Monday, August 22, 2016

Thing 9 - Twitter

Twitter and I have had a love/hate relationship for a long time now.  I've had a hard time understanding all of its functionality, but am slowly figuring it out.  I like using it for educational purposes, a lot of educators share great links there, and are very active.  One of the live Twitter Chats I was a part of was #stuvoice.  #stuvoice contained a plethora of resources about empowering students and making sure that they were getting what they wanted/needed out of their education.  One of the great links I found I retweeted on my page @jdteach36, it was from @edutopia.  The article gave a list of 8 questions that are great to ask kids.

As the Student Council advisor at Carleton Washburne getting new ideas on how to increase student voice is extremely helpful, and here on Twitter there are live conversations happening and people sharing ideas daily.  I'm very glad you keep pushing us to use Twitter because once you get over the hump of the terminology, the interface, and the thought of it just being another social media platform, you start to see all the amazing content inside.  

Thing 36- Final Project


This is my final project.  I hope you like it!



Sunday, August 21, 2016

Thing 35- Hot Topics (MOOC's and 3D Printing)

One of my "Hot Topics" this week is MOOC's, which stands for Massive Open Online Course.  The term MOOC came out of the Open Educational Resources movement and was coined in 2008. Thoughout this class, we have talked about a wide variety of MOOC's including Khan Academy and iTunesU.

There are two different types of MOOC's, xMOOC's and cMOOC's.  An example of a xMOOC is a course you can basically audit through "Stanford University."  An xMOOC is more like a traditional classroom where you learn through checkpoints, curriculum, and watch a teacher's lesson then leave. This type of MOOC is criticized for it's ability to engage the students compared to an cMOOC.

A cMOOC's is more about connectivity through pedagogy, you speak with the teacher virtually, you participate in group assignments virtually, basically you are connected with your classmates and your teacher. A cMOOC is more like this course, but it is a closed MOOK.

A lot of MOOC's are free to access, but there are some school's that have closed MOOC's that only enrolled students can "attend."  MOOC's contain an almost endless amount of educational opportunity, and the best part about MOOC's is that they are mostly free!  This means people who cannot afford higher education classes can "attend" classes of interest, and lifelong learners who simply don't have the time to enroll in classes can "attend" at their own pace.  This is the theory behind so many MOOC's that are funded by non-profits like the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" for example.

Some MOOC's offered by universities are offered at a much more affordable rate because of the cost savings to the university.  These MOOC's are worth college credit and are desirable to students who can perform without direct classroom interaction.

I personally feel that a hybrid of both types of MOOC's makes the most sense.  If there can be teacher and tech support but still be hands off, MOOC's will be able to remain free for students and affordable for their non-profit sponsors.

My second "Hot Topic" is about 3D Printing, something I've been interested in for a long time.  Our school recently got a 3D printer and I've been very curious about it's potential with all I hear about 3D printing in the news.

The term 3D Printing is also called "Additive Manufacturing," where the printer "deposits a binder material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads layer by later"-Wikipedia.  The process was first invented by Hideo Kodama in 1981, but was only popularized in the last decade.  While "additive manufacturing" was gaining its relevance the same technology was being used actively as "reductive manufacturing" carving metal into shapes of desire.

3D printers work in correspondence with CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs, and a 3D scanner.  This process allows for 3-Dimensional printing on an x,y, and z-axis.  The cost of 3D printers has dropped substantially since their mainstream introduction in 2010.  A printer costing $20,000 then, is somewhere around $1000 now.

One common misconception about 3D printers is that items are printed in usable condition, this simply isn't true.  What happens is that each part of the item is printed independently, then you can hypothetically put the pieces together.  Some of the things being printed using 3-D printers now include guns, medicine, organs, and many other items that are simply amazing!

One common and cost effective use of 3D printing is prototyping.  A once very expensive tooling process is now much simpler and inexpensive due to 3D Printing.  This is a very awesome use for educational purposes when students are innovating and design thinking.

Thing 32: Atomic Learning

Today I learned about and played with Atomic Learning.  Atomic Learning is a database that teaches you about pedagogy of teaching, learning, and how to learn certain topics of your choice.  I watched a great tutorial video on how to make an animation in Adobe Photoshop.

