Innovation 4 Everyone

Greetings!  Each day, beginning December 1, the Tech Integration Team at ASFM sent out techie recommendations.  Here's the complete list. On the First Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: On the Second Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: On the Third Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: Create your own 3D-printed Christmas gift!  Visit  Thingiverse  for ideas. Hey, there's even a  25 Days of Making Project !  On the Fourth Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: On the Fifth Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: On the Sixth Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: On the Seventh Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: On the Eighth Techie Day of Christmas the TI Team recommends: On the Nineth Techie Day of

The Elementary digital teachers (DTs) were presented with a challenge during one of our meeting times. They had to work on designing a logo and a “we believe” statement that would represent our DT program. At this time, the activity was led by Gaby, one of the DTs. Day 1: Gaby used her experience with logo design to introduce what a logo is and how the color selection is key as it may evoke different feelings. Teachers were partnered up and followed these guidelines: Create a logo and “We believe…” statement that represents the DT Team. Use/combine creation tools such as Google Drawing or Logo Garden for the logo. Consider the emotions generated by colors in logos . Take a screenshot of your logo and insert it onto a slide in a shared Google presentation (see below). Day 2: Once all the groups had submitted their logo and statement, the next steps were to share, persuade, and vote. Talk with your Logo team partner. Choose a spokesperson. Present your log

Last week I was invited to a Nursery classroom. Thank you Greta and Paula! These teachers had scheduled a Skype session with another classroom from Andover, Kansas, USA. Paula had contacted the Kansas teacher through Twitter. They had agreed to have the groups meet for 10 minutes. What an amazing experience! First, let me give you some background knowledge. Our Nursery students are 3-4 year old. They are the youngest students in our school. For most of them their first language is Spanish and they are learning to speak English. The kids are currently learning about continents and animals around the world. The timing of this Skype session was just right. It represented an opportunity for them to learn about people and things from a distant location that they could locate on their world map. The teachers agreed to ask basic questions, such as, what do you like to eat? what do you do after school? what's your school's mascot? The kids became very excited when the sessi

Hi everyone! I've spent these past few days searching for off-campus professional development opportunities for teachers at my school that might be interested in going to.   What am I looking for?  Events that focus on Technology Integration, Technology and Education, Innovation, 21st Century Learning, etc. Events that are at a reasonable distance from our current location. I've personally attended ISTE , TCEA, and GAFE conferences and can say that these kinds of experiences are one of a kind! Why should you go? Stay updated on the latest in tech integration and innovation. Learn from fellow educators. Develop your professional network. Get inspired to produce a change. Stay informed on what other schools are doing. Meet rockstars in the education field! Below is a table with the information I've gathered for events that will take place within this school year. I wish I could go to all, they all sound fantastic! If you know of anothe

Hi all! October was Connected Educator Month . As a way to celebrate and wrap up the month, at our school we created a week long activity, a.k.a. Twitter Challenge. For some time now we’ve been nudging our teachers to use Twitter to form or increase their PLN (see Twitter for your PLN ). This was just the perfect opportunity to encourage the use of Twitter! The “8 Day Twitter Challenge” , as we called it, consisted of a series of 16 different tasks to perform during the week. The tasks were designed to eventually expose all teachers to the main features of Twitter. For instance, they had to do a retweet, a modified tweet, use hashtags, search for connections, tweet a picture, follow people, etc. Here’s the complete list of tasks. Friday 10/24/2014 1 Send a Tweet with your name, grade level/subject area & school. Include #asfmtech and #ce14 Friday 10/24/2014 2 Add your name and Twitter handle to "ASFM Twitter Handles" sheet at the bottom of this page. Sa

Hello everyone! Every time I walk into a classroom, I feel very fortunate to be able to witness how the student's confidence with technology has increased over time and how well they can work independently.  This week I spent some time in two 4th grade classrooms and I'll share a couple of projects  the children were working on. These activities, used to assess the students' learning, are simple and engaging applications of Google Tools. Project: Character Suitcase Tool used: Google Drawing After a read-aloud, the teacher needs to check for understanding and comprehension. Instead of a series of questions and answers, or having students take a quiz, how about having the kids do a character suitcase? What's this? Ask the students to imagine that one of the characters in the book is going to take a vacation. What would they pack in their suitcase? Pretty simple, huh? Well, in order for the student to accomplish this task, he has to place himself in the character&

Hi everyone! Hope you are doing fine. Second grade students are our youngest users of Google Apps. They received a brand new Google account a few weeks ago. Basically, what this grade level does is use Drive and Gmail. One of the assignments these kids will have in order to use their tools for the first time will be to write emails.  The "Writing for Many Purposes" unit is coming up. In this unit the children learn about different writing genres: lists, thank - you notes, invitations, persuasive letters, and writing emails. Yes, emails!  What an awesome opportunity to develop 21st century skills, such as digital citizenship and communication & collaboration in such a meaningful way!   In order to support the second grade teachers, I have prepared a ThingLink ( reviewed in the previous post ) with information on how to create a well written email.  If an image can speak a thousand words, imagine an interactive image!   Just hover the mouse over the red circles

Hello everyone! Summer is over and a new school year has begun! I hope you are doing well and your start of the school year has been a smooth process. During the summer, I had the opportunity (and enough time) to explore different tools. At this time I want to share with you one of the great tools I came across. It's called ThingLink. Once you try it out, you are going to love it! ThingLink is a platform that allows you to create interactive images. See the example below. Imagine the possibilities! You start with an image and add labels to any part of the picture. The great thing is that you can share your creation in a number of ways: Post directly through various social media sites, use the link provided, or use the code to embed your work as I did. It's very easy to get started. Create a free account. Upload an image. Start adding tags. The tags can contain text and/or a link. Save and Share. Here are some ideas on how you can integrate this to your teaching: Add l

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well and had a wonderful summer. I want to take the time to advertise and promote the Google Teacher Academy that will take place in Mexico City and will be entirely in Spanish. The direct link to the application form is: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CDlKSoe97D8DfW3FAUnZlyoxwBElhfbOp1AfzIZ9GNE/viewform ¡Hola a todos! Quiero aprovechar esta ocasión para promover la academia de profesores de Google, llamada Google Teacher Academy, en inglés. Por primera vez será en la Ciudad de México y será completamente en español. Tendrá lugar el 16-17 de octubre, 2014. Es una excelente oportunidad para involucrarte más en el ambiente educativo de Google, ampliar tu red de aprendizaje personal y desarrollarte profesionalmente. Si te interesa conocer más acerca del programa visita la siguiente liga: http://www.google.com/edu/programs/google-teacher-academy/ Para aplicar visita esta liga: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CDlKSoe97D8DfW3FAUnZl

I was recently faced with a situation in which I needed to collect videos from all sorts of persons: some proved tech users and others not so much. An easy solution would have been to ask people to upload their video to Google drive and then share it with me, but not all of them are Google users. Another idea was to have them email the video to me, but the video files might be too large for emailing. So, I decided I would collect the videos through my Dropbox. I have plenty of storage space, so that should work. I created a folder and generated the share folder link. Great! All I needed to do was invite people or share the link. I ran some tests. Wait! People need a Dropbox account in order to submit files to my shared folder? No way! As I mentioned before, not all have the necessary tech skills and much less the willingness to create additional accounts just to be used once. Back to the drawing board. There has to be a better way! I kept searching and testing, and that's when I