Coding in CTE

The Hour of Code brought many opportunities for students across Moore County. Students in elementary, middle and high school spent time exploring the Code.org website along with many others. 

“Coding is the new literacy. To thrive in tomorrow’s society, young people must learn to design, create and express themselves with digital technologies,” says Mitchel Resnick, a media arts and sciences professor at the MIT Media Lab.

Students in the 6th grade Career Decision class at West Pine spent some time learning to code. They used the website coding.org.They began by working through some of the basics on the website, completing several levels before they began the assignment. They then had to create a story or a game using the program. The only requirement was “NO VIOLENCE!”

Aniyah was the first one in the class to figure out the complete her story. She was so excited to see her work on the screen and to see her accomplishment. She quickly worked through the tutorials and then began her project. Olaf and Frozen was her inspiration for her project. She didn’t see a snowman so she used a penguin because it fit with her snow theme. “It was really entertaining to work through the tutorial and then I got to use my imagination for my project. I learned to work with the computer better and to use the parts of the program. The pixels were controlled through the math actions; increasing the pixels controlled how far a character moved. I created the characters as I went along using the events action. Once I chose to put in a character, I was able to choose the characters from a long list of options. My favorite part was coming up with my idea. I think I could use it in other classes to show how the planets rotate around the sun, or the life cycle of a flower.”

“I worked on it for a long time, probably about 2 weeks. My favorite part was creating a story that showed my artistic side. Not only did I learn how to code, but I was also able to help others learn how to do things. I learned to be patient because it takes a long time and you have to concentrate.” Jada R.

“This was an ok project; I just had to put a lot of work into it. This showed me that video games are hard to design and we should appreciate the work they put into it.” Gerald O.

“I liked that we could go where we wanted to with this project and make what we wanted. We were able to get creative with this. I created a story about a lost dinosaur who was trying to find his way home. I learned how to code, which I had never done before.” Nick D.

“I created a story because a game was a lot harder. So mine had a Christmas theme and it was about a cat who is trying to find something he lost. It was hard learning to code and putting all the pieces together but it was fun. After learning how to code, I have practiced it at home too. I think a career in coding would be fun.” Joanna J.

“Honestly, I have never done coding before but once I got started, it got easier and easier. It was fun to do it with my friends. I learned how other people do this and there are a lot of complicated things and it is easy to get confused. It was good to have a partner to help you work through these problems. I made a story about unicorn who was trying to make it to a party. It took a few days and it runs for about a minute! It really is a lot of work to make anything happen.” Ainslee W.





Mrs. McMillan is a veteran teachers who teaches Exploring Career Decisions at West Pine Middle School.

3D Modeling on Chromebooks Made Easy with Tinkercad

I've always been a huge fan of students creating 3D models on computers.  It is a skill that combines mathematics, art, and design in a way that promotes plenty of problem solving along the way.  Over the years I enjoyed watching students take off with this skill using Google Sketchup on PC's and MACs and ever since we rolled out Chromebooks I've been keeping an eye out for a rich, cloud-based 3D modeling tool.

The best one I've seen to date is Tinkercad.  Simple, intuitive, and fun to learn; Tinkercad is a tool that many students will latch onto quickly.

Completely cloud-based, this tool gives a lot of the flexibility I had grown accustomed to within Google Sketchup.  It allows students to start drawing from scratch, but also has a good number of premade 3D objects that students can use to play with dimension, space, grouping, coloring, etc.

Finally, we are in the process of pushing for more 3D printing capabilities in our district.  Great news about Tinkercad- it allows exporting to all of the major 3D modeling standards for easy printing.  And, as an added bonus, it allows the exporting to Minecraft-useable objects (how cool would it be for students to design their own 3D objects in school to import into their Minecraft worlds???).

I hope you give some kids time to tinker with Tinkercad on their Chromebooks- I promised you won't be disappointed in what some of them come up with!

Student Highlight - Chromebooks - Student Perspective

Meet Ava F.  and Elisa R, New Century Middle 6th graders!

"Chromebooks are such a part of our daily routine, that we hardly ever think about having to do things on the computer, we just do it!" "They make most things simpler." Chromebook are our life!

