Spring Break Shenanigans

One of the many perks of being a teacher is our wonderful, well deserved spring break. This year, my spring break is quite different than years past. It used to be all about me: sports, coaching, shopping, vacation, hanging out with friends, reading, and relaxing. The real deal. 

This year, spring break, just like my life, revolves around my one-year old son, Tyler. I am only half way through the week, and wow....words cannot express how thankful I am for the time I have with him and the love that continues to grow day by day. His innocence, passion, curiosity, and knowledge continue to amaze me, and I can truly say that I am enjoying every second of spring break: Every smile, cry, word, step, book, giggle, tantrum, and adventure we have together. It is also the real deal. 

My son's curiosity has been especially entertaining to watch, as he is always observing and learning from everything around him. While he can be instantly distracted from what he is doing, his innocence allows him to be genuinely curious about everything he sees, and in turn, he sincerely appreciates all of life's moments and is proud of himself when he completes a task independently. 

I find myself acting a little sillier, taking more chances, and enjoying more moments, as I am inspired by his energy and curiosity. I beam with pride as I watch him grow before my eyes and cannot imagine my life, or future spring breaks, without him. Being a mom is totally the real deal. 

#whatsup 

Ideas and Taking Action

My mind has been spinning with great ideas of how to improve my classroom. I am blessed with opportunities to attend conferences and collaborate with other talented, passionate educators, and these opportunities motivate me to take new steps in making my classroom student-centered. I recently joined a cohort for a Future Ready Teacher Leader Certificate through the EdTech Team. My excitement continues to grow each day as I continue to connect with more educators and learn from their experiences while also sharing my own. My mind continues to race with new ideas for my classroom, and I know it is up to me in order to take action and risks in the future. 

My first big step this year was revising my research project and turning it into an Inquiry project. While it took time, I am extremely happy with the process and my students' work. Will I do things differently next year? Yes...of course, but this will only make it more successful. The risk in changing the project was invigorating, and it provided an opportunity for my students to think creatively, analytically, and critically. They took ownership of their own research and writing, and this ownership was powerful to observe and facilitate. 

My next step is creating a Project Based Learning activity for our fourth and final unit. The unit focuses on aspirations and what it takes to pursue happiness. In addition, our anchor text is my all time favorite novel, The Great Gatsby. At this point, I am in the planning stages but look forward to creating a learning opportunity for my students in which they contemplate what it takes to attain happiness. The project will take place while we are reading, and each week I hope to give the students a day to research and share using some sort of digital platform. Google Collections is high on my list for a digital platform, as I have just started using it professional and personally in order to organize my ideas and share my learning. Potentially, students can research, question, reflect, create, and then post writing, links, images, questions, and videos in their collections. From there, they can share their reflections in our class Community, which will speak to a larger audience and provide an opportunity to learn and communicate with each another. I may also challenge my students to share their collections on Twitter or through another digital platform in order to expand their audience outside of our classroom. Obviously, the opportunities for learning are endless. 

Ideas will continue to come in...but it is my job to take action. Stay tuned as I continue to brainstorm, create, learn, reflect, and share throughout this process. #whatsup

The Power of Screencastify

Screencastify is a great video screen capture extension for Chrome that gives you the power to create videos for your classroom. Teachers can use Screencastify to flip their classrooms or share pertinent information with students and parents. Students can also use Screencastify to produce digital presentations. Screencastify is easy to use, and with one click, you can save your video to the Google Drive and YouTube.

Click here to install the extension and watch the included video in order to learn how to get and use Screencastify.

Parent Teacher Conference Slam

Wow...it is already December! As with any school year, time is flying by, and we are already gearing up for final exams. November was a crazy month due to numerous professional conferences, parent teacher conferences, and Thanksgiving; however, we did some great things at Neuqua Valley High School that I wanted to share. 

Parent teacher conferences can be a stressful time for teachers. While it is always wonderful to meet the students' parents, it can take time to properly prepare for each conference if a teacher plans to share student artifacts from class. In an effort to help save teachers some time, frustration, and stress, we sent out various tips and tricks in order to help teachers DOMINATE their parent teacher conferences in our Parent Teacher Conference Slam video series.

