Melanie Fessler

It has been almost one week since I spoke at #Edscape in New Jersey, and it was a tremendous honour to have that opportunity.  Not only because I was able to connect with amazing educators in the area, but because I was asked by my friend Eric Sheninger.  Eric speaks around the world, inspiring people all over, has written books, and is one of the most known educators in social media.  For him to ask me, was a great honour.

But what was fantastic about the experience for me was, as it is always, the opportunity to learn from so many other educators, and to be able to spend time with Eric.  There is so much that we learn from informal conversations, and to be able to have three days with Eric, both professionally and personally, I learned that he is the real deal.

Here are some of the things that I was most impressed with.

The first night I connected with Eric, he took me to a restaurant in the community near to the school and it was fantastic to see how close he was with people in his community.  The owner of the restaurant came over and talked about how Eric always brought them opportunities to the school, and in return, the restaurant put money back into the events that were happening.  It isn’t one taking from the other, but mutual support.  

The focus on community continued as Eric took me to his school’s football game late on a Friday night.  This had nothing to do with me being in the area.  In fact, Eric gave me one choice about what to do that night; go to the school’s football game.  This is vital to his work.

As you go into Eric’s school, you see a VERY old facility (I think he told me it opened in 1929), that has a lot of desks and looks nothing like some of the innovative spaces that I have seen in my time.  In fact, some of the spaces seem so old that it was criticized by someone on Twitter about the 20th century space.  The thing is, while so many administrators focus their funds and efforts on redesigning classrooms spaces and bringing in all of these other amazing elements in the classroom, Eric has put money and time into people.  

Unfortunately in education, we sometimes have to make some tough choices, but the best answer is always put time and money into people.  The other things we can get later, but if people do not understand why or how to use these things, it doesn’t matter.  We need to create such a deep understanding of the opportunities that technology and innovative school design create for students that we create a need for these things in the classroom.  This is what Eric focuses on.

What I loved about #Edscape was that it was exactly what the people there needed.  It was not necessarily the same types of conversations that happen at Educon (which is another amazing conference), but it is what the people are interested in that are at the conference.  Many people that attended are just jumping into using technology in their classroom and are shifting their thinking about what they are doing as teachers and learners, and the feedback from their experience was fantastic.  

The vision of the conference, created by Eric and his staff, was to start with where people are, but to push them to their next level.  The best leaders have a larger vision, but they break it down into smaller steps so people develop confidence and understanding along the way. That is what happened in the sessions at Edscape.

As all leaders, Eric focuses on relationships first, and builds from there.  Seeing the growth and development of his school, you see how vital this is to growth.  But what I also loved about Eric is that he knows there is still a lot of work to be done, and that the best organizations continuously grow and learn.  The best leaders celebrate their accomplishments, but build off of them.  As soon as you spend too much time patting yourself on the back, you find that you become Blockbuster.  Eric was proud of where his staff and students have come, but also has a vision of where they can still go.

I learned a lot from my time with Eric and I hope I have been able to share a few of those “nuggets” with others.

The big take-aways from spending time with Eric:

1. Focus on relationships and building community.
2.  Change can happen in “old” environments if you focus on changing mindsets and developing educators as learners first.
3. Start with people where they are at, but help them get to their next level, wherever that may be.

Thanks to Eric and his school community for putting on a great conference and leading by example!

With the Hour of Code coming up (December 9-15), here is a great infographic from Kodable explaining why coding is such a useful skill for kids (and adults) to learn.

Welcome this second of a  four part series intended to provide Math teachers with some outstanding PBL resources. Hope uou enjoyed Part One.  First, to ensure you do not miss one of these valuable posts or other resources covering PBL, Digital Curriculum, Web 2.0, STEM, 21st century learning, and technology integration, please sign up for 21centuryedtech by email or RSS.  As always,  I invite you to follow me on twitter (@mjgormans). Please give this post a retweet and pass it on. Have a great week – Michael Gorman (21centuryedtech)

Booking Info – Are you looking for a practical and affordable professional development workshop for your school or conference?  I have traveled the country delivering PD relating to technology integration, PBL, STEM, Digital Literacy, and the 4 C’s. I have done 100′s of workshops and presentations.  Check out my Booking Page… Dates are going fast, with time up to and including December filled,  but I am  taking 2014 dates.

When facilitating Project Based Learning (PBL) workshops across the country I often have math teachers eagerly ask for additional math PBL resources. They want material that might provide a further  idea, a scaffolding lesson, footprint, or even an entire plan for a PBL unit. In meeting these teachers’ needs I have spent hours in research. I am pleased to share with you these twenty-twp sites that I am certain can help facilitate Math PBL.  Of course I have many things I would like to discuss in regards to Math and PBL… but I will save that for a future post. I hope you enjoy these twenty-two resources that are a part of this four part series. Is there something that should be added? Let me know! Please return, share, and provide a retweet.

Feel free to look at prior article: Part 1

Part 2: Math and Project Based Learning… 20 Amazing Resources 

Michael Gorman (21centuryedtech.wordpress.com)

CIMS Industrial Mathematics Projects For High School Students – The WPI Industrial Mathematics Project for High School Students developed over twenty industrial mathematics projects for high school students. Best of all these were drawn from a variety of real-world situations. These engaging projects are available for every level of high school mathematics, from Algebra to Calculus and Statistics. The length and scope of these projects is very flexible.  Each project contains enough material for a major, semester-long endeavor, but its component parts can be used in a shorter project of for scaffolding activities. Explore the project database which contains downloadable versions of each of the projects, ready to be assigned to students.

