This school year is coming to an end, but you have an opportunity with a new beginning in the fall.

One thing that I know for sure each year is that there is an end in sight!  But this also is an opportunity for a new beginning each fall.  Supporting staff with their use of technology is my job and this is a critical juncture in their learning.

When we have staff set goals for the year, and they don't quite meet those goals, it is a perfect time for them to reflect and plan/prep for the new year.  We have  1:1 staff do 9/9/9 goals in the fall and find them to be very helpful.  This format gives them some short-term wins and some long-term stretches.

9/9/9 stands for 9-day goal, 9-week goal, and 9-month goal.  As an administrator, I want to help staff reach these goals with time and support.  Reading their reflections after each helps us to know what support they need from us.

As you enter summer as a school staff I hope you relax and recharge, but also spend some time on your own skills with some tools that will be engaging and relevant in your classroom.

Off my soapbox.. into the tech tip.

Gimkit Example Screen

Gimkit is here and it's awesome!

Gimkit is made and maintained by high school students from Seattle. They crafted Gimkit to not only be a product that students want to use but teachers as well.

I encourage teachers to check it out and support these students by paying for the premium version.  

It is a combination of Kahoot and Quizlet that adds a level of gamification and understanding of compound returns.  It is extremely effective at repetition and lends itself nicely to any type of DOK level 1 stuff that kids just need to know.

A teacher starts a kit and his/her students go to play.gimkit.com on any phone, tablet, laptop, Chromebook, or desktop. Each student inputs the game's 4 digit code and their name.  Students answer questions on their own device at their own pace. Throughout a kit, each student will get exposure to the questions multiple times to ensure mastery.  Students earn in-game cash by answering questions. The more questions they answer correctly, the more money they earn.  This can be assigned individually, by team, by group, or by class. The teacher gets a live view to see how the class is performing real-time. 

And the coolest are the reports at the end for the entire group in addition to each individual.  Check out GimKit and add it to your toolbag of online apps to help your students learn in a fun gamified way in your classroom.

1 -

Free Image on Pixabay - Goals, Setting, Office, Work, Note. (2018). Cdn.pixabay.com. Retrieved 8 June 2018, from https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/28/21/07/goals-2691265_960_720.jpg

2 - 

(2018). Gimkit.com. Retrieved 8 June 2018, from https://www.gimkit.com/client/img/Home/MacScreenShot1.png

Teachers Are Awesome!

Quizlet Live - "Quarterback Method"

Another awesome couple days of training for our iPad 1:1 teachers.  We had a lot of growth this year as they reflected on their goals both personally and for their teaching and learning.

These days really re-energized me as we are able to have great conversations about student learning and allow them time to share and celebrate too.

We typically have some new tools, updates, and some logistics to cover for the upcoming weeks.  This training was really about ending the year process and looking toward next year leveraging their excitement as they reflected on their progress thus far.

Taking a selfie for the Amazing Race

Teachers are amazing and I am humbled every time we meet.  They are professionals who are always seeking out ways to help their students no matter what.  Some of them are personally not comfortable with technology but know that it is the right thing to do.  Our job as coaches, mentors, and facilitators is to guide their energy and provide them the tools and resources needed to improve student learning in their classroom.  We have to internalize the framework and have the ability to model and use the same tools we expect students to use.

This training we had them do an "Amazing Race" challenge using Google Tour Builder, Sites, and Forms.  I couldn't even count the number of small wins, lessons, and laughs we had during this part of the day.


Thank you to all the teachers to make our student's lives better every day and write sub plans to attend our trainings... trust me we get as much out of the day facilitating as they do learning and collaborating.

New Gmail Interface in Education

I have been away a while from the blog, but that doesn't mean I haven't been using some of the newly available tools.  Today I would like to give a hearty thumbs up to the new Gmail interface.  I have been using it since it was first available for our edu domain and am very pleased so far.

There are a slew of new features, but I want to focus on a few that will help busy school staff and students be more efficient.

First of all, you have to turn on the new features by visiting your Gear in Gmail and opting into the new interface.  If you don't see this option as the first listed, you will have to ask your domain administrator to turn this feature on for your domain.  It is well worth it.

By far my two favorite features are the smart reply messages you can use when replying to emails and the ability to snooze an email so that it comes to your inbox when you might want to look/work on that item.

