Tuesday, December 27, 2016

2016-17 #2) Thing 11: DIY

I love all of the lessons I have done with Cool Tools, however I am always glad that there are DIY options!  One of the first years I participated in Cool Tools I did the Thing about Twitter.  I now use twitter on a pretty regular basis - mostly as a consumer of news not so much as an active participant - but recently I have working with some colleagues to more actively use some of the program twitter accounts we created to get positive news out there about our district and specific programs.  The reason I bring this up, even though Twitter is not the topic of this post, is that I now follow quite a few people on twitter and am constantly learning from them!  I often read about things that I have every intention of investigating, but life happens and unfortunately, I sometimes don't find the time to do so.  One of the tools I read about on twitter this fall and wanted to spend more time learning about is called Listenwise.  I was very interested in learning more about Listenwise because I am a huge reader of audiobooks.  I rarely have the time to sit down and read a book, however I am able to "read" about 1-2 books a week on average by listening to them.  In addition to my past Twitter blog, I also had a blog about audiobooks - I use the app OverDrive to check out books for free from the NYPL and listen to them right from my phone!  However, I am getting off topic again!

Back to Listenwise!  https://listenwise.com/
I heard about Listenwise from NPR, one of the accounts I follow on Twitter.  It was founded by an NPR reporter and NPR is a partner.  It is a place teachers can go to find resources that revolve around listening to information - whether it is a podcast, an article, etc. - and then there are resources they can use to go with it to have discussions with students and to give assignments and/or quizzes to students.  When you use Listenwise to give a reading to your students, they can listen only or they can choose to listen while following along with the written text.  This helps students read text that might be too difficult for them to read on their own and learn the content of such articles or podcasts! Then they complete follow up assignments/quizzes and participate in discussions with their teacher and peers.  I think the idea of this is fantastic and really wanted to learn more about it, so I chose to use Thing 11 to do just that!
Listenwise is free, although there is a premium account which I did not investigate.  I signed up for the free account and used that to browse through what they had.  They have lessons for ELA, SS and Science and what I really liked is that there was an entire current events area; that is the area I chose to investigate today.  There were so many great topics to choose from and I got lost in there!  I didn't really get lost :) but I ended up spending much more time than I had planned to because I just kept finding interesting articles that I found myself listening to!  With each lesson, there is the audio as well as text version, which as I said is nice because students can read along as they listen if they choose to.  Then each lesson has some resources for teachers to use with their students, which makes it easier on teachers to use more immediately.  Some of the lessons had quizzes which were built in Socrative, which is another tools I have used and found to be very easy for teachers and students to use.   Overall, I was really impressed with Listenwise and I will definitely be spreading the word with my colleagues!  I can see so many applications for this to be used by classroom teachers in our district!  I have never understood why listening to stories seems to end pretty early on in grade school because I think listening is a skill people need to learn and once they do, it can help them dive into content that might be at a higher level than they are able to simply read about.  I also think that in this day and age, listening to news via videos and podcasts is much more available and prevalent, so teachers need to make sure to use those tools in their classroom to help students learn how to listen critically and analyze what they have heard!  If you haven't heard of or checked out Listenwise I highly recommend it!