TEDed Math – The TED-Ed commitment to creating lessons worth sharing is an extension of TED’s mission of spreading great ideas. Within the growing TED-Ed video library, one can find carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. This link brings you to some amazing Math lessons that can be used for a footprint of a PBL Unit of a scaffold activity.

Mathematical Moments – Authenticity is important in Math PBL. It seems that Math educators are always looking for ways they can show how math is used in the world around us. Discover a site that will help you achieve this goal of real world application. The site is cleverly titled Mathematical Moments and it is well worth the time! It contains free printable posters that are 8.5″ x 11″ PDF documents. These informational posters are available on many different topics in science, nature, technology, and human culture. As you take a closer look many of these posters note that many have a  link to some short feature podcast interviews with experts in the field. These posters and podcast could spark the idea for a PBL math unit that brings authenticity into your math teaching.

The PBL Academy – The PBL Academy at Indiana University provides outstanding project based learning instruction, structure, and on-going support for K-12 educators.  The provided link focuses on the numerous Math Projects hosted at the Academy. You will find them in the Math Matters Area. Each project is developed by participating teachers. Along with the elements of PBL, each project must also address an actual local ‘need’ which may include an on-going business process or an enhancement of a municipal program, etc. Of course these ideas can be adopted and assimilated into just about any community. When landing on the site you can sign up or log in as a guest.

Real World Math – This site contains a collection of free math activities for Google Earth designed for students and educators. There are some outstanding connections to PBL! As you know, mathematics is much more than a set of problems in a textbook.  Students will find that in the virtual world of Google Earth, concepts and challenges can be presented in a meaningful way. While this link will take you to the PBL section be sure to explore other areas of the site that can be used as you scaffold existing PBL units.

Next Post… Part Three, as we continue our PBL Math journey. Sign up now!

Thanks for joining me on this wonderful journey of 21st century resources and please feel free to attend what will be an awesome webinar . Join me in future weeks as together we continue to explore several more posts devoted to the Flipped Classrooms, Project Based Learning, Assessing 21st century skills, technology integration, web resources, and digital literacy.  I enjoy learning from all of you. Also remember to subscribe to this blog by RSS or email and follow me on twitter at mjgormans. I also appreciate your sharing of this post and any retweets. Keep up the amazing work,  have a great week, and enjoy the resources! – Mike Gorman

Booking Info - Are you looking for a practical and affordable professional development workshop for your school or conference?  I have traveled the country delivering PD relating to technology integration, PBL, STEM, Digital Literacy, and the 4 C’s. I have done 100′s of workshops and presentations.  Check out my Booking Page… Dates are going fast, with time up to and including December just about filled,  but i am  taking 2014 dates

Google probably doesn’t need my help selling any of its products. But I usually end up sounding like an intern from the marketing department at least once a week. I love their stuff.

I especially love Google Earth.

And the more I travel around, the more I discover that many social studies teachers are not fully aware of the different ways Google Earth can save their bacon. As in, engaging and useful teaching strategies that are aligned to Common Core Literacy and College, Career, and Civic Life standards.

So today? Five awesome ways to use Google Earth in your classroom:

1. Google Lit Trips
When most people think of Google Earth, they think maps and geography. Great literature rarely comes to mind. But one way that we can become better social studies teachers is to find ways to integrate our content with fiction and non-fiction sources. One of the best ways to do that is by using Google Lit Trips. Google Lit Trips focuses on the idea of creating Google Earth Tours based on historical fiction, novels and non-fiction.

So. You’re looking for ways to meet Common Core Literacy standards? Here ya go. No brainer.

The site encourages teachers to create and share their own Google Earth lit tours as well as download the tours of others. There are currently 59 tours that you can download into your Google Earth software. Titles include such books as Night by Elie Wiesel, My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Journey to Topaz by Yushiko Uchida.

2. Google Historical Tours and Events
Carol Larow, creator of Google Historical Tours and Events, takes the Google Lit Trip idea and changes it just a bit. The site focuses on historical events and is designed so that students are the ones doing the tour creation. You still get the chance to download Google Earth tours but the goal is tp provide a place for students to upload their own work.

So . . . a great place for you to find teaching tools but also a great place for your students to post their own research and work.

3. Historical imagery
Google Earth offers imagery from the past several years worldwide. In the U.S. and select other locations, we have acquired older imagery, some going as far back as World War II, and many major cities offer a dozen or more views throughout time and during various seasons. Simply click the clock icon and scroll through time — the notches indicate every point in time for which we have a photo within the current view.

So what might this look like in practice? Use the tool to help kids compare and contrast the same place over time and to practice historical thinking skills. Get a specific example of a lesson here. It can also be used to introduce fiction and non-fiction – use the previous lesson to hook kids into the book Night (which then, of course, plugs right into a Google Lit Trip!)

4. Tour Guide
A newer feature of Google Earth, Tour Guide provides guided excursions to and through a wide variety of geographic places, both famous and obscure. There are over 100,000 tours in 200 countries with more than 1,000,000 photos now available – from flying tours of the Roman Coliseum to Dodge City’s Boot Hill.

