Deb Norton Tech

Do you currently have a syllabus that you pass out the first day of school only to find that your students stuff the syllabus in their backpacks and never really look at it again?  Why not consider creating a digital syllabus using Google Presentations! Generation Z students appreciate anything in a digital format for viewing. There are many purposes to a syllabus. Let's talk about content and design ideas for your digital syllabus. First of all, check out my example. Try to picture your own content in this syllabus, customized to you and your students' needs. I included expectations, course content, grading information and contact information. You might also include a video, links to websites or even class rules that you and your students create together. I started by creating a new Google Presentation .  Before I added any content, I first changed the size of the slides in the presentation to 8.5 x 11 inches so that the syllabus looks li...

Flippity is a new site that allows you to create your own flashcards and then share those flashcards with others.   To get started go to this website:  http://www.flippity.net/ Follow the directions on the site: Sharing can be as easy as sharing the link, printing off the flashcards or use the handy QR code for students to scan. I created a set of flashcards in just minutes for our students on the vocabulary that we are studying with our literature story this week.  Click here to view my flashcards. Flippity does have a FAQ page that I found very helpful. One of the nice features of Flippity is the ability to enter a YouTube video.  You can also enter the URL of a picture to put an image on your flashcards.   My plan is to have my students use Flippity to practice learning French words before our French Adventure students come to visit from Paris.  I would like the students to create the flashcards and then we can share t...

On Saturday morning I was perusing through my Twitter feed when I came upon several of the awesome people that I follow tweeting about attending Minnesota's First Google Summit.   I will admit that I was a bit jealous that while I was sitting at home my friends were at a technology conference getting the chance to be inspired and Googled up.   So I did what any Twitter extraordinaire would do; I stalked the Twitter hashtag and followed all of the tweets from the conference. One way to follow a hashtag is right in Twitter.  All that is needed is to enter the hashtag in the search bar.   As an alternative, I used a site called TweetChat .  This is one of my favorite ways to follow a hashtag live.   Here are a few of the great resources I acquired from the Tweets. Flipped Classroom Kristin Daniels, a friend of mine, presented on the Flipped Classroom.  As always I was very impressed by what Kristin and her team...