But there are a couple other enhancements that really save me time.  The sidebar on the right with add-ons is great.  I now have my Calendar, Keep, Tasks, Zoom meetings, and Pod.  Pod is a cool free add-on that looks at the messages in your inbox and lets you create events from the content of emails, find free time, suggest 1:1 meeting times, and other great features without leaving your Gmail interface.

Overall I am appreciating the hover buttons to delete, archive, read, and snooze mails.  With an improved overall look and feel I can say that I am happy with it and will now roll it out to all the staff in our district as our standard.

iPevo Whiteboard App #edtech #ipevo

One of my favorite things to do is try out new EdTech tools, whether it's an app or a website. I recently saw on Twitter about the iPevo Whiteboard app and thought it looked like a great teacher tool.

It seems very similar to Stage Pro but it's free.

Sometimes, instead of paraphrasing what it says on a product's website, it's easiest just to paste it. Their website describes it this way:

The Intuitive Whiteboard App for iPad

The free IPEVO Whiteboard app turns your iPad into a portable, wireless whiteboard. Draw and annotate directly onto real-time video from your document camera or iPad's camera, onto a blank white canvas, or onto any image from your Photo Library.

Put the focus where it belongs

Whiteboard offers a simple and intuitive set of drawing and text tools. Add text boxes, shapes, and lines to emphasize key points of interest and highlight important parts of your image. Different colors and line thicknesses, undo and redo functions, a pointer tool, and a clear all function are right at your fingertips.

Choose the image you want to annotate

Multiple whiteboards ("boards") can be created and easily switched between, each using a different image as its background. Import photos from your Photo Library or take a picture with iPad's camera and use that snapshot directly. You can even draw on the real-time image feed from iPad's camera. Or, you can use the app as a true "whiteboard" and stick with the default white background.

Harness the power of your IPEVO document cam

When combined with the WS-01 Wireless Station and your IPEVO document camera (Point 2 View, Ziggi-HDor VZ-1 HD) , Whiteboard delivers a portable, wireless teaching tool using razor-sharp real-time images from your doc cam. Project and annotate text, artwork, diagrams, math equations, 3D objects and more. Teaching and presenting have never been this smart, effective, or fun.

Textingstory.com - Create your text story in video #edtech

I did random search for #edtech in Twitter today looking for cool tools and came across this great app from TextingStory.com. What it does is give students a place to fake text someone else and record their conversation in video.

Some obvious applications to this are students in an ELA class who are learning about character development or analysis and having to pretend to be that character to prove they know how they would think, act and text. The possibilities here are endless and students will really have to know a character's ins and outs in order to convey their personality.

Another situation might be in Social Studies or History class where students need to become a historical figure and text as if they were Einstein or George Washington or MLK. It's a fantastic way to prove what they've learned in a format that students will like.

The free app is customizable in the sense that students can change the names and colors of the text.

It's free for iOS and Android with the option to unlock other features.

Game Changer for Math Teachers!

When it comes to helping math teachers and showing them the value of Google Applications we always bump into... how do I type equations?  How do I easily make tests and worksheets?  I would love to go digital but how can I with the limited tools of Google Docs?

Well the answer has been around for almost a year, but I have re-discovered and love the simple ability of this Chrome extension to really make it easy!

EquateIO Chrome extension will insert math equations from common language, Latex language, spoken language, camera, or handwriting.  It doesn't get much better than that!

I tried from a worksheet with my phone camera, from voice, and from my tablet and they all worked seemlessly.  Getting the graph on assignments was a pain until now too!

They are offering this product and ReadWrite(an ELA product) free to teachers... Teachers can apply at: https://www.texthelp.com/en-us/products/free-for-teachers/

NewseumED - Media Literacy

Ray Birks, our Instructional Technology Facilitator extraordinaire, found this fabulous site for teachers on media literacy.  What a great free toolkit of resources provided for teachers.  I spent a bunch of time in the Media Literacy Booster pack and found the lessons relevant and engaging when thinking of middle school to high school learners.

The site has the full lesson with activities, videos, handouts, discussion topics, sources, and extensions.  There are a ton of resources here for teachers.

Current relevancy is obvious when I found "Filtering Out Fake News"  This lesson had videos activities and artifacts ready to go for the teacher.

Thank you to this museum for providing these detailed lessons and resources to help us teach students media literacy.

Check it out and get your free account today at https://newseumed.org

Awesome CheckMark by @EdTechTeam Update #gafe #edtechteam #checkmark

I wrote a few weeks back about a great Chrome extension called CheckMark that allows teachers to add quick, efficient feedback to students' work in Google Docs with a few clicks. The only issue I saw with the extension is that you couldn't customize the comments so you were stuck with the defaults. But as a few days ago you can now customize the comments and add new ones too.