It will display interesting places, even if you didn’t know to search for them. Thumbnails of available pre-created tours will update automatically with interesting locations near your current view. Click the thumbnail image to start a tour or to fly to a point of interest. Flying tours are marked with a tour time in the lower right hand corner of the tour thumbnail.

Where available, the tours and points of interest include 3D models (be sure to turn the 3D Buildings layer on) for the most realistic experience possible. Information from Wikipedia also provides more information on famous sites, so you can learn more about the places that interest you as your virtually fly over them. The tour guide also includes user-contributed Picasa and Panoramio photos as thumbnails for a preview of the featured location.

Use Tour Guide to lead discussions on cultural geography, to create sweet writing prompts, or to support student research. Tour Guide is on by default. To turn it off, simply toggle it off in View > Tour Guide.

5. Earth Gallery
The Gallery is 1000 pre-built Google Earth Tours available for immediate use. You can access the Gallery by clicking the button right beside the Layers area. A separate browser will slide in, letting you search or browse for specific tours. Clicking one of the tours will automatically install the tour into your Google Earth.

You can find a wide range of historical maps, geographic features, and other social studies related goodies. The Gallery is also accessible online via a traditional browser.

6. Need a few more resources?

Google Earth for Educators
Social Studies Central
Teaching with Google Earth: Awesome Tips and Tutorials
History Tours

Filed under: 21st century skills, common core, google, Google Earth, historical thinking, lesson plans, technology integration

Google Forms has received some nice enhancements over the last few months. Still there are times when I've wished that Google Forms could do more. That's where Form+ comes into the picture. Form+ is a third party service that adds features to Google Forms. Probably the best aspect of Form+ is that through it you can create forms that can accept file uploads. Form+ offers pre-made form templates for you to use. You can also create your own form templates through Form+'s drag-and-drop interface.

Randy Rodgers shared a Form+ tutorial on Google+ earlier this month. I encourage you to watch his tutorial to see Form+ in action.


Applications for Education
If you have been looking to expand your use of Google Forms, Form+ might be the tool for you. Using the option to collect files through upload could be a good way to organize students' assignments. Simply create a form for each assignment and post it on your classroom blog to have all of the uploaded files go into a folder. Form+ has an upload form template ready for you to use and re-use as often as you like.

Two weeks ago I gave the opening keynote at WLMA 2013 in Yakima, WA. During my keynote I mentioned the term "Google Jockey." It got a laugh when I described the "Google Jockey" as the student who seems to Google everything anyone says. You can leverage that student's habit into a force for good in your classroom.

I first discovered the term Google Jockey when I read Curtis Bonk's The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. In The World Is Open I came across the idea for having a "Google Jockey" in my classroom. The idea is that you have one or two students in the room who are responsible for looking up terms or phrases that come up during the course of classroom discussion. Combining the use of a back channel along with a Google Jockey could become a good avenue for drilling deeper into the content of the day's lesson.

Saturday, October 26, I presented two sessions at the ATMOPAV 2013 Fall Conference. This first one was targeted at middle and high school grades. Here are copies of the handout and the PowerPoint slides.

• Handout [PDF]
• PowerPoint Slides [PDF]

My thanks to those of you who chose to come. I had a good time, and we had a lot of discussion about things we might try as a result of the session. I know that Leigh Nataro (@mathteacher24) changed up her Monday morning geometry task, and had students Notice and Wonder about a diagram. I hope some of the rest of you might leave a comment here that describes something you plan to do or already did do.

Here’s the Noticing and Wondering that we did around the Congruent Rectangles problem (maybe some of you want to try the problem with your students, and then have them compare their lists to a list that a bunch of math teachers came up with!):

For those of you who couldn’t make it, as well as those of you did make it in person but want a succinct version to share with colleagues, this was sort of a one hour version of my Ignite talk of the same title: Ever Wonder What They’d Notice (If Only Someone Would Ask)?

Google Forms can be very useful for collecting all kinds of information from students and others. Two of the more common uses of Google Forms in schools are creating quizzes and conducting surveys (click here for a guide to creating quizzes in Google Forms). In both of those cases you may have a need to limit the number of responses, limit the length of responses, or set a cut-off time at which the form will stop accepting responses. While you can simply click "stop accepting responses" in your Google Form, you do have to remember to do it. FormLimiter solves that problem and two others.

FormLimiter is a script that you can install in the Google Spreadsheet in which you are collecting responses from a Google Form. The script allows you to limit the number of responses to a form, limit the number of characters in a response, and set a time at which the form will automatically stop accepting responses. The images below will walk you through the process of installing FormLimiter. (Click the images to view them in full size).

Step 1:

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Step 6:

                           
 Steve's students used their Chrome Books.  
I have never seen a group of students so engaged in not only listening to a book, but also in the discussion that was happening online.  They didn't want to stop.

Twice in the last two days at the WLMA 2013 conference I demonstrated how to create audio slideshows on YouTube. Creating audio slideshows in YouTube is a good alternative to using Animoto.

Animoto is an excellent tool for creating audio slideshows. But there are some limitations to it that some teachers don't like. Most notable of those limitations is the time limit (30 seconds unless you get an Animoto for Education account), lack of space for text, and that students have to remember a username and password to use it. The YouTube slideshow tool provides a tool for creating audio slideshows without those three limitations of Animoto.

