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!