Moving Existing Files to Google Drive – A Review
Posted: May 20, 2013 Filed under: EdTech, GAFE, Google, GoogleDocs, GoogleDrive | Tags: GAFE, google, googledocs, googledrive 1 Comment »I’ve taught about Google Drive/Docs many times in person and virtually. Many teachers have decided to completely move all of their files to the cloud to store them and edit them via Google Drive. The idea of having access to your stuff from any device connected to the web is really appealing; coupled with the collaboration features that Docs offers.
As the school year comes to a close, you might be thinking that you’re ready to move files (upload) to Google Drive. We had several of our teachers asking for a reminder about how to do this, so I thought I’d make a quick tutorial that will walk you through the process. Something to keep in mind when doing this is if you want to be able to view the file via Google Drive or edit the file via Google Drive. Some of the verbiage I used in the video is specific to our teachers, but I decided to share it here on my blog too as I thought it might be helpful to others.
Enjoy!
10 Apps in 10 Minutes #chromebookedu
Posted: April 29, 2013 Filed under: Chrome, Chromebook, EdTech, GAFE, Google | Tags: chrome, chromebook, chromebookedu, edtech, google, googlechrome 4 Comments »Recently my colleague Jill and I worked with some teachers during a PD day on finding great Chrome apps & extensions for learning. We thought we’d kick off the time together by picking 10 of our most favorite (picking only 10 is hard!) and sharing them with teachers in 10 minutes. We wanted to quickly get teachers excited about educational apps and extensions available to their students. We might have went just a tad over 10 minutes but nonetheless we kept it brief.
Here are the 10 we covered with a quick description as well as the link to the Chrome Web Store. I am also purposely keeping this post short so it takes 10 minutes or less to read. 
1. Google Dictionary – a very handy extension to use in Chrome. Students can quickly look up the definition of a word by using the extension or directly; or double-clicking any word on a web page will bring up it’s definition and a sound icon to click and hear the pronunciation.
2. Pixlr Express – this app allows you to quickly and easily do some fun editing to any photos you have saved on your computer, in Google Drive, or even captured live via webcam. This is one of many apps that integrates easily with Google Drive.
3. Scratchpad – another app that works seamlessly with Drive. This one opens a new (smaller) window to give the user a basic note-taking application. The really nice feature is that a “Scratchpad” folder is automatically created in Google Drive with each note stored inside it.
4. Lucidchart for Education – students and teachers can quickly build diagrams, flowcharts, and concept maps with this web-based diagramming tool. Again, saves and syncs straight to Google Drive for easy access from any computer or to collaborate with a classmate.
5. Readability – this is an extension that strips all the extra “stuff” off of a news article or blog post. Many times advertisements and other links can be very distracting as students try to read content on the web (for teachers too!). The Readability extension gets rid of all those extra bits so you can focus on just the content.
6. Lego Builder- What kid (or adult) doesn’t love building with Legos? With the Lego Builder app you can build all kinds of fun structures. Students that love Minecraft will also find creating content enjoyable with this app too.
7. Isle of Tune – this is a great app for the musician in all of us. Create a town on your island and each element of your town has different musical properties. Then as you send your cars driving around your newly built community your new tune will play.
8. MeeGenius – this is one of many great apps for younger grades to read and listen to online storybooks. Access a bookshelf full of the popular stories loved by many generations. Students can not only hear the book read to them but also see the words highlighted on the page as the story is read.
9. Typing Club – keyboarding skills and the necessity for students to have them are becoming more and more embedded in everything we do. Apps like Typing Club
10. Math Invaders – practicing math just got a lot more fun. Students can practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in a game-like format.
The great thing about installing apps in Chrome (whether on a Chromebook or not) is quick and easy. With everything in Chrome staying in sync to students’ Google accounts, access to these apps is easy no matter which Chromebook or computer a student is using that’s connected to the web.
These are just a sample of the great educational apps available in the Chrome Web Store. Be sure to take some time to check them out! If you have any other favorites please feel free to list them in the comments!
Going Beyond the Textbook
Posted: March 18, 2013 Filed under: EdTech, Education | Tags: beyondthetextbook 6 Comments »
What is the role of the textbook in education today? What should the role of the textbook be in education today? How do you envision a textbook of the future to function? What kinds of digital resources are most appealing to students? These are several questions that I would like your thoughts on.
