Technology Bytes Newsletter - November 2015

NOVEMBER 2015

INNOVATIVE EDUCATOR CONSULTING’S

TEC HNOLOGY BY TES Naomi Harm, CEO ◆ PO Box 188, Brownsville, MN 55919 ◆ (608) 386-2018 ◆ naomi@naomiharm.org ◆ http://naomiharm.org

FALL HOLIDAY EDITION ARE YOU IN IT TO WIN IT?

PO Box 188 Brownsville, MN 55919 Phone: (608) 386-2018 Email: naomi@naomiharm.org www.naomiharm.org #naomiharm

S TAY C O N N E C T E D ! https://play.google.com/store/ apps/details?

November greetings teacher and admin leadership friends. Fall has finally arrived and we hope you're enjoying the beautiful autumn landscapes and sun-filled, but mild temperatures in the midwest as our IEC team is. November provides for us a greater awareness of being thankful for the little things in life as we celebrate Veteran’s Day and approach the holiday season. This Fall Holiday Edition of the IEC Technology Bytes Newsletter will provide inspirational teaching resources and ideas for you and your students to discover and instill gratitude throughout the entire months of November and December.

“A RE YOU I N I T T O WIN I T ?” R ECIPE C ONTEST To showcase our appreciation and gratitude this holiday season, the Innovative Educator Consulting team is giving away three “Taste of Home” cooking magazine subscriptions through an “Are YOU In It To WIN It?” recipe contest. Yes, I said recipe contest, so dig out those family favorites, or tap into Nana’s secret recipe database, or glean some new ideas from the HGTV cooking channel or a Taste of Home magazine family favorite. Any holiday favorite will be accepted into this recipe contest, and this community of learners who subscribe to the IEC Tech Bytes will do the voting!

All recipes will be curated into a holiday “Are YOU In It To WIN It? recipe ebooklet to be distributed no later than December 20th, so everyone can enjoy those family favorite recipes.

R ECIPE S UBMISSION G UIDELINES https://itunes.apple.com/us/ app/innovative-educatorapp/innovative-educatorconsulting/id955196570?mt=8 consulting/id737480444?mt=8

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Submit your favorite family holiday recipe by December 10th through this Google Form and include a creative and delicious picture, to be entered in the “Are YOU In It To WIN It?” recipe contest. Three lucky winners will be selected by IEC Tech Byte subscribers no later than December 20, 2015 utilizing a Dot Storming Voting tool. Good luck to each and every one of you, and thank you for sharing your family favorite recipes. #TogetherWeAreBetter

IEC’s Inspiring PD Workshop Opportunities ............................................ 2 Toulouse, France… Can it Get Any Better Than This?? ....................... 3 Green Light It! Veteran's Day Remembrance .......................................... 4 It's the Gift that Keeps On Giving - The Global Holiday Card Project ..................................................................... 4

Tools to Transform Your Instruction and Student Engagement Tomorrow ................................................................... 4 The Digital Buzz Radio Show: Personalized Learning Spaces with the Brain in Mind......................................................................... 5 Chats with Deb: Go Formative ......................................................................... 6 Intel Webinars and Events ................................................................................ 6

IINSPIRING NSPIRING PPROFESSIONAL ROFESSIONAL DDEVELOPMENT EVELOPMENT W WORKSHOP ORKSHOP OOPPORTUNITIES PPORTUNITIES Visit our website for more details or to register

www.naomiharm.org/upcomingworkshops

NOVEMBER 17

#PLS15

Tech Mex Tuesday: Wearable Tech Gadgets Location: Tequilla’s Restaurant in Onalaska, WI Learn how you can make an edtech fashion statement with innovative wearable technology to inspire and personalize your learning. Bring your favorite tech gadget to share, discuss and how it is impacting your edtech classroom, and you might be surprised what new tech gadgets might make your holiday gift list.

NOVEMBER 19 Develop Global Collaboration Projects and Real-World Connections for Learners Through A Local Global Educator PLN Host Site: Arrowhead School District (WI) Explore the limitless possibilities of cross-cultural interactions via global collaboration projects and virtual field trips! This global collaboration workshop will outline the importance of the Wisconsin Global Education Achievement Certificate and how students and teachers can be active partners in learning together to document and showcase their learning of global education achievement.