YouTube Photo Slideshows don't have a time limit other than the standard 15 minute limit applied to all new YouTube accounts (there are work-arounds for this). YouTube Photo Slideshows allow you to specify the length of time that each image is displayed for. After uploading your images you can use the annotations tool to add as much text as you like to each frame of your video. If you're working in a school that uses Google Apps for Education, your students can use their log-in credentials on YouTube so they don't have to create separate usernames and passwords.

The images below show you how to create a Photo Slideshow on YouTube. (Click the images to view them full size).

Step 1: Log into your YouTube account and click "upload" then click "Photo Slideshow."

Step 2: Select images from your Google Account or upload images from your computer.

Step 3: Drag and drop your images into the sequence in which you want them to appear.

Step 4: Choose a sound track and select the slide display duration and transition.

Step 5: Enter a title, description, and tags for your images. Select a thumbnail and privacy setting.

Step 6: Use the annotations tool to add text to each frame of your video. You can specify the length of time that each annotation is displayed for.

Watch my sample video below.

Untamed Science is a producer of educational science videos. I've featured some of their videos in the past. Most recently I featured their video about why leaves change color. On Tuesday, October 22 Untamed Science in collaboration with Pearson OLE will run a free virtual training on making science videos for your classes. In the webinar you will learn some best practices and interesting video techniques that you can use either for yourself or as an engaging classroom project. You can learn more about the webinar and register for it here.

Creating animations can be a fun element to add to a creative writing project. Creating the animation could be the final piece of the project in which students bring their short stories to life. You could also have students create short animations to use as story starters for their written works. Here are five free tools that students can use to create animations.

ABCya Animate from ABCya (disclosure, an advertiser here)allows students to create animated GIFs containing up to 100 frames. On ABCya Animate students build their animation creations by drawing, typing, and inserting images. Students can change the background of each frame, include new pictures in each frame, and change the text in each frame of their animations. The feature that I like best about ABCya Animate is that students can see the previous frames of their animations while working on a current frame. This helps students know where to position items in each frame in order to make their animations as smooth as possible. Students do not need to register on ABCya Animate in order to use the tool or to save their animations. When students click "save" on ABCya Animate their creations are downloaded as GIFs.

Stop Frame Animator from Culture Street is a neat tool for creating animated stop motion movies. Creating your animated stop motion video is a simple drag and drop process on Stop Frame Animator. To get started creating your stop motion video select a background scene then drag your characters into place. While you have nine background scenes to choose from, the only characters you can use are wooden manikins. You can position the manikins' arms and legs in every scene. After choosing your scene and characters you can add some other props like chairs and beach balls. And if you want you can add sound effects and music to your video by selecting them from the Stop Frame Animator gallery.

Animation Desk is an iPad app (free and premium versions available) for creating short, animated videos. The app allows you to create drawings using just your finger on your iPad's screen. In the free version of the app (the version that I tried) you can create up to 50 scenes in each of your projects. In each scene you can include as little or as much as you want to draw on the canvas. There are a few different brush and pencil effects that you can use in your drawings. The opacity of the colors you choose can be altered too. When you have completed drawing all of your scenes hit the play button to watch your animation unfold. If you're happy with your animation you can export it to YouTube.

Draw Island is a free online tool for creating drawings and simple GIF animations. Draw Island offers you your choice of four canvas sizes on which you can draw. Draw Island offers two canvas sizes for creating simple GIF animations. To use Draw Island just head to the site and select a drawing tool. You can draw free hand (or should I say free mouse?) or select pre-defined shapes to use in your images. When you're done drawing just click the save button to download your drawing or animation.

Wideo is a service that allows anyone to create animated videos and Common Craft-style videos online. You can create an animated video on Wideo by dragging and dropping elements into place in the Wideo editor then setting the sequence of animations. Each element can be re-used as many times as you like and the timing of the animation of each image can individually adjusted. Wideo's stock elements include text, cartoons, and drawings. You can also upload your own images to use in your videos.

Math Live is a neat mathematics website hosted by Learn Alberta. Math Live presents students with animated stories that teach mathematics lessons. In all there are twenty-three lessons for elementary school and middle school students. The lessons are divided into four categories; Number, Patterns and Relations, Shape and Space, Statistics and Probability. Each animated lesson is accompanied by a mathematics worksheet that students complete either while watching the lesson or after viewing the lesson. Each lesson is divided into sections and students can advance or rewind as needed.

Applications for Education
Math Live does a nice good job of providing students with some real world examples of the uses of mathematics. In addition to the student worksheets, Math Live provides teachers with downloadable teaching guides. For parents who would like to help their children with mathematics, Math Live offers parent guides.

Google Earth is one of my favorite tools for students and teachers. The more time a person spends learning the many features of Google Earth, the more that person will see that Google Earth can be used for a lot more than just social studies lessons. I have seen many good science lessons incorporate Google Earth.  Since this is Earth Science week, I've dug up some science lessons that utilize Google Earth.

The Extreme Ice Survey offers a Google Earth file (clicking the link will launch a KML download) that displays the results of the Extreme Ice Survey. In this Google Earth file users can view glaciers, historical data about glaciers, and some video clips about shrinking glaciers. The Extreme Ice Survey website has high quality photos and time lapse videos from the surveyors.

The California Solar Irradiance Map (link launches KMZ download) is a Google Earth file that illustrates how much solar energy could be generated in one year from a horizontally oriented solar panel. The file can be used to see how much energy could be generated from the entire state. The file also includes thousands of individual data points showing how much energy could come from each individual place. Turn on the "placemark data" layer to view individual points.

