Aim to Be Awesome, Not Perfect

In my role as an Instructional Technology Specialist, I try to provide professional development and helpful hints in a variety of ways. One way I reach my staff is a weekly Tech Treats newsletter. This method can take a while.  At first, very few people read it, partly because it was buried in a principal's weekly memo. But it is catching on - especially as teachers learned they could bookmark it like a website and refer back to it as needed. It isn't at 100% - I don't think it ever will be - but it is enough that I will keep doing it. Want to make one for your staff?  Here are my tips: It's a Google Slide, because  It's easy to format  I add the newest slide at the beginning  It's easy for teachers to search to find previous pages It can be bookmarked  Put "need to know" stuff in there, especially action items with deadlines Include information for a variety of technology comfort levels Include new fun things - for Thanksgiving and C...

In my weekly newsletter, Tech Treats, I recently did a Google Slides Edition. Here are some of the great ideas I shared! Make videos  Google Slides now has Closed Captioning. It can now  provide a transcript as you narrate a slide deck. Screen-cast with your voice to create a video with closed captions! Check out the video explaining how to do it!  Create Graphics I use Google Slides to create graphics for our website and social media pages. Check out this example with instructions! Lesson Planner   Use Google Slides as a Lesson Planner. It’s a daily slide to share with students, an organizer for the whole year, or as one spot for all your ideas! Student Play of the Week   Use this Google Slides Template to highlight your class MVP’s! Check out this blog post from ShakeUpLearning for more information and ideas!

In my job, I am always looking for new ideas to share, whether it is a new activity or a new twist on an established one. Recently I got an email from Matt Miller at Ditch That Textbook with this idea -   an icon board for visual thinking.  I really got me thinking about how it could be used... and what other icon boards could be created. Since I am a former math teacher, that is where my mind heads - to math.  I started looking at the icons in the Insert Icons for Slides add-on, and sure enough, I found plenty that apply to math. So I started adding them, and thus creating my Math Icon Board My goal was to add icons that could be utilized in a variety of math and science classes. Obviously I do not have everything, partly because I couldn't find it or it didn't come to mind during my creation. When students use this, my suggestion is that they copy the icon (either by right-clicking and choosing copy OR hitting ctrl and C keys at the same time) and then...

I was searching through my Drive recently and I found a file that mentioned emojis.  Students love emojis and from what I have seen, including them definitely can up the engagement factor.  So I did more digging in my Google Drive to see what else I had saved from amazing educators and below is what I found.  I haven't had the chance to try any of them, but I included some thoughts below where they might work... MATH - Multiple Step Emoji  by Lindsay Foster   This would be great for any problem solving in a math class, especially when practicing operations with whole numbers.  You could modify it with integer chips for integers or algebra tiles. I have this for algebra tiles - I unfortunately can't find who created it. Emoji Texting Template  by Nadine Gilkison   This texting template could be great for discussing almost anything! From theme in English class to vocabulary in History to scientific observations! Students could even collabora...

The CDFMS makerspace has been busy! We recently completed a project with 6th grade science using stop motion to show their knowledge of potential and kinetic energy (future blog post).  One of the math teachers came in, saw what they were doing, and said "I think we could do something like that for transformations.  Could you create something for us?"  Could I? Of course I can! Since we have iPads in our makerspace, my first completed project was an app-smash between Educreations and iMotion .  Educreations had the coordinate plane background that I needed for my screenshots and iMotion is a free, easy-to-use tool that makes GIFs! (I didn't know that before.. but now I am using it constantly!) Here is one of my finished projects: Then I looked at the calendars and realized that some of science teachers have the makerspace booked the days math was hoping utilize the space.  I wondered, "Could I create something similar that they could do on their ow...

As I have been learning more and more about technology usage in the classroom, I have become really interested in Digital Notebooking.  I didn't attend TCEA , but many of my colleagues did, and they shared with me  Jessica Worley's presentation about Digital Notebooking . This has definitely inspired me a in a lot of ways. So in order to learn more and share with teachers, I took the first unit I taught last year in 7th Accelerated Math (all 8th grade Math TEKS) and made a digital notebook. I used Google Slides, since we are a GSuite for Education district. Below are some of the steps I took to create the notebook. I created a basic title page and table of contents (TOC) page.  I broke the unit into sections (which we usually do, it is a hodge podge unit) and created slides for those sections, and then hyperlinked to those slides on the TOC page. Since I have my TEKS, I know what students need to be able to do. I started planning how I wanted them to learn/practice...