Hosted By Eastern Carver County Schools, MN

DECEMBER 1

Personalized Learning Spaces with the Brain in Mind

Coding and Green Screening: A Perfect Match to Inspire Critical Thinking and Problem Solving with Your K-8 Students Host Site: Royall School District (WI) Our morning session will focus on coding and how you can implement coding into your classroom instruction, after school coding club or summer enrichment program. In the afternoon you will create amazing student-led green screen projects that will empower your students to direct and edit videos placing them anywhere in the world!

>> SATURDAY EVENT <<

FEBRUARY 6 Empowering Passion Driven Student Projects in Redesigned Collaborative Learning Spaces Host Site: Oregon School District (WI) Come and explore the endless possibilities of how low tech to high tech can deliver a more personalized, relevant, passion-driven learning experience for you and your k-12 students. An EdCamp style choice approach of our day of learning will activate a more collaborative teaching and learning environment, while gaining new and insightful instructional approaches from your facilitators and new network of teacher friends.

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NOVEMBER 14-15 Audience Focus: K-12 Educators and Administrators This two-day high-energy conference will empower school leadership teams to explore how personalized learning experiences directly correlate with a student’s and a teacher’s growth mindset. We will examine how personalized learning and its spaces can support a variety of pedagogical and brain-based instructional approaches.

Participants will also have the opportunity to create their own personalized learning plan, through a “classroom crib” design that will motivate participants to create a personalized learning space based on sound pedagogical practices gained from the captivating sessions facilitated by well-known Minnesota and nationally recognized educational leaders and industry partners. Collaborative and interactive panel discussions with attending school district leaders and high school students will add additional voices to this two-day experience.

w w w. n a o m i h a r m . o r g / p l s 1 5

Keep watching our website for more workshop offerings as they become available. www.naomiharm.org/upcomingworkshops

TOULOUSE, FRANCE… CAN IT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS???

I am so very excited to share out with you some inspiring ideas to support innovative teaching strategies I have gleaned while attending and presenting at the Practical Pedagogies conference in Toulouse, France in October. The #PracPed15 conference is a must attend and present at conference if you ever get the opportunity. The whole conference focuses on how to engage and support inquiring minds of teachers and learners. It is not about the device...it is about the learning.

S CAFFOLDING

Ewan Tosh provided the inspiring keynote for this conference on “The Failure Talk”, which sets out how one might deal with the inevitable tension of seeing something new, not necessarily seeing how to apply it, or being provoked with research that conflicts with “what we’ve always done”. This uplifting talk set the context for learning over the days ahead. The key pedagogical concepts introduced are the idea of students being able to lead their learning more effectively sometimes without a teacher, and the power of no longer awarding grades, just feedback, as well as what we know about effective teacher learning. He interjected humor, compassion stories, real life events, and responsive questioning techniques to engage us and that were reflective in our own ideation of connecting the dots. I was intrigued and responsive to the new ideas set forth to launch us into the next two days of community learning.

makeover. By scaffolding levels of understanding with SOLO

I also attended several sessions, besides presenting at this particular conference, and was on a mission to be a “learning sponge” to gain new and insightful ideas to bring back to my US teacher friends and administrator teams. I was most intrigued with two particular sessions on Socrative Questioning Gamification led by by Kathryn McGilvray, Innovation Technologist from Australia and Hexagonal Thinking let by David Faure, Curriculum leader of Science for the Toulouse, France schools.

H EXAGONAL T HINKING I N A CTION

Both of these sessions were infused with student-centered learning approaches, enhanced team collaboration through questioning techniques, inductive reasoning, strategic planning and empathy by appreciating the differences and learning styles of others.

up and moving to think in dynamic duo and trio groups, as a

G AME D ESIGN

AND

S OCRATIC S MASH

Led by Kathryn McGilvray, Innovation Technologist Twitter: @Kathmcg1 Kathryn's Presentation eHandout

UNDERSTANDING USING SOLO HEXAGONS IN S CIENCE LESSONS AND ELSEWHERE Led by David Faure, Curriculum Leader for Science Twitter: @d_faure David’s Presentation eHandout This session showcased how to give your “cut and stick exercises” a hexagons a simple card sorting activity can become a more open ended task which provides a scaffold for formative assessment and helps students to understand a topic more deeply, making connections like never before. David did a great job with introducing and following through on this activity of how to create a step by step process of making a proper cup of tea as a small group then whole group exercise. It is amazing the questions that were accessed to put our steps of action into order, as we discovered from different parts of the world, we all make simple cup of tea so differently. I wonder if I gave this exercise to WI, MN and IA teachers of how to create and make the proper brat for a football game, how would it take off. We will see, as it will be included and showcased in an upcoming workshop event with Innovative Educator Consulting.