Richard Treves has a built and shared lesson plans about flooding and volcanoes. The lesson plans include the Google Earth files that your students need to complete the activities. Richard's blog is an excellent source of information on all things Google Earth.

Declan Butler from The Great Beyond blog on Nature.com has created a Google Earth file displaying all of the world's nuclear reactors. Each placemark on the map is color coded according to reactor type. Click on each of the placemarks to learn more about each reactor. You can view the file in your browser by going to The Great Beyond blog or by downloading the kmz file. As Declan points out in the blog post, it would be interesting to have students combine the nuclear reactor layer with layers of information about population density, earthquakes, and tsunamis to evaluate the possible consequences of nuclear reactor melt-downs.

Earth Labs at Carleton College offers an excellent set of directions for working with Google Earth to explore watersheds and USGS watershed data.

Appalachian Voices is a featured project in the Google Earth Outreach gallery. The project uses Google Earth along with other tools to show people the effects of the practice of mountaintop removal mining.

One of the featured projects on the Google Earth educator's page is a lesson on plate tectonics. The lesson was developed by Cheryl Davis for 5th and 6th grade students.

Dictionary Bubble is a free Chrome extension that provides definitions and synonyms for any word that you double-click in an online article. The extension will also provide an audio pronunciation of the words on which you double-click. If highlighting and or using keyboard commands is more your style, you can customize the extension to response to highlights and keyboard shortcuts.


Applications for Education
Dictionary Bubble could be useful to students who need a little assistance with the definitions and or pronunciations of new words that they encounter in an online reading assignment.

H/T to Addictive Tips. 

This week is the American Geosciences Institute's Earth Science Week. The Earth Science Week website has a list of 151 Earth Science lesson activities. The can be searched according to grade level, content standard, and topic. Many of the lessons include hands-on activities for students to do on their own, with a classmate, or with their parents. A few of the hands-on activities that I think students will like are modeling an oil reserve, earthquake machine, and chocolate rock cycle.

The Japanese Science and Technology Center offers nine outstanding science lessons. The list of lessons and activities covers topics in physics, biology, psychology, geography, and space science. The general format of each virtual lesson is to present a manageable chunk of information followed by activities in which students try to use that information. I hesitate to generalize the activities as games because not all of them are games and those that are games are not "drill" games. Each lesson has multiple parts (some have 20+ parts) and multiple activities.

The logo displayed at the top of this post is from JST's Earth Guide which is an eight part virtual lesson about the Earth's place in the solar system and the environment of the the Earth. Each of the eight parts of JST's Earth Guide features multiple forms of information.

The virtual lesson that drew me to JST is the Mind Lab. Mind Lab is a virtual lesson on biology and psychology. The lesson is designed to make students think about the ways in which they perceive the things they see. Mind Lab has four introductory video lesson about the way in which we absorb information and how what we perceive might not be reality. One sample activity from the Mind Lab helps students discover their "blind spots" and teaches them how people sometimes become oblivious to their blind spots.

Applications for EducationThe Japanese Science and Technology Center's Virtual Science Center's lessons are appropriate for middle school and high school use. Some lessons offer more depth than others, but all of the activities offer excellent content. Here is the full list of lessons: Mind Lab, Search for ET, Physics of Amusement Parks, Optical Communications, Earth Guide, The World of Rust, Energy Transmission in Sports, the Human Genome, and the Mysteries of the Body.

Welcome to a post that is intended to show how two educational initiatives can compliment one another.  Also, be sure to check out an upcoming webinar that I will be moderating involving Flipped Learning at PBS Learning Media.  First, to ensure you do not miss one of these valuable posts or other resources covering PBL, Digital Curriculum, Web 2.0, STEM, 21st century learning, and technology integration, please sign up for 21centuryedtech by email or RSS.  As always,  I invite you to follow me on twitter (@mjgormans). Please give this post a retweet and pass it on. Have a great week – Michael Gorman (21centuryedtech)

Booking Info – Are you looking for a practical and affordable professional development workshop for your school or conference?  I have traveled the country delivering PD relating to technology integration, PBL, STEM, Digital Literacy, and the 4 C’s. I have done 100′s of workshops and presentations.  Check out my Booking Page… Dates are going fast, with time up to and including December filled,  but I am  taking 2014 dates.

Free Flipped Learning Webinar from PBS Learning Media – I will be  moderating an exciting free webinar at PBS Learning Media. Joining me will be Jon Bergmann, one of the Flipped Classroom experts and pioneers. I know you will enjoy his engaging presentation. He is an amazing facilitator and speaker. You can register for free at PBS Learning: Get Your Tech On. The date is Wednesday, October 16, at 4:00 PM EDT. You can also listen to a conversation between Jon and myself at the Flipside BAM Radio Network. Last, be sure to take a look at Jon Bergmann’s book co-authored with Aaron Sams entitled Flip Your  Classroom. It is a must read for those considering or practicing the Flip. Also, take a moment to visit the Flipped Learning Network.  Last, don’t forget to learn more about PBL at the BUCK Institute (BIE) where I am on the National Faculty. Now…  let’s investigate PBL and Flipped connections. Read On!

