New Website!!!

Hi everyone,
Thank you so much for your views and comments! I'm really excited to announce that I have just published my new website and blog... same great content, new look and home.

Check it out at www.popgoesthescreen.weebly.com Hope to see you there!

It's been a while... but good things are a-brewing!

This year has not only started with a bang, but rolling hard and has yet to let up! Between planning a wedding, a pretty regular rotation of classroom visits & lessons, a full year of Media Bytes, and all the committees I've joined, I am spent! Oh, did I mention I am co-presenting with a good friend, Julie Gunther at San Diego & LA CUE's Tech Fairs? We'll be presenting on blogging in the classroom and why your students should be self-publishing for the world to see! More on that later, we'll be co-authoring a blog about the subject very soon.

Over the summer and the beginning months of school, we have changed Mobile Device Management Systems, moved to a Leasing/Purchase 2-year cycle for our 1:1 iPad program, implementing mindfulness and self-regulated learning strategies, building a Student Technology Support Framework, building technology skills plans, among many other things! I hope to write detailed posts soon. Stay tuned along with a new website :)

Putting yourself in the shoes of a student.

Once school got out, I was inundated with professional development opportunity after PD opportunity! One conference after another and while I have had a running tab of topics I wanted to write about, admittedly, I have just been too wiped out to really do much else than prepare for the upcoming school year.

Alas, today was another PD workshop- processing with Khan Academy. Day 1 of a 3-Day workshop. Luckily, I was well rested when I arrived, but pretty quickly, my energy was zapped! Coding and programming are "not my thing". I know, I know..... "Jenn, anything can be your thing! All you need is a GROWTH MINDSET!"

Yea... I know and I didn't give up. But task after task, line after line of copying and then playing around with the numbers to see what happens if I change this or that, my frustration grew. My colleagues seemed to be getting it faster than I was; they didn't seem to be struggling. They seemed... interested in it. I, on the other hand, felt like I was right back in Geometry class struggling to comprehend the reason behind a proof and what theorems applied.

I think that sometimes it helps to step into the shoes of a student and put yourself into an extremely challenging situation. Feel the emotions of being frustrated. Give praise to someone who is getting it. After some playing with the various tasks from our instructor, I've come to the conclusion that Khan Academy for programming is quite useful. It's not as easy as some of these other "learn to code" programs, but we dove into learning the language. And now I have this to show (don't judge, it's not done yet):

A more formal write up to come, just wanted to share the experience.

Canvasing the world with Canva

     I kept telling myself (and others) that my next post would be about mindfulness and how it fits in with students using technology, but truth be told, I've been spending a lot of time working on a website I'm building to help alleviate some of the burden from teachers of teaching their new students the iPad. Earlier in the 2014-2015 school year, I asked some of our faculty how they felt about student use of the iPad and some of the challenges they experienced. Many said the duality of teaching the device and content. So... I got to thinking, what if we front load the basics of the iPad during orientation and then use the iPad-specific orientation for hands-on exploration of common apps like Notability, Haiku Learning, Google Apps, and Apple apps? Well, that's what we're going to try. I'll let you know how it goes.

    But why am I telling you this, you ask? Because in an effort to make my Weebly site look pretty and engaging, I'm creating a lot of graphics/infographics/signage with the program Canva. It's a web-based (and Google/Facebook single sign on capable) program and app that allows the user to create these amazing looking graphics using drag and drop features. One of our Research Librarians introduced it to me awhile ago and honestly, it took me some time to get used to it, but it reminds me of Publisher, only with amazing templates, graphics, and totally customizable right down to the ability to use customizable dimensions. I really like the way you can export/download your creation into a JPEG or PDF file. Canva also saves your work automatically and stores your finished pieces on the site. You can share your projects, making them public or not; there are various options to choose from: Instagram post, FB Headers, Blog Poster, inforgraphic, etc. And best of all? IT'S FREE (some graphics and templates do cost $$, but hey, the majority is free)!

    If you've seen some of the "About Me" pictures on my site, you've seen some of the products you can do! You can upload your own photos, drawings, etc and spruce them up.
   Check out some of the things I've been doing with it here (albeit it can be time consuming and tedious, but you'll get the knack for it in no time!).
Example: 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship graphic (Elements created by Mike Ribble)
Info from: Nine Elements. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html

 

Graphics explaining our expectations and responsibilities when it comes to using an iPad at school.

Flyer I made for our Exploration Studio Stewardship, to be displayed on our rotating slide displaying in the Center for Teaching and Learning.

 

The possibilities are endless. Our Ed Tech Specialist created buttons for Next Page on her Haiku class with Canva! I made my mother's day card with it and am planning on making my wedding invitations using it too! 

*Special shout out to Jolina Clement (@jkclement) for an awesome session on using Canva, piktochart, and more! Brand your class, brand yourself.