Marshmallow Challenge in Web Design! #busedu #teto

Last year, we did this project the first week of class and I decided to do it again today. It's a fun activity that also reinforces the importance of making prototypes and testing design along the way.

I have some playing cards with Rock, Paper, Scissors on them, so as they walked in today, I handed them cards. Then, they had to find their matches to form groups. I carried this forward to playing RPS to determine the group leader, too. A student suggested I give "rock candy" to the winner; man, I didn't think of that!

The instructions I used, with the built-in timer and the debriefing video, are all embedded into the presentation below. You'll also find some pictures from my top teams today.

If you'd like the Slides presentation, click here. If you wish to use it, just click File> Make a Copy and you can save one to your own Google Drive to edit.

Zipgrade and Five Below! #busedu

I know I've blogged about Zipgrade before, probably, but I found a $5 gadget at my local Five Below store that makes grading with Zipgrade and my cell phone so fast! This little clamp thing is genius!

Cell phone clamped to a chair for quick grading!

It gives a nice overview of results:

And item analysis by question:

So, I can see half the class got #6 correct or that 38% of them put B on #9. 

It's not free (well, it is if you don't use more than 100 scans per month) but it's only $6.99 a year. And, you can put in the answer key from your phone (literally, click the A, B, C, etc.). You print your answer sheet blanks (like Scantron) from your computer. I actually export my students from SIS (have to get Excel fancy and text to columns, etc., but it's fast) and put them in. It assigns them a number and you can even go to the classes and print ANSWER SHEETS already pre-populated with their username and number bubbled in. Isn't that awesome!?

Oh, that is was the first test for my new Web Design curriculum.. looks like they have some work to do! :)

Sharing My First Day Classroom Scavenger Hunt! #busedu #getupandmove

It was a teacher workday at school this afternoon and I thought it would be a good time to try to come up with something new for my classroom. So, I decided to create a classroom scavenger hunt that I will hand to students as they walk in the door Thursday. I'll admit, I am borrowing the idea from my fifth grade daughter's teacher (we had open house last night).

After they have completed the activity, I'll take some time to talk about my class, including sharing pictures from previous year of projects in Multimedia and Photoshop. Then, we'll do a few housekeeping things since I teach in a lab (making sure they can log in to the machines, access their user drives, get to the shared drive, etc.).

Here's the link (Google Doc) in case you'd like to make a copy and edit for your own classroom! I thought this was a little better than find your seat, sit down, and wait. Plus, I can't ever pronounce names so hopefully this will help me!  Enjoy!

Web Design Curriculum REVISED and READY! #busedu

Well, my last "big" revamp was in 2012, so this past year and summer I have worked hard to revise my Web Design 1 curriculum. I just finished it (school starts Thursday, so I guess it was time) and though it's a "beta" (I'm sure I will find some issues, typos, or a random file missing), I'm going to go ahead and share.

My goal will be to record some screencast demonstrations to go along with it AND to create online flashcards to go with each unit. But, I haven't got to that part yet. :)

So, feel free to take a look. The PDF of my book that I use in the class is in this Google Drive folder. And, the "data files" are in a zipped folder there, too.

Let me know how it works for you!

WEB DESIGN CURRICULUM - Coding/HTML/CSS/Online Photo Editors

**UPDATE:  8/4/17 Just put the 2017 updated "book" there now. There are also some additional non-book activities in the folder so feel free to look around at those. I fixed some typos that I noted in my book when I last used it, so I advise using the new book (page numbers are the same as 2016, but a few errors are fixed)

Getting Ready...First Day Next Week! And I hate icebreakers... #busedu

So, I have tried many things the first week of school to get kids up and moving or talking. And, I know from experience that some students absolutely despise it. As a teacher, I don't totally dig it either. I wish I cared that you had a baby and lost 80 pounds and went on a cruise and did a mission trip (and it's cool that you did those things...I like to brag sometimes, too) but often people sharing their glory moments just make the person who had to work all summer a mess of depressed. And, kids are the same way (off-topic, I had a great summer and did lots of fun things).

Some ideas I have used in the past are online inventories that tell you what animal you are or something I adapted that identified what cartoon character you are. But, other than having them write it on the board on the chart or all raise their hands if they are lions, I didn't totally encourage interaction (probably because as a student I wasn't super into that, either).

I decided to find something to switch it up this year. And, for only the second time ever, I purchased something on Teachers Pay Teachers. I'll admit, I give everything I make away for free (even on that site) and sometimes think it's not nice to charge for something you made for your classroom anyway, but "teachers gotta teach" and I don't want to be a "hatin' hater" so if it's a great resource, it's different.

After reading a back to school blog post and reliving all the college classes where I had to tell what animal I am most like or what the last book I read was, I found the ideas the author shared to be inspiring. Here's the blog post talking about three back to school games that "don't suck" as he said--Blobs and Line, Concentric Circles, and This or That.

Anyway, long story short, the resources are great! The person put much time into making very clear directions you can show the class and giving several activities you can do. I purchased the Game Bundle for $10. And, I can certainly personalize it to make it more my own, but the hard work is done. I'm looking forward to doing these the first week of school.

Do you have any "go-to" icebreakers that kids love?

Back to School Selfie Cell Phone Fun! #busedu

As I was planning my FBLA officer leadership training for this upcoming Sunday, I thought about what kind of activity I could do in that training that I could also do with one of my classes this semester when we head back to school. I wanted an activity that was personal and involved phones (partly because the kids want to use them and partly so I can see who has a phone and who doesn't). If they don't want to use their phone, they can pair up with someone else for the activity. I don't want students to feel threatened or feel "less than" if they do not have a phone (or some don't have camera phones and that would limit their involvement in this activity).

So, I came up with a "Tic-Tac-Toe" board of Share Your Self-ie! You could expand and make it more like Bingo or even pair them up with people who have phones and let them play head to head, alternating pictures. That's a cool idea, right?

Here's the Google doc link, and feel free to modify. Let me know if you like it!

Oh, and here are my selfies in each category, just for fun... (you can click to see them better).

Loving the new Google Slides Q&A! #busedu

Though I hadn't had the opportunity to use the new Google Slides Q&A feature with my actual students when it came out in May, I did decide to try it out at the KBEA Conference this summer when I did my Google session. If you haven't heard about it, you can access the new feature by pressing the down arrow next to the Present button. And, you have to tell it to use Presenter View. A URL appears at the top of your presentation that participants can visit on their phones (or laptops) to submit questions. They can see each other's questions and even up-vote them if they also have that question.

When you use it, the default is that only people in your organization can submit questions, which is fine if you are a GAFE school and using it in class with students who are logged in. However, in a presentation situation, I had to change that to be "anyone" instead (it was a simple drop down).

Also, the presenter view pops up on your screen, so I suppose you must do some sort of "extend desktop" on your presentation computer/device to make it where only you can see the questions. After using it, I might would just minimize it and then have my phone open to the URL where they submit questions so I can see those separately.

Finally, you cannot exit the presentation or the questions disappear (and the next time, a different feedback URL appears). I learned that the hard way. Although, I also learned that you can also go to "Tools>Q&A History" to access the questions.

It's a pretty neat feature! Even if your presentation isn't in Google Slides, you could make a one slide presentation just to start class (a welcome screen, if you will) and allow students to use this to ask questions about whatever topic you are discussing (or about a PowerPoint that you are using and not a Google slideshow) provided you don't exit the presentation. I think there are some great implications for using this somewhat as a back channel (except you can have students logged in, which is cool).

Thoughts!?