Tis the Season For Google Hangouts....End Of Year Assessment Time

At this time of year as the school year draws to a close both at the High School I work at and the Community College I teach at I like to close with something new for the students. This semester I chose to use the collaborative Google Hangout for sharing of course materials,a good laugh at us on a web cam and also a new fluency in technology use and assessment. The sharing of these experiences online is beneficial from a variety of perspectives for both the students and myself.

For a long time I have found video to be a great way to share what a person learns and also how they learn. Google hangouts provide the perfect opportunity to get up to 10 students(others can watch) for a web based video collaboration which has enabled chat features and screen sharing capabilities.

For the final of my PHP programming course at Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown,Massachusetts I asked students to go online and participate in the hangout and share their collective work for the semester. This was a small class so the format worked perfectly. Students received notification from me on their Google + page to join the hangout and shared their web pages from their chosen server and we also we able to discuss the approach we decided on for our group final project.

This students in this class really responded well to the hangout format and were anxious to share with the technology. When audio issues arrived we were able to utilize the built in messaging service inside the Hangout. This can help communicate between all participants.

I chose to do a hangout on air in which the video is live streamed to the internet and saved to Youtube. This is great for revisiting if you need at a later time.

I found Hangouts relatively easy to use except when some students I sent invites to did not receive the notice in their Google accounts. This can be a little annoying for inviting the members but usually a couple resends solves the problem. I have included the video from my PHP class if your interested in seeing one go down but it is much more fun to have your own!

In the Andover Innovation Lab which is a course at Andover High School for Independent Technology projects students have Google Hangouts as part of their final assessment. I ask that students present and their self driven projects and describe their experiences creating them. I want students to reveal their process and goals as well as the resources they used to get their product. In the video I embedded below, the student created an application using the iOS development tool Xcode and has described his experiences.

Overall the tool is powerful at creating collaboration and sharing with technology. It does take some time to get used to but in the end it can be a powerful web based assessment tool. Its great to be able to ask students to present in this way. It makes them think about their presentation in a real world construct.

Instructional Technology Update Andover High School Week Of March 31st-April 4th Google Groups & Forms

This week was a great week of working with teachers implementing a range of Google tools for collaborating with students and collecting responses.

The first teacher I worked with was Adriana Gonzalez. I have worked with Adriana on a range of projects during the school year which  integrated technology in her Spanish classroom. In this session we created some Google Forms which will be quizzes she can use across her classes and decrease the amount of time she will need to grade her traditionally assigned quizzes by doing them online. We worked together to create the forms and make simple reusable links to share easily and edit the quizzes for each class.  It took us only about 2 short half hour sessions to get her up and running with her quizzes and she will definitely be saving time in the assessment process moving forward. Each time we work together we are able to make her classroom more web based and easier to access online materials.

Social Studies teacher Lauren Ream was looking for a way to easily have students comment in a web based thread on specific subjects in her Western Civilization course. Lauren and I have already been working on a blog and adding more web based resources to add to her ability to share with her students more easily.

In just a short 1 hour period I was able to work with Lauren and her students to provide them access to creating a Google Group. Access for students was made more easily since students had provided their emails at an earlier time and they could easily be sent the invite. The benefits of creating a Google Group are that you can keep an exclusive or open group in which you can add comments to student posts or post discussion topics. Students add to the topics and create a stream of activity. The group can also be shared with a simple link. Emails can also be sent directly to the group as well.

Mrs. Ream used the Group to enable students to comment on specific classroom topics and to share perspectives. The link form the conversations can also be added to her current blog for revisiting at a later time.

I think from an integration standpoint Google Groups are a great place to start using a web based tool as you can commit to it on any level within your classroom. You can use it for just one assignment or use it for an entire course. Additionally those who are in the group are notified when a post or comment is made in the group. I feel as though this adds the element of being connected to the classroom.

This week I was also able to continue working with Art teacher Teresa Consentino on the development of her blog for her Art Foundations course. This week we worked at getting her older lessons created into PDF form on the scanner and adding the to her Blogger Blog. Creating her blog has been a process of selecting the most important lessons and what will work best being put online. With art it is also a challenge to choose art pieces which reflect a high quality of work and those which show the concrete concepts. We are working to develop her unit on 2 and 3 Dimensional Perspective Drawing. This process has been rewarding as it is a real model of transforming exciting art concepts into web based lessons and easy to navigate links.

On Thursday I had the opportunity to be a Judge at the West Middle School Science Fair. This was a great experience as I got to meet the students and find out more about their projects and what drove their scientific investigation. I spoke with students who did projects related to insulation efficiency,beach erosion and even the strength of spider webs.