My memories of textbooks go back to high school and college and not much before that. Some adjectives I would use to describe them are: static, heavy, and boring. Textbooks now have the capability to be so much more; especially with the vast amount of content that now exists on the web. We aren’t confined to a physical book any longer being the summation of knowledge on a topic. We are also at a place where we can easily interact with more than just the classmates and teacher in a physical space for 45 minutes a day.
I am fortunate to have been invited by the Discovery Education team to join them for their 2nd Beyond the Textbook forum taking place March 27 and 28. The event will be at Discovery Communications global headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Over the course of the two days I will be meeting with Discovery Education team members, as well as collaborating with about 20 very smart educators from North America on shaping the future of digital resources. I am very honored to get to be there and excited to be part of these conversations. Discovery has some incredible resources out there for teachers and students and a big hat tip goes to them for their commitment to continually make them better.
So what would you share with the team at Discovery Education? What do you want this to look like for our students? Please feel free to post comments here or use the hashtag #BeyondTextbooks on Twitter to join the conversation.
I would greatly appreciate any comments you have about the future of digital resources.
Ways to Support Teachers with Google Apps for Education
Posted: October 9, 2012 Filed under: EdTech, GAFE, Google | Tags: GAFE, google, googleapps, googledocs 4 Comments »As my district makes the push forward with Google Apps for Education this school year, the instructional technology support that our team offers to teachers is critical to its success. We start with professional development and continual support for district level leadership, then building level leadership, then to teachers, which we hope all trickles down to increased use with and by students. Gmail and Google Docs are our students two primary tools for communication, collaboration, and productivity; so increasing comfort level among all staff is crucial. Since our elementary students are 100% Google Docs for productivity, we knew it was imperative to reach all 19 of our elementary schools first. This began with professional development for our elementary principals and assistant principals back in the summer before teachers reported back to work. We started with the basics of Google Docs. After principals had a strong understanding and new comfort level with Google Docs, they then began to contact our department for Google Docs PD for their teachers. I have always liked how our team does such a great job of offering varying learning opportunities for our staff. As principals invited us out this happened a few different ways:
-A faculty meeting either before or after school to address the entire faculty at one
-A day long rotation schedule to meet with teams of teachers during their plan time
-On a district professional development day
During these sessions, not only did we cover the ins and outs of how Google Docs works and its benefits, but we also provided several concrete examples of how Google Docs can be used for student projects and best practices for maximizing their workflow as well as student workflow. So, to this point in the school year, the 4 of us that make up our team, we’ve already reached all 19 of our elementary schools. This is awesome! However, what’s important now is that we continue to offer support to all of our teachers so they can effectively support their students. We have had many teachers contact us for additional learning on some of the other Google Apps for Education products such as Calendar, Sites, and Blogger since meeting with the staff initially about Google Docs. This can look like one-on-one appointments and some have also been collaborative meetings during PLC time. This continued support that we offer is vital to maintain teacher comfort level which leads to effective use at the student level. Our department has also produced online resources for our teachers and administrators to access as well. This is another level of support that’s important to have in place when a phone call, email, or face to face option isn’t immediately available. Here are some examples of our online resources:
Resources for using Google apps in the classroom
We have also begun providing video tutorials such as this one:
While that example is a simple one, it can be the “just in time” help a student or teacher needs. Implementing something big in your district like Google Apps for Education requires not only the proper infrastructure to handle the usage, but it also requires continual support that’s offered in multiple formats. For myself, I know I like having options of how to learn something; we should offer nothing less to our administrators, teachers, and students.
All of these ways I have shared about how we support teachers don’t have to happen right away. They probably shouldn’t. Choose how you’re going to support your teachers and get really good at one way before adding on another. What matters most is that the support is there, it’s happening often, and it’s always building on what was learned previously.
“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”
John C. Dana
Literacy Worth Investing In
Posted: September 26, 2012 Filed under: Digital Literacy, EdTech, Education, Literacy | Tags: digitalliteracy, edtech, education, leadership, learning, literacy, professionaldevelopment, teaching 3 Comments »
Cross-posted at SmartBlog on Education
Learning isn’t analog any more
When I think of analog learning, I think of something static. I think of content that doesn’t change and is quickly outdated. I think of a textbook that I can’t interact with. Would you agree? If so, what do you think our students think? Is this normal to them? Do we want it to be normal to them? Do they have a say?
