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 less...

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...

With the shift in education and the rise of online learning, many teachers and school districts have begun using online learning management systems.  Some well-known LMSs are Blackboard and Moodle.  But, there is a free LMS out there and it is called Edmodo .  This is a definite cost-effective way of integrating online learning without the expensive of Blackboard or Moodle system.  It looks very similar to Facebook, so the learning curve for teachers and students is very low.  As a district, you can sign up for a district domain.  The administrator of the domain has access to see all teachers and students enrolled in the system.  Student sign themselves up (with a teacher code) so the teachers don't have to type every student into the system.  Once a student is signed up with one teacher, they can join other teacher's classes by entering more teacher codes.  Students can upload their assignments to Edmodo for the teacher to view and grad...

I have blogged about Google before, but I'm doing it again!  I am really loving Google Apps for Education the more and more that I use it.  Everyday I learn something new!  One of the best things is Google Forms.  With Google Forms, you can create surveys and assessments for the students to take online.  It is great for student engagement and achievement.  I found a great article online about the many things you can do with Google Forms.  It even has a slide show of over 80 more ideas for using Google Forms in the classroom.  Just click the link below and start enjoying all that Google Forms can do for you!  http://edte.ch/blog/2008/08/23/10-google-forms-for-the-classroom