Learn About Chromebooks Through Project Chromebook

Last month Google announced that 27,000 or more Chromebooks were headed into U.S. schools. If you or someone in your school heard that announcement and became curious about using Chromebooks in your building, you should take a look at Kevin Jarrett's new blog, Project Chromebook.

Project Chromebook is an on-going record of a 60 day trial of 25 Chromebooks in two fourth grade classrooms. The blog covers topics like deployment and administration of Chromebooks as well as information about Chrome apps for education.

While exploring Project Chromebook one of the things that I learned about Chromebooks in education is that you don't have to sign a year-long lease with Google, there are other options like month-to-month rentals of Chromebooks. Month-to-month rental is the route that Kevin's school took. If you're not 100% sure that Chromebooks are the right solution for your school a short-term rental makes sense to me too.

If you're curious about what it looks like to deploy Chromebooks and use them in the classroom, Project Chromebook is a blog to which you should subscribe.

Peep and the Big Wide World - Educational Games for Children

Peep and the Big Wide World is a nice resource for pre-K and early elementary school that I learned about through Kevin Jarrett's most recent Last Week in Lab post.

Peep and the Big Wide World, produced by WGBH, offers a great collection of online games, videos, and offline activities designed to help students learn and practice skills in math and science. One emphasis of the games that I tried is recognizing patterns. In all there are fifteen online games available through Peep and the Big Wide World.

The offline or Anywhere Activities section of Peep and the Big Wide World offers dozens of activities designed to extend the science and lessons provided in the Peep and the Big Wide World videos. In fact, when you're on the video page you will notice that there is a suggested Anywhere Activity listed with each video.

Applications for Education
Peep and the Big Wide World looks like it could be a great resource for pre-K and early elementary school science and mathematics lessons. Kevin Jarrett is one of the first people I started following when I started this blog and I've always found his work to be insightful and helpful. If he's using Peep and the Big Wide World, I'm inclined to think that it must be good.

Typing Adventure - A Fun Little Typing Game

Typing Adventure is a nice little game that young students can use to practice their typing skills. To play the game students just have to visit the game site, read the directions, and press start. The game scenario presented to students is a character leaping from stepping stone to stepping stone. To move along the path students have to type the letters of the stones they want to jump to. Students earn points based on speed and accuracy.

H/T to Kevin Jarrett.

For more typing games and lessons, please click here.

Overcoming the "Video Hurdle" of Applying for GTA

Miguel Guhlin published a post yesterday about his decision not to apply for the Google Teacher Academy. Miguel points to the application requirement of creating a "creative" video as a reason for not applying. I think Miguel's thoughts echo those that other people, including myself, have had about applying for GTA. Before I go any further I want to clarify that I respect Miguel's decision not to apply and this post is not meant as a criticism of his decision. This post is just to share my own thoughts about the GTA application's video requirement.

Prior to submitting my own application for the GTA in Washington, DC I had my own apprehension about creating and submitting a video. I don't consider myself to be a terribly creative person when it comes to multimedia presentations. I have the technical know-how to create multimedia presentations, but I don't think have the creativity for making dynamic videos such as those created by multimedia geniuses like Marco Torres. Yes, I've posted videos of myself on this blog before, but I tend to think that I'm too stiff on camera. None-the-less, on the last day that applications were accepted for GTA in DC, I plunged ahead and made a short video that included me talking on camera. I knew that I couldn't compete in a video making competition, but I was confident that my written content and overall body of work would offset a lack-luster video. It turns out that I was right.

Reflecting on the GTA application process, here is my advice for those who would like to apply but are apprehensive about application process.
1. The video is just one part of the application. The GTA application process is not a film production competition. If you're not great at video production, just remember that it's the message of the video that is more important than fancy animations and transitions. Make sure your video accurately portrays your thoughts. Watch my video and you'll see that I lacked fancy transitions, but I made sure the audience got my message.
2. The application is designed to get a sense of your overall body of work in the educational technology community. Focus on your strengths in the application. If you have a large following on your blog, on Twitter, or you work with 3,000 teachers a year, make sure that is clear.
3. Look at other application videos for ideas. You can see mine here, this is Kevin Jarrett's, and this one is Tara Seale's. You'll see three different approaches in these videos, but all three of us were accepted to GTA.

Why Google Apps for Education? Why GTA?

Last week I passed along the announcement that there will be a Google Teacher Academy for Administrators in March. If you're an administrator whose district is using Google Apps for Education or is considering Google Apps for Education, I encourage you to read more about GTA and consider applying for it. Before you apply, you may want to read this post by David Jakes and Kevin Jarrett's response to David. Both David and Kevin make good points that you should consider before deciding if GTA for Administrators is for you. (Just to be clear about my bias, I recently attended the Google Teacher Academy in Washington, DC).

If you're wondering about the benefits of Google Apps for Education, watch the following ten minute video overview.

Google Teacher Academy for Administrators

From Kevin Jarrett I've just learned that Google is going to host a Google Teacher Academy for Administrators. This is a unique opportunity for principals, assistant principals, superintendents, and technology directors serving K-12 populations. Just as with other Google Teacher Academies, applicants will need to create an original one minute video. The topic of the video is "Innovative Education Leadership in the Age of Google." GTA for Administrators will be held on March 5th in San Antonio, Texas. Applications are due by midnight on January 25th. You can read more about GTA for Administrators and the application process here.

If you're curious about what goes on at a Google Teacher Academy check out my posts here and here.

Survey of 2nd Career Teachers

Kevin Jarrett (someone you should follow) is proposing a session for BarCamp Philly about teaching as a second career. Kevin and I chatted about this briefly on Twitter this morning.

Kevin came to teaching after a seventeen year career in the business world. I came to teaching after roughly seven years in the transportation/ logistics industry. (I know it's hard to believe that I'm old enough to be on a second career, but what can I say, I'm a product of Gen X). In both of our cases we took very substantial pay cuts. During the course of our conversation we both had the idea to survey other teachers who came to teaching as a second career. Kevin has posted some questions on his blog. I encourage you to answer his questions there. Kevin is also looking for people who are willing to Skype into his proposed session on Saturday. Again, you can read the details on Kevin's blog.

I've also set up and shared with Kevin a survey using Google Forms which asks essentially the same questions.

Update: As of 11:40am there have been 15 respondents to the survey. You can read their responses here.

Values.com Offers Printable Signs and Widgets

Through a Tweet by Kevin Jarrett I recently learned about Values.com offering free PDFs of more than fifty quotable, inspirational posters. In addition to the PDFs Values.com offers a daily quotation widget that you can put in your blog or website.

Applications for Education
The free PDF posters from Values.com could be useful for posting on your classroom wall or door. The quotation widget may be something that you want to embed in your classroom blog.

DL Hughley Reminds Us Why We Teach

Kevin Jarrett posted this video on Facebook and I immediately knew that I had to pass it along to all of you. In this very short video comedian DL Hughley thanks his 5th grade teacher and reminds us all why we teach.

If you're viewing this in RSS you will need to click through to see the video.

Here are two other excellent videos about what teachers can do.

Taylor Mali - What Teachers Make


Dalton Sherman - Do You Believe In Me?

Two Voicethread Resources From Kevin Jarrett

Voicethread is one of the best technology resources for teachers available on the Internet. There is a place for Voicethread in math, science, social studies, English, foreign language, just about any content area. I've written about using Voicethread in the past and you can check out those blog posts here, here, or here.

Today, Kevin Jarrett posted links to two fantastic wikis about using Voicethread in the classroom. I encourage you to check out Kevin's blog to read what he has to say about Voicethread and the Voicethread wikis found here and here.

If you're not familiar with Voicethread, the demo below explains it far better than I ever could.

Free Technology For Teachers: Google For Educators Tutorial

Google Apps is a great suite of free online applications for educators. Kevin Jarrett, a teacher in New Jersey, has put together a fantastic website to compliment his workshop about using Google Apps for education. Kevin offers some great ideas and insights that might not be obvious to the average Google Apps user. For example, Kevin tells readers to upgrade to Google Earth Pro because the pro version is free for educators and offers more features. Click on the image above or click here to visit Mr. Jarrett's website.