Deb Norton Tech

Are you tired of the dog days of summer?  Then it's time to head over to the Ripon Summer Tech Academy happening August 6th, 7th and 8th in Ripon, WI.  Here is what you can expect. This conference is being organized by Naomi Harm and members of her consulting team as well a few of our own Ripon Educators.   There are so many great sessions to attend with varying levels of technology integration.   Click here to view the brochure for this conference and get the details on each of the sessions being offered. There is still time to register .   This is a fantastic opportunity for Ripon educators as well as educators from surrounding communities. In today's educational world, it is our professional responsibility to keep up with pedagogy and technology integration.  Come and gain some knowledge that will benefit the students in your classroom this year.  Make a difference in the education of today's 21st century learners.  I...

I keep several sites bookmarked on my bookmarks bar.   One of my bookmarks is from Technology and Learning.   I have this bookmark because it is one of the best references that I have ever found for Copyright and FairUse for teachers.  This reference is a chart and it is easy to read and understand. CLICK HERE to access this reference. Here is another great resource I found on Tech and Learning that covers plagiarism. Game Classroom has an interactive for students  that teaches them about copyright. It's imperative that we teach our students about copyright, fairuse and plagiarism early on in the school year and throughout.  Parents should also be educated and made aware of these laws.  I recommend sharing these resources with your students, parents and colleagues. 

Infographics are a tool I have been using for a few years now in my classroom.  I've written about infographics before here .  I usually use an infographic to present information or to have students use the infographic to gather and obtain facts and data. Here is an example of an infographic we use in our Health unit on the Circulatory System. Notice how infographics present information with a lot of icons, images, and color.  That is what makes the infographic visually pleasing and draws the reader into the content.  My students also enjoy the fact that the information is presented in small sections or chunks. To find infographics to use in this way, I usually do a Google image search like this one . While attending ISTE13, I learned about a site called Easel.ly .  This site is in BETA.   Easel.ly lets a person easily create their own infographic.  I haven't had my 5th graders create their own infographics yet, but after playing with Ease...

One of my favorite parts of ISTE13 was learning about up-and-coming technologies.  I learned about making my own ios app, augmented reality, creating interactive games for gaming in the classroom and many other newer trends in technology.   Check out this new 3Doodler Pen.  This is amazing new technology! Thanks for showing me this, Naomi! Today I was perusing through Pinterest and I decided to check out the technology category.  Here are a few interesting pins that I found. Pretty interesting ideas being developed.  I can't wait to see what the future brings!

ISTE13 brought a wealth of tips, tricks and tools to my digital toolbox.  Here is one that is useful and quick. Did you know that you can make a playlist in your YouTube account? Here is a playlist I just made.  It has videos that show Rube Goldberg examples.   Notice how it is labeled "Playlist" and says how many videos in parenthesis. Making playlists is useful so that you can easily find the videos you wish to share with your students and have them organized neatly into groups. Here is how you make a playlist. 1.) Make sure you have a YouTube account.  If you do not, simply create one.  If you have a Gmail account, you already have YouTube connected to your account.  Just click on the More tab. 2.) In your YouTube account click on the down arrow next to the Upload button.  Then click on Video Manager. 3.)  In your video manager you will first see any video uploads.  These are videos you have created and uploaded t...

SAMR is an acronym that I have been hearing quite a bit lately on the Internet.  It was also referred to at several of the sessions I attended at ISTE13. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition.  The SAMR Model represents a way to look at the different levels of integrating technology into the classroom. Here is a really short video that sums up the SAMR model in 120 seconds: So as you can see, the goal of the SAMR model is to move from Substitution to Redefinition and to switch from Enhancement to Transformation. Here is another example of the SAMR model showing how the use of an iPad to promote literacy is moved through the different levels. I was inspired to create my own example and chart showing how I have used the SAMR model to incude video and interactive web sites to deliver content in a lesson.  I used Thinglink to make my chart interactive so that I could link the different tools that I used onto the image. ...

Thank you Microsoft!  Can you believe that 10,000 educators received a free Surface RT tablet at the ISTE conference?  And I'm one of the lucky "few".  This tablet has a $495.00 value.  Check it out on Amazon . When I first opened my Surface, I felt a bit out of my comfort zone.  I did not have much experience with Windows 8.  It didn't take me long to get used to navigating Windows 8.  I like this video on Windows 8 for anyone feeling overwhelmed or confused.  Humorous but thorough.   Here are the features I liked that make the Surface RT better than an iPad.  I know you're thinking, did Deb really say, "Better than an iPad?"  Yes, I sure did.   The External Keyboard! - We were given a keyboard that snaps magnetically to the tablet.  And it is one sweet keyboard!  It is flat with slightly raised keys and a very nice mouse pad (works similar to my MacBook Air).  One really useful feature is that ...

A Gif (pronounced)  stands for Graphics Interchange Format.  Think, "Choosy educators choose Gif!"   Gifs are small animated images.  Gif is a file format that stores images in a compressed format so that these images are small and easy to send.  When you save a gif it will look like this: twist.gif. Here is a gif I found on Google Images: And here is a gif I might use in a health lesson on the circulatory system. This gif was made with the site www.gifsoup.com .  This site lets you make a gif from a YouTube video.  Here is one I made using www.gifsoup.com showing a chicken hatching: www.gifsoup.com allows you to make a 10 second gif unless you sign up for a premium account.  Saving a gif is the same as saving an image.  Just right click and save image as. Another option is to create your own gif using your own images.  This would be a great way for students to show the steps in a process or to show the par...