Spotlight on Finalsite Remember the story I told about attending Finalsite University? Well, if you're interested in seeing Jamie's presentations and others that were shared at that conference. Click here. PW to that site is: letmein --all one word. Most of the topics were around branding and marketing, but there were some sessions that give you insight on what other schools are up to. This is Jamie's presentation that went viral. Also related to finalsite--- I recently met with Ahmed, who has plans to explore online discussion threads for his concert rehearsals. Ahmed's request was, "Jen, most discussion posts start with newest to oldest, can we do the reverse?" (which I thought was odd) We brainstormed and I soon realized--- Finalsite does just that! Ahmed wanted the page to reflect the natural evolution of work, so that the viewer sees the progression of thoughts, scrolling from top to bottom. Keep us posted on how that turns out Ahmed! If you're interested in knowing how to use Finalsite for online discussions, come find me or send me an email.
Just when you thought you had enough memory... Dropbox is an online storage site that works well with both the iPad and laptop and we have an account here at Castilleja. Good news--- they just increased our storage size from 100GB to 1 Terabyte (1000 GB). Contain the excitement! Come see me or Sarah for login information. Oh and to avoid an unruly file system, please clean up any unwanted files from last year, so we can keep it nice and tidy. DropBox also just added a "View Only" feature --- so if you want to post folders for your students and don't want them to delete any files (which has happened!) then mark it "view only" and you're safe from unwanted deletions.
ClassKicks - student feedback app Back when I first started at Castilleja, Doris asked me for suggestions on an app that would allow her to view several iPad screens at once for formative assessment. During class, she often times will pose a problem and have students work in
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groups. She wanted to see where students were at certain parts of the problem solving process, so she could tailor instruction accordingly. After several apps that just didn't cut it--- and going through my Hermione Granger bag of ed tech tools, here we are, 2 years later and we may have a potential solution. Enter ClassKicks. I'm setting up a mtg with Doris and Alice to see the app from the creators. If you're interested, sign up here and I'll invite you to the long awaited meeting.
Hello iPad Leads What do iPad Leads do exactly? Here is one example: This year, each Lead will be organizing one professional growth event around iPads. Yes, there will be a few sessions such as: "Here's an app and here's what it does" but there will also be, "I tried this app and it failed, and so here is what I did as a backup, or here's my strategy for next time." iPad Leads are curious, and they'll show us what they've learned from their explorations of the iPad in the classroom. "Let's show our students that we don't just learn for school, but for life." This year's iPad Leads are Sarah Barnum (6th), Christina Gwin (6th), Eugenie Paick (7th), Samantha Terkeltaub (8th) and Alice Lung (9th). There are also junior versions of iPad Leads-- they are iPad Student Leads. More to come on this group in the next newsletter.
Other Academic Tech bits and bytes Virgina Fox is learning how to use Pixlr to annotate Latin literature. She's interested in seeing how you can use Pixlr to turn layers of annotations (on or off) so you can view selected annotations one at a time. Pixlr is free and you don't need an iPad to try this out. SMARTboard training is coming-- there is already a small group of interested teachers forming. A few of you have asked for 1:1 session. One of you specifically asked not to hear from some SMARTboard rep who would show you lessons for 4th grade Spanish. That feedback helps! I'm teaching an online course via schoology on Redesigning your Ed Tech Toolkit. [Thank you to Rebecca for helping me with curriculum design and giving me the faculty perspective!] If you're interested in seeing the resources, let me know and you can join the course. There's one more week left. I'll be teaching the same course again in January. For the first time, I have this exciting platform to teach a student from Malaysia, Mexico and the UK! LMS stands for Let's Make a Selection! Interested in joining our Learning Management System investigative group this year? Email Gabe, Cameron or Jen for more information or to sign up.