February 9th's Technology Saturday!
As everyone probably already knows, technology is not my strength. Since the beginning of this program I have struggled with every step when it comes to the technology component, which is almost everything. To improve my skills I have been attending the Napa Learns Technology Thursdays to learn and sharpen my skills in Google. I have learned a lot, but I thought that this workshop "Innovate Ed." would really give me some good tools, google add-ons and resources and it did not disappoint. For those of you that were unable to attend I am going to mention some of them here for you to star for your bookmarks and check out when you get a chance. I was going to link them and I can't figure out why it won't do it. Honestly, there were so many that I'm not sure when I will be able to get to them all to use them, but I'm going to try during my Technology Tuesday with my students. Each week we try something new to expand my skills and theirs. John Corippo started off the main session with a fun way to encourage creative writing. https://socrative.com/ using http://byrdseed.com/emoji/ to generate emojis randomly to write a story about what pops up. It was very fun and creative and kids will love it because most that attended got a kick out of it. As a Reading Specialist, teaching grades 3-5, my students will love it too. I am starting with this on my very next Technology Tuesday. All that attended will eventually get a copy of his book, Teach Better, Work Less. In my first chosen workshop I chose Google Classroom and unfortunately there were so many people in the fairly small room I and many friends sat on the floor. I have dabbled with it minimally before and set up my classes, but I took nothing away that I didn't already know in the beginners course. I really wanted to take the Advanced version but didn't want to walk away with two unlearned blocks, so I chose to head to the Shortcuts to Success: Mastering Digital Resource Tools with Rafa. In the Library Digital tools there really are a lot of resources for a Reading Specialist that are not being maximized to their full potential. The cites are great academic resources to so many research projects and reading of all levels K-12. Britannica Schools, Teachingbooks.net, OverDrive, GALE, Tumblebooks, School Libraries, and Napa County Library were just some of my favorites to get kids reading. I would like to have the tech lady put some of these on the home screen as a first line of defense to the automatic Google search bar that inevitably happens. This would also be a good way to introduce good and reliable academic sources for digital citizenship awareness. After lunch was "Open the Box". This was literally an industrial tool box with many locks to engage students in hands on problem solving to engage students in learning, taught by Sarah Magallano at Phillips. The students would cooperatively problem solve multiple clues from around the room to unlock the codes to discover what is in the mysterious box with locks. It was very active and engaging and meant to insight enthusiasm around a topic that will be studied by the students. Some teachers suggested that it could be used as an award as it was very similar to the popular "break-out rooms". It will cost about $60-75 to get started or there is a marked one out there called "Breakout Edu" that costs just a little bit more and comes with lessons and the box. I would love to get the resources to do this with my kids on Benchmarks units that relate to science and history. I think the black lights were the coolest tool that we got to use beside QR Codes. In "Mass Individualization with Merge Tools" I got a couple of great Google Add-Ons to be and look more organized and ideas to work smarter, not harder. As a reading specialist learning to use Google Sheets and Form Mule (add-on) and this could change my life no matter what I do in my next job. I definitely need more practice with it, but WOW! It showed me the ability to make formed letters and send up to 1500 a day. Form Mule allows the ability to create birthday cards and send out messages timed out for whenever the timer is set. This could be very valuable for me when sending kids records for RI results and making parent contact by doing Google Forms to get the information instead of inputting it in on my own. It scares me to death, but fear is growth and I am ready to try and expand my learning. Overall, it was a very productive day full of friends and learning. There were more class sessions that I wanted to take, but that will keep me motivated to go to the next one.
1 Comment
Scott Marsden
2/10/2019 04:57:13 pm
Monica,
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