Flair Pens and Lattes

When I visited the expo hall at ISTE, I came across something called Kami. I made a note of it in my phone and then went home to investigate what this tech tool was. I experimented and have already used it once. Kami is a web based document annotation software. To use it, you first create an account with Kami. Kami can connect to your Google mail account. If you read the last post, you know that I use Google Drive for ALMOST everything. You import a file from your desktop or Google Drive. You can then directly annotate on the document. It's so much easier than using Adobe. Kami came in very useful when I was planning my first pop up party for C + I yesterday. For those of you who don't know, I became a merchandiser for Chloe and Isabel jewelry last month (perfect time to start as I have weekdays free) and love being involved in this company. I needed to download a party host planning sheet and fill it out. I downloaded the file from my online office to my desktop and then ...

Is there a teacher who hasn't used Google in some way? I don't think so. I think everyone knows how to use Google Drive and has used Google Docs. Everyone knows how to use it, but today I'm talking about how I've used it in my classroom. I have been using Google for pretty much everything since freshman year of college.  I say pretty much everything because I did use Microsoft Word for my class newsletter template and some signs for my classroom. I'm fortunate that I learned to use Google Drive at the beginning of college so I had no problem transitioning to student teaching and then teaching in a GAFE district where students had personal gmail accounts from the time they enter kindergarten to their graduation. In college, I used it to type term papers (I never dealt with a computer crashing and if I had, my documents would have been safe), sorority meeting minutes, suggested that we use Google forms for our master recruitment list when I was my sorority's recru...

Last Wednesday I visited the expo hall at ISTE and absolutely loved getting to meet with the exhibitors to discuss cool new tech tools. My absolute favorite was getting to see a performance at the Flocabulary booth. Flocabulary reminds me of Hamilton as it uses hip hop songs to teach about concepts.  On their website ,  there are tons of videos for academic concepts. Rappers actually pair up with content experts to write the lyrics to the songs. Not only are they engaging for students and help students learn, but the songs go in depth into content. Students can also write their own lyrics for songs. What a great way to show student learning and understanding.  I would have loved to have had this resource for my sixth grade students. I don't see this as being as useful for students below third grade. The one downside to Flocabulary is that it's not free. Individuals, schools or districts have to pay. Individual accounts run $97 a year, so it's not cheap. I'm hoping ...

I wrote in my first post that when I was beginning my journey in education, I was hesitant to use technology and was a little bit scared when I was placed in a classroom where students were using technology for almost everything. I believe that many teachers echo this attitude. I like to joke that there are two types of teachers: ones who fully integrate technology (or do so whenever they can--my first classroom had no smartboard and I was doing a lot of long term planning to be able to reserve the iPad cart) and ones who are scared to. When I was at ISTE last Saturday, there was a session on how to engage reluctant teachers to use technology. Therefore, I decided it would be perfect to include a post about that in the blog. It's scary to use technology--you have to experiment with apps and find out what technology works for your students. There are so many apps and websites that you can't use them all. You find your favorites and easy to use for students and go with it. Du...

Today, I was given the opportunity to be a beta tester for the Kahoot app after seeing a tweet seeking testers. It seemed perfect to talk about on my blog today. As many of you know, I have a bit of an obsession with Kahoot. I even won one of their T-shirts at iPadpalooza 2015.  Since learning about it at iPadpalooza 2014, I have been a fan of this web-based learning platform. So were my sixth grade students. Kahoot test review days were some of their favorites. Many of my students had iPhones or other phones connected to the web, so I didn't usually have to reserve devices which was wonderful. They loved it!!!! Sixth grade ELA final test review of 2014-2015. If you don't already know what Kahoot is, let me tell you. Kahoot is a game based quiz platform. The teacher creates the quiz. Pictures and videos can be added to the questions as well.  You can also choose from quizzes that are already made, but I created my own. Kids go to kahoot.it and use a game pin to access ...

Today, I spent some time creating with the free iPad app Canva so it seemed like the perfect app to talk about on the blog today! When I first learned about Canva during an iPadpalooza 2015, I was not a big fan of it. Though I created a few things with it, I got frustrated. I didn't think it was user friendly. When I re-visited the app this past Saturday at the ISTE HackEd Smackdown session, I decided to give it a second chance. First things first-- Canva is a graphic design tool. I prefer to use the iPad app, but you can also design online. When you log onto Canva, you can choose from a variety of templates--social media, instagram post, poster, blog graphic, facebook cover, photo college, Pinterest graphic, business card and so many more. When I began designing the Facebook and Twitter cover for this blog, I chose the Facebook Cover. After choosing your template you can choose your layout, background and add text. Some of the backgrounds require you to pay for them but most ...

Up until March 2013 (my senior year of college), I was against using Twitter. At all. I thought it was unnecessary. I think I tweeted out a couple of times before taking about a year hiatus from using the app/website. When I moved into a role student teaching at a technologically innovative school, I saw my mentor using Twitter to tweet out what her class was doing. I also remember her telling me that I was going to have to use Twitter during my six-week session lead teaching.  Fast forward to 2017. Over 1,190 tweets later I have seen the value of using Twitter in education for two reasons. Every teacher should have one.  Reason 1: It's a way to communicate with parents if your district lets you tweet out pictures of students at work as long as they remain anonymous. I created my own class account to do this called Miss Norman's class. I haven't had a chance to use it but I plan to at my next school! A great way to do this is to have students write the short tweet ou...