Last Tech Tuesday of 2011-2012

Good afternoon everyone. I hope this post finds you all well. I wanted to make sure I sent out the last Tech Tuesday of the year on Tuesday.

While I will be continue to explore and catalogue awesome new sites over the summer, I will not be updating the page until the school year starts. Thanks for all of the support and kind words. It's always nice to know that the site is helping teachers.

Here are some final plugs for those interested in attending a conference or getting some Grad credit over the summer. 

The Digital Teaching Series
I'm teaching a grad class online on Project Based Learning using Web Tools. If you are interested in exploring 21st Century instruction, consider taking my course.

The summer is a great time to relax, but also get needed credit hours. Here is a great program that offers online professional development from experts.

6 Week Courses

4.5 CEUs

3 Graduate credits available

The Digital Teacher Series is perfect for you if you:

• Want to dramatically improve student engagement and retention during your class
• Recognize the need to meet your “digital learners” on a new level
• Are feeling pressured to utilize district-purchased technology
• Understand your role in preparing your students to become “online learners”

There are 6 course on a wide variety of digital topics that are worth checking out.

 

Michigan Google Conference

Michigan has it's own official Google Conference set for October 19th. Registration is open and I encourage teachers that are interested in exploring what the free tools that Google has to offer can bring to their classroom. I may be biased as a featured speaker, but trust me when I tell you that this will be a valuable conference for teachers looking to learn more about Google tools. I encourage you to sign up quickly before space runs out.

Below you will find links to topics I have covered on this site. Each link will take you to posts that contain the topic I tagged them.

I hope everyone has a great summer and I look forward with working with all of you in the Fall.

Dropbox           Elementary               English               Google               Math         

Science             Smartboards            Social Media      Social Studies    Technology

I hope everyone has an awesome summer and I hope you will give some of these a try.

NP

Welcome Back #GPPSS

Welcome back everyone! It is wonderful to be back in this great district ready to help our students achieve all of their goals and dreams.

My schedule has changed a bit from last year. I will be teaching 3 sections of English at South and the rest of the day will be dedicated to working with all of you to integrate technology into your curriculum.

My number one job is gong to be getting into your classroom, when invited, and work with you on integrating technology to best fit your needs. I'm currently working on the best way to reach out to all of you, so please be patient as we start the year.

I look forward to working with all of and your curriculum to find the best way to utilize the tools we have for the lesson you are creating. Just using any tool doesn't make the lesson better, the right tool for the right lesson is needed to get the most out of it.

The blog will be up and running and I will be sharing great resources as I stumble across them.

Here are some great tips from Greg Johnson of North and Scott Peltier of South. If you have great tips you would like to share, leave a comment on the post or shoot me an email.

From Greg: LCD Adjustment


The screen resolution on the teacher computer monitor was adjusted over the summer to 1280x1024. However at that resolution, the LCD projectors do not provide the correct image size on the Smartboard (left and right vertical sides are blank).

If you would like to lower your monitor’s resolution back to 1024x768 so that the image from the LCD projector will fit the Smartboard properly, please submit a helpdesk request so that it can be changed.


From Scott: Pinnacle Seating Charts

I found out that there are some who are not familiar with the seating chart in Pinnacle. Trust me, it is so much easier than Zangle’s version. Just drag the photos wherever you wish and print.



I hope everyone had a great summer and are ready to keep this the best district in the state.

- Nicholas Provenzano

@MrProvenzano

Back From Denver

I spent part of last week in Denver at the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. Of all of the conferences I have ever been to, this was the best. It was the best Professinal Development I could ever ask for in regards to technology. I met teachers from all over the country and the world and we shared some interesting ideas about tech integration and professional development.

The one thing that I walked away with was the fact that, like myself, there were many teachers that were there because they wanted to be there. They were not sent their by their district, they found the conference and asked the district to if they would send them. Technology in education is something that needs to be teacher driven and building/district supported. That is the only true to grow and expand technology in the classroom. The connections I've made over the past 6 months on Twitter and the various blogs and Nings I'm part of will have a major impact on my methodology this upcoming school year.

I have a few blog posts I'm linking to for your consideration. They cover various aspects of the conference and technology in schools. Take some time and consider what they mean to your classroom or building. Now is the time to get on board and be innovators instead of playing catch up a few years from now. I hope your summer is going very well and you are resting up for another exciting school year. Please, please leave a comment with your thoughts on this post and others. Without your input, we will never know what direction to head.

Here is The ISTE Ning if you are curious as to what ISTE is. 

Here are a few posts from me during and after the conference.


A Blogger's  Cafe In My Classroom?

Man in the Mirror

Classroom Creativity

So, Now What?

