"Creativity is contagious, pass it on." ~Albert Einstein

Monday, March 31, 2014

I have been feeling a bit guilty lately about my inability to consistently push out a blog post or two during the week.  I won't use the "time" excuse that I hear too often, I am simply just shutting down during some evenings of the week and leaving my computer alone.  Not a bad thing, right?

Okay, so here's the deal.  I want to create a blogging challenge (to force me to blog more) in which we can share some of the App Smashing that is happening in your classrooms/schools. What is App Smashing (or App Synergy as Lisa Johnson calls it)?   It's a term coined by Greg Kuloweic in which you use multiple apps on the iPad to create one product." I used to call it "App Blending" when I first started doing it, but "App Smashing" just sounds so much cooler!  I love App Smashing because it allows for a ton of creativity in the classroom and it fosters higher level thinking from your students.

I'm gonna use the NCAA Basketball tournament and the Final Four as our theme and motivation (I just want to force myself to blog FOUR days in a row!)  If you choose to participate in the challenge, please share your blog post or Tweet with your particular App Smash recipe that you enjoy using with students, use as an assignment, or one that your students have used, including the #appsmash4 hashtag.  This challenge will start tomorrow and end on Friday.

It doesn't have to be earth shattering. Remember, what you think as menial could be magnificent to another teacher! One or two apps is fine, but I would love to see some of the smashes you have that involve 4-5 apps.  

I will get the smashing started with one of my favorite App Smashes.  I used it in an App Task Challenge that I created for teachers and it is a very easy smash to use!  Students love it! No, yours don't have to be in the format you see below, just share your recipe with us and your successes (an example would be great as well)! 

Good luck!  Tune into the #appsmash4 hashtag throughout the week to see what the Twitterverse is sharing.  Thanks for participating!




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Sunday, March 30, 2014

Have students…

Create an iMovie to show their learning.

Conduct a Mystery Skype with a region you are studying. 

Use todaysmeet.com in your classroom as a backchannel when watching a video.  Make it interactive.  Periodically ask questions during the video.

Use the iPad to create a product that you have to be able to "see, hear and see text" somewhere in/on the finished product. 

Have your students blog. It's just as easy to click on publish as is it to turn in a worksheet.  I like to use Kidblog for blogging.  

Participate in chat on Twitter.  Show them how to use Social Media to learn instead of just sharing.  #scistuchat and #spanstuchat are held once a month and are a great way to get started. 


Studying about an area in geography?  Have your students use a template in Pages and create a travel itinerary as if they were going to travel to that area.  Have them use Kayak to plan their trip (they will be doing this in the future...start teaching them how to do it now).

Conduct a Google Hangout with an expert in something that you are studying.  

Create a product using Popplet Lite.  Right now, our 1st Graders are studying about the life cycle of a Butterfly. Students are creating a Popplet including their own images and text listing all the stages of the life cycle.  

Create a Tellagami that relates to your topic. You can use this app for about anything in your classroom. Use Pic Collage or Skitch to create a custom background within Tellagami.

Share a Google Doc and Collaborate. Make them share the document with you.  You are now the "air traffic controller" in your classroom.  Watch all of the collaboration that is going on and chime in on a Google Doc or two using the chat feature. 

Create their own "I Wonder" projects. 

Create a podcast.  One of my favorite assignments while teaching World History was to have students create commercials for the time period that we were studying. Let's say we are studying Ancient Greece.  Have students create a 30 second commercial and it has to be for a good or service that would have been sold during that time period. 

Create an iMovie analyzing a topic.   I did this with my Freshmen World History class and they had to analyze one of the events in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire."  They absolutely loved it, and created some amazing products! 

Create a Word Cloud using the Cloud Art app.  Have them use the background of their Tellagami.  Have the Gami analyze their product. 

Create a Wanted Posters for characters you are studying.  I like to use the Pic Collage app to create these. 

Create a Haiku Deck INSTEAD of a PowerPoint.  Don't let students use the bulleted lists within Haiku Deck. Force them to summarize in 8 words or less per slide.

Just a few ideas for you. Ready, Set, CREATE!








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Friday, March 7, 2014


When was the last time that you Googled yourself?

Recently, I was teaching a digital citizenship lesson about digital footprints in an elementary classroom and I Googled myself to show the students my digital footprint (or tattoo) I tend to Google myself quite frequently, so their were no surprises. The students were intrigued by all of the information and pictures that made up my digital footprint.  A very powerful learning experience, especially when I had them start Googling themselves.

After the lesson was over, the teacher of the class I was teaching approached me and told me that she had actually never Googled herself before and so she did so while I was teaching my lesson.  I was surprised that she had never Googled herself and she was surprised at what she found in her digital footprint. The teacher proceeded to tell me that she wasn't happy with some of the information that was showing up in the results.  I sat down with her and looked over her results and there wasn't anything inappropriate at all, just general information about her and some images that she had shared via social media.

 Yes, I could sit and wonder why this teacher (or more people), don't Google themselves more often.  The days when first impressions started with a handshake are over.  You are being Googled, those search results are creating first impressions about you, and you owe it to yourself to know what is being posted about you on the Internet.  I would recommend setting up the following to monitor your digital footprint.

Google Alerts
I have been stressing to our students in grades 6-12 this year that they need to start monitoring their digital footprints.  Last year I encouraged our students to utilize Google Alerts.  Google Alerts will send you an email update of relevant Google results based on your queries.  Here is what it looks like:

I simply add my name to the search query box.  I choose to receive an email from Google once a month with any new results about my name.  It's really fairly simple to set up, and very basic monitoring tool.  


Mention App
After a tip from Josh Allen, I recently started using an app named Mention. I know a lot of our students don't utilize their email like I do, so I wanted something that they could have on their iPads that would send out push notifications.  Mention is just what I was looking for.  With Mention, you can monitor keywords both on the Web and Social Media.   I created one for my first and last name.  Very simple, and easy to use, and the best part is that I get a notification every time that keyword is used. I am using it in a very basic sense, but there are a lot of options with this app that I haven't even gotten into. 



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Saturday, March 1, 2014

What if you gave a student in your school access to the district Twitter account?  Scary thought isn't it? Or is it?  I got the idea from Lincoln Public Schools here in Nebraska.  I was perusing my Twitter stream and this tweet caught my attention:


I was immediately intrigued. What a brilliant idea!  Too often I hear about how social media should be banned in schools.  Some people say that it has no place in the learning environment.  I disagree.  I think it can be a powerful tool in every classroom if used in the right ways. 

I think we ought to do a better job of TEACHING students how to effectively use social media.  After all, aren't we in the business of educating students? 

Although we spend a considerable amount of time in our district discussing and modeling how to effectively use social media, I struggle to get students to see the value of using social media to share information that is valuable, to collaborate, or how to build a solid PLN that could be of great value to them down the road. 

I thought to myself that doing something similar to what @LPSorg did would be a great way to teach our students how to share valuable information using social media.  Why not let them share their story via our district's Twitter account? 

I asked one of our seniors, Lucas Grossnicklaus (@LUKEsOfHazzard_) if he would share his day via the district Twitter account.  I covered some basic ground rules with him and away he went....logged into the @AuroraHuskies Twitter account, telling him to include our district hashtag #aurorahuskies and one that we made up #ahssp (AuroraHighSchoolStudentPerspective) so we could track the tweets as we do this throughout the remainder of the year with other students. 


How did he do?  Go through the tweets, check 'em out.  He did a great job!  I look forward to next week and empowering another one of our students!  



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