Learning opportunities that exist today are far from analog. The evidence of content is in abundance. That doesn’t mean we just send our students freely to the web without important conversations about things like proper digital behavior and critical consumption. This cannot be treated as a skill that we have students pick up in 8th grade from a particular course. How to deal with the flood of information and tools available to our students must become a literacy. We have a responsibility to our students. If we claim to be doing what’s best for students, yet we keep our resources and methods in the 20th century, our students are losing out.
We. Need. A. Plan.
Getting our students to a place of digital literacy begins with us. It’s a matter of modeling what we expect. It’s a matter of teaching the way we would want to be taught today if we were students in our classrooms. We must make this literacy a priority for teachers before we can expect to get our students there. Teachers: this isn’t meant to be seen as “one more thing”. Your students want you to go with them on this journey. Let them help. Let them teach you. Grow together. Leaders: it’s not a matter of finding the time for your teachers to learn; it’s a matter of making the time.
This is why a plan is important when beginning to venture into these new horizons of literacy. We have national standards for administrators, teachers, and students to help guide us in our journey to increase our digital literacy. Be sure to check out the Essential Conditions too. All are great places to start.
Does every teacher, student, and administrator need to have X, Y, and Z mastered straight away or even by the end of one school year? I don’t think so. What we expose our students to; learning that fosters creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking provides them continual experiences for them to build on year after year.
For example, In my district, our department is working closely with our Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Instruction to plan out a year-long professional development plan to our elementary principals. Using the NETS-A as a guide, we’ve created learning opportunities that allow administrators to experience new tools, ideas, and resources they can take back and use with their teachers (modeling), which will (hopefully) have a trickle down effect. Teachers will become interested and want to learn more, which leads to teachers using said ideas and resources with students which leads to students being exposed to new tools and resources to foster the “C’s” mentioned earlier. Teaching and learning is happening in new and different ways. It’s an exciting plan to be part of and our team can’t wait to see what happens next.
Making a move from the “analog” is an important step. One that’s hard to make by oneself. Planning and support is essential. Stick with it and don’t look back. You can only get better.
Thanks for reading.
YouTube Settings Teachers and Students Need to Know About
Posted: May 21, 2012 Filed under: EdTech, Education, GAFE, Google, YouTube 5 Comments »We all have gone to YouTube at one time or another to watch a video of some kind; educational or not so educational. We’ve watched the latest viral videos sweeping the world by storm for their hilarity, shock value, or powerful message. There’s no shortage of content to be consumed on YouTube. If you’ve never checked out YouTube’s statistics on their traffic you can go to their press page and give them a glance. An hour of video every second! That is astounding!
More-so than ever, content is available in abundance via YouTube. We, including our students, can consume content constantly from any device with an internet connection. Have you ever stopped to think about what it means when you upload your own original content to YouTube? Things like: How do I upload something? What settings are crucial to know about? How is this applicable to my classroom and students?
Whether you’re uploading content you’ve filmed yourself or uploading a screencast for your students, I thought I’d share some of the YouTube settings that I’ve found to be most important to make teachers and students aware of.
How do I get started?
Once you’re logged in to YouTube with the preferred Google account, click the Upload link in the top right corner of the YouTube home page. Once on the upload page you have a few different options for uploading (I am using Google Chrome as my browser):
1. Upload a file from your computer (most common)
2. Upload multiple files
3. Record a video directly from your webcam
Basic Settings
As your video starts uploading, you can go ahead and begin to enter basic information for your video such as the title, description (which appears below the video when someone watches it), and keywords you’d like to tag your video with. Once your video is done uploading, you can also choose the thumbnail image that your video will have (the still image that will show before clicking Play). Remember: these are items of information that you can always go back and edit later, so don’t feel like these are set in stone but it’s always something good to do while your video is in the process of being uploaded. YouTube also does a great job of automatically saving these changes while your video is uploading as well (YouTube is a great multi-tasker!).
On the right side of the Basic Info tab (still on the upload page) you will see the Privacy and publish settings. These are very important settings to keep in mind, particularly for publishing student produced content. The screenshot below shows these settings. Public means that your video is out there on YouTube for the world to not only watch, but for anyone to find by searching for it. Unlisted means that your video will not be able to be located by searching for it on YouTube. The only way others can view the video is by you sending out its specific link. Private is another level of security beyond that. This is where you at the owner of the content can give explicit permission to only individuals you specify to be able to view the video. Again, these are settings specific to each individual video and can be changed at any time. Definitely important settings to know about. Videos uploaded to YouTube are set to public by default.
Also at this point be sure to properly categorize your video. Everything I upload I make sure and categorize with “Education”. When I’ve forgotten to do this, I was quickly reminded because the “similar videos” section on the right side of my YouTube video were not usually the greatest. By that I mean they had absolutely nothing to do with the topic of my video and were sometimes inappropriate.
You can also set the License and Rights Ownership of your video at this point. You can leave it at the standard YouTube license or mark your video with a Creative Commons attribution. If this option is chosen, that means you are giving others the right to use your work. This could look like someone using the YouTube video editor to incorporate your video into another video they have uploaded (with proper credit always pointed back to the source (link) of your original video). Be sure to check out the YouTube Creative Commons page for more information.
Basic Settings
Advanced Settings
Here’s some more important settings you’ll want to remember to check. Again, I like how this can all be done while the video is still uploading (especially if it’s a large video). The most important advanced settings you’ll want to notice when you click on the Advanced Settings tab, are the check boxes related to comments and ratings. There might be sometimes you don’t want to allow viewers to comment on a video that is uploaded. To do this simply uncheck the box next to “Allow Comments”. Or maybe you do want to allow comments but you want them all filtered through you first (this is a great option for student work that is uploaded). You can click the drop down menu and change that to “Approved”.
You’ll also notice you can turn off the ability for viewers to vote on comments, give a rating to the video, or create a video response. You will also see syndication, embedding, and information such as adding location and date to your video. I have seen the comments feature work great for teachers and students, and also work not so great.
Advanced Settings
Lastly, notice in the top right section of the upload page you will see two buttons: Share and Add to. If you’d like to immediately get the shortened link, embed code, or ability to share to another social network you will find all of these options by clicking on the Share button.
If you click the “Add to” button, the newly uploaded video can be immediately added to an existing playlist or a new playlist can be created for the video. Another very handy feature. Above those two buttons you will find buttons for the Video Manager or clicking Add more videos will take you straight to uploading another video in the same manner. Inside the Video Manager is where you will find all of your uploaded YouTube videos where you can go straight to any single one to check all of these settings by clicking the Edit button.
To reference back to creating screencasts, which I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I particularly like to use Screenr to create these. It’s web-based software and after recording them you can instantly upload them to your YouTube channel if you choose. It’s simple and works well consistently. If you do upload these to YouTube be sure to head to your YouTube channel and go through your basic and advanced settings for each screencast you create to make sure they are named, categorized, and privacy settings are all set how you need them to be.
Whether teachers or students are publishing digitally, YouTube or not, it’s important to make the time to learn how to make the content work best and publish properly.
While I’ve only scratched the surface, the “Googlers” have put together a great YouTube help site with loads more to learn about. We haven’t even got to the awesome video editor built right in. Maybe that calls for another post!
Happy YouTubing!
“Become an empowered participant rather than a passive consumer.” ~Howard Rheingold
Google Docs for Administrators – 5 Ideas to Get Started
Posted: May 7, 2012 Filed under: EdTech, GAFE, Google, GoogleDocs | Tags: edtech gafe googleapps googledocs, googlect gct 8 Comments »
As another school year begins to come to a close, I have recently had some of our administrators (mostly elementary) contact me with ideas for making administrative tasks more paperless and create a more efficient workflow not only for themselves but for their teachers. Some of these have been regular “end of year” tasks and others are being put into motion in preparation for next year. Given my known affinity for Google Apps for Education, and being we are a Google Apps for Education district, my first inclination is always to figure out how these tasks could be completed using GAFE in one way or another. As I begin to help several of our administrators with these projects, I thought I’d start a post that I could come back and add to over time. They might be beneficial to you as a teacher or you might want to share them with administrators in your district. So here they are in no particular order:
1. End of year checkout form – we all remember this one right? The checkout form for the end of the year that has to be completed before teachers can leave for the summer. Why not use Google Forms to make the form electronic and send out the link to staff? The principal sends out the link to the form, teachers can fill it out as they complete their required tasks, and the information goes straight into a spreadsheet for administrators.
2. Student information collection – When I was in the classroom this was another end of the year task to be completed. We would need to fill out a student information card on each of our students to help provide any pertinent information (academic or otherwise) to next year’s classroom teacher(s). Again, this has always been something traditionally done on paper, so why not give it a digital go? Our administrator created a Google Forms version, then copied it the appropriate number of times for each grade level so that the data would come back to separate spreadsheets already separated by grade level. This information also helps the administrative team build next year’s class lists.
