Parent Teacher Conference Night

I have parents coming into my classroom today asking how their child is doing in my class. They only have a 95, how can they get a higher grade?
Really?
This happens over and over again. I wonder why they're here. I don't think it's to make themselves feel better about how great their child is doing in school. I also don't think that they are very worried about the 95 not being a 98. I believe it's to show their child that they are fully invested in their education.
Parents who show up to Parent Teacher Night are sending a message to their child that education is important and I'm here to support that. I'm here to help you get to where you can be. I'm taking time out of my schedule to look at what you're doing every day for six and a half hours.
So it's not about the 95. It's about taking an afternoon off from work and waiting in line to talk to a teacher for seven minutes because that's how important this is.
So thank you parents, for being here.

Another Month, Another Infographic

Here's one for the principals

What social media is allowed in your school?

Teachers sitting in a classroom on a Saturday

I recently taught a Digital Citizenship class for NYC teachers using Common Sense Media and I was truly amazed. These people spent their day off to come into the city and sit in a classroom all day, just to learn how to better serve their students. We spent the day getting better, in some ways by me, but mostly from what everyone brought to the table. Everyone shared something: a resource, a classroom hack, or answers to a question. Everyone was so generous. I came away from the day with a wonderful feeling. Teachers are awesome. 

I don’t know of other professions where everyone shares their best practices. You don’t see salespeople sharing their sales pitches, you don’t see plumbers posting how they fixed a radiator. Teachers are one of the few professions where people are so proud of their work they want to share it so that other teachers can benefit from it too. And that’s not all they do. They bring work home, they steal supplies from home and bring them to school, and they spend their own money to equip their classroom. You’ve heard all the stories, most of you have done one, if not all those things.I just want to stop and say, thank you teachers. I’m proud to be a colleague of yours. You might not be told it very often, but you’re awesome.

It's not just about the doughnuts.

My good friend Lisa Nielsen wrote about this on her blog, so I turned it into a pictograph. Did she miss anything?

My tech lesson when the internet is down

You have a great lesson planned for today, and the internet is down. Your supervisor is lurking in the doorway, you can just smell the observation coming. What do you do?

You teach your kids how to create hyperlinks with just PowerPoint or Google Slides!

Here’s my plan.

Begin the lesson with having the students create the first slide, a “Table of Contents” sort of slide. Mine looks like this.

Here's the basic slideshow to start with. 

This can be a template that you send them 

or make them create it themselves.

Instruct them to then create the rest of the slides, adding information about themselves. I like this lesson towards the beginning of the year so I can get to know my students quicker.

Choose the correct slide to link each bullet point.

I model how they then highlight the text “Where I was Born” and choose Insert-Hyperlink. They link it to the slide titled “Where I was Born.” I model another one, but most kids get it and finish the rest of the links themselves.

This is great, but it only links them out to the slide, not back to the homepage. So to complete the project I have them create a Home link button on one of the slides, insert the hyperlink to the TOC page, and then copy and paste it to the rest of the slides.

Insert-Autoshape to create the Home Button.

This explains how hyperlinks work, and how a website can be built, all without the internet.

It works well for me, and I hope it helps you out too.

I'm a certified bilingual nerd

I recently earned my Google Level 2 Certification, and it felt great, but I'm just as proud earning my Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert Badge for this year too. I like to say that I'm bilingual: I speak Google and Office. Both prove I met certain requirements, but they proved it in different ways.

You can earn your Google Certification anytime you want, just pay the $25 and you have three hours to complete the test.

The MIE Badge is only awarded once a year so you have a long time to complete the tasks, but if you miss the deadline you’re out of luck. I submitted my application 15 minutes before the midnight deadline, cause I’m organized and efficient. I knew about the deadline for MONTHS, yet there I am cramming like it’s a final for a class. I’ll never change.

The Google Test is a bunch of multiple choice questions and a pile of specific tasks you need to complete. Get enough correct, and you’re in. Don’t assume this test is easy-it’s not. You may be great at some Google products, but you need to know enough about ALL of them to pass. Google does provide all sorts of study materials and sample questions to prepare for the test, so if you do your homework you can pass it. I didn’t pass Level 2 the first time, you can read about my humiliation here.

Microsoft has a bunch of courses that you can take, just complete a certain amount of them. You watch videos, or complete interactive tasks, and there’s usually a short quiz at the end. The quiz will tell you whether you got the questions right or wrong as you go, and you can retake the quizzes if you don’t pass the first time. There’s over 100 different courses and badges you can earn along the way. The final piece for their certification is to create a two-minute video or Sway on how this process has influenced you and how you will implement what you’ve learned in your classroom.

Both methods of assessment were effective in their own way. I proved I can do specific tasks and had specific knowledge of Google products, but Microsoft just wanted to make sure I knew about all the things that were available to me and how I can be a better 21^st century teacher for my students. I only really had to prove what I knew by creating a Sway, which are very cool things, by the way.

The Google test gives you the results within seconds, the longest few seconds of your life.

The Microsoft results were released a month after the deadline.

The Google Badge email shows up a day later, the Microsoft Badge shows up with the congratulations email.

The Google Certification is a personal thing, you earn it for your own gratification.  

The Microsoft Badge is a global event. If you are connected to Microsoft in any of the many social media ways you can be, you will see that people in India, Germany and Mexico got their badges the same day you did. It made this planet feel a lot smaller seeing proud teachers from all around the world showing off the same badge as you.

So, I have my nerd cred from both Google and Microsoft. I learned a lot from both processes, and I am a much better teacher for it. It’s vital that teachers remain students, it’s the only way we learn.