Amazing Race Secondary PD

Our high school is 1:1 Macbooks and our middle school is 1:1 Chromebooks, so I wanted to create a race that both schools could participate in together.  The majority of teams were made up of one high school teacher, one middle school teacher, and one associate or student teacher.

The tasks for the secondary staff are below: 

Task 1: Slide into Learning (this one separated the men from the boys)

Create a shared Google Slide presentation per team. Each slide has specifications:

Slide 1: Create and list your team name, members of your team

Slide 2: Tell which each member of your team is an expert on.  Each member will contribute a link to their expertise.

Slide 3: Create 1 shared Google Maps Engine Lite map for your team.  Each team member drops a pin on their favorite vacation location.  Each pin must include the Place name, Team Member’s name and a short description about the vacation.  After all pins are dropped, take a screenshot and insert the picture into the slide.

When all 3 slides are complete, show to your Clue Master for your next clue.

Task 2: Twitter-ific

Your team has a few tasks at this location.  

1. Take a picture of your team.  Tweet it out with your Amazing Race Team name and the district hashtag.
2. Favorite a tweet
3. Retweet another person’s tweet

After each task, show your Clue Master.  Once all three are completed, your Clue Master will give you your next clue.

Task 3:  Standards

In this task, you will be shown three pieces of student work.  You will need to determine the ISTE/Iowa Core 21st century standards addressed in each one.  

Once you have answered correctly for each one, you will be given your next clue from your Clue Master.

Task 4: Detour

For the detour, you need to decide between two tasks.  When one task is complete, show your Clue Master for your next clue.

1. Create a video with the green screen in either iMovie or WeVideo.  Upload to Youtube (you can keep it private).

OR

2. Create a house in Google Sketchup with a roof and two windows.

Task 5: Hangout and Display it All

In this task, you will need to install Google Hangouts. Then, connect with your clue master via video on hangouts and display your video conversation. Once your video conversation is displayed, your clue master will give you your next clue.

Task 6: Roadblock

For the road block, only one of you will be allowed to complete it. The rest of the team may not help, but can encourage the designated teammate. You must decide who will perform this task before seeing the task.

Complete five levels of Hour of Code for your grade span.  When you have completed the first five levels, show your Clue Master for your next clue.

Task 7: Screencastify

For this task, each member of the team needs to download the Chrome app Screencastify.

Each member creates a screencast that shows off one skill you performed or learned today.

Insert them into the Google Slide created during task 1 and share with the district technology integration specialist.  

See your Clue Master for details on your checkpoint.

Checkpoint!

Great Work!  You have reached your checkpoint.  At this time, you will share something you learned during today’s session OR how you could use the Amazing Race game in your classroom via Google Moderator.   You can vote for others’ too and the most popular rise to the top.

Amazing Race Elementary iPad PD

I wrote about the planning of our Amazing Race Professional Development.  I have already had a few requests for the actual tasks, so I will start with my elementary iPad Amazing Race.



Task 1: Virtual Field Trip

Login to Discovery Ed Science through ourAEA’s online resources.  Find a virtual field trip you could use for your grade level in the next nine weeks. When you find one and bookmark it, show your Clue Master for your next clue.

Task 2: AirDrop your Video

For this task, you will need to decide your Amazing Race team name.  One of you will then record a short video (under 30 seconds) of the rest of the team members explaining why you chose that name. Then AirDrop the video to all of your team members.  

Once everyone has the video, show your Clue Master for your next clue.

Task 3: Twitter-ific

Your team has a few tasks at this location.  

1. Take a picture of your team with Photobooth.  Tweet it out with your Amazing Race Team name and the district hashtag.
2. Favorite a tweet
3. Retweet another person’s tweet

After each task, show your Clue Master.  Once all three are completed, your Clue Master will give you your next clue.

Task 4: Detour

1. Create a digital story on one of your iPads.  Team members may want to search for images and airdrop them to the production iPad.

OR

2. Each of you need to drop a pin on your favorite vacation spot in Google Earth.  Include your name and short description about your vacation.

Task 5:  Standards

In this task, you will be shown three pieces of student work.  You will need to determine the ISTE/Iowa Core 21st century standards addressed in each one.  

