Deb Norton Tech

One of the things I love about technology and the Internet is how r a n d o m things can be. Here is a list of very r a n d o m Links and Loves. This week I did some coding with students in an after school program. Code.org has an entire collection of coding activities ranging from grades 2 - 12. We used Karel the Dog to learn basic Java Script which was challenging enough for the students. Thank you Kasey Bell from Shake Up Learning for teaching me how to make short gifs using Gyazo . This is such a simple and useful tool for any educator. I was very moved by this video shared with me from Tara Lere, an educator from East Range Academy of Science and Technology in Minnesota, who is participating in ISTE’s Verizon Mobile Learning Academy . Tara uses the video in her health class. Gotta Love Millennials is a multi-track video sung by a Gen X singer with a lot of humor. Compare this to If Ye Love Me which is a multi-track video of a song from the Renaissance time...

What is Twine? Perhaps you have had fun playing with "choose your own adventure" type stories, games or surveys. Social media has been buzzing with such surveys like this one: Which Disney Character Would Play You In The Movie of Your Life? Recently I came across Twine ( twinery.org )  for creating your own interactive stories, surveys or games. Creating a story is a simple as generating a flow chart such as this one: What makes Twine so great is that you only need to type text into a box and then put brackets around the word or words that you wish to have the next part of your story linked to.  Any words in brackets will automatically generate a new box on the flowchart. Watch this short video demo to see how a Twine is created: Click here to experience the Twine I created called, "What Kind of Teacher are You?"  I took the information to create my Twine from this site.  FYI, I'm not responsible for the type of teacher my Twin...

1990 It's a well know fact that I have been teaching for 20+ years and I always tell people that one of the best parts of my job is that I rarely teach the same way twice and that the pedagogy and teaching styles are constantly changing.  (And thankfully the fashion has changed as well!) Students have also changed quite a bit from when I first started teaching in 1990!  Today's students have more of a voice in the classroom, they are digital natives and they are greater producers of content than students from the past. There are many things that we can do to better meet the needs of this new generation of learners.   Here is a list of some of them: #1 Objectives Everyday we post the objectives for our lessons.  We make sure to incorporate the objective naturally into our lesson and help students to understand the purpose for their learning.  Here is the ultimate way to post objectives in the classroom.  I need to do this! #2 - GAFE - ...