DECEMBER 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
DECEMBER HOLIDAY GREETINGS! This month’s Tech Bytes newsletter will be a simple, short and sweet version, as we know how busy this time of year is for many of you. The Innovative Educator Consulting team is sending fun-filled holiday wishes to you and and your school team members, and hoping you can enjoy a restful and stress free break.
PO Box 188 Brownsville, MN 55919 Phone: (608) 386-2018 Email: naomi@naomiharm.org www.naomiharm.org #naomiharm
December is always an exciting month to celebrate and showcase appreciation for all of those around us. Many of you are modeling with your students the importance of being thankful during this holiday season, while in the midst of creating some homemade gifts for your student’s parents. As recipients of these types of gifts from past years experiences, we were so excited to receive these handmade gifts from our children. Our kids were always so very proud of their creations. So, are you looking for some ideas that are extremely interesting and fun to create this holiday season with your students? If so here are some amazing design ideas that are budget friendly, highly creative and just plain fun to create and make at any grade level. ENJOY! 10 Easy Christmas Gifts Kids Can Make 15 Simple DIY Holiday Gifts
S TAY C O N N E C T E D !
23 Holiday DIY Gifts Kids Can Make and Give 40 Useful Gifts Kids Can Make
https://play.google.com/store/ apps/details? id=com.appbuilder.u217926p14
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ app/innovative-educatorapp/innovative-educatorconsulting/id955196570?mt=8 consulting/id737480444?mt=8
101 Inexpensive Handmade Gifts Christmas Gift Ideas
“A RE YOU I N I T T O WIN I T ?” R ECIPE C ONTEST We had no recipe entries entered into our “Are YOU In It To WIN It?” recipe contest, so will will not be giving away any free Taste of Home magazine subscriptions this month. We will run this contest again in 2016.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE IEC’s Inspiring PD Workshop Opportunities ............................................ 2 Conference Indulgence: When It’s Better Than Chocolate! .............. 3 10 Trends in Personalized Learning in 2016.......................................... 4 Show Me the Money - 2016 Grant Opportunities ................................. 4
The Digital Buzz Radio Show: When a Conference is Better Than Chocolate ................................................................................... 5 Chats with Deb: Hour of Code and Holiday Fun Activities................... 5 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
JANUARY 20 WOW Worthy Chrome Apps to Create, Make and Assess with Your Students Host Site: Iowa-Grant School District (WI) Get ready to explore the wonderful world of Chrome Apps to engage your students with creating digital projects, while allowing for student choice and voice in their learning. Join Naomi Harm as she shares innovative collaborative teaching strategies to support the mobile learning environment focused on student-centered and student driven activities using Chrome Apps. In addition, participants will tap into game infused Chrome assessment apps and tools to assist with checking for a student's understanding. A variety of multimedia literacy, digital story telling, mobile assessments and video production apps will be showcased, and participants will have the opportunity to create a digital project to use in their classroom the very next day.
FEBRUARY 6
>> SATURDAY EVENT <<
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.
FEBRUARY 9 Designing Learning Spaces for a Creative and Collaborative Future Host Site: Iowa-Grant School District (WI) New and flexible learning spaces are no longer classrooms that hold 25 students and 1 teacher in a fixed box style, single purpose room. Contemporary learning requires larger spaces and the combination of student groups with more than one teacher. They need to be places that provide space for a wide range of learning styles. From the front door, to the school grounds, to the teaching and learning environment, the aesthetics of learning spaces greatly impacts brain functionality and influences how students emotionally feel connected when they're in school. Join Naomi Harm as she explores how educational leaders and collaborative teams can design and create new learning spaces for the brain-friendly teaching and learning mobile classroom. Naomi will also share various collaboration activities that can be introduced in these new spaces using 1:1 and BYOD technologies. page
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Keep watching our website for more workshop offerings as they become available. www.naomiharm.org/upcomingworkshops
CONFERENCE INDULGENCE: WHEN IT’S BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE! The Wisconsin #SLATE15 and Minnesota #TIES15 technology conferences took place in the early weeks of December. It was almost learning and presentation overload with back to back events. Learning takeaways and highlights from both conferences focused on creative makerspaces, personalized learning with choice and voice, technology leadership, redesigning classroom spaces, and design thinking practices. It was the ultimate conference indulgence!
The Innovative Educator Consulting (IEC) team ran a 6 station makerspace event at the #SLATE15 conference. Teachers and administrators came to this area to learn about basic and intermediate levels of design and tinkering practices focused on wearable technologies through a “Digital Bling Bar,” green screening technologies with a Star Wars theme to create dynamic photo opportunities with team members to tell a story utilizing the Do Ink and Touchcast apps, introduction to virtual reality through Google Cardboard and 3D Viewmaster, everything coding and robotics with MakeyMakey, Dash and Dot, Sphero, and variety of coding apps, and playing outside of the screen with Tiggly, Osmo and Zoob challenges. A very very special thank you goes out to Deb Norton, Velvet Holmes and Sue Gorman for facilitating, guiding and coaching the dynamic makerspace event. These amazing teacher friends inspired many educators to take a risk and try to create, make and duplicate a learning process. Many attendees from these conferences have already reached out to us after these events, to share their new excited learning implementations with their students and where they have found success. WOW- now that is what it is all about! #TogetherWeAreBetter If you would like to stay connected and continue your learning with Deb, Velvet and Sue, you can follow and learn with them through Twitter: Deb @deb_norton, Velvet @iVelvet, and Sue @sjgorman
Naomi also facilitated a pre-con session at #SLATE15 on redesigning inspiring classroom spaces with a design thinking challenge to focus on re envision classroom and school personalized learning spaces. This jam packed session provided lots of opportunity to discuss and reflect on the why and how to redesign the physical space with the brain in mind. Movement was keyto keep all participants active in their active learning. IEC also provided four breakout sessions on wearable technology, transformative practices of 1-1 Chromebooks, mobile makerspaces, and co-facilitated a TeachMeet session with Jason Bretzman. Special thanks to Jason who is a Flipping 2.0 & Personalized PD co-author and publisher, for making this TeachMeet session so interactive with the throwable microphone CatchBox - where each participant had a voice and choice in their learning. Twenty-two amazing share outs of inspiring teaching ideas supported with apps, tools and websites were generated during this one hour session. You can follow and learn more from Jason through his insightful Twitter posts @jbretzmann Lastly, if you are looking for the “chocolate goodness” of the presentation handouts from the conference sessions, they can be found here. If you are looking for the green screening photos and “Digital Bling Bar” photos, they can be found here.
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10 TRENDS IN PERSONALIZED LEARNING IN 2016 “Personalized learning is happening now and will expand significantly worldwide in 2016. Yet there are still different definitions for personalized Barbara Bray
learning and even some have concerns about what it means for kids. We know the main focus of
SHOW ME THE MONEY 2016 GRANT OPPORTUNITIES
personalized learning is our kids. So we are focusing on three main concepts for these trends we see for 2016 starting with learners, the Kathleen McClaskey
AASL Grants and Awards Donors Choose
teachers, and pulling together
everything with culture and community that encompass the 10 Trends,” states Barbara Bray and Kathleen
Enhancing Math Through Tools and Tech
McClaskey, founders of Personalize Learning. For more
Fab Lab Grant for Wisconsin
information on this topic, please reach out to Barbara or
Google RISE Awards Grant Alerts By State Grants For Teachers Grant Wrangler Lowe’s Toolbox For Education
Kathleen at personalizelearn@gmail.com. As an extra bonus, here is a great addition to compliment the Personalize Learning website on Passion-Based Learning from CUE magazine, where Barbara provides additional insight on 9 ways to encourage passion-based learning in your school.
Meemic NCTM School In-Service Grants Target Field Trip and Foundation Grants Walmart Grants
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Picture from CUE magazine, December 2015.
WHEN A CONFERENCE IS BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE - OH THE SWEET INDULGENCE! December’s Digital Buzz radio show will broadcast the week of the Christmas holiday. Sound byte recorded interviews will be taking place from many attendees and featured speakers to reflect on their just in time learning stories of lessons learned that are “truly better than chocolate” from the #SLATE15 and #TIES15 Technology Leadership Conferences.
If you are looking for some just in time PD to indulge in over your winter and holiday break, tap into the entire 2015 series of archived webinars of the Intel Teach Live webinar collection facilitated each month by the talented Vanessa Jones. We are also preparing for our 2016 webinar lineup, so to kick off January, Naomi Harm will be presenting on wearable technology "Geek is Chic: What Will You Be Wearing in 2016" Date and time forthcoming. Hope you can join us!
CHATS WITH DEB This month Deb is highlighting the Hour of Code and holiday fun activities. Check out Deb’s blogpost overview within the Intel Engage Community which includes additional collection of coding activities, and click here to tap into here collection of holiday fun activities.
We hope December and the upcoming new year provides for you a wealth of opportunities of inspiration, happiness and gratitude! #TogetherWeAreBetter from the Innovative Educator Consulting Team!
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