GTA a no :-(

Well, today I got the bad news.  I was not selected to attend the Google Teacher Academy this year in New York.

Here is the email I received:

It would have been great to get some feedback or advice moving forward but none was given.  I'm not sure how to proceed.  I am SURE I will apply again when it becomes available next time.

See my application here

Google Teacher Academy Application

Whew!  My application made it!

This past Sunday was the submission day for application for Google Teacher Academy.  It is ironic that the submission day was also my birthday.  I'm hoping that is a good sign.

I'm hoping to be selected to learn aside many other GTA educators and continue to network and build my Professional Learning Network.

What do I hope to gain from GTA:

• Connect with educators from all over the world
• Build and grow my Professional Learning Network
• Add my expertise in grading, assessment and flip-teaching to the GTA
• Improve my knowledge and skill in the area of Google Apps
• The ability to come back to my district and train other educators since we are a google Apps district.
• Become a better user of sketchUp
• Begin and continue my love of Google Products!

My GTA video:

Information about Google Teacher Academy:

The GTA is a FREE professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies. Produced by CUE, each Academy is an intensive, two-day event during which participants get hands-on experience with Google's free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in a supportive community of educators making impact.

-http://www.google.com/edu/teachers/google-teacher-academy.html

What is Google Teacher Academy?: http://www.google.com/edu/teachers/google-teacher-academy.html

About Google Teacher Academy: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/04/about-google-teacher-academy.html

Google Teacher Academy Resources: https://sites.google.com/site/gtaresources/

Sample GTA agenda: https://sites.google.com/site/gtaresources/events/2011-04-20


Fingers crossed.....

Top 10 resources for 6/2/11

I missed a week of posting with the shutting down of school for the summer.  I got carried away with the packing of stuff to move my classroom and totally lost track of posting.  With that, it's summer time and the focus has shifted.  


A question to consider for summer.  How do you keep the learning and sharing momentum without built in colleagues you see every day?




Top 10 resources


10. Open letter to teachers

http://justintarte.blogspot.com/2011/04/open-letter-to-teachers.html

9. Inside the google teacher academy from Sydney

http://teacher.global2.vic.edu.au/2011/04/28/inside-the-google-teacher-academy-2011/

Apply for the next one in Seattle in July

8. Collect videos and build playlists

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freetech4teachers/cGEY/~3/UvskaewC_tc/edmodothe-total-classroom-solution.html

7. I love this comments to this post.  Filters in school, meh

http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2011/04/question-of-day-filtering-meh.html

6. Netspeak - when you are searching for that word you are missing

http://www.netspeak.org/#page=home

5. Webdoc looks like a very cool and useful resource for student and classroom blogging

http://www.webdoc.com/

4.  (should have made this number 1 for all my scientists out there) Science on the Simpsons

http://www.lghs.net/ourpages/users/dburns/scienceonsimpsons/clips.html

3. Increase student achievement, have students help make your lesson relevant

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/05/11/relevance-student-learning/

2. 20 Web 2.0 tools for teachers

http://www.slideshare.net/pingable/easy-web-20-tools-for-teachers?from=ss_embed

1. Homework, except in math, a complete waste of time (Made me say WOW!)

http://brooks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/homework-follies/

Videos of the week

7 videos that WILL ignite discussion
http://justintarte.blogspot.com/2011/01/7-videos-that-will-ignite-discussion.html

Sixty Symbols – Videos about physics and astronomy
http://www.sixtysymbols.com/index.html

Project Based Learning explained:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMCZvGesRz8&feature=player_embedded

Larry Smith wants to know your story. Since 2006, Smith has undertaken the Six-Word Memoir Project inviting his Smith Magazine readers to tell their live stories in just six words.  There are some really inspiration thoughts here
http://poptech.org/popcasts/larry_smiths_six_word_project?utm_source=PopTech+Website+subscribers&utm_campaign=19f591bf89-Smith_Goldacre_112_21_2010&utm_medium=email
 
Changing classroom relationships:  A great resource for all grade levels...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dvk9PuejN8&feature=player_embedded#at=109

How do you model? Great video that addresses the core of learning success.  Ask yourself, what would you say, what would your students say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H4RkudFzlc&feature=player_embedded#

GREAT SUMMER PD! 30 goals challenge for educators by the great Shelly Terell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M12omj0rRl8&feature=player_embedded

Top 10 list 5/20/11

10. 10 ways for teachers to collaborate

http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/10-ways-for-teachers-to-collaborate/

9. Build a home-school connection - There’s an app for that

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2011/05/want-to-build-home-school-connection.html

8. Cool way to make sounds online

 http://www.beatlab.com/

7. Cool things to do with youtube videos

http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/xR4Bt3pPSkfz/Cool-things-to-do-with-YOUTUBE-videos#1

6. Love this.  Technology just a tool?  Oxygen just an element!

http://www.maggiehosmcgrane.com/2011/05/technology-as-tool-skill-or-goal.html

5. Interesting chart on traditional vs 21st century skills

http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2011/05/culture-part-ii.html

4. 70 tools in 70 minutes - a great slideshare project

http://www.slideshare.net/langwitches/70-tools-70-minutes?from=ss_embed

3. 50 ways to integrate technology

http://goo.gl/FVHk

2. 5 coolest google search HACKS you didn’t know about

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-coolest-google-search-hacks-realized-existed/

1. How do we prepare kids for jobs we don’t know about yet

http://www.good.is/post/how-do-we-prepare-kids-for-jobs-we-can-t-imagine-yet-teach-imagination/

Videos of the week!

Great book: Patrick Lencioni - THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM

Pale Blue dot

Here’s to the students who refused to be standardized

Howard Gardner on Digital Youth

Should teachers make more money?

http://jeffthomastech.com/blog/?p=10268&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TechThePlunge+%28Tech+the+Plunge%29

Will Richardson, a leader in edtech and his thoughts on the 21st century learner

What can education learn from Hip-Hop

http://socialelearning.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/what-education-should-be-like/

Top 10 resources for 5/13/11

10. Museum of mathematics, SWEEET!

http://momath.org/

9. 5 fastest ways to improve your teaching

http://www.theteachinggameblog.com/techniques/top-five-fastest-ways-to-improve-your-teaching/

8. 4 mistakes educators make when integrating technology http://goo.gl/TEqpf

7. 40 awesome sites to improve your skills

http://goo.gl/pFTq

6. Why I flipteach!  A great post in the wall street journal

http://goo.gl/AIU2N

5. Surprise, Surprise, working in pairs, actually good!

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/05/13/surprise-surprise-study-says-cooperative-learning-is-more-effective-than-lectures/

4. Google Template for Student projects

http://sites.google.com/site/uteachwithtechnology/google-templates

3. 8 ways to support teachers to integrate technology

http://edtechtoolbox.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-support-teachers.html

2. Mindsets and the end of the year slump

http://blog.brainology.us/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:carol-dweck-on-mindsets-and-the-end-of-year-slump&catid=43:news-and-tips-items&Itemid=58

1. 32 ways to use google apps in the classroom

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AV_Pgq_ZxwvSZGR3d3FxNnRfMjJnN3Jtc2pnaw&hl=en&ndplr=1

VIDEOS of the week

Two more TED-like sites for your motivational and big thinking pleasure

http://www.gelconference.com/

http://the99percent.com/videos

education is broken

  

Search, browse, check out various tutorials on how to do stuff on your computer or iOs.

http://thinktutorial.com/

Diane Ravitch on our own education system

Star Wars and Blooms taxonomy

Radiolab presents symmetry

Top 10 resources for 4/15/11 TAX DAY!

The best resources found this week through twitter and my google reader.  Enjoy!

Top 10 List

10. Just for Fun Haiku Creator

http://www.pbs.org/parents/creativity/ideas/haiku.html#edchat

9. Just say NO! to keynote and powerpoint

http://livebinders.com/play/play/88883

8. 5 Bookmark tools every educator should have

http://www.educationandtech.com/2011/04/5-bookmark-tools-every-educator-should.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

7. “Every lesson is a balance between something the students can already do & something they are working to master.”

http://goo.gl/RmP8x

6. What to empower students?  Expect more out of them

http://blog.findingdulcinea.com/2011/04/want-to-empower-students-expect-more-of-them.html

5. Things that will be obsolete by 2020:

http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1839

and

http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1831

4.A Google A Day: A fun way to hone your searching skills!

http://agoogleaday.com/

3. Why educators should be using twitter

http://justintarte.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-educators-should-be-using-twitter.html

2. 16 things I wish they would have taught me in school

http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1844

1. The invisible leader:  A must read for anyone aspiring to lead in any way

http://tomschimmer.com/2011/04/12/the-invisible-leader/

Videos of the week!

