Groovin' at NETA With Kevin Honeycutt

Last week we had the pleasure of attending NETA 12 in Omaha, Nebraska.  While there were so many speakers to choose from and sessions to attend my colleague, Ann Feldmann, @techiefeldie, and I chose to listen to @kevinhoneycutt as much as possible.  He had four awesome sessions about people.  “People”, you might ask, “and not technology?”  Yup!  For Kevin Honeycutt his stories were about people, passion, and changing the world!  

Kevin grew up in poverty and yet despite that he survived and ultimately thrived!  He moves with the passion of an artist and has a spark in his eyes that you cannot deny!   Kevin has figured out how to leverage the tools that are mostly free to empower kids!  He speaks about students learning online safety, changing the way teachers teach, using the talents and skills that people have to become something wonderful!  

We loved his quote, “If you can hook ‘em, you can cook ‘em!”  He gave real life examples of how he has “hooked” kids to engage them in learning.  He spoke about tricking kids into learning in the best ways possible.  He pointed out students could take art classes from him on YouTube from his website www.artsnacks.org.  Students could then use shapeways.com as a platform to upload their artwork and become entrepreneurs, google sketchup for graphic design for free, and leveraging Twitter and Facebook to market their products!  He is a master of thinking outside the box with powerful quotes he called Honey Quotes on his webpage.  

Kevin talked about music in education and having jam sessions with iPads.  Ann and I even got to sign his shiny red guitar!  I think we are official groupies of @kevinhoneycutt!  I would love to sit through another day of listening and watching Kevin speak.  He ignited and renewed our spark for learning and training others on the power of joining people with technology 

Written by Ann Feldmann and Jenny Krzystowczyk

Six Essential Tech Tools for 21st Century Classroom Workflow

What is the workflow for a 21st century classroom?  What does it look like?  Where to start?

These six ideas will help create a classroom that is engaging and inspiring long after the last bell rings.   Publishing, sharing, collaborating, and global is the name of the game.  Our connected learners need lessons that challenge them to think critically, share knowledge, be inquisitive, and collaborate globally. The workflow from classrooms of the past, must be left in the past.  The concept of a Flipped Classroom must be explored.  These tools are just a few to utilize to start flipping your classroom. 


A flipped classroom is an environment where students learn the lecture content online outside of the classroom via a movie.   Students are able to pause, rewind, and view a concept over and over.  Additionally, students take ownership of learning the material.   There are many benefits to this concept for the teacher. One benefit is that this frees up class time for discussion, projects, speeches, labs, and other engaging projects and allows teachers more one on one time with students. This is the reverse of how a traditional classroom works where the lecture is delivered to a whole group by the teacher with a minimal about of time for homework.
(Flipped Classroom Resources: A flipped highschool: Clintondale, Flipped classroom Prezi, Khan Academy, The Future of Education?).

The time is now to engage our passionate, mobile students in a classroom that uses learning modalities of their generation.  Dare to take the bold step in transforming your teaching style to meet the needs of the digital generation.

Prezi - http://prezi.com Create engaging web based presentations for students to view at their own pace with PREZI.  Prezi is a non linear way to make a presentation.  You can easily embed PDF files, images, and YouTube videos.  This is a fantastic alternative to PPT's and provides students a way to view and review material that has been presented in class. After a Prezi is created, click exit.  There you will find lots of options for sharing the Prezi.  The presentations are web based so it can easily be shared via a link or tweeted out. Simply click the Twitter icon from the Prezi site.    If you have a classroom hashtag on Twitter, students can find it your classroom stream. Prezis default as Public.  If you want to create private Prezis, there is a fee.  You do have the option to allow your Prezi to be copied or not. There is also a tab called explore.  Click this tab see other Prezis that have been created. Prezi Resources: Cybraryman's Prezi Page Examples: Courtney Smeby - Nebraska History Review Amanda McKibbon - Crayfish	Screen R - http://www.screenr.com/ Create screencasts for your students to view anywhere in the world. This site is easy to navigate. Within minutes, you can create a screencast on any topic. This is the perfect way to create tutorials for students.  Students can view it again and again to learn, re-learn, and move to complete understanding of a concept. Screenr is perfect for explaining a new concept or a creating how to tutorial on a topic. This is the perfect tool to use as an anticipatory set or a chapter / unit summary.  Video are easy to link or embed on blogs or websites. Here are several examples for you to check out. Article: Flipping Your Classroom Sharae Geldes - Explaining Geometric Concepts Courtney Jameson - Double Spacing a paper Luke Olson - Using Easybib.com
YouTube YouTube is a game changer for the classroom.   From either the student or teacher perspective, YouTube can be a powerful educational tool. Students: Create and publish projects that demonstrate mastery of an objective. View videos to learn a concept at their own pace. View videos to review for exams. View how to videos to learn a skill. Utilize a YouTube channel to create a digital portfolio of learning. Teachers: Create a classroom YouTube Channel and post teacher created educational videos that correlate with the curriculum. Utilize lists to curate a collection of videos to use in the classroom. Use the video editor in YouTube to edit video. Reflect on lessons and share with principal. Videos can be linked, embedded, or the subscribed to. Example: Tech Tools For Teaching YouTube Channel Michael Gentry - Friction Similes and Metaphors in Pop Music Carrie Borner - Idioms Alex Williams - Gas Laws Katie DeBuhr - Animal Types Andy Fjelland - Density	VoiceThread According to voicethread.com, “A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).” Creating and sharing a VoiceThread is a powerful way for students to reflect on a topic.  During this process of metacognition, students can monitor their own progress in learning where students, teachers, and parents can provide feedback.   In addition, VoiceThreads are fantastic ways for students to create presentations that can easily be embedded, tweeted, or shared on a website.  This published work is shared far beyond the four walls of the school and potentially can have comments from people around the globe.  The web based nature of VoiceThread makes it a must have in every teacher's lesson plans. The skills to collaborate, communicate, and share are skills that students need for the world they live in. Example: Stacy Turner - teacher and grad student Becky Meier - teacher and grad student
Digital Study Aids Digital study aids such as the three listed below, make mobile students connected to learning wherever they may be. Each of these tools are easy to use, web based, and mobile!  No excuse not to learn! Quizlet- http://quizlet.com/    Word Dynamo - http://dynamo.dictionary.com/ Study Stack - http://www.studystack.com/ Example: Mr. Myers  - American History	Digital Presence A digital presence is a must for 21st century teachers.  If teachers aren’t blogging  and/or having a classroom web presence, they should be.  All classroom materials should be accessible for students so that continue learning happen regardless of location.  Purposeful, engaging, learning must be available online anywhere so students can learn on the go.   Having classroom materials easily accessible is a must for these mobile learners and their parents.    Examples: Dr. Kingsley's Third Grade Mr. Sims Fourth Grade

