Even if you are not a tech savvy teacher, I can be certain that you have a list favorite websites you use as resources for your lessons. These may be local bookmarks in a browser or pinned, tagged, checked or bundled somewhere online. I applaud the effort to organize the massive amount of freely available information or advice. A well connected educator has developed a PLN (Personal Learning Network) in which not only are they gathering websites, but in fact sharing them with colleagues online. However, you may be missing the most important target audience: your students. Are you sharing with students as you make these valuable finds?

Curating is the process of gathering, reviewing and editing lists of online content for an audience. We do it for ourselves with our bookmarks but your students could benefit from your wise choices as well. With a bit a tweaking in the organization part, you could be providing lists to students based on topics, standards or even essential questions. If you move from local bookmarks, to online bookmarks, you’ve already made the move necessary to offer these bookmarks quickly and easily to students as you find them. Services such as Delicious, Diigo, mentormob and the newly popular Pinterest, make the sharing easy and the access for you, almost anywhere.  (For a quick list of BYOD resources, check out my Bit.ly bundle.) Providing a more direct list of educational and teacher approved web resources keeps students away from the unfettered wiki world. Not only that, those who do have the desire to learn more will have a teacher directed path.

But don’t stop with just links, videos and games are engaging resources to help students learn a concept from another point of view, review for a test, or delve deeper to satisfy curiosity. Youtube.com/education  provides hundreds of quality lessons by teachers. If you can’t find what you are looking for there, try Hippocampus, Sophia, Vimeo, or some more specific subject content such as Spanish is Your Amigo  or  Mathtrain.tv.  Remember it’s not just for the students. When parents want to help their child, the first place they look is at the list of resources provided by the teacher.

Now back to that collaborative piece. Teachers can curate together. Pinterest makes this simple by allowing you to add collaborators to a board. That is the efficiency we want in our work. Not only is a great resource vetted by your colleague but instantly shared with your students as well.

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As part of my training, I devoted a little time to a less technical training and more application of technology. The presentation below is actually a set a screen shots from a Smart Notebook file. You will not see the interactivity, however please read the show notes to understand the presentation. There is a link to a Google Doc as well that outlines all the details of each slide.

Link to the "How Did She Do That" document explaining the Smart Notebook.

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It has been some time since I've even written in this blog. Hopefully my reasons will be clear near the end. Most of my entries are about ways to integrate technology in teaching. However, this entry is my final reflection, 6 months after attending the Google Teacher Academy in Seattle Washington.

I was overwhelmed when I received the acceptance email to attend the academy. (I jumped out of my seat at ISTE) I spent little time contemplating what I would learn, who I would meet, who I'd become or who I might influence. Now that I have watched my fellow graduates, I see the impact that Google Certified Teachers have on the world. They are inspirational, motivational, and some of the best presenters in education (you were fantastic Adam Bellow at VSTE). Other GCT's such as Kyle Pace, Alice Keeler, Jen Roberts, Karen McMillan and Troy Cochrum are the pioneers that teachers look to for advice and direction. I am awed at the content they produce and the "think out of the box" attitude that pervades everything a GCT does.

I really did start with great intentions for my small part of the world as well. I blogged, tweeted, G plussed and bookmarked hundreds of cool tools, sites and ideas for teaching. My idea for a cross platform app database was big (probably too big for one person) but I designed it anyway.

I began the school year very hyped about using these delivery methods for the best new ideas direct from the Google Academy to my teachers. Yet, what I found was that teachers in my district are not nearly as connected as this fast moving train of EdTech. Some had never heard of blogs, many were afraid of Twitter, and video's posted on YouTube just did not hold a candle to a Word document with instructions. Much of my job (I am a Tech Specialist in my school) turned into data entry and pushing information in the closed environment of Blackboard or through individual emails. The tools felt archaic, clumsy, and not connected to what I knew was the real world. So I became disappointed. If I tweeted, the only people receiving the message where the experts in the field. If I blog, my thoughts about 21st Century Learning or my dislike of the standardized testing model was like preachin to the choir. How could I affect the model of teaching right there in front of me?

As much as I love technology, I also love talking. So I started to talk. I spoke to teachers about Google, how kids learn, why 2011 is different than 2001. How to look at a standard, shrug your shoulders (thanks Patrick Green), and give the kids the opportunity to design the learning. I talked with the principal about cost of hardware, what is doable now vs what we can plan for in the future. I reexamined my idea of training and created short, to the point sessions (demo slams perhaps?) And yes, we all encouraged experimentation.

My first real victory was with the district itself. Fairfax County Schools was planning on rolling out Google Apps for Education in November. I pushed to have our school start in October and was granted my wish. I trained the students how to log on and find the apps that our district was allowing this year. Not as many as I had wished for, but enough to really get started. I began training teachers at the same time Google was changing their look, their labs and some of the functionality. Seemed I would show them a feature one day and it would be gone the next. Connectivity was an issue too, but I held firm that Google was the best venue for kids.

