#EdcampFLX17 Top 10

Yesterday’s Edcampflx brought almost 100 educator’s from across the Western, New York area together for a morning of personalized professional development. Here are my top 10 moments from the morning:

10. New apps. Can’t wait to play more with Letrecap.com and Mentimeter.com. Both of these look like great feedback and formative assessment tools.

9. Even thought she wasn’t there in person, it was cool to know that Rachel Murat (@mrsmurat) was following us on Hootsuite, liking and retweeting our adventures.

8. A fantastic conversation with Ned Dale (@nedatthegrove) about Digital Citizenship and Leadership. I gained a lot of insight into how a school district goes about giving skills students need, and using non-traditional ways to do it.

7. Coming early and doing some setup for Katie McFarland (@katiemc827). With coffee and a little tape, I got to see the goings on behind the scenes and learning about the effort it takes to get an Edcamp off the ground.

6. Conversation about Schoology. I had the chance to facilitate a session on Schoology, and I really tried to invite conversation. Many of the teachers in the room were self-described beginners, but as I listened to the work they’re doing, I wouldn’t use the word beginners. In our district, “beginners” are creating quizzes and assessments, delivering Nearpods and other online activities to students, and providing 24/7 access to their course materials. Awesome!

5. I also got to facilitate a talk on student blogging and discussions. It was a far ranging session from using Edublogs, Blogger, Schoology Discussions. But, at the heart, was a great conversation with teachers who want to give their students more choice, voice, and avenues for self-expression.

4. Working with the always positive, hard working model for technology integrators everywhere, Steve Holmes (@kylelaurie).

3. An empty session board. Oh, the possibilities…With Chromebook in hand (it would have been nice to have the new tablet model our students have in the district), I got lucky and helped to get the physical board into the digital version.

2. Stepping up. As we built the session board, we had to approach a number of our teachers who came to Edcamp expecting to be a participant. Little did they know that they’d be called upon to facilitate a session. It was cool to see people move from hesitant to excited as they got the opportunity to lead a session on something that they had some knowledge about. Thanks to these folks from Canandaigua who stepped up.

1. A full session board. Oh, the possibilities.

It was my second year at EdcampFLX, and my third camp overall. Looking forward to more adventures in the future.

Smore to Schoology

The response to my last blog was much stronger than anticipated. I’m following it up with a quick link with directions to embed your Smores into Schoology pages.

Good luck!

Getting Smore from Your Schoology Pages

The other day I was working with a colleague who was getting Schoology courses setup for the start of the year. At Canandaigua, we’ve done away with teacher webpages, so all teachers are using the LMS as their web presence for students and parents.

In our old system, Schoolworld, my colleague had a notable website. Particularly because it was a clear reflection of her personality–lots of pictures to share  her passion for video games, like the Zelda franchise, classic rock and Harry Potter. Students and parents who went to the site not only knew the course, its materials, but also were instantly connected to this dynamic teacher.

As we were working to create a page in Schoology for parents, she lamented that the pages in Schoology were, well, boring, with little ability to liven them up with colored backgrounds, or other design features that students and parents might find visually appealing. Below you’ll see what I mean. It’s my “Parent Page” in each of my Schoology courses.

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My Schoology Parent Page–Lots of Text and Not Much Else

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There wasn’t much I could tell her.

Then, light blub!

At home later in the day, I started playing with Smore–a web-based flyer and newsletter designer–as part of a project to aggregate blog posts from our student and teacher bloggers into a weekly newsletter to help them build their audiences.

I happened to notice that one of the sharing tools was an embed link. I quickly copied it off the flyer I was working on, went into my Schoology resources, opened a practice page, and embedded the link.

It worked, and the Smore flyer was there on the page.

A Smore Embedded into a Schoology Page

There are some advantages to this approach as I see it.

First, there are a lot of design and layout features available in Smore that are eye-catching and visually appealing. Second, these modifications could be furthered to use Smore for personalized student playlists or assignments with lots of links. Already looking around Smore’s “Educator Hive” you can find example of teachers who have used this approach. While I’m fully committed to using Schoology as my content delivery system, I’m thinking of using Smore to help give me another option in my playbook.

While these advantages exist, there are some drawbacks. Smore is another tool to learn. Teachers who may already be overwhelmed with trying to learn a new LMS, coupled with a smattering of apps, could easily throw their hands-up at you.

Still, for tech-savy teachers looking to keep their parents and students in Schoology, and looking to spice up the look of their pages, embedding Smores into the pages provides an interesting option.

 

 

Refocusing on 100 Plans

Today's sketchnote with a story to eventually follow:

10 Things to Do to Support & Build Cultures of Innovation

1. Don’t worry about having all the answers.
2. Take on new things, and don’t worry about having it all figured out from the start.
3. Know that it’s okay to say to kids, “I don’t know,” or “I’m challenging you to figure it out.”
4. Read books–try stuff that other people write about.
5. Reflect and think about how you can make it new, different, better.
6. Recognize boredom, figure out what conditions create it, and change.
7. Blend and integrate: How would a different subject area teacher do this? How would a different grade level do this?
8. Blend and integrate: If I were a business person, what would I do? If I sold cars, how would I proceed? If I were a surgeon, what steps would I take? If I were a short order cook, how would I make this?
9. Take time to follow your own passions: run, play video games, cook, write, play music.
10. Take time to do something you’ve never done before: run, play video games, cook, write, play music.