Google Domination at #METC15

I look forward to the Midwest Educational Technology Community Conference (METC) for approximately 362 days each year; give me a day to recover from it and I'm counting down to the next one.



My time at METC this year ended up overwhelmingly Google-influenced. Yes, I chose to attend a few sessions that had Google in the title. But even if the session wasn't declared to be all about Google, there was some kind of Google influence. Maybe the fact that Jaime Casap (@jcasap), Global Education Evangelist at Google, Inc., was a keynote speaker had something to do with it, I don't know. Check out his address here - well worth a watch! He was full of insights, an engaging speaker, and really delved into the nitty gritty of the past and future of education and technology. Some favorite nuggets:

This generation of students doesn’t think who can I work for? They think who can I work with to have an impact. @jcasap #metc15
— Steven W. Anderson (@web20classroom) February 11, 2015

We used to have to call the Internet. And the Internet was busy. #METC15

— Stacey Kenney (@stacey_kenney) February 11, 2015

"Education isn't broken... The world it was set up for just doesn't exist anymore" @jcasap #metc15

— Michelle Fank (@mfankopedia) February 11, 2015

#Technology is not the silver bullet. #Education is the silver bullet for lasting change - @jcasap #METC15 pic.twitter.com/Rv0qJPkfGS

— Drew McAllister (@drewmca) February 11, 2015

The devices kids are using today are the worst devices they will ever use in their lives. #metc15 pic.twitter.com/X9nXdQbGJ1

— Dr. Justin Tarte (@justintarte) February 11, 2015

I'll be devoting a few future blog posts to more detailed explorations of favorite tools, tricks, and concepts from the various presentations. And any resources from sessions are available on the METC website for anyone to view, so take a look! But in the meantime, a rundown of JUST the Google topics/tools I loved would be...

• Using "replace with" codes for adding quick comments (so simple!)
• Lab-scheduler add-on for Sheets
• g(Math) add-on for forms
• Using Drawings within Docs to format a template
• Changing the word "edit" to "copy" at the end of your sharing URL to force students to make a copy of a shared file
• Adding attachments (collaborative docs?) to events in calendar
• Research tool
• Using Google forms for a plethora of formative assessment: exit slips, 3-2-1, performance rubrics, quick writes, etc.
• Google Drive Template Gallery for school-wide document templates
• Doctopus and Goobric (mind blown!)
• Saving Forms to a tablet or smartphone home screen for quick, on-the-go access to save classroom observations, to-do lists, etc.

I'll add some links above as I find them. And I'm excited to share more details about the above tools and tricks. 

For now, I'll just leave you with this...

Turn it in to TurnItIn in Moodle

Nothing makes me happier at work than a teacher getting more excited than me about something in technology. Last Thursday was a really happy day for me.

After a few weeks of silly errors and issues, I finally had our new TurnItIn Moodle Direct integration ready to deploy and was playing around with a TurnItIn rubric when a teacher looked over my shoulder and asked if she could watch what I was doing. This prompted me to explain my latest project - encouraging more people to use our TurnItIn subscription by letting them use TurnItIn from within Moodle. And her response was my favorite kind. Excited about this new prospect, she went directly back to her desk and not only created her own first TurnItIn assignment in Moodle, complete with grading form, but also told the rest of her PLC right away. And got THEM excited for it.

I thought I was going to have to beg people to try this. Apparently not.

So why do this? 

The reasons to use TurnItIn are numerous. Paperless assignments, originality checking, online grading, digital portfolios, and data collection are a few. Since I started using TurnItIn ten years ago, I have seen vast improvements to the GradeMark program, especially the new Grade Anything platform that allows teachers to grade any kind of file, presentation, performance, etc within GradeMark. The iPad app is something I would have loved eight years ago when I was lamenting my decision to collect essays only via TurnItIn, but was headed for a twelve hour car ride with no internet connection - with the iPad app, you don't need an internet connection once you sync a set of assignments. Easy. Lovely.

Now it's even easier to use here at CJ. No need for teachers or students to log into another account to use the main features of TurnItIn. For everyday use, they can simply create and upload assignments via Moodle... which is an essential part of almost every class here. Logging into TurnItIn will still be useful to gather data from GradeMark Reports, but it isn't necessary every day, nor is it needed by the students. 

From the reaction I've gotten from just a few teachers, I'm thinking this will be a good thing.

Resources:

• TurnItIn's Moodle Direct page containing...
• Instructor Manual
• Student Manual
• Training Videos
• FAQ
• TurnItIn Product Demonstration Videos

I love Edutopia: Sharing a blog post about tech in the classroom

Quick share, then I promise I'll get back to my "real" work for today. While researching just now, I visited Edutopia.org, which is one of my favorite ed tech websites. In my former life as an English teacher, I loved receiving the print copies of Edutopia in my mailbox and was bummed when I read that it would be discontinued in 2010. Published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, it was a free magazine full of articles and ideas (and ads for amazing technology!) that inspired me to try new things with technology in the classroom.

I have come to terms with the loss of those colorful pages in hand as I have personally rethought the way I publish resources for my colleagues (formerly in an emailed newsletter formatted in Publisher, now here in this blog and via various email updates... hopefully linking them to this blog) and have discontinued my personal newspaper subscription because I just wasn't getting around to reading it, instead getting the highlights from social media. But I still miss the magazine and my newspaper. They just aren't always the most logical options these days.

I digress. Edutopia.org. The top headline today was a blog post titled "The Digital Lives of Teens: 'If You Don't Have a Plan for Them, They Will Have a Plan for You'". Well, of course that caught my attention. Blogger Matt Levinson, a school administrator and author of From Fear to Facebook: One School's Journey, begins with a story from a TV show to get his point across - we have to meet the students where they are with technology. It's a challenge to do so, but so essential today.

I just want to leave that link for you. A quick read, entertaining, and good to keep in mind as we turn the corner on the July 4th holiday, which to me has always signaled the turning point of summer - after this, it's the down slope headed back to another school year...

Breaking bad habits... how hard can it be?

Just a quick post today to share two finds from Te@chThought.com, a new favorite resource.

It takes 21 days to develop a habit. That's a generally accepted... myth? Really, how long does it to make (or break) a habit?

Researchers at University College London have found that 21 days is actually too short a time. Published in the European Journal of Social Psychology in 2009, the study followed 96 people for 84 days as they attempted to make small changes to their lives  On average, participants in their study took 66 days, as explained in a blog post from 2012. Yikes. That's a long time.

My thinking is that breaking a bad habit is actually the process of developing a new, good habit, right? So we need to allow a bit of time to do so. This is something to consider as we wind down this school year and have a chance to maybe "forget" some bad teaching habits over the summer break.

What bad habits do you need to break? 

This list from Te@chThought is a great checklist to use for reflection. Click here to read the full blog post.

I can't decide if the number 4 in the title of this graphic is a legitimate typo or is trying to call our attention to the bad habits by not proofreading on purpose...

Time to form some new habits...

Don't worry. I'm not going to leave you on a negative note. A separate (but related!) Te@chThought post provided this infographic, borrowing a list from AlwaysPrepped. Something to think about. I'll bring it back in August as we head into the new school year...

Which of these do you want to make a habit? And can you master it in 21 days? No pressure :)