I have been a K-12 Innovative Teaching and Learning Specialist for two years. Prior to that I was a social studies teacher for ten years. Back in May I was told there was a very good chance that I would be asked to teach a couple sections of 9th grade Social Studies (World Geography). I have a sneaky suspicion that my administrators were a little worried that I would not be open to the idea, but I was ECSTATIC! The truth is I absolutely love my job, but I miss working with kids. I didn't realize how much I missed working with them until I was presented with this opportunity. This arrangement will work for everyone involved. The school gets a teacher and I get to actually do all of the fun and crazy things I talk (preach?) about!
I hope teachers and administrators stop in every single day to see what my students are up to. They are going to do some pretty terrific things! I'm going to push them and challenge them to do things they never thought possible. They are going to connect to the world via their blogs and they are going to manage all of their projects through a classroom website. Everything they do they will be tied to the Nebraska Geography Standards. I have a vision for how this is going to work and it is going to ROCK!
This is the first in a series of posts where I will share what I am doing. There isn't anything that cannot be replicated for different subjects and grade levels. Most of the things we will be doing are things I've had students do for years, so I already know it is possible.
The first thing I did when I found out I was teaching 9th grade Geography was get a copy of the book and the pacing guide. While my class will be very different from the traditional way this class has been taught, I still needed to come up with a schedule to make sure we explore the same topics that are stated in the official course description. I set aside roughly five weeks for each unit. This will allow us some flexibility with our schedule just in case we need to move some things around.
I spent some time today setting up this doc to make sure we get to all of the standards. I still need to spend some time figuring out which ones we should focus on for each unit. I'm also working on building a rubric to help students (and me!) know how they are doing when it comes to mastery of our standards. This document is not even close to complete, but it is a good start.
My next step is to divide up the standards to provide students with areas on which they can focus while they are working on their projects. I'm so excited to see where this goes!
Showing posts with label tutorial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tutorial. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2016
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Easily Shorten a URL
Have you ever tried to direct all of your students to a specific website but the URL is so long that half of them type it incorrectly? Some of them will get there right away while others will take 20 minutes. Meanwhile the students who are there get frustrated and by the time everyone finally gets to the right place you have a class full of disgruntled students. Google has the perfect solution! Goo.gl is a URL shortner that is so easy to use. All you need to do is copy the URL and go to goo.gl and paste the address in the box then click the blue "Shorten URL" button on the right.
As soon as you shorten the link some cool things happen. First, a short link is generated for you. You can write this link on the board or print to give to your students or anyone who you need to share it with. As long as you are signed in the you will have a few other options. If you click on the Details button you will notice that you can track how many times someone has used the link as well as which browser they were using and which country they visited your link from. Perhaps the neatest thing of all is that a QR code is generated when you shorten the link.
What can you do with a QR code? There are lots of things!
As soon as you shorten the link some cool things happen. First, a short link is generated for you. You can write this link on the board or print to give to your students or anyone who you need to share it with. As long as you are signed in the you will have a few other options. If you click on the Details button you will notice that you can track how many times someone has used the link as well as which browser they were using and which country they visited your link from. Perhaps the neatest thing of all is that a QR code is generated when you shorten the link.
What can you do with a QR code? There are lots of things!
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Google Classroom
Stacy Behmer and Chad Kafka are both Google Certified Teachers and I was lucky enough to see both of them present at the Great Plains Google Summit back in July. They both believe it is better to share knowledge than hoard it so Stacy was more than happy to give me permission to share their presentation on Google Classroom.
One of the most daunting challenges to going paperless is figuring out how to get organized. If you don't have a solid system for creating, collecting, grading/commenting, and returning digital documents to your students then you are going to get overwhelmed very quickly. Until recently many teachers used scripts and add-ons to manage this, but it seemed like a lot of work to get started. Back in the spring Google announced a new product called Classroom which promised to make managing documents easier. Rumor has it that Classroom will be available to all teachers on Monday provided their district has it turned on.
From what I have been able to see so far I think that it looks like it is pretty easy to use. I like how it automatically puts assignments into folders then shows who has turned in assignments and who hasn't. You can open the docs and leave comments and you can comment when you return the assignment as well as leave comments that students will see when they open your class. You can post announcements, discussion prompts, news articles, or anything else you want to share.
One suggestion that Stacy made was that elementary teachers might want to set up one class that has all students then have each student set up as their own class to make it easier to assign different assignments to different students.
I will keep tinkering with it so I can help you out if you decide to use it. While there are other services such as Hapara (which is an AMAZING service!) that organize more apps than Google Classroom, this is a good alternative.
If you have suggestions on how you intend to use Classroom or if there are things you have figured out while you have been playing around with it please share them!
Keep in mind that Classroom is brand new! There will probably be lots of changes in it in the coming months and it might not always work as you expect. Be patient as Google works out the kinks.
One of the most daunting challenges to going paperless is figuring out how to get organized. If you don't have a solid system for creating, collecting, grading/commenting, and returning digital documents to your students then you are going to get overwhelmed very quickly. Until recently many teachers used scripts and add-ons to manage this, but it seemed like a lot of work to get started. Back in the spring Google announced a new product called Classroom which promised to make managing documents easier. Rumor has it that Classroom will be available to all teachers on Monday provided their district has it turned on.
From what I have been able to see so far I think that it looks like it is pretty easy to use. I like how it automatically puts assignments into folders then shows who has turned in assignments and who hasn't. You can open the docs and leave comments and you can comment when you return the assignment as well as leave comments that students will see when they open your class. You can post announcements, discussion prompts, news articles, or anything else you want to share.
One suggestion that Stacy made was that elementary teachers might want to set up one class that has all students then have each student set up as their own class to make it easier to assign different assignments to different students.
I will keep tinkering with it so I can help you out if you decide to use it. While there are other services such as Hapara (which is an AMAZING service!) that organize more apps than Google Classroom, this is a good alternative.
If you have suggestions on how you intend to use Classroom or if there are things you have figured out while you have been playing around with it please share them!
Keep in mind that Classroom is brand new! There will probably be lots of changes in it in the coming months and it might not always work as you expect. Be patient as Google works out the kinks.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Gmail: Basics and Beyond
I will be working with new teachers next week to help them get started with Gmail. This slideshow has a few tips that you might find useful even if you are an experienced Gmail user. If you have useful tips or tricks please share them in the comment section of this post.
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