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Showing posts from June, 2014

7 Characteristics Of A Digitally Competent Teacher

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I saw this infographic  posted by te@chthought yesterday and thought that it was worth passing on.

How to Use Google Forms to Collect Daily Feedback/Responses

There are a lot of teachers are the middle school who are revising their websites to prepare to come back to new positions this fall. One of the items that many have been adding is a Google Form to collect daily writing, feedback, or responses. If you've made a Google Form before, you already know how easy it is to do. However, for those of you who haven't, here is a quick screencast to walk you through the process. Once you've made your form, you can link to it from your website or use the "Insert" menu on your Google Site to embed it right on your website (or come see me and we can do it together).

Scheduling Meetings with Doodle.com or Google Calendar

If you struggle to find a meeting time when you can get a group together, you can use Doodle.com or even do it right in your Google Calendar. It's easy to do in either, but is more of a challenge in Google Calendar if your coworker aren't using their Google Calendar or have their privacy set so that you can't see their availability.

How to Back Up Your Laptop and Google Drive

Several folks have been asking for tips on backing up their school laptops and Google Drive. This is especially important if you are passing in your laptop next week before moving on from Bonny Eagle. The tech department will not be collecting teacher laptops for the summer, but they will be collecting the laptops from the Ed Techs (last time I heard). Here is screencast to walk you through how to do it.

Changing Point Weights in ClassDojo

There is a teacher at the middle school who has been using Class Dojo this year to make a noticeable difference in his student's behavior and motivation. One of the features they have unveiled recently is the ability to weight the points so that some behaviors are worth more than others. Setting it up is very simple, but here is a quick screencast (without audio) to show you how it can be done. Another feature they released this week is the ability to share a class with other teachers. That means that a clan or team of teachers could decide on behaviors (and points) together and then share classes with each other to give a student and their parents/guardians an easy way to see how they behaved at school and what they can do to improve.

Officially a Certified Google Educator with Chrome Specialty!

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After taking five exams with 60 questions in each one with a time limit of 90 minutes (and $75 in testing fees), plus lots of going cross eyed and pulling my hair out, I am very excited to officially report that I am now a certified Google Educator with a specialty in Google Chrome! Phew! What does it mean for you? Hmm... likely not much. But it does prove that I know my stuff when it comes to Google and it will, hopefully, help me to find out what is coming next from Google a bit sooner so that I can keep everyone better informed. Now on to the higher levels of Google Certification. Google Education Trainer and Google Certified Teacher, you're next!

Looking to learn this summer?

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I know that many teachers say that there just isn't enough time in the year to learn what you want to do. Fortunately, the Sebago Alliance Technology Integrators (that includes me!) have put a lot of time and energy in to organizing another year of the SEA Staff Tech Camp. It's going to be held at Windham High School the week after we get out of school. And I'm teaching three sessions! You can view the fancy brochure with all of the information by clicking here . Here is the jam packed schedule for the three days: Tech   Camp  Registration is Now OPEN!  Please go to our website for more information: SEA Tech Camp Registration Join in the fun and learning at  Tech   Camp  2014: Gaining STEAM.

Workshops for the Rest of the Year

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Thank you to everyone for your feedback so far on my tech skills survey . I have a lot to think about to improve things for next year. One point that I did want to make is that I have made a conscious effort this year to try and bring everyone's skill levels up to where they need to be in terms of basic use while providing as much for the upper level users as possible. I did not expect everyone to do everything that I talked about, but more wanted to put out options so that folks were aware of what they could do. I was basically throwing stuff out there to see what would stick. With that in mind, I really want to make sure that these last few weeks are as valuable to you as they possibly can be. So I am opening up my office hours to every day at either school so that I can help you as much as possible before you leave for the summer. What does that mean? Customized workshops! If you want to learn how to build a website, for example, you can make an appointment and we'l