Deb Norton Tech

This past week we started using Badges with our students.  Perhaps you were a scout and remember earning badges for your accomplishments? This reward system has become popular online.  There are several sites for creating and rewarding badges. Currently I am teaching a blended class using Schoology .  I've written about Schoology before here .  The class I am teaching involves teaching the students to write main idea topic sentences and detail sentences, as well as, editing and presenting skills. In Schoology , there is a built in feature to create and award badges.  A person can also use the badges already available in Schoology.  So, last week I made some badges: Our students are quite motivated to work hard to earn badges. One modification I will make in this course is to allow students to have several chances to earn a badge. Here are a few other sites for creating badges for your students: Credly Class Badges Passport In o...

Here are the sites our students have used or will be using this month in our classroom.  We are using technology to promote authentic learning and problem solving.  As always, the technology is being integrated into learning.  Educanon is very quickly becoming one of my favorite tools for assessing student understanding while viewing a YouTube video.  This is an amazing site! Here is my latest creation for Black History Month.  I love that I can assign this to my students and then watch as they answer the questions.  The students love the instant feedback.   Our students created book reviews on a Google Document.  We then created QR codes linked to their book reviews and displayed them on a bulletin board. This is the easiest word cloud maker around.  Our students used this site with their spelling words.  They rolled a dice and then typed the word the number of times on the dice.  They then c...

This week I was a presenter at Naomi Harm's Mobile Literacy Boot Camp in Sparta, WI.  Kudos to Naomi and Jeff Harm for putting together this Technology Camp.  I can only imagine what it took to make this happen.  It was truly an amazing experience for many educators. As a presenter, one of my sessions was on the topic of Flipped Teaching.  This is such a hot topic right now in education.  I was more than ready to share the pedagogy and benefits of using Flipped Instruction in a classroom. My Presentation: I made sure to include plenty of personal stories  engaging videos a video directly from our classroom a backchannel to "hear" from my audience digital tools to add to our digital toolbox examples of flipped videos time to work with the tools and practice making videos The feedback I received from the audience was so positive and energizing.  One success story I just have to share is about these three lovely teachers: After l...

I have become a true believer in using blended learning in our 1 to 1 computer classroom.  Blended learning is an approach that combines face to face classroom methods with computer- centered activities to form an integrated instructional approach.   Blended learning gives my students the opportunity to access digital media content any time that they need it.  It also is strengthening their computer literacy skills through the multi-media rich content.  Our students are really loving learning through different modes of blended learning. Here are some of the ways that I have been creating blended learning lessons and units for my students: #1 - Schoology Schoology is a free LMS that I have been using quite a bit lately.  What I love is the fact that it helps to organize and host the content  in one place.  Students can access videos,  quizzes, discussions, files and links easily.  I also love that my students can turn in an as...

As I create more and more hybrid lessons and units, it is imperative that I have a way to host my content online.   This past year our district went with Course Director, which as you may know, is part of Google for Education.  Course Director uses Google Sites to display all of the course content.  The quizzes are made with Google Forms and discussions are done through Google Groups.  There is also a choice to have a grade book. This year I have created many, many Google Sites to host my math units, spelling content and others.  I also use Google Forms all the time for our quizzes.  For some reason, I haven't used the discussions or the grade book. Here is what some of my content looks like using Course Director: Math Unit Science Topic Spelling Content AND NOW INTRODUCING SCHOOLOGY!!!!! I first heard about Schoology two years ago at TIES.  I used it last year for the first time.  Thi...