Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

Each year at Chicago Foundation for Education 's Annual Workshop (for teachers by teachers) I present on grant writing tips and tricks.  While the presentation is geared toward Chicago Public School teachers to complete CFE's small grant application it still contains information that is best practices when applying for any grant.  The presentation is below.

Our middle school is 1:1 with Chromebooks so students spend a fair amount of time researching topics online.  A teacher noticed there is a lot of copying and pasting of information by students and asked me to come in and have a conversation about plagiarism.  I developed a Prezi with an accompanying notes guide for the students to complete as I presented the content to them.  The Prezi and notes guide are below.  As we wrapped up the students were able to use their Chromebooks for a bit of fun (with a topic that isn't so fun).  We played a Kahoot game where they reviewed concepts about plagiarism from their guide.  They loved it!  What I loved is that Kahoot also provides a summary of student responses to the game- I can see which students missed specific questions which allows me to follow up if needed. Resources used in the presentation (good for teachers and students): http://www.plagiarism.org http://en.writecheck.com (this has a plagiarism...

When students are released for summer break teachers may not come to work each day but it doesn't mean they aren't learning.  Each year thousands of teachers seek out opportunities to continue their professional growth.  This summer Coonley teachers had a chance to work at their own pace to learn about technology tools that could assist them with formative and summative assessments. I designed an online professional development website titled "Coonley Technology Road Trip" where teachers could learn the basics about these tools, create sample artifacts and then blog about their experience.  Blogging offered teachers a chance to hear from their peers how they thought the tools could be used in their learning situation.  It also allowed me as a technology coach to see how everyone was feeling about specific tools so I can reach out this school year to offer additional support. The tools featured aren't all exclusively made for assessment purposes but like any go...

Our middle school newspaper club is off and running!  Last year the sponsoring teachers asked me to come in and talk to the students about how to take quality pictures for the newspaper.  Following is the information I gave to them (updated for this year's presentation with the club after school).  All of the images were taken by my daughter or me and as you'll see we're big fans of the cat! Composition Rules There are no set rules to composition (also called ‘framing’) but here are some tips: Framing : be aware of all elements in your picture, not just your subject (look what else is in the frame- trees? garbage? other people? etc.). Do these other elements distract from your image? Rule of Thirds : imagine the view finder is divided into thirds (both horizontally and vertically). Many say the best photos have the subject placed where the lines cross Foreground and Background: Every picture has a foreground and background.  Zooming in ...

Can you sum up anything in 6 words? Coonley students were asked to do just that!  Chicago Public Schools has a lonnnnnng end-of-year with students in classes through June 19th.  As a challenge for the month of June grades 1-7 were asked to write 6 Word Memoirs based on the following prompts: Tell something you like about Coonley What activity did you really enjoy this school year? Write about yourself Give advice to others The results were fantastic!  All memoirs were combined into one giant slideshow resulting in over 470 slides ranging from 6 year to 13-year-old student perspectives.  Each day three memoirs were selected and featured on Coonley's Twitter feed.  We hope our work inspires you to create your own! Direct link:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qD3_1UaWp7LEUSGAVwcDFGKQPSln1iqtzCT-kC4A4z4/edit?usp=sharing   (See 2016 version here !)

Our students are quite expressive.  Many are great writers.  In two of our 3rd grade classrooms students expressed an interest in writing reviews online about books and movies they enjoyed.  After a conversation with the teachers about how to do this I thought Quadblogging would be a perfect fit for them, allowing them to reach a greater audience of their peers.  For those that don't know the term, Quadblogging consists of 4 classrooms (in our case 4 schools with 5 classrooms) taking turns blogging. One school hosts and writes posts for the the week and the remaining three classrooms reply.   I encouraged the teachers to sign up at the "official" Quadblogging website.  They received no response so I emailed the site manager. Again, no response.  Next I took to Twitter, tagging the manager of the quadblogging site.  And again.....nothing.  I am disappointed that no one had the courtesy to reply. Had I been a brand new teacher and gotten...