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Monday, June 28, 2021

Icebreaker... Three P's

 I don't know about you, but first days of school are long and often boring. Though I do try to avoid spending most of the time on procedures or rules, I also realize (as an introvert) that asking me to stand up and talk about my summer is ABSOLUTELY not something I want to do. I don't care to hear that you went to Europe or hiked to the top of Pike's Peak. I watched Netflix, so thanks. :)

So, with that in mind, I often try to do icebreaker activities in smaller groups and in a way that isn't going to upset my introverts too much. 

Here's one that I think might work well from Tophat.com that I created a document to go with--

Divide students into small groups, and have them share three facts about themselves: something personal, something professional and something peculiar, such as an interesting hobby or habit. 

A few little pieces of advice:

  • Always ask students to say their own names on day 1 (so you don't butcher them AND so they have a better opportunity to let you know what they go by-- so you aren't calling someone Alexandria when she prefers Lex!) and have a seating chart so they know where to sit (this prevents shy kids from feeling like they have no friends and avoids cliques from sitting in groups). I usually just say, "Okay, let's see if you found the right seats..."
  • If you do a sharing activity, divide them into small groups and let them share in a little group rather than a big class forum. Then, you can collect the papers and review them on your own (I think it's nice to collect them after giving a little "work and small share time" and then ask if they want to share something they learned from someone else and you can make notes on the papers while they do. 


Here's my "worksheet" for the activity. Feel free to make a copy of your own!

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Icebreaker fun! The NUMBERS game!

 It's early summer but I am already on the hunt for ideas for back to school (it's a given when you have 6 preps in one semester and you refuse to repeat activities since some kids may take you multiple classes per day!). 

I ran across this fun idea today, the Numbers game! Here's the YouTube video and then my suggestions.


I love the idea of getting students UP and MOVING. I think week 1, this is important. This is also a great activity for getting them to have to work with others (without them even realizing it because it all moves so quickly). 

So, the guy in the video just has them doing arbitrary numbers, but as a business teacher, I thought... come on, how can we make this a little more "interesting" and so here is my take!

  • I may not have 20 or 30 (or exactly that number, rather) kids in a class... so I think setting this up with maybe smaller group numbers would be easier. You might have to have a person in the group who does not have a number and helps put them in order OR you could have a number that repeats (like zero) and have multiple of that one.
  • Price is Right style-->
    • Go on Amazon or get out the local grocery store ad and use prices of items
    • If someone is correct, they win... or you can give them so much time and then pick who is closest to award points OR you could say that this team is closest and the answer is higher or lower or whatever
  • "When Did It Happen" style-->
    • I found this webpage from Information Age with key events in the story of technology and this one from LiveScience with Internet History. You could use dates for all answers (4 digit years)... granted, many of these will have a 1, 9, or a 2 in them... but it would be a race to guess correctly AND you can relate it to tech!
    • Examples:
      • 1832: Charles Babbage invents the first Computer.
      • 1904: John Ambrose Fleming invents the vacuum tube.
      • 1936: Alan Turing proposes what has become known as the Turing Machine.
      • 1976: Queen Elizabeth II hits the “send button” on her first email.
      • 1981: IBM invents the PC.
      • 1983: The Domain Name System (DNS) establishes the familiar .edu, .gov, .com, .mil, .org, .net, and .int system for naming websites.
      • 1991: CERN introduces the World Wide Web to the public.
      • 1995: The first online dating site, Match.com, launches.
      • 1997: Netflix is founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph as a company that sends users DVDs by mail.
      • 1998: The Google search engine is born, changing the way users engage with the Internet.
      • 2003: The blog publishing platform WordPress is launched.
      • 2005: YouTube.com launches. The social news site Reddit is also founded. 
      • 2007: Apple releases the iPhone.
  • Get to Know Mr/Mrs style-->
    • Honestly, I'd embed this in the other games, but you could have a few just fun facts about you to help them get to know you... like the year you got married, graduated high school, turned 40, got your first car... 
What do you think? I am excited to try this one out in the fall. Heck, this might even be fun in an adult leadership retreat or conference!


Sunday, April 19, 2020

9 Objects of My Isolation

We've been out of school since March 13 and most instruction is being delivered online at this point. As a teacher, I don't like it. For Elementary, maybe it's fun. I mean, you have 25-30 kids in your class and you are "their classroom teacher" so they spend almost all day with you (and have been since August). In high school, I have 130 students a day, so mine are with me for 50 minutes and have 7 other teachers to see daily. That's 8 sets of classroom rules/expectations and 8 different personalities (some who they click with and some who they do not!).

So, as part of my "alone time" I prepared (in honor of the instagram challenge), 9 Objects of My Isolation (using PhotoPea on a Chromebook, since I am asking my Photoshop kids to do one as well).



And, here's my explanation...


  1. Top Left:  Puzzle! We worked on a 1000 piece puzzle at some point after the first week. Everyone in the family worked on it together from time to time. I ordered other puzzles, but after two weeks off, no one really cared to do them anymore. :(
  2. Top Middle:  Zoom! I don't know if my students are getting tons of Zoom calls, but we do a faculty zoom at least once a week, department meetings by Zoom, FBLA officer meetings (and virtual interviews) with Zoom.. and I'm finally trying it with a class next week and hoping at least a few show up.
  3. Top Right: Kitties! That's Pumpkin and Ollie. I have a feeling they wish we were all at work/school because they are probably tired of having people around constantly.
  4. Middle Left: Wii! We pulled out the Wii again. We've mostly played Smarty Pants and Wheel of Fortune. I wish I had a working Balance Board, but it died in a flooded basement sometime in the last few years.
  5. Middle:  My Girls! Though my kids are tired of being at home, it's been nice to see them every day and spend time together that we wouldn't typically get to spend, especially my senior daughter who moved into the dorms in August for college.
  6. Middle Right: Meat! Okay, I just thought it was funny that after a week out, meat was hard to find. This was a pic from a day where I was excited to find two kinds of meat at one store!
  7. Bottom Left: Road Trips! I mean, when you can't visit many places, you get in the car and drive. We've done a little roaming around.
  8. Bottom Middle: Netflix! My oldest daughter and I watched all seasons of Kim's Convenience, a sitcom. Now I'm watching Scandal (crazy!).
  9. Bottom Right: Scrabble! We've been playing board games quite a bit. Scrabble, Pictionary, and Telestrations, to name a few!
Hope your COVID break has provided you time to relax, learn, and spend some time with your family. But, I am sure missing my students!

Friday, March 27, 2020

No Illustrator? Try YouIDraw! (free)

Here's a 15 minute review/demo of a browser-based vector graphics editor/creator. The free version is limited, but when it comes to something similar to Adobe Illustrator that can be done on a Chromebook, this is about as close as I have found.

Tools you will see:

  • Typical Move, Rotate, Skew
  • Shape tools
  • Type tool
  • Hand tool

Panels/Features you will see:

  • Layers panel
  • Pathfinder (similar) panel at top of the screen
  • Library (gradients are here, and it actually has objects and lots of shapes)
  • Properties panel (where you can change fonts, modify fill/stroke, transparency and appearance panel type things, flip horizontal/vertical, and the canvas size/background color)
  • Export button-- be sure to tell it to export OBJECTS and not entire Canvas if you want transparency
They have a pretty simple user guide, too-- https://site.youidraw.com/youidraw-drawing-user-guide.html

What's really missing-- (among other things)
  • No knife tool
  • No trace bitmap (you can insert images, though, and if they are SVG images, you can edit the paths, change colors, etc.)
  • No good control over angles
  • No Shapebuilder or other fancy tools
  • Text path tools
  • Ability (in free version) to export in anything other than PNG (transparent) and JPG

What it does that Illustrator DOES NOT do-- save to Google Drive!

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Fantasy Photoshop Fun! What the Animal Project!

