Creating and sharing digital selves
I’m participating in Thinglink’s Summer VR Challenge, and the first exercise in the challenge is to design your Digital Self, a visual representation of yourself with embedded links to things you feel are important people know about you.
A key component of the exercise is to share your Digital Self with your PLN. But I warn you: you’re not ready for this jelly.
Science app-smashing in a 1:1 environment
Brendan Nerney, a middle grades educator at Mill River Union High School in Clarendon, Vermont, explains some of the edtech tools his students use to study hurricanes with their iPads. The students used a variety of edtech tools to produce a mock newscast documenting a hurricane and its aftermath.
Let’s look at some good tools for studying hurricanes.
A middle school case study
Katie Bryant, an English teacher at Lamoille Union Middle School, presents the results of her semester-long action research project examining the relationship between student-led conferences and engagement in PLPs, or personal learning plans.
Here’s what she and her team discovered.
A step-by-step guide to publishing your first episode
Podcasts have been around for awhile now but can be a little intimidating in terms of knowing the technical aspect of how to launch one. Thinking of starting one for your school but need a little help unpacking the tech?
Here’s how to get started podcasting, the technical version.
Students explore the geography of self(ies)
An innovative way for students to explore who they are happens in Lori Lisai’s classroom at Lamoille Union Middle School where she works with them to craft an interactive biography through her Geography of Self project.
A bulletin board houses the student self portraits; 8th graders include their 7th grade portraits side-by-side: a visual representation of growth-over-time.
How these educators used Nearpod for professional development
Educators instinctively understand the engagement power of a tool that allows learners to actively participate in the learning.
For those of you new to Nearpod, this multi-platform app allows teachers to shoot out presentations — think Powerpoints or Google Slides made interactive — directly to their students’ devices. Content slides can be interspersed with embedded polls, quizzes, and drawing tools for in-the-moment formative assessment.
Embed yourself in your video lesson
MoveNote lets you create screencasts where you appear alongside the material, making how to screencast a lot more dynamic for students and educators. Flipped classroom? Blended learning? Student presentations? Gallery walks? Support for students with disabilities?
Let’s look at some of the possibilities, features and how to get up and running with Movenote.
Putting a human face on science storytelling
Lava flows down the halls of Main Street Middle School, in Montpelier, Vermont, and you must choose whether you’ll go with the flow or try to cool off somewhere and become an igneous rock. In another portion of the school, you’re the new kid, getting a tour from one of your peers when a volcano erupts, and you have only your geology wits (and a science teacher with fabulous hair) to save you.
These are middle schoolers building mobile, place-based games with ARIS, taking advantage of the game editor’s powerful new re-design and one science educator’s trust in letting his students demonstrate what and how they learn.
Thinglink, augmented reality and gaming
Alert reader Lucia Hoegeveen asked a question about our suggestion that you create a map of a country and give each state it’s own voice. Now, as she pointed out, each Chatterpix you create can have only one mouth. So in order to make our Chatter-map, we’re going to need to app-smash Chatterpix in one of a couple different ways.
Or maybe we’ll just put them all together in a blender and hope for the best. I’ll let you know after I finish this delicious coffee.
Tips and tricks from around the edtech world
Image by Wes Fryer (CC 2.0)
Successful and powerful integration of iPads in the classroom depends in no small part on keeping device management, well, manageable.
Here’s a quick look at how edtech folks are tackling the nuts and bolts of keeping track of, making best use of and not being made crazy by, iPads in the classroom.