#edchat #edtech
Eradiquer la pauvreté
I just found that Atomic Learning is giving away this eBook to help schools get money from grants. I call it “Begging for Bucks” but we all have to do it. Many of the great tech items that I have for my kids came from grants.
Here is a quote from the forward that Karl Samp wrote…
“We would be naïve to think that all changes resulting from our current economic challenges are good for education. Larger class sizes, fewer support services, and decreased resources for upgrading texts and supplies are all having negative outcomes on student learning. Yet, with the help of grant funding, you may find your school district in a position to greatly advance its use of technology.”
Here is the link to download the free eBook.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
Hey everyone,
I have decided to move my podcast from my other website www.BradFlickinger.com to here. The next few episodes will just be to test the system — so don’t listen yet. I will let you know when I am up and running again.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
#edtech #edchat #elemchat
How could I "flip" my U.S. Constitution podcasting lesson?
In the past, trying to differentiate instruction in a tech class was almost impossible.
Take for example, teaching my fourth grade students how to edit their newly recorded podcasts in Audacity. I could only go as fast as the slowest student, because I didn’t want to leave anyone behind. “Okay everyone, let’s add music to our podcast. Under “Project” select “Add Track.” I would say. Then I would have to go around the room and help those students that were now lost. Meanwhile my tech-whiz students would just sit there bored out of their minds. This kind of instruction was not working, two or three students were holding up the entire class.
Then the idea of a flipped classroom came along, where the students learn content on their own and get help from the teacher later when they are working on their skills. But the thought of making all those screencasts of the steps involved made my great idea fade. I just do not have the extras hours that doing something like this would take.
If only I had some screencasts…
Students learning from screencasts about Audacity.
I chewed on that for a few days when it suddenly hit me — I use screencasts all the time to learn new tech skills. My school has a subscription to Atomic Learning for our teachers, but I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t use it for my students. So I had the guys at Atomic Learning set up a generic log-in for my students and then assigned them the Audacity lessons that they would need to do their U.S. Constitution podcasts.
Boom baby! Instant differentiated instruction by flipping my classroom with Atomic Learning screencasts. Besides, there screencasts are way more professional than I would have done. Now my students can go as fast or as slow as they want when it comes to building new skills. My tech-whiz students now just pick and choose any video tutorials that they might need while other students will watch the same tutorial three times until they get what it is talking about.
Now I can spend my time “working the room,” helping students one on one without slowing down the whole class.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
Below is one of the U.S. Constitution podcasts that my students made.
#edtech #edchat
I had a little extra time over the Thanksgiving break to finish my new video how-to guide called 10 Steps to Success Student News Podcasting.
In this Video How-To guide I give you all the secrets that I use to get my elementary students to do the best student-news podcast on the web, and how our news podcast makes our school over $1000 a year.
Step 1: Developing a Show Format, Step 2: How to Set-Up your Studio, Step 3: Writing your Script, Step 4: Setting Up your Show in iTunes, Step 5: Putting Together a Great News Team, Step 6: How to Train your Team, Step 7: What to do Before the Show, Step 8: Doing the show, Step 9: What do do After the Show, Step 10: Extras.
Here is the intro video so you can see what it is all about. I have it for sale in my store (above) for $35.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary
#edtech #edchat
My friends over at Atomic Learning have organized a little “fireside chat” to talk about technology integration best practices. Here is a link to their info. http://blogs.atomiclearning.com/youre-invitedtechnology-integration-best-practices-fireside-chat
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
#edtech #elemchat #edchat
For the past two years teachers have been asking for my screenplays for the movies that I make with my elementary students, so I have now made them as PDFs and are now available online in my new section I have added to my website just called the store (see above on the menu bar).
Enjoy,
Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary
#edtech #edchat #elemchat
My computer lab finally came up on the list to get an interactive whiteboard — I know, I know, the computer lab should be the first classroom to get one and not the last one, but that’s how it ended up. I have wanted one for years, but to be honest, I knew that my classroom teachers needed them more than myself so I kept quiet and waited until it was my turn.
The district installers haven’t come by yet so my Smartboard is on a portable cart, but it will do for now.