2016-17 #1) Thing 8: Screen Sharing

For my first Thing for Cool Tools 2016-2017, I chose to explore more about screencasting and screen sharing.  For my role, I am often trouble shooting computer or website issues over email/phone as well as making short videos to show people how to do things.  I rely on ScreenCastify for making my videos, the snipping tool for sending screenshots, and I needed to find a tool to quickly/easily share my screen.  
I was very interested in ScreenLeap; I read about it and was intrigued by the fact that it said no downloads!  After reading more and trying it out, there actually is a download for the person sharing their screen, but not one for the person viewing a shared screen.  For me, that is fine, I can download things to my machine, but I am not sure that other teachers in the district would be allowed to do that.  I will have to investigate that with a few colleagues and see if they can download or not!  However, since I was able to, I shared my screen and had 2 people test it out for me.  It was so easy!  I just sent them the link via text message, they clicked it and immediately were viewing my screen, right on their smartphones!  Obviously for trouble shooting, viewing it on a smartphone it not ideal, but this was just a test.  You could easily send the link via email for them to click and view on their computers.  I was really impressed with how easy this tool was and I am glad to have found it - or should I say that Cool Tools found it for me!  There was no account creation for any of us- my sharing my screen or them viewing my screen and that is very nice!  Now, with that said, there are some limitations.  Without creating an account, the limit is 2 people viewing your screen and 30 minutes.  Those are not really problems for me, as in most cases when I would need to use the tool, it would be one on one with a teacher and would not even go close to 30 minutes.  Besides, the time limit would be easy to work around - if you needed it to go longer, just start another one.  If you create an account, and choose the free plan, the limit is then higher - 8 people and 1 hour.  There are then a few different levels of paid plans.  Plenty for everyone to  choose from, but the free plan is certainly perfect for what I need as a technology resource teacher!
I am really glad that I learned about this tool!  I had never heard of it before and know that I will be using it from now on!  On a side/personal note, I will also be using it to help my mom for all the times she calls  me to help with her computer!  I will download it on her machine for her, them show her how easy it is to start and give me the code I need to view her screen!  This will make helping her so much easier!!


Saturday, April 23, 2016

2015-16 #5) Thing 20: Final Reflection

I enjoyed my Cool Tools PD this year just as much this year as I did last year!  Although I think I actually liked it more because of the bonus thing, Make Connections, but I will not repeat what I wrote in that post!  I am very glad that I was able to participate again for a number of reasons, the main one being that it is obviously very convenient to be able to learn on your own tie rather than having to attend scheduled meetings.  As I am sure is the case in all school districts, we are expected to do more and more, so it can be hard to find the time to learn on your own and grow professionally when all of your time seems to go to just keeping up with what needs to be done!  The change made to Cools Tools this year where most of the lessons were posted pretty early on was very helpful in being able to complete it on my own schedule; great idea!
The second, and probably more important reason was that it gave me the chance to learn more about how to use a different blogging tool.  Last year I used Wordpress, but this year I used blogger because I wanted to learn about the Google tool.  Our district has embraced Google and we are not a GAFE school district.  This means that every person in the district has their own Google account and so our department (Instructional Technology) has been heavily involved in promoting the use of all things Google and helping teachers use all the tools to enhance not only their learning but that of the students!  Therefore it was extremely useful for me to learn about Blogger and now I am confident that I can share this tool with the teachers I work with.  Along those same lines, another thing I learned about, from reading the blogs of others, was quad blogging.  What a great idea - I have absolutely shared this with others and I hope to share with more in the future.  This is a great way to get classrooms involved with blogging.
I also used my Cools Tools time to learn more about coding and creating websites.  I have SO much more to learn, but I also know that I have come a long way in what I know now from what I knew at the beginning of this school year!  I honestly was not sure that I would like it, but I have found that I really do.  I had a conversation with a former colleague recently - I was a high school math teacher before taking this position - and I have started to realize that I do not want to go back.  I truly miss having "my own" students and classroom, but I have found that I enjoy this position more.  I guess I felt that in teaching, I wasn't really learning myself.  Sure I would take PD, and the ways you would teach were constantly changing, but once you know the subject, whether it is algebra, geometry or whatever, it doesn't really change.  However, in this position, with all of the different aspects of it, I have found myself learning almost everyday and enjoying it immensely!  I feel like I am using my brain again!
Again, same as last year, I have nothing but positive things to say about this PD opportunity and I only hope it can continue.  I wish that our district could find a way to expand this and offer the opportunity to more teachers!  Now that I am thinking about it, I wonder if our union might pay for teachers to participate!  I have to remember to talk with our district administrator to see what the possibility of that is early on next school year.
Thank you again for another great year!

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

2015-16 #4) Bonus Thing: Make Connections!


