Tech Goodness for your Spring Break!!

A teacher saying: "I'm not good with technology," better be ready to hear a kid say: "I'm not good with books." edchat via @education_geek
— Dr. Justin Tarte (@justintarte) March 8, 2015

It's the week before Spring Break and tomorrow is April fools day! Everybody have thier riot gear ready? If we stick together I know we can do this and get to a much needed break.  I'm sure all of you have nothing planned and really need some tips and some extra reading for the week, so I saved up some great stuff for you to peruse on your time off!

• ALL TEACHERS: The Atlantic featured an article last week entitled The Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher, which reads as ominous as the title would suggest but I would highly recommend reading it anyway.  I personally don't see the removal of what I call "the human element" from K-12 schools as a possibility at all.  However, the changes that are happening in society are going to flood schools over the next few years and we need to be prepared.  There are plenty of intangible lessons that we all help student's with throughout their time in school, but we should think more about the curriculum that we teach and the way in which it is taught. 
• Math Teachers! Check out this resource that I heard some hype about this past week: Prodigy Math
• Remind users: The company recently announced a Chat feature in which students can "have safe, simple, one-to-one conversations with students and parents".  As great as REemind is, this feature really does not follow our electronic communications policy that was approved at the beginning of the school year.  But don't lose faith! There is a solution - E-mail! If students are not availing themselves of their own school email address you should encourage them to do so.  It's one of the easiest (and approved) ways for them to communicate with you.  Not to mention, it's the form they will be using as college students and beyond, so all the more reason to encourage its use now. 
•  Cool stuff... Video is really becoming the new medium for social media.  It's pretty cool that we are actually capable of video conferencing just like Marty McFly did with Needles in Back to the Future. Last week, the app Periscope was released and I think the potential is amazing.
  
   You can live stream to your Twitter followers and get "likes" and comments in real time.  Yesterday, after downloading it I saw a teacher asking for feedback on a student's blog design and I talked to another teacher about his video game design class.   I haven't streamed anything yet, but maybe a future Tech Tuesday can be live and we can interact.  Give it a try.
• Jeopardy Powerpoints are long gone...  Thanks to Valerie Sanchirico for this one! Build an online Jeopardy game for a review.  If you been playing Kahoot and want to change it up, give this a try!
• Digital Citizenship - We've all heard the message that social media can get kids in trouble when they apply to college.  I thought this news story brought up some ideas I had never thought about though.  Take a look: 

I hope you all have a great and restful Spring break.  Enjoy the time off and let me know if you need any help with anything!

Welcome to the Tech Tuesday Blog!

Welcome to the Tech Tuesday Blog!  For a while I've been thinking it would be nice to have a place to store all of the information that I've been sharing with you.  We get tons and tons of emails everyday and I know that often mine have been a bit long.  I'll still email you to notify you of new posts, but I think a blog may be more suitable to the information I am trying to share with you all.  I hope that the blog will be a resource for you as well as a place that those of you interested in Edtech can have discussions and develop new ideas.

I have 4 things to share with you this week:

1.  Security Update - Last week my checking account was compromised and I had to go through a lot of steps to remedy the situation.  I am now using an free app on my phone that is also available for your desktop:

https://idprotect.vip.symantec.com/desktop/download.v

The app generates a string of numbers that changes every 30 seconds and you use a "token" from the app to login to sites that you need to keep secure.  Keep it in mind if you do banking online.

2.  Email Charter - Thank you to Mr. Fenton for sharing this with me.  I think we can all agree that emails have gotten out of hand and we can all use some tips on how to best handle this phenomenon.  Take a look at this agreement and see if there are some tips you could use:  http://emailcharter.org/

3.  How much do you use your phone?? For those heavy phone users, I started using an app called "Moment" about month ago.  It tracks when you are using your phone (not if you are using it for music).  The results are... well... I use my phone a lot.  You can set limits and track device use for an entire family with a paid account.  Definitely something worth looking into if you think you should be limiting you or a child's phone use.

4.  Apple Researchkit - I was talking to a friend about the new Apple watch today and he sent me this video.  Must watch - amazing possibilities for medical research: http://www.apple.com/researchkit/

Thanks for tuning in this week - Please let me know what you need help with - all comments and concerns are welcome!

Tech Tuesday Archive 19

Good afternoon everybody,

I know you've missed the updates! Next week I'm determined to get you some good info on an actual Tuesday.  However, the delay this week brings with it a teachable moment.  I was all set yesterday afternoon to send you a Tech Tuesday email when I suddenly had to deal with fraudulent activity on my checking account.  All is fine now and it only took a measly 3 hours of phone calls to get it sorted out yesterday...  I just thought it was important to remind you all to carefully pick your passwords and change them once in a while.  If you are like me, you get really annoyed at having to remember every different password for every different website "Is this the one I have to start with a capital letter? Does this one need 8 characters? Do I have to do the hokey pokey in the webcam before I can log on to this website??" There is definitely a point to these exercises as there are, unfortunately, people out there looking to steal your money or identity.  Here are a couple resources for you:

-Lastpass.com stores all of your passwords and can generate highly secure passwords for you.  You can use the site to access several sites and it is secure.  This one is new to me, but recommended to me from a highly reliable source.  

-Check out this article about changing your passwords - It made the rounds on Facebook last summer and stuck with me - a great story even if you don't want to change any of your passwords.  There are a few swear words, FYI:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mauricio-estrella/how-a-password-changed-my-life_b_5567161.html

Some other tips:

-Google classroom now allows you to customize your classroom settings even further.  They've added more options (I'm particularly excited to have a picture of the digestive tract greeting my honors bio students) and you can upload your own pictures as the background for your class.

-The mobile app has increased how much students can share to assignment submissions.  Something that was brought to my attention, however, is that students with Android phones are having trouble accessing classroom/drive/docs from their phones due to the school domain and their phone being a google device.  IPhone users don't seem to have any issues :)

-Several of you have asked me if 2 teachers can be in charge of a single class on classroom.  The answer is no but this seems to be the most requested feature on Classroom.  If this pertains to you, I encourage you to click the question mark on the bottom right side of the classroom site and put in the request to Google.  They have been very responsive to the feedback they are receiving and I am sure they will bring this feature soon.

That's it - as always, if you have any feedback or need any help, let me know!

Have a great week!