REMC 17 Director’s Blog

If you were like me and you couldn’t attend the Mobile Learning Conference held on Friday, May 10, 2013 in Kalamazoo, you can still learn from the presenters and the attendees! Check out the Conference Handouts and pull up the Conference Twitter Hashtag – #maculmlc. I have already bookmarked several items and will be viewing more resources over the next few days as time permits. Via the Twitter hashtag, I found Tammy Maginity’s presentation links from her session about apps for digital storytelling. Using the Conference Handouts page, I found Anthony Buza’s Prezi, “Producing Content from the iPad.” Check out the links and see what you can find!

The 4TVirtualCon is an excellent online conference! It provides an opportunity for educators from around the world to learn about best practices in technology education from each other. The current Elementary and Secondary Master of Arts with Certification (MAC) interns at the University of Michigan School of Education have assisted with the development of the conference. This year one of the proud sponsors of the conference is Oakland Schools!

The conference is FREE and OPEN to all educators. Most sessions are targeted to K-12 educators. The conference will be held virtually—no plane tickets annd no hotel fees!

The preconference workshops will be held on Saturday, May 18th. The opening keynote will begin on Sunday, May 19th at 8:00 p.m. and the conference will continue through 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 21st. There are three themes for the conference this year; Teaching in the Cloud (web2.0 focus), Bring Your Own Technology, and The One Computer Classroom—Do More with Less. See the conference schedule for details about the numerous sessions being offered each day.

All sessions will be live and archived. This means that even if your schedule doesn’t permit you to attend a session of interest to you, you will be able to view a recording of the session and still learn about the topic.

The conference is run by instructors from the MAC programs at the University of Michigan School of Education. While the conference is free and open, registration is required. In addition, interested educators can earn SCECHs by attending the virtual conference. Register now! You won’t want to miss this opportunity to participate in some powerful virtual learning!

Every Tuesday the people at Symbaloo EDU post a new tutorial on their blog to help you learn to create Symbaloos in new and powerful ways. The first tutorial I viewed showed me how to embed a YouTube video in a Symbaloo in just over one minute! After viewing this tutorial, I decided to try embedding the CUE/MACUL Roadtrip Documentary on my Symbaloo of MACUL Conference 2013 resources. Check it out by clicking here and then clicking on the YouTube Roadtrip Documentary icon when my Symbaloo opens.

The next tutorials I viewed were about using the Symbaloo iPad app. I’m finding these tutorials to be a quick and easy way to learn. Maybe they will work for you too! Access the tutorials on the Symbaloo EDU blog by clicking here. Enjoy!

I learned about Symbaloo EDU sitting in on David Prindle’s (@dprindle ) 2013 MACUL Conference hands-on session, “Creating a Digital Teaching and Learning Environment.” I decided to try it out by setting up a Symbaloo that contains links to the resources and websites I learned about at the 2013 MACUL Conference in Detroit. Click here to access those resources. I hope you will find them to be as useful as I have found them to be. I also hope you will setup an account at Symbaloo EDU and create a bookmark page to use with your students.

The First Annual REMC Connected Educator Un/Conference will be held on Saturday, April 20, 2013 from 8:00 AM – 3:00 PM at the Jackson Area Career Center. The cost is a very affordable $40!

Teachers who have been part of REMC Connected Educator showcases will be the presenters at this un/conference. They will be running hands-on sessions to help other teachers get started in their topic area.
Some of the presenters and their topics are Nick Provenzano – Blogging, John Sowash – Google Apps, Ben Rimes – Video Story Problems, Karen Bosch – Digital Storytelling, Steve Kelly – Flipped Learning, Gary Abud – BYOD, Kit Hard – UDL, Erin Klein – Digital Literacy Stations, Greg Vieau & Mary Phillips – Student News Groups, Anthony DiLaura – Digital Textbooks, and Andy Losik – Challenge Based Learning.

Lunch will be provided. Additional information, including a link to registration, can be found on the conference website.

If you took my advice and decided to move your Google Reader feeds to Feedly, you can find some great tips & tricks for making the transition here on the Feedly blog.

Yesterday Google announced that it will be discontinuing its Google Reader service as of July 1, 2013. You can read more about it by clicking here.

As a long time user of Google Reader, my first reaction was to panic! Once I calmed down enough to think, I went to Twitter. Lot’s of conversation about this news on there – mostly dismay, some calls for action to get Google to change the decision, and a few suggestions for a different RSS reader.

I explored a few of the choices and have settled on Feedly. It currently connects with my Google Reader feeds and within a few seconds had pulled in all of my subscriptions and the organizational scheme I had developed. To add icing to the cake, Feedly is promising that they have developed a method that will automatically keep our feeds working even after Google Reader is shut down. Read more about that by clicking here

Hopefully if you’ve been wondering what to do when Google Reader shuts down you now have an answer!

It’s not too late to make your plans to attend the 2013 MACUL Conference.
Click here to find out the details of registration.
Click here to read the MACUL Conference Blog.
Hope to see you there!

The second offering of the REMC sponsored “Blended Learning in the Classroom” course is fast approaching. The course guides classroom teachers in learning about and building their own blended learning environment. Participants meet once face-to-face and complete the rest of the course online. The course is based on research and teaches strategies to implement highly effective blended learning. This rigorous learning experience will require between 6-10 hours of online work per week. 50 SCECHs are pending.

Participants will receive a copy of “Continuing to Engage the Online Learner” by R. Conrad & J Donaldson and a free Snagit license.
 
Reactions from Pilot participants…”focus on the practice and not the tool made all of the content relevant and useful”, “support of the instructors was great”, “I’m able to market myself as able to teach both avenues [face-to-face & blended].”

Twenty offerings of this course are available around the state and three of them are being held right here in Oakland County! The first Oakland County session will be launched on February 5 at Lake Orion High School and it will be taught by Lake Orion teacher, Richard Messick. The second Oakland County session will be launched on February 6 here at Oakland Schools and it will be instructed by Kevin Emmons, a Clarkston teacher. The third Oakland County session will be launched on February 11 at the Walled Lake Schools Educational Services Center and it will be taught by Pam Shoemaker, Walled Lake’s Technology Instructional Coach.

Interested participants can register at:  http://www.solutionwhere.com/remcam/cw/showcourse.asp?19

Have you ever tried to make a Google Doc look the way you want and experienced frustration or disappointment? Do you miss the clip art and Word Art that were available in Microsoft Office? I will be facilitating a new Google workshop titled “Branding & Beautifying Your Google Docs” on Thursday, February 7, 2013 from 4:30 PM-7:45 PM to help you leave all of that frustration behind.

In this workshop you will learn how to brand your Google creations to make you stand out to your students, parents, co-workers and administration. You will learn about copyright-right friendly, free, clip art sites and how to start a collection of your finds using an app for Google Chrome and Picasa Web (Google’s photo/image sharing site). You will spend the majority of your time in the workshop setting up and trying out the tips and tricks. You will leave ready to keep creating impressive Google Docs long after the workshop ends. Bring your own laptop or use one of ours. If you bring your own, please have the Chrome browser installed. Everyone should come with their Google accounts set up and ready to use.

To register, please visit our online registration site by clicking here. Once the site opens click on the link for February and then locate the link for “Branding & Beautifying Your Google Docs.

I hope to see you there!