3. Staff communication – We all know one of the best, if not the best feature of Google Docs is collaboration. The ability to have multiple people working on the same document at the same time is a huge efficiency booster for many. Documents don’t have to be emailed back and forth or saved on a network drive where only one person can have the document open at a time. Administrative teams can now easily create their staff newsletters in Google Docs so they can be built collaboratively and then easily shared out with the staff directly from Google Docs. This not only helps increase administrator productivity, but teachers can have a digital copy of building communication delivered right to their inbox.
4. Committees – Again, Google Forms can come in very handy for this. I recently assisted one of our principals who wanted to create a form for teachers to fill out monthly with any specific concerns/needs for individual students that will go directly to the building student assistance committee. This provides the team with valuable information ahead of time prior to the referring teacher meeting with the team. Documents and Forms can also help any building or district level committees communicate and collaborate which builds a more efficient workflow for everyone.
5. Fun stuff – Since this week is Teacher Appreciation Week and schools, parents, and communities are showing their appreciation, it reminds us that some times we also need better ways to work to plan fun stuff too. This could be to collaborate on a document to plan for this week’s teacher goodies, or a spreadsheet to plan Field Day, or make a form to send out to gather ideas for an end of year staff celebration. This possibilities could be anything with this one.
What I think is also great about this is that there’s positive modeling going on for use of Google Apps for Education. Administrators modeling for teachers, which will hopefully lead to teachers modeling for students. Helping the production equal or outweigh the consumption. A snowball effect that will always be in motion.
Please feel free to add your ideas in the comments section! Thanks!
Awesome Empowerment
Posted: April 20, 2012 Filed under: EdTech, Education | Tags: edtech, education, professionaldevelopment, students, teachers Leave a comment »First, a great story to share about an email I got from a couple of kindergarten teachers this morning. They had emailed me to share exciting news. But first some back story. I have partnered with these teachers many times over the last few years to help them with various instructional technology topics. Last year, they had found a video on YouTube that was produced by another kindergarten class (not in our district) on the life cycle of a butterfly. They decided they’d like to re-create this project for teaching this important science topic. I helped with the “talent” (kindergartners), camera work, and worked with them as they learned the editing and finalizing of the video. I was also lucky to get to attend the video’s premiere at a parent night. The teachers and their students did a fantastic job with their production of “The Butterfly Life Cycle – Kindergarten Style”.
Now back to their email they sent me earlier this week. The subject of their email was “Look what we did!”. When they say “we” I knew they meant that in reference to their students, not them. They had attached the video of this year’s version of “The Butterfly Life Cycle – Kindergarten Style”. I watched the video while smiling ear to ear the entire time. The students did a fantastic job acting out all the different stages of the butterfly life cycle (how can you not smile at them?!?) and the teachers did all the planning, preparation, and video production work on their own this year. I am really proud of them and told them how lucky their students are!
Being an Instructional Technologist, I always strive to empower teachers, not enable them. What I mean by that is, it doesn’t matter if it’s one teacher or a group of teachers; no matter if it’s the first time they’re learning about a topic or it’s part of the continual support I offer, I will not “do it for you”. By enabling, or making it easy, doesn’t empower someone to step out of their comfort zone and learn something new. I will teach, re-teach, and always be there for support for any teacher that wants it; without fail. I always make sure teachers know this. Teachers need to know this. Our students need to know this. My goal is to equip with the necessary tools, resources, and knowledge base to increase comfort-level and success rate. Doesn’t project-based, authentic learning lend itself nicely to empowerment? Shouldn’t we want this for all learners, regardless of age?
“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.”–William Arthur Ward
Content Curation with PearlTrees
Posted: March 21, 2012 Filed under: EdTech, Education | Tags: curation, digitalliteracy 2 Comments »Note: This post is also cross-posted over at the EasyBib blog.
I’ve written and spoken before about the essential skill (a literacy according to Howard Rheingold) of students not only being able to collect content from their network(s), but to curate what’s collected. Just like a museum curator pours over artifacts to find the very best to display, we should also do the same not just for our own professional resources, but see it as an obligation to model it for our students.
