Show what you know: iPad apps for expression

I love giving students the opportunity to share what they know. I believe that students have something to say and share. When given the opportunity to share their knowledge, they will do so and can be very creative. Too many times teachers restrict them with certain requirements for the presentation. I believe that this limits the students too much. Earlier this month Rebeca Lundberg, a fellow DLC, and myself were asked to present at a district librarians' conference. The librarians began...

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The best student blog privacy settings

I recently helped a teacher set up blogging with her students. I needed to check out the posts and comments from the students so I could offer feedback and help her improve the process. However, all the blogs written by the students were set as private and I could not see a single one. When I asked her to change them to public for me, she answered that the admins were concerned about it being open...

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Static pages on your blog

Static pages on a blog are a useful element. They establish a place for us to share resources or content that does not need to be updated on a daily basis. For example, at the top of my blog I have several tabs, including an About Me and Schedule Me tab. These pages are static - I don't need to change or update the information on a regular basis. I've also created pages on Edmodo, Mystery Skype,...

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#MysterySkype Dealing with Time Zones

A middle school social studies teacher I was working with expressed interest in doing a Mystery Skype with another class in Europe. I was all for it until I remembered the time zone difference. Not to be deterred, I looked around for resources to help me figure out what time zone countries in Europe are in. Here are two that I like to use. World Time Zone World Time Zone is an interactive map...

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The story of a girl who became a reader

image from Etsy My wife and I are avid readers. As a young child I would devour book after book, checking out a dozen at a time from the local library and finishing them within a week or two. My wife has many books at her bedside, ready for her to enjoy. She also tears through audio books on her daily jog and I listen to audio books in the car on the way to work. We have always tried to instill...

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Google Workflow on the iPad

image courtesy of Flickr At the Google Mini-Conference on Saturday, video production teacher Shira Park and I presented on Google Workflow for the iPad. With our district jumping on the GAFE bandwagon, many teachers are now knee deep in using Google apps with their students. There are many ways of handling the workflow of passing out assignments and collecting work from the students. We presented...

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Let YouTube rock your classroom

Today I joined Karl Gustafson (@lvmachead) to present at the CCSD Google mini-conference at Roy Martin MS. Our topic was using YouTube in the Classroom. Our goal was to share practical ways to use videos to engage students. We also shared ways to find videos and collect them in playlists for easy access I've embedded the presentation below. The presentation is mostly for resources to use back in...

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7 ways to use YouTube in the classroom

YouTube currently has over one billion users, with those users watching over six billion hours of video each month. 300 hours worth of new video is uploaded every minute. It's estimated that the average time spent on a session by mobile YouTube users is 40 minutes. (source) That's a lot of video time! Clearly video is a big thing and isn't going away soon.  How can teachers harness the power...

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Search YouTube like a boss!

With over 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube is a rich source of video any teacher can use in their classroom. Subtract all the cat videos and you've still got a sizeable chunk of video to sift through to find the perfect one for your class. Luckily, YouTube provides some search filters to help you narrow down those search results. Playlists and channels are great ways to curate...

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Blogging with Blogger

Blogger is Google’s free blogging platform. It is included with any Google account. Blogs are created at blogger.com and hosted at blogspot.com. Students can use blogs to share thoughts, opinions, keep a digital portfolio, and participate in a variety of writing activities. There are many benefits to having students blog, as I've discussed here and here. Kidblog is my all time favorite platform...

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Engage your students with a YouTube playlist

image courtesy of Literary Fusions YouTube has a ton of great videos that can be used in the classroom. Videos can be used to spark discussion, model a concept, hook students, provide real world context, or make lessons more engaging for visual learners. Finding and bookmarking all those great individual videos can be time consuming. Luckily, YouTube has an easy way of curating all those videos...

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Why you should subscribe to YouTube channels

image courtesy Hypebot YouTube lets you watch a variety of videos on practically any topic imaginable. Many users produce a whole series of videos on a particular topic. This series of of videos is called a channel. A channel on YouTube is the home page for an account. It shows the public videos that person has uploaded. Personally I have become interested in woodworking and successfully taught...

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Maker Movement: Bring it on!

image from Mrs. Wideen's blog The Maker Movement seems to be all the rage in education. I've read about it in my Twitter feed and seen many articles about it in Feedly. I've always been drawn to the philosophy of "learning by doing". It drives my teaching and presenting. I feel that hands on lessons and workshops are far more beneficial than "sit and get". I get the Maker Movement and I'm glad...

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Student Presentation Apps

Today was my district's annual iDevice Mini-Conference. I always love these conferences because of all the learning and sharing. There are so many good ideas that come from them! I facilitated two sessions on student presentations. Because of the focus on iDevices, I shared several apps that I love to use for helping students share their learning. Rather than just focus on tools, I like to discuss ways to help students be better presenters. My inspiration comes from a blog post by Lisa...

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