-Ann Feldmann

Frog Dissection 21st Century Way

Frog Dissection - 

So real you can almost smell the Formaldehyde! 

Frog Dissection is a very realistic app that goes through all the steps of dissecting a frog.  Students start by pinning the frog specimen to the virtual dissection tray.  Using the scissors, scalpel, and forceps, students methodically dissect the Frog.  Students lift the liver lobes with the forceps, which shows all the internal organs.  Tap on the organs to learn more information on the organ. The organ is in 3D and can be rotated.  

Additionally, there are eight other sections to explore including Frog Lifecycle, All About Frogs, Human vs. Frog, Wet Lab Process, Quiz, Internal Organs, Video, Types of Frogs, and Interactive Activities.  Each of these sections contains interesting facts, images, and videos to learn more about frogs.  

We used this app with 7th grade science students.  It was definitely a hit!  Students used the iPads in groups of  3-5 and dissected the frog, learned about frogs, and also took the quiz.  This app took them places their book never could!  They were engaged, curious, and learning the whole class period.  The app, Frog Dissection, is $4.99 and is not and app within and app!  Here is the link to the app.

One of the unexpected outcomes was the amount of learning that took place in the virtual dissection which made the real dissction the next day go so much smoother.

"Students knew what the organs looked like before they began dissecting the frogs, " Kristie Kuhn, middle school science teacher said.  "The real dissection day went very smoothly."

Check out this YouTube Video to see them in action!  

Written by Ann Feldmann @annfeldmann1

#FarAwayFridays

Recently I saw a tweet come across my feed and one of the teacher's I follow from Ontario, Canada.  Her name is Angie Harrison or @TechieAng on Twitter.  She tweeted, "Looking for an adult who loves Dr Suess & is willing to read aloud one of his stories via Skype tomorrow to our grade 3 class #deseussbday" 

I then saw her interaction with another elementary Twitter teacher I follow @Grade1 and Aviva was lining up a time to Skype in and read to Angie's class so I thought, what the heck, I could do it.  So I tweeted Angie and told her I was up for it.  In a matter of minutes I was lined up to read the following day, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!  My personal, all-time favorite book to read to kids.  As a principal, on #drseussbday's I was always asked to come into lower elementary classrooms and read to them.  I always enjoyed it.  

This experience was no exception.  It was fantastic!  I was skyping into an amazing teacher's classroom in Canada who thinks outside the box, she uses Twitter to flatten the globe, and on this day I was in Canada for a little while.  How cool is that?  I busted out a CAT in the HAT hat and surprised the kids with that!  Ha!

Within this great idea of Angie's, her husband Brian Harrison or @bharrisonvp on Twitter, came up with an idea called #FarAwayFridays to go along with it.  And from that a Google Spreadsheet was born.  See it here: #FarAwayFridays This idea was to continue on with setting up educators skyping into classrooms all over the world from Far Away on Fridays.  What a great idea and a fabulous use of a #hashtag in twitter!  I love it!  I am so glad I tweeted back to Angie and got involved with it.  I will encourage and share this with as many teachers as I can because what a great way to show kids a love of reading and learn from others "Far Away".  

Check it out!  Get involved!  Pass it on! 

Here is @TechieAng's blog post about it.

