February Updates

It's hard to believe that February is already here! I look forward to getting to see everyone in person again this month! #lovemyteachers

Our Transform Session this month will start with a quick look at what the AdvancED External Review team will be looking for regarding technology use in the classroom. Next, we will be collaborating with the goal of transforming some of your favorite lessons, activities, and/or projects. You will need your laptop or iPad (with Google Slides app). It would also be helpful to bring along a favorite lesson idea, activity or project to transform and share with other teachers across our district. I'll bring some delicious treats and tech badges along with some ideas for transforming your lessons!

Check out the Thinglink below for this month's Tech Tip Calendar, upcoming PD dates, and other useful resources!

January Updates

Our Transform Session for January is designed to be flexible and self-paced. All of the resources are located in Google Classroom, and you may complete the assignment on your own or during one of the live sessions. Based on the results from the survey last month, the resources focus on using recording tools to move toward Modification and Redefinition as described by the SAMR model.

Please see the Thinglink below for upcoming PD dates and other great resources!

On the Road Again...

Based on survey results from my last session, our December Transform Session focused on presentation tools for teachers and students. In selecting the apps/tools to share this month, I again tried to balance already familiar apps with the "new" in order to meet the needs of two different teacher groups: those who want to dig deeper into tools they already know and those who are always on the lookout for new tools!

Quizalize was a popular webtool shared last month, so I decided to use this quick assessment (Code: mbh692) to kick off our December Session. This warm-up gave me great feedback on teacher knowledge of the assessment tools from last time and served as a pretest covering a few of the tools for this session. Additionally, I was able to show my teachers how to access the quality item analysis features within Quizalize.

Next, teachers selected an article on student choice to quickly review and discuss with the group. Many groups commented that we are too often telling students what they must learn, how to learn it, and how to show what they've learned. Technology allows us to offer so many opportunities for student ownership and choice in their learning!



Using the information presented in their selected article, teachers were given an opportunity to explore Keynote, Prezi, FlowVella, Haiku Deck, Google Slide, Nearpod, ClassFlow, Pear Deck, Canva, and/or Buncee with the goal of choosing one to create a quick sample presentation. These presentations were shared with me via Google Classroom.

Haiku Deck was very popular among all groups K-12, and those in the early grades were very excited about Buncee. Teachers continue to enjoy having choice during the sessions, and feedback was encouraging. One teacher commented, "I really liked learning about these tools, and we had great discussion today. I actually wish the session could have been longer. This would be a great way to spend a technology in-service day because we could work together and go over multiple tools and actually create content for classes." Another teacher wrote, "Loved getting to create my own presentation. This enabled me to actually learn how to use the app, and I now have ideas for incorporating this next week!"

Student Choice & Presentation Tools @PVMSPatriot today #ilovethesepeople #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/Y63crmiuLw

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 10, 2015

Love my Ts @PowdersvilleHS ❤️ Great discussions about student choice today #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/kh1OAhah0Q

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 9, 2015

Ts @PowdersvilleHS explored presentation apps & tools today! #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/5VBUJCfnli

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 9, 2015

Fun times with K5 @CPSCrickets yesterday! #supercrickets #transformsession pic.twitter.com/ixd1jv2OXZ

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 4, 2015

Thanks to Ts @pvespride for your hard work during our #transformsession today! #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/siB1cMTYmA

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 1, 2015

Fun times with 3rd Grade Ts @pvespride today! #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/p2Xk87Beoy

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 1, 2015

It was a great morning with 4th & 5th gr. Ts @pvespride #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/R2ArKguAac

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) December 1, 2015

Fun times using @Quizalizeapp and exploring #canva with Ts @officialwren #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/j4MfPpdAeu

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) November 19, 2015

Ts @OfficialWren explored options for providing student choice #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/qCcshfywfV

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) November 17, 2015

It was a great day working with Ts @OfficialWren #presentationtools #transformsession #a1digitalinnovation pic.twitter.com/8W19pKOvzt

— Jessica D. Preisig (@PreisigJessica) November 17, 2015

November Updates

As November approaches and first quarter comes to an end, I feel like things are beginning to settle down. So many wonderful things are happening in our classrooms each day, and it is amazing to see what students are researching and creating as I walk down the hallways. It is also exciting for me to be able to get into classrooms to work with students and teachers where the magic happens!

Our Transform Session for November is focused on assessment and study tools for upcoming exams. Teachers will be given an opportunity to explore Google Forms with Flubaroo, Socrative, GradeCam/ZipGrade, Charades, Kahoot!, and Flashcards by NKO with the goal of creating something to use with students.

For other excellent resources and updates, please checkout the Thinglink below!

Welcome Back, Teachers!

I'm so excited to begin welcoming teachers back to school tomorrow morning! It is hard to believe that this will be my 12th Opening Meeting at Powdersville Middle School.

To help with organizing the many resources that I would like to share, I created a Thinglink. In addition to being more visually appealing than a long list of links, teachers can also bookmark this one web link instead of creating multiple bookmarks for all of the resources.

The background image was created using Canva, which is one of my favorite tools for simple graphic design. I hope everyone will find these resources helpful as they prepare for those first few weeks of school!

A1 Core Apps Symbaloo

An important aspect of my job as an Instructional Technologist is to pull together resources for my teachers to use. In the same way that creating recorded Math lessons for my students allowed them to "take me home" with them each night, curating and providing quality resources is a way that I can provide help even when I am in another building! It is important for the resources to be organized and easy to access, so last school year I created an organized Google Drive Folder full of cheat sheets, video tutorials, and student samples to share with the teachers in my area.

Though the teachers and I love the accessibility, organization, and ability to search in Google Drive, I wanted to find a more visual way to show what resources were available. Yesterday, I decided to try using Symbaloo to share file and folder links from Google Drive.

One of my favorite things about this is that I can easily update and make changes! As I add files into my shared folders, they will automatically become available here. As app icons change, it is easy to edit a tile and change the image. If we want to add or delete an app to our core, it is also simple to add or delete a tile from the Symbaloo. I hope this will be useful way for my teachers to access the resources that our A1 Digital Innovation Team is pulling together.