EdCamp Athens

EdCamp Athens is coming up next weekend!  

An EdCamp is an informal un-conference day of professional development organized and given by the local participants with sessions determined at the time of the event. 

At an EdCamp, you can connect with other educators to share innovative instructional strategies and technologies that transform education for all students.
Sessions are planned upon arrival, volunteered by EdCamp participants. You do not have to lead a session! 

The rule of the un-conference is to “vote with your feet”. If a session doesn’t meet your needs, simply get up and move on to another room.



Visit their website to signup and for more details:
https://sites.google.com/site/edcampathens/home

Technology Newsletter of the Week

Technology Newsletter of the week featuring: Remind, Google Scholar, Google Street View, and Creative Commons https://

goo.gl/kHCSOc 

Santa's Back, alright!

Google released Santa Tracker 2015 on their main page. Santa Tracker is full of Christmas related virtual stocking stuffers. Santa Tracker is a virtual Christmas village. Each day a new game, video, or tool is opened to the villagers. Many of the games are educational including a dance game that teaches the basics of computer coding. There is a Santa Selfie station, Elf Jamband, and a translator tool (Elvish is included). With only a few days left of school, let your students explore Santa Tracker 2015. 

Tip: Turn it into a virtual scavenger hunt using Google Slides. Simple assessments can be created using Google Forms or YouTube. 

Three ways to celebrate Mountain Day in the classroom

Today is International Mountain Day. How have you celebrated? Hopefully you will find some time to visit a mountain or a big hill. There are tons of things to do in the outdoors related to Mountain Day - hike, view the scenery, play in the creeks, or nap in a hammock. Let's take a look at how Mountain Day can inspire engagement in your classroom ( or life in general). 

Learn to read a Compass - All that wander are not lost, true, but knowing how to use a compass is a great skill to have when you want to be found. Check out Compass Dude to learn basic to advance navigation skills with a compass. Compass reading, as a part of Social Studies class, is a great way to teach students about the outdoors, environmental protection, and situational awareness. 

Learn about Topo Maps - The best online topo map website I've found is caltopo.com. This site integrates with single sign on for Google and Yahoo. Users have access to a great map selection, distance and marking features, and ability to print custom PDF maps for hiking. There are also Google Earth/GPS files. Now that your students can read a compass, teach them how to create a map of their school or neighborhood using this website. Give them homework that requires them to navigate to parts of their neighborhood using a topo map and compass only. They can document the distance using the map scale, triangulate their location, and estimate how far to other areas of their surroundings. 

Geocaching - This is grown up hide and seek. There are thousands upon thousands of containers hidden on trails, trees, and urban settings. These containers, known as caches, hold a wide variety of trinkets inside. The owner of the cache post the GPS coordinates online to a website such as Geocaching. You (or your students) can now take your new learned map reading skills and a compass or GPS to search for caches hidden in your area. Rules are inside explaining the value of the treasure and what you have to do to replace it. This builds global awareness and community among the participants. Better yet, teachers can build caches and bury them around your school with test question answers, homework passes, or extra recess time for those that find it. 

Youtube Playlist - Directed Visual Learning

Looking to engage students? Worksheets - Check, Lecturing - Check, hmm, I'm out of ideas. Take a look at any 10 year old with a device, and you will see that YouTube is rather engaging to them. Side note: Do you hear clapping and a catchy theme song in your head? Students should not be allowed to freely search YouTube without adult supervision. Luckily, YouTube has provided us with a way to direct and guide students to appropriate curriculum rich videos. It's called YouTube Playlist. Start with a topic, search for videos on YouTube, review the video for content and safety, add to playlist, then share with the world. That's it.

I produced a video (2:00) on how to create a YouTube Playlist.

Collaborate with Google Slides - #winteraroundtheworld

Shannon Miller, from my Twitter PLN, introduced me to a  cool (pun intended) idea called Winter Around The World Project. This is a project after my professional heart. It is collaborative, timely, and meaningful to students. According to their website, the project uses Google Slides to collect winter stories, songs, poems, illustrations, and photographs from students and teachers around the world. Once all of these are collected as a slide deck, there will be a digital eBook published by Cantata Learning.

Here's my favorite winter story ever told:

If you have the chance to add to the story, use the information below for the richest experience:

Shannon Miller Twitter: @shannonmmiller

Twitter Hashtag: #winteraroundtheworld

Website: Click Here To Learn More

Google Slide To Add Your Story: Winter Around The World

Searching Skills - A Google A Day

Do you know how to search Google? Of course, a monkey can do that. Not so fast. Searching is a key discipline related to Digital Literacy. Educators take for granted that everyone knows how to search for resources online. According to Google Help, there are fourteen basic search options available. These range from specific punctuation marks to search operators. Knowing how to use these searching skills can improve your returned results. Not only that, but it will quicken the process of vetting the results. Let's see how this works, shall we?

Abraham Lincoln returns 79,500,000 results

Abraham Lincoln -war returns 41,000,000 results

Abraham Lincoln -war "foreign policy" returns 365,000 results

That's not too bad.  By harnessing the power of Google search students and teachers can spend less time searching and more time vetting the value of the source. Isn't that our ultimate goal?

Looking for a fun way to integrate searching skills into your classroom? Google has created a website that turns learning about searching skills into a game. I've tried a few games;  it is fun and challenging. It is called "a Google a day". (Click here for larger picture)

If you would like to implement this into your classroom, check out the Google Search Education website for classroom materials. Here's a great one minute video showing how to use a Google a day.

Hemingway App Readability: Grade 7