Teachers and Change

After watching a recent keynote given by the amazing and talented @stumpteacher ( video here if you want to watch ) and this video by another Twitter legend in my PLN @mrmacnology I am burning to write a post about Teachers and Change.

@stumpteacher makes some great points in his keynote and one thing he brought up was a book by Daniel Pink called Drive.  I am currently reading it and most of my burning is coming from this with the assistance of inspiration from legends like @stumpteacher and @mrmacnology !

As I have been reading the book Drive by Daniel Pink I keep turning to my wife @jcatlett1 and telling her the different stories from the book about motivation and what motivates kids!  We do it all wrong!  And in @stumpteacher 's keynote he talked about how many of us teach like we were taught.  He mentioned when he started teaching that he taught like he was taught and now he is changing!  WE MUST CHANGE!  In all my years as a teacher, principal, coach, and now technology trainer I have never understood where some teachers came from and why they were so resistant to change and connecting with kids.  It is all about connecting with kids.  Bottom line.  If you do not connect with kids on their level they will not work for you and in my opinion they will not respect you!

I loved the dodgeball game analogy used by @stumpteacher in his keynote!  This is so true!  This teacher blasts a kid in the face (by accident I'm sure) and the kids think he is AWESOME!  It happens in dodgeball, kids know that!  They also know if you are purposely throwing at their face or if it was an accident because THEY RESPECT YOU!  I am by no means suggesting that hurting the kid or his feelings in front of the others was the intention in order to have kids think your awesome, but I am suggesting that you GET IN THE GAME!!  You might find that kids will really like that and you might gain some of their respect!

I have played many a dodgeball game, basketball games, football games at recess, or anything, even cards or checkers with kids.  The fact is that I was CONNECTING with kids on their level and they thought I was "COOL".  This is not stated because I am interested in them thinking I'm cool, but it is because I want to gain their respect so we can work together to improve their whole person as a student and who they will become later in life.  This is my concern.

Some teachers are stuck in a rut.  Some teachers are teaching like they were taught.  Our system has us so concerned about standardized tests and not the kids.  It bothers me to think some teachers might try changing if they knew they could or did not feel like they can't based on having to keep up with curriculum and preparing for standardized tests.  There is no question CHANGE is hard for people, but in my educational journey from teacher to principal,  back to teacher, and now to instructional technology teacher, all of these CHANGES have been good for me as an educator and have taught me different things and have kept me motivated to be a learner and an educator.

I wish there was a magic wand I could wave to get teachers to see what I see.  To see what legends like @stumpteacher & @mrmacnology see in education and connecting with kids.  It honestly is not that hard.  In the meantime, I will keep reading Daniel Pink and being inspired by other amazing educators like Josh and Jeremy.  (Thanks goes to Twitter for finding these guys & their videos they shared, that evil Social Media, wink)

Digital Devices Empower Learners

As my colleague, Jenny (@jennykbps)  pulled iPads out of the bag, the 4th grade students were breathless and wide eyed, as if superman himself had appeared in the classroom. Excitement filled the air and everyone was waiting on the edge of their seats, hands in the air, in eager anticipation of what they were about to learn.  

Delighted, the students enthusiastically joined us at our technology center where they were given an iPad 2, iPod Touch, or a DS, and were engaged immediately on math facts by the apps, videos, and games on the devices.  They worked intently for an hour on mastering multiplication facts, trying hard to beat their time, set a high score, or move to the next level.  Each student was working at his/her own level and motivated to learn.  

The hour long math class melted away quickly and before long we needed to pack up.  The kids said the following:
“Do we have to go to lunch?”

“Just a minute, I need to finish this level.”  

“I almost have a new high score.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Math was fun!”

“I did more problems than ever!”

“I liked the video, it helped me remember.”

We knew putting the iPads, iPods, and DS’s in their hands would make a difference, but we did not expect it to be transformational.  Not only were we able to individualize the instruction for each child, every student was 100% on task the entire time, had fun, did more problems, and did not want to stop working.  Every student was challenged at their level and advanced at their own pace.   

Another interesting finding at this school where many are free and reduced lunch, was that most students have access to technology outside of school, but use the devices for entertainment, not learning.
“I have a DS at home, but I just play games on it,” one 4th grader said.  “I am asking for Math Blaster for my birthday.”
“My mom has a phone that has apps,” said another student. “I am going to ask her to get Math Bingo for me.”

According to Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach) , “The digital divide is no longer an issue of access. Instead, there is a widening gap between those who use technology to be entertained and those who are empowered by it.” http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-divide-technology-internet-access-mary-beth-hertz

Our next step is to collect some baseline data and work with this same group of students over the next six weeks and see how learning with iPads, iPods, and DS’s impacts test scores.    

Check back later for more about our pilot with these 4th graders.

Apps Used: Math Bingo, Bubble Math, Math Samuri, My Math App, Flash Racer, Math, Sum Stacker
DS Games: Math Blaster, Learn Math
Videos:
1. Multiply by 9’s - http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=183949&title=9s_times_table_multiplication&vpkey=

2.  3, 6, 9, - http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=167261&title=Multiplying_3_s__6_s___amp__9_s&vpkey=
-Ann Feldmann