Recently I sat down with these two 6th graders to talk about how the Chromebook has changed their learning environment. "I really like it better than doing classwork with a notebook and pencil. The computer makes it easier and more fun. I like using the Chromebook except for taking a test. This is not just because it's a test, it is hard for me to read the test on-line and make a choice."

Elise shared that in one of her Flex classes, she had to make a commercial. It was actually aired on the school news show. "That was fun. I learned how to use the green screen to record the commercial. I had never done that before and it was really fun. I had never made a webpage before, and I made one of those too. We worked as a group and designed a company and items to sell. Our webpage was about our mouse accessory company, MEMLA."

"We use our computers in class everyday. I have a Moodle account, an Edmodo account and we use Discovery Ed in Social studies every day! We don't use the computer all day long, I think it's a healthy balance. We usually use them more on Thursday's and Friday's because of tests.We use the computer in Social Studies every day because Discovery Ed is our Tech Book - we don't have an actual text book anymore."

Ava has Art for Flex. She uses the computer for research in Art. "For instance, we had to choose a college basketball team and then research that team. We wrote a report which included information about the college and the basketball team. We teamed up with the AIG class for this project. The culminating project was to create a poster highlighting the team (this was not done on the computer). I think it would have been really hard to make the poster on the computer and I don't think people would have shown as much effort. It would have been easier for the teacher to grade it if we had used the computer!  The posters are up on the wall and receive an large red X when the team loses. It's the big basketball tournament, you know." 

When I asked them how their responsibilities have changed since getting the Chromebooks, they said they had a lot of new responsibilities! First, we have to remember to bring it to school each day and to have it charged. We have to make sure we know where it is at all times, and we are responsible for them all day long. If something happens to it, our parents will have to pay for the Chromebook; that would not be good. I have always had a digital device such as a phone or an iPad so that part is not new. We also have e-mail accounts now and that is very helpful because we can communicate with our friends, e-mail the teacher if we have a problem or to ask about a project. We can't e-mail people outside of Moore County, so that makes it difficult when working on a project. We know that everything is being monitored, so we just do what is right. That doesn't bother either of us! 

Their words of advice were, "You know what is right, so just do that!"

New Century Middle School

Southern Pines Primary Students React to...The Device Pilot

Friday, November 14th was a big day for the elementary schools of Moore County. This was the day that devices were delivered to Highfalls Elementary, Westmoore Elementary, and Southern Pines Primary School to be put in the hands of students so that our district could get input from students and teachers as to which device they should go with as move towards our 1:1 goal. Here at Southern Pines Primary, two second grade classes received a cart of Chromebooks to test out and two first grade classes got their hands on a cart of Samsung Galaxy tablets.

It was love at first sight. These students have truly enjoyed the opportunity to test out the Chromebooks and Samsung Galaxies. Their eyes light up when I walk into their classrooms because they know they usually work with their device when I'm in the room. It's hard to have a bad day when you have kids running up to hug you when they see you. To give you an idea of how these students feel about the pilot devices, as well as a taste of what they can create with them, here's a video I made with a Samsung Galaxy using WeVideo.

Find out more information about our Elementary School Pilot by visiting our website here.


- Clint Rogers

Blizzard Busting with Chromebooks

This week, we here in central North Carolina were told to brace for a blizzard.  The hot cocoa was simmering, the sleds pulled out, and the schools were closed as we got ready for the storm.

Since all our 6th-12th graders have Chromebooks that they take home with them, I thought it might be fun to put some optional, engaging activities together for our students while they were out of school (and make no mistake, when it snows in North Carolina we miss a LOT of school).  I reached out to our DIF team for help with ideas and got started.

Here is what I came up with:  MCS SNOWMAGEDDON 2015.  This site includes 3 fun, cross age-level ideas that I was ready to add to, depending on the number of missed school days.  I was nerdily excited to see all the fun stuff the kids would come up with and how far they would take it!

So......the plan was to push this site out to all student Chromebooks via the Google Admin Console, once the snow started falling.  But, alas, the snow did not fall!

