Skip to main content

Less Physics Mo Problems

By
Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs.  In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year.  Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home.  I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
Post a Comment

InstructureCon 2016 Volume 3: Return to Camp Canvas

Image
By


I've made my way through 70 sessions that were posted on YouTube from InstructureCon 2016.  Now, I didn't watch them all in totality. Certain sessions were focused on administration of a Canvas instance and as a classroom teacher, this is something that I don't have to deal with.

There are a lot of great videos from the Con in which you can hear the stories of districts implementing and growing their implementation of Canvas. But I'd like to focus on a couple that I found extremely informative from the perspective of a classroom teacher.

Join the LTI Camp
Christy Steffen Noblesville Schools
This is a great session for people who don't know what LTI tools are or who are already using them in their Canvas course. If you haven't investigated LTI before, this will give you a great place to start. If you're an LTI guru, you're bound to find something new.




Using Canvas and Blogs for Student Publishing and Reflecting
Terence Priester Newington College
This session does a great job of framing how teachers can utilize blogs as a reflection tool in their classroom. The presenter does a great job explaining the why behind student blogging. But, he also shares a blogging course he has created in Canvas Commons for any teacher to get students started blogging.



Hacking Canvas: Making the Rubric Tool Work for you
April Lynn Millet & Stevie Rocco Pennsylvania State University
I am all about innovating my use of rubrics in Canvas. So, I loved this session. The presenters do a great job of walking through the different types of rubrics and how one can build them in Canvas. They also include best practices for rubric design. I had so many takeaways from this one. They also shared out their slideshow.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Twitter Cards for Blogger

By
So, I’ve been seeing people with beautiful Twitter Cards in my Twitter Stream. They make it clear that there is a web page to visit and give a quick preview of what would be found. Something like the one below: I’ve been wondering how to get one of the cards to appear when I tweet out a link to my latest blog post.  Since I use Blogger, there is not a simple button to click to turn this on.  I had to find a way to paste new code into the HTML code of my blog.  It took some searching from multiple sites to get a completely functional.   This site though was quite helpful.  But, I’d like to walk you through my process and hopefully it helps a few out. There are a few types of Twitter Cards.  Two that at most frequently see are the basic summary card and the summary card with large image.  Below you can see the layout of each, but realize that they both have the same content pieces. This is going to look like a lot ...
14 comments
Read more

Personalized Learning Tasks and Roles

By
Yesterday, I read a great post by Jim Rickabaugh dealing with the roles of learner and teacher in a personalized learning environment by looking at tasks . The roles were set up on a continuum. This article timed perfectly with a reflection on part of Students at the Center by Allison Zmuda and Bena Kallick on idea generation and task development I had in mind. These two works are the focus of my reflection here. I think a key misunderstand teachers have when it comes to digging into personalizing learning is that for planning purposes, we no longer begin with standards but with student desires.  I believe like all good instruction, we need to start with the standards.  Think about it, standards are what we want all learners to know and be able to do as a result of passing through our educational system. That is why it is essential that we make sure that standards are representative of what we believe is important for learners to be informed and productive in th...
1 comment
Read more

Pear Deck 101 + Q&A

By
  Last week, I presented as a part of Pear Deck’s Pear Fair 2020. My presentation was Pear Deck 101 for Google Slides. During the presentation, there was a live chat. Many people said it went too fast for a 101 Session. Luckily, it was recorded so it can be rewatched.  Also, many said that they wanted to know how to build a Pear Deck first. I structured the presentation to show what Pear Deck was before showing how to make one. Perhaps that wasn’t the best structure. But, I’m going to stick with my philosophy of showing what something is before showing how to make it. The presentation, which can be watched below, was structured in several different sections What is Pear Deck? Providing an overview of the experience from the Teacher and Student perspectives. How do you build a Pear Deck in Google Slides? How do you start a Pear Deck presentation? How do you end a Pear Deck presentation? Here is the Slideshow I shared during the session bit.ly/pearfair101 Time really flew in...
2 comments
Read more