Friday, December 14, 2018

#12DaysLearning Day 12 -- What is one way you would like to grow as a coach in 2019?

Thanks to @edurolearning
Day 12 -- What is one way you would like to grow as a coach in 2019?

I actually have been thinking about this for some time, I am finally planning on doing the Eduro Learning Microcredential on Coaching. So... I signed up just now and will start taking courses ASAP.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

#12DaysLearning Day 11 -- Share a photo from your wishlist

Thanks to @edurolearning
Day 11 -- Share a picture of an item from your educator wishlist + why is this item on your list.

This is going to sound a little pathetic considering that I'm a Director of EdTech and have been a Tech Coach for years, but I'd like to become more mobile. I have been so married to my laptops over the years, but I'd actually like to get a iPad Mini cover with integrated Blue Tooth keyboard. It is probably shocking that I don't own one already, but I don't. Time to get one finally, eh?

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

#12DaysLearning Day 10 -- Give a Shout Out to a Coach Who Helped You Transform Student Learning

Thanks to @edurolearning
Day 10 -- Watch Episode 15 of the Coach. Better. podcast. Give a shout out to a coach who has helped you transform student learning.

Wow! There are so many coaches/mentors that I deserve a shout out. Some people that come to mind are Dana WattsKim CofinoChris Reitan, Dr. Larry Creedon, David Lee, Steve Katz, Ben Summerton, Chris Bernhardi, and Art Schultz. In different ways each of these individuals have help me transform student and teacher learning. I couldn't be the person I am today without the experiences I have shared with these people.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

#12DaysLearning Day 9 -- What are you excited for?


Day 9 -- Watch Eduro Learning's 5 minute Friday sneak peek on Facebook. What are you excited for? What is 1 tip you have for becoming a better learning coach?

My one big tip is to be patient. Rome didn't get built in a day; you can't coach a teacher in a day; you can't change a culture in a day. That isn't to say you shouldn't try, but realize that you are in a marathon, not a sprint. Don't burn yourself out early; pace yourself. When you feel stress because things don't seem to be moving at the speed you want, stop and breath. Think of where you started as opposed to where you are today. Think about the big picture. Relax. Enjoy yourself. Be patient.

Monday, December 10, 2018

#12DaysLearning Day 8: Participate in the #isedcoach chat and give us your big takeaway

Thanks to #EduroLearning
Day 8 -- Participate in the #isedcoach chat. Post a meme or gif of your biggest Building a Coaching Culture takeaway.


via GIPHY

Friday, December 7, 2018

#12DaysLearning Day 7 -- Would you rather monitor a standardized test or grade a set of essays


Day 7 -- Would you rather monitor standardized tests or grade a set of essays?
First let me just say, "Eeeewwwww! Who came up with this idea? Yuck!" With that said, I was an English teacher before becoming a coach, so for me the essays are totally fine. In fact, I even enjoy grading essays to a certain degree. Furthermore, anything is better than the mind numbing job of monitoring standardized tests.

You can see my other days here: Day 6, Day 5, Day 4, Day 3, Day 2, Day 1

#12dayslearning Day 6 -- Give a Shout Out to a virtual connection that has become a real life connection

Thanks to @edurolearning
Day 6 -- Give a Shout Out to a Virtual Connection that has become a Real Life Connection

Geoff Derry (@gderry) -- I've been interacting with the guy on Twitter for years, but finally got to meet him last year at #21CLHK10. I'm really looking forward to seeing him again, because he is just a super cool guy who is doing some great stuff with AR and VR.

#12dayslearning Day 4 -- What is one way you globally connected your classroom or school in 2018?


Day 4 -- What is one way you globally connected your classroom or school in 2018? Bonus: share a picture.

Participating in Twitter chats like #ISEDCoach and #PubPDAsia. Going to events like the Google Summit at Chadwick International SchoolKORCOS at Gyeonggi Suwon International School, Atlas Rubicon Curriculum Summit at Cheongna Dalton School, and #21CLHK11 at the Hong Kong Convention Center.
Most of the #ISEDCoach Chat team

Thursday, December 6, 2018

#12dayslearning Day 3 -- Pencils or Dry Erase Markers


Day 3 -- Would you rather have... Pencils that are always sharp or dry erase markers that always have ink?

This is a tough question, because usually in my classroom the students have the pencils, but I have the dry erase markers. So do I go with what is good for the kids or what is good for me? I'm going to be selfish and pick dry erase markers that always have ink. This works for the students as well because sometimes they do use them as well.

On an interesting side note, once an administrator purchased all the teachers in our school dry erase markers that were not the standard colors of red, blue, black, and green. These things were like gold, because most of the teachers burned through them very quickly, but I didn't allow my students to ever touch the other markers and it became a thing with them. They would literally beg to use the other markers when they were going to do something on the white board.

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

#12dayslearning Day 5 -- Participate in the #coachbetter slow chat

Thanks to @Edurolearning
Day 5 -- Watch/license to Episode 14 of the Coach.Better.Podcast, then participate in the #coachbetter slow chat. How do you connect w/counselors?

Currently we are without a college counselor for foreign schools, so our Korean college counselor is really struggling to meet with needs of all of our students. One thing I want to share with him (and our foreign counselor next fall) are VR campus tours. Many universities have VR tour of their campuses now and it would be great for the students to take advantage of that tool to get an idea of what the campus looks like and what facilities that are available.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

#12dayslearning Day 2: Give a shout out an educator who is transforming student learning


Thanks to @edurolearning

Day 2 -- Give a shout out to an educator who is transforming student learning

Just one? That is going to be tough, because I'm coming off the Google Summit at Chadwick International School where I met some great educators. So this will be a list of people doing great things and you better start following if you aren't already.
  1. Mr. Craig Kemp (@mrkempnz) -- Craig is just a super nice guy, but he also knows a ton about technology integration and how to move it forward in a school. His keynote presentation on The Changing Face of Education: Connecting, Engaging & Empowering was very inspiring and a great way to launch the event.
  2. Mr. Rob McElroy (@EdTechMac) -- Once again bedazzled me with the possibilities of VR in the classroom with his presentation Take a Trip With Google Expeditions and Google Tour Creator. It can us a chance to play with Google Tour Creator which is simply a great way to build some cool explorative journeys with your students.
  3. Mr. Sethi De Clercq (@sdcthailand) -- I met Sethi for the first time during this Google Summit and I was immediately impressed with his knowledge and skill. In his Youtube ins and outs session he taught me some super sick things with analytics in Youtube that were beyond my imagination.

#12dayslearning Day 1 What is one action you took in 2018 that was inspired by new learning?

Thanks to @Edurolearning

I saw my friends at Eduro Learning were getting this 12 Days of Learning challenge going this December and I wanted to join in as well as spread the word to others.

The first question is what is on action you took in 2018 that was inspired by new learning? What impact did it have on student learning?

Great question! 2018 saw the development of several new actions for me professionally. I managed to get a classroom set of Google Cardboards (20 with a router for them) and started playing with Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in the classroom. The trick here is that I don't have may own classroom, so I need to convince other teachers of the value of something. This was pretty easily done. I offered a week's worth of PD session in The Zone to give teachers a demo of what AR & VR could do. The response from teachers was quite good; everyone was really impressed with the power of the experience, but it really only translated into one teacher really adopting in her teaching. But for now, I will call that a small but important victory, because Karissa Van Liew really was willing to try something very new and different in her music lessons.

Karissa took her G5 students to New Orleans with our Google Cardboards. The students were studying a unit on Jazz music, so Karissa took them to New Orleans to tour the hometown of Jazz music. The students love it! They did all the things we all do the first time we see VR -- loads of ahhh's and ohhh's as they attempted to walk around in the new environment. They talked to each other about what they were seeing and how the buildings and city looked compared to Cheongna and in general -- just had a great time.

So what impact did it have on student learning? Early results are limited, but the students did enjoy the experience and kept asking me when they would do it again every time they saw me in the hallway. I say that is a positive response. I got one teacher to buy in to the idea, so based on her experiences my hope is to get the Social Studies and Science teachers to try out some lessons utilizing the Cardboards in the coming spring semester.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Scanning Documents with a iPhone

1. Open Notes and hit the + key
2. Choose Scan Documents from the menu
3. Adjust the scanned image and hit Keep Scan 
Sometimes a person asks me a question that makes me realize that the world has changed, but the person asking the question doesn't know it. Today's question involved one of the faculty members asking about how to get our photocopier to scan documents. To actually change it requires super-admin privileges, no one on campus has that level. The company we lease the machine from has to send out a representative to change it. This will not happen immediately, so I asked the teacher about using her/his phone. She/he said, "Oh, but I don't want a photo of it. I want a real scanned copy, so the quality is good." I calmly asked, "What type of phone do you have?" She/he replied, "An iPhone 7." I explained that in Notes, you can scan a document now. I have included a three-step guide on how to do it. No other apps are needed. But even if you have an older phone, you can download QR Reader from the app store for iOS or Android. The great thing about the QR Reader app is that you can also create your own QR codes with it. Don't live in the Dark Age!

