Pulaski students assist Seniors with Smartphones!

Last Thursday, I had the honor to watch Pulaski students put their tech skills to a great use!  Students helped some senior center residents with their smartphones.  They did awesome!  It was a great experience for all!  I was impressed with their maturity, kindness, knowledge and willingness to help!

News Article:

Residents of the Pulaski Senior Center called on Pulaski Community School District students and staff to help them with their iPhones.  On Thursday, October 17, students in Mr. Hendricks’ 5th and Mr. Pratt’s 6th grade model classrooms were able to put their technology skills to use to not only help these residents with technology, but also provide some community service as well.  Students taught the residents skills from setting up email on their smartphones to taking pictures and using other downloaded apps.  

In the model classrooms, students utilize a variety of technologies to learn and create.  This coupled with the use of technology in their personal lives helped them to help others learn these essential skills. Library Media Specialist Joe Diefenthaler, who usually assists staff and students at PCMS with technology, was able to share his skills and connect with the community as well.  “My son talked about this experience all weekend and how much he enjoyed it.  Now he keeps asking what careers he could do in the future like this experience, ” said Mr. Diefenthaler.

Book Makes Me Think!

Our Library Media Team is doing a book study of Why School? by Will Richardson.  It's very thought provoking!  Really makes me think about ways to bring the learning students do outside of school into school.  Outside of school, students use videos and people to learn from- they define their own problems, seek the best sources, and apply what they learned through a variety of means.  Take the craze of Minecraft for example- my son couldn't find diamonds in the game.  That was his problem. So, he used youtube to learn how to do it from another kid.  While he attempted it on his own, he failed; watched the video again; learned from his mistake; tried again.  Success!  Diamonds!  Excitement!  Proud of himself!  Then, he used Skype to video chat his friend and help him to do the same thing!

Weeks later after watching a few more videos- he created his own how to with the help of his sister.  Many could say since I'm in the tech field he had learned the skills to do all this.  I helped him with very little.  He used his own resources to solve his problem. Critical thinking, creativity and collaboration abound.... mixed in with a bit a constructive failure!  And probably many of you reading this have seen similar skills developing in your kids or other youngsters.

Thanks to our LMS team for a very enlighting discussion about student learning and skills needed for their success in the future.  Next session:  specific ways/ integration ideas to bring this learning to all classrooms! Kudos to our teaching staff who have embraced this concept and implementing strategies for devloping creative, collaborative, critical thinkers!

Learning Leaders Lunch N Learn: Google Plus and IFTTT

So excited to be working with our awesome team of administrators learning about and talking about best practices in educational technology!  Our first topic is Google Plus!
Google Plus for me is like meshing all your favorite social networking sites.  It's a Facebook, Twitter, Skype,  Google Groups and Picasa experience all in one package!
Why would Learning Leaders want to use it?

• Sick of email?  Create a community for your building and communicate this way instead of flooding email inboxes.
• Communicate different information with different groups of people
• Schedule events
• Participate in a Google Hangout- virtual meeting instead of traveling the 35 miles from one end of the district to the other- right Kris and Eric?
• Professional Learning Network
• Share photos

Google Plus Intro:  

• Setup Profiles
• Create Circles
• Post
• Communities
• Hangouts

Creating a community:

IFTTT
If This Then That is a site that allows you automate technology tasks by creating recipes!  You may not even know you want certain tasks automated until you see you can!

Here are the recipes I have:

• At 6 am every day, I receive a text message telling me the weather for the day.
• I get a text alert everytime the pollen count goes above 1.0 (I know, weird, but I have a son with bad environmental allergies and this alerts me to be a Zyrtec day!)
• I get a text message at the END of the Packer Game.  I found if I set it during the game, I would get a text before they actually scored as I was watching it on tv!
• I get an email everytime someone posts an iphone5 for sale on Craigslist- my current iphone5 is cracked!
• Every time I post to my blog, the content automatically is forward to a Twitter feed.

Future Topics:

I surveyed our team to see what topics they were most interested in learning more about.  The topics with the most votes will be our next Lunch N Learn Resources!  Here are the top selections:

• Blogger- widgets, posting, layout, etc.
• Best iPad apps for administrators
• YouTube 101
• Ideas for modeling the use of technology
• Creating infographics- new way of sharing information
• Using your smartphone in place of school issued phone

 

Welcome AmyU to Blogging!

Finally.... the world of blogging!  This has been on my to do list for too long!  I'm finally joining the ranks of bloggers everywhere!  Looking for a good place to share information and resources with others and create a digital presence.  Was going to bypass a blog and utilize Google Plus only, but decided to go this route! Happy blogging!