Stuff yourself with Technology this Thanksgiving!!

I would hate for you to be bored on your Thanksgiving vacation so why not look into the following ways to integrate technology into your classroom.
TodaysMeet is a very useful online tool that allows for a digital conversation to take place concurrently as a teacher or student gives a presentation.  This is called back-channeling and is a great way to have all students provide feedback and be active listeners. Click here to read more about how to use TodaysMeet to "backchanel" and give every student a voice in your classroom, or talk to Nate Uttaro and Gina Johnston who are trying it out in their classes.

In other tech news at Algonquin Cam Martin's Computer Essentials class is connecting with a class in Taiwan using Facebook and Blogger.  Here is a link to the Facebook page that was set up by the students in Taiwan.  Seen below is an image that these students used to describe the origin of Yangmei city which is where their school is located. There are many ways you could use Facebook in your classroom.  Please let me know if you want to explore some options.

Emily Squires is also helping Algonquin to go global by connecting with students from Spanish speaking countries to Skype  and/or do some collaborative projects with.  She was able to make these connections by creating a lesson and posting it on the Skype in the classroom website.  Some of our other Spanish teachers are in the process of creating pen-pals with the school in Spain where Hannah Brenner spent a year before coming to teach at Algonquin.

We had one lively Skype session with Brian Mawson's gym class and a class from Norway.  This teacher is looking for other classes at Algonquin who may want to connect with her students.  Please comment below or let me know if you are interested.

Shout outs to Jen Sousa, Paula Bombrun, Katie Salt and Nate Uttaro who are trying new ways for students to create presentations using Imovie and Explain Everything.

The Tech Department is happy to announce the arrival of 2 new classroom Chromebook carts.  Sue sent out an email earlier this week with some instructions about how to sign out and use these.  Here is a link to a great Google slides presentation created by a high school teacher about how Chromebooks have helped to make her classroom project based and technology infused.

We are also excited to announce that coming soon we will have 2 more Ipad carts.  These new carts will have 15 Ipads on them and will be available for long term loan.  If you are interested in having these ipads in your class for an extended period of time you will need to write a proposal of how you intend to use these constructively and creatively.  Look for more details on applying to have an ipad cart in your class for a few weeks.

And last but not least Jean Tower, Greg Martineau and I had an amazing conversation with some of our students about the future of technology in the District.  They were so helpful and articulate and we should be very proud of them!!

Hoping you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Please comment on any of the topics mentioned in today's post.