I think a great component built into this fair was the integration of the "Green" projects. This really helped students choose to look into environmental issues in their science project and try to solve them. As an Instructional Technology Specialist it was great to visit and view the perspective of the students and their technology,engineering and science integration into their projects.

April 7-11 Instructional Technology Update Andover High School -Daniel Downs

I have been communicating with teachers around the building this week on how to use Baseline Edge software and complete the uploading and checking off of evaluation documents. This has benefitted teachers with helping them become more familiar with saving and storing important artifacts for their SMART goals. This learning process has been taken on with full steam and I am highly impressed with their detailed documentation of their learning goals and graphics being added to the portal.

Sara Adam a senior who works at the helpdesk was in a cake decoration competition in Danvers Mass. She is currently designing a website at the helpdesk about her cakes and designs and cupcakes. Sara has been diligently working on her site which displays a photo gallery of her work and also the history of her business. 
Sara was eager to have the opportunity to join the help desk and she has brought a great spirit and attitude to the help desk.

This week I continue to work with Peter Hall on his video project that he has for this the French students. He is currently using iMovie with video clips the students of shot show parts of Andover to the students are visiting from France. I am working with him to have the clips to iMovie edit and add titles. Peter has dedicated himself to integrating more technology into his classes and now he is taking on full video projects.






He will be sharing this project with the students were visiting as well as his own students to strengthen the vocabulary and dialect of their French. Working with Peter has been greatly rewarding and I am currently planning on using his project as a best practice for high school integration in Andover. I have included the photo of Peter's notes which he meticulously took about the contents of the project outcomes he wanted for students in this video. 

We are currently planning a video which will showcase teacher use of technology across the district. The video will be a collaboration between the digital learning department and the film and video studio teacher at Andover High School, Dan Brennan who will help us shoot and edit the "Virtual Open House".




The goal of the "Virtual Open House" will be to inform the community,parents,teachers and students of the variety of new technology tools, integration strategies and best practices which will be an important part of the 1:1 implementation in the fall in the 8th grade. Stay tuned for more updates on the progress of the video as we move forward.

Instructional Technology Update & Andover Innovation Lab Week of March 17-21 2014

At the Andover Innovation lab and student run help desk we are busy planning for our promotion efforts for next year! We had current students create flyers to hang around the school promoting our program. Students will be able to sign up for the help desk next year during the week of March 24th thru 31st.

From an instructional technology perspective teacher awareness of the use of web 2.0 tools is been a major focus this month as I have been sharing the district resources for Digital Learning. These resources help teachers to integrate a variety of web 2.0 tools into the classroom and also be able to differentiate what the difference between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools is. Please review the link below to review some of Andover Public Schools Digital Learning Approved Tools. At a recent faculty meeting I was able to present the availability of these materials and  presented to faculty the tools and suggestions for integration.

https://sites.google.com/a/k12.andoverma.us/digital-learning/approved-web-2-0

A tool that I was able to directly introduce to them at the same meeting was the social bookmarking tool Symbaloo. This is a very graphical bookmarking tool that allows you to set its interface as the homepage of your computer and also create multiple pages of bookmarks. I can highly recommend the use of this tool for teachers particularly for creating specific pages of bookmarks to share with students and also the ability of this tool in other users

“webmixes” of links and resources.

https://www.symbaloo.com/

This is great for finding new resources and also sharing specific subject area links. Another option would be to have students create accounts and make their own list of links to share with the teacher.

This week at Andover High School we were in the midst of MCAS testing. It became a great time to catch up on projects but also to connect with teachers more easily about how their technology is functioning and how their current projects may be developing.

On Thursday I had Natalie Pinta come and shadow me for a day at Andover High. She was interested in viewing how were integrating technology into our classrooms and the tools and culture we were creating with student and staff use. She was really impressed with the collaborative approach and willingness of teachers to let me into their classroom.

News From The Andover Innovation Lab/Help Desk: IPad Cart Updates & Preparing Our Final Projects-Getting Back In the Flow

After a great Christmas break we are back at the Andover Innovation Lab and Help Desk ready to conclude the projects we have been working on in the first semester and also updating the IPad cart for the Science department. 

The Science Department at Andover High School has the amazing resource of a shared IPad cart which includes 24 IPad for classroom integration of technology and 1:1 learning opportunities. At a recent department meeting they collaborated and chose 18 new IPad applications to use in their courses. Amongst these was the app for Gizmo's which enables students engage in a variety of interactive science activities and the app for Prezi Presentations which will enable presentation creation from the IPad. The department did a great job selecting apps which fit their needs and classroom strategies. Apps like "Evolutionary Biology", "Ecosystem HD","Bridge Constructor”, and “Genetics Lab Mobile" will engage students with content rich learning on the IPad.