Project Based Learning and Flipped Classrooms: There Really is a Connection – Mike Gorman (http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/)

Have you ever considered flipping your classroom and engaging students in Project Based Learning at the same time? As I study these learning processes I see possibilities that allow the two to not only coexist, but also complement each other. How might this work? They do share similar emphasis on higher order thinking skills. Another not so obvious way the two can complement each other is based on productivity and time. Let’s take a closer look.

As you might know Project Based Learning (PBL) is a dynamic process that allows students to learn and understand content at Bloom’s highest level while taking an active part in their learning. PBL provides for deep inquiry, which leads to rich and powerful understanding. Through authentic experiences, and a driving question that engages students with content standards, PBL has the ability to be a delivery method for the student centered classroom. In PBL, formative learning activities are scaffolded throughout the project. This allows for productivity between content delivery, facilitation, and student production.  Let’s consider a way to allow for even more student productivity in PBL, which can  exponentially spiral learning,  How can this increased productivity for both teacher and learner take place? A flipped infusion just might  be the answer.

As you might already know the Flipped Classroom was first coined with the idea that class lectures are recorded and watched at home while the teacher assists students with homework in school. Technology makes this very basic scenario a real possibility. Through the years the Flipped Classroom concept has become more sophisticated with an increased benefit to the student. While lectures still may be ported for home use, teachers have found powerful ways to  utilize class time beyond homework help. The Flipped Classroom has become more of a Flipped Learning experience. While instructional videos may be  viewed at  home, teachers are providing higher order learning activities at school to compliment the home learning experience.

As we look at the process of PBL and Flipped Learning we can begin to see how the two together can promote Bloom’s higher order learning.  Together they provide  a streamlining of valuable time, which in turn allows for increased productivity. As we continue to examine this concept several other added benefits are accomplished.

First, as teachers combine the PBL and Flipped experience,  they see learning spiral. This allows teachers the opportunity to bring the home learning experience up a notch. Students are provided open ended questions, engaging interactive activities, and front loaded thought provoking videos at home that can spur classroom discussions and activities for the next class period. This blended experience erases the classroom walls allowing for an authentic and constant learning experience. Instructional videos, while still used at home, can also be incorporated as part of the PBL scaffold during class time.  After-all, research has demonstrated that an instructional video can be more time productive than a live lecture. Plus, there is also the added benefit of the student able to pause, rewind, and replay the instruction. Try that in a lecture. Please note that the teacher is still available for face to face time in order to provide any reinforcement needed in the learning process.

In this day of what appears to be numerous educational initiatives, it is exciting to see how two are able to work in harmony with each other. In fact, as we further reflect we just might see how other initiatives such as 21^st century competencies (4 C’s),  technology integration, digital curriculum and literacy, 1 to 1 computing, PBL, and Flipped Learning  really do blend as one.  In closing, we just may wish to ask, how many educational initiatives there really are? Perhaps there are not as many as we originally thought. It maybe time for you to see how PBL and Flipped Learning really can work in productive harmony. After implementing these two practices,  you may wish to work on student centered learning  next. Or perhaps you will have already done it!.

Thanks for joining me on this wonderful journey of 21st century resources and please feel free to attend what will be an awesome webinar . Join me in future weeks as together we continue to explore several more posts devoted to the Flipped Classrooms, Project Based Learning, Assessing 21st century skills, technology integration, web resources, and digital literacy.  I enjoy learning from all of you. Also remember to subscribe to this blog by RSS or email and follow me on twitter at mjgormans. I also appreciate your sharing of this post and any retweets. Keep up the amazing work,  have a great week, and enjoy the resources! – Mike Gorman

Booking Info - Are you looking for a practical and affordable professional development workshop for your school or conference?  I have traveled the country delivering PD relating to technology integration, PBL, STEM, Digital Literacy, and the 4 C’s. I have done 100′s of workshops and presentations.  Check out my Booking Page… Dates are going fast, with time up to and including December just about filled,  but i am  taking 2014 dates.

It seems like every social studies teacher I talk to asks about reading and writing strategies. Everyone is freaking about Common Core ELA literacy skills for history / government. And I suppose that’s a good thing. Good social studies instruction should always include reading and writing activities.

But I believe that we sometimes overthink the whole process. Give kids engaging questions, provide some interesting evidence, and step out of the way.

An easy way to focus on document analysis and support writing skills is something I call Graphic Notes. A Graphic Note is a lot like a Thought Bubble but takes it a bit further. So you can use it as a hook activity or even as a type of assessment.

1. Start by finding a photo or painting depicting an event, idea or group of people that helps introduce your content. I call this photo the visual anchor – it’s the one piece of evidence that the instruction revolves around. In this example, I used a photo from Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama as my visual anchor.

2. Begin the activity by asking kids to complete a simple sentence based on clues they find in the image:

This image shows . . .

3. Have students share their completed sentences with each other. Then, working in small groups, have them predict what they think will happen next. Share out whole group.

Your students will want to know the answer – what happened next?

4. Let them find out on their own. Have kids source the image by asking them to become 10 Minute Experts on Bloody Sunday. (Ten Minute Experts are kids who use print and online resources to quickly learn the basics of a specific topic. You can provide these resources or guide kids to find the resources themselves. They’re Ten Minute Experts cause, well . . . you spend just ten minutes doing it. And like it or not, Wikipedia should be part of the ten minutes.)

