Author: Jac de Haan

Posted on in educator profiles

Todd Conaway | Yavapai College

Name: Todd Conaway (Faculty site, TheWholeClassroom.com, YouTube, @todd_conaway)
Organization: Yavapai College
Current title: Instructional Designer
Selected accolades: Departmental 2012 Award for eLearning in technical support and service from the ITC ((ITC Announces the Recipients of the ITC 2012 Awards for Excellence in eLearning)), blessed with a wonderful family, almost 1000 miles walked in the Grand Canyon

 

 

What skill(s) do you feel are most important for today’s students to explore in academic settings (tech or non-tech related)?

Curiosity. Passion. Learning to learn. Finding relevance. I don’t think we need to always address the “why are we doing this?” all the time in classes, but I do think that in many cases we have lost that conversation and part of the result is disconnectedness from the “real world” that lives outside the classroom walls.

What we are calling “21st century skills” is simply literacy, and it is part of all literacy that involves words, numbers, sounds, graphs, images, and videos among many other types of information. As long as we continue to separate “digital” or “technological” from other types of media literacy, we will do our students a disservice. In many places it is an amazing and powerful part of our ability to be citizens and do good things.

 

For a teacher looking to use technology to connect with students, enhance learning or embrace 21st century skills, where do you suggest one begin?

I suggest to teachers that they will learn tools most quickly and deeply of they have a personal connection to the content they explore with the tool. For example, I would never tell a teacher new to Facebook to go create a group for their class and start using Facebook ((http://www.facebook.com)). I would suggest they begin (more…)

Posted on in educator profiles

Kern Kelley | R.S.U. #19

Name: Kern Kelley (Website, blog, @kernkelley)
Organization: R.S.U. #19
Current title: Technology Integrator

 

It’s become more important than ever for students to be encouraged to explore educational opportunities for themselves. In traditional education, much of the time was spent waiting for the teacher or other students, but technology promises the ability for students to go as far and as fast as they can.

When students teach others they learn a topic more thoroughly than if they received knowledge in a passive state. It’s important that students see teachers actively learning and going through that process ourselves.  I loving bringing students to conferences and exposing them to our learning process.

 

What is the best part of your job?

Working with the kids, hands down. It always surprises me that it seems like the more accolades and money that an educator earns, the further they seem to be from daily interaction with students.

 

What was your path to your current position?

I began as a fifth grade teacher and loved it. I integrated technology in almost everything we did as a class and was asked to do the same for the rest of the district. I was hesitant initially because of what I mentioned above, but at every step I have been able to incorporate working directly with students into whatever I do, whether it’s providing professional development for teachers or even going to conferences.


What skill(s) do you feel are most important for today’s students to explore in academic settings (tech or non-tech related)?

Tech should never be the ends in itself, but rather built into some greater educational purpose. The tech skills that students develop should always have a greater purpose. For example (more…)

Posted on in tutorials

Free tablet stylus hack

My students are always misplacing their styluses (styli?). Meredith Swallow, assistant for the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont, explains how to use the conductive power of foil food wrappers to make a quick stylus.

Make sure your iPad has a screen protector on it before attempting.

Posted on in tutorials

Screencasting iPad app & web interface combination: EduCreations

This post is an introduction and evaluation of EduCreations new iPad screencasting app. This is a companion post to the previous reviews, Screencasting Apps for the iPad (September 2011).

Comparison to the common features noted in the previous article

  • import a background image from the camera roll
  • choose pen colors for drawing
  • erase areas of the screen or the entire page
  • record voice along with what is happening on the screen
  • upload for online viewing

1. EduCreations Interactive Whiteboard (free | iTunes link)

Pros

  • Step forwards and backwards between edits.
  • Move freely between slides while narration continues.
  • Auto-pause the recording when attempting to add an image.
  • Undo button steps backwards through changes.
  • Dedicated image menu with image “lock” feature.
  • Companion online screencasting interface.
  • Online video sharing includes multiple levels of permissions.
  • Video embeddable within other websites.
  • Import and control multiple images per slide.

Cons

  • Videos lives within the App or the propitiatory website by default.
  • Embed feature requires FLASH (video won’t play on iPad or iPhone).
  • No pen tip width control.

Web interface recording test

Posted on in tutorials

Connecting Khan Academy login to Google Apps for Edu

More and more educators are becoming comfortable with the idea of using technology to time-shift instructional lectures to allow more class time for differentiated instruction and project-based learning.

One of my clients is interested in using materials already available on the web as a compliment to classroom mathematics lessons and wanted to know how to connect their existing Google Apps for Education deployment to Khan Academy’s website.

Rather than individually walking each teacher through the set-up process, I decided to flip the lesson and provide a baseline procedure via video tutorial: