Our Last Post

First of all, thank you all so much for participating in this year's Learn & Earn! I hope there have been a few things that have sparked your interest and inspired your use of technology. In fact, for this week's clock hours, I'd love to hear what you think was the most useful post (or posts) for you. After perusing past posts, come back here and tell us what you liked most.

Also, as a special treat, I'm accepting late work. :) If you'd like to go back and comment on weeks that you missed, feel free. Please do so by the end of next week.

Finally, if it's not on your calendar yet, you had better put it there--the  10Tech Summer Conference is around the corner: June 25-27. Registration will open soon!

Social Bookmarking--a New Tool

Social bookmarking--the name for a variety of web 2.0 tools that allow you to collect and share your favorite websites--has been around for a while, with Delicious and Diigo leading the pack. Both of these sites have evolved quite a bit since their debut several years ago. Now there's Pearltrees. My colleague Christine used it just the other day to create a collection of websites she will have teachers explore next week. Below you see an example from their site that shows how someone used it to create a collection of resources for the Common Core Standards.

Take a look and give it a try. (Or, if you prefer, try out Diigo or Delcious.) (In all cases you'll have to create an account.) I think social bookmarking has application both as a teacher productivity tool AND as a way to share sites with students. What do you think?

Go.Tahoma!

If you recall, back in February, I ran a post about our Go.Tahoma project which will provide Google accounts under our own Go.Tahoma domain for all secondary students and staff beginning next fall. Since then, several pioneering teachers have volunteered (themselves and their students) to help us make sure everything is working as it should this spring. So far Walt and I have successfully introduced Go.Tahoma accounts to about two or three teachers (and their students) in each seconary building. This means you may have some students in your classes who have accounts now and are using the apps to complete school assignments and projects.

Are Google Docs new to you? Watch this video for a two-minute introduction:

All students and staff will have access to these tools next fall, but why wait? You're in the Earn and Learn class, so you can explore now. If you've been a regular contributor to this blog, I will send you your login information in an email. If you haven't been commenting, but have been reading and want to get your information now, send me an email and I'll send you your information. The login information I send you will allow you to sign in and start experimenting with Google docs, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, sites, and calendar. Your students will not have access until next fall unless they are in a pioneering teacher's class.

Once you get your account information, follow the directions and sign in. You'll see that I shared a document with you. This is one of the great features of Google's collaborative documents--they are collaborative and are easily shared. When you open that document, you'll see that I started a list of ways collaborative documents could be used in the classroom. Please add your own idea (or two) to the list.

(Note: Google docs save automatically, so just log off when you're done. Also, because this is a collaborative document that we will all share, you'll be able to see everyone's ideas in one place. AND, because the document lives on Google's servers (not your computer or the school's network) you'll have access to the document anytime (and from anywhere) you sign in with your Go.Tahoma account.)

For this week's clock hours, you should do two things:

1. Contribute to the collaborative document as described above.
2. Come back here and provide some feedback (comments, questions, celebrations, etc.) about your experience using you Go.Tahoma account. 

Completing both of these tasks will count as two weeks' worth of work to make up for one of the two weeks I was on hiatus.  Again, thank you for that!

Get Ready to Flip for a New(ish) Model of Teaching

Welcome back to the Learn and Earn and thank you for letting me take that brief hiatus. Today's topic is one that you may have heard of, but may not know much about. We're talking about "flipping" your classroom. This idea has been around for a few years, and now it's really starting to get a lot of attention thanks to things like the Khan Academy.

The basic idea behind a flipped classroom is that by swapping what often traditionally happens (lecture) in the classroom with what traditionally happens as home (homework, projects, etc.), teachers can improve student learning, engagement, and increase the rigor in their classrooms and at the same time, save time. Let's start with a quick (2 minutes) introduction:


Sure, there's a little technology involved, but if you have a white board in your classroom and a laptop with a camera (which you do), you could get started flipping your classroom right away. (Not to mention that you also have an instructional technology coach (me) who would help you get started.) But, first, let's learn a bit more about it.

