The Invention and Design Cycle

It's parent-teacher conference season, so I get tiny pockets of free time here and there between meetings. I decided to finally try my hand at some sketching on the iPad in the style of sketchnoting/visual note-taking. I used the Autodesk Sketchbook app, which is free!

I'm very pleased with how it turned out! I'm excited to try something similar on my Chromebook next. (I own a personal Chromebook that has a touch screen, so I'm hoping to be able to use it in a similar manner as the iPad...)

Drawing this really got me thinking about the similarities between making art and making/inventing using technology. We all follow a similar thought process of concept - ideas / brainstorming / creating and execution / reflection and revision. Makers, artists, designers, inventors... we're all the same! I think this really helps to illustrate (pun intended, ugh) why I love to live and teach in both worlds: art and computers, and how they're related!

Have a great weekend!
- Mrs L.

p.s. Do you like my new logo? I made it using Google Draw with my 6th graders! 

Even MORE Green Screen Fun Time Ideas!

I’ve been wanting to try out this fun green screen method for a while now. I even got my buddies from my local Starbucks drive-thru to hook me up with a bunch of green straws (those extra-long venti iced coffee straws are perfect for this)!

Disclaimer: this is not my original idea. I got it from one of my favorite PLCs - Twitter!

Use @SUBWAY straws in your next GS Project.@DoInkTweets #recycle #savethearth #edtech #ipaded #doink #ipadchat #greenscreenguru #2ndchat pic.twitter.com/O3SvbrtzbA— Goodwinnovate (@amsgoodwin) June 28, 2017

A lot of iOS teachers love using the DoInk app, which is great if you’re an iPad school… but I’m a Chromebook 1:1 school, so I use WeVideo. Honestly, even if I was an iOS school, I’d still like to use WeVideo because it’s not device-dependent. Anywhere you can access your Google account, you can access and edit your WeVideo projects and video files! It’s so convenient, and they’re constantly adding features and upgrades to the service. I’m hooked.

So anyways, today I set up a mini green screen set: a piece of green construction paper as a “screen,” and a green straw taped to the back of an action figure - like a puppet stand, if you will. Once you add the green screen magic to it, you end up with a video that has an awesome low-tech effect that reminds me of Vitruvius floating around as a ghost in the LEGO movie:

(That visible string from LEGO ghost Vitruvius gets me every time! )

So, I tried out this method (items on green straws) using a Playmobil action figure, a red speech bubble cut-out shape, and a plastic Super Mario figure. I think I surprised myself by how well it worked overall! Can you see the shadow on some? Yeah. Is it perfect? No. Does it do the job? Heck yes! I’m a fan. 

Here’s what my playing around produced:

Fun fact: the skater that jumps off the curb in the last clip is me! I’m trying to teach myself to skate at the skate park. I’m still a very baby beginner, but at least I’m out there trying. :) 

Using the green screen method on a small scale like this is a fun alternative for teachers without space or resources for large green walls or curtains. And you can typically grab the straws for free! 

- Mrs. L.

Tips For Creating a Good Tweet

Recently, my district has begun to leverage social media to help showcase positive aspects of our students, schools, community, and teachers. That’s awesome! Yeah, it’s a little tardy to the party, but at least they made it.

One thing I’ve noticed across several districts is that they love to post about professional development. Stuff like:

"Look at this special guest talking to us about assessment and data!"
"Check out our math teachers working on common core!"
"Hey, here’s some administrators watching a Powerpoint at the district office!"

(Not a tweet from my district; faces have been blurred to protect the identities of the innocent)

Typically, these kinds of tweets are accompanied by a photo from the back of a room, showcasing adults sitting at tables. They might be looking up at a screen (so you get that back-of-the-head view), or you might see them in profile looking at each other. Most importantly, neither the text nor the image makes it look the least bit exciting or engaging:

(Not a tweet from my district; faces have been blurred to protect the identities of the innocent)

Argh. The sheer fact that you tweeted it out does not make it GOOD!

