The @BlackboardK12 BITS Learning Sessions #19 #BbK12Live

The @BlackboardK12 BITS Learning Sessions #19 #BbK12Live

I've partnered with BlackboardK12 to share out the awesome sessions they are having this Fall. Educators can sign up to attend and share with other great educators what they have learned. I'll feature the session and the description on my blog each week and on my Twitter account. If you have questions, feel free to shoot a tweet to @BlackboardK12. Have fun learning and sharing!

The Networked Teacher: The Power of the Professional Learning Network

An accomplished teacher continues to learn. An accomplished teacher continues to connect, communicate, and collaborate. Now 14 years into the 21st century, there are a myriad of ways that teachers can capitalize on the 3C’s of building community, and move beyond the static face-to-face and one-to-one encounters with a brick and mortar school. This session will explore the power of the Professional Learning Network, taking the concepts of a learning community and looking at it from a more global context. How can teachers share, collaborate, discuss, and learn from other teachers around the state, nation, or world? How can teachers engage in an environment that builds and supports not only individual, professional learning, but the learning of students? Although many digital tools are used to develop and sustain a PLN, this session will focus on Twitter and maximizing its use to learn, grow, and connect. The key to building a successful PLN is a commitment to learn, play, engage, and contribute.

Don Lourcey, Director of Professional Learning, North Carolina Virtual Public School

Don Lourcey is the Director of Professional Learning for North Carolina Virtual Public School. He has been an educator for 22 years and before coming to NCVPS in 2007, he served as an English teacher for 11 years and an Instructional Facilitator for 4 years. He is passionate about teaching, learning, innovation, leadership, and digital literacy. He currently lives in Statesville, NC with his wife Michelle (the Chief Academic Officer for NCVPS) and his daughter Elizabeth, and two cats, Gator and Tebow (yep, you guessed it, he is a Florida Gator fan).

Twitter: @dlourcey

When: Monday, February 2, 2015 3:30 PM EST

Sign Up

Don't forget to check out the Blackboard Live App. It has all of the sessions you might have missed and much much more.  Here is the playlist where you can watch this recorded session and other sessions you might have missed.

The @BlackboardK12 BITS Learning Sessions #18 #BbK12Live

The @BlackboardK12 BITS Learning Sessions #18 #BbK12Live

I've partnered with BlackboardK12 to share out the awesome sessions they are having this Fall. Educators can sign up to attend and share with other great educators what they have learned. I'll feature the session and the description on my blog each week and on my Twitter account. If you have questions, feel free to shoot a tweet to @BlackboardK12. Have fun learning and sharing!

Connected Learners Need Connected Leaders 

This session will explore the importance of connected learners having connected leaders, strategies to become more connnected and ways to leverage this in an instructional setting. 

Mark Carbone, CIO

Donna Miller Fry, Education Officer, Waterloo District School Board

Bio for Mark: 

Mark Carbone is an educator with 33 years experience. He is currently the Chief Information Officer for the Waterloo Region District School Board. He also serves as the Ministry OSAPAC co-chair, OSSEMOOC project co-lead and is president of Educational Computing Organization of Ontario

Bio for Donna:

Donna Fry has nearly thirty years experience in publicly-funded schools in Ontario as a teacher, administrative head, online instructor, alternative education teacher, vice-principal, and principal. She currently serves as an Education Officer for the Province of Ontario. Donna is especially interested in how school and system leaders influence what happens at the level of the student desk.

Twitter: @markwcarbone and @fryed
 
When: Friday, January 30, 2015 12:00 PM EST

Sign Up

Don't forget to check out the Blackboard Live App. It has all of the sessions you might have missed and much much more.  Here is the playlist where you can watch this recorded session and other sessions you might have missed.

HoverCam Solo 8 Review: I Love It! #EdChat

I have used a new document camera and I have to say I am a huge fan! The HoverCam Solo 8 is a wonderful addition to a classroom. Here is a short video that details all of the awesome things it does.

Here is a description of the Solo 8 and I'll talk about these different features. 

The pictures are simply stunning. The images are crisp. I am blown away at how wonderful everything looked under the Solo 8. Take a look at these pictures from their photo gallery. 

