Every single day our teachers instill this into our
children. Our little dreamers, our future blinkers, they stare quietly,
intently, and purposefully at those instructors, each and every moment passing
for the first time and the last time. For no second that has been spent will
ever return. It is here one instant and gone the next. To have such a calling,
such a credence thrust upon them takes a true calling to accomplish.
My wife teaches fourth grade. She has taught for 14 years. I
admire her for this. I truly admire anyone in the public education field. To
live a life of service, to help mold our children, strengthen them, and tune
their dreams into something attainable is honestly a gift. It is my belief that
all teachers who genuinely have this calling have the propensity to be great;
great in ways they can never fathom. It is my own creed that with a little
innovation, a little nudge into the unknown, a slight shove off that precipice
of innovation I mentioned in my previous blogs, teachers can reach heights they
on no occasion knew they could. I believe this because I have seen it more than
once. I have seen a teacher so apprehensive towards technology that they feared
its use. Yet with just a little guidance they blossomed into something amazing.
So I sit here again, another evening in my attendance,
writing my thoughts. Hoping I can make sense of what I know is true. I know the
question that so many in the education field have. I know they want to know, “How
can we make this easier? How can we do this a better and easier way?”
I believe that teachers, staff, and administrators are inundated
with so much information that it is sensory overload. Imagine a warehouse full
of red balls. When they opened the door to this warehouse a flood of red balls
came crashing down upon them the likes of which they had never seen. Red balls
of every shape and size, texture and mass. So many red balls that they didn’t
even know where to start. They didn’t know how to even begin to separate them
into discernible groups because each one was so uniquely different. In this
analogy I akin the digital landscape of core curriculum, collaborative tools,
web 2.0 resources, such a smorgasbord of options it is dizzying to say the
least.
I believe in a streamlined environment. Even in this digital
revolution we are in, I trust that sense can be made out of the chaos that
surrounds us. I know that there is a way to sift through all of these things,
the apps, the websites, the programs, the vendors, and really get down to the
meat and potatoes of what really innovates in the 21st century
classroom environment.
In the two months I have been discovering this vast
landscape myself, I have found an order to this chaos. I have realized that
there truly is a clear and concise way to file through all of the data and
assemble it in a relevant way that is meaningful to a teacher. To give a little
more information on where this is going let me give direction on what I am
talking about…
After about a week of searching for interactive websites
that would be useful with SMART Boards and other similar devices, I stumbled
upon what I like to refer to my diamond in the rough. I had managed to find at
least 50 to 60 relevant, meaningful, and informative interactive websites at
this point and it was then that I ended up following a link from one of those
websites to another interactive lesson. However, this particular lesson
required me to install Google Chrome. This was the first such “app” based
approach I had seen on the PC browser based atmosphere I have known for so
long. Yet here I was scratching my head asking myself how such a thing was even
relevant? Why make an interactive lesson browser specific? Then it hit me…
Apple. This has been the Apple model since time immemorial.
Since their inception, Apple has held a tight rein on who develops what for
them and how they disseminate it to their consumer base. So, in a sense, this
was nothing new to the digital landscape I write about so often. Yet, this tiny
discovery made me realize that there is this whole other side of the internet
that I never realized was there. At least in the aspect of a PC based environment
like 95 percent of our school district is.
Thus I immediately downloaded the Google Chrome web browser
and quickly began to explore its many distinct functions. I must say, though,
once I discovered the Chrome Web store portion of the browser, this changed
EVERYTHING for me. It made me realize that I had found, at least in one way, a
specific answer to that eternal question our educators have always asked. Using
the Chrome browser, the web store, and the countless apps, interactive games,
resources, and educational areas within its navigation, I was able to find a
viable cost-effective (Essentially FREE) interface. Chrome allows a teacher to
link their relevant web pages, specific documents, presentations, and apps all in
one seamless platform. Essentially a teacher could deliver their entire lesson
from the front of the room using an interactive whiteboard or virtually
anywhere with a tablet with desktop controlling software such as Smoothboard
air with duo or Splashtop.
Using a combination of interactive websites I had already
found and the newly discovered Google Chrome interface with its many extensions
and apps, I created a virtual playground that could be the potential canvas of creativity
for any teacher. And the beauty of the entire discovery was that this whole
solution would work with ANY interactive whiteboard so every single teacher in
the county would benefit from its use.
Below are two videos I created using Cam Studios software (A
free software program I found for Windows XP/Vista/ and Windows 7) and a simple
microphone.
The software captures the activity on your desktop and
allows you to record your voice for explanation of what you are doing onscreen.
The potential of this software in our learning environment is already being
applied by several teachers. Classroom flipping for one, and supplemental videos
to help teachers incorporate technology into their classroom are all essential
to the changes that are on the horizon. Not to mention that everyone learns differently.
Some like to read through instruction manuals and have a set of chronological
steps to a solution, while others like to have visual guidance. I feel that
this solution is best for a great deal of our teachers because they are already
on borrowed time, every second counts so SEEING and HEARING at once brings the
best results in my humble opinion.
I made these two videos just as
a demonstration on the Google Chrome interface and its use with the Smoothboard
software that we have a few teachers using at the High School. The videos are
meant as supplemental material and not as official training videos in any way.
The idea is to get this information out so our teachers have access to relevant
and meaningful data that they can use and see results immediately.
The first video can be found here...
And the second video can be found here…
Thank you again for your time and I hope this blog is
beneficial to you.
Aaron
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