Arizona K-12 Center Blog

SMART Lessons

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:36:23 -0700

This post is by Jane Nesdell. She is an instructor for the Arizona K12 Center's Camp Plug & Play 5.0.

You seem to find SMART Boards being used in classrooms everywhere. This presentation tool is useful for teachers as it easily engages and involves students in their learning. Adding an interactive component to a child’s education gets their attention, as they enjoy the use of technology tools in their learning. Students are not alone in their desire to use an interactive piece to make the learning more relevant and meaningful. Teachers are finding that their lessons can be more focused and target the specific needs of their students when technology tools are incorporated.

The SMART Board can be a powerful instructional tool when used with good presentation techniques. There are some basic elements of presentations that work well for lessons using a SMART Board. These guides are found in good presentations regardless of the medium used.

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Screencasting: Share Video of What You See on Your Monitor

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:27:29 -0700

This post is by Amanda Hughens. She is an instructor for the Arizona K12 Center's Camp Plug & Play 5.0.

There are only a few drawbacks to being a computer nerd and the biggest issue is that everyone from your boss to your friends to your colleagues has questions about how to add something to their web page or how to submit an online absence request. (It’s like being the only friend with a pickup truck when someone is moving). This is why I have fallen head over hills in love with Screencasting! Screencasting is actually quite simple; it’s a recording of what is happening on your monitor. With most applications today you can jazz it up to create a dynamic video with added audio and other media files.

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Digital Storytelling: Everyone Has Something Important to Say

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:48:22 -0700

This post is by Jill Felty and Nancy Pratt. They are instructors for the Arizona K12 Center's Camp Plug & Play 5.0.

Digital storytelling involves using technology to share a personal narrative with others. The narrative has a certain point-of-view and is often emotional. The final product combines a passionate voiceover with music and photos. Teachers and students at all grade levels have used a variety of software to create digital stories, including iMovie, Movie Maker, PhotoStory, and GarageBand. Watch the two sample digital stories below to see why digital storytelling is considered an art form.

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Green Screens Can Make Films Fantastic

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:49:07 -0700

This post is by Chris Giles. He is an instructor for the Arizona K12 Center's Camp Plug & Play 5.0.

Over the years I have narrowed my favorite all time TV shows down to two, Whose Line is Anyway and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Both shows integrated the use of green screen technology to enhance their shows by putting a spin on older movies and "B" roll. Watch this YouTube clip for an example.

The use of green screen is not limited to TV, Hollywood has produced hundreds of movies that have incorporated the use of green screen in their production. Star Wars, The Matrix, Harry Potter and Spider Man, just to name a few are blockbuster movies that relied on green screens for their special effects.

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Take Your Interactive Whiteboard Engagement to a Higher Level

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:50:22 -0700

This post is by Sara Crawford. She is an instructor for the Arizona K12 Center's Camp Plug & Play 5.0.

An interactive whiteboard can increase the level of engagement in a classroom. Just by handing a stylus pen to a student the level of engagement increases two-fold. However, many times this is where the interactivity stops. Using a concept that is familiar to educators, Bloom’s Taxonomy, along with an interactive whiteboard and student response systems, you can intensify the academic rigor of any classroom.

Bloom's taxonomy, originally created by Benjamin Bloom, classifies levels of intellectual learning that are commonly found in a classroom setting. Benjamin Bloom identified six levels that are known as Bloom's taxonomy. These levels from highest to lowest are: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

Many educators use these levels to aid in the creation of lesson plans and lesson objectives. They are aware that the higher you travel on Bloom's taxonomy, the more cognitive demand increases. Students who are challenged cognitively are more likely to retain information and develop a deeper understanding of the material presented. This applies to lessons utilizing technology as well.

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New! in Google

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Tue, 11 May 2010 01:04:55 -0700

This post is by Cherie Stafford. She is an instructor for the Arizona K12 Center's Camp Plug & Play 5.0.

Do you use or have you tried Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, or presentations), Sites, Gmail, or Calendar? Many educators have found that the best things about using Google Docs, Sites, or Calendar with their students or colleagues are the ability to collaborate and to work from any computer. Teachers are using Google's offerings for lessons in conducting Collaborative Lab Experiments, to Present Online at Any Time, and improve writing with collaborative activities like Writing and Publishing a Poem.

Google's suite of tools are known as Google Apps. Google Apps are freely available to everyone, but some schools participate in Google Apps for Education, which customizes Google's tools for school use. Google Apps are frequently updated with new features. Google's 2,668 (and counting) employees seem to thrive professionally in the Googleplex environment, if the amount of their product creations and upgrades are an indicator. On average, the Google Apps Blog posts new features, products or updates every other day. But only some of those new features for the 40+ Google Apps are useful for educators. Below is a brief review of some of what I think are the best new or upgraded qualities for the Google Apps in Education pack from the past six months.

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Introduction to Project Based Learning

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:40:21 -0700

Picture students working together to tackle these questions, issues, and challenges:

Is it better to buy or lease a car?
Which element of the Period Table is most important?
Why has a woman never been U.S. President?
What makes a good Vice President?
Is it more important to know the area of perimeter of an object?
Is Picasso's art worth its price?
Design a house on the moon.
What if the world ran out of oil tomorrow?
Could the British have avoided the American Revolution?
Is it better to use more adjectives or adverbs in song lyrics?

These aren't the typical questions students are asked in school. There's more than one solution, and responses cannot simply be copied and pasted from a website. In fact, these are Driving Questions for Project Based Learning. Answers to these questions are so complex that they require students to create something to demonstrate what they have learned.