I have never used Atomic Learning before, but I think it is a great resource for teachers.  One of the things I liked about Atomic Learning over Youtube is that it is very teacher/student centered.  You can tell that the people making the videos are teachers by their pace and diction.

I do not think that assigning Atomic Learning sections to teachers based on their assessments is a good way to go about improving their assessments.  However, sharing the links and giving the teachers the tools to improve themselves is a great idea.   I feel that, as a teacher, watching videos on how to do something isn't exactly the best way to improve pedagogy.  Often times, I feel that watching other teachers in action, or communicating with a teacher that has strengths where you have weaknesses is more beneficial than any tutorial video.

I could see myself using an Atomic Learning lesson as a sub activity or as an enrichment activity for a strong student, or possibly as a supplemental activity for a student that needs extra help at home.

Thing 34: Breakout EDU

Today I learned about Breakout EDU, another great resource for "gamifying" your classroom.  These Breakout games, which could be fun to do once in a while, I feel would lose their muster after one of two of them.  Doing one or two of them per year though, I could see being a lot of fun for students.

"The Haunting At Farrar" is a fun breakout EDU lesson about finding a box hidden in a haunted school that can unlock the secrets of what happened at the abandoned school.  I'm not sure I could use this exact lesson, but it would be fun to design a lesson similar to this as a team building activity around Halloween in my classes.

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B08Di9b0sN5yelZuYWR6RG5lZlk

Below is a Breakout EDU game template I made that is my version of the above game.  It's pretty funny and obviously only a template, but could be really fun to do with a class around Halloween.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TdnTuenEyvH9UE_HfpkKn9Q32ZADj56oUmy9WfWwMtM/edit

Thing 33: Educators Learning Network

Below is the link for my ELN tutorial video.  This video is about inspiring and engaging your students.  It gives some great advice about how to get the most out of your students and to give them a real sense of accomplishment in your classroom.

 https://www.brainshark.com/portal/eln/presentation.html?pid=672217632

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Thing 31: Gizmos

I had some time recently to play around with Gizmos, which is basically a interactive leaning tool for students to go above and beyond their typical lessons.  Gizmos offer interactive tutorials for an wide assortment of topics from K-12 in Math and Science.  When I was working with Gizmos I simplified Trigonometric functions in an interactive proof simulation, I did a digestion puzzle connecting the organs of digestion, and I found out how much I would weigh on the moon.  All of these topics can and are relevant to curriculum taught in our math and science classrooms and should be utilized by math and science teachers.  Below are a few of the Gizmos that I added to "My Class," which I called "36 Things."

                                   

Thing 30: Discovery Education

Today I learned about Discovery Education.  This is a really awesome resource for students wanting to go above and beyond with their interests.  There are tons of different videos and explanations about everything under the sun.  One video that I watched was about how EA Sports makes the different Madden games, particularly the animation of the athletes.  This is a video I think kids and adults would both love to watch.  Also, kind of like Pinterest, you can then post the videos and links to your Board, so you can share and access them later.

Another cool part of Discovery Education was the "Spotlight On Strategies" portion.  This is a really neat way to learn new strategies of teaching and engaging your students.  One strategy that I found was called "Six Word Stories."  This is a summarization activity that students can do together or independently, where they watch a video or look at a picture and try to summarize the entirety of the work in 6 words.  After everyone has summarized the media, there is a share out where everyone can see the differences in what a good summary entails.

I will definitely be using Discovery Education in my classroom as an enrichment activity.

Below is my board.

https://app.discoveryeducation.com/builders/boards/assetGuid/9C45AA86-972C-8523-33AA-951CB932D327/#mode=preview

Thing 29: Professional Development

Today I watched two conferences on Youtube from the K-12 Online Conference site.  The first one I watched was called "Our Journey To Innovation," hosted by Don Wettrick.  Don started a new class at his high school called "Innovation," which is very much like a STEM or STEAM course we offer today.  His class is built on the idea that students should have the freedom to learn about what they are interested in, not limited to technology.  I like this idea in theory, but am still unsold on giving students complete creative freedom to "innovate" without direction.  To many students this just ends up being too relaxed of an atmosphere, and can lead to little getting done with their time.  In the situations where students are self-determined it can be an amazing thing.  