Once you have answered correctly for each one, you will be given your next clue from your Clue Master.

Task 6: Roadblock

For the road block, only one of you will be allowed to complete it. The rest of the team may not help, but can encourage the designated teammate. You must decide who will perform this task before seeing the task.

Complete five levels of Hour of Code for your grade span.  When you have completed the first five levels, show your Clue Master for your next clue.

Task 7: Hangout and Reflect

In this task, you will need to install Google Hangouts (Hangouts in the app store) on one of your iPads.  

Then, connect with the clue master via video on hangouts and display your video conversation with Reflector.

Once you have reflected, your clue master will give you your next clue.

Task 8: Stay Put!

In this task, you will need to get into an app on your iPad and turn on Guided Access.  Once you have Guided Access turned on, you will show your Clue Master for checkpoint information.

Checkpoint!

You have reached your checkpoint.  At this time, you can discover apps on your iPad until the rest of the teams arrive!  

Great work on learning some new things about the iPads!

Amazing Race Tech PD

For one of our ninety minute technology professional development sessions, I created an Amazing Race style game. @angelancheatham and @jessica_branch presented a poster session at ISTE14 about giving professional development a makeover and this was one of their ideas. 

There is a lot of preparation and organization to creating the races, but it was well worth it by having actively engaged learners who are collaborating and growing with each other.  In preparing for these races, here is the checklist I used to get organized.

• Determine 8 tasks that you want the staff to engage in or learn
• Determine locations for each station and get permission from classroom teachers to use their room
• Make list of equipment needed in the location
• Ask 7 other people to be "Clue Masters" that will be stationed at each pit stop
• Create and print clue sheets to move from one pit stop to another
• Create and print task sheets for each pit stop
• Share tasks with clue masters.
• Determine teams - (worked great in pairs or groups of three)
• Purchase yellow envelopes
• Stuff and label clue envelopes - Give yourself plenty of time for this
• Create and print station instructions/keys for clue masters 
• Create introduction iMovie
• Create Google Form for team reflections
• Secure prizes for winning team(s) - I purchased gift cards
• Give Clue Masters the task cards, materials needed for their station (including answer keys), and clue envelopes
• Day of the Race - set up each station

To make an Amazing Race work for our district, which is 1:1 Macbooks at the high school, 1:1 Chromebooks at the middle school, and some iPads at the elementary, I had to create multiple races which added to the planning.

The day of the race (for secondary staff) followed this format:

1.  I presented an introductory iMovie that explained the race and the teams.

2.  Staff started with me with their first task

• Task 1: Create a shared Google Slide presentation per team. Each slide had specifications such as adding a team name, inserting an image, external links and using Google Maps engine lite

3. When they were done with their first task, they received their first clue to the location of their next pitstop. These clues were stuffed into the yellow envelopes. Here are a few examples of clues that moved the staff from pit stop to pit stop:

                       

         

4.  They moved from pitstop to pit stop until they arrived at their checkpoint.  Along the way, staff had a roadblock in which only one member could participate.  They also had a detour in which they had a choice between two tasks.

5.  At the end of the race, I awarded prizes to the team that finished the race first.  Then, teachers reflected on the learning experience through a Google Form.

If you have any ideas to make this better or would like some more of my resources or task ideas, please let me know.

Blog Commenting Pathway

Our eighth grade language arts classes will be connecting with another school, across the state, through blogs on their own interests. This week, we will be reading the other school's blog posts and making comments.  Students usually struggle with how to make effective comments to blogs, so I created a poster to encourage them to think before they post.  Only after they have gone through the path of commenting should they post their comments.  I will also add that their comments should be at least three sentences long, but this should be obvious when going through the pathway of commenting.

Adding a Global Perspective to your Google Search

When researching history or global topics, it is important to get a global perspective rather than just being egocentric and biased from what our news sources are providing.  This is an important skill we teach students and it also addresses many social studies standards.

 Before the Internet, the only ways to gain a global perspective  was to get news from friends or family in other countries or get ahold of old media such as newspapers from different countries.

