Innovation 4 Everyone

I'm not sure when or how I first heard about something called the Google Teacher Academy . That was several years ago. I glanced through the program and didn’t consider it because I thought, “if only a few are selected, I’m not even going to come close, so I think I’ll just pass”. Last year, I was encouraged by a colleague, who was already an Apple Distinguished Educator, to apply for such recognition. I did just that, and to my surprise I was honored and selected ADE 2012. “There’s no stopping me now!”, I thought. Shortly after, the opportunity came around again but now with Google. I was looking for PD opportunities, related to my new position as tech trainer. My school was about to deploy Google Apps for Education. It seemed to me that Google was the way to go. I learned from another colleague that there were Google Certified Trainers and Google Certified Teachers. That’s what I wanted! I looked at the requirements for each of them: I had to take 6 tests regardin...

I’ve been having sessions with parents regarding digital citizenship topics. One of the sessions, I call “Be Wise, Protect Yourself” , has to do with online safety and security. I can’t stress enough the importance of these measures anyone can take to ensure their own and their loved ones’ safety and security. We start by differentiating what each term stands for: • Online Safety refers to making sure you and your kids are not harmed, physically or emotionally, through inappropriate images, videos, content, and interaction with an unknown person that makes you feel uncomfortable. • Online Security refers to making sure your personal information, your files, and equipment are protected from viruses, damage, and thefts. Basic Safety Measures: Be careful when giving out personal information. Don’t post photos and don’t tag them. Don’t accept contacts you don’t recognize. Kids should tell a trusted adult of anything that seems suspicious. Adjust privacy and sec...

Why would someone want to reduce the size of a pdf file? I had to do that…twice. When I asked our webmaster if she could please upload to the school’s web site the handouts I made for parents, she said they were too big. So, this is how I solved the problem. My goal was to have my presentation available to parents so they could download it at home. The presentation was made with Keynote, a software application for presentations, part of the iWorks suite, for Macs. The first thing I did was convert the keynote file to pdf format. How?  File –> Export –> PDF.   The original .key file was 111 Mb. Way to big! I knew that, that’s why I converted to pdf. Smart me! Now I had reduced the size to only 4.3 Mb. I also took away the videos, and only included links. That should do the trick. Right? Wrong! Turned out it was still too big. The web master told me it would be best to have the file size down to about 1Mb.  But how? No matter what I rem...

Last year, as part of my job as tech trainer, I became involved with training parents too. Early in the school year, parents were asked to respond to a general survey asking them about their tech interests. The majority mentioned wanting to learn how to help their children with security and safety, cyber-bullying, digital footprints, etc. At the same time, at the elementary campus, from K-5, we applied short surveys to students to see how much they already knew about digital citizenship topics. Results from K-1, like the ones below, raised some red flags. We were sure that we needed to bring the parents on board in order to make our digital citizenship program initiative a successful one. So I took upon this huge task and started to look for the best way to approach this. In my search I gathered a large collection of online resources. I created a chart to categorize the resources according to the grade level, and developed a scope & sequence chart for the digital citi...

Dear Reader,  Before I continue, I will make a small disclaimer: The experience I am sharing in my posts is mainly my work with Apple Computer devices, as well as with software for Macs. But still, I hope you find it useful. Before Jing (http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html) allowed uploading videos to YouTube, it would only generate .swf files. A format that YouTube doesn't accept. A fact I learned the hard way. I was preparing small videos with tutorials for teachers so they would feel more comfortable when they would start using Edmodo (http://www.edmodo.com). I was going to need about 30 in total. (Remember, small chunks of information is better.) I was faced with the frustration of already having created half of the videos and worried about the other half I needed. Honestly, I didn’t want to redo them, it had been a lot of work and now I didn’t have time. I thought to myself, “There has to be a way!”. In my search for that option, I came across Quicktim...