So, I thought I’d share some tips for how to increase the quality of your tweets:

1. Showcase who is there, and how much FUN you are having. Do you have a guest speaker? Take a selfie with them (like here!), or have a teacher give the ol’ thumbs up and pose with him or her. Don’t just stand there with a neutral expression - make it look like you’re having a good time! 
2. Or, highlight a detail of something actually HAPPENING. Did people get up and walk around? Did you create collaborative charts or posters? Were there high-fives? Laughter? Did you have a book discussion? Take a close-up picture of one of those things, and talk about a specific detail, rather than an umbrella-like generic tweet. 
3. Another option is to create a whole collage of photos to show the variety of happenings during your professional development sessions, as in this really nice tweet below: 





(Not my tweet; check out the variety of activities being showcased!)



4. Tag people in your tweets! Include the handles of people featured, or guests present. This increases the likelihood that your tweet will be shared and liked, and therefore gain a wider audience. 
5. Share something that you learned. A useful take-away or tip for the people who see your tweet is always nice. They couldn’t be there, but they can still share in the goodness. 
6. Hashtags! Use them. Hopefully, your district has a common hashtag for use, or even a building level hashtag, but be sure to include broader hashtags, too, like #edtech or #makerspace. Not sure what to use? Here’s a whole list of hashtag ideas in this blog post.





Not my tweet; I assure you this girl is just as happy underneath the smiley emoji! Isn't that the kind of attitude you want to advertise in your organization? 


As a general rule of thumb, before you post an image to social media, step back, take a look at your image, and ask yourself:


"Does this look like a picture of somewhere I'd want to be?"
"Is this an image that I'd like to know more about?"

...and if the answer is no, re-take that picture before publishing it to social media!  


- Mrs. L.

Classroom Tour 2017-18! Flexible Learning Space Design

Don't you just love peeking into other teacher's classrooms to get ideas for how to design your space and set up your room? I know it's not just me. For the third year now, I've made a classroom tour video for my YouTube channel. 

Wanna take a tour? Check it out below!

I'm pretty proud of how I've been able to incorporate a whole variety of flexible seating options in the classroom: chairs, rocker stools, yoga balls, bean bags, sitting on the floor, or even standing! 

Some of these items were purchased via a grant, but others were total freebies or at little to no cost! 

Here's a post about an easy way to get started with flexible seating in your classroom.

I talk about the items purchased from a foundation grant in last year's tour video.

Here's some information on my standing desk, which I was able to achieve for FREE!

I really love thinking about and designing learning spaces. I have a made up dream job in my head where school districts hire me to do just that. 

Have you done a classroom tour video? Please share!

- Mrs. L.

The Google Classroom Tip I Didn't Know I Was Missing...

I love love love Google Classroom. I've been using it for the last three years (since I moved from art to computer literacy classes), and it is a game-changer in terms of going paperless and making classroom life in general so much easier!

There is a feature, however, in Classroom that I've never used... due dates on assignments. Maybe that sounds weird at first, so let me explain. The way that I grade, there's no such thing as "late" work. Therefore, I don't use due dates. I see kids for a 6-week term, and they either do the work, or they don't. I don't care when it gets turned in... as long as it gets turned in before the end of the term. My husband teaches art in another district, and he runs his classes the same way. We don't assign due dates, because there really aren't any. 

The first year I taught class, I tried assigning a due date based on when we would finish working on it in class, but it only confused students, and I had to keep telling them to ignore alerts from classroom that assignments were late or not done. It was annoying. 

So, for the next two years, I just kept creating assignments with no due date. The problem with this though, is that I never received alerts when students turned in work. Most importantly, if I graded an entire class and someone turned in their assignment AFTER I had graded the work, I never knew to go back and look unless a student took the time to personally email me. Seems like a simple step, but if you've ever taught (or parented) a middle-schooler, you know that every additional step is a huge deal that could possibly (and probably will) get missed. 

I struggled to keep track of work that was turned in after I had already graded the whole class. 

