Friday, April 20, 2018

8 Deadly Sins of Camerawork When Using an iPad

Our high school physical education students will be creating energetic lifting videos.  We will be teaching them how to film correctly when using an iPad.

After each "deadly sin" was introduced, students partnered with another student and practiced how to properly film based on each of the "sins".

I liked how students saw what was an incorrect/correct skill and then practiced the skill correctly.

I also believe this was an outstanding example of how iPads are so portable and function in so many ways.  If we had Chromebooks in our school as our one to one device, this would not have been as efficient as the "all in one" iPad.  You'll also see a great example of team teaching and the very best thing I like about my job.  After the introduction to the learning opportunity, I presented the tech skills that students will be using.  To complete the introduction, the physical education teacher, Ms. Retzlaff, provided the specific requirements and expectations.

The teacher is the facilitator of the content.
The digital learning specialist (me) is the facilitator of the tech tools & skills associated with content.

View all our pictures!

View the presentation below!

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Zach Seidel, Social Media Coordinator - UMBC Athletics

Our marketing students were blessed to have experience an interview with Mr. Seidel of the UMBC athletics Twitter account.

UMBC men's basketball and UMBC became famous as they were the first number 16 seed to beat a number 1 seed in the NCAA Tournaments.

Zach's wittiness and timely tweeting caught the eye of many!  Since our marketing students are in the midst of a social media campaign to raise funds for Phase II of our Field of Dreams Campaign, I reached out on Twitter to Zach and asked if he would "hangout" with our students. 
He graciously agreed.  By the way, this was a great lesson for our students as well. 

IT DOESN'T HURT TO ASK!











He gave great responses to a number of questions:
  • How has your life changed since your famous night in basketball?
  • What was your social media plan prior to the game?
  • What is your social media plan now?
  • How are you leveraging the success you have found to improve your entire university?
  • What does your social media team look like?
  • What's two things you can specifically tell us that helps when being "good at social media"?
Watch the interview:

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Bekah Vought, Indiana Hoosiers, Talks About Social Media Effectiveness

Our marketing students conducted an interview with Bekah Vought, social media assistant at Indiana University.  In the interview, Ms. Vought talked about her humble beginnings, journey to IU and some of the things that make social media effective for Indiana University.

ULTIMATELY, students are getting an expert's insight from someone outside of our school!
  • Grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin.
  • Loves Sports
  • Loves communicating with people
  • Volunteered at Oregon State University in social media
  • IU has a great set up: virtual reality studio, podcast studio, photo studio
  • IU sets up GIF shoots for teams
  • Videos for each teams
  • Her job is putting all of those "created content" for teams and the university together in strategic ways on social media.
  • Experts on her team focus on different mediums: Instagram expert, Snapchat expert, Twitter expert, etc. (This helped our students realize that they could utilize their team in different ways)
  • Features such as "Hoosier Bedtime Stories" create content by sharing more details of student-athletes and coaches
  • Twitter is used as a resource, and answering questions for fans is important. (We continue to stress that social media is about relationships.)
  • EVERGREEN: social media posts need to be timeless and from the group's perspective not the individual perspective - See below for a detailed explanation


Overall, Ms. Vought gave great insight into what an effective social media team does on a daily basis.  


You can learn more about Ms. Vought in another interview with Taylor Siebert of Class Intercom.


Tuesday, March 20, 2018

World History Twitter Template

Students will be creating three tweets on behalf of a famous person in history.  While we could be "real tweeters", some students do not have a Twitter account.  Because of this we modified a Twitter template that we found online for our purposes.

Students will create a copy of the template using an iPad which has a specific workflow.  Find the specific presentations below.

We feel that this learning opportunity helps students to practice being great communicators, critically thinkers all while creating good content.

The Twitter Template



The iPad Workflow

Thursday, March 8, 2018

World History: Levels of Creation Options For Students

Our World History teachers have allowed for students to learn about a famous person in history while creating something.  These creations are at "different levels" of text. 
👉If students like writing text, magazines and newspaper templates are provided.  If students like creating with green screens and video, the option is available. 

We feel this learning opportunity allows for students to build critical thinking, communication, and creativity skills.  All of the skills employers are looking for in an employee.

We also feel this assignment meets multiple ISTE Standards.

View Complete Options

👉Tools Students Have Choice To Use


Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Padlet Used For Presentations and Discussion

Padlet is not a new tool, however, I utilized it as a new tool to present.  I did not have any formal "presentation", instead I utilized the wall feature of Padlet to create options for session two teachers of my Resonate: Making Better Presentations.  Session One was all about emphasizing visual and delivery of presentations.  After learning about these keys, teachers spent one month creating and revising better presentations.

Session Two was about choice, sharing an old presentation, sharing a new presentation, and then providing words of wisdom.  The first three choice columns contained resources that were text, video, and images.  Teachers liked and/or commented on the resource.  Teachers then uploaded images or complete presentations that were "bad" and then presentations that were "good".  They discussed the negatives and positives of each of their presentations.  Finally, teachers were able to provide "words of wisdom" for anyone making presentations based on what they learned in the two hour session.

Padlet allowed me to do all of that with it's collaborative features!  Link to Padlet
*Scroll right, left, up or down on the green Padlet below to view all content.
*Once class was over, I changed the permissions so that the Padlet was "read only".
Made with Padlet

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Marketing Students Hear From College Freshmen Whose Done It

On Wednesday, January 31, 2018 our Pulaski High School Marketing Principles class experienced a thirty minute interview with an Ohio University School of Business Honors Student. Brock Reisler (BrockReisler.com) has developed a positive personal brand through his website.  He is featured on the Ohio University Honors page. He also secured a 2018 paid internship by November of 2017 after sending 400 emails to colleges and university athletic departments throughout the United States.