Although this feedback isn't as good as one-to-one and it's not in-depth, it does give a quick way for teachers to address student needs and errors and for students to see exactly what they need to fix in their work. It's worth checking out! Download it here.

Book Review - Learning First, Technology Second . The Educators Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons

As an Instructional Tech Director it is my job to bring current information to our staff and students.  Once such current book was "Learning First, Technology Second by Liz Kolb.  I was introduced to this book by the ISTE Ed Tech Coaches Network.   They were doing a slow Twitter chat with a question every day for a couple months as we read the book.  This was a great way to keep us engaged and collaborating about the book.

“Technology integration is more complex than simply using a technology tool; pedagogical and instructional strategies around the tool are essential for successful learning outcomes.”
Excerpt From: Liz Kolb. “Learning First, Technology Second.” iBooks.  

I am not a reviewer, but I feel that if something makes you really think then tell others about it.  This book was the first I have read in a while that did a great job of preaching to the choir in my case, but doing it in such a way that I can share the ideas with our teachers in an effective way.

The fundamental shift in teaching and learning will only take place if the pedagogy of our staff and the learning of students come first, and the technology tool comes second.  This book lays out a very good set of research-based ideas regarding the use of technology in the classroom and gets to the point pretty quickly as she gives practical examples for the classroom teacher.  I appreciated the chapters about the three frameworks for technology integration into the classroom and especially like the rubric with the Triple E framework that will be very practical with my staff as they create and share lessons.  We plan on using some of the lessons from the book and sharing the Triple E Framework with our staff.

The book is worth checking out if you are anyone who is interested in really impacting student learning with the use of technology.

You can purchase at ISTE, and while you are there, become a member and connect with like-minded future thinking educators.

Yellkey.com Quickly Share a URL #edtech #yellkey

Sometimes you're doing a training or teaching with kids and you have to share a link quickly to a lot of people. Or you have a link to share that's long and cumbersome or maybe has some weird characters in it that can easily be confused (I'm looking at you goo.gl URL shortener and Google Classroom).

That's where a service like yellkey.com comes in. Simply visit the site, enter your URL and yellkey.com spits out a URL with a common word at the end that's easy to share and remember.

The link lasts for five minutes to 24 hours, depending on what you choose, and then goes away.

I believe this service used to be called shoutkey.com because I was going to blog about it a few weeks back but couldn't access the URL. If you're in a pinch and need to get a URL out, yellkey.com just might do the trick.

Tall Tweets Turns your Google Slides into a Gif #edtech #gsuite #talltweets #googleslides

Tall Tweets is a neat site that has one purpose, to turn your Google Slide presentations into GIFs. Why would you want to do that? GIFs are an easy and lightweight way to share your presentations on websites and social media, like Twitter or Facebook. Since a GIF is a bunch of images strung together you can upload to most sites and it will play like a slideshow or a movie.

Tall Tweets is very easy to use. Go to the website, press the button to select your presentation from your Google Drive and Tall Tweets does the rest. You'll be presented with an intermediate screen that allows you to adjust the width, duration and sequence of your slides and that's it. If you choose nothing on that screen the slides will rotate every second. Download it to your computer then upload it wherever you want.

Here's an example from a random slideshow that was in my Google Drive and a tutorial:

Take Control of Google Forms - Control Accepting Responses #gafe #gsuite #googleforms

Today's blog post is about a great Google Forms add on called Control Accepting Responses that allows you to turn a form on/off based on a time frame or the number of responses to the form. For example, I had a book to give away the other day and so I created a form with the simple question, "Do I want the book?" with the only response being "Yes".

The first person to respond with "Yes" got the book and then the form didn't accept any responses after that. Another example might be if you have an event and you want only the first 15 people who sign up to be eligible to come or get information. You could set up the form to stop after those 15 people reply.

This add on is similar to others I've used in the past, like Choice Eliminator, but this one is simple and works. You could also use this to start accepting responses to a form at a certain date/time. Or potentially use it for a timed test, but the developer says it's not 100% precise with the timing.

Google Calendar Updates - Optional Invites #gsuite #googlecalendar #edtech

Google Calendar recently made some updates to the interface which I like. They're slowly transforming all of their products to a cleaner look that matches their mobile apps. One nice change that was recently unveiled is the option to make attendees to your events optional, which is a nice touch. That way people know your expectations ahead-of-time and it's a bit more graceful and puts less pressure on attendees.