See, those of us that have lived in central NC for any amount of time know we routinely fall on the "freezing line" during these storms- the line of 32 degrees, where just north of it gets hammered with snow/ice and just south gets nothing but a cold rain.  For this storm in particular our weather forecasters were confidently predicting anywhere between 0-12 inches of snow (this is how our winter weather forecast rolls in Moore County).  Well, I'm sure you can guess the rest of the story...

So, I was never able to push the site out.  But, on the bright side, we have it for next winter already in the chute, ready to go- oh, and we still get to have spring break!

Happy Chromeing, all- stay warm.  =)

-Steve J

How can One-to-One Chromebooks Transform a Classroom?

I've been lucky to have had contact with some great educational technology thinkers over the last 6 years or so.  One of the leaders I have heard speak many times, to rooms large and small, is Chris Lehmann.  Chris is the practical, down-to-Earth principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia as well as the founder of Educon.

For Christmas, my good pal Amanda Bullard got me a book titled "What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media", which was edited by Mr. Lehmann and Scott McLeod (another leader I've been honored to meet and talk with in the past).  The chapter in the book that spoke deeply to me was Chapter 7, entitled "One-to-One Computing", co-written by Chris Lehmann and Pamela Livingston.

It spoke deeply to me because it rings loudly with what we are working so hard to accomplish in Moore County Schools, where I work.  A great synopsis of what One-to-One computing in schools is all about is found on page 77 (emphasis mine):

"One way to think about the pedagogical change is that a 1:1 program should allow schools to make technology ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.  In a 1:1 environment, students have the technology with them at all times.  It does not require a special trip to a lab or signing out a cart.  This means that students can have constant access to the world around them.  Resources for creating, synthesizing, researching, writing, presenting, and publishing are solidly in the hands of the learner, not distributed by the teacher.  Teachers have to learn how to work this potential into their planning and classroom management.  Students have to learn how to manage the productivity potential of the device as well as the distractibility potential.  Used purposefully, 1:1 creates classrooms where teachers are facilitators and mentors, guiding students through learning and creation in powerful ways.  In this model, students can be empowered creators and synthesizers of learning artifacts...When all embrace their new roles, it stops being about the technology and becomes about the work.  When students and teachers stop talking about their laptops and instead use them in an authentic way toward common educational goals, a shared learning vision has been achieved."

This is the vision we have for our 1:1 Chromebook deployment and it has been from the very start.  We know the challenge is great and it feels great to be a part of a team that not only recognizes the challenges but works hard to overcome them for the benefit of students.

One-to-One Chromebooks can transform a classroom (and an entire district) by providing an equitable platform for ALL students to become expert collaborators, powerful creators, and empowered publishers.  Now that our students have Chromebooks at their fingertips both at school and at home, the world is open to them to chase down their passions and interests, grab them by the collar, and get to work fulfilling them.

The path to fulfilling our vision is long and filled with obstacles and challenges.  As a  member of an outstanding team, we can make this vision a reality together.  As a leader, the questions that drive me are:

• What obstacles are in our way to fulfilling this vision for students?  What obstacles face our teachers?  Our students?  Our parents?  Our admin teams?  Our DIF team?  How can I purposefully identify and help eliminate them?  
• In what ways can I continue to "say yes" when someone asks to try something new?  How can I focus on creating an environment where people are comfortable enough to share their innovative ideas?
• How can we continue to make sure our efforts are focused squarely on student learning and opportunity?
• In what ways can I continue to work directly with and gain valuable insight from students across grades K-12?  How can I help steer us toward an environment that truly values student choice and voice, instead of pay it lip service?

Together, with our heads and hearts in the right places, we can truly arrive at the transformative potential that One-to-One provides us.  Here's to the ongoing journey!

Make Beliefs Comix

Are you looking for an innovative way for students to summarize information, practice new vocabulary, work on conversation skills or collaboration skills? Make Beliefs Comix may be the tool you are looking for!



Make Beliefs Comix is easy to use and engaging for students. After you choose the number of panels you want to create, you can begin adding your content. Start with a background or background color. Then add characters, speech bubbles, thought bubbles, objects and panel prompts. Add your name and a title before you share it. Your students will amaze you with their creativity!

– School Library Journal (January 9, 2013): "One of the true pioneers in the field, Bill Zimmerman launched MakeBeliefsComix.com only a few years ago, and now it's in use in countless classrooms, libraries, and technology labs throughout the world. Not content simply to provide one of the premier 'comics generators' available, Zimmerman and Make Beliefs are constantly coming out with new, highly topical templates as well as free printables (now numbering 350!) that allow educators to help kids write comics without a computer in sight."

 -- Connect the Pop Blog by Peter Gutierrez, School Library Journal (January 9, 2013)

"This website is great! My students have had fun using it. We used it to summarize the different types of waves associated with an earthquake."

Student Work

21 Ways to use MakeBeliefsComix.com


5 Steps To Get Started

Open the website: Make Beliefs Comix


1. Choose the number of panels for your story.

2. Highlight a panel. 
      *Choose a character - be sure to check out all the options for that character 
      *Press enter to add the character to your panel. (You can add more than one character per panel.

3.  What is your character thinking or saying? Add a thought or speech bubble.

4. It's never too late for a background or some objects. 

5. Proof and add your e-mail information. 

FEATURES

You can change the number of panels at any time.
Items can be scaled, moved, flipped, and layered/ordered
Can edit before finalizing
Option to print
You can send the file to more than one person 

The only drawback that I can see with this tool is the inability to save partially finished work. I have used this with 6 - 8th graders. They love the tool and have worked diligently to complete all assignments. 

Computer Science Education Week

This is my first year getting my feet wet with coding, but after I realized that I wouldn't drown in all of the computer science programming mumbo jumbo, I dove in head first! I'll admit, I was a little intimated when I first clicked on http://code.org/learn to try my hand at what over 61,000,000 people had done, learn the basics of coding. I've been a part of meetings with our technology department and looked over the shoulder of one of the lead technicians while he went into the "guts" of some of the programs we use in our county. It wasn't pretty. It was foreign language. So to say I was hesitant to try my hand at coding would be putting it lightly. Then I watched this video from our President and I was inspired to give it a shot. Take a look.

That's when I hoped over to http://code.org/learn to start coding. I was amazed at how well the instruction for coding was organized. You start simple with drag-and-drop coding with blocks to create snowflake designs with Anna and Elsa of Frozen. They even have cameos from Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. If you really want to challenge yourself, you can even create your own app or game with tutorials to help guide you along. 

By the end of the night (more than just one hour) and with the help of http://code.org/learn's training wheels, I was caught up in the excitement of creating my own code! I was wrapped up in the ability to create something just by writing the code for it. To get an idea of how powerful coding can be, check out this Google Hangout with Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter.

I want to challenge YOU and your students to make some time for an hour of code. Give your students the opportunity to build something impactful, something meaningful, something they can be proud of. "It helps nurture problem-solving skills, logic and creativity. By starting early, students will have a foundation for success in any 21st-century career path." - Code.org

Here are a few resources to help you get started:

http://code.org/

http://hourofcode.com/us#b11g04t20w14

https://www.khanacademy.org/hourofcode

-Clint Rogers

Teacher Feature - Stacey Deaton

This past week, I had the pleasure of visiting Vass-Lakeview Elementary and see how some of the 5th graders there are using their Chromebooks.  VLE has only been 1:1 with students for approximately 7 months and it was great to see the creative work the students are already deeply involve with!

One of the teachers' rooms I visited was Stacey Deaton.  Stacey has been teaching for 7 years, all in Moore County Schools (and she is also a product of MCS!).  After 1/2 a year teaching 2nd, she has spent the last 6.5 teaching 5th grade.

It was immediately obvious that Chromebooks were not an add-on in this room- they were very much a natural extension of the learning tasks at hand.  Some students were working in inquiry-based ways, creating Google slideshows of images that represented current vocabulary words (which they will subsequently show their classmates, who would have to guess which word was being alluded to). I also saw some great, creative examples of students showing mastery of content.

"Using Chromebooks have benefited student learning in my classroom because they are more engaged than ever before.  They have fun working on projects and they are able to do more creating.  It is also more relevant to the world that they are living in now."

-Stacey Deaton, 5th grade teacher, Vass-Lakeview Elementary

Student Work Samples:

Movenote   (Support Materials here)

Jordan C - Vocabulary Movenote
Journie T - Vocabulary Movenote

GoAnimate  (Support Materials here)

Rebecca C - Animation about Thomas Paine
Kaden T - Animation about John Adams

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Thanks so much for all the work you do for your students, Ms. Deaton!

-Steve Johnson

Lead Digital Integration Facilitator

Moore County Schools

@edtechsteve

Haiku Deck - Transform your Presentations

Don't get me wrong, I love Google Presentations just as much as the next guy. But sometimes I want to create a presentation that's got some flavor to it. That's when I found Haiku Deck. This award-winning creation tool allows its users to create simple, yet beautiful and fun stories. These presentations can easily by shared, posted, embedded on a website or blog, or viewed on a web-based device. Some of the game-changing features of Haiku Deck include: 

• a range of stylish themes
• the ability to upload images to use as your background including millions of free images
• text that makes your presentation pop
• charts that provide sleek visuals to represent your data

Whether your students have Chromebooks or iPads, this free software will be sure to turn their ordinary stories into inspirational presentations. To learn more about Haiku Deck, including a gallery of featured decks, tips on how to optimize your decks, and more reviews, be sure to visit www.haikudeck.com and begin creating your own engaging presentations. 

-Clint Rogers

Powerful, Chromebook-Approved Creation!

The critical question when giving digital devices to students is always "what do we want kids to do with them?"  In Moore County Schools, our answer to this question is that we want students to use their Chromebooks to create dynamic multimedia products that showcase their learning.  

To this end, our outstanding Digital Integration Facilitator (DIF) team worked very hard to create the excellent resource below.  We would like to share this out to any teacher, student, parent, administrator, or anyone else that would like to use Chromebooks to create dynamic work products!

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Screenshot of "I Want to Create" Site

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Click here for: The MCS "I Want to Create" Site

As we rolled out 1:1 with Chromebooks last year, teachers and students told us a few things we could do to help support them:

• Don't throw a hundred tools at us that all do the same thing- tell us the one you recommend most :  We did this on each page of our "I Want to Create" site by providing a featured tool at the top and other tools linked at the bottom of each page.
• Make sure all the tools provided work on our Chromebooks:  We tested each thoroughly on our student Chromebooks.
• Provide an overview of the tool and also some easy ways to get started: We did this through embedded tutorial videos on each page
• Give us a printable cheat sheet we can print out if we need extra help while working through a tool:  We did this on each and every tool page
• Tell us which tools are good for beginner, moderately skilled, and advanced skilled learners:  We did this by organizing all the tools in exactly this manner, to allow folks to personalize their own learning.

We hope this resource can be helpful to any other educators out there that have Chromebooks in their classrooms and we look forward to seeing how this site evolves and grows throughout the next few years!

-Steve Johnson

Google Helpouts - Need help? Find help.

My friend and colleague, Clint Rogers (@clint_rogers21) and I were working on our district website yesterday and wanted to try out Google Helpouts to see how it worked.  It wasn't long before we realized this could be a great tool for teachers.  Google Helpouts is a service that connects people that need help, with those people that can help them.  Helpouts are video conferences through Google Hangouts that allow you to speak with Subject Matter Experts.  There are people available to help from all walks of life and fields of work.

Our first ever Google Helpout was with HomeAdvisor.  It was a free helpout (I should say that some Helpouts are paid services) that connected us with a gentleman named JD.  JD was very helpful and answered all of our questions thoroughly about some simple home improvement issues we asked.  

 If you would like to give Google Helpouts a try, a good place to start would be with the group at HomeAdvisor.

Check out HomeAdvisor on Google Helpouts

After participating in my first Google Helpout, I decided I would like to create my own Helpout account.  I received an invitation code from Google and setup my Helpout account offering help with high school and college Biology.  Check out my Google Helpout page and feel free to share with those that may need help with Biology.

Check me out on Google Helpouts for help with Biology.

Thanks,

Tyler Callahan
@STEM_TC
jcallahan@ncmcs.org

More Movenote AwesomeSauce

About a month ago, my friend and colleague Tyler Callahan (@STEM_TC) introduced our team to a great new tool, Movenote.  On this blog space, Tyler wrote about how he helped a high school Bio teacher use this tool to great effect.

When I first saw the student examples sent, I knew Movenote was one of those tools that come along and check a ton of boxes off my own personal digital tool checklist:

• Can be used in any content area
• Students have opportunities to express their creativity and imagination
• Students are able to showcase their content mastery and understanding
• Easy to personalize and "make it their own"
• Incorporates student voice- literally and figuratively
• Allows public publication and easy sharing on the web

In other words, it's one of those great tools that is easy, highly flexible, easy to share out, and works across devices.  I had a pretty good idea that it could also check the box off for "spans a wide age range" but decided to try it out with my own girls at home to make sure.

So, my kindergartener Kenna (who will be in 1st next year) had to do a report on an animal she had seen at the zoo.  So we whipped my Chromebook out and I helped her to put a short slide presentation together on ostriches.  She was then able to flip over to Movenote, load her presentation, and record the following Movenote:

(My Kenna, the nut...)
Link to full presentation where it doesn't cut left side off

I sent the link to my daughter's amazing kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Demolet, and she was able to easily pull it up and play it for the class.  And what's more, Movenote has a replay/commenting feature so Mrs. Demolet had her students send this Movenote back as a response (they're all doing the BYEEEEEEEE thing at the end- so funny).

So this is a tool that can be used all the way from AP Bio down to kindergarten (with support and help).  I also let my 2nd grader (now 3rd grader) handle it and it's worth noting that I didn't have to help her with anything at all.

What a great and flexible tool for students to be able to take content, make it their own, and personalize an easy creation that shows what they know as well as lets them be creative!  I hope you'll try Movenote in your classroom. :)

What is the difference between an App and an Extension?

In the Chrome store, you will notice that there is a section to select Apps and a section to select Extensions. What is the difference between the two?

Chrome App - Chrome Apps are really just websites that allow you to accomplish a certain task. If I wanted to create a video on my Chromebook, I could go to WeVideo.com or click the App for WeVideo. Downloading apps from the Chrome store allows us to have quick access to websites that we use on a regular basis. Apps are categorized in the Chrome store. This helps me when I am searching for a good website/app to use for a specific purpose. **Note:  Apps now also include many offline-capable applications that work similarly to traditional PC or MAC programs- opening as a separate window.  You can find these under "For Your Desktop" and they're also marked with a lightning bolt in your search results**

Chrome Extension - A Chrome extension gets it name because it actually extends your browser's capabilities across many websites. These capabilities could be anything from taking a screenshot, creating a screen recording, having text read to you, etc. For example, I used a Chrome extension called Webpage Screenshot to take the screenshot you see in this post and to annotate that screenshot. That extension works no matter what webpage I am on. 

Student Feature - Movenote in AP Biology

For this week's Student Feature, I would like to showcase a student from Union Pines High School in Cameron, NC.  Gavin is a sophomore at Union Pines and created a Movenote Video on Lipids in his AP Biology class.  Gavin's teacher, Glenn Caviness, was very impressed by his video because of its accurate information with the right touch of humor.

      +Movenote         @Movenote 



Movenote is a web-based tool that allows users to record themselves presenting slides, pictures or presentations.  Mr. Caviness used this tool to have his AP Biology students create review videos that were shared out with others in the class using Google Docs.  Students could then view their classmates videos to study for the End-of-Course Test.

You can check out Gavin's Movenote video here or by copying and pasting the following link in your browser:   https://www.movenote.com/v/VJUlGYJwfvF-i

There are several other students who created Movenote videos and shared them out with the class.  The links below will take you to those presentations.

