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Post date: Dec 24, 2014 3:59:54 AM
Wow I'm so sorry I was not able to attend the live session by John Sowash, however a school concert prevented me from attending. It was an excellent session with tons of information.
The session started off with an overview of Google Apps for Education. Now I must admit I'm a little surprised this was not our first or at least one of our first session of this course. I understand YouTube being later in the course but Google Apps seems like it should have been earlier. I'm guess because John did both that was one of the reasons for placing this when it feel in the overall course structure.
I loved John's statement "Technology makes good teachers better and bad teachers worse." Because I believe that is so true. I have seen so many weak teachers fall apart when trying to do anything with technology. Yet at the same time give a strong teacher a bit of technology and show them how to infuse it into their classroom and look out.
I would love to show John's GAFE Presentation to my Director of Technology and Superintendent as we are not a GAFE District and my Director of Technology is very much against us becoming one. John laid out so well all the plus to Google Apps, security issues/concerns, and issues and challenges of Google App Schools. He made a strong case for how many schools and company's now use Google Apps.
My favorite slide was the one that addressed security because that is my districts big hang-up.
For the current moment we are not a GAFE School and will not be any time soon. So I'm going to move on to address YouTube since it was unblocked for teachers this year in my District. I have a YouTube Channel and have already curated videos for several different classes but I picked up a few new tricks from John that I will be passing along to my fellow teachers.
It is funny but I have loaded YouTube videos into Google Presentation for class use before but never thought about doing that more as a way work around to clean-up or scrub as John said YouTube for showing a video in class. In the past when loading one into a Presentation it has simple being because I was making a presentation and wanted a video as part of the presentation.
Another way to scrub a video to show in class is to use EdPuzzle. Here is a quick sample of how easy it is to use EdPuzzle and how videos turn out in EdPuzzle using the same short video as the on used above. With EdPuzzle you can add stopping points in your video and place questions for students to answer. If you add class lists to EdPuzzle you can assign videos to students to watch and answer question. These question can be in multiple formats from multiple choice to short answer. I saw EdPuzzle used for the first time at teh Central Valley CUE conference last year and have used it in computer classes especially on days when I have a sub. I can create lessons for students that are relevant and interesting no mater who I have as a sub.
In the last month I have been working at organizing my YouTube Channel to make it a more effective tool for the classroom. When I find something that will be useful for a class I save it for future use. Here is the link to my YouTube Channel.
YouTube in and of itself is not something that will transform education. Like any other shiny new piece of technology it is how it is used by the educator in charge that will transform the experience for the student. I'm going to end today with this video that I shared in G+ community recently after seeing at a technology meeting I attended. It was a good reminder for me about keeping my focus on the student not the shiny new piece of technology which I can sometimes get lost in.
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