The Purple Parade

I had the pleasure of sitting in on a training in our district today by two of my colleagues (Amy and Heather).  I love watching them speak about their experiences with flipping the classroom.  They are so passionate about making their lessons available for students 24/7 and holding students accountable for their learning.  However, only 10% of the flipping process means that you should be assigning the videos for homework.  During their workshop, they showed a video by Lodge McCammon that describes the "pitch" for videotaping your lessons for homework is just 10% of the reason of why you should do it.  View the video below to hear Lodge describe it himself. Flipping the classroom can be such a powerful tool in the classroom.  Think about reteaching...  Think about instruction for students who are absent...  Think about having yourself in the classroom as your own co-teacher!  These are the reasons that you should be flipping your lessons!  Think about it and then do i

With the inspiration of Google expert David Wees, I used his Choose Your Own Adventure idea with Google Forms for a Google training I am facilitating. Using his Choose Your Own Adventure story and adding some more details and pages, I created my own story based on his original.  It is called "The Lily Pad".   https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DX3uhiwGehYYk3ya_ww7cxriAlnY85P2jEtzUEAUL6A/viewform Using the "Go To Page Based on Answer" option in Google Forms, you can guide your viewers to different pages based on the answer they choose.  Think of the movie BIG with Tom Hanks.  At the end of the movie, he and his "girlfriend" pitch the idea of a choose your own adventure comic book with different cartridges with multiple choices to guide the reader which ever way they choose.  They can read the story over and over again with different choices.  Not only would this be an engaging reading activity for students, they could actually work on their writing skills b

A Teacher's Best Friend!?! I know that this post may be a little touchy for some, but I think it does need to be said.  As I, and other educators, begin to build their professional learning networks on social media, many educators are turning to Pinterest for their teaching ideas.  I, too, use Pinterest for ideas.  I have boards on all types of educational topics.  I also have lifestyle boards with recipes, ideas for the house, my hopes and dreams, and more.  Pinterest can really be a time sucker if you let it. But, it can also be an educator's best friend.  There are so many great educational "pinners". However, Pinterest can also be a detriment to education if teachers use many of the ideas that are posted.  I love the ideas for classroom organization, experiments, instructional technology, and student collaboration.  However, I am seeing too many pins that are worksheets and things that say they are "Common Core Aligned".  I am really weary about th

As a "newbie" to the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference, I didn't quite know what to expect.  I've been to conferences before, but this was a conference on steroids.  There were so many workshops to choose from. So many different types of workshops, connecting opportunities, demonstrations, etc. were available that I wasn't quite sure what to do. I think I must've looked like a little lost puppy in a huge, unknown world.  The first day I was there, I walked into this huge convention center to ISTE Central and was overwhelmed.  It looked like ground control for NASA or something.  I signed into a computer where immediately my nametag was printed for me, and I was handed all the materials I needed to get started on my journey.  "WOW" was all I could think of.  "This is going to be great"! From my hotel room, which overlooked the loading dock of the convention center, I could see all of the crates with va