I love this:  Students used Project Based learning to utilize a cross curricular project as well as a TON of technology....Building a restaurant!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Qy0uTL76U&feature=youtu.be

WOW!  Just WOW!  When you identify a kid that is not paying attention in class it’s important to understand attention and just how much we as humans do pay attention.  Great video with many AH HA’s! for me

TMB Panyee - The true story of how innovation, determination can yeild tremendous success.

http://edupln.com/video/tmb-panyee-fc-short-film

Words are worse than sticks and stones - good message wish it was appropriate for school....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37_ncv79fLA&feature=player_embedded

Really good anti-bullying video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gliHyklHr6c

Pre-PD day Top 10 4/8/11

For those of you outside my district we have a web 2.0 PD day coming up on April 15th.

To prepare for this day we brainstormed lists of Web 2.0 Items and then gave each teacher a set of dots.  Dots were placed on butcher paper next to the web 2.0 items they were most interested in learning about.  From here I created a top 10, gather presenters and reserved spaces.

We will have 15 minute sessions and have time for teachers to interact with the presenters afterword to gain further understand and depth.  We're calling this activity "SPEED GEEKING" it's set up similar to speed dating :-).

To prepare for our PD day we're creating here a list of resources for before and after our PD day to access whenever needed.  If you have more resources that fit into these categories please share them through the comments below!

Here goes!

TOP 10 resource for April 15th PD day.

1. Google docs

Google Docs 101: http://stumpteacher.blogspot.com/2011/03/google-docs-101.html#edchat

A guide to going Google

http://www.technologybitsbytesnibbles.info/archives/2857?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+technologybitsbytesnibbles%2FAZit+%28Technology+Bits%2C+Bytes+%26+Nibbles+from+Cyndi+Danner-Kuhn%29

Good tutorial

http://edutech.msu.edu/online/GoogleDocs/GoogleDocs.html

Good tutorial from google: http://services.google.com/apps/resources/overviews_breeze/DocsSpreadsheets/index.html

Video:

2. Prezi

http://jswanski.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/210-tech-talk-prezi/

Video Tutorials:

3. Edmodo

http://www.technologybitsbytesnibbles.info/archives/2947?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+technologybitsbytesnibbles%2FAZit+%28Technology+Bits%2C+Bytes+%26+Nibbles+from+Cyndi+Danner-Kuhn%29

Blog post about Edmodo as well as Diipo, another site very similar

http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=3809

Video tutorials

4. Dropbox

The complete DROPBOX for educators.

http://jeffthomastech.com/blog/?p=7525http://jeffthomastech.com/blog/?p=7525

12 popular Mac Apps you can Sync with dropbox

http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/internet-roundup/12-popular-mac-apps-you-can-sync-via-dropbox-instructions/

Advanced users can drop music into your dropbox and use droptunes

http://lifehacker.com/#!5788980/droptunes-is-a-web-jukebox-for-your-dropbox-music-stash

5. Videos into activInspire

Info on inspire: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:5ZKPPUN1poEJ:madera.k12.ca.us/imrieweb/resourcetoolkit/-PrometheanTutorials/ActivInspire/ActivInspire101Tutorial.pdf+activinspire+tutorial&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESig841a6hsx-71ZTwlaaYY7RjkVT-k9HdV2XffbvZkt7UdWZd8qUcRby73RHdC7jaOJsZbvWhMppOCYPkWSq4UPdIr4GDZhjngTB36Wl9ZhE5MT54LzrBVOg64wxzfvxH5H2r06&sig=AHIEtbTD1tttXj1Jddw4K1je3deaBVvOkg

Video tutorials:

6. Webpage authoring

Got nothing on this one.  I taught myself as I went.

If you want to talk about Blogs, I have three I manage. :-)

7. Digital storytelling

Educational uses of digital storytelling

http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

Depending what you want to do there are ton's of resources

Top 10 sites: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2010/05/top-10-sites-for-digital-storytelling.html

Magazines and Newspapers: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2010/09/top-10-sites-for-creating-digital.html

Free animation software: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2010/09/top-10-sites-for-creating-digital.html

Digital Comics: http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2010/10/top-10-sites-for-creating-digital.html

8. Voicethread

Using Voicethread for interactive projects

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=voicethread-for-education-1224079950373114-8

9. ActivInspire

http://prometheanlearning.com/us/

also see 5 above.