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Book Study -- Enhancing Professional Practice: The Framework for Teaching

The Cheongna Dalton School admin team is in the process of changing our teacher evaluation system. As part of this work, we have committed to having a book study as a group to discuss and add to our knowledge. Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching by Charlotte Danielson has been around for several years and is a good place for us to begin our process. Specific goals we are hoping to achieve:

  1. Developing a common language around educator evaluation and growth.
  2. Finding a more consistent way to conduct evaluation with a focus on professional growth.
  3. Improving our knowledge as a team.
Move moved through the beginning chapters of the book pretty quickly, but now that we are in the section that describes in detail each domain and the type of evidence that could be gathered, we have slowed do to really think through each section. 

I've read the book in the past, but I'm enjoying rereading it as a group to discuss what we are learning and choices that we need to make to have this work for CDS.

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Reminders in Google Calendar

One of my colleagues didn't have Reminders in his Google Calendar and we couldn't understand why it wasn't available, but I was able to figure it out finally. I figured I better share the knowledge because I'm sure other people are having the same problem.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Funny Stories from Elementary School


Recess time
One of the great highlights of my job at Cheongna Dalton School is the fact that my position is PreK-G12. At first, I was a little apprehensive about the elementary part of the job, because my teaching license is for secondary and most of my experience has been in secondary. However, I've learned a ton from observing my elementary colleagues and the experience of teaching elementary students has been wonderful. And the best part is that every once in a while, you get a great story to share about kids. We have a Ms. Garcia who teaches G2 here, this is important to the story.

The classrooms here have an open concept, so there are walls separating the rooms, but there are no doors, so it is possible to walk from one class to another; in fact, you must go through one room in order to reach the classrooms farther
Recess time
away. You could walk around the outside of the building and come through another door, but nobody does that. So it is very common for people to pass through a room and the students are so used to it that they hardly notice it. This morning I was walking through the G3 classroom on my way to G4 to say hello to another teacher. School was just starting and the G3 teacher was waiting for her students to join her for carpet time to go over the day's activities. Some of the G3s were there, but others were still getting ready and milling about. As I said hello to the teacher, one of the boys looked up and said, "Good morning, Ms. Garcia." The teacher and I both started laughing and then said of course asked, "Why did you call Mr. Bray Ms. Garcia?" And without hesitation the kid replied, "I forgot his name." So you called me Ms. Garcia? I guess any name will do in a pinch.

Friday, August 17, 2018

Social Media at Cheongna Dalton School

Social Media at CDS

To the new faculty, we have a culture of crowdsourcing social media at CDS. With that in mind, here is a list of some of the places you can engage in our community. Our policy is that teachers and students should not friend or each other on any social media platform. Facebook pages do not require you to friend any student. It is a shared social space. If you have questions or concerns about social media use at CDS, please feel free to ask. Enjoy!

  1. CDS Staff Facebook
  2. CDS HS Facebook
  3. CDS MS Facebook
  4. CDS FP Facebook
  5. Live Streaming Youtube
  6. My Channel with many videos about CDS
  7. EdTech Blog
  8. Humans of CDS
  9. On Instagram we use the hash tag #cdsphoenix (you can also check out the hash tag #cheongna to see people's photos of life here).
  10. On Twitter we use the hash tag #cdsphoenix, Ben, Karissa, and I post quite a bit.

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Reviewing How My Time Was Spent in SY2017-18



Each year I find it useful to look back at the data I have gathered about how my time was used for the year to think about planning ahead for the coming school year. I'll be sharing this with my admin team at our next meeting. Currently our middle school and first program are smaller than our high school, so the fact that the middle school and first program combined receive about the same time as the high school by itself actually does make sense. However, I think that my office being located in the high school makes a huge impact on the first program and middle school teachers access to me. Some one of my requests will be a more centrally located office/professional development space. I will also continue having one day of each week where I am located in the first program for the entire day.