Today, it is very easy to get a global perspective on historical or news events by adapting your Google Search.  You can search the same topic but filter so you only get results from a certain country.

You can do this by typing google.us in the omnibox to get the results only from the United States.  To get results only from Germany, you can type in google.de and then do your search from there.  For those of us that are not bilingual, if you use the Chrome browser you can use the Google Translate tool which is directly activated in the browser.

Every country has their own domain extension.  For example, sites from Germany have the "de" extension.  Sites from Spain have the "es" extension.  (List of country domain extension)

You can also do this within the advanced search option in Google.  You will need to go up to the gear in the top right hand corner of your search results.  Then, click on Advanced search.

Make sure you have the topic in which you are searching in the Find pages with....area.  Try Christopher Columbus as an example.  From there, you can complete the global results in two different ways.  You can either click on the region area and choose the country from which you want to display your results or you can type in the domain extension in the site or domain box.  Then, click Advanced Search in the bottom right hand corner.

Your results will be different based on your location, as you can see below.

Give it a try with a topic you are teaching in class and then teach your students how to search with a global mindset.

Changing Reading Level of Google Search Results

Are you tired of searching for information on Google and getting results that are too difficult for you to read?  This will come in handy when doing research projects and a lot of the results come back with an adult reading level.  Below will show you the steps in changing the reading level of your Google search results.

Step 1:  Search for your topic on Google.  I am going to search rainforests.

Step 2: Click on Search tools box.

Step 3: Click on All results.

Step 4: Choose Reading level from drop down menu.

Step 5: Click Basic to filter sites to results that are easier for you to read.

Step 6: Enjoy your results!

Designing, Creating, Building and Inventing = Makerspace

What is a Makerspace?
A makerspace is a DIY gathering place for students to design, create, build and invent.  There are many different tools or varying abilities for people to build on their craft.  Our district makerspace is located in the high school Media Center in which we have multiple supplies and tools to make. Our makerspace includes a Makerbot 3D printer, a 3D replicator, little bits, a Kano, Raspberry Pi's, Arduinos,  Makey Makeys, a recording area equipped with a green screen, as well as links to coding applications.

Purpose:
In the traditional classroom, we are asking students to find answers to questions, but in a makerspace the focus changes to the students asking the right question.  Students learn new skills through trial-and-error and perseverance to create something brand new.  It's all about the experience and learning and having something tangible and/or applicable to the real world when they are finished with their project.  We do not want the students just to make to make, but rather to create items that will go beyond the school and can solve real-world issues. Our focus for the students is to make something that can improve his or her life or someone else's whether that is an improvement on something that has already been created or inventing something themselves.

Process:
There are two different sets of skills learned in the process of making.  One is based on learning the tools themselves and the other relates to the problem-solving skills developed from making. Learning the tools themselves, such as how to run the 3D printer, can be taught through manuals, Youtube videos, or good ol' Google.  The other set of skills, which tend to be taught less in schools, are those which seem to be the most important - problem solving and diagnostic thinking.  These skills determine why something is not working, figuring out a creative solution, being meta-cognitive, and also managing stress and emotions while persevering to make something unique and useful.

Many students will start creating by mimicking others' work, using creations on Thingiverse, Youtube, or other DIY websites.  We feel this is an important part of the learning process, as students need to build confidence in risk taking while creating.   They first need to figure out how the hardware and software work.  Once they are comfortable in that step, then they start moving into creating items on their own.

Another important aspect of the makerspace was for us to have multiple ability levels of tools, software and hardware.  We have multiple levels of learners and we want everyone to find something of interest to them.  We have some simple items such as little bits and kano, but once users become comfortable, these simple tools can become complex with some imagination.  By also providing items such as Arduinos and Raspberry Pi's, students who already have a foundational understanding or programming, can create and keep moving forward.  Creating, building, problem solving and inventing are all skills we want our students to be able to do when they leave our district; therefore, providing them with a place and tools to develop these skills is an essential part in the creation of our makerspace.

Taking a Screenshot on a Chromebook

At times, you may need to take a picture of what is happening on your screen.  This is called a screenshot.  Doing this on a Chromebook is much different than on a Mac.  To do so on a Chromebook, use the following steps.

To access your files app, click on the launcher and find the Files icon.

When you click on your Files icon, a list of your files appear.  Look for those that say screenshot and have the picture icon beside them. 

You can now add these to Google Drive, Google Classroom, a blog entry, or any other place you may need a screenshot.

On the Chromebook - Where's my caps lock?

This past week, I spent the majority of my time in a few of the classrooms that have Chromebooks. The most popular question students had about the hardware was related to their keyboard.

The design of the Chromebook is little different from a traditional laptop or desktop computer. The first difference that you probably noticed is the "missing" keys on the keyboard.

So what do you need to know to make the figure out the keyboard shortcuts?
Here is the first thing for you to do. Press CTRL + ALT + ? and you will see all the available
keyboard shortcuts. Instead of function (fn) keys, you have specific keys for managing your Chrome browser. Getting used to this may take a while, but once you get the hang of it, I am sure you will find it helpful.

The Search Key and Caps Lock Key
Your Chromebook does not have a caps lock key. The caps lock key has been replaced with a search key (that looks like a magnifying glass). The search key opens the Chrome OS apps menu, which is a very helpful key.  If you are certain you want to have a caps lock key instead, go to settings and search for Keyboard. From keyboard settings, you can change the function of the search key to caps lock.

The search key seems to be more widely used over the caps lock for school purposes. When the caps lock is REALLY needed, use the following keyboard shortcut.  ALT + SEARCH
This keyboard shortcut will enable and disable caps lock. When caps lock is turned on, you will
see a up arrow like icon on next to time on the taskbar.

Posting Comments on Blogs

The fifth and sixth graders just started blogging about their thoughts on current events for their social studies class.  I wanted to see the power of a blog - rather than it being just a place for their teachers and classmates to see, it is a place where they can have a worldwide audience.  So, after the students' first posts, I taught them about commenting.

Many times when reading student blog comments, I see unproductive comments such as "Great blog" or "Hi".  Those comments do not move the conversation forward for the reflective conversations that blogs really encourage, so it was essential to teach the students about appropriate commenting on blogs.

We watched this video on creating productive comments (created by some elementary students) and then made a list of the expectations for commenting.

Expectations for commenting on blogs

1.  Read previous comments to make sure you are adding something new to the conversation.
2. Compliment the blogger in a specific way about their post
3. Add new information about the topic
4. Make a connection
5. Ask a question to the writer to keep the conversation moving forward
6. Proofread

The students took these expectations to heart!  I was impressed with the transformation in the quality of comments just from having these expectations in front of the students.

Before the lesson, I would see comments such as the one below.

These are a few examples after today's commenting lesson:

Getting back into your Blog

You have created your blog using Blogger, but do you remember how to get back into it to create, edit, and post?  This post will walk you through the steps.

First, click on your launcher and find Blogger.



Next, Click on the Blogger icon.  

You should see your blog listed.  You do NOT need to create a new blog. 

If you are wanting to create a new post, click on the orange box with the pencil in it.

If you are wanting to edit a post you previously started, click the drop down arrow shown to the right and choose posts.

Hover over the post you want to edit and click on the words edit. 

When you are done editing, you can either save (if you still need to work on it) or publish if you are done with your post.  These are located at the top right hand side of your post.

Following these steps will get you back into your blog to edit and post.  

Middle School Chromebook Rollout

The Nevada Middle School students and teachers had been waiting patiently for the 1:1 Chromebooks to arrive. Finally, the day arrived for rollout and a boot camp on how to use their new devices.  The students have now been using their Chromebooks for a little over a week and are enjoying the benefits of doing work online! 

There have been a few issues with passwords and some network security from home, but for the most part things are smooth sailing with students and teachers.  As we move forward, students and teachers will be working on collaborating, connecting to the outside world, thinking critically and creating on these devices.  We are working on moving beyond information that students can Google, but rather focusing on students being the creators of their own learning and connecting to the outside world.  

We know this will be a year of learning for both the students and teachers but we are excited to get started in this journey at the Nevada Middle School.

