Suzanne's Ed Tech Reflections

Last year we introduced QR Codes to our flip learning teachers during a monthly PLC . It was one of their favorite PLC meetings and quickly became one of the best loved tools in their toolbox! During our summer PD, we also introduced the new group of iPad flip learning teachers to QR Codes. Here are some ways the teachers have found to use QR Codes in their Classrooms: Scan a code to get the correct answer to a problem. Teachers create a text QR Code that contains the answers to the math problems being worked on in the classroom. Students can self-check their answers and move on when correct or go back and figures out where they went wrong.         Scan a Code for a math word problem. Teachers again created text based QR Codes with math word problems for the student to access and work on in class.         Scan a Code to answer the question: "Teacher I'm finished, what should I do now?" One of the proverbial problems - how to keep students busy when they

The 2014-15 school year is off to a great start. Students have shown up and are eager to learn - especially learning with their iPads. Some of them even hugged their iPads when they got them out for the first time! Here's a peek into what happened the first week in a couple of iPad flip learning classrooms: 2nd Grade: The teachers introduced the iPads and quickly began having them complete some "apptivities" using various apps, such as Quick Voice Recorder to complete audio recordings. When not being used the procedure in this classroom is to place the iPads on top of their desk name tags.                 5th Grade: Most of the students in this 5th grade classroom used iPads in 4th grade, so they were very familiar with using them. However, we added some new apps for them over the summer, such as Shadow Puppet Edu, Stick Around, and ABCya Word Cloud. This teacher is great at exploring new apps and figuring out how they can impact learning in her cl

Students are arriving in their new school uniforms carrying backpacks filled with school supplies. Teachers have artfully decorated their classrooms and are ready to welcome students for the first day. And our iAchieve teachers are ready to move forward with technology integration in their classrooms. This summer we provided technology PD to our 26 1:1 iPad Flip Learning teachers, along other groups using iPad Media Kits (a teacher iPad, Apple TV, and HDMI projector) and 1:1 iPod touches. The Flip Learning teachers spent four days together learning about flip learning, creating flip lesson videos, planning flip lessons, setting up student iPads, and practicing using a variety of apps. Our group was made up of 13 new flip learning teachers and 13 continuing flip learning teachers. The continuing teachers took the lead on much of the PD. iPad Media Kit teachers learn about using the iPad and Apple TV as an instructional tool in the classroom as an alternative to an interacti

Well, it's been a month since returning from ISTE 2014 in Atlanta and it's taken about that long for me to come down from the learning high and have some time to reflect and take it all in. Team Creighton (there were 5 of us this year!) had a great time of learning, listening, discovering, communicating, and even just having some fun. No matter how many times you attend the conference, it never gets old. There are always so many new things to learn about and new people to meet and make contact with. Here is an overview of our time in Atlanta: We did several presentations - 4 in all - and attended a lot of great presentations and poster sessions. Lots of great things to share and implement during the coming year. Learned about lots of new online tools and updates to existing ones.  We met up with old friends, like Dr. Alice Christie, and made new ones - like meeting the developers of our very favorite app - Explain Everything. The developers even came to see our poster pre