It is 6 months later, so what has changed at my school? More than I realized before I started this reflection. My principal agreed to 128 new netbooks that are cranking out Google Docs creations every day in 7th grade. We have all administrators and counselors working on iPads and examining how to integrate them with students and our infrastructure. We have a Twitter presence, a training channel on YouTube for technology, a new more modern website that uses RSS feeds and the whole school is promoting Bring Your Own Devices for the students. There are 2 Math teachers creating videos to flip their classes and I even have an English department using Today's Meet as a backchannel in class.

I may not have thousands of followers yet and really haven't even updated the template on this blog, but I have had an impact in my little world, where 60 teachers are changing what they do everyday with students. I could not have done that without the Google Teacher Academy support. They are the heroes. If you are looking for anyone to follow, check out some of the names I've mentioned or just look for the hash tag #GCT. I also wish the best of luck to the next group that gets that acceptance email. The inspiration will stick with you throughout your career. Thanks to all.

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If another article on what to buy at Christmas is just too much, consider the taxpayer or perhaps even the students. Yes, I'm talking about school technology purchases of which I've been doing my share lately. I'm looking on cyber Monday at deals: Chromebooks are on sale for $299. That is an amazing price for a machine that really uses class time efficiently, (8 seconds to boot up) slims down the learning curve (one browser, one interface, no complex operating system) and from an IT standpoint is a dream. But until recently, schools were expected to go with the lease option that is still at a whopping $20 per machine per month. (keep in mind that includes summer months) Google has recently offered a purchase plan that, well, just can't touch the deals online. Currently, schools can purchase a WiFi Chromebook for $449 each with 1 year support. Additional support for years 2 and 3 come at a price of $5 per month per unit. The math is elementary. $449+($5x24) =$569. That is almost twice the price of an Acer Chromebook I can purchase right now as an individual.
So what is Google giving us as educational institutions we can't buy elsewhere? The appeal for the leased model is the management of the Chrome browser using SMS and of course continual support. From what I can tell, IT can lock down the homepage and deploy Chrome store apps with the Chrome deployment and use current Active Directory users profiles. After a quick browse of Chrome Apps in the Web Store I found I could accomplish these tasks with a few apps on each Is Google's expertise worth the high price tag? I'm willing to view this device as I tend to do with my own home tech purchases. It will be obsolete in 3 years so i'd consider it a consumable item. Either that, or petition Google to bring the price in line with other mobile devices for students.

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Share a Google Spreadsheet - 21 Ideas for Your Class
As I venture off to the Google office to become a Google Certified Teacher, I thought this list of how I have used spreadsheets in the past in my teaching would be a useful one. Spreadsheets are so underutilized in schools and are yet so versatile. Many of these ideas were spur of the moment in my classroom - such as signing students up for specific projects or tasks. I didn't even realize that sharing a spreadsheet and allowing students to fill it in was a unique use of technology, it just facilitated what I was doing. You are welcome to add to the comments any other uses you have for shared spreadsheets. There are many more but I have always thought 21 was a good number.




https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXy343L_u9RsZGZjeDN4NzZfMzI2Zzkyc24yaGM&hl=en_US

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Why We Love Apps
I found an app the other day that does one thing and it does it well. I like to listen to a particular podcast but the process to subscribe and then move it to my phone was very tedious. The app has a single purpose and it delivers my favorite podcast, no other, to my phone. Fabulous.
Yes I'm an AppAholic. (here's the link to a UK blog) It is important to me to understand my addiction and determine what caused this craving for specialty programming. I am of a generation that has lived through all of the transformations. The operating systems with the green text where we as consumers had to learn long strings of commands to create a process that only did a portion of what we really wanted. I've also been privileged to teach the Microsoft Office Suite - going on 8 years now. If anyone has ever opened MS Office with a group of 1st graders you will immediately have that recognition reflex. It is like sticking a 1 pound steak in front of a kitten. They poke at it but don't have any idea how to attack it. MS Office is a behemoth. It does far more than any of us will ever need to do. In fact, most of the software of today is the same way. All of the big companies want to be everything to everyone and we are overwhelmed.
Let's talk about education as well. I am heading to a curriculum development meeting to develop lessons that go with the new online textbook. Another behemoth is the textbook. Every teacher knows they rarely use a tenth of what is available to them as resources and finding what they really want to use takes years. At that point a new text is out and the process starts over. This online text is the same way. Luckily, I've taught with it and can bring some insight. So I am the guide through the forest. Just as I was when teaching MS Office.
Back to our apps now. As educators, we are desperate for lessons that are on target for what we need to teach. We love the online flashcards that we can easily program for chapter 10's list. That is why iPad/Android apps are so appealing. Do one thing and do it well. Don't give us a timeline maker. Give us a timeline maker for the Depression that only leads students to age appropriate materials with a simple interface. Web 2.0 has been a great start, but we want these activities to be student driven. Hence the apps rule.  

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