Parent Support with 1:1

We spend so much time preparing our teachers and students for the 1:1 environment, but we tend to forget about the parents who may not have ever had a student bring home a device from the school. It is essential that we support our parents at home with the 1:1 program.

First, parents need to understand the vision of why we are a 1:1 school.
With the changes in today's world, our schools need to adjust teaching and learning.  No longer do we live in a society where memorizing and regurgitating information will make one successful.  We need to teach our students how to communicate, collaborate, think critically, problem solve and create.  The Internet can provide the information, but we need to teach students the skills on what to do with that information to make a difference in the world.  The video below, provides a great insight to the current reality of our world in relation to technology.  Here, in Nevada, we are trying to embrace this reality and provide a solid base of learning for today's world, as well as flatten the world for them so they have the opportunity to collaborate with experts and other students across the world.  We want learning to be related to the real-world so students can contribute, problem solve and relate to the outside world.

Next, we need to help parents find resources to keep their child safe online.
Now that parents understand why we are providing Macbooks to the high school students and Chromebooks to the middle school students, we also need to provide resources to them to keep their students safe online.  A Platform for Good has many great resources to help parents when working with your students on being safe, creating a positive digital footprint, social media and keeping a balance between their online and offline life.  Here is an example below:


There are many other sites that help parents and students with their online life, like Netsmartz and Common Sense Media (which also gives reviews on games, apps, and movies to see what is appropriate for students).

Staying informed
We will continue to provide online safety tips, reminders to parents and students, as well as displaying positive ways students are using technology in the school on this blog and by following #NevadaCubPride on Twitter.

Nevada's World of Learning

http://badges.nevadacubs.org/

Gamification is one of the buzz-words in businesses and is an up and coming idea in education. Gamification is taking game thinking and mechanics and applying them to the real world. Think of your students, they can play MMOG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Games) all day working on quests. If you are on Facebook, you may play or get inundated with some social games such as Farmville, which you work on quests for points to purchase things.  

Other examples are cell phones and credit cards with reward programs. If you pay your bill on time or spend a certain amount of money, you get points. These points can be turned into purchasing power. Other examples are the craze of fitness apps, such as Fitbit and Nike+.  When you take so many steps, you earn points and have a leaderboard where you compete with your friends. When you take a certain number of steps, you earn a badge.  It is a recognition of an accomplishment, progressing through higher and higher levels of development just as people do when they are playing a video game. Its constant feedback, its work and reward.

One very important part of gamification is earning a virtual reward to keep people engaged 

to participate and keep moving forward.  In Farmville, these would be the infamous purple 

cows, or more commonly known as badges and achievements. The virtual rewards, badges, play into our natural goal-setting impulse - when one sees there is a virtual badge 

for something or if a goal is close to being met, it encourages one to participate to increase 

their activity level.

Example of badge

Badging also provides opportunities for recognition in a community and rewarding model users.  We will be using gamification and badging for part of our technology professional development for Nevada's Community Schools.  The badges that are earned through Nevada’s World of Learning are not just a stupid reward, but through the system staff will gain badges that are connected to meta-data about how and why they earned that badge. 

How many of you have went to a conference and received a certificate for learning which is now stored in some file?  With these badges, the metadata, which contains the information about the accomplishment, is stored online available when you want to show your skills, training, and accomplishments in your career development plan, resumes, and can be embedded into a social networking site or your blog.

There are numerous badges our staff can earn that cover a wide array of topics and technologies related to integrating technology into the classroom. The topics include many areas - a few examples would be things like flipping classrooms with Touchcast, connecting with other educators, students, and experts with social media, and even presenting tech professional to other staff members. The badging opportunities will continue to grow throughout the year. The leaderboard will be posted with prizes given to top performers at semester and the end of the school year.  

The real purpose: Not only will they earn badges, the main purpose is they will learn new ways to integrate technology into their classroom in transformational ways. Also, when providing professional development, we want our sessions to be relevant to all staff members. It is very difficult to have a one-size fit all technology pd session, so we want to give our staff options to dive into areas of need and interest to improve their classroom teaching and learning.

Dot Day meets Augmented Reality

Mark your calendars for September 15th, which is International Dot Day.  This day was inspired by Peter H. Reynolds' book, The Dot, and founded by a great Iowa educator, Terry Shay.  The purpose behind this day is to encourage students to create and celebrate their imagination.  

This year, there are already over 60 countries participating and almost 1,000,000 students taking part in dot day.  This day is also a way to incorporate some global awareness, as students can see how others are creating their dots by following #dotday on Twitter.

There are many different ways to celebrate Dot Day, but my favorite is by using the colAR app.  This app has special PDF's that you can print.  On these PDF's students color and design their own dots.  Once they have completed their design, they open the free colAR app (which is available in iTunes or Google Play) and scan their PDF.  

The dot will appear to come off of the page and you can view it from many different angles just by moving around the device in which you are viewing it.  Kids, are amazed with this app, as this is usually the first time students (or teachers for that matter) have seen or used augmented reality in a school setting.  There are more options to design with this free app, but you have more options if you purchase the paid version.  

As I worked with students, they were amazed with what was happening with their dots and also figured out a way to layer dots on this app so they had one background image of a dot and another dot coming to life over top of it.

How are you going to celebrate Dot Day in your classroom?  Please connect with our students to share how other parts of the world are going to celebrate creativity and imagination with this fantastic day.

Youtube Playlist for Google Classroom Setup

Since Google Classroom has just been released to us on Friday, I am sure a few of you are ready to jump right in and get started.  For those of you outside of the district, check with your IT director to make sure he or she has enabled the Google Classroom feature on your domain. I have created a YouTube playlist to get you started with using Classroom with your students.  I will continue to add to this playlist over the next few weeks as we figure out some of the ins and outs of this great free GAFE tool.

Google Classroom is now available!

What is Google Classroom?

Welcome to the first chapter of the Google Classroom tutorial.  Before we begin, you need to know what Google Classroom is and how would you use it with your class.  Classroom is a new tool  from Google Apps for Education that weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease. It lets students organize their work, complete and turn it in, and communicate directly with their teachers and peers.

For any of you who have used Google Apps for Education with you classes before, you may have realized that organizing assignments was cumbersome...classroom should take care of a lot of those issues. There are many benefits of using Classroom, as it is easy to setup, eases the workflow between students and teachers, enhances communication, and it improves organization.

We are very excited about the ease of workflow Classroom provides, but remember we don't want to fall into using this in the traditional sense of just turning in papers and assignments. This tool should help with workflow, but remember we want students creating with choice, critically thinking, communicating and collaborating.

In the next few blog posts, I will demonstrate how you can setup your Google Classroom account and how you will be able to use it in your classroom.

LanSchool Class Lists

Media Center Change

Being new to the Nevada Community School District, I am quite amazed with the teachers and their dedication to do what is right for the students.  They are constantly improving their craft and teaching to keep students engaged and have authentic learning experiences while trying to keep up with this ever-changing world. Change - a lot of people seem to strongly dislike that word, but change is necessary to continue to improve our practice and stay up-to-date with our students' lives. 

The first change - the district has been used to having a full time librarian so having a technology integrationist take over that position has been another change the students and teachers have had to get used to.  One of the tasks I was assigned was to create a vision and redesign the media centers to meet the needs of our students.   

Our Vision:

The Nevada Community School District’s Media Centers are to be learning commons flowing with innovation, collaboration, curiosity, adaptability, critical inquiry, and transliteracy.

Our Mission:

The Nevada Community School District’s Media Centers are to offer forward-thinking instruction, space, and programming that develops innovative leaders who create content that reaches a global audience.

With the vision and mission in mind, a few of us (Jessie McGaffin, a few students, and myself) gave the middle school media center a facelift over the summer.  Not only was there new staff, there was a lot of weeding of uncirculated books and new furniture.  Some of the staff was a little shocked but the students were excited.  Today, the second day of school, we were ecstatic to see a group of boys enjoying the new furniture before school started.

We have to keep in mind that the media centers are for the students and we want to draw them in to be places flowing with innovation, collaboration, curiosity, adaptability, critical inquiry, and transliteracy.

Back of the media center: