Instructional Technology & Digital Learning Update Andover High School-Week Of September 2-5 2014

The startup of the Andover Innovation Lab/Help Desk was great as we have 7 students beginning projects. The new format at the help desk will have students creating webcasts. They are also going to be blogging soon about their projects and I look forward to reading about their learning process and projects. Students are ramped up to participate in ways to help assist teachers with the use of technology in their classrooms.

The District’s Tech Con has once again started the year with a bang and I had the great opportunity to present on a variety of Project Based Learning Technology Tools for the classroom and also presented on the Integration Of Social Media Into Our School District with Director Of Digital Learning Joanne Najarian. I have included the links to our presentations below.

I have had many opportunities to discuss the implementation of the Lego Mindstorm Kits into the Middle School science curriculum with Steve Sanborn the Program Coordinator for the Science/Engineering Department in Andover. Its great to see the enthusiasm he has for this program and the opportunities this program will present for the integration of coding,engineering and robotics into his program.

It was rewarding this week to reconnect with the teachers about technology and see where their goals are at for the year. I had the opportunity to work with Louise Cummings and her team in the Transitions Program at the high school to integrate Google Calendar across their computers so they could manage the support for different students needs.  

On additional professional levels I just completed the development of a curriculum for a course in “Web Application Development” for Bunker Hill Community College. This course includes to ebooks which delve into the context of web applications in the modern world of web development as well as a technical project which allows students to work their way through a project through the course. I am proud to complete the development of this course and look forward to its implementation.

So we have taken off with a huge push and plan on completing so many new technology projects this year! Looking forward to a great year of collaboration,sharing and learning with the fine teachers,administration and staff of the Andover Public Schools

Using A Great New Website IFTTT.COM (If This Then That)To Push Out Social Media Posts And Manage Your Internet Exerience

 A website that I discovered from a discussion with a student is IFTTT.com. This website has many full features for sharing your Twitter posts, LinkedIn posts or your Blogger or Wordpress account. The website allows you to share your content created across a variety of platforms by creating different social media recipes. For example, I recently created recipes which send my current favorite feeds to my email each day and also automate the tweets of my blog at different times of day. IFTTT(If This Then That) also sends the most popular New York Times technology articles directly to my email. The site really increases your engagement with the parts of the web that are the most relevant to you on a daily basis.

IFTTT does require sharing your information but it also provides tremendous value with the amount of sharing of content you have chosen to receive and also the high level of  integration between the variety of social media networks. Some of the most powerful recipes allow you to send automated updates to your Evernote account from starring emails in your Gmail or even Tweeting automatically by entering data into your Google Calendar.

Once you become familiar with the site you will see there of thousand of recipes that can be designed be creating a variety of triggers. This site has helped me organize the sharing of posts from my blog and also enabled me to be sent direct emails from Craigslist based on a search url. There are also phone based recipes which can call me in the morning as a wake up call. I highly suggest checking out all the available recipes and reap the benefit of the tools and sharing of web content.

Check out  http://www.ifttt.com and see how you can begin to orgainze the many tools you are currently using into a more organized approach with your social media.