I'm adding a 10th that I think is pretty cool it's called livebinders

I LOVE, love, love livebinders.  Here’s a great take on how one teacher uses it.

http://itscindybrock.blogspot.com/2011/03/livebinders.html

or this one: http://cybraryman.com/livebinders.html

http://livebinders.com/

BONUS video:

The History of Educational technology - Great video to springboard into our PD day

5 for Friday (DOUBLE EDITION) 3/11/11

This week was a slow week for me, I really didn't get a chance to interact much online but managed to read a few things that would be helpful to some. Check out the list for this week

Top 5 (times 2!)

The networked educational leader – This is a great presentation from an AWESOME principal in Canada.  Great guy always willing to help, follow him on twitter at @gcouros

http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/1814

100 great TECH talks for educators.  Love, love, love this...

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2010/05/31/100-great-tech-talks-for-educators/

Cool website to get all the cool characters on your documents just by copying and pasting

http://copypastecharacter.com/

Do you teach Bloom’s taxonomy?  Do you want to?  If so this is a great resource to get kids to understand question types and with it, answer types…

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/03/03/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-thoughts-inquiry-with-blooms-taxonomy/

Top 100 tools for twittering teachers (if you don't tweet, why not!)

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/04/02/top-100-tools-for-the-twittering-teacher/

25 tech tips for not techies - This might not be for you but might be a great resource for someone you know!

http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/25-techy-tips-for-non-techies-581.php

Thank you Google!  Did you know under Google’s advanced search you can now select reading levels of search results.  SWEET!

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Online plagiarism checker - BUSTED!

http://plagiarisma.net/

Ooh, challenging – 10 things you might need to change.

http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/10-things-you-might-need-to-change/

If I could change my classroom into any classroom it would be this one…

http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2011/02/unfettered-by-stuff-or-why-i-dont-lug.html

Videos of the week:

Anti-creativity checklist – Be careful when you start saying some of this…

My Anti-Creativity Checklist from Youngme Moon on Vimeo.

Awesome educators teaching you about Wordle, Prezi, Voicethread and more (great videos to see before our PD day in April)

http://blog.simplek12.com/2-min-edtech-talk/wordle-prezi-voicethread-more-these-educators-know-it-all/

5 for Friday 2/4/11

2 snow days, unprecedented!

Here's what I found inspiring my brain to use more technology this week:

The 5

Google sketch-up - http://sketchup.google.com/ I was recommended this resource for building 3D models of structures.  As we are embarking on the wiring project this resource couldn't be more timely.  I'm excited to try it out with a group of kids which will be sure to inspire a blog post.
How I'm using it: http://goo.gl/Iwi6p
For what project: http://goo.gl/Gwdvu 

In my search to continue to ask “Ungoogleable” questions in the classroom I am struck by the blog post.  I know I’m often influencing the questions and answers students given, but how do I stop?

http://alwaysformative.blogspot.com/2011/02/problem-with-creating-problems.html 

Ever have a bunch of websites you want kids to go to, ever wanted to make that process easier? Ever wanted to lost 10 pounds?  Well, this resource won’t help with the pounds but the websites it can help with!

http://blog.simplek12.com/technology/free-webtools/fur-ly/ 

Weekly Core subject resources:  This is awesome!  You can check out web-based resources for your specific content or be nosy and check out other core content resources.  Very cool!

http://www.edutechintegration.com/2011/02/weekly-core-subject-resources-all.html 

Poster Projects

All too often in our educational career we make a presentation using posterboard, markers, and glitter glue.  There’s a cooler way to do that now.  There are two great resources to check out

1.posterous - https://posterous.com/ Simple, clean, easy, kinda boring but it works

2.Glogster - http://edu.glogster.com/ Rich, exotic, able to embed pictures, videos, exciting, but more difficult to use.

Video of the week

Life after: Death By Powerpoint

  A great video to remind us about how to present to 21st century students (and teachers).  If you've seen this before watch it again.  It will remind you of that last presentation you were in and hopefully motivate you to say, "That's won't be me doing that."  I sat in class last night and chucked to myself as my professor read every word on every slide.  Ah, education makes me smile.