Update Flash - a NYCDOE centric tutorial

The below tutorial was created with the New York City Department of Education computers and network in mind. That said, however, the idea behind finding a way to easily batch-update Flash on student computers carries over to users and networks beyond the NYCDOE.

So, while the tutorial may be NYCDOE centric, if you are in a Mac environment you can most likely follow the steps to push out Flash updates in your lab setting as well.

Hope this helps folks out...

School Technology Summit 2014 presentations - #NYCSTS14

Welcome to my portion of the School Technology Summit 2014, presented by the Division of Instructional & Information Technology of the New York City Department of Education!

This is the second year for the Tech Summit. My materials from last year can be found here. Just like last year I have created this post for my session slide decks. Once again, the day looks to be an amazing day of learning with a lot of great session opportunities. I am putting all my presentation resources here, in this one post, to make it easy for everyone to have access to my content, even if you are unable to attend in person.

I hope you find my material & presentation valuable.

Enjoy the conference!

"Corporation" doesn't have to be a dirty word

This is a cross-post from Lisa Nielsen on her Innovative Educator blog. She turned one of my Facebook comments on professional development into a blog post. I've re-posted her post here (unedited)...

I have had the pleasure to be involved with creating partnerships between innovative educators and the companies that provide them with resources. This currently includes companies like PBS, Common Sense Media, Google, and, Microsoft, SMART, and Edmodo. 

Unfortunately, for some, when the word corporation comes up, there is immediate distrust. This is a big PR problem that corporations need to take seriously. Fortunately, many corporations are excited about the opportunity to provide support to those who use their products and the teachers are benefiting in many ways.  

Don't blame social media if students are distracted...

Note: This post started as a comment on “Filtering social media in schools because it’s a ‘distraction’” which appeared on Scott McLeod’s Dangerously Irrelevant blog and then first appeared as a guest post on Lisa Nielsen's blog, The Innovative Educator.

Social media is no different than pencil and paper. I doodled a lot in the margins of my physics book. It wasn’t Twitter and Facebook that made me doodle but I doodled nonetheless.

Social media can serve as the new platform for distraction but not a new cause for it. Doodles, passing notes, sleeping in class, all of the “analog” forms of distraction, have just morphed into branded platforms.

The difference? 

Taking Google Apps Data With You...

This post originally appeared on ps10tech.blogspot.com as a tutorial for 5th graders who were graduating and leaving the school but wanted to take their Google Apps data with them.

5th graders,

Over the last few years you have created quite a lot content here at PS 10. Between your classroom and the computer lab you have produced a lot of great work.

In the last year everyone has been using Google Drive to create and store projects.

Here is how you take it all with you:

3rd Grade Google Presentations

I am posting this here because I have to admit, I'm a bit proud of it. I introduced students to Google Apps for Education (GAFE) this year, in grades 3-5. It's been a long process, but as the school year approaches the fruits of our labor are starting to show.

With 3rd grade I focused on Documents and Presentations. First basic Document use like writing and formatting, then sharing, commenting, and collaborating. We then moved to Presentations. As 4th graders they will use Presentations in Science and with their classroom teacher (on class Chromebooks) so I wanted to give them a good baseline of how to create a Presentation.

We are now wrapping up the year and beginning to publish. And by publish I mean using the "Publish to the web" feature in Drive and posting it on the computer lab blog. And now this blog too. True digital publishing.

It's been a wild ride this year, getting over 400 students up and running on GAFE, as well as implementing over 100 Chromebooks in those grades. But it's been well worth it.

I will be updating this post as more student finish, but I am very proud of the work my 3rd graders have done so I felt compelled to show it off on this blog too...

PARCC testing? No worries, page wont load...

PARCC

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career.

Essentially taking the good ol' Scantron bubble sheets of my youth and putting all standardized testing online. Awesome. Saves paper. Quicker return of data. Fantastic.

It'll never happen.

Or at least not soon.

Here's a quick breakdown of why I think PARCC testing is years and years away...

Fear. The great motivator

Warning: this post contains a wee bit of snark and sarcasm, proceed with caution

Here in New York City we are about to administer a 5th grade "field test" on behalf of the curriculum publisher we use.

This morning I wondered aloud, "what if we don't do it?"

The initial response I got was a blank stare.

DropItTo.me - a "must have" Dropbox add-on

Dropbox is amazing.

It is.

Google Drive is great, don't get me wrong. Apple's new announcement, iCloud Drive, seems like it could be killer too. But at this point, Dropbox is the king of cloud storage, in my opinion. It's easy, doesn't care about file formats, simple to share, easy to navigate. It's the market leader for a reason.

My favorite Dropbox add-on is DropItTo.me. DropItTo.me is a 3rd-party, web-based application that links to your Dropbox account.

When done isn't done & here isn't here

Cryptic title? Sort of.

A story of my June? Mostly.

Here's what I mean...