Slacker is back!!

Oh, yes!  I'm back!  I've been slacking on the blog thing, but it's time I get back into doing this.

A teacher's life is always busy, but it's no excuse to put things off.  I need to force myself to get in the groove of writing at least one entry every other week or maybe once a week so as to create a new habit.

I do so many fun, techy lessons with my kiddos that it's a shame I don't share more.  Well, it's about to stop!  My dear friend, Sheila, will keep me on track, she's my biggest blogging/tech cheerleader and I want to make her proud.

Well then, let's catch up a bit...

You all know I went to spend a few days with Richard Byrne at his awesome Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp for Teachers (PET Camp).  I just got the ok from my division head to head back to Maine to see him again, but this time for a Chromebook camp!  Hands-down, he's got to be my favorite tech guru.  I'm super stoked to go again.  I can't wait to learn even more from him.  You think you know all that you can do with Google tools and he wows you with a bunch more awesome things you had no idea existed.  I'm going to be counting down the days!

Head back farther to November and I was fortunate to be chosen as a presenter at the Thinking and Learning with iPads conference in Raleigh, NC.  I did a session titled "Comics in the Classroom".  The idea was to share with others the many different web-tools and iPad apps that allow you to create comic strips.

My spin was that comics can be fun and useful as an alternative assessment tool.  I use them in my classroom for language arts on a regular basis to see if the kiddos understand how to use different parts of speech in a real situation.  Sure they can find the action verb on an action verb worksheet, but do they really know how to use one in a sentence or a short story?  Yup, you can assess that with a comic strip!  I'll share more ideas and some samples in an upcoming post.  Just a little tease to keep you reading!  Here's a little one from MakeBeliefsComix.com to honor all my creative teacher friends!

Below is the link to this online and you can create one of your own! From the link you will see that my character is animated, it's a still here since I just took a screen shot. It's one of their new features!
Demo Comic Strip

In about a week and a half I will be coordinating our campus wide professional development afternoon.  It's a half day for the kiddos and then the other half is up to me.  No pressure, right?

Well it's not as bad as it sounds.  I went to an EdCamp in Balitimore, MD earlier this school year and was intrigued with the whole concept of an un-conference.  It was truly fascinating to see that the entire conference was participant driven and lead.  While I didn't take away a lot of info, the session topics were more focused toward public, big school, inner-city issues, since that was the majority of participants (I'm small, private school, more of a country setting teacher, therefore not too many things in common).  Regardless, the whole idea of an un-conference held potential in my mind.

Flash forward to the middle of March, I'm home with my little guy and we're both sick.  I'm reading my emails and see one from ISTE about hosting an EdCamp.  I thought, "Hey!  This would be a great thing for our school!"  So drugged up on cough syrup and having NyQuil induced boldness,  I sent an email to my division head.  She sent it on to the rest of the leadership team, and now I'm the proud coordinator of our next PD day!  Wow, how did that happen?  I'll let you all know how it goes after I get through it on the 20th of this month.  Keep me in your thoughts that afternoon and pray I don't have a nervous breakdown (or chew off what's left of my fingernail nubs).

I'll let you know how I organized the whole thing and what I might do differently next time. See, I'm already thinking about the next one and I haven't even lived through this one yet! Optimistic is the way to be!!

I think I've covered the big items in my techy teacher life.  I've got to get to work writing my next few posts now that I'm rejuvenated!

Stay techy my friends!  Steph

Web-tools, Lobster, and Richard

What in the world do those three things have to do with each other you ask?  Well, they all have to do with my recent trip to Portland, Maine to attend Practical Ed Tech (PET) Camp with Richard Byrne.  Now it makes sense!  If you don't follow him on twitter, pinterest, or his blogs, you should!  He's got great tutorials and advice that I've found to be priceless as I set forth on my tech-journey.

I spent two full days with Richard exploring different web-tools, apps, and programs to use in my classroom.  Each day I walked out of the conference room with my head filled with ideas and new "toys" to try in my room next year.  My head literally hurt from all the thinking I had done for 8 hours!

So, I'm sure you're now thinking, what things are you going to use?  Well, sit back and I'll tell you a few.

One thing I'm really looking forward to using more this coming year is Google Maps and Google Earth.  I want to use Google Maps to pin the different places in New Zealand that our school will be "visiting" this year for Global Awareness Day (GAD).  Jim Lewis (friend/former colleague of Richard's) came in and did an incredible presentation on using Maps/Earth in different ways in our class. While texting with my dear friend Sheila, we were lead to the idea that we should do this for our classes to further illustrate the country.  The GAD idea was inspired from one of the activities that he had us do, and the texting...got to love collaborative thinking/planning with colleagues in different states.  I can't wait to do the tour with my classes, I hope it's as exciting for them as much as it was for me!

I'm also looking forward to using it with my social studies topics.  I want to teach my kiddos how to use the maps and place pins on specific locations.  They can then put tidbits of info with their pin and share it with others.  I thought that might be something a little more fun than just looking at the maps of Egypt, Rome, and Greece in our textbooks.  We can use the different layers on the maps to explore more than just their physical location.  Layers like terrain and street view aren't something that you can see on an old fashioned map.  Then there are pics that people have taken that you can view, so it brings a whole different vision to the place.  The class can create a tour of their locations and tell you how far it would be to walk it! Can you tell I'm excited to get started with Maps?  Here's the link to the map I created on the left.  I put a few pins on it and found the distance between the pyramids I pinned.  It's too much fun!

I'm thinking I'll use Google Earth as a whole class presentation tool since it sucks up a lot of bandwidth and I don't want to crash the system.  I manage to break enough stuff without trying so I don't want to do something that I know I might be bad!

Richard also spent some time on blogging.  I sat up straight and was extra diligent for this part!  Did you notice that I embedded the Google Map into my post?  I even changed the width and height so it fit in my template better. Yup, learned how to do all that and I feel pretty good knowing I could make it work!  Here's a video I use with my kiddos that I'm going to embed, just because I know how to do it!  :)  Knowledge is a powerful thing!

I love School House Rock, don't you?  This is one of my favs.  The kids in my class sing it for weeks afterwards...of course I sing along with them. (Sometimes I'm the one who starts it!)

Well, I've rattled on for long enough.  I need to keep some of my new things to try for another post!  This one's long enough for today.

Happy blogging and keep it techy!
Stephanie