Some years, we do a compositing  project, which is a great review of using Selection tools, Layer Masks, and Adjustment Layers called the What the Animal project. Students must take numerous parts (four) of animals/insects and create a new one with some color adjustments.

Here's a video demo of me walking through this example one (you can download the PSD in the video comments on YouTube).

A few tips:  1) Make sure students sketch out an idea before they start as they collect the parts. It makes it easier to grade and helps them think about getting pics that are turned the correct direction, etc., to match.  2) Make them turn in a thumbnail sheet so you can see the images they started with (sorry, they will cheat and just find one already done online).   3) Make your own! They want to see what you come up with, too!







Friday, November 1, 2019

Teaching Web Design... read on!

First off, my apologies for not being as present this school year. It's been a trying semester for me, for some reason. But, I wanted to give some updates for those who teach Web Design.

I revamped my curriculum and I'm still ironing out the details of how I want to do things, but I did create a TON of resources this summer to go with my materials. We also shifted to using Repl, a coding site, where students code in-browser. I can have them turn in projects through that, do bellringers, etc. It's working really well for us.

Here's a walkthrough video. I wanted to show you what it looks like and how to use with the kids. I will say that it always starts with a skeleton HTML file (with an embedded script that we delete), a script. js file (which we delete), and a blank css page. When I begin the class, I made the kids delete everything but the index file and then even all the content of the index file before we type everything in. At this point, they use the skeleton file and just make edits. But, you can drag and drop in other html files (if you drag in an index.html file, you will have to tell it to REPLACE the current one) and you can drag in image files from the computer as well.

I deliver materials (mostly just the links) in Canvas. I don't run it through modules or anything (yet, maybe eventually). But, here is a link to my bellringers file (which I add to as my kids need more practice). We do some of these whole class together to practice from the unit or they get 20 minutes to try to work on it and then we do it together. I don't grade any of them (I hand out stickers sometimes, though). We do a ton of practice, including self-graded practice quizzes I made on Google Forms. 

Links:
  1. Coding the Web Textbook (Links to an external site.) (work in progress)
  2.  Bellringers and Class Activities Packet

Self-Grading Google Practice Quizzes (Coding the Web)--

I did do a hand-coding quiz the other day... they were relying too much on guessing on codes and not looking it up (they are allowed a notes page for quizzes AND for work... and some weren't even getting them out!). We practiced hand coding every day for a week because it was driving me nuts. But, they are doing much better now.

Anyway, this is a rambling post today... but I wanted you to know 1) we all struggle, 2) you are not alone, and 3) here's a resource that might help you.  Oh, and if you managed to get this far... here are my "teacher recap" videos for my chapters, in case you need any help figuring out how to use some of the code.

Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Barely Keeping My Head Above Water! Parent Conference Week!

Can I vent a minute? This has probably been the most stressful school year of my teaching career! My many preps, my daughter being a senior in high school, and trying to remember to write objectives every day every hour are testing my limits. I was in bed before 8 PM last night.

But, it's Parent/Teacher Conference week here at JHS. These early conferences are always a challenge. I have 120 students to remember and unless you are not turning in work, being a discipline problem, or you've struck me as wonderfully genius or polite, I may not really know your work habits (or name... ahem).

So, I like to ask my students to complete a conference form ahead of time. We take about 10 minutes of class time and students have to check their grade, note missing work in my class, respond to questions about their satisfaction with their grades and the course, and then I use this information when I conference with parents. It's much better than that standard... "Oh, who do you belong to? Jared... okay, he's in my second hour. Let me check his grade. 96, A. He's doing pretty well. No concerns. Good kid."

This also gives me feedback while I sit there for 7 hours. I can reflect on how I'm doing and how they like the course so far, so it's good for all of us, right? And parents always say that they like it, so it's good to keep those mommas happy! Occasionally, I change the questions up a bit.

Here's a link to my form (Google Doc). Feel free to File> Make a Copy and edit as your own. Good luck with upcoming conferences!