My learning charge from both of these sessions was to recreate teaching and learning scenarios infusing hexagonal thinking activities for our MidWest technology leadership groups, Intel Global Leadership Summit event, and for future workshop trainings. Here are the new teaching examples and creative grouping technique I created and introduced on hexagonal thinking to our Intel Global Leadership Summit in Portland, OR this past week. The purpose was to get them collaborative and social deeper thinking activities for teachers to discover and realize your hidden passions for teaching and learning.

As an extension to this activity, the talented Deb Norton took a portion of the Hexagonal Thinking idea a step further as a Google Slides student-centered rotation station activity at the Intel Global Leadership Summit. She tapped into Russel Tar’s hexagon creator found on ClassTools.net and made this a center

This session was designed for secondary teachers with a focus on

activity for teachers to

game design and examined current pedagogy and research in the

create their own

area of game design with a focus on developing critical thinking

Hexagonal Thinking

skills through game design. The workshop was not focused on a

activity. I so love Deb’s

particular technology classes but a focus on how gaming can be

creative activity design

used over many subject disciplines to engage in learning and

to involve all

development of communication and critical thinking skills. This was

participants and their

a hands-on session and teachers were encouraged to examine

comfort levels and

how they can incorporate new research and thinking in relationship

engage them with new

to pedagogy and game design into their classes.

digital creation ideas.

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GREEN LIGHT IT! VETERAN’S DAY REMEMBRANCE IT’S THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING THE GLOBAL HOLIDAY CARD PROJECT Jen Wagner’s “Holiday Card Exchange Project” is back! What a great opportunity for your classroom to be part of something bigger and better to celebrate your heritage, cultures around us, and appreciation for others. There is still time to be part of this project for your students to participate in. Click on this Holiday Card Exchange Project link to get your classroom signed up today!

TOOLS TO TRANSFORM YOUR INSTRUCTION AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT TOMORROW W HAT

IS

D OTSTORMING ?

Dotstorming takes the process of dot voting online to allow groups of people to collaborate on a topic.

Step 1 - Create a Dotstorming board Step 2 - Invite participants Step 3 - Add your ideas Step 4 - Vote on the ideas you like

W HAT

IS

S TORM B OARDING ?

StormBoarding is a new web app for collaborative brainstorming based on sticky notes and multi-section boards. While not my ideal brainstorming format, it's very effective for quickly getting ideas out, and organizing and developing them.

November is a time for remembering our Veterans. Many of us forget the amazing gift we receive each and every day to live in this beautiful country of the US in freedom.

Without our current active Armed Forces to keep us safe, our Wounded Warriors who have fought the battle on and off the battlefield, and our Veterans who are currently retired or retired early due to an injury, it is these amazing individuals who have sacrificed everything to keep us safe each and every day. Please remember these American heroes on Veteran’s Day by showing your support and turning the green light on, as many of our Veterans have been forgotten and are now wearing civilian clothing and go unrecognized.

This is your chance to give back and show your support on November 11th and future days ahead to show your respect, gratitude and appreciation for their service. Here are some resources to use with your students: A Million Thanks PBS Veteran’s Day Resources Veteran’s Day Free Classroom Resources Veteran’s Day Printables Veteran’s Day Activities for K-5 What You Didn’t Know About Veteran’s Day

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#GreenLightVet

November’s Digital Buzz radio show will be coming to you live from the Personalized Learning Spaces with the Brain in Mind Conference hosted at East Carver High School in Chaska, MN. Live interviews will be taking place from many featured speakers that may include: Erin Klein with Kleinspiration on classroom redesign with the brain in mind, Brad Gustafson from Plymouth, MN schools on Mobile Makerspaces and capturing authentic learning stories of lessons learned from attendees and students from five MidWest states. *This is your brain on learning infographic Gaming in the Classroom: The Good...

The Bad... You Decide November 17th at 6PM CST In November, guest speaker Doug Adams will highlight successful integration strategies for bringing Internet-based games into your curriculum.

CHATS WITH DEB This month Deb is highlighting the new mobile assessment tool of Go Formative. The feature that makes Go Formative stand above others is the ability to award points and give feedback in real time, which works well if you are gamifying your instruction.

There is also the ability to view students while they are being assessed. Check out Deb’s blogpost overview within the Intel Engage Community and watch the screencast on this amazing mobile assessment tool- it is going to make your day!

We hope November provides for you a wealth of opportunities of inspiration, happiness and gratitude! #TogetherWeAreBetter from the Innovative Educator Consulting Team!

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