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11 Dec 2014
Comments: 4

Visual Portfolios: The Blending of Analog and Digital

As I mentioned in my most recent post, The Role of an Ed Tech within the Project Planning Cycle of a 1:1 iPad Classroom, my job entails working with students just as much as teachers. A few months ago I was asked to speak to the Senior Mentorship classes about online resumes, portfolios, social media, and digital footprints. A collection of the resources I shared is available here. Each year students in these classes present a final presentation summarizing their experience throughout the semester of their professional mentorship. In addition to showcasing the resources mentioned above, I highlighted the tool bulb as a way for students to create an online visual portfolio of their work and final products.

One student, Yasmeen Tizani, gravitated to bulb and created an exceptional portfolio of her work. Her bulb includes three collections: Art, Architecture Mentorship, and Architecture at UT.

Screen Shot 2014-12-09 at 9.33.02 AM

I have to say it has been such an amazing experience working with Yasmeen this semester. She would pop in a few times to get my feedback on the layout and any ideas for improvement of the content.

Polishing the Portfolio

Two changes that she made based on our discussions were art work descriptions and the use of Canva to create a few of the tiled images:

  • Art Work Reflections: We discussed adding blurbs on each art piece that highlighted both the inspiration for the work as well as the process and media used to create it. 
  • Canva Creations to Customize Tiles: Rather than uploading a photo or using the default image associated with the page’s tile, Yasmeen used Canva to expertly spruce up a few of her page icons.
bulb.001
 

Hybrid Portfolio

The best part of this bulb is the hybrid approach that Yasmeen took. She created a mentorship portfolio that combined a unique blend of analog and digital work from scanned log sheets and journal entries, photographs of hand-drawn sketchbooks, to images of SketchUp designs and photographs of the final product.

bulb3.002

Personalizing Visual Archival

Yasmeen even included a collection of her work from the UT Architecture Program. The collection seamlessly blends photos from her presentations as well as the evolution of her final product through multiple iterations. One of the most powerful pieces of the portfolio is showcasing Yasmeen in action – I think it brings a personal touch to the portfolio that stand-alone photos of products alone could not.

Screen Shot 2014-12-09 at 9.34.23 AM

Transferring Portfolios

One of my biggest pet peeves with ePortfolios is that many students create something within the four walls of their K-12 education and then the portfolio is not transferable to the student when they leave. I advised our seniors to create their bulb accounts with their personal gmail account so that they could continue to grow and evolve with their work after they left our institution.

Many thanks to Yasmeen for letting me share her work. I hope it serves as an exemplary model to inspire you and your students to reflect, create, and publish.

FREEBIES and GOODIES OH MY!

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02 Dec 2014
Comments: 5

The Role of an Ed Tech within the Project Planning Cycle of a 1:1 iPad Classroom

During a conversation with my father over the Thanksgiving week, I realized that he had no idea what my job actually was. Now this may sound strange but truthfully when you hold a support role and you don’t occupy a classroom for seven periods a day, people often wonder what it is that you do. I know how busy I am during the day and those that utilize my services and plan with me also value my insight and position, but I thought the inquiry and topic might warrant a deeper reflection.

What is the Role of an Educational Technologist?

When people think about the role of Educational Technologist, they immediately consider co-planning with teachers and offering professional development… but what many don’t realize is that I work with students just as much as I do with teachers…

The Role of An Ed Tech

What Does a Life Cycle of a 1:1 iPad Project Look Like?

This blog could get quite lengthy… but I felt a Tackk was truly the best tool to highlight and illuminate the role of an Ed Tech within an actual project cycle. From that email or first point of contact with a teacher to the planning and support provided for both teacher and students throughout the life cycle of a classroom project…to the final stages of publishing and reflection. Check out this thorough reflection on the life cycle of an iPad Project.

See on Tackk.com

Many thanks to both Tackk (@Tackk) and Shadow Puppet (@puppet) for their social media love, kind words and app-reciation for this piece.

Appreciation

What is the Ed Tech Piece of the Pie?

A big shout-out to Carl Hooker for creating this epic mock iTunes U page to highlight some of the roles of an Ed Tech as well as to showcase a handful of carefully curated resources and supports that I provide:

I feel very blessed to have a job that I am so passionate about and that I wake up for each day knowing that I can make a difference. I sincerely hope that my time spent on metacognition and narration of this process is helpful and beneficial to the greater edusphere and will inspire others to reflect and share their work and insight within their own roles.

FREEBIES and GOODIES OH MY!

TechChef4u now offers a Doc Locker full of freebies and goodies that can be used in the classroom. Lots of resources and templates can be found in the Creatively Productive Digital Downloads Doc Locker. Just sign up using the form below and you will receive an email shortly with a secret link to the site and password to nab your freebies.

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19 Nov 2014
Comments: 2

STEM Day Recap…

On Friday I had the opportunity to teach coding to 5 kindergarten classes for STEM day at Eanes Elementary. We weren’t sure if Scratch Jr would hold their attention for a 30-35 minute class period… but we were pleasantly surprised… because it did.

