Summer Reading Part 1

I learned to love reading from my Mom. She was a voracious reader. My mother encouraged me at an early age to read. She was okay with the period in my life that the only thing I would read were Comic Books. Then I grew to love SciFi and almost everything I read during that period was SciFi related. My mother did not like Comic Books or SciFi but she encouraged me to keep reading.

In college, I had a professor that I highly admired and respected that encouraged our class that we should read 15 minutes a day something other than our textbooks for school. He said that reading every day would help us grow as knowledgeable adults.


Well, I took that advice to heart and read every day. Sometimes it is a book, at others, it's a blog or magazine article.

This is part 1 of my summer 2016 reading journey.

1. The Innovator's Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead Culture of Creativity. By George Couros
    A must read for any teacher or administrator that wants to empower learners to wonder and explore.
This would be a great book for an educational professional study group.

I found this book to be so powerful I purchased a copy for my Superintendent.

2. The Pixar Touch By David Price

   I picked this book up when I was at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I have enjoyed Pixar movie for years. This book was a fascinating story of the history of Pixar from its early days with Lucasfilm to Disney. The compelling story of animation genius John Lasseter and businessman Steve Jobs.

3. Kids Deserve It! By Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome

Heard about this book from Jon Corippo on twitter.

Still reading this one but it has already lead me to tweet out about the book.

Truth #KidsDeserveIt pic.twitter.com/7RDw3xIHt5

— Nora Allstedt (@nallstedt) June 18, 2016

It would be awesome if staff room lunch talk was about the wins! #KidsDeserveIt pic.twitter.com/hQsWM8EBLH

— Nora Allstedt (@nallstedt) June 18, 2016

 4. The Zen Teacher by Dan Tricarico

This is another book from Dave Burgess Press. I have not read anything published by Dave Burgess that has not been excellent, which is why I'm currently reading this book.

Hoping this book will have some helpful tips I can use to slow down, focus and de-stress.

Exeter Ed Tech Newsletter May 2016

April Exeter Ed Tech Newsletter

Today's Learner - TEC-950

The set-up, educators play a vital role ensuring that students are prepared to be productive in the 21st Century. What are the challenges educators will have...

Let's start with a little look at who it is we are currently teaching.

Springbank Middle School Alberta, Canada

It is more important today than every before that we become the guide to learning. It is time to get outside the box and let the walls come down. Teachers and students collaborating to bring about a rich learning environment. We need risk takers. With any new challenges, we will have success and we will failure. We need to learn from the failure and not give up but push on for the betterment of our students. Teachers need administrators that are willing to let them branch out and explore trying new ideas. 

We are in a fast-moving society today. I like the image about because it shows how all the cogs move and work together. It will be working together science and math, language arts and social studies, etc through educational processes such as Project Based Learning that will move students forward for the next phase. 

For education to work at it's best it is constantly changing evolving and moving. Yes 2+2 is still 4 but were we go from there is only limited by how we inspire the young mind. 

Greater collaboration among teachers will be needed. This will mean everything from teachers team teaching to needed more time to prep together to prep for lessons. In the US we could learn a few lessons from our friends in Finland about giving educators time to plan. We have more contact time with students than the Finnish do yet perform worse on the PISA. 

Educators will have to look outside their own school district for collaborators if the district is not providing what they need for support. Thousands of educators are already flocking to twitter and G+ to form PLN's. Most of the innovating lessons I have done with students the last few years have been inspired by my twitter PLN or a CUE Rockstar Camp and not by anything from a training in my district. It is the few lone nuts who have gone out and found the other lone nuts and started a revolution for student success! 

Web 2.0 Cool Tool - TEC-950

Cool Tool

While there are many cool web 2.0 tools available to used in the educational setting these days one I would love to explore the use of more is Augmented Reality (AR) with Aurasma. We are using this technology with our HS yearbook, which is great. While that is a cool way to add an extra component to a student's yearbook, so much more can be done with Aurasma. 

One possible classroom/school use of AR would be to have students create book reviews of books read from the school library. These books could then be tagged for other students to use Aurasma to view these reviews. Tagging of books could be done in several ways, either a sticker on the book or a card in the book would notify other students of the AR review. 

How about making a history lesson on the Declaration of Indepence come alive with the reading of the opening in English or Spanish. In fact, it could be read in any language needed for your class setting as a way to differentiate for EL's. 

For a more extensive list of ways to use AR in schools check out Drew Minock and Brad Wald's blog Two Guys and Some iPads.

Audio or Video - Maybe a Screencast or two - TEC-950

With my new position this year as a half-time band director (cue laughter) and half-time TOSA for technology (double cue laughter), I get asked all the time how do I do ________? You fill in the blank with technology. But with only being scheduled half-time in the technology position I don't always have time to get to a teacher's classroom to show them how to do what they have asked for help. Either my schedule does not work or when I have time does not work with their teaching schedule so I have found for some topics short screencasts have been useful for teachers and students alike. A YouTube channel was created in our GAFE domain that I add videos to as needed for teachers to access whenever they need.

Future plans as my position expand full-time next year will be to show students how to create these as well for both fellow students, teachers and parents. 

When students create media it so powerful. While I'm not currently working with students on creating audio or video projects here is an example of a project that students create last year using iMove.

Students creating a podcast or a video will show their true understanding of the material. Working together on these builds their cooperative skills. The students that created the video above were so proud of what they had accomplished when they finished and showed that they do have pride in their school.

The above video was completed using iMovie by a group of students to show they understanding of how to use a microscope. The project was completed in my class and then shared with their science teacher who gave the students credit as well and asked to use the video to show future classes. 

Photo Sharing - TEC-950

Photo Sharing

Morro Bay at Sunset

There are multiple photos sharing sites available for use today. Flickr is one that has been around for a number of years. To use Flickr you need to have a Yahoo account. Until just recently I had never used Flickr to house any of my personal photos but have used the site to search for photos that users had marked as shareable for projects.

The site I used for a long time was Photobucket. Until Google drive came along and Google Photo along with it Photobucket was my personal go-to place to store photos online and to share with friends. The picture below of the Taj Mahal I found stored in my Photobucket from a trip to India.

In 2013 I went to my first CUE Rockstar on the US Hornet at this event I participated in more than one photo walk. To share the photos taken during these walks we used Google Drive and shared folders. 

What does a photo really say? By the way, a photo is framed and shot can help to tell a story. Images can be used to teach students about point of view and storytelling. A picture can be used as the inspiration for a story.