Google Calendar as Lesson Plans and Embedded In Blog

Today was a great day of learning!  Teachers set up calendars for each of their classes or subject area.


To communicate with parents and students these calendars will be used for their lesson plans and embedded into their classroom blogs.  The step by step process is in video and presentation form below.






The entire process of creating a lesson plan in Google calendar and embedding the calendar with a week's lesson plans into a Google blog took one hour.

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Interactive Response Tools

Because I am presenting in two weeks on blended learning and ALL that it entails as I have scene it and experienced it last year, I sent this tweet out to my PLN.

I was blessed to receive a number of responses.  I am putting all of them in one area as a number of teachers may ask about this in the upcoming school year.

In no particular order:

• Socrative
• Today's Meet
• Nearpod
• Poll Daddy
• Smarttech Response
• SMART Response VE
• Answer Garden

I also learned about Larry Ferlazzo's Best of List for Response tools.

Since I do not know what type of device everyone will have or what the wireless connection will be like, I have decided to have two different methods of response.

My preferred method will be to use the Answer Garden tool.  I created a test question and the response shows up below.

I like the way it shows up in a word cloud, and I like the different options for exporting and keeping.  It is also a big plus that no creation of an account is needed.

For those that have a cell phone, I think I will stick with PollEverywhere for now.

I am truly thankful for the help that I received in learning about great tools for interacting with an audience.

Please consider following them:

• @lisettecasey
• @acihlar
• @TeachaKidd
• @jenlegatt
• @KristinStrauman
• @ShellyMowinkel
• @suser1

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iPad, iMovie, Extras4iMovie, and Scroll Credits For Video Production

Yesterday, our students volunteered a day's worth of time to help elementary students learn about bike safety.  I decided to video and take pictures of the entire process, but wasn't really sure what I would do with the images and video.

On the way home, I decided this would be a perfect excuse...err reason for me to purchase the iMovie app for iPad to discover its features.  One other video editing app that I have used in the past is REEL DIRECTOR.  I like it, but it is rather cumbersome to use.

I really enjoyed and became proficient at using iMovie for iPad in a within 1 hour of first use.  The timeline and features that go with it are efficient.  The themes are a nice addition.  Adding video was extremely easy as it is located in the list of videos.  Same with pictures and songs.

I really like how sound from video clips mutes the song of the entire movie while it is playing.  Adding voice to a video clip is easy as well.

I also purchased Extras4iMovie, and Scroll Credits.  Both apps have an incredible amount of additional backgrounds and clip art.  I used the Extras4iMovie to create the scrolling edits at the end.  I nice feature.

I will be using iMovie more than Reel Director from now on based on the fact that my user experience with iMovie was better than Reel Director.

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