When I saw this lesson added I got pretty excited and jumped all over it!  One of the things I reflected on last year, after participating in the Cool Tools for the first time, was that I wish that somewhere built into the process was a way to have more interaction with the other participants.  There were a few teachers doing it within my district, but other than conversations with them, I had no idea what anyone else was doing.  I didn’t have an answer for how that would look exactly, but it was my thought/suggestion nonetheless.  I know that I could have taken the time to find blogs of other participants, and read through them all, but to be honest, even with the best of intentions, I just never found the time to do so.  Fast forward to this year, my second year participating, and this bonus lesson!  What a great way to encourage us to find the time! 
I had to slightly alter the directions of this lesson since not all of the 3 people after me in the list had any posts other than the first blogging post, and that wasn’t something I wanted to comment on – I wanted to see more of the creative things people were learning and doing!  I wanted to read blogs that had more to read!  I also wanted to find 3 that I had something constructive to offer, rather than just post to post, so I hope this is OK!
So even though I read through about five to six of the blogs after me, the 3 that I chose to comment on were Barbara Mierlak, Cathie Morton, and Lindsey Murphy.  I read through all of their posts, but the ones I commented on are linked below.
I really enjoyed this and was very glad to have this opportunity to see what others are learning about!  I got some more ideas to investigate for myself!  One of the things I learned about was quad blogging – where you get your classroom matched up with others who are blogging so that the students get people coming to their blogs, reading and posting!  If you don’t have that, blogging tends to get very boring very quickly with students, so I think this is just fantastic and can’t wait to share with some colleagues!  We are always struggling with getting traffic onto our students’ blogs, and it often ends up being adults, so it would be great for kids to have other kids interacting with them! 
Great lesson!  Thank you! 

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

2015-16 #3) Thing 7: DIY - You pick

This is my first year as a full time system administrator for our school district's eLearning online learning platform.  There are two of us who manage it, one is a teacher (me) and the other is a project administrator with no teaching experience, so between the 2 of us we cover all the needs from teaching to data reporting, etc.  We use a Learning Management System (LMS) from a company called Agilix.  We have previously used their product called BrainHoney, but are in the process of moving to their newer product called Buzz.  Apparently they like bees! :)
We use the platform for many programs - Online Credit Recovery (OCR), Virtual AP (VAP), Virtual Initial Credit (VC),  Online Professional Development (PD) for staff, and an online district resource area for staff.  We have created all of our own PD courses and resources for staff, but purchase courses from various companies to use for our VAP and OCR courses.  Last year we developed our own initial credit courses for American Sign Language (ASL) I and II as well as a SS elective called Abnormal Psychology through Film.  At the time that those 3 courses were developed we had a different system administrator, so I was not the one who worked on developing these courses with the teachers.  
This year we were approved to develop 2 additional VC courses - Literature through Film and Computer Programming I.  Since I am now the teacher system administrator, it is up to me to work with the two teachers who were approved to create them; they bring the content, I bring the technology!  We have learned from experience that the best way to develop the courses it to mirror what the companies do - they create web-based content housed on our own servers and then embed links to that content. This way, if we were to ever change our LMS, there would be nothing lost as everything for the course would still be on our servers and we could easily recreate the links in any LMS we have.  
This involves writing entire courses in HTML code and this is not something I have ever done.  A good amount of managing our LMS involves code, but it is really just editing code that is already there, so in this past year I have learned to read and make small edits to HTML code, but I have never created it all from scratch!  In my “previous life” I was a math teacher, so I never took any courses in college related to anything like this!  This was all new territory for me, but something I really looked forward to doing!  
At first I thought I could just copy the code from the previous courses that we already had, but in working with them this year we have realized that there are several errors in the code that we have had had to find and fix throughout the year so I decided we should start from scratch and make better/cleaner code that wouldn’t have issues all the time.  
I knew I need to take some time to learn much more than I already know about code, so I came to my Cool Tools to see if there was a lesson that would help me.  Last year, I completed the lesson 11 about coding, and what I did for that lesson really helped me in learning to read and edit code, but it was nowhere near advanced enough for what I was about to take on.  I needed to learn more and fast!  I didn’t see another lesson that I thought would fit the bill, so I decided to conquer it on my own with a DIY lesson.  I love DIY home decorating projects, so why not here, right?!
To get started, I did use what I learned from my coding lesson last year and went to check out some Lynda.com courses through the NYPL for free!  That and I hit the internet hard to research this.  I also spent some time reading material form the companies we have purchased pre-packaged courses from.  This all took a lot of time, but luckily I was able to get a base knowledge.  I started creating some template lesson pages and a custom CSS file to go along with them to provide style to our websites.  Once I started I then reached out to a friend in our IT department who deals with code everyday to ask him to take a look at what I had created and he told me I shouldn’t be starting from scratch.  He pointed me in the direction of Twitter!  Apparently the people who developed twitter also developed a website, http://getbootstrap.com/, and it helps you write HTML code and create the CSS style sheets to go along with it. You can download templates to start with, then customize from there.  
Bootstrap has been amazing!  I have since worked with him to develop some basic templates and then we started meeting with the the teacher developing the Literature to Film class.  We met with him for a few hours, and now we are off and running!  We are by NO means experts, but with his help, the use of the bootstrap website, and honestly Google (I can’t tell you how many time I have googled “how to ___ in HTML” or “how to ___ in CSS”), we are beginning to get the hang of this!  We have currently developed the first 2 modules for her course that will eventually have 11.  While she continues to work on her course, I am now working to take some of her pages to create templates for other teachers who can then use them, but edit the content as well as basics of the style, such as color and font.  We will make templates for a variety of pages - 2 tabs, 3 tabs, pages with tables, pages with bulleted lists; pretty much everything we can think of that teachers would want to have.  Before we did this, I verified with our friend from IT that what we had created was well written, clean HTML code so that we would not run into problems in the future.  
I have really enjoyed doing all of this.  I love to learn new things, and this was by far one of the most fun yet difficult things I have learned in a long time!
Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think!   Here is the link to the first “lesson” of her course.  The first module is obviously an introductory module.  
http://elearning.rcsdk12.org/Courses/LitFilm/Lessons/01.00Lesson.html

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

2015-16 #2) Thing 25: Infographics & Data Visualiation

I have seen Infographics used in many areas, but I have never created one myself.  Until recently, I never had the need to I supposed.  A few weeks ago my boss asked me to gather data for her on the statistics of our Online Credit Recovery (OCR) Program, now that we were halfway through the 2015-2016 school year.  This is the first full year that I, along with one other colleague, have been the system administrator for our eLearning platform.  We use the platform for many programs - OCR, Virtual AP courses, Virtual Initial Credit courses,  Online Professional Development for staff, and an online district resource area for staff.
This year we centralized the program and created a program school called the Virtual Academy of Rochester.  Our department hired staff that rotates around the district providing support for students taking an online class.  This requires a lot of time and man-power, so there are many eyes on the program.  Everyone wants to see data on how well the program is working - how well the resources are being used.  As one of the system administrators, it is my job to provide much of that data.
As I mentioned, we were looking at the data recently since we were halfway through the school year and had some students who graduated in January.  My boss wanted to look at that data so I collected it and then thought about how best to present it.  Sure we had all the charts that everyone could look at, but that isn't as powerful as visuals, so I took the opportunity to experiment with creating an infographic!  I came to my Cool Tools lesson page and began reading through all the resources on infographics as well as taking the time to explore a few of the web based programs I could use to create one of my own.  I settled on Piktochart and got to work!  It was pretty easy to get started and soon I had my complete page - that is because I had all of my data already gathered and ready to go! It was fun to make - much more fun that the usual Powerpoint or Google Sheets presentation.  It doesn't have a whole lot of writing on it in the way of explanations, however it is going to be used as a part of a presentation, so the explanations will be a part of that.  I feel that there is nothing worse than presentation where almost all of the detail is written down and I could have just read the document myself!  I think having a conversation with supporting visuals is much better, and hopefully my infographic will accomplish just that!
I am glad I took the time to finally learn how to make one and am happy with the results.  I plan to use Piktochart more in the future!
Take a look and see what you think!  Remember, you are not getting the whole presentation, but I still think you can get the gist of the data!