5. Using photo editing software such as Comic Life or a mobile app like Explain Everything or Notability, students add speech and thought bubbles to a variety of the people in the painting. The text in the bubbles should highlight factual as well as inferred information.

I used Keynote and then simply took a screenshot of the finished image. Depending on your image, you could add bubbles to all of sorts of things including animals and objects.

6. The final step should be to have students use the different thoughts and sayings suggested to write a brief story or account of the event depicted in the image. You might also require students to complete the sentence:

A connection between then and now would be . . .

Have fun!

Filed under: 21st century skills, civil rights, digital storytelling, graphic organizer, historical thinking, primary sources, strategies, tip of the week

Presentations give you the ability to bring a story to life in a visually compelling way—whether it’s a pitch for a new product idea, a deck for a history class assignment, or an introduction to your surfing club. Today you can take the magic up a notch with two new features in Slides—widescreen format and editable master slides.

With widescreen presentations, you get a ton of new space to fill with words, charts, tables or even a simple, beautiful image.
Since the majority of monitors and displays are now widescreen, new presentations will be widescreen by default. You can change the size of your slides using the pull down menu in the theme chooser, or by visiting Page setup in the File menu.
Every presentation you make with Slides has a theme that comes with a set of preset colors, font styles and sizes, backgrounds, etc. to give you a consistent look and feel throughout your deck.

One of your top requests has been to customize these presets throughout your presentation. With editable master slides, you can now easily tailor how content appears on every slide by selecting "Edit master" from the Slide menu. For example, you can set all of your header fonts to Alconica, make all of your first level bullets bold, and add a logo in the bottom right corner.
Voila! The thumbnail previews alongside the master show that all of these changes are made instantly across all of the slides in your presentation.

And that’s not all. Each theme consists of a variety of slide layouts, which can also now be individually customized or created from scratch.

We hope that these new ways to customize Slides help you tell better stories, and look forward to seeing the beautiful themes that you come up with. Look out for these updates throughout the course of the day.

Since so many of you have been requesting custom themes, we want to see what you can do! Share your own custom theme on Google+ with the hashtag #mygoogleslides and we'll feature the most impressive & beautiful presentations on our +page.

Posted by: Michael Thomas, Software Engineer

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a way to be alerted whenever a student entered new information into the Google Form that she shared with them. There are a couple of Google Sheets scripts that can be used to accomplish this task. The easiest script to use is called "form_alert." This simple script will send you an email alert whenever someone enters new information into your form. The email that you receive will contain a timestamp along with the information that was submitted through your Google Form. The spreadsheet attached to your Google Form will still update as usual too. Directions for using "form_alert" are included in the screen captures below (click the images to view them in full size).

Step 1:

Step 2:


Step 3:


Step 4: 

After clicking configure you will begin to receive alerts in the email account that is attached to your Google Drive account.

If you browse through the Google Docs Template Gallery you will find a bunch of templates for creating flashcards in Google Spreadsheets. There is also a flashcard script available in the script gallery (open the insert menu in a spreadsheet to search for the script). None of those templates nor the script is as easy to use as Flippity.

Flippity is a free tool for creating flashcards from data in a Google Spreadsheet. Flippity provides clear directions for the simple steps to take to create your flashcards. To create your flashcards use the Flippity template, enter your data, publish the spreadsheet to the web, then grab your Flippity link. Your Flippity link will take you to a Flippity page on which you and your students can flip through your flashcards. Flippity includes a shuffle function and an option to remove cards from your deck of flashcards as you flip through them.

Applications for Education
Flippity is a good tool that you and or your students can use to create flashcards for any number of topics. I learned about Flippity from Steve Fortna who is a Spanish teacher.

OpenEd is a new site that claims to be the world's largest educational resource catalog. On OpenEd you can search for videos, games, and other educational materials. Your searches can be conducted according to content area, grade level, Common Core standard, or a combination of those factors. You can also search according to keyword although when I tried the keyword search option it didn't work well.

As a registered OpenEd user (registration is free and takes less than thirty seconds to complete) you can create courses and playlists of videos and other materials that you find in the OpenEd directory. You can align your courses and playlists to standards. If you choose to align your course to a standard, OpenEd will suggest materials to you.

Applications for Education
The biggest benefit of OpenEd seems to be found in the search tools. Rather than searching and hoping to find a video on YouTube that matches the standard(s) you're addressing in a lesson, you can start with the standard and have OpenEd locate videos for you.

Simple Surface is an online whiteboard tool that I initially reviewed a couple of years ago when it was known as My Simple Surface. The "my" was dropped from the name because the tool is now a collaborative tool. With Simple Surface you can collaboratively create outlines and mind maps.

To get started with Simple Surface just click on "use for free now," double click on the surface, and then start typing. To create an additional thought box just double click anywhere on your board. To make sibling and child thought boxes use the enter and tab keys. You can edit the color and size of fonts. Your boxes can be linked to URLs too. Right-click on your surface to open the full menu of editing options.


Applications for Education
Simple Surface could be a great tool for students to use to create webs and mind maps to plan creative stories, draft outlines for research reports, or diagram a set of concepts they're trying to connect.  You could also have students use Simple Surface as a storyboard tool to plan video projects.

This morning at the Title I and Special Education Conference in Bismarck, ND I presented my latest version of Best of the Web. This version was updated to include new resources that I've discovered since June. This version is roughly 50% new material from the last version that I published.

