Friday, July 5, 2013

Oh No! I Lost All My Vacation Pics! Or Did I???


Let me tell you how my Independence day celebration ended this year...

Well my BFF came over for a cook-out and some family time.  To kill a few hours before the fireworks, she wanted to work on an online album of her recent family trip to Disney.  As we were trying to work smarter and not harder, somehow she deleted her entire folder that contained not only the last 3 years of her children's lives, but the ever so precious pictures from a recent family trip to Disney.  ARGH!  As she looked at me with eyes full of tears, I headed to YouTube to seek out some answers.  Low and behold I found what I was looking for!  (Man what did we do before YouTube?)  Those pictures that you think you have deleted from your SD card actually still exist! :)

We watched the posted video from yutubemeda, a few times over to tell the truth, and decided to give Pandora Recovery a try.  What could it do? Right?  What could we lose?  We already lost a lot in my BFFs eyes.  We would waste a few minutes trying to recover or lose all of her value pictures because of a mis-click of the mouse!

Soooooo I headed over to CNET, only because I trusted this site and frankly I was worried about downloading a virus.  I then proceeded to download this free software.  I followed the on screen directions and my heart sank!  It didn't work!  Before performing CPR on my friend, I tried one last attempt at this newly downloaded program.  As I looked closer at the screen it read, "Didn't find what you were looking for?"  BINGO!  I clicked it and amazingly it began recovering and loading all 2,166 missing pictures!  Now, this wasn't a quick process.  In all I believe it took about 45 minutes to recover all of these lost photos, but in the end it was well worth it!

I had no idea you could recover lost/deleted pictures from a SD card!  Chalk this independence day up to a learning experience!   I wonder if many years ago the people living in this country who were fighting for our many freedoms would have thought that these devices would exist and be a part of the many freedoms we enjoy today?  Something to think about!

I highly recommend watching this just in case you find yourself in our shoes when working with photos!  

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

21st Century Post-It Notes - Communicate, Collaborate and Collect


  


Check this out...What can Linoit do for me, Professionally and in the Classroom?

Linoit.com is a "new to me" site that I think has MAJOR potential for the classroom teacher as a way for integration into daily classroom happenings.

Basically, it is an online canvas which allows students to leave post-it notes on various topics chosen by the teacher.  What is really nice about this site is students do not need to log in to it or have a username or password to participate.  Think of this as the old standby of passing out yellow, blue, pink and green sticky notes to students asking them to place their responses on different continuums.  Instead of the teacher having the bulletin board paper posted in the classroom, students participate in the same manner, but in an online environment.  This allows students to Communicate, Collaborate and Collect; much of what is being asked with the Common Core Standards in Language Arts and Mathematics.  

As a teacher, a classroom discussion could center around any unit of study.  Here are a few of these different ideas:



The ideas here are endless!  I can see this added to a menu of ideas presented to students on how they collect evidence on a unit of study.  This program has capabilities to add links, upload pdfs and documents, attach You-Tube, Vimeo, or Ustream videos and photos.  If you are using it on an iOS device, then the video and photo capabilities are pretty cool!  You could send a student on a search around the classroom to find and photograph or video examples of the topic you are studying and insert it into the canvas.


How to target students to make sure they are able to view your canvas?

Hyperlink the Linoit canvas by placing it on your classroom website or blog.  Be sure to use a URL shortener, as the site produces a pretty long address.  If you are an iOS user and most of your students use iPads or iPhones, be sure to check out Chirp!  I go into more detail about Chirp on this page.

Overall, this site IS worth your time exploring whether you are a classroom teacher or an administrator.  If you can think it, it will materialize!  It's the 21st Century, right?  Anything seems possible!
  

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Googlized! Is that a word?


Interesting facts about who has "gone" Google:
7 out of 8 Ivy League Universities
72 out of 100 Universities across the United States


3 Things I Learned from the "Ohio Goes Google" Summit Today!


WOW!  If one was not a admirer of Google before attending this Summit, then I believe they definitely left a lover!  This conference left a participant wanting to go home and try many new ideas to use in their classrooms tomorrow.  Among the many things I took away from this day, I am going to talk about the three things I most want to implement soon.


1.  Google Apps for Education (GAFE)

Our district has been slowly dipping our toes into this world by requiring SLOs and Unit Designs to be created and shared in Drive.  But thanks to the wonderful direction Eric Curts gave us today, I believe we will be diving into this world the beginning of next school year.  At least, part of our district will as we want to take baby steps to insure teacher buy-in and get any kinks worked out.  We are in talks about rolling out Staff/Student Gmail, Drive and Calendar apps for our district as early as August.  Check out in detail here.

2.  Google Moderator

Who Knew?  This little known tool is quite powerful.  If you are familiar with Today's Meet, then Google Moderator will feel like a long lost cousin.  Basically, Moderator runs in the background as a teacher or presenter is delivering content.  The teacher or presenter signs into google.com/moderator with their Google Account and sets up a question or questions they would like answered from the group. This would be a great help to students who are studying for a test.  The teacher could post review questions and students could respond on their devices. This is a
great way for you to see who understands the topic and who will need more reteaching to ready themselves for the test. Another use for Moderator is to embed a video on a personal district website and then place a moderator on the site below the video to answer questions that pertain to the video. And finally, ask your staff what they would want as far as professional development over the summer. They not only can add their input, but see and respond to what other teachers are requesting from their districts.


3. Presentations to Slides to AWESOME!

OK...PowerPoint. We have all used it. All have sat through someone reading it to us. (ARGH!) We know it has all of the cool bells and whistles that Google Slides (formally Google Presentations) does not have. However Slides is DIFFERENT. It is pretty user friendly, especially if you have used PowerPoint. It has great functionally where a user can embed it into a website easily. But we really haven't seen how cool and educational Slides can be!

Google Slides can be used to make non-linear slideshows.  Meaning the user can make a slide show that will link to other slides inside of the presentation. Check out the following example:


I can see this as a "clone the teacher" type activity.  Meaning a teacher can be in multiple places at one time.  This would also serve as a great differentiated tool to go along with tier lesson planning in order to reach every student where they are and take them further.


Overall, I do believe I have been GOOGLIZED, if this really is a word.  I am drinking the kool-aid.  I have always seen the great potential this suite of apps had, but now I can see this in our school district to help with the new Common Core Standards, PARCC and any other initiative teachers take part in daily in the realm of  their everyday school lives.



Friday, May 10, 2013

What is your purpose?


So, What is Your Purpose?  Kind of a difficult question for most.  At least it is for me!

 A few colleagues of mine have been encouraging me to start a Blog over the last few months.  For me, it was a no-brainer;  I don't have anything profound to say, so why waste my time, (and yours)!  But over the last few days, I think I am changing my mind about this.

As technology is ever changing, so is the classroom in which our youth are growing up.  I am a strong advocate for enriching our students in a technology deep classroom.  I am an advocate for our children being immersed in educational technology, because it is THEIR world!  However, I am not an advocate for the latest and greatest piece of technology being thrown into our classrooms and teachers using the tool to guide their instruction.  Integration is the key.  Teachers need to be able to continue to teach new common core standards and integrate technology into these lessons to enhance learning.  This is my purpose.  This is my passion.  I am planning on using this Blog to communicate ideas and lessons to teachers who share my viewpoint.  I am hoping that through curating good ideas and good uses of technology, you will be captivated enough to continue to come back.

So here it goes...