Digital Resources from the DOE Ed Tech Dept.

A couple of years ago Richard Culatta, who is the Director of Educational Technology for the US Department of Education spent the day in my classroom and then brought me to a great event with Arne Duncan that night. He has remained an approachable resource for me since then and now has a great page on the DOE site with videos for "Personalized Professional Learning for Future Ready Leaders." One of those videos above discusses how districts can move to a one to one environment. It is a subject that is close to my heart as I wrote a practical guide for it call "Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud to Individualize Instruction" which teachers can use to literally slowly or quickly move to one to one. I even include a chapter on how an entire district made the move. Both my book and the video above discuss how to move towards making the book a resource, not the only source of learning.

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Homework Reminders

When I want to quickly contact my online students, I use Remind.com . It allows you to send a text without knowing their phone numbers. Additionally you can set a time for it to be sent. You can add a link and/or upload a document. If you choose, you can also text individual students. All of the texts are recorded and kept as long as you keep the class. Above is a video giving you a great overview and here are several videos explaining how to use different parts of it. If you use Blackboard, the video below shows you how to embed Remind texts into a Blackboard page.

How to Make Your Own Flip & Tutorial Videos

Over the years I have made lots of video tutorial for my blog followers and flip videos for my students . Every single one of them have been made using Screencastomatic . You can purchase your own yearly subscription, but I have not only never paid, but also never even set up a free account. You don't need to since you can make the video and then just upload it onto YouTube. Watch the video above and you will be able to see how to record, add you talking (or not) to the recording and to upload it - all in less than two minutes. Go forth and make your own tutorials and teach lots of others. In a later post I'll show you how to organize your YouTube video library.

Tech Conferences

On March 7th and 8th I will be at the South by Southwest Education conference in Austin. Another conference that I have enjoyed is the ISTE one which this year is in Denver from June 26-29 . The key, if you can do so is to find someone else to pay for you. For example I am doing work for TES (more on that coming later) and so they are paying my entry ticket. So why bother? Well first off you will meet lots of tech minded people like yourself and make some connections that you can work with when you return home. Secondly there are lots of companies showing all of their latest wares and then, there are talks and demonstrations - literally hundreds of them. If you can't get the big ones, look for one close to home. Here is a place to start.

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