App Smash and App Dice

As a way of introducing the concept of app smashing to our teachers, Kristen and I put together a session using Nearpod and the Make Dice Lite app.

We were inspired by these articles:
Rolling the Dice with Teacher PD
Why App Smash?
iPad Educators App Smash

We shared the definition of app smashing and several examples. We built in a few activities in the Nearpod session that required them to think of a few of their own. Teachers met with their subject area and we provided an app key ring with a small picture of the app icon, brief description and a few ideas for using with the students. Next we asked them to choose their favorite 12 from a list of apps we have learned this year and our district's core and recommended app lists. Then create two dice with those apps on it in the Make Dice Lite app. Finally roll the dice and get your creativity going.

You can use Today's Meet or Padlet to collect their ideas as they brainstorm app smash possibilities.
We did this with our staff and the staff of one of our elementary schools. We plan to submit this session to our state's Edtech conference as well because it is so much fun.

Have you done any app smashing? How do you help your teachers and students understand the concept? I'd love to hear your ideas. Feel free to contact me for more details or the materials we used for these sessions.

10 Super Powers of the World's Greatest Instructional Technologist

I am excited to announce that I will be serving my district in a new capacity next year. I will be the instructional technologist for our feeder system. I am really looking forward to this new challenge and being a part of my district's rapidly growing technology plans. I will be working with an amazing team that includes my "librarian in the middle" counterpart, Kristen H., my professional development partner in crime, Kristen G., and an enthusiastic techie math teacher, Jessica.
It was a difficult decision to even apply for this job because I love being a librarian. I think I will probably go through a bit of an identity crisis because I have associated so much of who I am with being in the library. In fact, I even emailed one of my librarian heroes, Jennifer LaGarde for advice. She left the four walls of her library to serve as Educator on Loan for North Carolina and I knew she would have some words of wisdom about this decision. She calmed my fears when she assured me that I can still take the mission of the library with me no matter the position or title.
From my first year as librarian and the successful Gadget Petting Zoo I feel that professional development has been a strength for me. Now I will be able to focus more on serving my teachers with timely, effective PD. Being a librarian really prepared me for this job because we are accustomed to collaborating with all subjects, levels and personalities, we have mastered the art of co-teaching, and we know what it means to evaluate ourselves and share the impact with others.
As part of the interview process we were given thirty minutes to share why we would make a good instructional technologist. This is part of what I shared. Please visit the site if the embedded links are not working.



Any resemblance to me is purely coincidental, of course! I used around 15 different apps or web tools to create a product for each of the ten super powers. I had a Powtoon resume attached as well, but took it off before posting because of the contact information.
I would love to see someone create one for librarians. It was an exercise in reflection for me to access my skills, experience and narrow down the traits I thought were important for the job.
I was inspired to create this after seeing this infographic about the "world's greatest instructional designer".
I hope that the posts that I share as instructional technologist are still helpful and interesting to you. I see the roles of librarian and instructional technology overlapping more and more. I love the librarian community, both locally and globally, and hope that you will still consider me one of the tribe.

Instructional Goals: District and Teacher

For the last session with our teachers we decided to focus on lesson planning and making goals for the summer.

We used the web tool Edpuzzle to flip part of our meeting. Teachers were asked to watch a video on the flipped model and answer questions we embedded into the video through Edpuzzle. 

This is the video we used. 

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G_p63W_2F_4

We started the meeting with a few questions about flipped classes such as pros, cons, and tools for flipping.

Next we looked at a few iPad lessons and determined which level the lesson was on the SAMR model and how the teacher could bump it up. This led us to creating our own lesson plan using the iPads. 

Then we looked at our district's instructional goals for the iPads and talked about how we can individually contribute to those goals and prepare over the summer.

We used the app Chirp to send out this picture so we could reflect (and share if you wanted) on which part of the pencil we are and which part we want to be. This was a nice conclusion because our teachers were able to see how much they have improved and learned.

I was very impressed with the lessons that the teachers created and it was rewarding to see them confidently use the apps that we have been working on. We still have a lot to learn and next year will be a period of trial and error for all of us, but I'm so proud of how far we have come together.

Creating a Core App List

The district wide iPad committee that I served on was tasked with creating a list of core apps for the iPads. There was significant thought and care put into making the list. We wanted to stick with free apps, developmentally appropriate, focused on creation yet considering space limitations on the device.

We liked this visual for sharing the apps so we tried to recreate our list in this style. http://www.teachthought.com/apps-2/47-core-teacher-apps-a-visual-library-of-apps-for-teachers/

This is the list as it stands today for elementary, both teacher and student versions.

This is the list for middle school.

 

This is the high school list.

What apps would be on your core list? Did we miss anything?

Teaching Tech to Principals

Most professional development is focused on teachers and rightfully so, but we can't forget that our administrators often need help with technology as well. Recently I was asked to share some tech tips with our principals. One teacher shared Evernote and a principal shared Twitter so I decided to share some iPad keyboard tricks, QR codes,  Padlet and Adobe Reader app. 

First I asked the principals to scan a QR code that took them to this article: 

http://www.districtadministration.com/article/want-increased-student-achievement-using-ipads.

After opening in Safari, I showed them how to take away the images and extras from the site, how to bookmark and add to a reading list. 

Then I had them scan a QR code that took them to this PDF:  http://www.eduleadership.org/wp-content/essential-ipad-guide-2.0.pdf

I showed them how to open in Adobe and how to use the highlight, comment, and other tools in that app. I asked them to contribute some of their thoughts on their role in a 1:1 initiative on a Padlet I created.

Finally I showed them some keyboard shortcuts like the hidden apostrophe, quotation mark, hidden URL endings, and how to type numbers without switching keyboards back and forth.

They seemed to enjoy the hands on time with the iPads and they loved the keyboard shortcuts. I promptly followed several of our new tweeters. 

Do you have special time dedicated to teaching your administrators? I would love to hear your ideas.

QR Code App Scavenger Hunt

If you are looking for a way to expose teachers to lots of apps, this is a fun activity. I took our districts list of core apps (and several extras) and printed a sign with the app icon, brief description and a QR code that links to examples of the app being used in the classroom. We did this activity in one of my feeder elementary schools and it was fun. 

After giving them time to explore I asked each teacher to choose a favorite app and create a screencast sharing how they would use this app in the classroom. We used Ask 3 because I encouraged them to view the other screencasts and comment. This app is shutting down in August so you could easily replace that with Educreations or something similar. 

Their homework assignment was to create a product in one of the apps and turn in to me using Showbie. 

I was so impressed with their ideas and the products that are starting to roll in to Showbie.

If you would like the signs I used, contact me and I will be happy to share.

The iPad PD Continues, But Now We Have Ninjas!

I described our first four iPad sessions in a previous post so I wanted to share the latest sessions.

5th Session: Evernote
For homework we asked our teachers to load Evernote Webclipper to their laptops and load the Evernote app onto their iPads.
We shared several great Evernote Youtube videos to introduce them to the many uses for this service. Together we went through the steps to creating a checklist and adding the Evernote email address to our contact list. We shared ideas for using Evernote in the classroom including sharing and turning in work, saving important parent emails, creating lesson plan notebooks, using Penultimate for notes, StudyBlue for flashcards that integrate with Evernote, and the cool Post It Note options.
Evernote is such a robust application that I think we went overboard and scared some of the teachers. At the end of the session we asked them to open Aurasma and follow our school channel to prepare for our next session and a few teachers had a freak out moment because they were overwhelmed with so much information.
Our original plan was to have the teachers participate in creating a bulletin board using Aurasma answering our yearbook theme of "What Makes You Soar?". Due to the panic we decided to fall back and punt. Instead I asked each teacher to send me a picture representing their answer to the question and I had my library helpers go around and video the teachers answering the question so that I could put the board together myself. We also sent out a quick survey requesting feedback on the sessions so far as well as asking them if they wanted to stay at the same speed or slow down.
We used this information to differentiate our next PD session on Nearpod.

6th session: Nearpod
For homework they had to turn in the picture for the Aurasma board, load the Nearpod app and bring a previously made Power Point to the session.
This time I took the ones that wanted to slow down into a separate room while my partner in crime, Kristen G., kept the others in the library.
We had 12 teachers that wanted to slow down so we took it one step at a time and went through a Nearpod session we created then I helped them load their own presentation and insert activities. The teachers' responses were very positive. They felt more comfortable in a small group and several of them mentioned that in the library as a whole group they felt like everyone was ahead of them, causing them to panic. One teacher said "Now I know how my students feel when I go fast in class."
On our way out we all stopped by the Aurasma board that I put together and let them watch the augmented reality videos. They thought it was really cool.

