Ice breakers with technology

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21st Century Icebreakers: 11 Ways To Get To Know Your Students with Technology 

Here is an excellent article I came across involving icebreakers and the utilization of technology. As summer winds down, planning for the start up of next year ramps up.  Keeping this in my mind, I'm always open to finding fresh and easy-to-implement ideas for my teachers.  From the author:

1. Have students create a Pinterest board with 10 pins that summarizes them.
2. Ask students to create a 30 second podcast that introduces themselves. Then allow students to present them or play them on separate devices as an audio gallery.
3. Create a classroom blog and ask each student to write a blog post introducing themselves to the rest of the classroom.
4. Have students create a quick comic strip to describe themselves or to recreate a recent funny moment in their lives.
5. Use PollEverywhere to ask students interesting questions and get to know them as a class, like their favorite subjects, bands or TV shows.
6. Use GoogleForms or SurveyMonkey to survey students about their interests, academic inclinations, and background info – a 21st century alternative to the “Getting to Know You” info sheet!
7. Have students create word clouds to describe themselves and share with the rest of the class.
8. Have students go on a QR code scavenger hunt in teams to get to know each other and learn about your classroom rules in a fun, engaging way.
9. Ask students to create their own Voki avatars that introduce themselves to the class. Encourage them to be creative with the backgrounds, characters and details of the avatar to reflect their own personalities and preferences.
10. Have students create graffiti online that speaks to their interests and personalities and share with the class.
11. Have students create mashup videos of themselves with Weavly to introduce their interests to the class.

My favorites that I would add to this extensive list of ideas would be:

1. Create a Glogster photo blog of the things they enjoy (account needed)
2. Skitch - annotation and markup tool
3. Animoto - great little videos for free/cheap!
4. Prezi - great direct substitute for PowerPoint, it's like PP but in 2013!
5. Blabberize - seriously, make photos talk.  I mean, awesomeness?

Tweet of the Day

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So I have been thinking, "how can I contribute a little slice of what I find to be the most interesting tweets or articles I read all day?" Of course, the natural answer is to simply retweet those profound words of wisdom or thought-provoking articles. Well, I was looking for a little better way to keep track of these daily educational gems, so I spawned my own hashtag, #MrD-ToD.

Now, I acknowledge that I lack a few creative bones in my body and am barely original. However, I'd like to think my hashtag is fairly self explanatory and should be easy to follow. If you happen by chance to be the other person (besides myself of course) following this hashtag, you can expect to read some pretty excellent daily musings, most educational in nature.

Contrary to popular belief, I do perform a bit of research prior to jumping into things of this nature. I don't want to be that, guy that just created the 2,096,521st "Tweet of the Day" for education. Much to my surprise, I found nobody else providing something of the like. Well, guess I am a bit original today. Up, up, and away with Mr. Dooley's Tweet (s) of the Day!

Principalm for School Administrators

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Anybody running Principalm software for student data management system on the go? Well I am!  I must say, for the price we paid (roughly $1k for our 1k students), we sure get a lot of bang for that buck.  I run Principalm on my LG Revolution smartphone (android powered) and boy is it smooth.  At the drop of the hat, I have student schedules, lockers, health conditions, parking info, grades, attendance, and discipline history at the ready.  Oh, and did I mention a 4" picture of the student!?

I think so highly of the software that we provided it to all three campus supervisors on older Palm handheld devices.  They use it to deliver student notices, check attendance/truancy records, learn student names/pictures, and the like.  This software has given us all the ability to have the majority of our student data management system on the go.  I have absolutely no complaints thus far, and am looking forward to expanding its' use elsewhere on campus (as well as connecting through an Infinite Campus back door - I currently have to download Ad Hoc reports if I want updated info, my only minor issue).

Lastly, it is important to make a note that the data is secure, even on my smartphone.  It is password protected, and it is setup to wipe the data at the third incorrect password attempt.  There are some additional security features but I never plan on letting my phone out of my view.

If you are an administrator looking at the software as an option for your campus, feel free to ask questions...