Sunday, November 22, 2015

Secure Test Taking for State Exams on Chromebooks.

For those of you investing in Chromebooks the video above show you how to use them for secure test taking.  We use TestNav (Pearson) and fortunately this is one of the ones that can be used.   When you secure a Chromebook, the kids cannot get to any other sites except the one you are using for the exam.  

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

China Webquest


George Coe posted this China web quest a couple of years ago (hard to believe my blogs are 7.5 years old) and it is still a great one as it goes through all of the dynasties and has great images as well as a couple of videos such as the one above.  

Syria's War: 5-Minute History

Here's a great 5 minute overview of all the players in the Syrian War from Vox. It helps us to better understand the mess inside and outside of the war-torn country. Thanks to David Houston for sending the link.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Personalized Urls

We normally start my classes with a five question quiz where my students can use their notes from their flipped video to answer the questions.  It serves a few purposes.  First I won't count the quiz grade if the notes aren't good enough as I want the kids to have a repository they can use later (which is easy with the search function in Google Drive).  Secondly the questions are the main points for the day so it tells the kids what their exercise is going to be about.

But to the point.  I very rarely use the LCD in my classroom other than for when I am giving our opening quiz.  But the other day the my LCD lightbulb went kaput.  So I had to improvise by taking the url from the Google Drive document into a Tinyurl which I also personalized.  For example I am doing the fifth and sixth units in my for AP microeconomics called tinyurl.com/apmicro56.  So I wrote the url on the board and didn't worry that we didn't have a LCD.  It also is nice when kids want to redo a quiz, I just give them the url and we are all set.

In addition there is bitly.com that allows you to keep a repository or your shortenings as well as Google's shortening.  

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Comparing the World's Major Religions (chart & video)


Above is a great Ted Talk video on the world's five biggest religions and if you need in simpler terms for your kids, here is a chart.  

Saturday, November 14, 2015

My Education Week Column

Along with the interview I did with Larry Ferlazzo last week, he had me write a column in June which he just published in his Education Week column.  Above is a summary of my thoughts, but here is the entire article.  Of course if you want my detailed thoughts and how to implement them, they are in my book: Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud to Individualize Instruction

Monday, November 9, 2015

How Does the Internet Work

Most people now have heard about the cloud, but few understand it.  The top video above shows where the actual cables are in the oceans that transport our messages across the Internet.  The bottom one shows how webpages are broken up and transported.  

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Force Fitting Technology into the Classroom

Last week Larry Ferlazzo interviewed me and Susie Boss for his radio show.  Ferlazzo is a leading innovator in tech education, a writer for Education Week and a classroom teacher.  We discussed the topic of which comes first, technology or content.  Perhaps you would be surprised with my answer.   Here is the interview

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Who was Confucius: Terrific Ted Ed Clip

Here, Bryan W. Van Norden outlines Confucius's life and contribution to philosophy in just four minutes.