The second video conference I watched (I literally watched from my PJ's) was about Gamification.  Gamification is a huge buzz word around our district and the nation right now.  Kids love games and if you can "gamify" your curriculum you can really engage students beyond what they would typically give.  The video conference I watched was by a teacher named Sarah Thomas @sarahdateechur, she teaches English and Technology in Maryland.  She is a very upbeat teacher who was inspired by a professional development her school put on, to redesign her class into a gamified classroom.  Sarah explains how she "gamifies" her curriculum, and shows her website that shows the students current levels and how to earn points to gain levels.  Sarah meets with her students in person to discuss leveling up, and when they are ready to start the next level of their "gaming."  This is a really cool concept, where kids have to earn points to be awarded privileges in the classroom and choice of topics.   I really like the idea of gamifying the classroom, but there are a couple of things I would change regarding her "game."  For one thing, the kids "score" was visible for all students to view, which means that the low score students are known by the whole class, which can be embarrassing to those students.  She gives the students an option to use a "gamertag" which is cool, but I'm sure kids will figure that out pretty quickly.  This concept is really cool, and I am very interested in learning more about it.  

Thing 25-28: Formative Assessment tools

Hello Learning 2.0 colleagues and friends,

This was a challenging, yet effective group of things.  I really enjoyed learning about Google Forms, Flubaroo, Socrative, Kahoot, and Padlet.  Each of these forms of assessment are innovative and fun new ways to gauge our students understanding.  I particularly like Kahoot and Padlet because they are fun and exciting new ways for students to be assessed.

I can see myself using Formative assessment tools like Kahoot and Padlet in my classrooms.  Kahoot is basically a gamification assessment tool and kids LOVE IT!  Padlet is a cool and artistic way for our students to share their ideas, in real time, and facilitate an open dialogue regarding a wide range of topics.  I chose to do my Padlet on our school's yearbook theme.  This is always a big discussion and it might be better to do it through something like Padlet.  I may also use a Padlet for assessing our episodes of our school T.V. Show "Washburne Live."  Each week we do a critique of the episodes and this is a way better way to organize our ideas.

Google Forms and Socrative are both assessment tools, but they are a bit more traditional.  When you add add-on's like Flubaroo, these traditional assessing tools become more state of the art.  Google Forms is an incredible program, and I plan to use it more and figure out how to sync in with Schoology.

Have a great day!

Friday, August 19, 2016

Thing 23 and 24: Creative Commons and OERs

Hello everyone.  Today I learned about Creative Commons.  I already knew a little bit about Creative Commons from taking the Google class in the Spring but this was also very helpful.  Creative Commons is a great resource for my students to learn about because we do use a lot of images, snippets of movies, and songs from artists, but we do not "broadcast" so it's a gray area.  Creative Commons and the specific Google Image search are great tools for using images and using them safely.  Below is a Creative Commons photo of Croatia, I used Croatia because I just got back from a trip there.  Thanks!


Next we have OERS, Open Educational Resources, like Khan Academy and iTunes U.  These online sources are making it possible for someone in a third world country "attend" a class at MIT.   Khan Academy lessons are typically watching a person work out problems or demonstrating a procedure, while OER's are often video's of teachers teaching a lesson, or animations made from those lessons.  I looked into an OER on filmmaking and it was from a teacher named Ms. Black, who had a variety of resources about preproduction, production, and postproduction, along with a lot of great ways for students to work together and compromise during the filmmaking process. 

http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:7024 

Here is a cool graphic representation of how to graph functions. 

https://acswebcontent.acs.org/scienceforkids/index.html#Graphing  

These types of OER's are great for teachers and kids who may have forgotten how to do a task, missed a day, or just want extra help.  

I enjoyed reading about different OER summits happening around the nation and learning about how different teachers are using OER's in their classrooms.  I enjoyed reading @mpowers3 article about how teacher-created free online classrooms are changing the classroom.  

I look forward to using these classes as teaching tools, and learning tools as I continue to learn everyday.

John D.