You might be reading this right now and thinking that you already know how to fix this. Well, try not to make me feel too stupid, ok? I'm really comfortable with Google Classroom, and I've even trained others on how to use it! So this was a real light bulb moment for me. 

I could still go in and create the initial assignment with no due date. Then, after I sat down and graded the class, I went back in and edited the assignment to give it a due date of whatever the day was that I graded the work. 

Because I made the date of grading my "due" date, I now receive email alerts after that any time a student turns in an assignment! Why hadn't I figured this out before? 

I was so mind blown by this discovery that I had to tell my husband all about it when I got home. It's a game-changer. So, I thought perhaps there are others out there that might find this helpful, too, and that I'd share. 

Are you familiar with Google Classroom? If not, I have a whole beginner's overview/professional development presentation all about Google Classroom! Check it out here: 

For those of you familiar with using Classroom, what's your favorite Google Classroom trick?

- Mrs. L.

Organizing Student Inboxes with Gmail Filters

One of the best things about being a computer teacher is that I get to teach students super practical skills that are often immediately relevant to a student's needs. This is one of those skills!

Now that most of the teachers in my building are utilizing Google Classroom (yay!), student email inboxes are being bombarded with automatic alerts from the service. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because most of the information is good to be aware of, but it fills up fast!

I like to teach students how to create filters to automatically label those Google Classroom emails, which then allows students to quickly sort them out and archive or delete them.

Once students learn the technique, it's easy to apply filters to other emails, too: library notices, extra-curriculars, or sorting emails by subject areas - whatever method of organization a student prefers.

I searched on YouTube to find a tutorial, but I always end of creating my own because I'm so darn particular. If you're not like that, feel free to use mine in class:

Do you use Gmail filters with students? What methods work for you? 

P.S. Find my other Gmail tutorial about creating custom student email signatures here! 

- Mrs. L.

DIY Techie Craft Ideas for Back-To-School

It's that time of year! I'm back after taking some summer time off to recharge, be a mom, and do some home improvement projects over the summer. It's been great, but it's time to start thinking about school again. My five-year-old starts kindergarten this fall, and he loves looking at school supplies. Hmm... I think he gets that from me?

So we were watching some YouTube videos about DIY school supplies and came across some super fun tech-related projects that Iggy and I had to make, and that I just had to share here.  Check it out!

Cord taco vs cord donut. Who will win?

Earbud cords are forever getting tangled, or lost/broken in your backpack or pencil case, amirite? We've got two new different solutions that you can try out this school year! The past couple of years, I was totally pushing the "mint-container-as-earbuds-holder" craft idea, but I've got a couple of new ones that I think are equally as functional and fun.

The first one is a "cord taco" made from craft foam and velcro dots. My son decided to try his hand at the "cord pizza," and loved it so much that he made one for his dad, too. Here he is, hard at work:

He's not exactly coordinated enough for painting (or patient enough!) just yet, so Iggy opted to decorate his foam cord keepers using colorful permanent markers. I used acrylic paint though for mine.

The second item was a "cord donut" made from Perler beads. This is actually where our crafts all started. My son is hooked on these tiny plastic beads that you place onto a pegboard, and then melt to fuse together using an iron. He started out making flat images of Ghostbusters and monsters and such, but has started to graduate to 3-D creations. I was researching the best glue to use when I came across the DIY for a cord donut. How could I NOT try it out? It's a donut!

And once you go down the YouTube rabbit hole of ideas, it tends to snowball. I became obsessed with the idea of a lipstick USB drive, and had to try to make one for myself:

The trick here is finding a USB drive that's small enough to fit into your empty lipstick tube! I got mine on Amazon, but still had to do a little tweaking via a sanding block to get mine to fit just right... but it's super cute, don't you think? 

Here's my complete playlist with the DIY directions on how to make these (and other) fun tech and school supplies!

BONUS CRAFT: 

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw how I made myself the ultimate finger pointer stick for my whiteboard this school year, inspired by one of my all-time favorite movies, School of Rock:

Heavy metal rock hand for the win!

Hope your school year gets off to an awesome start!

- Mrs L.