As a teacher, this was a great way to utilize
  • Communication (with "experts" outside of our school)
  • Create content as we recording the entire hangout
  • Critically thought about the content that Brock presented to our students as they are going to be creating a personal brand
As a father, I am so proud of the responsible young man that Brock has become.  I liked one of the things Brock said in the interview:

"Everything In High School Matters" ~Brock Reisler 1-31-18

Watch the interview conducted through an event on Google Hangout!


Read through the Tweets:



Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Apple Core - Resonate: Ignite Passion Through Better Presentations

I have studied Nancy Duarte's work and read a number of her books.
I love what she talks about.  As an educator, I have been on a quest to inform and challenge teachers to create better presentations since 2013.

I was blessed with the opportunity to teach sixteen teachers from our district on elements of better presentations.
  • The Reason For Better Presentations (Slide 7)
  • The Glance Test (Slide 11)
  • The Delivery (Slide 36)
  • The Goal (Slide 54)



Within the presentation, teachers were asked to perform a "Glance Test" and "Delivery" evaluation of past presentations.  The top of the document has been reduced from an original by Nancy Duarte to one that teachers can use.  I also added a checklist for evaluating the delivery portion of a speech.

I also incorporated Flipgrid to gain feedback from teachers after the session.  Teachers were asked to choose either the "Glance Test" or the "Delivery" to reflect on and then the "Goal".  The goal of creating three presentation throughout the year that incorporate the "Best Of" everything that we talked about is the expectation. 

We will be meeting again in one month to see an "old presentation" and how the "new presentation incorporates many of the ideas discussed during Resonate: Ignite Passion Through Better Presentations. 

*Slide 61 provides resources


English 9 Students Blogging About Literature Circle Books

Blogging is going to be our "go to" tool for students to express a number of aspects of the book they are reading from literature circles.  While blogging can be done on an iPad through Safari, images are a challenge to insert.  We will be using computers or Chromebooks located in various learning areas for our students to incorporate images.

We explained the "set up" process for students in Large Group Instruction.

Ms. Alger-Feser, Ms. Kennen, and Ms. Kohls did a great job of creating blog post entries.



Friday, January 12, 2018

Changing The Narrative - Communication, Critical Thinking, Creativity

Spending the entire day teaching the "tips" about GarageBand to over 250 juniors was a tremendous honor.  The U.S. History team of Mrs. Schartner, Mr. Krause, and Mr. Rodal want students to develop a 3-5 minute radio show.  As they progress into the era of the 1920's, students will see that radio was the "window to the world" for almost every American household.

As I worked my way through the presentation below, students were given three opportunities to "play" instruments, record voice, and record multiple tracks of instruments.



The content of the U.S. History curriculum is so important.  My teaching role allows students to experience additional learning opportunities while experiencing the information.

My main focus was NOT ANOTHER project, but an opportunity to develop the skills that will help them during their time in high school and after they leave.  I addressed their "attitude" as one more thing to do by changing the narrative.  It's not another project.  They heard me say that this is a tremendous opportunity to get better at skills that employers continue to seek from our students.

Communication.
Creativity.
Critical Thinking.



As always, the impact of the message is undetermined at the beginning.  I'm not a motivational speaker.  I do know that my message is helping students to view learning opportunities in our school differently.  In my time of co-teaching technology tools, GarageBand engaged students to the end of the learning time and beyond better than most tools.



All of this became even more validated for me because of the podcast I listened to this morning.  Education with an Edge, Mike Smith of The Bay  Visit It


Monday, January 8, 2018

"Five Minute Finds" and Nearpod Leverage Tools for More Than Projects

Integrating technology tools for "projects only" is not an effective way to help students become great consumers of content, critically thinkers of that content, collaborators, and creators.  Utilizing a "five minute find" in a lesson and incorporating activity cards (with Nearpod) can help utilize the power of technology tools during learning experiences.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Inserting an Apple Logo  Led Me to "STOP" Using the Word "Projects"



I was curious as to how to place an  Apple symbol into a blog or text message.  I found an article from April 2017 on how this works.  However, the January 2018 version is slightly different.

This leads me to the practice of allowing students to "consume content" while teaching.  A perfect example of this happened this week. A teacher had a famous person in history projected in front of the class.  The instructor asked students, "What do you know about this person?" The high school students didn't say a word.

Not. One. Word.

The instructor discouragingly proceeded on by giving the students everything the teacher knew about the famous person.  After observing this, I mentioned to the teacher that at the moment they asked what the students know, the teacher could have provided students with three to five to however long the "investigating" minutes takes for students to consume content that could be a website, a video, an image, a pdf, etc.  Allowing students to "critically think" about the content that they are "consuming" and then sharing that content is a great skill for our students to develop and master.

The teacher tried the strategy the next day and emailed me a tremendous "thank you" as the discussion was so much more valuable and productive.

STOP using digital devices and tools "just for projects".  Utilizing the tools for consuming content, critically thinking about that content, collaborating with others, and creating/sharing solutions can all be incorporated into a single learning experience.  Furthermore, STOP calling all of these "learning experiences" "projects".   Avoid saying, "We are going to do an iMovie project."  We don't say that this weekend I'm going to do a "hammer project".  We say, "I'm going to build a deck and these are the tools I'll need: hammer, saw, nails, etc."  These "projects" are simply opportunities that allow students to build skills through learning experiences that help them move closer to contributing to their college, career, or community while in school and after graduating.

This leads me back to this morning.  I wanted to learn how to insert an  Apple symbol into a blog or text message.  I was able to consume the content, but needed to critically think about that the information I found "shortcuts" from the article

was slightly different than what I was seeing as "text replacement".



Once I did that I was successfully able to insert an Apple symbol on my iPad.








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