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?

Ipad 1:1 Schools

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Are there any 1:1 ipad schools? Are there any 1:1 ipad schools receiving grants to fund implementation? Are there any 1:1 ipad schools where implementation is significantly increasing student learning?

I am equally intrigued as I am skeptical. You see, I spent time as a teacher in a school in Nevada where a 1:1 MacBook initiative was rolled out to the Freshman class my last year there. I taught Computer Science and knew the initiative would immediately create new,  unique, and exciting learning opportunities for this group of students. Do ipads do the same? Do they do it bettet?

I am more than happy to do some work and tech training with a teacher on a trial basis, but I have no idea where to start. Besides asking my principal to shell out $15k to supply a classroom with ipads, do I have other options at the state or federal level? Or even private grants? What about Perkins? As you can see, I have lots of questions and few answers on this topic. Anybody have advice?

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...

Tech Tip: Download YouTube Videos

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A colleague of mine has restarted his dedication to blogging as part of his personal professional development plan (see previous post about self-directed PD). Mr. Orr is a Science Teacher and Technology Coordinator at Faith Lutheran Jr/Sr High School. In his latest blog entry, he posted a link to a YouTube video that demonstrates how to download YouTube videos (I know, there is some irony here). I agree with his statement that "how do I download YouTube videos?" is the most common question asked of our fellow teachers. I thought I would also spread the tip, so here's the video:

Students & Twitter: Part II

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To follow up on my first blog post about Students & Twitter, students succeeded at implementing twtpolls to collect opinion-based data from their peers on various topics. After this short Twitter assignment, students completed this WebQuest. Changes made to the WebQuest included utilizing Google Docs to create a presentation (much like PowerPoint) demonstrating their perspective on their Computer Ethics, as well as integrating Twitter.

A few student groups integrated twtpolls, while others searched for tweets containing opinions to back up their own. One group found an expert that provided excellent information about Bluetooth and WiFi for inclusion in their presentation.

Overall, the WebQuest assignment was pretty successful. I would have liked to have seen greater Twitter integration at completing the assignment, but I have to remember these students are novice tweeters. Keeping this in mind, they did a great job.

FETC & Professional Development

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As I wrote in my previous blog post, I am taking on the responsibility of creating my own self-paced Professional Development plan. In keeping within my own goal for PD, I decided to attend the 2009 FETC Virtual Conference. This is my first attendance at an all online conference, and I'm excited to see how it turns out. FETC touts the following benefits, which are the main reasons I decided to attend:

There are no travel expenses. No lines. No substitutes to schedule. No funding approval needed.

A 100% FREE education technology conference? I don't need a substitute? I don't need to create lesson plans? I don't need to stand in line? FREE? What other reasons do teachers need to attend this conference? How about the fact that teachers can experience

• A dynamic exchange of best practices and tips for success.
• Expert speakers sharing their views in an effective, interactive way.
• A virtual networking lounge to reconnect with colleagues and make new contacts.
• Real-time access to other participants through instant messaging.
• Technology product and service demonstrations in our virtual exhibit hall.
• Free content downloads and presentations to go.

I encourage all those that have not signed up for attendance to do so - Register Here. I'm looking forward to experiencing the virtual environment of this conference in combination with learning some new technology integration tools! See you "there."

Students & E-Portfolios

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It has been quite a while since my last blog entry, and for good reason. I have taken on the challenge of single handedly creating/editing/implementing the curriculum for my school's Web 2.0 course. I have devoted a lot of hours to developing lessons, assessments, and the like. After thinking about how to best assess student learning in a summative manner, I came up with the idea of student e-portfolios.

I started to dig through the topic by performing a simple Google Search; the most valuable search result came in the form of Dr. Helen Barrett's Electronic Portfolio website at ElectronicPortfolios.org. Dr. Barrett is a leading researcher in the e-portfolio domain; her website has a lot of useful information, complete with diagrams, step-by-step instructions, and examples.

Having knowledge about how I could use e-portfolios as a summative assessment in my Web 2.0 course, I turned to my Twitter PLN for direction in how to have students create them. I got a few different ideas:

I liked the idea of the wiki, but thoughts came to mind about having students tip-toe around the public forum. The only answer for this was to utilize our Google Education Site, and keep everything protected and under that domain (as we usually do). I came across a page in Dr. Barrett's site that discussed how to create e-portfolios in a Google Site - I wondered how I had missed it before but was glad to have my answer.

Turns out it was extremely easy to introduce the topic to students, have them each create a Site under our Google Education domain, and begin creating and editing their e-portfolios. We even found a way to have students create a WordPress blog (of course, again on our own servers for privacy) and embed it into their Google Sites (using an iframe gadget). It is a work in progress, and students will contribute artifacts and reflections into their sites on a weekly basis.

If you have questions, feel free to ask. I will not be posting my students' examples as they are "hidden" in our Google Site domain.

Here is a short video about e-portfolios, and a quick how-to for Google Sites:

Students & Twitter - Part I

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A few days ago, I introduced the explosively-popular micro-blogging tool Twitter to my Web 2.o class. Upon creating accounts, downloading TweetDeck, and toying with our settings, we began down the micro-blogging path exploring Twitter's usefulness.

I relayed the importance of developing a quality community of followers and the equally important task of who the students should follow. I recommended politicians, some celebrities, sports starts, companies, and the like. Students then went on to find their own, some more useful than others (I suppose that's the point for them, though, to customize Twitter for their own liking). I was surprised when students found other teachers on campus (only because I could not imagine these "old-timers" using Twitter!) and was amazed at their ability to be completely engaged with the task-at-hand.

Today's Twitter experiment involved students tweeting education-related articles from the Internet. Their instructions were to find a relevant article pertaining to education, utilize TweetDeck to shorten the URL, and to tweet the article with a short description, all while including our class hashtag.

Here are some of the more interesting articles:

2 Year Study to Learn What Makes Teachers Good
CollegeQuad - College Tweets
U.N. Position Paper on Technology
Why is Education so Important?
Listening to Music Helps Students be More Productive

Next class we'll be attempting Twitter Polls via twtpoll.com, stay tuned!

Follow Mr. Dooley on Twitter, @MrDooley.

How do students feel about technology?

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I`ve been hanging on to this video for a year now, and it seems that it is a good time to post it on my blog. As our school is heading into a new 1-to-1 laptop program for the Freshmen class next year, placing importance on the integration of technology in the classroom is paramount. You`ve all been warned...