The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation offers several short videos on the topic. There are two short videos embeded on this page. Watch them to build your background knowledge about this topic. NOTE: One of the things I like is how these two teachers use minimal technology to achieve the "flip." Sure you can get fancier, but their approach of one-take videos and use of a white board makes it much more accessible.

What do you think? What questions does this raise for you? Do you see application for your classroom? Why or why not? Interested in some extra credit? Then, why not give it a try yourself? Like I said, I'd be happy to help you get started. Just let me know!

Spring--A Time to Reflect and Grow

It's spring and we're on the verge of spring break. Perhaps, like me, you're looking at doing some yard work, tending your garden in some way--seeing what needs dividing, what needs moved, where you need a new plant, etc. Thus, I thought this week we'd do some similar reflection with our tech "gardens." I'm not providing you with anything new to consider this week, but rather, asking you to do one of the following, then come back here and tell us what you did. And, of course, have a great spring break!

1. Revisit some of the tools and ideas we've covered in Learn and Earn. Identify one that you have implemented and tell us how its use is playing out in your classroom.
2. Revisit some of the tools and ideas we've covered in Learn and Earn. Identify one that you were particularly intrigued by, but haven't really had the chance yet to truly investigate or use, then spend some time doing just that. Come back here and tell us about it.
3. Identify something tech and learning related (that you didn't learn about in Learn and Earn) that you think has had a positive effect on your work and/or student learning. Tell us about it.
4. Identify something tech related that you think could have a positive impact on your work and student learning but that you haven't tried yet (for whatever reason). Why do you think it would be a good thing? What are the roadblocks keeping you from trying it?

So, there, you have it--choose one of the above, then get outside and tend your real garden. :)

Sign Up for SignUp Genius

A friend in another district turned me on to this site that lets you create an easy way for students or parents (or any group, really) to sign up for things like presentation times, conferences, volunteer activities--even potlucks! I played around with it a little bit yesterday, and it, indeed, was pretty simple to set up.

The only thing you really need to think about is how people will access the sign up list. In the end, I selected "Public Anonymous" for my test so that people wouldn't have to create an account with SignUp Genius in order to sign up for my event. However, the advantage of having an account is getting a reminder a couple days in advance of the event.

If you want, visit the test site I made for parent conferences. You can even sign up if you want.

What do you think? Try using this the next time you want students to sign up for in-class presentations or to help organize your club's next event. I think it shows promise and I encourage you to share how you imagine it could make your job a little easier.

Happy Thursday!

Now There's One More Reason to Love TED

This week I want to thank Kristin Edlund for turning me onto TED's ("Ideas Worth Sharing")  new venture: TED-Ed (Lessons Worth Sharing).

First, some background for those of you who don't know what TED Talks are:

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer -- TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize. (from the TED website: http://www.ted.com/pages/about)

Those who know me know that given the opportunity I will go on and on about TED Talks. (Is this an opportunity? I think it is.) I love them. I listen to them at the gym, I watch them while I make dinner, I make my friends watch them after I make them dinner. If I were still in the classroom I would make them a regular feature of my classroom. (Oh, wait! I did do that!--as part of the blended learning class I taught this fall at the high school, a regular assignment was watching, commenting on, and sharing TED Talks. Kids loved them!) I know there are a few teachers who share one talk a week with students and then they discuss it or respond in some other way. One of my favorite ways to have students respond to a TED Talk is to ask them What questions would you ask the speaker? then I have students do some research and see if they can find the answers themselves.

Now, for TED-ed:

TED-Ed's mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators around the world. We do this by pairing extraordinary educators with talented animators to produce a new library of curiosity-igniting videos. A new site, which will launch in early April 2012, will feature these new TED-Ed Originals as well as some powerful new learning tools. (from the TED-Ed website: http://education.ted.com/)

Even though the site hasn't officially launched yet,  you can check out the TED-Ed YouTube channel they've started. I watched a really interesting demonstration of how the brain works using a cockroach's leg.

