Thursday, December 11, 2014

Get the Math - Multimedia Math Challenges About Careers

Get the Math is a super website designed to provide teachers and students with multimedia mathematics challenges. I initially reviewed the site when it launched a couple of years ago. Since then the site has expanded. Get the Math put math challenges in the context of the  "real world" scenarios of fashion design, video game design, music production, restaurant management, professional basketball, and movie special effects production.

Get the Math features short videos of professionals explaining and or demonstrating the role of mathematics in their fields. After watching the videos students try to complete a series of challenges based upon the work in each professions. For example, after watching the Math in Fashion video students have to design a shirt to match a specific price point.

Get the Math provides highly detailed lesson plans to accompany the videos and interactive features throughout the site.

Blogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders - A Practical Ed Tech Webinar Series

Now available with graduate credit!

In January I am again offering my popular series of PracticalEdTech.com webinars about blogs and social media for teachers and school leaders. If you have been thinking about starting a blog or revitalizing a blog, this course is for you. If you have been wondering how you can use Twitter, Google+, and other social networks professionally, then this course is for you too. And if you have tried blogging and social media in the past, but just didn't get into it, Blogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders is the course for you.

Blogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders is designed to help teachers and school leaders develop an understanding of the many ways they can use blogs and social media (Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and more) to enhance communication between school and home. After learning about how each of the tools works we’ll dive into developing strategies for implementation.

Blogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders is a five week webinar series during which teachers and school administrators will learn the how to choose the best blogging platform for their situations, how to set-up a blog for classroom and school-wide use, and learn about strategies on how to manage blogs in classroom and school-wide settings. Participants will also learn how to avoid the mistakes that often lead to blogging endeavors being abandoned. After establishing blogs we’ll jump into using social networks like Twitter, Google+, and Instagram to reach out to parents, students, and other community members.

Course Dates:
Blogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders will meet at 7pm Eastern Time on January 6, 13, 20, 27, and February 3, 2015. All sessions are recorded for participants to watch as many times as they like.


Graduate Credit Option!
Three graduate credits are available for the course through my partnership Midwest Teachers Institute and Calumet College of St. Joseph. Graduate credits require an additional fee and completion of weekly assignments. To register for the graduate credit option you must first register for the course here then click here to register for the graduate credit.

Cost:
This webinar series costs $147 per person.

Participants receive:
  • Five hours of live instruction with Q&A opportunities.
  • Access to recordings of each session (recordings can be downloaded for unlimited personal use).
  • Digital hand-outs to download and re-use for personal use as well as re-use within their school districts.
  • A dedicated discussion forum to access throughout the three week course.
  • Certificate of completion.
  • Three graduate credits (optional, separate fee required)
Course Dates:
The live webinar sessions will be held at 7pm Eastern Time on January 6, 13, 20, 27, and February 3, 2015.


Nice Things People Have Said About My Webinars and Presentations:
I am finding your GAFE webinar so helpful!! 
K. Sloan
Your keynotes were spot on and your professionalism was extremely appreciated.
Lindsay Bellino, Director of Online Communities, Pearson OLE
Your keynote was excellent and set a great tone for the whole conference.  
Gary Seastrand, Brigham Young University
Again, thank you very much for this wonderful course. I will have to train teachers in the coming year and this will be very useful.It was a very enjoyable experience and I will be on the look for more training opportunities from you.
S. Landete

About the costs and my decision to advertise these opportunities on my blog:
Sometimes when I advertise one of these webinars I get messages from people who are upset that I am advertising it here and or that I am charging for it. I understand why some people feel that way. I thought long and hard about how to offer these opportunities. In fact, I thought about it and talked about it with trusted advisors for a year before offering the first webinar series last year. The purpose of this blog and my goal for years has always been to help people use free technology in their classrooms. The tools and strategies featured in my webinars and at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp are free to use. However, my time for teaching isn't free. Further, I pay licensing fees to GoToTraining and to Wistia for hosting all of the media content of the courses.

Sign-up and Sign-in to WeLearnedIt Through Edmodo

WeLearnedIt is a free iPad app through which you and your students can create digital portfolios.Today, WeLearnedIt announced an update that allows you to use Edmodo Connect to sign-up and sign-in. This means that as a teacher you can import your existing Edmodo classes and student lists into WeLearnedIt. Once you're signed-up to use WeLearnedIt you and your students can create digital portfolios that contain files from Google Drive, Dropbox, links from the web, images and videos captured with your iPad, and whiteboard videos created within the WeLearnedIt app.

Applications for Education
The best aspects of WeLearnedIt are found in the feedback and sharing tools. Teachers can assign grades to elements of students’ digital portfolios. Grading is not limited to assigning scores. Teachers can give written feedback on each submission. Rubrics for assignments are available through the app too. School-wide implementations (a fee-based option) of WeLearnedIt allow teachers and administrators to share assessment data.

Disclosure: I have a small advisory and equity interest in WeLearnedIt's parent company eduClipper.

How to Create Your Own Map-based Quizzes on Mission MapQuest

Mission MapQuest, developed by Russel Tarr at ClassTools.net, is a great tool for map-based quizzes and games. The concept behind it is simple, you create a series of clues that your students need to follow to identify places around the world. You can add as few or as many clues to your MapQuest as you like. When you're ready to have students try your MapQuest just give them the web address assigned to it. Watch the video embedded below to learn how to create your own map-based quizzes on Mission MapQuest.

Enable Automatic Grading of Quizzes With Flubaroo for Google Sheets

Flubaroo is a popular Google Sheets Add-on that enables teachers to grade all at once all of their students' responses to a quiz created in Google Forms. The latest update to Flubaroo enables automatic grading and emailing of grades.

The new autograde option in Flubaroo allows you to have students automatically receive their scores after submitting their responses to a quiz you created in Google Forms. The autograde feature will send students an email with their scores and the answer key (you can exclude the answer key). With autograding enabled students do not have to wait for you to run the grading process or wait for you to send emails.
Click image to view in full size. 
To use autograding in Flubaroo you still have to set an answer key and grade at least one submission before autograding will work. Click here for a complete set of directions on enabling autograding in Flubaroo.

Applications for Education
Using autograding in Flubaroo could be a great way to give students nearly instant feedback on practice quizzes that you give to them.

Popular Posts