Opening Doors to Digital Learning: 09-09-14 New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions

© 2009 uhhhhlaine, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio

Happy New Year! Coming from a family of teachers, the beginning of a school year has always been a more significant start to a new year than the traditional celebration on January 1st. As teachers and students we are blessed with the opportunity to make a fresh start every year. Sometimes that means a change in position and other times, it is just a resolve to improve yourself by trying or learning something new or different. And just like the traditional New Years Resolutions, we often start off strong and then at some point, resolve to try again next year when we didn't quite make the changes or progress or go in the direction that we had planned. Last year at this time, I resolved to return to my weekly blog. Well, if you scroll down this blog very far at all, you will see that I was not very successful with that goal. Life got in the way, I got spread too thin, etc. But with a summer to reflect, plan and regroup, I am ready to give it another go. My main reason for giving it another try is that my plan this year is to really focus on Google Apps for Education in the classes I offer . I want to build a culture of collaboration with these tools and to do this, we all need to be able to "speak Google". In doing this, I feel like I am stepping back a few steps to make sure that everyone is on board. I see this blog as a place where I can go beyond the basics and share not only with those just getting on the bus, but with everyone on the journey of learning how to better create, connect, collaborate and engage through the use of technology. I plan for this to be a window to all the great ideas and teaching happening in our district, A place to share news and about upcoming events and also a place to share about ideas, tools and resources, (not necessarily Google apps related) that can be helpful in your teaching and learning. Right now, my list of things I want to share is overwhelmingly large. So many cool things I have been learning about that I want to share. But I am going to do my best to serve it out in bite sized pieces. The great thing about a blog is that if you can't read it until Winter Break, it will still be there waiting for you. I do encourage you to try to at least skim this each week to make sure you are getting the news of upcoming events etc. There is a lot of great stuff going on this year. You will want to be in the know.

Going Google:

In case you missed it, here is the archive of our Digital Literacy Workshop Hangout on Google Drive.
Remember to register to attend one of our two Sandbox Sessions coming up next week to explore all the possibilities of drive further.

9/15/2014	Digital Literacy Sandbox Google Drive	3:00:00 pm - 4:00 pm	MVHS	1415.0908+
9/18/2014	Digital Literacy Sandbox Google Drive	4:00 pm - 5:00 pm	District Office Tech Lab	1415.0908+

Resources:

GoNoodle:

Check out GoNoodle for "brain breaks" for your students. (And you too.) Sometimes taking 2 minutes to move or breathe can make a world of difference in the rest of the lesson. This is free and especially elementary students love this. Might be a little bit more difficult to convince a middle schooler that this cool, but it is certainly worth a try. (Nikki Klinger, you are going to love this.)

ThingLink: