Google Drive: Tips and Tricks

This presentation was originally given as part of Scarsdale teacher's yearly professional development requirement in the area of technology. This PD session was part of the Scarsdale Teacher's Collaborative (ST@C).

From the course description:
Spend an hour learning Drive tips and tricks to help make your digital file life more organized and efficient.
http://blogs.scarsdaleschools.org/heathcotetech/stc/drive-tips-and-tricks/

The PD session slide deck:

GMail: Tips and Tricks

This presentation was originally given as part of Scarsdale teacher's yearly professional development requirement in the area of technology. This PD session was part of the Scarsdale Teacher's Collaborative (ST@C).

From the course description:
Spend an hour learning a few GMail tips and tricks to help make your email life more organized and efficient.
http://blogs.scarsdaleschools.org/heathcotetech/stc/gmail-tips-and-tricks/

The PD session slide deck:

In light of this latest GMail phishing scam...

With this new email phishing scam rearing it's ugly head it's always a good time to pause and think about how these things happen and how we can prevent them.

How do they happen? Usually because we are so accustomed to interacting with email from people we know that clicking on a "Open in Docs" button from a colleague doesn't even faze us.

So what happened and what do you do...?

Blogging with 3rd graders: an overview for parents...

This is a repost from my school blog, HeathcoteTech. I worked with the 3rd grade team on blogging with students over the course of the year. This was one of our final activities, presenting the work to parents at an open Parent Coffee...

Portable sound booths: audio cubes

In an effort to provide students with a better way to record audition (for movie narration, video reflections, screencasts, and so forth) I have experiments with a few ideas.

Let me preface this by saying I have no illusions about the audiophile quality of these experiments, they are by no means perfect. What they are, instead, is a way to lesson the din of a classroom, and improve sound quality, when recording audio. My sound booth solutions will win no acoustic awards but they do a surprisingly good job in a few areas:

• limiting background noise
• providing more depth/richness to the student's voice since it forces them to be closer to the iPad/laptop microphone
• make everyone else in the room more aware of recording happening
• it was surprising to see how quiet the rest of the room got when everyone noticed the cubes being used

Here's what I did...

Your Technology Plan Isn't about Technology

This post originally appeared on the Daily Genius on October 27, 2016

Rock, paper, scissors. The game we all know and love. The game we all grew up with. The game that is very much an analogy for educational technology plans.

Rock, paper, scissors isn’t a game. It’s a means to an end. The game isn’t the purpose, the game decides what comes next. No one plays the game to simply play the game, the game is usually played to decide an order for the bigger game; who goes first, who gets the better seat, all those important childhood decisions.

The other key point to the game is here. No one element; the rock, paper or scissors, is greater than all of them. Each is better than one other but none better than all, and most importantly they all need to be part of the game.

Technology Plan: Rock, Paper, Scissors

On the eve of Spirit Day...

Today I left work, as an educator.

I drove home.

I then went to my daughter's school, as a parent, for Family Night.

I left Family Night feeling disheartened, angry, and sad. But I also left hopeful.

Tomorrow I go to work, as an educator, on Spirit Day. And it makes me thankful and hopeful...

Gearing up for Day 1

Tomorrow is the first day of the 2016-2017 school year.

My 14th first day of school as a teacher.

I'm excited. These last few years I've been re-energized about the profession and my place in it.

My students and colleagues have pushed me a lot these past two years. I hope I've pushed them too.

I've been thinking a lot about the why and how of what I do lately. I want my students to think about their why too. To not just do. But to understand the purpose, the why of what they do.

I think I'm going to make this a poster in my lab this year...

CapCon! 2016 - a capstone learning conference

Every year the 5th graders of Scarsdale participate in Capstone. Capstone is the last two months of school, post-standardized testing. Students choose a topic, research it, and create a final product. It is designed to be a self-directed, passion/interest based assignment. And it ends with a tri-fold board...

This year our school decided to turn it on it's head.

No more tri-folds.

We created CapCon! a capstone learning conference. The vision was to create a professional learning conference experience driven by students, their research, and their work.

We spoke a lot about Ignite talks, TED Talks, professional quality documentaries (we used 60 Minutes and Real Sports as reference points). We created flyers, posters, and all the traditional marketing material associated with conferences like ISTE, ASCD, FETC. We wanted our students to create professional-quality research projects, so we treated them as professionals. Professional learners, creators, makers, and presenters.

And the students were amazing!

Here's how we did it...

Thinking about my why: I am a purveyor of geekery

I am not a computer teacher.

I am not a technology teacher.

I am not an integrator, facilitator, technician, or guru.

I am a purveyor of geekery.

Why?

I am a purveyor of geekery because I am more than any of those first items listed. I am more than a pigeonhole of knowledge or experience. I am a teacher, a techie, a learner, a nerd, a student, a person with a passion. It is that passion, for the geeky side of life, for the things that aren't limited to electronics but still wave the geek flag with pride, that makes me a purveyor of geekery.

I've been reading Simon Sinek's Start with Why and it has really opened up my thinking and my approach to what I do.