 Check out their Gallery Photos for more great pictures. 

The Video Recording was smooth and the sound was clear. This can really change the way teachers flip their classroom. I can see teachers and students recording their annotations and then sharing them with the rest of class.

Zooming was easy to use by simply sliding my finger up and down on my mouse and the auto focus made sure that the image was clean. 

I would have to say that my favorite aspect of the Solo 8 is the annotation feature in the Flex 10 software. Here is a quick look at a student essay and the annotation tools. 

This is a screen shot of a live image. I was able to annotate on a live image. You can also annotate on the pictures that the Solo 8 takes, but annotating on the live image is important. As a teacher, you might want to show a class something, but do not need to take a picture of the document every time you want to show an example. You also might not want to actually mark up the paper. This allows you to virtually mark up the work for the class to see and you could snap a photo if you wanted later, but it is not required. This is the type of feature that sells document cameras.

I also love the fact that the live shots did not have any lag. When I moved my hand or made notes, they were on the screen right away. Normally, other document cameras have that lag hiccup that just takes a second to catch up to what the user is doing. I did not experience that at all and I tried to make it lag. I wrote quickly, i waved my hand, and I even shuffled papers around. I did not see a lag and the auto focus was great once I stopped moving. These things are huge in a classroom where every second of instruction counts.

Flex 10 software also allows for the user to crop the image that is being viewed to help focus on the relevant information. This is a crop of a part of an editorial from our school newspaper. This is perfect for teachers that are showing printed works and want to focus on only one aspect of a very busy page.

As an English Teacher, one of the ways we help students with their writing is by showing them examples of good writing and how to make good writing great writing. Document cameras make this a much easier process. The HoverCam Solo 8 has raised the bar when it comes to Document Cameras. I can now do things with essays and documents that I just could not do before. The pictures are beautifully rendered on the screen. I can see this being wonderful for the Science teachers who want to show images of dissected frogs or other Science-y type of things. (Note: I'm not a Science teacher, but if I was, I would show dissection stuff all of the time on this document camera.)

Clarity is important and we have come a long way since the overhead projector. The fact the Solo 8 can do so much in one device is important for teachers looking for the most bang for their buck. The high resolution photos, the screen recording, zooming, cropping, annotating, and other awesome features make the Solo 8 an excellent choice for educators looking to add an document camera to their classroom. 

If you are looking for a new document camera that can do everything you want and more, check out the HoverCam Solo 8. They have a great 30 Day Trial that can help you see for yourself how this awesome camera can be used in your learning environment. It's what I did and I can't wait to get one for my Makerspace so students can see the detail for all of their work. Check out the Purchase Info to get a HoverCam Solo 8 in your hands as soon as possible. 

Week 18 #NerdyCast Reflections

18 weeks down. It has been crazy to think that I have done 18 of these videos. I've been reflecting on my teaching for a number of years now, but this has been something different for me. I really can't wait to look at the first few at the end of the year to see if anything has changed.

This week is the end of the semester, so I took some time to chat about my students, ongoing projects, and future events at school. Thanks for taking the time to watch and feel free to drop me a comment if you have something to share.

My @BlackboardK12 BITS Learning Sessions #BbK12Live

The @BlackboardK12 BITS Learning Sessions #17 #BbK12Live

I've partnered with BlackboardK12 to share out the awesome sessions they are having this Fall. Educators can sign up to attend and share with other great educators what they have learned. I'll feature the session and the description on my blog each week and on my Twitter account. If you have questions, feel free to shoot a tweet to @BlackboardK12. Have fun learning and sharing!

The Connected Classroom: High School Edition

I will be talking about how to connect your classroom using various tools and methods to integrate technology into the classroom smoothly for all learners.

Nicholas Provenzano High School English Teacher

Nicholas Provenzano is a high school English teacher and an education blogger. He writes on his website, TheNerdyTeacher.com, Edutopia.org, the ISTE blog,  as well as many other prominent educational websites. He has been featured on CNN.com, The New York Times, Consumer Report, and many other media outlets. In 2013, he was awarded the Technology Teacher of the Year by MACUL (Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning) and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) based on his efforts to integrate technology into the classroom. In the summer of 2014, Nicholas became a Google Certified Teacher. He is also the Evernote Education Ambassador and does consulting work for many edtech businesses and school districts. Nicholas can be found tweeting plenty of nerdy ideas on Twitter at @TheNerdyTeacher. 

