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Showing posts from September, 2019

EdCamp Still Rules

  Looking Back at 10 years of EdCamps Oh how the time flies, EdCamp Madison is turning 10 this year!  It will be held Saturday, February 3rd at Sun Prairie West High School. Which can be found at 2850 Ironwood Drive in Sun Prairie Wisconsin from 8:30 am - 3:00 pm.  Get more information and register here: https://sites.google.com/sunprairieschools.org/edcampmadwi/home   I will always remember sitting in my first EdCamp opening session at the very first EdCamp Madison and having no clue what I was in for. So, I’d like to take this space to go over some of the basic rules of EdCamp. No One Will Pitch It for You EdCamps are unconferences. By this I mean that they have a blank slate of sessions for the day. There may be a few predetermined sessions, but ultimately the session topics are determined by attendees during the pitch & plan session that opens the day. If an idea gets pitched there will be a session on it. If a topic doesn’t get pitched, there won’t be a session on it. So, it i

Evidence in Site

"Are you open to your own evolution as an individual and as a professional?" Couros, G., & Novak, K. (2019). Innovate inside the box: empowering learners through Udl and the Innovators Mindset. Place of publication not identified: published by IMpress, a division of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. Five years ago, I was hearing the buzz about student portfolios. So, I took the big leap of integrating student portfolios into my classroom. I was using Google Sites as the platform for creation. It was free and at the time our school was just beginning to use Google Apps for Education (now known as G Suite). If ever there was a case in which I felt like I was innovating inside of the box, this was it. Google Sites had lots of opportunities for customization. Almost any type of media could be added and the look of any part of the page could be adjusted. Students could add artifacts, create blog posts, and comment on each other’s work. The big drawback was that the interface w

Reflect Privately to Share Globally

This will be my 6th year using Google Sites for student portfolios. A lot has changed along the way and I’m excited to iterate again with a feature that I feel has always been lacking in my portfolio process. That piece is reflection. Whether it be a portfolio to document growth or a portfolio to showcase the best work, the ability to reflect is essential. But, the ability to provide multiple forms of reflection has been a bit cumbersome. In all the time I have been using Google Sites, typed text responses to prompts has been the form that reflection has taken. After learning more about the amazing things educators are doing with Flipgrid, I have realized that not only is it a tool that can be used for sharing ideas, it is a great tool for video reflection. These video reflections can be kept private between the student and teacher. What I did not realize was how these videos created by students can easily be added to their Google Sites portfolio by the student. So what is the proc