I came across a new resource recently (I believe the hat tip goes to Alec Couros for this find) called Pearltrees. After you sign up for your account, you can start building your own Pearltrees. Pearltrees are made up of “pearls”, or sites you want to curate into particular the Pearltrees (topics) you’ve created. Give this 40 second video a watch from the PearlTrees site called “Why Pearltrees?”
Once you’ve signed up for your account, you will already have your “root” Pearltree created for you with your username. You will also see a couple of Pearltrees waiting for you. One is called Getting Started and another is called Pearltree Videos. You can see them in my main Pearltree page here.
You will also see there that I have created a Pearltree called Digital Citizenship. I added “pearls” to the Digital Citizenship Pearltree by using the “Pearler” tool, which is a browser extension that’s available for both Google Chrome and Firefox. When I came to a site I wanted to add to a Pearltree, I clicked the Pearltree extension (I was using Chrome) clicked on the Pearltree I wanted to add it to, and it was instantly there. Easy enough.
As you noticed above you can share links to specific Pearltrees in your account and also embed any Pearltree you’d like on your own website, blog, LMS, etc. It’s also easy to share directly to Twitter and Facebook.
I also like the emphasis on sharing of your Pearltrees. They call themselves a social curation community. You can even give it a try by importing your Delicious bookmarks (I’m a Diigo user so I did not try this feature). So not only does this site give you an easy way to curate great content, but it also recognizes the importance of being social about it by making Pearltrees easy to share and they can also be built collaboratively.
Here’s a few of the more important features that I believe Pearltrees offers:
1. Easy to use interface
2. The browser extension works nicely for quickly adding content to different Pearltrees
3. They are easy to share
4. Pearltrees can be created collaboratively
5. It’s a web-based application, allowing students to access content from anywhere, including the free iPad app
Think of Pearltrees as a content curation meets concept mapping tool. I had a great time learning how to use it and I think it would be great for students as they curate content they need for various classes. I look forward to watching it improve. Have fun!
An informed decision
Posted: March 10, 2012 Filed under: EdTech | Tags: edtech, planning, technology 3 Comments »I met with the administrative team earlier this week at one of our middle schools. They wanted to talk iPads. They were thinking about purchasing them for themselves to be more efficient with their administrative duties as they do walk-throughs, formal observations, etc. We met for over an hour talking about the device. What it will do, what it won’t do, and possible workflows for things they wanted to be able to do. They came ready with their questions, which was fantastic. They came into the meeting with an open mind. In fact it was so open of a mind that by the time I left they had decided to not buy iPads for themselves. They didn’t come in with the “gotta have it” mindset. They came in with the “do we need it?” mindset.
These administrators did however, get a much firmer grasp on the possibilities when placed in students’ hands. I didn’t spend a lot of time showing educational apps, but I did show a few of my favorites. I keep folders of apps for several subject areas on my iPad so I have them organized and ready to go if I need to do a little show and tell.
I’ll admit, I had a pretty good feeling going in that the device wasn’t going to be best for them for what they were wanting to do. It’s not going to replace a laptop. Will it get there some day? Possibly. Do I enjoy having an iPad? Absolutely! This Apple fanboy has his hand proudly raised. However, while it is a great device and offers great potential in the hands of students, I also know that it’s not the device for everyone. I wasn’t there to tell them they couldn’t buy iPads. Even if after meeting with me they still wanted them, that was fine. I would still support them in their use. I was there at that moment to help them make an informed decision. The administrative team decided they did not need them, but they did decide that they’d like to begin some sort of implementation in their building to put them in the hands of students. Not as the end-all be-all device, and no huge instant influx of them, but to add to the variety of tools available to teachers and students.
We get so excited about the next big thing. It’s easy to get excited! I get just as excited as the next person. If you were on Twitter around noon CST on Wednesday there was lots of excitement:
Just for fun, create a column in tweetdeck for #ipad3
— Dean Shareski (@shareski) March 7, 2012
I’ve learned, however, to have a bit more of a critical eye to what the device (doesn’t matter what it is) can do for our students. Isn’t that what we should do with everything? Not be so quick to run out and buy, but to ask, “Does this make learning better for our students?” This isn’t a decision that can be made in one hour, or even one day. Careful planning and thoughtful questioning is important. We have homework we need to do too.
I really appreciated these administrators taking the time to make an informed decision rather than just running out and buying because it’s a hot item right now and then after the fact say, “Now what do we do?” I think the willingness to be open, ask questions, and be informed in the long run can sometimes take us farther in the long run.
Thanks for reading. I welcome your comments.
