Spreadsheet software offers users a wide variety of tools and features. From organizing data and creating charts to computing complex math formulas, the possibilities are endless. Knowing where to begin and how to make sense of it all can be a daunting task. This resource serves as a beginners guide for those wanting to learn how to operate Google sheets.
This blog focuses on Google Sheets and gives 4 purposeful uses in the classroom. Google Sheets is no longer for math classes! These four ideas are used in any class! The blog includes links to live rubrics as well.
February 18, 2016 Here is a handy cheat sheet we have been working on during the last few days. This is basically a collection of some of the best apps and web tools to use for each of the six thinking levels in Bloom's digital taxonomy.
it’s basically a way to give the browser plain text and have it output richly formatted and even active content that can be clicked on to some end.
HTML mostly relates to directly inputting content onto a page.
CSS is The Skin, Hair and Clothing
Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS.
The typical web developer workflow might be to insert all the various pure content first into an HTML document, then jump over to CSS and begin crafting that content to appear in a more visually pleasing and usable way
JavaScript jumps into this game by taking a more active role in how the page behaves.
HTML5 developers have some new tags to work with that make the basic structure of a web page more logical.
This article from the Educational Leadership journal is an interview with Karen Cator, former Director of the U.S. Office of Educational Technology. Cator goes into depth on the topic of personal learning environments. She says that PLEs bring in "the long tail of student experiences and interests." She also state that anytime you add a new technology, something gets amplified and something else gets reduced.
Great interview highlighting some strong examples of working tech environments and components that are needed to grow and sustain. Favorite quote: "In several classrooms, I couldn't tell where the front of the classroom was. On one side of the room was an interactive whiteboard; on another side, a regular whiteboard; and the teacher's desk was on a third side. The whole space was a learning environment, and the technology was just part of the infrastructure." Makes me want to rethink me space as well.
Cator brings up some great points, especially about the finite scope of education today. Where do you find the room to add new ideas and technologies? Something has to give to make room for something new.
The first school that comes to mind when I read this article is about as poor and dysfunctional as the one in the article is well funded and utopic. In the last year there, not only have they not been able to get internet access and technology into the hands of all students, they have seriously discussed putting overhead projectors with plastic sheets back into rooms. The digital divide is alive and well, with the poor getting poorer. I truly believe that technology can make a huge difference in education, but how many students will be left behind waiting for it to get to them?
Cator hits home with a lot of these points for me. She speaks about how the digital and pedagogical divide amongst teachers and administration is so large. There are schools taking on the technological issues head on while others are still stuck in the old way of thinking. Before we can purchase all of this new technology, we need to get the teachers to realize what age they are living in and what is necessary to help them teach to the students in front of them.
Great reference site. Could probably be used as a primer when getting into connectivism for the first time - use it as a cheat-sheet when reading an article with more density.
This site helps users create awesome timelines based off a Google Sheet template. The timelines can then be embedded on websites or linked for people to view.
One of the most important benefits of conducting a program evaluation is using your findings to improve services, motivate staff, or even to change public policy. This tip sheet focuses on ways to use your results to improve services.