Organizing and adding these new applications to their shared IPad cart is the where the role of the help desk students come in. Viabhav Patel and I (Dan Downs) spent about an hour and a half with the cart adding the applications to the Science Departments ITunes account and then synching all the applications to the IPad. This is also an opportunity to check the status of the charging of the IPad and the MacBook laptop which is used to streamline this process.

It is great to have students as part of this process and enables them to not only see the connection of their learning at the help desk to the needs of the teachers in the classroom. 

After completing the update Viabhav also had time to do a blog entry for the Innovation Labs blog on the video series related to better helping teachers understand Minecraft for use in educational environments. Viabhav has done a great job balancing his time between working on his own independent project and assisting the needs of teachers who have the benefits of a variety of new technologies in the classroom.

An Overview Of Google Drive With Sample Projects & Directions For Sharing Preferences

The following document provides an overview of the use of Google Drive for the creation of Documents,Spreadsheets,Forms and Presentations. I have embedded the document for easy viewing from my Google Drive. The direct link for this document is here.

This document includes links to link shorteners and also information on how to use and integrate the scripts for Flubaroo and Doctopus. These scripts enable the grading of Goggle documents and also how to create a classroom learning management by organizing the delivery of documents to students. At the bottom of the document is a link to a written tutorial which walks you through creating your Google Document and setting the sharing preferences.

Students Leading Ed Tech Change: Drawing Inspiration From The Tech Savvy Student

In my past 8 years of teaching a variety of levels of technology fluent students in the classroom I have become exposed to the variety of different ways that students supplement their knowledge acquisition of technology skills while away from the traditional classroom. I always find it very interesting when speaking with students to discover how they found this tool or that web resource and see how they have built upon their skills completely independent of school curriculum. I am also curious how they then share and collaborate with these skills. 

Technology knowledge driven students spend hours of their time learning how to learn develop a variety of skills such as programming, research skills, web fluency and development. In this process they define goals, find resources and match those goals to projects with meaning. These students become the leaders and show superior knowledge acquisition in most classrooms. We hopefully have all met these trailblazers at some point in our educational careers, they take acquiring skills in which to create projects and develop knowledge to a new level. I love working with these students because I learn from them and I grow with them. By encouraging them I am allowed to envision what their projects goals are and how their research will impact their learning.

In my web design and mobile app development courses I often had students who had more advanced programming knowledge prior to taking my introductory course. Some of these students acquired their skills in a summer camp or other venue but many of them had found the resources themselves on the web and become familiar with the skills necessary to be complete tasks independently.We operate in a time in education in which most students have many resources to direct their own independent learning. 

I think it is important to ask students: "What skills and knowledges do they use to compensate for the knowledge’s they don't find in the traditional curriculum?" It is with their answers that educators can find the opportunity to provide students with a range of new and interesting skills. It is time to investigate what students research, and how they use their time to better understand what the world of education is for students who are doing much of their learning online. This will provide a real opportunity for educators to see what they're missing. It may lead to better formulated lessons, more comprehensive curriculum and skill based learning. 

Having a classroom open to collaboration and connecting to the real world by introducing business owners, entrepreneurship opportunities and connection to employability based soft skills can help keep your classroom vibrant and infused with learning which is relevant to world applied knowledges. The modern student is looking for the knowledge and examples to apply skills to complete projects with self defined goals which are relevant in the real world. I really believe this is at the heart of education, helping students learn and guiding them towards resources. Let's allow them to develop their own thoughts and create their own projects which can really help change the world.

Students are engaged with games like Minecraft, which enables students to create their own worlds and are able to develop their knowledge of the Java programming language to create modifications (Mods) to their games and worlds. Our current technology education system has not caught up with these trends and provided opportunities for students to develop the skills in the real world classroom. In this process we are losing out on a critical opportunity to connect with students and better understand what drives their acquisition of knowledge. We are also not able to frame their skills and build realistic connections to apply their skills in the real world. Students are deciphering the web and finding their own curriculum in order to learn how to acquire deeply engaging technology embedded skills.

Students are also learning new programming languages that their current classroom teacher has not caught onto yet. Their young active minds are moving beyond just being tech savvy and helpful when a teacher is in trouble, they have developed their own system of knowledge acquisition which plans projects and needs to be valued and encouraged in and out of the traditional classroom.

Educators are missing not only a valuable opportunity to connect but also but also a valuable opportunity to continue their personal growth with the integration of technology. Embracing the independent technology learner enables teachers to draw from student experience and knowledge and can help create more engaging lessons and strategies to connect with students. The web the way students view it.