Deb Norton Tech

  Hello friends and colleagues. Can you believe the month of September is over? On one hand it has flown by so quickly and then on the other hand, it feels as though a lot has gotten done in just 30 days! Ready or not, here comes October. It's time to choose a new background for the laptop and phone. I suppose it's also time to decorate our home for fall and Halloween. My husband, Tim, LOVES to decorate outside and some might say he goes a little overboard. I'll have to share pictures next week and let you be the judge. Here is this week's Links and Loves. Enjoy and happy fall! Click here to view in full screen

 🍂🍂 Happy November all! 🍂🍂 If you live in Wisconsin or the midwest I hope you are enjoying the fall-like weather and the cool temperatures. I feel as though we have finally gotten into a rhythm of day to day school, teaching and learning.  It's been a creative week of STEM projects in our Innovation Lab. During Excel this week my colleague, Teri and I, led a Cricut Design Space Activity to create a personalized name plate. Students were able to show understanding of scale, positioning, layers, welding and weeding, which are all graphic design concepts. Another project my youth apprentice and I worked on is a balsa wood airplane cut out on the Cricut machine. We wanted to add weight to the nose of the plane, so we used Tinkercad.com to design and then 3D print pieces to add to the nose.    It may seem like a simple project, but a lot of design, critical thinking and troubleshooting went into these gliders.   On Monday we plan to have a friendly comp...

🎃 👻 🦇 🕷️ Happy Friday everyone! I hope your week went well. It was dress up days for us for Halloween Spirit Week. I'm not sure who enjoys this more, the teachers or the students.  Here are a few things that have come my way this week: Top 5 Game-Based Learning Websites  posted by Meagan Kelly from "I  ♥  Edu".  I'm all in when it comes to using game-based learning in the classroom. I came across this video  I created to help a colleague on how to make a stop animation video using Google Slides. It's a pretty rough video, but still worth sharing. This reminded me of this  free webinar on making stop animation by Eric Curts.  I'm excited to begin offering STEM activities to our HS students along with my colleague, Teri, our media specialist. We're going to focus on using the Cricut cutting machine during the month of November. Encouraging students to explore STEM related activities and careers is very important to me. This week ...

Greetings colleagues and friends. How was your week? This week flew by! I've been managing the hustle and bustle of work, family and enjoyment.  It has been a bit of a difficult week for me and my family with the passing of a family member, a cancer diagnosis for a family member,  an injury of a family member, a serious heart issue of a family member and as sickness of a family member. Needless to say, when family members are struggling and dealing with health issues, it is hard to be my cheerful and positive self. Every day that we wake up healthy is truly a blessing! Please remember to take care of yourselves and your family. Here are a few things that have come my way this past week. I watched two different series on Netflix recently.  One is called Squid Game which is now the #1 biggest series launch ever, with more than 111 million global viewers! Squid Game is a South Korean series about contest players that are all deeply in debt and play children's games with dead...

This week has flown by so fast! Here are a few things that have happened or caught my eye: LINKS AND LOVES: I've started an Instagram account for sharing all things instructional technology. I would love to have more followers and people to follow! My username is deb.norton.tech Speaking of Instagram, earlier this week I shared that CommonLit.org has 9 articles to share for National Hispanic Heritage Month .  Speaking of National Celebrations, check out this website where you can search national days, weeks, months and more! This week was National IT Professionals Day. Who knew? Speaking of Celebrations, check out this awesome display that a colleague of mine created using these free PDF posters to celebrate Women Innovators as Illustrated by Women Artists. Nice job Kristen! Speaking of free, SimpleK12 offers free webinars on most Saturdays throughout the school year. These are a great way to learn about technology uses in the classroom. QUICK TIP: ...

Those who know me, know that I am a very positive person who likes to spend my time focusing on the good. Lately, there have been some events and situations that have left my mind unsettled.  Whether it be student behaviors, negative conversations or facing difficult obstacles. Before I know it, I find myself in a funk focusing on negative thoughts and in a bad mood. As a reflective person, I am quick to recognize that I need to turn things around and take action to get back to focusing on the good. Here are a few things that help me to get back into a positive mood. 1.  Podcasts from Positive People -- I've been listening to podcasts on my commute. This week I've listened to Cult of Pedagogy, The Danger of Teacher Nostalgia ,  from Jennifer Gonzalez.  The timing of this episode was perfect. It was just want I needed to hear.  I also love listening to any episode from Awesome with Alison  anytime I need to laugh or feel empowered. Another podcast th...

How was your week? Mine was very productive and energizing! We held our first ever North High School Poster Sessions for PD. This idea is one I have envisioned for a while now, and it was a highlight to see my vision come true. Here  is a promotional video for all of the sessions that were presented by our own North educators and technology coaches.  Kudos to all! I listened to two podcasts this week. One was titled, “Be a Good Forgiver”.  I LOVED the message from this one. The act of forgiveness in leadership and life makes you a better and stronger person.   If you have just 10 minutes, I highly recommend checking this one out. The second podcast was titled, “Moving from Feedback to Feedforward”.  The message from this podcast was to change our practice of giving feedback, which is a reflection of the past to giving feedforward, which is a focus on development in the future. I learned a lot from this one and I like th...

Podcasting - a Growing Community of Listeners Online Communities = a group of people with common interests who use the Internet to communicate, work together and pursue their interests over time.  They  come in many different forms: Social Media, Professional Networks, and if we stretch the definition a bit, Podcasts!!  Podcasts can lend well to people having conversations in an online community because they make for very interesting conversations via social media or even Monday morning at the water cooler. Podcasts are becoming more and more popular and lately I've been enjoying several different podcasts during my commute to and from work. Watch this Chat with Deb to learn about some great podcasts.    To give you the authentic experience of a podcast, this Chat with Deb was created in a podcast fashion with sound effects and music. Click here for the online presentation. Here are links to the Podcasts mentioned in this Chat with ...

We often listen to audio books during our milk break.  I'm always amazed at how good the voices of the readers can be.  The books really capture our students' attention and help them to be great listeners.   Recently I discovered a site that has free audio books in which many are classics.  Among the audio books I found the entire collection of C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia. Click here for the collection. Click here for other free audio books. Audio books and podcasts are a great way to use technology to bring rich literature into your classroom.