Thing 22: Powtoon

Hey gang.
Just got back from Europe and am back working on my 36 Things.  Last night I learned about Powtoon which is a lot of fun.  It reminds me of a super simple version of Adobe After Effects, which is totally awesome if you like animation.  Powtoon is super basic, but is a great alternative to buying expensive animation software.  I could see this program being fun for my students to work on in my T.V. Studio class to tell a story, or make a storyboard.  However, I do feel like there is quite a bit of a learning curve and I'm not sure if I would want to work on Powtoon for more than a day or two.  Here is the link to my Powtoon.

https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/fsS1ljcCucA/?mode=movie#/


I hope you like it!

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Thing 19-21: Prezi, Voki, and Animoto

Today I used Prezi and Voki to create some really cool content.  In Prezi, I'm allowed to zoom in and zoom out seamlessly during a presentation.  This is pretty fun for viewers and presenters.  There are a lot of themes to use and it can be more fun than a basic Powerpoint or Keynote.  Here is a screenshot of a demo Prezi I made regarding some of my favorite "Things" in this class.



http://prezi.com/rk2do1dvbhik/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

I also used Voki, a Avatar talking program, that allows you to make a fake person talk.  You can create any avatar and have it speak via a microphone recording or a type format.  Pretty cool stuff. Below is an example of one of my Vokis.


http://www.voki.com/site/pickup?scid=12961784&width=575&height=323&chsm=95f45ea5836b43a898b6ab35cbc224d4

This could be a lot of fun for my CWB class.

The last app I learned was Animoto, a really neat online video editing software.  This software would be great for little kids because it is very easy to use.  You can add videos and photos very intuitively and it doesn't give you tons of editing options to keep the interface clean and simple.  I don't foresee myself using this app because of it's simple approach, my students tend to use more advanced features of even iMovie.  I would like to move into using Adobe Premiere in the fall, which is is 1000 times more complex and creative.  This is a great app for the younger grades.

<iframe id="vp1hoIsE" title="Video Player" width="432" height="243" frameborder="0" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/embed.animoto.com/play.html?w=swf/production/vp1&e=1470152910&f=hoIsEoSpNka1v8yjUTnt1g&d=0&m=a&r=360p&volume=100&start_res=360p&i=m&asset_domain=s3-p.animoto.com&animoto_domain=animoto.com&options=" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Thanks!

Monday, August 1, 2016

Thing 18: Paper 53

Over the past few days I have been toying around with the Paper 53 app, which is really neat.  In this app you can do a lot of things you can do in Photoshop, but it is more basic in terms of capabilities.  The real feature I found applicable to my classroom is the Storyboarding format.  This would be a really fun way for my students to use their iPads on their storyboards they do in my class.  Another way I could see this app being used is in the Math classroom.  I noticed that you can utilize many math symbols and it's very easy to write over shapes, and make shapes.  This is a really fun app and I can see this being useful in many different ways.

Thanks.

Thing 17- Notability

For the last few days I've been playing with Notability on my iPad.  Notability is the most comprehensive note-taking application I've ever used.  It allows you to color coat your notes, organize your notes by topic, it allows you to choose the backgrounds of the notes, and much much more.

One of my favorite features of Notability is the ability to draw over pictures.  I could see this being very beneficial in a class that provides the slideshow prior to the lecture.  This way I could write notes on the topics I'm confused on directly on the slides I'm confused on.  There are many other ways to use this feature which are very cool.

You can type using the iPad keypad, or you can write with your hand directly onto the iPad and with it's modern features, it will reduce the size of your handwriting down to the size you want it to appear on the note.

This type of notetaking is new to me, but I can see our students using this a lot and using it well.  The one thing I would have a hard time with by using my iPad as a notebook, is staying focused.  When apps like Facebook, Gmail, and other media outlets are at my fingertips, it can be hard for me to focus on the topic at hand.

Very cool app.

Thanks.

Thing 16: Haiku Deck

For today's "thing" I learned about Haiku Deck, a presentation software for the iPad that is actually pretty cool.  This presentation software is easy to use, has a large database of images for you to use in your presentations, and is very intuitive in terms of layouts allowed.

One of my favorite aspects of Haiku Deck is the versatility in the text layouts.  Another thing I like about this app is that it is compatible with Keynote and Powerpoint, which adds even more versatility to your presentations if you are more comfortable with those apps, or if you the computer you are using to do the presentation only has those apps.

I'm not sure I will use Haiku Deck in my everyday life, but it is nice to know there is a free easy to use software for the iPad if I ever need one.

Thanks!