End of Semester and Awesome Podcasts

So apparently it was a busy first semester of the school year as evidenced by my lack of writing. WOW.
I seem to apologize often for my lack of writing. I don't think I am really cut out for this but hey, I try.

What did I accomplish this first part of the school year? Well....I'd have to say that one of the best things were podcasts. Turned out really well but here were the challenges:
1- my students have their own Microsoft Surface devices so I wanted them to be able to use them to create the podcast. Problem- How to record?
2-Audio editing. Yeah, a whole bag of problems there.
3- I needed a place to host the podcasts. Problem- Free? Ease of publishing? Safety/privacy of my students?
And how did all this work out?
1- OneNote has an audio record feature within the program. Unfortunately we were not getting good recordings using the built in microphone (who knows why? they are kids.) so we ended up attaching my Blue Yeti mic. Worked great. Love this microphone.
2- Editing- We needed to add music which we got from bensound.org at the beginning and ending of the podcast. I prefer to use Audacity but that was not an option. I tried finding some other things but I wasn't happy with what I found. We ended up pulling the music and the audio into a Chrome app called Beautiful Audio Editor and it worked perfectly. We were able to save it as a project and reopen it later. We also were able to download it as a wave file which we then converted to an mp3 for easier upload to where we were posting the podcasts. Which by the way, we used Audio Converter from 123Apps. Also was super easy to use. Our creating process was not as challenging as it started out looking to be despite all the bumps in the road.
3- Where to post? I have used other sites before like Podbean and others but I just didn't like the fact that their podcasts were located where they could access other podcasts that were not necessarily those I wanted them to find. Remember, these were 7th graders. Solution? I am a major Edmodo user and created a group just for our podcasts. I am the only member and I made all the posts BUT I made all the posts public. That way anyone with the link to the Edmodo group could listen to the podcasts. By the way- the podcasts were all on Social Justice Leaders and probably would not interest anyone but other teachers, parents and well that pretty much sums up the list so I was not so much concerned about "gee now the whole world can hear your podcasts". This platform gave them the publishing they needed but in a very controlled world. And if you would like to hear the podcasts you can follow this link: SPS Podcasts Unfortunately though there seems to be an Edmodo glitch and even though there are 21 posts you can only see the first half of them. When you click on load more posts it won't. Boo hiss. So what was and is a great way to post podcasts safely for your students has this one very important problem. I've contacted Edmodo but still no solution. Again- boo hiss.

First Week of School

We just finished the first week of school and what a whirlwind that was. Phew! I'm tuckered out. And what did we learn this week?

• don't let 5th graders make their own Edmodo accounts. Well let's just say that didn't go as perfectly as I had hoped. I was being overly optimistic and I didn't take them through the steps like I should. My mistake. Live and learn. I created the second class myself.
• don't make the needed copies of the schedule until you finish the first week of school. Yeah there were some errors and new versions had to be made. I only made one set. 
• I still haven't found the magic potion that gets students to put and keep their hands in proper typing position. Unfortunately some of them are getting really good at text typing so they transfer that to full keyboard typing and I must admit that some are pretty darn fast with two fingers. But we keep trying.
• Practice, practice, practice. We usually use typing.com for
  
  
  
  
  
  our keyboarding practice but for fun I had them go to ABCya and play the typing games their hoping something silly and easy would help them use the correct position. ABCya is a great site for educational games for K-5. I actually had 6-7-8 using the typing games also. I love typing.com because I can create classes and monitor or assign what I want my students to complete.
• I had a chat with the librarian and we decided to do a joint project after Christmas on the Iditarod. She was given a book called Granite by Susan Butcher  (you can find this book on Amazon) about a sled dog in the Iditarod. Very cool story. Have to start looking for resources. Found one already: Iditarod Just not sure what sort of projects we will do. Hmmm..... So be on the look out for more posts about the Iditarod.
  
• AND to top it all off, we are setting up a staff notebook inside of OneNote. It has been not without challenges. But it is going to be GREAT!

And so, the weekend, which so far has been non-stop rain, and back to it on Monday!

Tots and Tech Galveston and Frisco

Did I mention I was presenting at TCEA Tots and Tech Galveston? And in Frisco too! #tceatots
Well I did. It was awesome once again but this time no sea weed or tropical storms so we actually had a "vacation" of sorts and stuck around for a few extra days and explored Galveston. But I digress....