Twitter: @TheNerdyTeacher

When: Monday, January 26, 2015 4:00 PM EST

Sign Up

Don't forget to check out the Blackboard Live App. It has all of the sessions you might have missed and much much more. Here is the playlist where you can watch this recorded session and other sessions you might have missed.

Week 17 #NerdyCast Reflections

Here are some thoughts on Plagiarism for this week's reflections. I really do not come to any conclusion because I feel this is such a complex issue. I'm not sure anything can be done besides doing our best to educate students about it and how to avoid it. What are your thoughts?

Week 16 #NerdyCast Reflections

Here is my reflection from the past week.

I talk a bit about teaching writing and how it is something I have worked on over the course of my career and I feel like I am having a very good year reaching my students. Sometimes you can just feel like the lessons and tweaks that you have made are actually working. I felt like that this week. 

I also chat a bit about final exams and how I am not a fan of them. I also do not like the fact that we are losing 6 extra instructional days to testing this year. Ugh. More and more testing just eats away at the soul. Honestly. It is hard to find something that is a bigger waste of time. 

Anyway, I hope you are taking the time to reflect in the New Year and I'd love to hear from you. 

Happy New Year!

Nick

#EasyBibAMA With Me!

I've been asked to participate in EasyBib's first ever AMA! I'm so excited to be part of this AMA. I've been a fan and user of EasyBib for many years. It is where I send my students when it comes to citation and research issues. 

The AMA takes place January 29 at 8PM EST. Follow the link above to register. This is your chance to ask me anything and everything about me, teaching, technology, Saved By The Bell, or anything that you can think of that you have always wanted to know.

The registration page is here.

I hope you can join me for this awesome event!

Nick

Five Years and a Day #edchat

It's been five years and a day since my first blog post. It's hard to wrap my brain around the little blog that could. It's gone through ups and downs and I have always been able to go there and empty my brain when I needed. I think there are a few things I've learned about blogging these past five years.

1. Blogging is a connection - My main idea behind blogging was to simply share what I was thinking. Sometimes that was focused on a tool, a lesson, or even an Ed policy. No matter what it was, I was able to go to my site and share my thoughts. Through sharing, connections were made. I've met some amazing people that have inspired me and supported my silliness. I've always made sure to credit Kelly Tenkely and Shelly Terrell for being some of the first people to support my blogging. They read and tweeted my work and gave me the confidence to keep going. For me, writing on my blog is to keep those connections going and create new ones. 

2. Blogging is a voice - Blogging has given so many people a voice in the education discussion. I do not agree with all of the voices out there, but all voices have a chance to be heard because of blogs. My voice tends to be comical/satirical of various situations. Some people actually find me funny. It's a fact that confuses my wife. :-P

No matter the topic of the blog, everyone has a chance to be heard in the conversation if they take the time to share their thoughts. Not every blog post will be read, but there is always a chance that your thought/comment on an issue could be the one that sparks change. That is an awesome power to have in a little blog post. Keep writing and we can change the world.

3. Blogging is a chance... - ...to do anything, to go anywhere, etc. My blog has taken me all over the country. I've had an opportunity to work with amazing people. I've become a Google Certified Teacher and  Evernote Education Ambassador. I've worked with YouTube and I write for George Lucas (I write a month post for Edutopia which is a George Lucas Nonprofit company, but I like telling it the other way). I've spoken to teachers around the country and I've won the MACUL and ISTE Teacher of the Year Awards. I never set out to do anything of these things.

Writing on my site always started out as a place to share some thoughts. I didn't realize it was a chance to do more until much later in the blog's life. When you put yourself out there, anything can happen. People have asked how they can do the same things I've done, and I always tell them to just be themselves and put it out there. If people like what you are doing, they will reach out. Blogging can be a chance to do anything. It can start with a simple post. Trust me.

Five Years and a Day seems crazy to me. I still have posts in my head and things to say. When I don't, I'll know it is time to retire the site and explore the next thing I'm super passionate about. See you in the next post.