What is a slam you might ask? A slam is a quick, fun, and energetic tutorial of some sort of app, skill, or idea. The goal….learn something awesome and use it in order to make your life easier! SLAM!

Video #1: Searching the Google Drive  

Video #2: Using Google Forms = Student Ownership

Video #3: Navigating Google Spreadsheets

Video #4: Becoming a Chrome Ninja

Video #5: Creating a Timer

Geeking Out

Life is good….Google released even MORE updates yesterday to the tools we all know and love. (Yes…I am geeking out) #Googledomination

Now for the updates….(Here is a quick preview list. Click on the links below in order to read more about the updates and see them in action)

1.   Voice typing in Google Docs

2.      Easily see new changes in Google Docs

3.      Revamped Google Forms (You have to opt in to try the new Google Forms)

4.      Google Fonts preserved in Microsoft products

5.      The new Explore option in Google Sheets – analyzes your data and automatically creates charts and surfaces based on the information (Seems pretty powerful)

6.      Partial cell formatting in Google Sheets

7.      Templates in Docs, Sheets, and Slides – Numerous options in order to help you focus on content and not formatting (Some really great options available)

8.      New themes/color schemes in Google Slides

Click here for more information about these awesome updates.

In addition to the Google Drive/productivity updates, Google rolled out a new Chrome extension called Share to Classroom, and it is a wonderful tool for classroom use! Teachers can push websites directly out to students, and it will automatically open up in the students’ Chrome browser. (Students must have this extension downloaded and enabled in order for it to work) If you are interested in using this new extension, click here to read more about its capabilities.

I will leave you with this…If you are looking for a great daily bell ringer activity, just Google Search Fun Facts.

Finding the Goods...

Now that we are one week into the school year, I am starting to get myself organized and actually have time to tackle my long list of things I would like to do as a teacher and instructional technology coordinator. With the constant updates and improvements to many of the IT tools that I find valuable for the classroom, it can be hard to keep up; therefore, one of my goals is to get better about staying in the loop and sharing what I can with different departments at my school. 

Yesterday, as I sifted through all of the tweets I favorited this summer so that I could come back to them as needed, I was extremely impressed with the resources shared by my PLN. As an educator, it is so refreshing to know that there are people out in the world who are willing to share all of their wonderful ideas with others thirsty for knowledge. Not only do they share this wonderful information, but many of them also include images and make instructional videos in order to make the learning experience more enjoyable and meaningful. In our digital world, the overabundance of information we can find online is overwhelming; however, if you know what you are looking for, it can be a wonderful resource in your professional and personal life. 

My classroom continuously evolves due to the knowledge I gain from others. I feel grateful for my colleagues and PLN who supply me with endless tips, tricks, and suggestions to make my classroom environment more student-centered. Ultimately, it is not about the tools that I am using, it is about WHY I am using them in order to enhance my instruction and the students' learning experience.

Isn't it wonderful to know that we can rely on each other in order to share the goods that can and will transform the classroom environment? Step one...find the goods! 

It Will Be Fine...

School has officially started, and my colleagues are all eager to get through the first two days of meetings in order prepare for our first day with students. While everyone, including myself, is disappointed and sad that summer is over, there is that same buzz of excitement that I always appreciate at the beginning of the school year.

As new teachers enter our district, they have to complete a few days of new teacher camp. As an instructional technology coordinator, I have the opportunity to present to new teachers about the technology we offer in the district. Despite the overwhelming amount of info we have to present, it was a wonderful afternoon of learning. I was so impressed with the new teachers' enthusiasm and passion for their new positions in the district. The excitement in their eyes reminded me of the excitement I had as a new teacher. What a wonderful feeling! My goal this year is to hold onto this excitement and use it in a positive way in my classroom.

I have adopted a new motto this year about all of the other work, besides teaching, that takes up a majority of the day and causes stress in the workplace:

"It will be fine!" 

The most important part of my day is the time I spend with my students, and it is my job to create a safe, creative, collaborative, and insightful environment for them to gain success as learners. Everything else will get done when it gets done. It will all be fine.