Presentations in Galveston included:

Edmodo in the Classroom
Edmodo, My Personal Learning Network and More
Fun Web Projects and Resources
iPad Projects that Wow
Quiet on the Set: Making Movies with Your iPad- Green Screening
Let's Do the Paper Slide and Mime

If you would like to see any of the presentation material, you can go to my co-presenter's site. You can download everything from Hold the Mayo (nothing to do with sandwiches- her last name is Mayo!)

http://www.tceatots.org/

TCEA Tots Frisco sessions will include the following:

Edmodo in the Classroom- Beginner
Engaging Your Students with Interactive Lessons using Nearpod
Fun Web Projects and Resources
Formative Assessment using Technology

Again- any presentation material will be available at Hold the Mayo
If you are local to Texas/Dallas-Fort Worth, you should definitely check out this mini conference in Frisco -> TCEA TOTS
I highly recommend attending. Very well done and not as intimidating as the regular TCEA conference that is held in Austin in February.

Collaboration

One of the things I have been getting my middle school students to do is collaboration on documents for their work. And it has worked out surprisingly well! Some of the tools we ave used for collaboration are: Google Docs, Google slides, Padlet, and just collaborating inside of Edmodo.
The Google products are very easy to use because of the larger work area. Although the doc was tricky since I limited them to keeping all the work on one page. Padlet is a nice area to share information. Depending on the layout of the posts (I used stream) this can have an effect on the organization. One of my favorite collaboration projects was to work in their small group in Edmodo doing research about the history of Big Tex. Their group had to divide the jobs up and only one person could input the information on the timeline. (We use the timeline from ReadWriteThink. Excellent resource.) The info that they found had to be posted in their small group for the Timeline person. They also had to find links to images to use. The project worked well and everyone's timelines turned out nicely. I believe that teaching students to work in collaborative groups is an important skill and helps them become an asset to their future employers.

Edmodo Training

So I have been working on the Edmodo Certified Trainer course. Wow- lots of work. I've been using Edmodo since 2008/09 or sometime very close to when it first came out. So I feel pretty comfortable in using it, talking about it and teaching others. But as with anything, you have to present things how those that developed it would like it presented. Sometimes that can be tricky because "that little thingy picture" is probably not in their terminology describing the cute little icons on the page! Just kidding- it was all good and I think I am done. Or at least I hope I am. I tried to really keep track of the assignments so I really hope I didn't miss any. Our final project was to create a case for using Edmodo for something and I chose using it to extend your class time with your students. I can honestly vouch that Edmodo is the answer to succeeding at this task. Because of all this hard work I now have created a ScreenCastOMatic channel and you can view my final project there.
Enjoy Extend Your Once a Week Class with Edmodo at the TailWagger Tech Training Channel on ScreenCastOMatic!

New Year, New Name, New Look!

2015 has rolled right in and I am back in the game. Changed my blog name- Tail Wagger Tech- the last one just didn't roll off my tongue very well and I had to have something to do with dogs. Had to change the colors and background too just to keep up with all the changes. February kept me pretty busy with some presentations at TCEA in Austin. We presented on Formative Assessment: Required for Learning, Extending Your Classroom with Edmodo, and Using Edmodo Apps to Enhance Learning. The sessions went well and if anyone is interested in those presentations you can find them on my colleague's website www.holdthemayo.org. We will be presenting Formative Assessment and Extending Your Classroom with Edmodo at NCEA in Orlando. Looking forward to some Florida sunshine!

Speaking of Edmodo apps....My sixth grade music class is working on some composer research and they are using the InstaGrok Lite app in Edmodo. Using the apps in Edmodo is very handy since students don't have to log in to more than one thing. The apps operate right in Edmodo. InstaGrok Lite helps students gather information from websites, etc into a mind map of sorts. Another tab is their Journal where they can actually write their paper and take notes. It keeps their pinned websites in a menu to the side. I think it has made organizing their research much easier. If you are an Edmodo user don't be afraid to visit the "app store". There are many apps that are free to use with your classes and many are unlimited use, meaning they can be assigned to all your classes.

If you aren't an Edmodo user, well you really have to take a good look at that! And once you sign up and get a FREE account, check out InstaGrok Lite and all the great apps in Edmodo.

Stop the World I want to get off! NCEA

Apparently I just let 3 months go by without a single post. Yeah I am getting really good at this.

Back to it-
This week is NCEA in Pittsburgh. My partner in educational pursuits, Carol Mayo, and I are presenting on Tuesday on the topic of "Extending the classroom with Edmodo". One of my very favorite classroom tools is Edmodo. I use it on a regular basis and find it so user friendly I cannot imagine why any teacher would be opposed to trying it out.

One of the things we will look at besides the usual uses for Edmodo are now the "apps" that are available within #Edmodo. I also recommend that teachers take a closer look at the communities where you can connect to teachers from around the world.