Mary Beth Hertz - She was recognized as an Emerging Leader by the ISTE at the conference and I had a chance to hang out with her and talk for a bit. She is very smart and has some great ideas about technology in the classroom. Here are a couple of posts from her that you should read. Follow her on Twitter at @mbteach

Dissecting the 21st Century Teacher

Is ISTE Still Relevant to Young Educators?

This post is by George Couros who is a principal at K-12 program in Alberta, Canada. He has some interesting insight into technology in the classroom for administrators. If you are an admin or are working on your Masters in Administration, you should check out the post below and his other posts. If you are still not on Twitter, sign up and follow him at @Gcouros.

An Open Letter o School Administrators


Here is a great set of videos from Buzz Garwood about Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). You should watch it because it has me in it, but more importantly it further explains the value of Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, etc) to teachers. I'm in the one at the bottom of the group of videos.




Kyle Pace is an Instructional Technology Specialist and is active on Twitter. He moderates the US version of #edchat. You can follow him @KylePace. An excellent post on PLNs and what they can do for teachers.

The People of a PLN

Kristina Peter's post on the Digital Generation is a must read. Our students do not learn the same way we did in school Here are some great notes she took during an ISTE Conference Session that explain this generations learns and what we can do to help them.

Those are just a few of the posts from people that I had so much fun meeting and sharing ideas. I look forward to meeting these teachers at other conferences and continuing to grow and push the limits of technology in  my classrooms and others. Please leave me a comment if you have any ideas about PLNs, Twitter, ISE, etc.

Thanks and as always,

- Give it a try!

One Stop Shopping

Some other people have posted this link, but I figured I would pass it along as well. A site, onlinedegrees.com, has put together a list of the top 100 technology blogs for teachers. When I started out in January, I had not idea where to look for blogs to follow or which tweets I should listen to. This site did some research and put together a stellar list of educators and their blogs. I read many of these blogs, but was happy to find some other great ones. They were immediately placed on my Reader so I can learn from them. Take a look at these blogs and see what you can learn and share with these great educators. Oh, except for #39. That blog is terrible! ;-)

Summer Tech Tuesday Treat

Happy Last Tech Tuesday (of the school year)! I found some time between checking essays and entering in grades to put together some info on some great sites for you to take a look at over the summer. I wanted to take a quick moment and thank all of you who have bee supportive of the blog and have sent me words of thanks and encouragement. It's nice to know that the blog is helpful to some of you. I will continue to post over the summer from time to time, so please add my blog to a RSS feed or just pop in and take a look around to see if there is anything new. Thanks again for the support and I hope you have an awesome summer.

Social Studies!

Here are two sites care of ILearnTechnology. Kelly Tenkely's site is always full of amazing reviews and these two American Government sites are amazing. I know I've said this before, but if you are not checking out her site on a regular basis, you are missing out on tons of great material for your classroom.

The first site is the Branches of Government. It's a very simple game that has students drag leaves from the ground onto the three different branches of the government tree. Each leaf had a fact pertaining to a specific branch of the government. The goal is to place all of the leaves on the correct branched with the fewest mistakes. This would be perfect for use with the Smartboard since you can have students get up and drag and drop the answers by hand. It's a fun and simple game that can be used for review after discussing the three branches of government.

This site is an epic game. Road to the Capital places the user, in this case, the class, in an election against a politician that wants to ban and review all media for kids. As a class, or as individual students in a lab, you can review important case information on Freedom of Speech, Assembly, Religion and other important rights and then go to different parts of the map for mini-quizzes on the materials you have studied. Each mini-quiz will award you poll points. The goal is to end up with more points than your opponent and win the election. I sat down and played this game for over 30 minutes and had a blast.

This is a great way to teach the different aspects of our electoral process and the importance of individual freedoms in a way that students can understand. I highly recommend that Social Studies teachers take a look at this site and think of a way to use it in class next year. Very rarely are they fun and interactive ways to teach government, but this site is the exception. I really think students learning about government would take away some important information if this site is used.

Vocabulary

Wordia is a site I only recently found through Twitter and I'm still exploring. I have high hopes for this site and it is currently working on a school version for users. The gist of the site is that it takes everyday words and gives you the standard dictionary definition. Next to the Standard Definition, there is a video of a person's view of the word, the connotation. The idea behind the British site is to make stronger connections to words beyond the standard definitions. The word Pitch is a great example of SD and Connotation. While the Lion is a bit goofy, the point is well made that there are words that have other meaning besides the SD.

The site has one vocabulary quiz game and a couple more on the horizon. It's always good to see more vocabulary games on the Internet. The more practice students can have with new words, they will become stronger readers and writers. The school version will help build those skills as well.

The school version of the program, once it's up and running, will allow schools to upload their own videos and share within the school or district only. This keeps the site safe for kids to use at school or at home. Comments can be moderated and approved to keep the site safe and appropriate for all ages.

