Deb Norton Tech

I have been following Jacqui Murray's website, Ask a Tech Teacher, for a long time.  One of the things I really appreciate on this site is the great list of websites by grade level from Kindergarten through 6th grade.  In addition, there are also these additional sites: I'm always finding wonderful websites to incorporate into my lessons.   I also subscribe to Jacqui's Tech Tips.  This is located under the tab newsletters. I highly recommend checking out the Ask a Tech Teacher site and subscribing to the Tech Tips.  

My Classroom Ideas is a site I heard about from Richard Byrne's Blog Free Technology for Teachers . This is a site similar to Pinterest, where teachers can post pictures of their classrooms, bulletin boards, projects, etc.   There are seven categories to explore which include: Here are some of the ideas I liked: I'm planning to submit my own displays and idea.   My Classroom Ideas is a nice way to share your ideas with others.

Last week my students made Glogsters (online posters).  We were reading about hibernation in our reading series and the students needed to convey what they had learned in their Glogster.   Here are some nice examples from my students: And here are some "not so nice" examples: I am going to take some of the blame for the "not so nice" Glogsters .  Even though I showed students examples before we started, I didn't take enough time to discuss the properties of a well organized and attractive Glogster.   I made a simple grading sheet to let the students know what I was going to grade the Glogsters on.  Here it is: I took these descriptors right off of our Standards Based Report Card which focuses on  Common Core Standards .  What I missed out on were descriptors for the organization and attractiveness of the poster.   I am thankful for having these "nice and not so nice" examples to share with students for future project...

This past week I had the most amazing opportunity to present a SMART Board workshop in the Mauston School District.   Naomi Harm  called me and asked if I could fill in for one of her team members who had the flu.  She didn't have to ask twice.   I felt like the luckiest person spending the day with just under 30 educators showing them  what is new in SMART Notebook 11 and showcasing  one of my interactive, multimedia elessons that I have created for our health unit.  I also created some flipped videos to teach some of the interactive techniques that I incorporate into my elessons to get the students engaged and interacting with the SMART board.   Here is a slide show explaining my multimedia, interactive, SMART notebook elesson: Do you make elessons for your SMART board?  If not, you should give it a try.  I love teaching a lesson on our SMART board because it allows me to be more of a facilitator, and the SMART board de...

My students made book trailers.  I think the students did a pretty good job. Click here to take a look.  Please feel free to share this site with your students.  How did my students and I do it? 1st -We used Google Docs to collaboratively write the text.  This was a challenge for students to get the gist of being able to write text that gives a feel for the book without giving away too much of what happens in the story. 2nd -We used an app called Drawing Pad to create our own pictures to go with the text.  Great for artistic students and allowed us not to worry about copyright. 3rd - We captured a picture of our book cover to include in our trailers.   Dropbox was the easy way for us to access our saved jpegs. 4th - We learned how to use the book trailer section of iMovie  on an iPad and found this to be a great app for making a movie. 5th - I uploaded the iMovies to Vimeo (which cost me $60...

Have you ever sent a document to someone and they weren't able to open the document?  Yesterday, I sent out my son, Ryan's basketball schedule to all of our family and was notified by everyone that the document wouldn't open.  So I went to my alternate plan, take a screen capture!  Taking a picture of the schedule made it easy to send and everyone could view the picture.  Here it is! I don't know about you, but I am constantly taking screen captures for this blog, my websites, social networks and my flipped lessons. And now I also use them for emails too. Here are some of the sites/tools that I use to take screen captures: #1 - Snipping tool on my PC.  This is the easiest way to capture a part of my screen.  In Windows, just click on the start button and search for snipping tool.  There is not an option for annotation. #2 - On my Mac I hit -Shift/Command/4- and then choose the area that I wish to capture.  This is very quick and easy. ...

For the past week, my students have begun to make book trailers using iMovie .  This is really an amazing app and I am so impressed with how the book trailers are developing.  I will be sharing more about the book trailers in a future blog post. My son Robert was watching me learn how to use iMovie and he also got very interested and decided to make his own movies.  Take a look at how the movies he made turned out. This movie is dedicated to our puppy, Wrigley: Puppy Party from Deb Norton on Vimeo . And this movie is dedicated to Robert's brother, Ryan, who played in a basketball tournament this past weekend in Fond du Lac:- Have you ever tried iMovie ?  It can be a little tricky, so my method of learning how everything worked was to watch You Tube videos.  Here was one video that was particularly helpful: Here is another video that gave me even more indepth information. In iMovie, you have a choice of making a reg...

Happy New Year! I thrive on organization.  Would you like to be more productive and organized in 2013?  Here are some ideas to get you started in your classroom: #1 - Pencil, Pen or Crayon Organization.  How many times do our students need a certain color and they end up looking through a bucket for several minutes?  Check out this idea ! I'm going to get our colored pencils sorted by color using this great idea! #2 - Class list at your fingertips.  When we have a drill I always have to remember to grab our class list.  This tip will allow me to have my list with me at all times! #3 - Classroom Library Check Out.  Until now I haven't really had a great way to check books out to our students from our classroom.  Well, there is an app for that!   Classroom Organizer is a free web-based check out system for your classroom library.  The app works in conjunction with the website. #4 - Plastic Bag Storage.  ...