High School Technology Communication - 23rd February 2015

Important Announcements:

• If you have signed up for Robyn’s workshop, kindly take some time to do the pre requirements.  Here is the excerpt from Kevin’s attachment:

Prior to the training complete the following:

• Complete the survey: http://goo.gl/gJXb4y
• Access Google Site with resources: http://goo.gl/vpHxc0
• Register at
• Common Sense Media http://goo.gl/Dj967R
• Graphite https://graphite.org
• Digital Bytes http://goo.gl/zQVbp5
• Digital Passport http://goo.gl/wV75to
• Install Evernote on computer and/or devices https://evernote.com/
• Bring curriculum planning documents for subject or year level.
• If you need help with any one of the processes above, kindly send me an email and I will walk you through the entire pre requirements.

• Kindly impress upon your students to sign up for the Digital Citizenship Workshop during the afternoon of Feb 27th, 2015. The details are in Daily Bulletin.  In a BYOT School, as a class teacher, you know how important for them to be educated about being a responsible Digital Citizen.   I will send you a list of students who signed up for the afternoon soon. Please give the attendees some time to talk about Digital Citizenship in the class to the others.  A little sacrifice of your class time will go a long way in creating responsible citizens (digital) and digital leaders!

• Virtual Planning Day on March 25th.  To learn more please read more about the event in our full brochure HERE.  I would like to bring your attention to the following promise that the School has made.  Kindly let me know if you need my support in preparation of running the day successfully!
• All classes on Moodle will have specific instructions for this day. Learning activities will involve three key components: • Print or multimedia content • Interaction with teacher • Short non-graded assessment

VoiceThread Workshops:

• VoiceThread is hosting 7 free online sessions in the coming months to help both Higher Ed. and K-12 educators develop ideas for enhancing their classes. Each session will be led by George Haines, an expert VoiceThreader, Instructional Designer, and former K-12 educator. George will share his expertise, showcase some exemplary VoiceThreads, and facilitate an open discussion about lesson design. Sign up for those workshops through this link.

• Thanks for signing up for  Technology PDs on Blogs and Audio Tools.  If you have forgotten to sign up, you can right now.  Please CLICK HERE to access the signup form for our tech professional learning.

• Again thanks to those who expressed your interest in attending the Professional Development/ Teacher Training program on LEGO Mindstorms Education(LME) NXT Robotics by external expert Lead Trainer is coming up on March 14th, 2015.  Click here to know more about NXT Robotics.   It is an amazing, hands-on workshop which will be useful to the teachers of Math and Science. If you are still interested in attending this, kindly send me an email.

Cool Resource and Tool/s:

I wanted to focus on Virtual Learning Resources.  You can try and test them now in order to make sure that you are ready for our very first Virtual Learning Day  on March 25th  on our School.

Three key components of learning activities which we promised as a School to deliver to the students are:

• Print or multimedia content
• Interaction with teacher
• Short non-graded assessment

Let us look at the tech tools which will help us with each categories:

1. Print or Multimedia Content:
1. Teacher prepared videos (using screencastify, or quicktimeplayer’s screencasting options or similar one)
2. Our own Library Resources:  http://cic.aisch.org/index.php/high-school, links to databases with usernames and passwords: http://virtualschool.aisch.org/pluginfile.php/35370/mod_resource/content/5/DatabaseUNPW1114.pdf.
3. http://www.refseek.com/directory/educational_videos.html - 25 best educational videos for contents
4. http://www.watchknowlearn.org/ - with the categorized subjects and age filter
5. http://www.discoveryeducation.com//teachers/ - gradewise and subjectwise classified
6. http://www.neok12.com/  -  Lots of videos, lessons and games

2. Interaction with the teacher:
1. Google Hangout
2. Skype
3. https://todaysmeet.com/   or https://appear.in/  - a simple backchannel for chatting. Offers permanent transcripts and embed, paused rooms, better access controls, and more!
4. 12 Moodle Tools to interact with your students online.  At Least pick a few from these tools and use them as you find fit.  My favorites are Moodle Lesson, Moodle Journal, Database (The database activity module allows students to upload their notes or answers and access others’ after they have uploaded two of their own. This feature creates notes or question database and a useful resource for both teaching and learning. Requiring students to upload two first ensures that they’re taking their own notes and doing their own work before turning to someone else’s.
3. Short non-graded assessment:
1. Socrative - List of Socrative Quizzes already made and ready for you: HERE. (I shared with you quite a while ago.  Thanks to Calley who reminded me of this collection of treasure).
2. Google Forms - Even math has an add on : g(Math) for Forms which helps the math teachers to Create graphs and complex math directly in the sidebar and insert them as Form items.
3. PollEverywhere.com -  Just to test a quick understanding of the lessons.