Proteins:

https://www.movenote.com/v/zgeKt8hokXODN

Mitosis & Meiosis:

https://www.movenote.com/v/Poet_Fw4KNK

Symbiosis:

https://www.movenote.com/v/EWtqXP6TjbC

Population Growth:

https://www.movenote.com/v/5AfRD-3e8cM

Water:

https://www.movenote.com/v/eAjYvE2vB-3XL

Circulatory System:

https://www.movenote.com/v/gKdk6mOTQyoTU

Nitrogen Cycle:

https://www.movenote.com/v/0gaw6XSBbwv

Cell Structure:

https://www.movenote.com/v/sSwJHvj3coSEd

Evidence for Evolution:

https://www.movenote.com/v/kljaD12m2X_s9

Cellular Respiration:

https://www.movenote.com/v/vD7Tpu9ph25

To contact Mr. Caviness about this project, you can email him at gcaviness@ncmcs.org 

Until next time,

Tyler Callahan

@STEM_TC

Digital Integration Facilitator

Moore County Schools

jcallahan@ncmcs.org

Global Connections on Chromebooks with ePals

One of the absolute best tools I've encountered over the years to increase global awareness and collaboration across the world is ePals (located at http://epals.com).

"ePals" are what the name implies - Electronic Pen Pals.  But the service offers so much more (and all free!).  With ePals, you can connect with classrooms from over 200 countries all over the world, whose students speak 136 different languages and range in age from preschool to college age.  

Once you're logged in as a teacher and have completed your class profile, you can easily search for and connect with classes through an intuitive process.  As you can see, it's very easy to narrow down your search so you can start looking at profiles that fit your classroom's exact needs. 

The three types of collaboration that are available are simple email exchanges (like a traditional pen pal), video chats, and collaborative project work spaces.  These three can certainly be combined as you grow more comfortable with your ePals.

Click here to browse / search for classrooms so you can see how the interface works.

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A sample profile

Each classroom profile is created by the teacher and explains the types of connections they are hoping to make.

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Finally, another great service that ePals provides are message forums for teachers and students alike.  Here, students can pose and answer questions to the global community that are interesting or relevant to their lives. Here, you'll see students from all over the world discuss things like their favorite foods, favorite books, favorite movies, as well as globally important issues such as gun control, women's roles, and cloning. It's great to see students read through and contribute their own thoughts and ideas about topics that are highly relevant to their lives.  It can be quite an eye-opener for many students who may otherwise never get an opportunity to communicate with kids their age from around the globe.

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Here's to hoping you take the dive and expose your students to the global community in a way that is very accessible and "real."  Try ePals!

Teacher Feature - Jilian Reynolds

Jilian Reynolds is a rock star 7th grade ELA teacher at Elise Middle School in Robbins, NC.  She is one of those teachers that has always been at the forefront of using technology with students, always chomping at the bit for more!

Because of this, at the start of this 2013-2014 school year, Jilian was a natural selection to pilot 1:1 Chromebooks for our county.  Her students did amazing work, created incredible multimedia projects, and have become a model classroom for others to come visit and see what every student is capable of doing on these machines.  She and her student's work and willingness to share their positive feedback on the Chromebook experience was a big factor in our decision to move forward with these devices for all students in grades 6-12.

As a bonus, Ms. Reynolds produced a short video with her students that shows how she uses Chromebooks in her classroom to easily and powerfully differentiate instruction and assessments.  Enjoy!

Collaborating with Google Drawing

Collaboration is a key 21st Century skill. Google has a Drawing feature that allows students to collaborate on a work space that allows them to insert images, text, shapes, lines and scribbles.  Like other Google tools, Drawing allows for comments and chat while collaborating.  During our Pilot Project for our 1:1 initiative, teachers used Google Drawing to create timelines in English class and Science safety diagrams in science class.  Student final projects were created in Google Drawings to share out links to their mini-projects.

Once your drawings are complete, you can use them pretty much anywhere.  You can save them as multiple file types (.png, .jpeg, .pdf and .svg) and insert them into documents or embed them into websites (once published to the web).  A cool feature of Google Drawings is the snap to grid feature that allows you to easily align objects with precision.  The best part about Google Drawings is that it is FREE!

Some ideas for using Google Drawings in the classroom:

• Timelines
• Mind mapping
• Brainstorming
• Flow charts
• Procedures
• Geographical mapping
• Posters

Let us know how you are using Google Drawings in the comments!