What do you think? After watching the introduction video above and checking out some of their sample videos, come back here and offer your two cents' worth. Did you find something you could use in your classroom? Or, do you have a suggestion for a lesson? I think linking great lessons/talks with great animation is a super-terrific-fantastic idea. You?

Online Discussions in the Classroom

Every day it seems like a new tool for hosting and tracking online classroom discussions comes along. That's because teachers are realizing how powerful these discussions can be as a way to hear from EVERY student and extend learning beyond the school day.The video below from CollaborizeClassroom, a free online discussion platform for teachers and students, not only provides an overview of their tool, but also provides some compelling reasons you may want to consider using online discussions in your classroom.




Many of you may already be using the online discussion tools built into SWIFT and Moodle. Regardless of the tool, making online discussions rich and meaningful for students can be challenging. Check out the Free Resources for teachers over at CollaborizeClassroom to help with this. In particular, you'll find great tips and ideas for supporting online discussion in the "Getting Started" area, including Dos and Don'ts of Online Student Communication.

Want to experience CollaborizeClassroom from the student perspective? Head on over to my 10Tech CollaborizeClassroom site. When you get there, you'll be prompted to sign in, just as a student would. Click "Register now," then fill in the information, but select the "Don't have an email address? Click here." option (so that your email address is reserved for use as a teacher if you decide to use CollaborizeClassroom and follow the directions. As the teacher, I'll approve you and send you an email once I've done so, then you can head back, log in and even participate in some of the sample discussions I've posted for you. (NOTE: If I don't approve you right away, send me a gentle email reminder and I will.)

If you're here for clock hours, offer us your impression of online discussion and their usefulness in class. In particular, if you are already using online discussions, please share some of your tips and tricks with us.

What's Up Next? NextUp Keeps Your Classroom Running on Time

If you're like me, you often plan lessons down to the minute only to run out of time in the end because you let something run on longer than it should have. Of course, monitoring and adjusting is part of the job, and often we should allow more time for a discussion or activity than we originally planned. Nonetheless, I can think of several times when I wanted students to do something (for instance, share with a partner) for a specific length of time and not a second longer. Then I wanted them to move on to the next time-specific activity. In many of these cases I just simply lost track of time because I was called over to help or got distracted in some other way. Now there's a solution: NextUp. This site allows you to create agenda items with specific time allotments for each item. This is done on the fly--there's no account sign up and it's very easy and intuitive to use.

First, go to the site and start adding your agenda items/topics with the amount of time you want to allot for each activity.

Once you've added all your items/topic, select "Create Agenda." That will take you to a new screen that will allow you to "Start the Meeting." 

And you're done . . . the clock will wind down and you and students can monitor how much time is left by watching the seconds tick away if you project the site for all to see: 

That's it--it really is that simple. Drawbacks? There's no restarting the clock or pausing, so this wouldn't be appropriate for activities that truly depend on you being flexible about time. However, in certain circumstances, I think this tool would have really kept me and my students on track, in particular when students were working in groups and needed to monitor their time. I hate to think about how much time was wasted sometimes because I failed to keep us on track.

What do you think? What is a series of activities (aka "Topics")  in your class that you could use this for? Take it for a spin and tell us how it goes.

Coming Soon! Google+Tahoma=Go.Tahoma

You recently received an email explaining how next fall all staff and secondary students will have access to our Go.Tahoma suite of free Google Apps for education, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar—all offered under our own domain. View this video to understand the project:

You can read more about the project at our Go.Tahoma website. In particular, visit the Staff Information page for information tailored to you.

So, Learn-and-Earn-ers--what do you think? Take a look at the some of the lesson plans that teachers from all over the world have developed that use Google Apps. Or, do a little bit of "Googling" to find out how teachers are using the apps--try "Google docs in the classroom" or "Using Google sites with students" and see what you find. Or, take a look at the Google tutorials that have been developed by Richard Byrne over at his blog Free Technology for Teachers.

