cards for the stations that the students will travel to using the samples in the images below (each station includes a hint the students view first which directs them to a performance task). 
• Have students work in pairs or teams to video each other during each performance task.
• At the end of the tasks, students will report to you to show you the video from the tasks they completed. 
• Reteach skills and have students revisit the stations (taking new video for assessment) as needed. 
• Have students respond to (or blog about!) the final hint.

Ready for the next level with tech?

• Have students upload their videos to Google Drive to share with you (or submit through Google Classroom by sharing the link to their video).
• Share exemplary demonstration of skills with students by projecting on Apple TV. 
• Start a discussion in Google Classroom on what they learned from watching exemplary videos. 
• Have students use fitness apps such as myfitnesspal to analyze their nutritional intake. 
• Use step counting apps such as runtastic to track distance and steps.
• Allow students to maintain fitness blogs on Google Sites, Kidblog, or Weebly where they can track their progress with PE skills, distance accomplishments, and nutritional analysis. 

Do you have other great ideas for integrating technology into PE? Please share them in the comments below! *Contest alert* A special techie prize goes to the first teacher to try a technology integrated PE lesson and share their experience!

Lesson Materials: