I can do better.

I know that.  What I am uncertain of it HOW do I do better?  The famous quote right now is "When you know better, you do better."  It would follow that "knowing better" is the key to "doing better."  

So, that leaves me with the question, "how do I "know better.""  Easy answer.  Research.  Reading. Practicing habits that will propel me to learn more about my field, my life, my soulmate, and my universe.  

​Every year, I put forward a simple set of goals in my bullet journal and then record my progress along the way.  Here's an example from one of my teaching years.

As you can clearly see, I messed up a LOT.  Especially on the twitter chats.  But the idea isn't to get everything perfect.  The idea is to try new things, record how I interact with them, and evaluate their use in my life.  

I usually don't share my lists (with the noted exception of it things on my list have to do with my job, then I pilfer the pre-written list to copy and past the answers on the annual "what are your goals" document for work).  

So, here's the big professional goals for this school year.  Let's see how I do.

​

It is hard to explain exactly how much fun I have putting robots into the classroom.  I have to say, I love my @dashrobotics.  I've used them for several years now and every Dash I have ever encountered has been tough enough for the classroom and versatile enough for the programming to be adaptable to multiple levels of students..  

One final reason I love them:
​They are extraordinarily cute.  

For the past three years I have used them almost exclusively (withs some time out for flying drones with programing). 

The iPad app Blockly connects easily to these robots to allow students to use a "Scratch" like code to program the robot's movements and sounds.  

I'm betting any TKAM fans can easily guess which section of the novel this represents.  

I think one of the best parts of this lesson was hearing how the students fought over the text choices and dialogue.  Mrs. Rhodes and I were pretty adamant in the plans that we wanted student to focus on creating theme based vignettes.  

Mrs. Rhodes and I were both please with the results of the Hour of Code integration into the English curriculum.  We both agreed that one more day would have made this unit much better for reflection and polish on the finished product.  

I loved this unit and these classes.  

.Students recorded the fastest kid in the school (Trevor) running down the hallway. They then filmed themselves running the same distance as fast as they could. Using the time on the films, they set up equations and solved to see at which point Trevor would have overtaken and bypassed them. Math, for the win!

To create the doubled effect in iMovie we simply stacked to videos.

Then, we move to the controllers on the top right tool bar and simply adjust the opacity of the layered videos.  

I have to say, as far as student engagement goes, this lesson was through the roof.  I also think that the tech was simple enough that it made the learning curve on building the video pretty manageable.  

​All in all, a great project!

October saw the launch of two different sets of ebooks.  First, Mrs. Schulte had her students using the Apple products suite to design iBooks.  Students first studied common myths from Greek and Roman mythology.  Then, they used those models to build their own myths to explain a natural phenomenon using Pages to save stories as ePub files.  From there, we published the stories in iBooks so they could share!

The Spanish II students embarked on a similar journey, but they used a web based app called @bookcreatorapp.  The teachers in the case chose to pay the subscription fee for a month or two in order to get all the features of the app.  Total cost was about 10 dollars.  

Differences in the products and outcomes:

With the objectives being to force students to include higher order thinking skills and consider issues of scale, ratio and proportion (in addition to the original objectives of calculating distances and midpoints  on a coordinate plane), I knew this could be a a great fit for this activity.

The pre-stage of the iPads was a heavy lift.  Thanks to @esu3pl and @21centtech, I was able to borrow 10 iPads with the scanners that would enable to project.  After that, I used @tearagon7's innovative @Keynote hack to create the rides that we would import into the amusement park.  When I finished loading the rides, I turned to the organizational challenge of creating the teams and the jobs for the teams.  Knowing this tech might be a harder sell to this specific population, I tired to focus on giving everyone in the group a job that was essential to the success of the project. 

We did make one change on the fly in between the first two classes.  We changed the measurements from just inches to inches times two to make the surface a little bigger.  This resulted in projects that were much easier to see and manipulate.  

​Thanks again to @keynote and @armakrapp for making these awesome project possible.   Always remember: #everyonecancreate!

I've taught English and writing based curriculum for many years now (well, a few more than twenty). The farthest I've branched out is journalism at the high school level.  

I had been itching for a change before I got the job as the technical coach for Gretna Public Schools.  To feed that desire the switch things up, I applied to teach computer programming in summer school for Logan Fontenelle Middle School.  Luckily, I was approved and I started working with the Apple "Learn to Code 1" materials to design a four-week course. 

The INTERESTING:

• Incoming 7th graders are 6th graders (seems intuitive, but I was absolutely surprised when reflecting on differences in behaviors, attention, gaming, and cognition. 
• The curriculum provided by @Apple needs augmentation for a group as young as 6th graders.   I relied on @Flocabulary, @Kahoot, @Quizizz, @Quizlett, @Classkick, @Piccollage, @Parrot, @WonderWorkshop to give the lessons the needed "pop" and reinforcement. 

April. That wonderful time of the year when all middle school students and teachers lose "they" minds.  As evidence, I give you things I've said in the last week alone:

• "No.  I do not want to see the banana in your pants."  (After being asked if I'd like to see the banana in his pants--from a student who started a black market fruit business during guided study by taking the leftover fruit from the cafeteria and selling it for a nickel during study hall). 
• "Please do not eat pancakes in the bathroom, ladies."  Yes, they had syrup and everything.
• "Do you really think if the FBI were coming tomorrow to Logan in order to confiscate phones, they would be kind enough to give us all a 24 hour warning?" (Responding to the out of control rumor that the FBI would descend on our school on the morrow and working themselves up into a tizzy about the whole thing).  
• (This one was not said out loud: Please stop eating your dandruff).  
  

Guys, gals and non-bianary palls, it's only the first week of May.  

No one has every accused middle schoolers of being exceptionally logical humans.

​However, there are some bright spots to the end of the year.  

Here's one of them.  This kid.  He is my tech genius of first period.  Yesterday, he turned me on to a website called @PaperRater (www.paperrater.com).  How can this company have been around since 2011 and I've never found them? (Luckily, I have kids like this dude).
@PaperRater uses A.I. to analyze papers.  Granted, it's a little clickbaity and  I have only used the free version, but things I LOVED were:

• Vocabulary and style analysis
• Plagiarism alerts (although not as savvy as turnitin.com)
• Comparisons for papers written at the same grade level

 The video above was taken using @ARMakr as an example of a dynamic vocabulary lesson for the ELA classroom

I have not been this excited about technology in the classroom since I discovered automated grading on @Flubaroo five years ago.

Augmented reality is about to take us to the next level in education.  Why?  Because it's cool and fresh and has limitless potential across the curriculum.  Imagine this tech in a science classroom.  Students could put the entire digestive system on their body and then point out the parts.  What about a tour of Jupiter?  For mathematics, teachers could make equations life size and ask students to explain each section by standing in it and pointing.  History?  What about interviewing a historic figure by having a student hiding behind the image doing a ventriloquist act with the picture?  

So.  Many. Applications. 

​Here's an instructional video showing how to use Keynote to get rid of backgrounds with Instant Alpha made by @tearagon7, an Apple Distinguished Educator out of California.  I found her examples on twitter during a wild search for ideas.   This easy to follow tutorial has so much potential to revolutionize interactions with material.  Check out her video and then see what she's going in her school on her website and in her  e-book!