Deb Norton Tech

This week I attended the ISTE conference in San Antonio, TX.  The big message from this conference?  "Where the Energy is Palpable"   Not only did I feel the energy, my senses were heightened on every level.  Let me share with you what I saw, heard and spoke.  #1 See New Technology - As I attended different sessions a few new technologies were mentioned.  One is something called: "Wearable Technology"   This is literally people wearing devices that have technology attached to them.  Here are some examples: Google Glass These high tech glasses allow a person to record live what they are seeing, use a built-in GPS to navigate where they are going, receive social media updates, take a picture, send a message, ask a question, and more. This is Adam Bellow one of the Keynote speakers. Watch 10 minutes of Adam Bellow's Keynote speech as recorded through his Google Glasses.   Up by Jawbone is a...

It's my first #ISTE13 post and I haven't even arrived in San Antonio yet.  However, I just had to share this before I arrive at the conference. One of the Keynote speakers this year is Adam Bellow .  Unfortunately I will not be able to hear Adam talk since I will already be back in Wisconsin.  Adam is the founder of the web site eduTecher.net  as well as eduClipper.net .  If you haven't used either of these sites, you should check them out. The eduTecher.net site is used as a way to keep track of the growing number of web tools that could be used in the classroom setting.  The website's mission is to help educators and schools around the world effectively integrate technology and web tools into the classroom. Here are three reasons I love the eduTecher site: 1)   eduTecher site has eduTecherTV videos made by Adam himself.  As you may know, one of my favorite ways to learn is through videos, so this part of the website r...

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...

Ahhhh!  Summer is almost here.  I am beginning to set some goals for myself.  Do you set summer goals?  Here is what I'm planning: #1 Read.  I have not picked up my Kindle in over a month.  That makes me very sad.  My first goal is to read a book a week this summer.  My favorite ways to find good books are the  New York Times Best Seller List on Amazon   or Pixel of Ink . #2 Walk.   I truly need to get out and walk more to get some exercise.  Perhaps I will use the Map My Walk app to get me motivated.  Losing weight would be wonderful too.  It will be much easier to work on this goal this summer when I have the time to dedicate myself to this goal. #3 Cook.  During the school year I really struggle to create different meals each night.  I tend to rely on the typical tacos, spaghetti and pizza.  My goal is to find some healthier recipes to cook for my family.  One place I look fo...

This has been a very successful year for our student blogs.  This is the first year that we opened our blogs up to the community, state and nation.  It is also the first time that I have made sure to include more technology and web 2.0 tools into our blog posts. Here is a recap of our year: #1 - September - "All About Me"  Students wrote interesting facts about themselves. #2 - October - Students created a Thinglink to show different places that they have been.This post tied into our unit on map skills in social studies. #3 - November - Our students used iPads and Educreations to make video tutorials. #4 - January - Students made New Year's Resolutions. #5 - February/March  We made eBooks during RTI time. #7 - April / May  Students created a survey using Google Forms.  We sent our surveys to Middle School students but also created a survey for our blogs. A special thank you to all of my friends and colleagues that took the...

This spring has been super busy for me.  There are track meets, baseball games, practices, school events, and of course teaching every day. Because I like to stay connected to all of my social media outlets, I am finding that I use apps on my iPhone more than I do my laptop to keep up-to-date. Here are the apps that I have been using a lot in between track events and baseball games: Twitter - I check Twitter more than any other app. I love keeping up with all of the wonderful people in my PLN. Feedly- This is really a wonderful app.  My RSS feeds build up fast and the Feedly app makes it easy to peruse through the long list of blog posts and articles. Facebook - My friends and family are always with me through this app.  It seems that the Facebook app keeps getting better and better with each update.  I particularly like the new message feature. Linkedin - It's nice to see the new connections that professionals are making as well as job opport...

I have found a wonderful app!  Let me tell you about the situation. Last week a colleague of mine needed to get videos from one iPad onto another.  The goal was to get the videos into one photo stream so that the videos could be inserted into iMovie.  Perhaps you've had the same idea of students using several iPads to capture video and then put all of the videos into one iMovie.  We discovered that this is actually not an easy task. We tried several ways to transfer the videos through other apps without any luck.  We tried Dropbox and Google Drive, but neither offers an option to save the video to the Photo Gallery.  We tried emailing and the Bump App , but the videos were too large.  It seems that only videos under 30 seconds could be bumped.  So I started asking my Twitter friends, but no one seemed to have a solution.  I began searching and came across an app that looked promising.  It was called Wireless Transfer App . Th...

Pixlr Express is an app you can add to your Google Drive for photo editing.  It's a very impressive app.  Watch my video tutorial below to see more about Pixlr Express.  Pixlr has now been opened to students in our district.  :)

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...

Recently I had the most amazing experience.  I interviewed for a case study with some great people at Air.org (American Institute for Research) and Intel for Education.  We had a wonderful conversation about Mobile Learning and technology integration.   Today, I want to share with you the Intel Mobile Learning Website .  There are some great resources available for teachers on this site. There are 3 main sections: Each section offers informational articles and research.  For those of us that want to keep up with the pedagogy of instructional technology and mobile learning, these are very helpful and interesting reads. Another section is called  Teachers Engage . This is a community for educators to connect.  In this section  Intel also offers free webinars!  (I've posted about Simple K12's webinars before .)  As I have said time and time again, I LOVE learning through webinars.  They are such a quick...