Edgaged

Life After the Interactive Board If I could choose one word to describe my district's journey with moving away from interactive whiteboards to non-touch displays, it would be adaptability. I posted a long time ago about having life after the interactive board. The big question that I was tasked with when coming to MSD of Steuben county was if placing such a large sum of money at the front of the classroom is a good investment? What is the return on investment for a teacher to have an expensive interactive board that is primarily used to write on a blank white screen? The entire staff has had to make adaptable their mantra in the transition away from interactive white boards. We've created more focus on student involvement and interactivity in a 1:1 environment rather than the teacher or one student at the front of the classroom. 
One exciting thing that happened this year for my teachers that has greatly improved this journey has been the replacement of teacher Chromebooks. P…

ICE Conference I recently had the pleasure of speaking on the topic of Orange Slice Teacher Rubric at the Indiana Connected Educators conference. It was a quick, 30-minute session but it is sometimes refreshing to present just on one focused tool and the implications for the classroom instead of multiple directions. I'm personally connected to the Orange Slice Teacher Rubric Google Docs add-on as the creator is not only a colleague of mine but is a friend. Matt Buchanan is a blessing to our school district as he has transitioned from the physics classroom to our data analyst. His experience as a mechanical engineer and as a classroom teacher gives him a unique perspective as he pursues solutions for our staff.  Why did Matt ultimately create Orange Slice? He wanted to create an easy, effective means for feedback within a Google Doc. It is proven that readily given feedback is a powerful means to help students learn. Orange Slice is not just a rubric builder, it allows the user to…

Three months It has been three months since we started testing "locked mode" in Google Forms for Chromebooks. It has been an exciting opportunity as it promised the possibility of students recording, taking screenshots, or leaving a Google Forms quiz. I've received quite a few mixed reviews during this time. I'm a little late in the game to be posting about the beta version of locked mode, but maybe with this will provide a more honest review. If you haven't tried locked mode in Google Forms, then feel free to check out the video. It is a couple months old, but it will get you started. If you do not have this capability, then your GSuite administrator did not sign up your domain for the early access. 

Being a beta tester Teachers were super excited to pilot locked mode when I first announced it. It was going to help resolve a big problem many secondary teachers were struggling with and that was the issue of cheating. Before you jump to the conclusion that all of…

Been Awhile Edgaged.net has been a quite place as of late. I apologize for the lack of posting, but it has certainly been representative of the season in my educational career. We've had a lot of new in the last couple years at MSD of Steuben County. I'll make more of an attempt to post in the future. Just in case I don't hold up to that promise, I'm pretty active on my YouTube channel. Feel free to subscribe to me there. 
Google Classroom Hack It has been almost an entire year since I came across a quick hack within Google Classroom to save you time an energy when it comes to creating collaborative spaces with Google products (docs, sheets, slides, etc.) To reiterate the linked post, the teacher merely needs to create an assignment, attach a hyperdoc, set the hyperdoc so that students can edit and save it as a draft. By doing so, the teacher can save tons of time due to a cool "reuse" feature within Google Classroom. By reusing the assignment draft and sett…

Map hyperslides? Why do that? (Note: I use hyperdocs and hyperslides interchangeably. Hyperslides is not an official term, but I use it.)

I'm a firm believer that technology should not be used unless there is some functional improvement to the task a teacher wants to accomplish. Technology for technology's sake is counter-productive. So when it comes to utilizing tools within GSuite, the tendency is that it becomes a digital worksheet; complete substitution for a paper-pencil activity. I want to combat that when it comes to the creating of hyperdocs or hyperslides. The purpose of a hyperdoc is to increase the level of access and collaboration. We'll explore this thought throughout the post.

A member of the social studies department at Angola High School asked me for ideas on how he can change what he is already doing and convert it something the students can accomplish on their Chromebooks. He has tons of blank maps where students have to mark and label various regions ba…

ICE Conference Fall is my favorite season. I love the turning leaves; I love the cool, sweatshirt weather. One of the best things about living in the mid-west is that you never get bored with the weather; it is always changing. One gem that happens each fall is the ICE conference. I look forward to it each year, but it has been especially beneficial the last several years as Michele Eaton has done a fantastic job of bringing some great keynote/featured speakers on board and organizing great opportunities for Indiana educators. I'm excited to see how the conference will continue to grow and evolve.

I've also had the pleasure of presenting at the ICE conference over the last several years on various topics. Its been interesting to think back to just a few years ago because I was presenting primarily about iPad integration for primary students. Now I'm very focused on utilizing GSuite in all classrooms, but that's very much due to my job change to MSD of Steuben County. …