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!

Utah Write

Utah Write is a formative writing assessment that is now available to ALL Utah teachers.  The new features in Utah Write for 2013-2014 include:

• New pre-packaged writing prompts with video, graphics and reading passages for grades 3-12 for all three of the Common Core writing categories. (Argumentative, Informative/Explanatory, Narrative)
• A new module for creating district/school-wide performance tasks.
• A new scoring tool using a 0-3 scoring rubric for teacher to evaluate students writing for textual evidence and content. 
• New reports displaying students performance by Common Core writing category.

 Utah Write is free to all 5th and 8th grade students.  If you are looking to purchases Utah Write, click on the button in the lower right hand corner of the website and look for the following button.  If you are a teacher looking to purchase Utah Write, it is $5.71 per student.  This program is highly recommended to help prepare students with their writing skills, not only for DWA, but for the SAGE end-of-year testing. 

Creating A Teacher Account
1.  If you are a teacher and interested in signing up for a free account, the following button "Sign Up Here" is in the bottom right hand corner of UtahWrite.com. 

2.  Enter you personal information.
3.  Enter your district access code.  (You can obtain this from your Ed Tech in your school.)

Creating Student Accounts
1.  Adding Students One by One

• Click Add
• Add New
• Input Needed Information

There are three other strategies for creating student accounts and you can see your Ed Tech about those strategies.

As a teacher, you can assign pre-packaged essay prompts or teacher created prompts that can be assigned to your students to write about in their accounts.  Student results can be viewed as a report and teacher feedback can be left on student's essays.   Make sure you see your Ed Tech today for more detailed information about Utah Write. 

ComicLife2 for Writing in Elementary Language Arts

Fifth Graders at Willow Springs Elementary are learning to use ComicLife2 to support their reading and writing lessons this year.  Using a class set of MacBook Pros these avid readers are starting to make book projects in the form of a one page comic teaser.

As a lesson to get started using the program, each student made their own one page summary of the History of Utah.  It was easy for kids to dive into the program by following step-by-step instructions on adding images, speech bubbles, text boxes, and titles.

Lesson Plan:  After a brief discussion about "chunking" text into small readable selections and using images to engage readers, the students were off and running with the ComicLife2 program.

Step 1 - Open the program and select a new comic using the template "Mesa" since it has a nice southwest feel to it, perfect for a comic about Utah.

Step 2 - Edit the title to say "The Story of Utah"

Step 3 - Add a picture of Utah and State Seal to the upper left image block.  Students will need direct instruction on how to find images in the photo finder area by navigating to the folder set up by teacher with images downloaded ahead of time from the web.

Step 4 - Add a picture of Coronado, as well as text bubble and text box.  Students will then require 5-10 minutes of practice time as they learn to resize and adjust text features.  Suggestions for text bubble - "Wow, this place es muy bonita!" or "What a great place to build a ski resort!"

Step 5 - Insert new boxes as place holders for remaining pictures.

Step 6 - More Practice Time! - Let the students explore the program as they learn to resize and move images in order to make the most visually appealing page.  Invite students to also add additional text boxes and speech bubbles where they feel it is most appropriate.  5th graders in Utah have already learned a lot about their state, so let them share their knowledge with interesting facts and points of interest.

Step 7 - Have students save their work and give them a specific location on their computers or school network folder system.  Remind students to save as they go and use the "Command-Z" keyboard shortcut to undo any mistakes.

Step 8 - Explain the difference between saving a ComicLife2 project and exporting an image or PDF.  Allow students the opportunity to both save their project and export the finished product in a file format that they can either email, post online to a LMS like Edmodo or even publish to a blog or website.

If you would like a sample Rubric for this activity, check out this Google Doc.

Vine in the Classroom? Really?

Vine is an app used by smartphones and tablets created by Twitter that allows you to create, record, and post a short six-second (that's it) video clip that can be shared via Twitter and Facebook.  It's free, simple to use, and students, not to mention teachers, can have fun creating these short videos.  Video and audio is recorded by tapping the screen and when you lift up your finger, it stops recording.  Teachers have had students create projects using Vine and it has been amazing to watch the creativity that stems from students.  Some of the ideas I have seen for using Vine in the Classroom are:

• Using Vine in the Science Labs
• Video Pen Pals
• Class Book Reviews
• Simple How-Tos
• Teachers or students can announce homework on a class blog or web site
• Book Trailers

These ideas are just a few.  How can you see using Vine in the classroom? 

Check out the following site below.  Under Four Great Ideas Fresh Off the Vine, there are some great examples of Vine created videos for Education.

 Five-Minute Film Festival: Vine and Instagram Video in the Classroom  Edutopia, 9-27-2013.