The slides are embedded below. You can download them from Slideshare.



Click here for more information about my workshops, keynotes, and how you can bring me to your school or conference. My winter schedule still has some dates available.

Let's speculate that before this year's cohort of first-year teachers retires from math education more than 50% of American classrooms will feature 1:1 technology. That's a conservative prediction – both in the timeline and the percentage – and it's more than enough to make me wonder what makes for good curricula in a 1:1 classroom. What are useful questions to ask?

Here's the question I ask myself whenever I see new curricula crop up for digital networked devices like computer, laptops, tablets, and phones.

Is it any different?

That isn't a rhetorical or abstract question. I mean it in two separate and specific ways.

Digital

If you print out each page of the digital networked curriculum, is it any different?

The answer here is "sort of."

When I look at iBooks in the iBookstore from Pearson and McGraw-Hill or when I see HMH publish their Algebra Fuse curriculum in the App Store, I see lots of features and, yes, they require a digital medium. They have a) interactive slider-type demonstrations, b) slideshows that walk students through worked examples, c) stock video in the margins instead of stock photography, d) graded multiple-choice quizzes, e) videos of Edward Burger explaining math concepts and f) probably other items I'm forgetting. None of those features would survive the downgrade to paper.

So the question becomes, "Is it different enough?"

Are these offerings different enough to justify the enormous expense in hardware, software, and bandwidth? Do they take full advantage of their digital birthright?

I don't think so.

Networked

"Is it any different?" here means "if you were hundreds of feet below the surface of the Earth, in a concrete bunker without any kind of Internet access, is the curriculum any different?"

Here, in September 2013, the answer is "no," which is a shocking waste of very expensive, very powerful device.

Look at the apps you have on the home screen of your smartphone and ask yourself "how many of these are better because they have a large network of people using them?" Me, I have 12 apps on my homescreen and eight of them – Tweetbot, Messages, Instapaper, Instagram, Phone, Mail, Safari, Spotify – are so much better because of the crowd of people that use them with me. When I switch off my phone's network connection, they get so much worse. Those are the apps I care most about also, the ones that enrich my life, the ones that justify the expense of a smartphone.

When you switch off the network connection, most curriculum stays exactly the same. It doesn't suffer at all, which means it isn't taking advantage of the network connection when it's on.

More Different

Digital devices should allow you to:

• Pose more interesting problems using more diverse media types and fewer words. (eg. three-act-style tasks).
• Replace your textbooks' corny illustrations of mathematical contexts with illustrations from their own lives. Students: find a trapezoid from your own life. Take a photo. Tap upload. Now it's in your textbook.
• Progressively disclose tasks over multiple screens so students don't have to look at pages full of questions and information like this [pdf] and can instead start with a brief video and single sentence.

Networked devices should allow you to:

• See all your friends' illustrations from their own lives. The teacher should be able to see that gallery of trapezoids, promote certain illustrations, and offer comments on others that are visible to everybody.
• Start lessons with integrated, formative polling. I'm talking about Riley Lark's ActivePrompt software built right into the textbook.
• Create student conversations. Use student data to find students who disagree with each other, pair them up, and have them work out their differences. All of that should happen without the teacher having to facilitate it because the device is smart.
• Combine student data for better, more accurate modeling. (eg. Pennies, where each student collects a few data points which are then instantly collected into a much larger class data set.)

There are other possibilities, of course, some of which we'll only start to realize as these tools are developed. But don't just sit around and wait for an industry as reactive as textbook publishing to start making those tools for you. Publishers and their shareholders react to their market and that's you. As long as they can still profit by repurposing existing print curriculum they will. It's on you to tell your publishing reps that the curriculum they're selling doesn't do enough justice to the powerful, digital networked devices they're putting them on. It isn't different enough.

2013 Sep 27. And here's LA Unified buying a billion dollars worth of iPads and then wasting the network that might make that investment worthwhile:

By Tuesday afternoon, L.A. Unified officials were weighing potential solutions. One would limit the tablets, when taken home, to curricular materials from the Pearson corporation, which are already installed. All other applications and Internet access would be turned off, according to a district "action plan."

Featured Comment

Elizabeth Statmore:

This is always a problem in the early stages of a new technology. The “Technology Adoption Life Cycle” has proven itself over and over for the last 20 years to be the gold standard in analyzing tech markets.

The “innovators” adopt a technology because they need to be the first kids on their block to have whatever it is. The “early adopters” see strategic advantages and uses for it — and they are willing to put up with what they perceive as minor inconveniences like limited optimized uses in order to gain the advantages they seek.

That moment of “crossing the chasm” into the mainstream is that moment when a technology catches fire because vendors have figured out a way to reach beyond the techno-enthusiastic “early adopters” who have sustained their businesses to the techno-unimpressed “early majority” customers who are the major “show-me” skeptics. These skeptics form the first mass market for a technology, followed only later — and reluctantly — by a “late majority.”

Seems to me that we are still very much in an “early adopter” market in the race for digital textbooks. No one knows the “killer app” for digital curriculum is going to look like, but we do know it might bear some slight resemblance to the analog textbook. But this will not

As Steve Jobs always used to say, the “killer app” for the iPhone was making a phone call. But it was all the supporting infrastructure tht was built in (seamlessly integrated contacts, e-mail, texting, reminders, calendar, notes, & management of the technology) that transformed the act of making a phone call.