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Pecha Kucha: Streamlined Presentations

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:39:00 -0700

Twenty slides displayed for 20 seconds each for a total time of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. That's the formula for Pecha Kucha. Pecha Kucha was devised as a way to keep presenters focused and to keep an audience's attention. Pecha Kucha presentations have exactly 20 slides and the slides are set to automatically advance every 20 seconds. Sticking with this format allows for a multiple speakers to "take the stage" and keeps their messages concise.

When students, teachers, principals, or anyone who makes presentations use the Pecha Kucha format, their slides tend to have less text. Twenty seconds isn't enough time to dwell on a slide, much less a slide with more than a couple of bullet points. Instead of bullet points, many Pecha Kucha slideshows use photographs as the visual aid.

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Take Control of Your Email

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:01:22 -0700

Dealing with email can be time consuming and feel like a second job. I've seen some educators with thousands of messages in their inboxes. You won't find very many emails in my inbox because I take care of my email each day. It isn't easy and I'm not always successful, but my goal is to achieve Inbox Zero. That's right, everyday I try to completely clear all emails from my inbox.

It sounds pie-in-the-sky, but Inbox Zero is indeed possible. If you're like me, you use your inbox like a to do list: each email represents at least one task to complete. The task might be replying to a parent's inquiry, sending information to the school secretary, remembering a meeting, reading an article, etc. Productivity guru David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, says that productivity is Advanced Common Sense. Applying some Advanced Common Sense to how we approach email can help us make our inboxes seem deserted.

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MEC 2010 Handouts

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:59:34 -0700

The Arizona K12 Center is once again hosting sessions at the annual Microcomputers in Education Conference (MEC) at ASU. We are covering some great topics, including Web 2.0, GIMP software, personal productivity, wikis, Twitter, iPhones, and iPod touch. We have a one-page handout for each of the sessions. PDFs of the handouts are available below:

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Online Communication & Collaboration with Wikis

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:36:20 -0800

When you hear the word wiki, you probably think of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit. Wikipedia may be the largest wiki, but educators are creating their own wikis, large and small, to improve learning, communication, and collaboration.

A wiki is a website designed for multiple people to collaborate by adding and editing content. Some say wiki is a acronym for What I Know Is since a wiki as designed for multiple authors. However, the word wiki is actually Hawaiian and means quick. Wikis really are a fast way to make a web page or site. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use a wiki.

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Funny Video About PowerPoint Mistakes

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:51:37 -0800

Comedian Don McMillan delivers a short sketch about the misuse and abuse of PowerPoint. As a professional who probably uses Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote regularly, it's a good idea to avoid the mistakes Don outlines in his comic routine. If you have students use slideshows as visual aids in classroom presentations, it's important to teach them about what makes good and bad slideshows. Watch the four-minute video of Dan's comedic take on bad PowerPoint presentations:

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Action is our MO: Give us your input.

nospam@example.com (Kathy Wiebke) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:23:00 -0800

"Action is eloquence." ~William Shakespeare

"Talk doesn't cook rice." ~Chinese Proverb

There's so much that needs to be done to support teachers to perform at their best, I sometimes don't know where to start. But what I do know is that we have to take action. We can't afford to get bogged down in endless theoretical debates that don't produce actual steps to be taken. Looking at the landscape of education in Arizona, there ought to be more change happening. Of course, there are significant obstacles, including the recent and extremely acute budget cuts. But the truth is some arguments simply go on and on and never produce real outcomes.

If we're not happy with our professional development, we educators need to take charge and do something about it. We can't wait for outside entities to get this accomplished for us. We can't waste the time. Our mission is too urgent. Students don't stop going to school. They can't take a decade off while we sort it all out. For students, the opportunity to learn is now. Or never.

That's why here at the Center we're focused on action. We talk to educators, find out what they need and put together programs that speak to these needs. We have a healthy impatience with postponement and delay. In a sense, action is our study, because by providing new professional development we can see what works and what doesn't. And in the process, teachers are learning, being rejuvenated and gaining new tools to excel.

Now, as we're planning for next year's professional development calendar, we want to hear from you. Share your thoughts with us on teacher quality and professional development. What do you need? What type of program or training would make a real difference in your practice? Give us your input. Respond directly to us by email at info@azk12.org. Or visit us on Facebook at facebook.com/azk12 to tell us what type of support you'd like to see included in the future. We're ready to take action.

Staying Power: Ten years and counting.

nospam@example.com (Kathy Wiebke) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:38:11 -0800

We’re celebrating our 10-year anniversary at the Arizona K-12 Center this year. Just the fact that we’re still here, providing quality professional development for teachers, is something to feel good about. Too often, we launch new efforts in education, but don’t stay committed long enough to realize real results. And as we all know, you don’t change schools and student performance overnight. Fortunately, the state has allowed us time to grow and establish programs that empower teachers to enhance their practices and be at their best for their students. And we are grateful for this.

I personally joined the Center five years ago. What started as an exciting new opportunity now feels more like a calling. The privilege to collaborate with colleagues in order to create resources teachers really need is one I don’t take lightly. It’s been a thrill to see teachers grow professionally and connect with other educators who share their passion. It’s been especially satisfying to watch teachers become empowered and take on the leadership roles so critical to our schools.
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Arizona K12 Center on Facebook & Twitter

nospam@example.com (Tony Vincent) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:18:43 -0800

Of course you can find the Arizona K12 Center online here at azk12.org. But like other organizations, you can find the Center on the social networks Facebook and Twitter.

On Facebook, click on over to the Arizona K12 Center page at facebook.com/azk12. Not only can you read updates from the Center itself, but you can connect with more than 500 "fans" who are friends of the Center and education in Arizona. The page's "wall" includes updates about the Center, information about upcoming events, photos, web links, and musings. If you're a Facebook user, be sure to click the Become a Fan button so Arizona K12 Center's posts appear in your personal News Feed.
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