7th session: Digital Storytelling
For homework we asked teachers to watch this video, answer a short survey choosing one digital storytelling app and then load that app onto their iPad. Teachers had a choice of these apps: Toontastic, Pixntell, Animation Express, Haiku Deck, Fotobabble, Chatterpix, Voicethread, Puppet Pals HD, Book Creator, and Storehouse. I worked with 8 of our gifted and talented 6th grade students to prepare for this meeting. I assigned each of them an app or two to learn so that they would be on hand to help each group create a product during the meeting. We called the students Tech Ninjas and we ordered shirts for them. The students were a huge help! Several teachers asked if they could come to every meeting. After each teacher created a product in their app they had to pick their favorite from the group to share with everyone. This allowed them to only learn one app, but gain exposure to all of them. We shared the products at the end of the meeting and had a good laugh at some of them. The teacher that had their product shared won a bluetooth speaker and earbuds with built in microphone.

8th session: Pages, Keynote and iMovie
Homework for this session was assigned before our Spring Break. To prepare for this session teachers had to go through a Nearpod homework session describing iMovie's basic features and then create one of their own. When we return from the break we will share a few of these to get us started then we have cheat sheets created for Pages and Keynote. The Tech Ninjas will be on hand to assist as teachers spend 30 minutes on each app going through the cheat sheets and trying out the tools. As an exit ticket we will have a Padlet projected on the screen asking teachers to share ways that they plan to use the iPads in their lessons.

Our last two sessions will focus on lesson planning. We've spent a lot of time learning the basics and exposing the teachers to apps (50 total!), but now it is time to put it into action. I will share the details as we get closer.

News of our successful iPad training has spread across the district and I was asked to lead four sessions with one of my feeder elementary schools. This school has had a rough experience with iPad carts so I wanted to make this as fun and positive as possible.
We started with Nearpod. I created a short presentation of a few fun apps they could use right away such as Name Selector, Sand Timer, Kahoot, Groovy Grader, Too Noisy and Stage Whiteboard, but the real goal was to show the activities that can be built into a Nearpod presentation. Their App Task was to create a background for their lock screen using Pic Collage. This is an app task we did with our faculty and they loved it. Pic Collage is very easy to use and fun. When they finished that task (I knew we would have a wide variety of ability levels) I had another Nearpod session launched as a homework session so they could go through the slides at their own pace. This presentation had apps divided by subject category. Before this session I surveyed the staff and asked them what they would like to learn. I made sure to have slides devoted to the things they asked for like reading, notebooking, and the related arts. They also asked for places to find good apps so at the end of the session they were taken to a few sites like Best Apps for Kids and Appitic. Finally I had a handout with a QR code on it that led them to a Padlet where they shared their favorite takeaway from the day. We ended with a drawing for iPad prizes and they scanned a QR code that took them to a Google Form where they signed in to receive technology credit for the session. The teachers were very excited about what they learned and what they wanted to learn in our future sessions. I left with two iPads to fix and shared a Dropbox folder with them with all the instructions for the apps we used.
My next session is in two weeks and I have a QR Code App Safari planned. I know with only four sessions I need to cram in as much as possible without overwhelming them so I created slides for each of our district's core creation apps (plus a few more) with a QR code that takes them to product examples and instructions. We'll start the session with a Socrative question asking them to share one positive experience with the iPad that they have had in recent weeks. Then they will be able to walk around the room and scan QR codes to explore the different apps. As they move around I'm going to project a Today's Meet session on the board and ask them to share ideas as they explore. The exit ticket will be to create a short app explanation for one of their favorites using Ask3. I did recently read that Ask3 is closing in August, but I wanted to expose them to screencasting. I like the bulletin board feature in Ask3 and still feel it is a good one to use for this purpose. When it goes away they can still use Educreations, Show Me, ScreenChomp or another option. Their homework is to use one of the apps that they explored to create something that will be turned in to me using the app Showbie.

Many teachers say that they want to know how to use the apps, not just a list of apps so I'm trying my best to model app usage in my own sessions with Socrative, Padlet, Showbie, QR codes, etc and talk about how I modeled it at the end of each session.

If you'd like any more details or the presentations for any of these sessions don't hesitate to contact me. I'm happy to share and eager to hear your ideas for faculty professional development.