Friday, October 28, 2011

Thriller

Hello fellow bloggers,

I apologize for being absent the past few days. I have a lot of great new tools to share with you so please bare with me, I will be posting and updating my resources this weekend. Please check back in a few days.

In the meantime, check out this how to dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller, a great activity I like to do with my students during Halloween :)

The how to :


Dance with the music:


The music video: (Start the video around 1 min 44 secs for the dance)


Happy Halloween

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

6 Steps to Becoming a Viral Educator

Today I attended a Webinar that discussed the 6 steps to becoming a Viral Educator. I found this to be a very valuable webinar in order to get organised and get ready for the next step of my adventure of becoming a great technology teacher, school coordinator, technology specialist, etc.

These 6 steps were presented by: Steven Anderson

Twitter @web20classroom

Email: steven.anderson@web20classroom.org

Some of you may feel that there are more or less then 6 steps. Please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts on becoming a viral educator.


Step 1: Form a Brand (your online profile) 
  • It's all about your digital footprint
  • Name  - Always use the same spelling (Middle initial or not)
  • Your Blog 
  • Twitter 

Step 2: Get connected


Alec Couros, PhD Thesis illustration, 
the Networked Teacher ...
edtechfrontier.com
Step 3: Share
  • A two way connection - give information back
  • Create new information or
  • Share the information 
  • http://www.slideshare.net/ a great place to share your presentations with others.


Step 4: Reflect and think (reflections helps us grow and learn)
  • Be CURIOUS
  • Start a blog
  • Ask questions







This is the blog post created by Alec Couros with a voicethread using the "connected teacher" image 
http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/799
Step 5: Grow
  • Take time to engage in edchat, read others' blogs, comment, and post new info.
  • Read others people posts, tweets, etc that think differently than you do

Step 6: Have fun
  • Always remember to Have Fun

Thanks for reading!
And If you are just getting started,  start with Twitter, follow me : @canadianteched and check out : Social Media Getting Started: http://www.cybraryman.com/chats.html

Monday, October 24, 2011

My first attempt at using Google Forms and Fluberoo

Beginners mistake:

I worked really hard last night preparing my very first online exam for my grade 9 students. I even had a mixture of questions to evaluate all the levels of Blooms Taxonomy. However... when I shared my quiz with the students today, somehow they got a copy with most of the answer's. Luckily there were still enough questions to be able to evaluate them properly and it was a good drill to get them to verify the answers that were already there.

Needless to say, my lesson learned today: Always send myself a copy, before I share anything with me students. My students lesson today: Patience, understanding and flexibility with using online tools is key in a online course :)

On the other hand, I am very grateful to have learned about the application Flubaroo integrated with Google Forms. It saves a lot of time when marking your exams. However, another beginners mistake : Don't forget to exclude your long answer questions before you submit to have your exam marked, otherwise your students marks will be much lower as it is not able to correct long answer questions. ( I had to send an email to my students apologizing for the amount of emails they may had received with various results of their quiz).

My suggestion and lesson #2 for today: Make a 2 part exam
a) Multiple choice - short answer (User Fluberoo to evaluate)
b) Long answer ( Have students share their answer's with you in Google Docs)

I hope you will all have much more success when it comes to your first time using Google Forms and Fluberoo.

Feel free to share your experiences!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Supporting Bloom’s Taxonomy in a Digital World

On October 6th, I participated in an amazing Webinar, offered by SimpleK12, that shared a lot of very useful tools for our classroom.



visualblooms.wikispaces.com
I hope you find these applications useful as they are also very well organized for each level of Bloom's Taxonomy.




Blooms chart (New Version)
  • Creating
  • Evaluating
  • Analysing
  • Applying
  • Understanding
  • Remembering

Knowledge and Rembering


Comprehension and Understanding

  • Bubbl.US - Mindmapping - http://bubbl.us -  Like Inspiration - Can be exported

Application and Applying

  • Xtranormal - Animated Movies creating audio from your text or you can upload audio http://Xtranormal.com

Analysis..

  • Popplet - visual display, like poster board or mindmap - embed videos into mindmap - http://popplet.com

Evaluate (Formerly the top)

  • Nota - collaborative whiteboard/webpage - many people can work on it at the same time - http://notaland.com (has education version)

Creating

  • Prezi - More sophisticated slideshow has educational licence that gives teacher more  -http://prezi.com

Links from the webinar:

http://www.diigo.com/user/mrplough07/bloomsSK12

If your interested, check out : http://simplek12.com/tlc/webinars/ for their upcoming FREE webinars!



Welcome!

Hello,
I am really excited to start my new blog. Over the past year I have been learning so much about new and exciting technology tools and applications available for our classrooms. In addition, I have many friends and co-workers often asking me to share with them the tools available and what I have learned through my research! So here it is, a place to hear about my experience with these tools in the classroom and a place for me to share the knowledge I have acquired.

Enjoy!

My Favorite Ted Talk