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.

Comments

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.

Snow Days Online

So we have a potentially major snow storm coming to DC this week. I am thankful that we have the technology to make up for not having school, esp. in classes like AP or IB ones where time can't really be missed and your students are more likely to do the work at home. Of course my online students get to work no matter the weather. So how can you get your brick and mortar students to work on a snow day. For my online kids I use Blackboard Collaborate so I would create a shell for the brick and mortar students as well and set an agreed upon time to meet which I reminded them about a few days before a snow storm. If you don't have something like Blackboard Collaborate you could you a Google Plus Hangout live stream where you could send a link to your students and they could watch a live lecture ( here's how ). You could then use Today's Meet to send a link to students and you could see their live questions. You would be able to do this b...

eLearning Blog

Search This Blog