Tyler Callahan
jcallahan@ncmcs.org
@STEM_TC

Promoting Student Voice with Chromebooks

One huge benefit we've found in deploying Chromebooks on a large scale is that they are so much easier to manage than any other device we've used in the past (PC's, Macs, iPads, etc.).  One of the excellent features of Google Apps Admin is the ability to easily create a district-specific App Store within the larger Chrome Web Store Environment (if you'd like to read more on how to do this, click here for a tutorial).  Our store is called "Moore@School".

The way we set up our Chromebooks for app downloads is in two tiers- staff and students:  
Staff:  Any staff member has full rights to view and download ANY app from the wider Chrome Web Store.

Students:  All students can VIEW apps on the wider Chrome Web Store and have access to download and install any apps within our "Moore@School" store.

So how do we promote more student voice within our district?  Well, we give all students an opportunity to request an app to be placed within the Moore@School store. All students have to do is go to this page and fill out this form to request an app to be loaded.  I get a notification of the request, download and test the app, then approve or deny it.  Once it is approved, I email the student back to thank them and let them know of it's approval, then push it out to our web store.  This entire process- from my email dinging with a notification to the app showing up for download in the web store takes less than 5 minutes.

We've seen great benefits from this already!  The students are doing an outstanding job of providing sound reasoning and justification for their app choices.  Here are just a few excerpts from apps that were requested and approved:

App Request:  Caret  (Requestor: Garret K)

"This app is a text editor. I am trying to write html and javascript code on my chromebook but the text app has a very hard to use interface and doesn's make a whole lot of since. After every opening tag it adds a two space indention that you have to remove to had a closing tag to keep your text aligned. I'm on the search for the best text editing app on the web store."

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App Request:  Cacoo  (Requestor:  Cheyenne)

"I think cacoo should be add to Moore County Schools because it is a app that would help us in math and science and reading. Cacoo can help us in science because we are learning about plants. In reading we do flow charts that help us draw conclusions It can help us in math because we plot coordinates on a coordinates plane. It can help us in social studies because we do timelines. Thank you for taking our suggestion."

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App Request:  Graph.tk  (Requestor:  Brittany)

"I believe students of Moore County Schools should be able to access the app Graph.tk. I believe this because it’s a very useful and educational app. The 6th-8th grade students of Highfalls Elementary School are working on learning graphing and calculating functions. In this utility you are able to use exponents which would be very useful for the upcoming years. The reviews on this app are “excellent graphing utility” and ”quite amazing”. Graph.tk can help us in many ways such as with completing tasks. Also, it allows easy work formation, and allows you to plot and design your own graphical unit. It has more functions that are still new to the app and it is easily used. By having this tool we would be able to use less paper by graphing parallelograms, trapezoids, and polygons through the app. Thank you for considering my suggestion."

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If you're interested in seeing how our app list has grown, check out this page and scroll to the embedded G Doc toward the bottom.

We've been able to be responsive to student needs, have been exposed to a lot of great new apps, and students are able to have a positive impact on the rest of the students in our county- a true win for increased student voice!

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6 Quick and Easy Ideas to use Fresh-Out-of-the-Box Chromebooks

So you've gotten a class set of Chromebooks. Now what?  

Check out 6 easy ideas you can take and use with students while your laptops still have that new Chromebook smell:

1. Research and Note-Taking with Google Docs:  Students research topic(s) and record notes into Google Doc to share with others or save for themselves.

2. Vocabulary Work:  Students create a Google Doc of words and research definitions, record in own words, and insert visual representations for each word.

3. Create and Share with Drawings:  Using Google Drawings, students create posters, flyers, handouts, signs, etc.  Can do solo or invite group members to a shared document.

4. Jigsaw with Google Presentations:  In small or large groups, one student creates a Google Presentation and shares with other members.  Each member is then assigned one piece of the larger puzzle to create a new slide to report back what they learned.

5. Quick Feedback / Backchannel TodaysMeet:  Create a Todaysmeet.com chat room and allow students to use space to respond to questions, reflect on presentations or videos as a group, or stage lively debates.

6. Play, Explore, and Create: Allow students to explore web apps for music/video/animation production.  Great ones to play with that are easy to get rolling:  uJam, Wevideo, Animoto, Picmonkey, and Voki.