For those of you posting here for clock hours, please share your thoughts and questions after taking a few minutes to get acquainted with the project, checking out our Go.Tahoma website, and perusing one or two of the other links I shared above. I'm eager to hear what you have to say!

Use Socrative to Check for Understanding

I owe Kevin Hurt at TJH a finder's fee for this week's topic. Thanks, Kevin! Socrative is a student response system that allows students to respond to multiple choice, T/F, and open-ended question that you post (or share orally) in class and they answer via a laptop, netbook, smart phone, or iPad--pretty much any device. There is no account set up required on the part of the student. In fact, once you've created your account, you're good to go--all you do is provide your students with the room number that Socrative gives you, then select the type of activity you want students to do. The "Hands On Demo" in the center of their home page does a great job of showing you the way it works from both the teacher and student point of view.

Socrative's Blog has some great ideas for how to use it. For instance, there's "3 Easy Ways to Introduce Socrative--Baby Steps" and "1-2-3 Word Cloud".

What are you waiting for? Sign up and give it a test drive with your students. Come back here and tell us what you thought. Is this a tool you could see yourself using regularly?

Big Ideas for Your Classroom

In December I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Big Ideas Fest outside of San Francisco thanks to a scholarship from ISKME (the organization responsible for the conference). The Big Ideas Fest draws together "teachers, innovators, edupreneurs, policy makers, and students with big ideas for transforming K-20 education" for three days. During that time I was able to work and talk with a diverse group of people, ranging from Lee LeFever, the founder of Common Craft and mastermind behind those cool "Wikis/blogs/etc. in Plain English" videos, to Pete Forsyth, a consultant who helps businesses and organizations "make sense of collaborative communities," in particular Wikipedia. It was truly an interesting group that offered a variety of perspectives that we don't always get at educational conferences. I encourage you to keep your eyes open for the 2012 conference and consider attending.

Our Prototype

In particular, though, I was most intrigued by the "Action Collab" process we all participated in over the course of the conference. In our Action Collabs, we tackled BIG challenges for education then brainstormed and prototyped solutions.  This process is based on design thinking and the whole time I just kept thinking about how it could be an incredibly powerful tool to use with students. Then, just a few weeks ago, I discovered an article  by Betty Ray, a participant at Big Ideas, on the Edutopia website. In her article, "Design Thinking: Lessons for the Classroom" Ray summarizes the process and provides insight into how a teacher might use it in the classroom. Take a moment to read the article, then come back here and share how you could imagine using this process in your classroom. And, of course, if you're inspired to actually try it out, let me know--I'd love to help!

Google's New Privacy Policy

My guess is that most of you have never read a privacy policy before. I hope that's about to change.

As you may have heard (because there's a lot of hubbub about it the media right now), Google is changing its privacy policy, essentially bringing one unified policy to bear on all of its products (e.g. Search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.). This is kind of a big deal (thus the hubbub). Google even urges you to read it right underneath their search bar on the standard Google Search  page as you can see here:

You can read what the Washington Post said about it on Tuesday, and if you Google it, you can find a myriad of blog posts and other reactions to the announcement. They range from outrage to it's-no-big-deal. Regardless of how you feel, I think it's just good to be informed. Even though I've been well aware that Google uses the content of my Gmail to tailor ads to me for quite some time, for some this might be a surprise. And it hasn't been coincidence for a long time when an ad for that Ann Taylor sweater you were admiring online yesterday suddenly shows up in the right sidebar of that blog you read.

Yes, Google has been paying attention to what you do online for a long time. They do it to provide you with better search results and they do it to provide you with (hopefully) advertising that you might actually be interested in. But if you're using Google or have an Android phone, you should be aware of the change which will become effective March 1. It's actually not that horrible of a read. Go read it now, and if you have a Google Account, check out your dashboard to see specifically what information Google has and is collecting about you.

NOTE: I'm not at trying to alarm you. In fact, I'm not planning to cancel my personal Google account, but I am planning on carefully reviewing my dashboard this weekend. I think it is important to be informed in this digital world of ours. Also, it's probably not a horrible idea to encourage your students to take a look as well. So, take a minute to read the policy, then come back here and share new learning, insights, questions and/or issues that this post raises for you.

Another NOTE: If you recall, last spring I did a post that included a really interesting TED Talk about how web content gets personalized for you by sites like FaceBook, Yahoo!, and Google. Reviewing that talk in light of this change makes for some interesting thinking.

Creative Commons--Better Searching Available

If you've been with the Learn and Earn since its beginnings you know that each year I eventually talk about copyright and Creative Commons licensing. Understanding and respecting copyright is becoming increasingly important as more and more "common folk" like you and me (and, of course, students) access, download, use, create, and post digital content. In other words,  understanding and respecting copyright isn't just about knowing whether you can make extra copies of a story in a book for your students anymore. If you need a good primer about copyright and how it applies to teachers and students, this blog presented as an online short course in copyright is very useful--even if just for review.

Even when simplified, copyright and fair use can be difficult to understand--there's just so much grey area. That's why I love Creative Commons licensing! The best part of CC licensing is that content creators (artists, writers, musicians, students, teachers, etc.) specify permission levels upfront. With Creative Commons, there's no need to track down the person who holds the copyright of a work to seek permission to use it. Here is a lovely 5-minute intro to Creative Commons for your own edification that would also be appropriate to share with students.



Every time I talk about Creative Commons people are usually very receptive, but they whine (understandably) about the extra work it takes to seek out images, music, etc. that is CC licensed. Fret no more! The Creative Commons folks have finally created a good search page. I tried it out today for images on Flickr and I was happy with my results--much easier than going directly to Flickr and searching for CC licensed images there.

For clock hours this week, take a moment to consider where and when in your curriculum you could reinforce good digital citizenship with your students by expecting them to only use CC licensed content AND/OR expecting them to license their own work with the appropriate Creative Common license.

Happy New Year! and YouTube

Welcome to 2012! I hope you all had a relaxing break. It was fun to read what folks were thankful for technology-wise and see some of your goals in the last post. To me, it's amazing how quickly document cameras, projectors, and ready student access in the classroom have become something we've just come to expect and rely on in our daily lives as teachers. I think that's real progress--seeing technology as a reliable, essential ingredient to making teaching easier and learning more engaging, thus enhancing our Classroom 10 objectives.

Now, onto this week's post: YouTube. I suspect you are all using video in some way, shape, or form in the classroom, so I thought I'd take a few minutes (paragraphs) to talk (write) about YouTube. As you know, YouTube is blocked at school for students, but it is open to teachers. Please note that if you ever get an Access Denied! warning as a teacher, you likely only need to log off and log back on to solve the problem. This video explains the problem and the solution.

Back to YouTube. Yes, there is lots of content on YouTube that is inappropriate and just plain stupid, but that shouldn't stop us from exploring, using, and sharing the incredible resources available there with our students. In fact, I'm betting most of you already do. This blog post offers tips for making YouTube easier to use in the classroom. Also, if you scroll down to the bottom and look at the comments, you'll see a reference to YouTube for Schools. Once we have our school Google accounts set up (coming later this spring) we'll register our schools. However, in the meantime, you can still check out the "Edu" side of YouTube here, and I encourage you to do so! For instance, do you know about Kahn Academy? Kahn Academy (whose videos are readily available through their site or YouTube channel) offers a huge range of short educational videos/tutorials. Then there are the incredible array of MIT, Stanford, and other university courses that are available. It's really something! Certainly, there may not be something for everyone, but as access to education content is becoming more open and available we need to know about these resources and share them with students when appropriate.

For this week's assignment, after you've looked over some of the links I shared, I'd like you to share how YOU are using content from YouTube (or other video resources such as Discovery Streaming, Vimeo, TeacherTube, etc.) in your classroom.