If you are in Pittsburgh and attending #NCEA please join us on Tuesday.

New Year and Back to the Race

Happy New Year!
The first week back to school. Mostly smooth. Can't complain. And I see January already zipping by!

One cool item to share and I know I am behind the time on this one. I heard about this tool but was too busy at the time to check it out. Now I wish I had slowed down and looked at it months ago! I am talking about Blendspace. Very easy and cool way to bring different parts of a lesson together and share with your students. It is a drag and drop construction that also has some really easy search tools already built in. You can share it easily, there are privacy setting so if you include documents you don't want to share with the world you don't have to.  I had heard teachers get all excited about Blendspace but thought "how can it be any cooler?". Well I'm not saying it is any better than some other web tools that let you bring videos, web pages, documents, whatever, together in one place but it sure is slick. There are some who will still prefer the other formats but take a look at Blendspace. I have accessed Blendspace through my Edmodo account. It is a free app inside of Edmodo. I do a quick lesson on hearing loss with my middle school students and this would have been handy to use. Here is the Blendspace that I just created for a hearing loss lesson. It includes videos, web image, and 2 web links. Mine is pretty simple but it is just what I need for this lesson.

ISTE 2013 Day 1- sort of

So today was kind of the first official day of ISTE for me here in San Antonio. Awesome day. Went to some great poster sessions. I love those! When I was at ISTE in Philly I spent quite a bit of time in the poster area because you can take out as much as you want or as little. I can't even begin to list all the things we saw today. We visited Jason Ohler and how he used Aurasma. I've tried Aurasma and I

think it has some great potential but I don't find it particularly user friendly. I've had some glitches in using in and I know if it doesn't work easily and smoothly teachers will give up on it and stop trying. But, I really think Aurasma is pretty cool so I've going to keep at it and see how I can solve my issues.

Learning management systems seem to be the up and coming thing. First there was Moodle and Blackboard. I've never really used Blackboard for a class. I've seen it but not used it personally. I took my entire masters courses using Moodle and it was okay. Not very fancy. Kind of plain jane of sorts but fairly easy to get around. Well now there is Schoology and Canvas who are going to make those old two step up their game. Both Schoology and Canvas offer many options and seem to flow seemlessly from one thing to another. We are going to meet with a teacher that uses Canvas. I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say. I use Edmodo regularly but will check out these other two on their "free" side.

Well I just tried Schoology and your students have to be 13 and over to create an account. So, is this a platform only for the upper middle and high school crowd? I will need to visit Schoology booth to find out more.

Flipping the Classroom

I talked about the Flipped Classroom a few months ago and if you go back to that post there is a great info graphic that talks about what it is. I've been thinking, pondering and trying to brainstorm about how I can flip my general music class for my middle school students. I just introduced, Edmodo,( which I talked about in this post --> Edmodo ) to my 7th and 8th grade students. If you have not explored Edmodo and are looking for a very user friendly micro blogging environment that is safe and secure, go check it out. Moving on- I really would like to do this and I'm going to figure out how soon but in the mean time, in my research for ideas, I came across an excellent set of videos that would be great for a flipped history class. Crash Course in History videos can be found on YouTube Edu. They are 42 high quality videos that present history; each average 12 minutes long. I watched the first one and felt that they were definitely appropriate for high school students, perhaps middle school depending on your students. Crash Course also has 35 videos for Biology. I recommend taking a closer look at these if this is your course, either as a student or teacher, and perhaps use them to flip your own classroom.

Well this still brings me to no big solution for myself in flipping my classroom, but hey, I'll figure it out. And when I do, you will definitely hear about it.

History teachers- you may also enjoy History for Music Lovers also on YouTube.

End of the School Year musings and Social Bookmarking

So the end of this school year is fast approaching. I always feel like I have more to say than I have time to say it in. There have been some frustrating moments in the year but also many exciting happenings. I was evaluating how our technology has improved at my school. I recently sent a survey out to the teachers inquiring what form of technology did they integrate in their lessons. It was a commendable list of things ranging from Edmodo (a very popular choice) to presentation tools like Prezi and Glogster. This list was quite encouraging especially remembering how little teachers would use in the past. So this is a step in the right direction.

One of the questions I asked was what technology infused projects or assignments were given to students. Here is where we lack. Outside of Microsoft Word (which technically is using technology), the list was quite short. This area is where we need to focus in the year ahead. I love walking down our school halls and seeing all the wonderful posters, book reports and models but I often wonder how teachers can branch out and encourage their students to do the same assignments but in another way other than using a poster board. A challenge indeed.