I would love to use this in conjunction with my daily vocabulary words. I could have students record their own meaning of words and post them to the site and have other students comment on them. This would allow students a different way to learn vocabulary instead of looking up words and staring at a page. Working with the vocabulary words will hit far higher on Blooms than staring at a piece of notebook paper with definitions. As this site grows, I look forward to seeing what other things it has to offer for students and teachers to help grow vocabulary.

That's All Folks...

I hope all of you have a great summer and come back with a fresh set of batteries. If you have questions or ideas, please feel free to leave a comment on the blog and I'll get an email. See ya! :-)

Skyping in the Classroom

Skype is a tool that allows people to chat with a video connection from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. Schools have been using this tool for a couple of years to knock down the walls of their school and let their students see the world around them. Around the World in 80 Schools is an idea from the Langwitches Blog that took the idea of using Skype in the classroom.  This blog is run by Silvia Tolisano and it is filled with wonderful ideas and resources that is worth a look through. If you are on Twitter, you should be following her @langwitches to keep up to date on her adventures in the classroom.

Her goal for this project was to connect with 80 different schools over the course of 6 months. Her blog outlines the project and offers various updates over the course of the 6 months. She created a Ning that has all of the information you could want about setting up something similar in your class. Here is a great video that explain the adventure she went on.




Here are some links that will take you to sites that can connect you with classrooms that are looking for Skype partners.

Skype other Classrooms from Edublogger

Skype in Schools

Skype for Educators

Skype in the Classroom - Click on the Comments to see those willing to Skype

50 Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom

Here are some bookmarks from Langwitches that you might find helpful.


Don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of information presented here. Like all good lessons, take you time and see how this might work in your classroom. As a student, I would ave loved the chance to talk to other students from all over the world about books we are reading or to be able to get first hand knowledge about a country we are studying. Take the time and see how this would impact your students.

- Give it a try!

Tools for the 21st Century Teacher

I found this great document on my Google Reader today and thought I would pass it on to you wonderful people. Michael Zimmer is Technology Integration Specialist and has posted many great things on his blog, The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness. Please take a moment and add his blog to your reader or scan through his posts. It is worth your time if you are interested in integrating technology into your classroom.

The document below is something Michael put together to provide some information on some very valuable tools for teachers in the 21st Century. I have used these tools in my life and in the classroom and they have done wonders for creating a more interactive and engaging learning environment in my classroom. Take a look at these tools and see how you might be able to incorporate them into your class.

Open publication - Free publishing - More 21st century


- Give it a try!

Shakespeare On The Internet!

Here is a great list of resources put together by a wonderful educator. Jerry Blumengarten aka @cybraryman1 He has a whole host of other great resources you migth find interestig and helpful in the classroom. He recently tweeted his collection of Shakespeare sites and I loved them. If you teach Shakespeare or are just a fan, please stop by and take a look at what he has put together. You will not be dissappointed.

 Shakespeare


- Give it a try!

A Little Something for the Art Teachers

Here are some great art sites I found while reading a great blog by @2sparkley. It's called Bits and Pieces Place. It has a bunch of great resources for all subjects and grade levels. I wanted to point out one set of resources for the Art Teachers because they often get left out of the Teacher Tech stuff because good stuff is hard to come by. Fun Art Sites is a great post that lists some art sites that you can use with your SmartBoard.

• Learn from Cezanne
• A Pointilism Practice Page
• Surreal Painter
• Animal Mix-up (This looks like crazy fun!)

Those are just a few of the sites she has put together for Art Teachers to use in the classroom. Stop by her page and take a look around. Drop her a comment if you find anything useful. She would really appreciate it.

- Give it a try!

Digital Natives

Digital Natives are people that have grown up their entire life with with 21st Century Technology. Digital Immigrants grew up in a time before 21st Century Technology and are learning to use it now. Here is an interesting slide show that explains Digital Natives. As teachers, these are the students that are in our classroom. If you are a Digital Immigrant, how are you trying to reach the Natives.

Digital Natives

View more presentations from Nick Skytland.

Thanks to Kathleen McGeady for sharing this slide show.

60Second Recap

I found this site today and I have to share it with everyone. As an English teacher, it is tough to get students to read "Classics". They complain about the language and want to know how this will ever be important. I spend countless hours coming up with lessons to intorduce the novel in a fun way in the hopes to hook some of the reluctant readers. 60Second Recap is a great site to use to really help students get a handle on what the story is about.

Here is their Mission Statement:

"60second Recap™ wants to make the great works of literature accessible, relevant, and, frankly, irresistible to today's teens. Through 60second Recap™ video albums, we seek to help teens engage with the best books out there ... not just to help them get better grades, but to help them build better lives."

I love this mission statement. It really expresses the goal of all literature teachers. I watched the first video on Hamlet, my favorite Shakespeare play, and was very happy with what I saw. Hamlet, played by Jenny, is taking an online quiz, "Are you Mad?" It gives a nice bit of information about different aspects of the play. There are videos on Motif, Theme, Plot, Symbols, and the Characters in the play. It was a very well put together piece.

60Second Recap currently offers recaps of some great pieces of Literature. Here are just a few:


Animal Farm
Brave New World
Fahrenheit 451 (On my Top 5 All Time List)
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
Catcher in the Rye (On my Top 5 All Time List)
The Great Gatsby (On my Top 5 All Time List)

There are many more great pieces of Literature that get the 60Second Recap treatment. I strongly encourage all Literature teachers to give this site a look over and use them with your students.

-Give it a try!

Why Teachers Should Tweet

I've been asked by a few teacher why I use Twitter. If they would have asked me the week I started, I would have told them it was something fun to play around with this summer. Now, I feel I would be lost without my Teacher Tweeps. The connections I have made with other teachers from around the world has made me a better teacher. We share ideas, pass links, discuss ed topics and tech topics. There is no limit to what we can discuss. The question I have for people now is, "Why are you NOT on Twitter?"

Below are a few links that can answer some questions about Twitter that you might have.

Richard Byrne has a great blog called Free Technology For Teachers and it is a great source of information. This post will show you how to find other teachers with shared interests on Twitter. You can follow him on Twitter by clicking the Twitter link on his blog.

Laura Walker has a great site that offers wonderful tips. This post gives 9 great reasons Teachers should be on Twitter. You can follow her at @mrswalker

Twitter for Teachers is a site for teachers and it's about Twitter. It has endless resources on Twitter and other great tech tools for the class. Don't skip this site!

Another great site that offers comments on technology, thought on education policy and movementsm, and shares terrific links from other teachers is The Nerdy Teacher. @TheNerdyTeacher

Lastly, you should try to follow the people you know. Friends, famliy and other teachers in the building and district is a great way to get comfortable before you start connecting with the rest of the world. Twitter is where the information is being shared by educators. It's important to keep up or you might be left behind.

- Give it a try!

Abstract Art Without The Mess

I learned about this site from @Ktenkely on her website iLearntechnology. It's an interacitve site that allows you to create Jackson Pollock style paintings without any of the mess. This is great fun on the Smartboard. By clicking the mouse you change to a random color and splashes of paint appear as you move the mouse across the screen. JacksonPollock.org is a wonderful site that art teachers can use that will save you a big cleanup in the future.

-Give it a try!

Tech Integration For Teachers

Tech Integration for Teachers is a great site for teachers that want to start including different types of technology into their classroom. Do not feel overwhelmed by all of the information. Scan through the different parts and pick and choose the tools that interest you most. You never know what you might find.

The page is for all skill levels, so even the techies will find something they never thought of using in the classroom. This site is just one of many out there designed to help teachers get comfortable integrating different forms of tech into their lessons.

-Give it a try!

See The World From Your Classroom

Here is a great site teachers can use to explore different parts of the world. Here are some of the places you can go:

Explore the Taj Mahal
Stonehenge
 
Mount St. Helens

The Supreme Court

US Capitol Virtual Tour
 
Louvre
 
Just click on this link and you will have access to 100 Great Trips you can take your students on.
 
Give it a Try!

iNudge - Make Beautiful Music

• 
  
  iNudge.net

Here is an interesting site for the Music Teacher in the district. You can create you music with this free device. Here are some of the things you can do on iNudge.

• * Select 1 of 8 different Sound Patterns from the small Matrixes icons on the right.
  * Use your mouse to draw notes on each 16 Step Matrix.
  * For each Pattern, adjust Volume, Mute, Clear, or set Audio Pan from Left to Right.
  * Click on the Tempo numbers and click up or down to change the overall Tempo.
  * Get & Share allows you to Send Mail, Get Link, Get Embed code or Spread in communities.
  * Use the Feedback Forum to tell us what you think, leave your comments or make suggestions.

This could be a fun site to have music students play with or little children to use to learn about notes. Play around with it and see what you can so with it.

-Give it a try!

Math Teachers Unite!

It was brought to my attention that it is World Math Day on March 3rd by Kelly Tenkely and her iLearn Technology blog post. I thought this would be a fun site to share with the Math teachers in the district. It's a free site for students 5-18 years old and they can practice Math with various games leading up to the main event on March 3rd. The main event is a competition that involves 60 second games and points are awarded to the student for every correct answer. The goal for a students is receive the most points and enter the Hall of Fame. It looks like a nice way to change up the pace for a day and really let kids have a chance to use their math and take some pride in their skills. Plus, wouldn't you want to brag if your students made the Hall of Fame? You know I would. :-) Check out the World Math Day site or iLearn Technology for more details.

-Give it a try!