techleadership

When your students teach each other, they learn more.

Teachers then don’t need to know everything and how to do everything anymore.

Have students identify their strengths, their passions, and their interests.

Engaging students as experts can bring specialized knowledge about particular subjects to classrooms and education agencies, enriching everyone’s ability to be more effective throughout schools

ideas and passion drive the future of technology

Without substantial opportunities to be experts, students are inadvertently taught that their opinions are insignificant or not worthy of educators’ attention

Most research supports starting students on formal keyboarding around grade 4,

We encourage students to pretend there's a line down the middle of the keyboard and to keep the right hand to the right of the line and the left hand to the left. We also encourage them to type with more than one finger because they may tend to use just the index finger. For later instruction, it's good for students to develop the habit of using more than one finger early on."

"If you combine keyboarding with letter-recognition and hand-eye coordination activities in grades K-3, then you provide a developmentally appropriate skill that helps reinforce classroom learning and develop fine motor skills,"

This year, we tried a different approach so that this skill was not only taught, but also applied across all content areas.

NCTE and other respected educational organizations view digital skills such as keyboarding as essential for learners to communicate in the 21st century.

How could we use Google Docs to complete assignments? Wouldn’t these tools allow students to complete unfinished work at home? Making connections between the technology and the academics had begun.

some feel "tech prep" is a waste of time, but far more view it as a crucial set of skills that does double duty.

SETDA advocates blending computer skills seamlessly into instruction, rather than teaching them in isolation.

asked her students to practice typing by using a free online program at home for 20 minutes, twice a week,

Is student work easily organized by date, course or some other category?

Can students view and comment on each other's work?

it can be time-consuming and often frustrating to transfer student work to another platform.

They love that they have an audience and even more, they love to get comments about their work

Gradually, we begin to add drawings and use other media to show our learning, such as video, Audioboo (for voice recordings or podcasts) and Storybird (to make embeddable storybooks).  We have also used tools such as Animationish and the ScreenChomp app for the iPad. We have taken pictures of posters or other things they have made, or posted combinations of these if we feel that using only one tool is not adequate to show what we can do.

there are no big surprises at our student led-conferences.

Be realistic about your design and expectations. • Make use of relevant models. • Instill a sense of ownership in the students creating the portfolios. • Communicate implementation strategies and timelines clearly. • Be selective in design and strategy. • Allow for continuous improvement and growth. • Incorporate assessment stakeholders in all phases and components of your efforts; that is, make sure portfolio content meets the needs of those assessing the work.

purposeful collection

. Over time, a student selects items from the working portfolio and uses them to create a display portfolio. Finally, the student develops an assessment portfolio, containing examples of his or her best work, as well as an explanation of why each work is significant.

Google Drive is particularly handy for teachers when revising students' work and providing feedback. It allows you and your class to track what changes have been made, save each revision, and collaborate in real time. And it's a great organizing tool -- you can easily upload existing files to Google Drive so that everything is accessible in one place

Google Sites is your place to create a digital classroom on the web. One of the best things about Google Sites is its ability to be that digital hub for your classroom. You can combine video, documents, forms, calendars, and other resources all in one place for student and parent access.

Google Classroom is Google's newest product (August 2014) available to Google Apps for Education users. Classroom helps teachers to streamline their digital workflow by creating a space where they can easily push out announcements and assignments, and give students a way to interact with the teacher and classmates, as well as turn in assignments electronically.

Sharing and commenting provide students with opportunities to receive immediate feedback on their writing from teachers and peers in the 24/7 classroom

Teachers create and publish a Google Form to be used as an In Box. When it’s time to turn in a Google Doc, students complete the simple form and submit a link to their Google Doc.

The features available in the drawing component of Google Docs are well-suited for online, collaborative brainstorming  sessions that provide students with opportunities to work together to develop ideas

One in five devices shipped to U.S. students this year was a Chromebook built to access the Google platform. And over 70 of the top 100 universities in the U.S. have gone Google, including seven of the eight Ivy Leagues.

being able to discover a world of infinite resources

Teamwork: working together in real time. Using Google’s collaborative productivity