Perhaps in getting teachers to use some simple tools, they can see how these tools can also help their students. One such tool would be to create and organize internet bookmarks. Very simple yet very productive. My personal favorite is Delicious. I would have to say that 99% of my bookmarks are here. I have begun using the stacks feature to create groupings of links. This has been especially helpful when teachers ask me to find links for their students. A science teacher at my school has asked me many times for links to topics that her students are studying. I find and create stacks, send her the link, which she shares with her students. I am told the students try to finish their work so they can go explore the links. Lifelong learners in the making. My stacks are not particularly large and sometimes it is tricky finding interactive features. Nonetheless, it adds to their learning experience. Here is a link to a stack I put together for her class when they were studying geology.

Some thoughts about Delicious that you should consider: First of all Delicious is a "social bookmarking site" and could likely be blocked at your school because of the "social" nature. In the site you are able to search the community's links so doing a search might turn up some links that you don't want your students to be exploring. Secondly, in the terms of use, Delicious does state that their site in not intended for those under the age of 13. If your student population is mostly under this age you might consider some alternative bookmarking sites.

This list contains some great for teachers and adults but some not so great for the under 13 crowd:
Live Binders- Terms of use state that you must be 13 to register for an account and there are public binders that are easily accessible. So- good for teachers- not so good for under 13
Diigo- now this is a social bookmarking site that initially I did not like. It just did not seem user friendly. Too many options? However, looking back at it I see they now offer an education account. So Diigo now looks very promising for classroom use. I'll have to play more with this education account and post about it later.

Music Tech Ideas

Well it is a good thing this is not Twitter because I am worse at "tweeting" than I am at blogging. It seems I am always apologizing for my lack of posts. I would love to be one of those weekly writers but it never seems to happen. I promise this will be the last time I whine about never posting! Moving on-

I will be away from my classroom and wanted to leave some assignments for them using technology. It is always nice when I can send them to the tech lab and they can work on something that doesn't require a sub to monitor too closely. Many of our teachers use Edmodo as an extension of their classroom and students regularly turn in assignments through their class pages. Edmodo is often called "Facebook for the classroom" and that is a pretty good description.

My junior high students will be using it while I am gone. They will all be logging into their Edmodo account where they will find their assignments. Once there the sixth graders have a link to the Rhythm Trainer. Rhythm Trainer is a fantastic site by John Blank created as part of his masters project while at VanderCook College of Music. The site lets you practice hearing rhythm patterns in two different ways. There are options for tempo and a variety of notations to choose from. One of my favorite parts is that my students can email me their results. When I get the email, it tells me their name, how many correct, how many wrong and the best part....how much time they spent doing it. Great for when you aren't there and wonder if they are really doing what they should be doing.

My seventh grade students will be working in Jam Studio. Jam Studio pretty much helps you write a song. You have the option to choose your chords, tempo, meter (4/4 and 3/4) and all of the instrumentation. Very fun and they enjoyed using it.

The eighth grade has a bit more complicated assignment. After signing in to Edmodo, they will access 4 links. The first will take them to a Google Site (You are welcome to take a look) that I created to help them discover some things about musical form. They also have links to two Google Forms where they will answer questions as they go along. I will be curious to see how they handle all of it. Sometimes they are very focused and receptive to using so much technology and other times they act like they've never seen a computer before!

Please be sure to share these marvelous sites with your music teachers. They are all easy to use and your students will enjoy infusing a bit of music technology in their learning.

Edomodo and May

Blogging does not come easily and time is very hard to find. Thinking of things to say is not so hard, but the time issue is a challenge. I keep trying.

So I noticed some new highlights on other blogs about Edmodo and I am thrilled that others are finding this FREE tool. I have been using Edmodo for 3 years now and really love it for many reasons. Always on the top of my list when evaluating tech tools is the ease of use and the ease of the learning curve. I find Edmodo extremely easy and friendly to use. It does not take very long for even the less tech savvy to navigate through some very basic use of Edmodo. And students also find it very easy to use. There are five teachers on my campus that now use it and I would like to see all of our teachers on board by next year. I think it would offer them a great place to interact with families and their students. A teacher on another blog has suggested and reminded readers that you are able to embed many other web tools into Edmodo, such as wallwisher (which I love but is still blocked at my school) and fotobabble (another that is surely blocked) which I do not have much experience in but looks promising and fun. Simply put, if you have not looked into using Edmodo for your class, put double stars next to it and check it out. You will not be disappointed.

Speaking of blocked sites at school, my own blog here is blocked. Which makes writing all the more difficult as I am then only to write after hours or weekends. No brain storming during the day.

Trying a little fotobabble here with my dog Remi.