Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

Aside from my full time job as a technology integration coach I adjunct at two local universities.  My courses all involve technology integration in the classroom.  Sometimes the audience is undergraduate pre-service teachers and other times it's established teachers in graduate programs.  During these classes the students work on creating a professional online presence- a digital portfolio. The undergraduates go with the flow- they are students that aren't too far removed from being high school students so they are used to directives.  The graduate students, however sometimes put up a fight.  "Why would I create a portfolio if I'm not looking for a job?" is asked.  This post is my answer. What is a Digital Portfolio? A digital portfolio is a  living document that changes as you progress throughout your career. Portfolios are collections of artifacts and reflect your accomplishments, skills, experiences, reflections and growth as an educator. It d...

As an instructional technology coach and adjunct professor the amount of information I cover is extensive.  Teachers expect that a coach will have a wide range of knowledge, skills and pedagogy in order to help build capacity and provide the best recommendations for student learning. As a teacher I am always learning from my PLN and my colleagues, building my knowledge base and improving my craft.  This post is dedicated to the ways I am learning right now, at this point in time.  I plan to cross post this information on my About.me page as well as my digital portfolio .  As educators it is increasingly important that we expand our own knowledge and model this learning for our students.  Cross posting this information on a page that I know others will see will help to keep me accountable and current in my journey. Can you imagine if all teachers posted how they were currently learning?  Our students would not only see we don't stop the journey when we l...

Setting the Scene This year Leland became one of Chicago Public Schools' STEM schools.  The designation brought about additional support staff placed in the building to help build the capacity of the teachers and help move the STEM initiative forward.  Our school has a STEM Technology Specialist (me!) and a STEM Math and Science Specialist- my partner, Tom. It's great having a colleague to bounce ideas off of.  Since we are housed in the same "closet" we have a lot of time to communicate and talk about ways to grow the school and our faculty.  We are a great team and support each other's specialties. One day after the middle school science fair we talked about how our science boards had a long way to go.  Being a Welcoming School (merging 3 student bodies and different teachers from across the district along with a new administration) has had it's challenges.  The science fair was one of them.  We talked about the need to express to the teachers...

http://goo.gl/qtM4EU Today I spent the day in a training session with a presenter from Discovery Education titled "Powering Up STEM".  The professional development would allow the technology and math & science specialists from the STEM schools to experience a lesson from a fourth grader's perspective.  This post will walk you through the lesson as well as provide some of my additional notes.  The lesson is centered around a fourth grade fractions unit. Photo Inquiry We began by collaborating in Google Docs.  This part of the activity needs to be set up by the teacher prior to introducing the lesson to students.  The presenter in our session used  http://linkyy.com to shorten the URL- Google Doc URLs are extremely long and are easy to type in wrong so they should always be shortened.  There are several services out there that do the same thing:  https://bitly.com ,  http://tinyurl.com  and  http://goo.gl are some alte...

I spend a lot of time trolling through my PLN on Twitter.  Sometimes I’m looking to keep up with current technology trends.  Sometimes I’m looking for resources I can use with my elementary and post-secondary students.  Other times I might be looking for motivation to go for a run or just trolling for fun.  Recently I saw a tweet that caught my eye.  I was instantly curious.  I love analytics, and I’m still enjoying Facebook somewhat.  Further catching my attention was the fact that this application was done using WolframAlpha .  I’ve got twins in 6 th grade; WolframAlpha is a reputable site that is a staple in my house when the kids need math help that I can’t complete or explain off the top of my head. WolframAlpha is a “ computational knowledge ” engine (that means it computes answers and provides knowledge), and is  not a search engine.  It differs from Google. Google searches for pages or links with answers that m...

image source: http://www.moyeamedia.com/blog/?tag=mothers-day-pictures Happy Mother's Day!   Recently we've spent some time focusing on mom.  During lab students have had the opportunity to create Mother's Day projects.  Younger students created "I like" lists for mom.  Older students chose to create PowerPoint coupon books, PowerPoint Poetry or Wordles that describe mom.  Below are the templates I used with the students and some finished products (the Wordles will be laminated with a magnet for the refrigerator). Take a look: Mothers Day Wordle Template by nmzumpano Mother’s Day PPT coupons by nmzumpano Sample Mother's Day Coupons Happymothersday Template 1st2nd by nmzumpano