So as I stood in the middle of my room looking at my new interactive white board, I wondered; “Now what?”
I scratched my head for a few minutes, then I logged into my Atomic Learning account and searched their database of tutorials and came across this workshop…
I have an interactive white board now what?
The tutorials that make up this workshop series will attempt to answer some of the many questions that instructors have about using an interactive whiteboard in their classroom:
- What types of interactive whiteboards are there and how do they work?
- What are the benefits of using an interactive whiteboard, both for my students AND for me?
- How do I get started creating engaging, authentic IWB activities to use in my own classroom?
- Where can I find communities of educators who are using the same kind of interactive whiteboard that I use?
Whether you have a SMART Board™, Promethean ActivBoard®, Mimio®, Easiteach®, or some other type of device or software application that allows you to build interactivity into a presentation, you should find something of interest in this workshop. Be sure to download the reference document that accompanies this tutorial series for a list of additional resources, including links to user communities, example activities and lessons, and continuing professional development opportunities related to interactive whiteboard use.
Perfect, and after about 20 minutes of watching the online tutorials and lessons, I had two pages of notes and ideas to apply in my classroom today.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
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I just uploaded a new episode of Elementary Tech Teacher’s Journal.
Episode Number 49 for the week of November 7, 2011
Providing an Authentic Edtech Experience
Show Notes
By putting extra effort to provide our students with an authentic experience with edtech projects we can get them to do so much more.
http://www.bradflickinger.com/Brad_Flickinger/Podcast/Podcast.html
This week’s episode is sponsored by Atomic Learning.
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This past weekend I was in Charlotte, NC to work with a great group of teachers on integrating more technology into their lessons as part of some blended professional development I was doing for Atomic Learning. I was about half-way through the first half of the morning when a teacher asked me how I get students more interested in doing tech projects. It was then that I explained my secret formula for edtech lessons…
Curiousity –> Investigation –> Skills –> Success –> Passion
Let me explain…
Before I talk about technology lessons I will use this formula with a sport like basketball. Let’s say a student goes out one recess and sees other students having fun playing basketball, he is curious to see what all the fun is about. This curiousity leads to investigation, where the students looks into the sport of basketball and starts to formulate questions like, “How do I dribble?” “What’s the key?” “What’s a 3-pointer?” His investigation then leads to the desire to develop skills like dribbling, shooting, etc. So with the help of more experienced players and a coach he starts to develop these skills and if he gets good enough and sticks with it long enought to get over the learning curve he might hopefully experience success. With more and more experience his success increases and soon he has apassion for the sport. If he was to leave this formula anytime before success, he might never get to the level of passion.
Now take the story from above and plug in any ol’ tech project like; podcasting, video production, blogging, etc.
First your lesson needs to peek their natural desire of curiousity.
Then you must make available all of the resources for their investigation.
You must also coach them through the skills they will need to do this edtech project.
Keep pushing so that they experience success and maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ll get the passion for it. And isn’t that why we became educators?
Follow this formula and you will have great success with your edtech projects.
- Brad Flickinger, Tech Teacher, Bethke Elementary School
#edtech #edchat
Last week I got an email from the people in charge of video production for our district asking schools to consider having a short intro video on their websites that highlight interesting things about their school. Well, my principal got the same email and asked if this is something I wanted to take on. I thought the idea sounded great so I started to do a little research. My first stop was Atomic Learning, which to no surprise I found that they had a project called Tour My School. http://www.atomiclearning.com/k12/la_tour
This project had all my work done for me, here is the description from their website:
The example project created for this Lesson Accelerator combines images, narration, and music to produce a video presentation about the student’s school. The resulting multimedia slideshow might be used as part of an orientation process to introduce new or prospective students to the school building. Students will learn how to import and edit images, record their voice, add transitions, music, and finally export their project as a movie file. The example project could be easily adapted to present information about your own school, or for projects in any curriculum area that could benefit from integrating images with music and sound.
See, perfect. So for a project that I thought was going to take me hours to figure out and plan, I was now done in 10 minutes. Nice!
- Brad Flickinger, tech teacher, Bethke Elementary School
