Smore: A Fabulous Online Flyer-Creation Tool!

Have you checked out www.smore.com yet? It's a great website to use for creating engaging flyers. It's free to use and allows you to create dynamic flyers, rather than just a static PDF file. You can easily add videos, websites, pictures, and even surveys just by dragging and dropping each type of item onto your flyer. If you want to delete a section of your flyer, simply drag it off the screen and then it's gone! Here's a quick video from smore that tells a little more about it.


A Cupcake Story from Smore on Vimeo.

How could you use this in your classroom? This would be a great communication tool to use for parent flyers, extracurricular clubs, school newsletters, etcetera. I used Smore to create the flyer below, to share a few apps with my teachers as a continuation of my professional development session that week. I've also used it to create flyers for my gym, to let members know about our holiday hours and to share some healthy holiday recipes.

What are you waiting for? Go to www.smore.com and sign up for your own free account. Be creative and start sharing!

LEC 1.2 Reflection: Personal Learning Goal

Prompt:
Considering the online learning self-assessment you took this week, and thinking about your reasons for taking this course, what is your highest priority learning goal for this course? What are some specific skills, strategies or tools you are hoping to learn more about?

My highest priority learning goal for this class is to learn and expand my repertoire of effective strategies and online tools that my teachers will be able to easily use next year as they move towards a blended learning classroom. More specifically, I would like to learn more and investigate how a blended learning classroom could be successful in a high poverty school where many students do not have internet access outside of school.  How can we cross this “digital divide” to help our students reach their learning goals? In my opinion, blended and/or online learning is even more important in high poverty schools, as many poor students are not afforded the out of school learning opportunities that their well-to-do counterparts have. 

My goal this summer is to learn tools and strategies that will give my teachers the best chance for success with the blended learning model. I know that if I cannot find workarounds/strategies for students without internet access at home, it will be hard to convince any of my teachers to try it. I have some this past year who researched “flipping” their classroom, but were unable to make plans that would accommodate all students. I also look forward to learning new tools and strategies that I can implement in the technology professional development I teach at my school. This coming year, we are planning to do more targeted/personalized professional development by meeting with grade level departments, rather than full faculty meeting professional development. My principal, literacy coach, media specialist and myself will meet and plan our initial PD - from there we will use their feedback to further personalize their professional development. 

According to the TOoLS self-assessment, I am an excellent fit for online learning classes. This makes sense to me, because I have always been a self-motivated learner, and have a strong background in technology which makes online learning easier for me. The only negative tendency that I noted in my self assessment(which is one I often struggle with), is my occasional tendency to procrastinate. I hope and plan that my procrastination will not show up this summer, as I am involved in this and one other online course this summer, in addition to attending several days of training and a national conference this summer. Thankfully, my procrastination is usually balanced my tendency to make lists and plan out my week’s work. 

I look forward to learning more about online and blended learning throughout the eight weeks of this course! 

Formative Assessment - Google Docs

What's that you say? A formative assessment that grades itself? Miraculous!

We are lucky enough to live in a era where many technology tools exist that can make our lives as educators a little easier. Some of my favorites include Socrative, InfuseLearning, and one of the simplest, Google Docs. If you're not familiar with Socrative or InfuseLearning, keep an eye out for my upcoming posts about these two wonderful tech tools!

Last week I did a tech tutorial with my teachers on using Google Docs for grading. A few of my more reluctant technology users told me that there was "No way technology could make her life any easier." After we finished, she wanted to know when I could come work with her to create her first quiz!

Getting Started
You need to create a Google Drive account. If your school district is like mine, you'll need to create a separate account using your school email address. Our email system blocks emails from non-school email addresses, so Flubaroo would be unable to email you students their results.

1. Go to https://drive.google.com
2. Sign out of your personal Gmail account(if you are currently signed in)
3. Click the Sign Up button in the upper right hand corner.
4. When on the Sign Up screen, select "I prefer to use my current email address" under the Choose Your Username box.
5. Fill out the form using your district email address.
6. Google will send a verification email to the address you provided. Once you verify your account, you're ready to go! 

Flubaroo

Flubaroo's website does an excellent job of explaining how to use it in conjunction with Google Forms. Check out their intro video here:

Here's a link to their user guide: http://www.flubaroo.com/flubaroo-user-guide
Flubaroo User Guide
In addition to its uses in the classroom, it's also a good way to find out how much your faculty/staff know about a particular topic. We used this in a faculty meeting to gauge the knowledge level of our staff on a particular topic. Try it out - let me know what you think!

Tools for Teachers: Paper Slide Show

This is not a web 2.0 tool, however, I think it is an excellent option for student projects. Essentially, students work in groups to create a slide show using sheets of computer paper. This is recorded on a Flip Camera or smartphone. As a teacher, you only have to supply the topic, markers, and paper. The students do the rest! The beauty of this project(in my opinion), is that you do not need constant access to a computer lab. For those of us who are in schools where the labs are in high demand, this is a wonderful thing! My students are very engaged, and it's been a good way to reinforce those collaborative skills we work on throughout the year.

One of my classes is currently in the process of creating paper slide shows on Feudalism in Medieval Europe. Each group was assigned a different level of the pyramid. You could use this format of presentation in almost any subject. For example, in math, you could have students explain a particular type of problem and how to solve it as part of the end-of-course review. In science, you could have them create paper slide shows about biomes.


Below, I've posted a sample slide show I created for a course earlier this year, and also a video from Youtube that explains how to make a paper slide show.


How to Make a Paper Slide Show:

 Sample Social Studies Slide Show:

Teaching and Technology

In today's schools, technology abounds. We have SMARTboards, iPads, laptop labs, Bring Your Own Device, and many other new and exciting trends. It can be overwhelming! Sometimes, it's difficult to discern which of these new tools can truly increase student learning and engagement. Our focus must be on the students - when utilizing new technology, we must evaluate whether or not it is a truly valuable and worthwhile tool.

For the most part, my posts will evaluate the value of various tools, and give ideas on how they can be used in the classroom.  Also, I will discuss various ways in which we as educators can continue along our own path of learning - in these tough economic times, many school districts have cut professional development funds. However, there are so many online opportunities for free professional development that it's easy to stay in touch today!

I'm excited and ready to learn - are you?