Happy Halloween!

Wishing you a safe night of haunting! 

Happy Halloween from your Ed Tech Team. 

2013 Canyons District (costumed) Educational Technology Specialist Team 

blendspace

Even though blendspace (http://www.blendspace.com) has been around for quite some time, I was thinking it would be a good idea to review.  This site allows you to easily drop content into a nice format, easy for kids and adults to navigate.  You can select colors, themes, and layouts. 

For this example, I used blendspace for the PG&L (Professional Growth and Leadership) class for the teachers to review the articles that they are assigned for that night's class.  You can also search within blendspace for content.  In this example, I used some content that I located, and some from their search engine.  I was very impressed with the ease of use.  Check it out.

http://blnds.co/16EZBti

iOS 7 Battery Saving Tips

iOS is great, but it also drains your iOS device's battery very quickly. Here are 3 easy tips to help save your battery on you iPhone, iPad, or other iOS device that is running iOS 7.

A Conference in Your Jammies

There are now several online conferences available throughout the year. However, my favorite still remains the K12 Online Conference which is held in October. The conference consists of recorded presentations (10-20 min. each). 2 to 4 are released daily throughout the 10 day run of the conference.

The theme of the conference this year is Transforming Learning and began on October 14th with a fantastic keynote by Shannon McClintock Miller entitled Transforming Learning....One Voice at a Time.



The 4 strands of this year's conference are: Open Learning, Outside Learning, Leading Learning, and Building Learning.

Last week (the week of October 21st) the first two strands were offered. The latter strands are offered this week (October 28th).

The best thing about this conference is the presentations are all online and you can view them at any time. You can also view presentations from the previous 7 conferences. You can view the presentations at K12OnlineConference.org, click on 2013 and you will see the list of presentations available.

The conference is also offered as an iTunesU course that you can subscribe to in iTunes on your computer, or iTunesU on your iOS device.

So if you are looking for some great learning, join in on the K12 Online Conference you will be sure to find something of value to you.

Podcasts: Expanding Your PLN

Have you ever heard of a Podcast? Do you know what it is? Have you listened or watched one? Well, if you haven’t heard about them, then this is your opportunity to learn. Podcasts are either audio or video and they tell a story or give you information. Most are based on a subject. People who have their own podcast usually love what they do or want to help other people learn more about their interest.

I listen to them to learn more about the subject that they are about. I listen to a few Mac Podcasts. Some are teaching me new things about the mac and others are about Mac news. One is daily but most of them are weekly. They range in length from 15 minutes to 2 hours each podcast.

I enjoy listening to them. They are all part of my PLN. I learn a lot of new things from them. Here are a few that I listen to: Mac Power Users, For Mac Eyes Only, Mac OS Ken, and Today in IOS are my Mac Podcast and I found them on iTunes. I also found one that I enjoy listening to just for fun. I’m a Star Trek fan and this podcast is starting at the very beginning of the first series and talking about each episode. It is called Mission Log: A Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast.

There are Podcasts about any subject that you are interested in or want to learn about. I hope that you will look into them and start learning.

Ross

Mail Merge in Office 2011

Mail Merge in Office 2011 is a feature that is useful to most members of a school community at some point.  Whether is is creating labels for teachers to use in the classroom, secretaries creating address labels and letters to send home, or just keeping your address book organized, Mail Merge is a great tool.  Our Elementary Education Team Lead, Kelly Dumont, held a helpful training offered to Canyons School District's Educational Support Personnel.  We learned how to take a spreadsheet created in Excel and do a Mail Merge to address labels and to a letter in Microsoft Word.  I attended this hour long course and gained great information to share with the ESP's in my buildings and it was great to participate in a training hosted by Kelly.  I have included and article that includes helpful hints and instructions for Mail Merge in Office 2011.  Mail merge and Office 2011 - Macworld

                            

Why Canvas?

In a recent CSD EdTech blogpost (October 16, 2013) by Jared Ward, he states, “More and more teachers are using Canvas for their course instruction.” He also prompts readers for their comments, so here is my response.

Are more and more teachers using Canvas for their course instruction? While I agree that Canvas is an incredible tool for a blended learning environment (and one I use daily with my own classes), I would argue that more teachers are only THINKING about using Canvas for their course instruction than are actually using it.  Teachers are questioning ‘Why Canvas?’ and are finding it difficult to move past that one question. Maybe answering this simple question was missed in our initial training series? Regardless, let’s back up and try to answer this seemingly simple question.

So Why Canvas?  Canvas offers many excellent reasons to use it for classroom instruction. My suggestion? Try choosing at least ONE reason (1 feature of Canvas) that you think will be beneficial for your classroom and work on developing that ONE piece.  Don’t be overwhelmed by everything Canvas can do for you – start small and slowly build.

Read about other Canvas Use Stories at http://www.instructure.com/stories-k-12!