Final reflection

This experience has been wonderful. I found most of the tools very beneficial for me to experience. My only negative was that there was some redundancy. The most beneficial tool was to understand google forms more.  I feel that in combination with google classroom, forms will guide my instruction and provide great feedback about progress from my students.

The blog format worked great for this type of activity.  However, I do not find that this would be very useful in a middle school classroom.  I know some of my colleagues are using blogger as their webpage this year, but I will be sticking to google sites for now because of the ease of adding pages related to the content.

Activity 10

Activity 9: Digital Citizenship

• Discuss the possible ethical issues involved in two of the scenarios
• Miss Starbuck really should have run her idea by someone else.  She also should have thought of all of the possible downsides and ensured that all of her students were of age to use the tool.  Also, even if all of these were met, she needs to set more clear parameters.  
• All of the situations could be solved by proper planning.
• Determine if the safety or well-being of anyone is in jeopardy.
• In most of them, the safety and well being of the students is what is most important.  However, many of these things could also lead to issues for the teachers and their livelihood.
• What advice, strategy, or policy would you recommend to individuals or schools based on this scenario?
• Again, plan ahead and do your due diligence to ensure that what is done at school is helpful and safe.  Be okay with saying that maybe technology is not the best way to do an assignment.  There are still times that teachers and students can be old fashioned with paper and pencil and it is just as useful without the risks.
• Share any real-life incidents or personal connections related to the scenario.
• The only thing I can think of is the fact that I refuse to get a Facebook page.  I feel that it would be an awesome tool to use with my friends, but the risks do not outweigh the rewards/usefulness.  
• How can the Mounds View Resources help to implement high quality instructional practices with with technology?
• By giving guidelines to help teachers select tools.  There is no way that even at the building level that we can keep a list of approved tools and sites.  This is where guidelines and being a professional has to come in to play.
• What is 1 procedure that you can implement in your class and what is one that you would like to implement in your whole PLC or whole building?
• I want to create "commonly used sites" posters for all teachers in my PLC.  These would include things like peardeck, classroom, socrative, etc., but I want to include things like the class codes for each site as well as some guidelines to how they will be used in class.  This would provide a constant reminder to students and teacher as to the fact that the chromebook is a tool not a toy.

Activity 8: Assessment Part 2

Here is my branching form: http://goo.gl/forms/iB0Ju4Cbwl

I like the idea of using this as review for the students.  It could even be their homework to fill it out and the more they get correct, the less review they have to do.  I see this taking place of some of my study guides in the future to allow me to "teach" material even when they don't get it at home.  It would work great for the students that procrastinate the study guides until the day before the test.  (Did I mention that I am doing this assignment with assignment nine on the night before the face to face meeting:)

Here is my form for using Flubaroo: http://goo.gl/forms/dzbK1Kogcq




I wanted to make this form to see if it would work to do our mapping quizzes on forms.  The one thing that did not like was needing to put the image as a separate item each time.  I was hoping that I could just do an insert image to the questions.  However, using the google search within the "insert image" was very easy and saved a ton of time from the old copy and paste.  Overall, I will use this method as review for the mapping, but could see it being more useful in other things throughout the year instead.

For the advanced portion I would say that Autocrat looks to be a little more user friendly; however, I do not see me using this in any way.  I liked the example of using it for certificates of attendance at a conference (this must be what Susan did for the Tech Take-Away day), but I see no use (right now) for a classroom teacher.  It seems like it would take way too long for anything that it might be worth for me.  Besides, it seems like there is better alternatives for the same essential thing.

Assignment #7: Assessment/Polling-Data gathering

Here is a Kahoot we will be using in Early College Prep.  It was a public Kahoot that fit our needs.

https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/9703effb-18f9-4c68-b9ef-d1b27f964162

This is a Socrative quiz I made.  I did not know that I could make it into a printable PDF to use/share with students who may have been absent.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6X564GuZ2JsMWFJdFJ2b19wRFU/view?usp=sharing

Assignment 6- Classroom

I really liked this idea of classroom.  I think it will make it easier for students to have all of their classes in one place.  The thing I really like is the possibly to add the links as resources to complete assignments.  I will for sure be using this in the current year.

Activity 5- Apps, add-ons, and extentions

After being consumed by all of the options out there (really spent too much time looking at all of the different things out there), I can say that I have mixed feelings about the options for me personally and professionally.  Here is why:

• Excited: so many cool, and free, options for diving deeper into content and technology.  The add-ons for Google forms alone is something that can have a major impact on my timing and effectiveness as a professional this year.  Knowing that if I ever think about something that I want, or think would be great for use in my classroom, all I have to do is search for it and it probably already exists.
• Negative: I feel that I wasted a lot of time trying out some bad tools and just having some okay results with others.  My fear is that I could become too obsessed with the tool and forget about the purpose the tool is supposed to fill.  Dare I say that maybe I am becoming a little old fashioned here, but I think some of these things could fall under the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) theory?  Outside of a few things that I find really useful, I feel that I would have to spend a lot more time with some of the others to feel comfortable enough to use it with students.

This being all said; do I think that I should keep trying in order to stay up to date and to know the best options out there for my students and me-  YES!!!  

Activity 4- Google Suite

20% time: First week ideas

The above link is for the first week of using 20% in college prep.  It is mainly ideas from another educator's webpage, but customized for our use.  Rather than referring back to the webpage, I thought it would be easier to have it in a working document that can be used and shared by everyone teaching college prep courses.  We are still working on determining if this is the way that we want to go or if we just use more of a "Genius Hour" idea.

• How will you use your Google Drive in your teaching practice?
• I will use Google Drive for all documents that are going to and from my students this year. With Chromebooks in the classroom and use of Google classroom, it will provide my students and me with the ability to easily access all of the information. Plus, I really like that it saves in real time and I can go back and see revision history for the "I swear I did it. I don't know how it got deleted" problem.
• How could cloud computing be a useful tool in your classroom?  
• I think it can be very beneficial by allowing more individual student feedback and attempting to go paperless. It will allow me to send students feedback on their progress and/or final projects that I can do from home instead of one on one. Plus, I don't have to worry about hauling paper around and having a student claim that I must have lost it.
• What are the pros and cons of using it with students?
• Many of my thoughts are listed in my previous statements, but I feel the biggest con that I have right now is that I am worried about staying on top of the organization of it all. My own drive gets disorganized quickly without many students sharing things with me. Also, I am a little worried about having students with an organization system in their own Drive. I plan on ensuring that all of my students set up a seperate folder in their drive for just my class. It is the modern way of students buying notebooks and folders for each class.

Screencasting

I have done screen-casting in the past and find it very valuable for the idea of staff training and/or student use to demonstrate understanding.  This is a video I made with SMART record to help our staff understand how to use the mastery manager online test option.  I plan on doing a follow-up version to show how to send results out via our school email.  The only thing I need to figure out now is how to get a test-safe browser onto the Chromebooks to prevent students from opening new tabs during their test- if you have any ideas, I would love to know.

Engagement

I have done some of the other options for this assignment in my classes; therefore, I chose to do the Movenote. I was thinking that this would be a great tool for flipping some of my classes and getting content out very quickly. I always struggle when it is a big lecture day in class because I feel that I am working harder than my students (plus, I commonly get frustrated by dealing with inappropriate behavior as I am trying to teach). This gives me the options to have students watch the lecture at home; use the Chromebooks and headphones in class, and/or have a review session without having students stay after school. I really like this option and feel that it will provide the opening of time in-class for more hands on activities.

My only issue that I had with this site was that it wouldn't allow me to just insert my presentation from google slides.  I had to save it to my device as a pdf first and then post it.  It works great now that I know, but it appears that this shouldn't be the only option.  Just a heads up to anyone else struggling with it.

Why we need to teach geography...

I always enjoy showing this video to my classes at the beginning of the year.  This year, I may have my students do some pre-learning by looking up the answers to some of the questions even before they watch the video.

The way I see using blogs in my class are to share information with other teachers and the students.  In reality, it could easily replace the traditional webpages that we currently use.  This for the parents combined with the use of google classroom for students and teachers...is there any wonder why some feel that google is taking over the world?  The question becomes, when will education be mostly done through the internet?

Kickoff:

• What motivated you to become a tech nerd this summer?
• I want to never be complacent.  I want to continually learn the next and greatest thing for my students.  Things change so quickly.  I want to try and stay in front of it all.
• What you hope to learn about in Tech Nerd Camp 2.0?
• I hope to learn tools that will supplement my instruction and allow my students to learn and demonstrate learning in fun and creative ways in my class.
• How would you describe your current comfort level with technology?  What tools do you use already in your classroom (if any)?
• I feel very comfortable with the current tools that I use; however, I want to learn new tools.
• Currently, I use the following (to name a few)
• Flipboard
• Google sites
• Google classroom
• Kahoot
• Socrative
• Storyboardthat
• Pear Deck