Sick Day and PD for 2015

What does one do during sick days other than sleep and feel generally yucky? Well, if you're an educational technology geek, you start planning professional learning sessions to begin in 2015. And what goes best with that you may ask? Design time with Canva.com and learning more about CreativeCommons.org licensing.

As a pirate through and through (district mascot and #tlap groupie) I've chosen a pirate theme for these staff PD sessions and written a poem to kick things off in January. All designed using Canva tools and shapes and a free-use graphic I located through an advanced Google search. This is also my first attempt at adding a Creative Commons license to something I created. I must admit I got a little lost in the legalese, but the site walked me through selecting a license step by step and provided and embed code that I added below.

Here is the result.
Until next time... Follow your treasure map!
S~

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

More Fun Than A Worksheet

My son came home from school last week and with our usual "do you have homework" formalities, announced that he had to create a fake Facebook page for a Texas History icon. He was assigned Susanna Dickinson, one of the survivors from the Battle of the Alamo. During class he spent some time researching and came home with a two page Fakebook worksheet/template to complete.

Having been a Texas History teacher, I was greatly intrigued by his homework. However, as an educational technology specialist and fan of edtech tools, I had to show him another option beyond the dreaded worksheet. Don't get me wrong, this worksheet was not the typical drill and kill, fact based only worksheet. It was really a template, but if there is already a digital tool available, why not make use of said tool?

A wonderful website, www.classtools.net, is loaded with free tools for student and teacher use, one of which happens to be Fakebook. The tool is easy to use and and even comes with a StartUp Guide. (Plus a ready made rubric that ClassTools calls a MarkSheet.) I showed him the Gallery and we looked at several Fakebooks in the History category for ideas. Since Facebook is not really high on the pre-teen list of frequented sites, we opened my Facebook page and took a quick tour there as well. Now armed with more FB knowledge, my son started to work on his homework. To my great joy, he decided to use the digital tool. In his words, "It's more fun than the worksheet and I can use real images."  He made sure the worksheet information was covered in his ClassTools Fakebook, even though the design was a little bit different. This is the end result. Biased of course, but well done even from an edtech teacher point of view, in my opinion.  
Susanna Dickinson Fakebook by Colton
(the QR code in the image links to the page as well)

Challenge: As an extension of this activity, have students drop an image of their Fakebook into another tool, like Skitch, for example and use text boxes to explain why they chose certain people as friends for their character or explain the reasoning behind the status updates. Students could also use VoiceThread, screenshot images of the Fakebook and create their own recorded audio explanations. 

The possibilities are limitless with some creativity, research and a few innovative tech tools. 

Until next time... Follow your treasure map!

S~

Connected Educator Month

Being connected means...

Let the Journey Begin!

Welcome to my first blog post! I was so excited to get my feet wet with blogging during a summer graduate course. Blogging is something that I have wanted to do, but never really knew how to begin or what to say. This will be a terrific way to share information with others as well as create a type of personal portfolio. 

During the course we were tasked with utilizing LemmeTweetThatForYou to create a 140 character introduction. This is a great tool for those that may be a little inhibited by social media or Twitter may be blocked in your district. Students and teachers can get the feel for tweeting while not necessarily publishing just yet. Not to mention the summarizing practice when you only have 140 characters. I went over in my example by 87 characters! Oops! And I was trying to be really creative with my text!

Twister and Fake Tweet Builder are two other options for creating fake tweets. Experiment and decide which one is best for you and your classroom.

EduChallenge: How could you utilize this tool with students?

In the classroom: Tweets from historical figures or literary characters, discuss authors, math steps, exit ticket, etc. What ideas do you have?

Until next time... Follow your treasure map!

S~