When you create an event, click on More Options, then Add Guests. Choose a name and then click the little person next to their name to make their status Optional.

Forms, Sheets, Slides, and Certificates.. Oh My!

If you are a Googly geek like me then you are always trying to find new cool and efficient ways to use the tools you have at your fingertips. 

I have loved AutoCrat for years and now that you can use with Slides... it is a worthy blog post and YouTube video how-to for staff to use.  It is hard to put my smile into this post, I am grinning  😊.

So here goes.  AutoCrat combined with Google Forms and Google Slides gives you endless possibilities for auto-creating documents from a Google Form submission.

YouTube How-To - https://youtu.be/Ku8XFxE4Wzk (14min step by step)

Here are the steps in words:

• Create a Google Form with the information that will go onto your certificate, award, poster, etc.
• Create a "Slide" document to be your certificate, award, poster, etc.
• Create tags inside the slide document for the fields from the form by indicating them surrounded by <<FIELD NAME>>
• From the Google Sheet that the Form creates, get the add-on called AutoCrat, install and run
• Cruise through the AutoCrat wizard to connect your Sheet to your Slide document.  Make sure you set to Trigger on Form
• Get a short URL for your form to share with your staff so they can use from anywhere at anytime.
• Sit back and enjoy as the forms come in and the certificates get created instantly and shared with the staff.

A big thank you to CloudLab a part of New Visions Public Schools for their creation of AutoCrat

Use CheckMark by @EdTechTeam for Quick and Easy Feedback in Google Docs #edtech

CheckMark is a Chrome Extension that works with Google Docs to help teachers give quick feedback to students Google Docs. Nothing beats quality face-to-face feedback but sometimes in the rough draft phase of writing students need quick help with punctuation, grammar and spelling. That's where CheckMark comes in handy.

Simply click the extension in your Chrome toolbar to turn it green. Then double click on a word or phrase in a Google Docs and a contextual keyboard will appear when you hover over your selection. Clicking on one of the keys of this keyboard will automatically add a comment on the right side of the document with your selection.

Examples: capitalization, spelling, punctuation, sentence fragment, tense and many more.

Classroomscreen.com - All Your Teacher Tools in One Place #edtech #classroomscreen

Classroom Screen is a tool that's been out for awhile now and it keeps getting better with new widgets and tools added all the time. You can tell the developer is passionate about it and is getting good feedback.

Classroom Screen is a one-stop tool central for teachers with multiple, practical things teachers can use everyday to manage their classroom. The tools include:

• random name chooser
• sound level monitor
• QR code generator
• drawing space
• text boxes
• work symbols to let students know noise levels
• traffic light
• timer
• clock

In addition to the classroom tools, the developer recently added a tool called Exit Poll, which allows users to press a button on a device or touch screen to show how they felt about a certain topic or lesson. The only drawback to this is it only works on one device, meaning students can't chime in from their own devices like Poll Everywhere. But if you only have one device or a touch screen this would be a way for students to tell you how things went as they left class.

If you're looking for some classroom management tools this is a great place to go.

Safely Watching YouTube in the Classroom #edtech

Ah, YouTube, wonderful site with many educational videos and the potential for kids to show what they've learned and teach others, but bastion of inappropriate videos and terrible comments that have no place in the classroom. Ads are also a part of the equation, a necessary evil of a free website, but they can be intrusive too. Not to mention the related videos and suggested items that clutter up your screen and take kids down rabbit trails. If only there was a better way...

Here are a few alternatives to just going to YouTube in front of your students and watching videos:

1. Download the videos ahead of time - This one obviously takes the most preparation but is very useful because it's quicker to play videos from your computer vs streaming, especially if you're additionally streaming to an Apple TV or other device. The sites I currently use to download videos are below and they all allow you to copy and paste a YouTube URL into a search bar and then download the video. In addition, they have quicker ways to grab the video.

• yout.com - 0n YouTube, if you simply remove the letters 'ube' from the URL of a video and press Enter you will be redirected to yout.com and the video will be ready to download
• dlyoutube.com - same goes for dlyoutube.com, simply add the letters 'dl' to the front of the URL and press Enter.
• y2mate.com - just type 'pp' after the word YouTube and press Enter

You can also grab the audio from a YouTube video on these sites if that's all you need.


2. Use the DF YouTube Chrome Extension - This is a little tool that, once downloaded, lives in your Chrome toolbar and automatically hides all of the little nasties when you go to YouTube. Simple and clean.

3. Use alternative websites to view YouTube content - The following sites allow you to copy and paste the YouTube URL into their search bar and the video is then streamed on their site with none of the yuckies and unintended content.

• https://watchkin.com/
• https://safeshare.tv/
• http://viewpure.com/

Note: if YouTube is blocked in your district, these sites will not allow you to bypass that as they simply stream the video from YouTube onto their site.

Tween Tribune - Adjust Reading Level of Articles, Give Quizzes #edtech

One of the features of technology in the classroom is that it can personalize or customize content to fit the user's needs instead of being one-size-fits-all. One site that does that very well is NewsELA, which takes current events and adjusts them to the reader's Lexile level with the click or tap of a button.

Another free site that I came across today that does the same thing is Tween Tribune which boasts the following:

• Daily AP news articles
• Lexile® leveled for K-12
• Self-scoring quizzes customized by Lexile® level
• Critical thinking questions
• Student commenting
• Espanol AP articles
• Weekly lesson plans
• Weekly video
• Weekend "Monday Morning Ready" newsletter as prep for the week ahead

Herp Derp Chrome Extension for YouTube #chrome #edtech

I fully admit, and my colleagues know, that I am a tool hound. I love finding a great tool, add-on or extension that does something cool, makes my job more efficient or makes life better. In some cases finding a tool that does all three makes my day. Chrome Extensions are some of those tools that I use every day, in some cases they're working in the background and I don't even remember I installed them, like Always Clear Downloads, which clears the Download bar after something has downloaded so I don't have to go and click on that little 'x' in the corner. Brilliant!

The one I'm going to talk about today is called Herp Derp for YouTube. I was presenting at a Google Summit last year about Chrome extensions and I opened up the floor for attendees to share their favorite extensions and this was one of their replies. What Herp Derp for YouTube does is change all of the comments below the videos to the words Herp Derp, which is nice when you have a classroom full of students who are keenly aware that there are often nasty comments or you don't want the comments to be a distraction. This could also be pushed out by a Google Administrator to all students along with Distraction Free YouTube to help hide things that can interfere with student learning.

I also love it as a father because I know if my kids are watching YouTube at home they won't be exposed to comments that are inappropriate. When they ask why it says Herp Derp it opens the door to a great discussion about what is helpful and hurtful when it comes to comments; a digital citizenship moment is born!

Certifications for the Love of Learning

We all know that great teachers are lifelong learners.  They try to instill this into their students every day.  As parents we want our own kids to seek out learning and embrace and learn from change.  But sometimes as teachers and administrators, we can get buried in the day to day of work.  This is not a bad thing, but sometimes we need to do some professional development to better ourselves, challenge our minds, and create the excitement again for learning.

A great way to do this is through certifications in your favorite apps and technology systems. There are many programs where you can become an expert and become an ambassador, trainer, or just a certified user.  They take time and you have to schedule that time or it will never happen.  The payoff is immeasurable in your own feeling of efficacy and achievement.  One bonus is that some of these programs come with some freebies and badges which will enable you to branch out into training and presenting your ideas to a broader audience. 

If you are Google Apps for Education school I highly recommend doing the Level 1 and Level 2 Certification classes and exams as a teacher.  There are great pedagogy concepts and you will improve your use of those tools for learning in your classroom.  The exams are inexpensive and if you ask your school admin or district tech admin, I would bet they might pay for it too!

So put yourself into the learner role and get certified and then apply to present at a conference to give back to your fellow teachers, it will be empowering.

Some Useful Links:

• Google Training and Certification
• Microsoft Training and Certification
• Seesaw Ambassador Program
• Apple Distinguished Educator
• Adobe Education Leader

Embed into New Google Sites #gafe @linktohansen @photosforclass

The New Google Sites is a big departure from the classic version, not only in form but in function. It is much more intuitive to use and has a much cleaner look. One of the best features that was just added a few months ago is the ability to embed another website into your own site. Below are a few ways that feature can be useful for a classroom teacher or administrator.

Soapbox: if you're not on Twitter, get on Twitter. You won't be disappointed.

You can now easily embed a Twitter feed into your site by following a few simple steps. There is an easy-to-follow tutorial here thanks to @linktohansen. I suggest using the publish.twitter.com site instead of the Twitter widgets because it does the same thing in an easier way.