Coding with Kinder

I spent a few minutes introducing the interface and then presented them with 4 challenges (one challenge at a time):

  • Create a New Project and Select a Background (Setting)
  • Add Movement Blocks to have Scratch Jr Move – (We also discussed how the number underneath each movement block would repeat that action that many times rather than dragging the same block again)
  • Add Action (e.g. Shrink, Grow, Disappear) and Text Blocks – (Students found very quickly that the number multiplier made the characters grow more quickly and many of them wanted the character to have a speech bubble with their name or lunch number. They also discovered that if you made a character disappear, that it would not reappear…without adding the Show Block).
  • Add and Paint a Character – (I think this may have been their favorite. Students really enjoyed customizing and adding characters.)

Before I know it, students began having their characters interact and even adding their own audio recordings. I have to say that Scratch Jr. is a natural choice to teach programming but also offers a lot of cross-curricular integrations such as programming distance with specific backgrounds or sequencing a narrative. My 2nd grade son even started using the app to study his spelling words and use them in context (more on that in an upcoming post.)

Capturing Coding with Kinder

As it is not every day that I teach kinder and utter phrases like, “1, 2, 3, Eyes on Me”, I am very grateful that Debbie Smith (@dsmitheisd) captured a few pics to commemorate the event… I have compiled those pics and added some additional Scratch Jr. resources (lessons and curriculum) as well as 30+ iOS apps for programming with students within the thinglink linked here and embedded below.

FREEBIES and GOODIES OH MY!

TechChef4u now offers a Doc Locker full of freebies and goodies that can be used in the classroom. Lots of resources and templates can be found in the Creatively Productive Digital Downloads Doc Locker. Just sign up using the form below and you will receive an email shortly with a secret link to the site and password to nab your freebies.

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13 Nov 2014
Comments: 3

Bringing S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR Back…

Last year I presented S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR at TCEA to a packed room. Flash forward a year, there have been many lessons learned. While the S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR Tackk, chocked full of questions and resources, proved popular at a host of conferences and schools this semester, in actual sessions the idea of attendees developing their own understanding of SAMR through the activities proved tricky.

The Evolution of S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR

Initially I had everyone complete a PDF survey (Substitution), and then stopped them and provided a Google Form (Augmentation) using the same questions. We discussed the pros and cons of each and then I offered a Google Slide Deck with full editing rights so each attendee could add their expertise and information to build their PLN (Modification). While developing the SAMR model in this context was revealing for some, others I believe struggled with this delivery method and wanted to simply be told what the SAMR model was. I too struggled to find a balance between discovery and divulging as well as meeting the needs of a diverse group of learners.

S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR 3.0 Revealed

So… I went to the drawing board one more time… and decided to create a resource that had 3 tiered sections. When I launched the session at Miami Device this past week, I decided to provide a little back story (as I have done above for you) so those that planned on taking the resources back and using them as professional development for their own staff could make the adjustments as well. Then, I gave a quick review of each level of SAMR and discussed the “That’s So Not SAMR” section as a whole group. Finally, I allowed participants to self-select their comfort level with SAMR and connect that to one of the levels within the bulb site that I prepared (pictured and linked below) and begin to explore the exercises contained in each level.

SAMR Bulb

Breaking Down S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR 3.0

Each tier includes an activity with reflective questions:

  • Fancy SAMR is for those that have no knowledge of SAMR
  • Cheeky SAMR is intended for those that have a basic knowledge of SAMR but would like to have some ideas for how to connect each level to a classroom integration example
  • S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR is for more advanced attendees and takes a deeper look at the TechChef acronym intended to make SAMR (also an acronym… yes, the irony is not lost on me) a little more digestible and easier to understand

S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR 3.0 In Action

I do have to say that opening up a traditional sit-and-get session to be a more discovery and discussion app-ortunity is not without its own challenges, but I feel like the time spent on exploration and the thoughtful participant discussions that evolved during the session far outweighed the angst some may have felt by being asked to be “active” participants. After the discovery portion, each group revealed their insights and I closed with a quick history of the S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR acronym.

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S.A.S.S.Y. SAMR 3.0: the Critics Are In…

I want to also give a shout-out to Adam Jones. He was an attendee at two of the sessions I delivered at Miami Device and he provided a very thoughtful and thorough reflection of both of my sessions as well as multiple others that he attended:

“Lisa has done a tremendous amount of work with SAMR – not just in her own classroom, but also teaching other educators how to make their classrooms more student-centric and project-based.  She said, ‘It not about evaluating teachers with this model, but rather deploying it as a structure to have an ongoing conversation about pedagogy…’ It is hard to overstate how valuable a maven Lisa truly is in EdTech.  Find her on social media and you’ll find a deep rabbit hole of carefully curated content.” – Adam Jones ED

Another shout-out goes to Joe Rommel, Instructional Tech Consultant from Southwestern Michigan that shared these kind words about my sessions:

“Miami Device was great. My favorites were Lisa Johnson’s “Sassy SAMR” and “Tech Chef” presentations. Her style was engaging, and she had an amazing collection of SAMR resources that she was willing to share for our own professional development purposes.”- Joe Rommel

Stay tuned for TechChef’s Miami Device Recap… Coming Soon…

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