If you would like to see how this data was gathered, you can read this blog post.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Getting Math Equations on a Google Site


Use Equatio in Slides.
I always learn the best tech tricks from students, and I always get my best challenges from teachers. We have student portfolios on Google Sites and for the most part it is great. But the Math department came with a small problem, Sites doesn't have an equation editor. We started thinking of possible solutions to this dilemma. The first idea was to write the equations in Docs and simply screen shot them or insert the Doc, but the teachers were really happy with this solution. So I continued looking for a more elegant solution... A couple of days passed by with that problem floating around in the back of my mind, when on Twitter someone shared the Chrome extension Equatio which also doesn't support Sites yet, but it does allow you to put equations on just about anything else in Gsuite, including Slides. When I mentioned this solution, the department seemed much more happy with Slides instead of Docs. Here is how you do it. First get the Equatio extension for Chrome. Then open up Slides and have your students input their equations. Slides will treat the Equatio output like photos. Arrange them appropriately on the Slide. Once you are finished messing around with your equations, go to Sites and insert your Slide on your Site. It looks pretty good!
Insert your Slide on your Site! Easy!

Professional Development Bingo

Professional Development Bingo is not my idea. The CDS Director of the High School, Malcolm, introduced me to the concept, and I loved it so I development this bingo card to use at school for next year. And then I though I should share this out to the educational community at large. You can have a copy of mine with this link.

Friday, March 16, 2018

Voice Typing in Google Slides!

One of the amazing features of Docs is the voice typing option. It allows the user to speak and it types exactly what you say. I've been waiting for Google to add this feature to other products and they have... Introducing Voice Typing in Slides. It is in the Tools menu and only allows the function in speaker notes, but you can easily voice-type your Slide content in the notes and copy and paste to the actual slide. Game changer for people who struggle with writing.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Adding Music to a Youtube Video in 6 Slides


Youtube's music library has over 150,000 free songs. They are broken into genre to help you find exactly the type of background music you want for your project.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Using Bookmarks in Docs

This 51 second video will teach you how to make Bookmarks in Google Docs. Worth the time!

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Where is the Youtube Video Trimmer?

1. Creator Studio from your image in the top right
corner of the screen.
If you are like most people, you were probably sad when the trim video function was removed from Youtube. The fact is that the trim video function still exists! Yes, it is true. It lives! But Youtube did decide to hide it from you. But, this post will walk you through how to find it.

Your journey starts by logging in to your account. Go to your image in the top right corner of the screen. The menu that appears is rather new, so don't be surprised if you never noticed it before. One of the options it Creator Studio. This is where you need to go first.

The second step is to go to the video you want to trim and hit the edit button.

Next you will go to Enhancements. You can find it along the top of the screen above the video player.

2. Use the edit button next to the video you want to work on.
3. Go to Enhancements.
Finally you are ready to see the video trimmer! Next to the bottom of the video player, you can find the Trim button. Now you are ready to trim your video. Have fun!
4. The video trimmer is here next to the bottom of the
video player.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Email from a Calendar Event


It was a subtle change, so you may not have even noticed it, but now you can send an email from a calendar event. When you click on a calendar event on your Google Calendar, along the top you will see an envelope for email. Once you click on that icon, you will get an email window like the second image. It will automatically add anyone who is invited to that event to the email and you can write up to 2400 characters. It is a great way to ask a quick question or share some brief information with all those who are coming to the event. I've been using it to ask teachers where they would like to meet for appointments
or to remind them about things they will need for our meeting.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

G4 Students Coding with CodeCombat.com

G4 students trying out coding with Codecombat.com. Everyone had fun, but it was interesting to observe the different levels of tolerance for ambiguity and frustration. Not to mention the difference in skill level -- wow! I had three out of the 16 students who simply could not work independently. Every level was an incredible challenge for these three students. The majority were fine on their own or with limited help from a buddy, but these three needed continuous one-on-one attention from me. There were another two that simply wanted validation for their choices, which I also found interesting. These two were up to the challenge, but wanted to be sure about the decisions and choices they were making with their coding. This was our second session of the year and two of the students had completed all of the levels, so I set them to helping and assisting others.

I find working with the elementary students has been one of the unexpected joys of my PreK-12 position. Most of my career has been in the secondary, but at KIS, SIS, and CDS I have had many opportunities to work closely with elementary teachers and their students and it has always been a joy.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

#21CLHK10 Takeaways Part 1: Mini-Keynotes with Liz Cho and Carlos Galvez

I was thinking of how to write a debrief of #21clhk10, but I realized after wrestling with the problem for over a week that it wasn't going to happen. There was simply too much: too many great ideas; too many discussions; too many amazing moments. It was going to require several blog posts. With that in mind, I'm going to start with the mini-keynote presentations of Liz Cho (@cho_liz) and Carlos Galvez (@clos_gm).

