Friday, May 1, 2015

To think...

"Come on, ride the train, woo woo, hey, ride it, woo woo.  Come on, ride the train. It's the Choo Choo, ride it, woo woo."

I am off track, no pun intended.  The GAFE train continued on at CMS for teachers as they dug deeper into Google Apps for Education.  In March, teachers chose a playlist to follow independently or with a colleague.  A tool we used was Blendspace, which allows you to personalize learning.  Teachers can organize resources such as video tutorials and assignments.  You can have students take assessments and track their progress.  This playlist along with other playlist models provide differentiated learning opportunities and recognizes pace too.


Playlist options teachers could explore were Docs, Presentation, Forms, and Spreadsheets.  These four Google apps are the foundation for changing the way we interact with each other as a staff and will inform the learning experiences we provide for students.  Through this PD teachers learned how to use the apps but also experienced being a student in a digital learning environment.  Shout out to +Jessica Geremia for creating this experience.

CHOICE is the theme of the year because it is so important that we emphasize choice for students. We provided a choice learning environment that recognizes learning styles, pace, and depths of knowledge.  This work continued in April.  Model Educators provided a series of workshop that teachers could choose learn about as thinking about using technology as the third layer to enhancing teaching and learning.

Offerings included a Google Presentations.  How can a teacher use slides to enhance students in classroom individually, in partners, or in small groups?
Another session was about the use of Padlet.  Wow, this is an amazing virtual bulletin board that has various uses in a classroom from posting comments to to a dilemma, brainstorming ideas to write about, creating lists, posting links that need to be shared, posting information for others to note, etc...

A third offering focused on Google Cultural Institute.  This amazing resource allows teachers and students to "discover exhibits and collections from museums and archives all around the world. Explore cultural treasures in extraordinary detail, from hidden gems to masterpieces." Talk about enhancing the humanities.


To think that we have only learned about probably less than 1% of the technology resources in the world.  To think that this less than 1% will make us so much better.  To think about the types of masterpieces teachers will be creating because of the little we know and what we will know more about!  It is a fascinating time in education.