Another great page you an embed is Photos for Class, which is a great site that helps students search for copyright free images and, when downloaded, gives the citation right on the bottom of the image as a caption. You can embed this site just as easily as Twitter and give students a quick reference place AND teach good digital citizenship at the same time.

Here are the directions from their site to get you started. Basically, copy and paste the embed code and add it to your Google Site.

Follow and Archive Twitter in Google Sheets #gafe Using Get TAGS @mhawksey

I'm participating in a Twitter slow chat with educators and technology folks around the world and sometimes it gets hard to follow. Someone tweeted about Get TAGS that allows you to collect and archive tweets in a Google Sheet so you can go back and look at them and interact later, as well as keep them in Drive.

I appreciate that not only are all of the associated tweets in one spot but there are links to the tweets so I can jump to Twitter to retweet or reply to them. Thanks to @mhawksey for creating this.

TAGS is a free Google Sheet template which lets you setup and run automated collection of search results from Twitter.

New Tech Tools to Play With

I'm going to piggyback on my colleague's last post and share some cool tools that I've come to like lately.

One of them is a Chrome extension called Sir Links a Lot and it what it does is take a Google Doc and give you multiple options on how you can share it and what other users can do with that document. For example, you can Force Copy, put the doc in Preview mode, make it a Template or a PDF. It also has a button to copy the link to the Clipboard, put a Google shortened link in the clipboard or open the link in a new tab.


Another Chrome Extension is called Clip it Good and it allows you to quickly save any image online into your Google Photos with a simple right-click. You can even create folders in the Google Photos and drop selected images into different folders. Always remember that images you download are not always available for you to use simply because they are easy to download.



My final tool is called Remote for Slides and the beauty of this Chrome Extension is that it allows you to use any web browser (phone included) to advance your Google Slides presentation.

Shorten it up!

URL Shorteners

An oldie but a goodie.  My tech tip this week for my administrative team is a worthwhile blog post for everyone.  It was a good reminder how tools change and we have to keep spiralling back to show relevant content and possible new tools along with it.

My staff continues to love digital, but we have several who continue to use the paper pencil and whiteboard when training, teaching, meeting, etc.  Posting URLs in a digital space like Classroom, Moodle, Web, or other medium is no big deal and we don't care how long and ugly they are.

But if you want an on the fly formative, survey, exit ticket or have people access something quickly sometimes the quickest is to put up a URL and have them type it in, but with the length of the URLs in Google Apps, or anything else for that matter, is crazy.  I would never put one on the board unless it was SUPER short... 20 characters or less is always my goal.

URL shorteners to the rescue.  Their are tons of them out their and they all have their pros and cons.  PS.  Great for Twitter too with it's limited character count.

Here are a few of my favorites and why:

• bit.ly - I love that it is short and if you log into it you can have it store all of them so that you can easily find them again or look at the analytics on whether the short url is being used.  Another bonus is to customize them with real words that make them easier to use than random characters.  An added bonus is that it has a Chrome extension to quickly make them on the fly.
• gg.gg - Super short, customizable, and has QR code generator. You can login and save your shortened links too.  Also you can see the hits from which ip they came from.
• is.gd - Super short, customizable, hit tracking, button to make lowercase pronounceable, super quick with no ads.
• goo.gl - Google's tool connected with your Google account. Tracks clicks and provides QR code.  Also Chrome extension.  Non customizable.
• tinyurl.com - The one that started it all.  Handy, quick, no customizing links or login.

Enjoy and remember to shorten those links!

Been a long time!

Ok, it has been a while since we have added to the blog.  But we are back.  We have truly been continuing to share with our staff and others, but primarily through Twitter.  Twitter is so convenient and now with the number of characters almost as thorough as this format.

So on to today's tip.  As I prepare to present at the NCCE conference in Seattle in February on becoming a "Digital Administrator", I find myself pondering how with all of the demands on current principals and district office how do they find the time to learn new ways to be efficient and use technology effectively in their role.  This can be a daunting task as their email boxes swell and they just try to get through the tyranny of the urgent.

One strategy I am using is to present 1-3 tools at every leadership team meeting that can be quickly demoed and adopted.  This has been extremely popular with our administration and encouraging to me as I see them using the tools regularly.

Linked here is a slideshow of each of the tips I share with my admin team and keep adding to this so eventually they will have a pretty good set of tools to use, but the beauty of this is that as tools change they will be able to evolve with them and change their practice.

Hopefully as we give time to these practices and value their use the admin become model users and see the benefits of using technology for learning.