I should never question these guys, right?
Photo from the #21clhk Flickr feed.
By now, I should know better than to question the judgment of the #21clhk team. By now, I should know that they have insight and vision. But when I heard about the mini-keynote concept, I was lukewarm to the idea at best. I just wasn't seeing where it was going, why it would be good, or how it was going to make an impact. When I saw that Liz Cho and Carlos Galvez were doing them, I knew it was going to be interesting, but I still wasn't sold on the concept.

And then Liz took the stage... She was poised, calm, and deliberate in her delivery. She caught the crowd in her message and even threw some geekiness to Star Wars fans. (She asked us what Yoda had said to Luke -- "Do. Or do not. There is no try.") She told her story as a girl growing up who was not encouraged (in fact seriously discouraged)
Liz coaching.
Photo from the #21clhk Flickr feed.
to do sports. She told us how she saw the silks for the first time and suddenly found the courage within her to try something new; to live a dream she had never thought possible. And she told us how a mentor had been the person who supported her learning; encouraged her dream. She then climbed the silks and performed an amazing display of grace and strength. She took my breath away, but not just mine -- the entire crowd was hypnotized by her beautiful routine with the silks. And when she finished, Carlos took the stage.

People were joking that Carlos was not in a good position having to follow Liz's performance, but then he told the story of the dancing students from his school. Two boys who he saw trying to do something different and so he encouraged them. Not as himself, Carlos developed a
Carlos telling the story.
Photo from the #21clhk Flickr feed.
character and challenged the boys from the internet. They rose to the challenge and then went further than Carlos had ever dreamed imaginable. They started their own dance troop; they performed around the community; they raised money; they donated the money to other dancers who they had met online. It was bigger than Carlos; it was bigger than the boys; it was bigger than the school. And it all happened because he helped encourage some young guys with dreams of dancing.

How can we encourage those around us to continue dreaming? How can we support the dreams of our colleagues and our students? And what can we do with those dreams? If we allow ourselves to dream; if we allow our students to dream, then we can build real things with those dreams. Things that change the world. Few giant changes ever really happened from large events. Instead, small events occurred. Little changes happen due to the actions of regular people doing amazing things. Small forces build upon each other. And over time, huge change happens because someone small dared to dream. And someone else encouraged that dream. From little things, big things grow.
One of the dancers.
Photo from the #21clhk Flickr feed.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Google Sites for Student Portfolios


During the AppsEvent at Chadwick International School back in December, I offered one presentation about using Google Sites for Student Portfolios. My room was full and part way into the presentation, I realized there were many folks who wanted the session to be more hands on, so I switched gears and went into Google Sites and started walking through the process we used at Cheongna Dalton School to build portfolios with our students. The teachers were very thankful and interested in the step-by-step process of creating a portfolio. I guess I did a good job, because I was recently contacted by an AppsEvent team member (Neil Trinidad) requesting a guess blog post about it. I'm posting the original here on my blog, but will be giving Neil a version to post on the AppsEvents Blog.

The content of the presentation is something you can read from the Slides above, so I will get into the discussions from the session that was more interesting for the teachers. The most commonly asked question was how to get students to create a portfolio when templates don't really exist in Google Sites. At CDS we dealt with this by building a portfolio with the students. For example, I created my Google Site going step-by-step to show the G2-G5 students exactly what they needed to do. I believe this is better than simply giving a student a template, because then they actually learn how to build the Site from the beginning. Many of the students were really happy and made tons of comments like, "Dude, we are building webpages. This is so cool." We started by simply going to Google Sites and using the + button to make a new Site.

The next step was to properly name the Site and give it an address by publishing it. Our student Sites are published only for people within our domain, which gives a layer of security for our First Program students. As a school, we have agreed to continue publishing within our own domain through G6 and then Sites become public. Students are taught to consider what they are posting and to alert a faculty member or parent if anyone from outside of our school ever contacts them online. After creating our homepage, we added subpages for each Term and then subpages under each Term for each subject. Homeroom and subject teachers decide what assignments the students should share and reflect on in FP, but starting in middle school, student select their own assignments to share and reflect upon.

After Term 1, the G3 and G4 students really needed very little support; mostly they needed a few reminders about where to find things in Google Drive. G2 continued to need some major hand holding during Term 2, but I think they are fairly comfortable at this point. The middle school students needed one 20-minute overview of Google Sites and the rest they basically did on their own with some gentle nudging from their House teachers. If you have any questions about using Google Sites for creating student portfolios, please feel free to contact me.

Monday, January 8, 2018

21CLHK10: Getting Google Certified

This presentation is the one I will be offering at #21CLHK10 on January 20, 2018 in the Hong Kong Convention Center.