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If you would like to recommend a book, contribute a post to this blog, or suggest a pairing please contact me.
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About My Work
2016 CLMS Educator of the Year
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At the California League of Schools Annual Conference, I spoke about the three most valuable lessons that I have learned from my students. I rewrote that speech as a blog and posted it on my teaching blog so that I could share it with everyone. I also presented two workshops at this conference. One was about designing digital lessons called Hyperdocs. The other was about building community through technology and focused on digital flyers created with S'more (www.smore.com), as well as connecting with families through social media.
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The Hyperdoc Handbook
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One of my blog posts was published as a testimonial in the HyperDoc Handbook. I will reference Hyperdocs often, as it is the style of lesson design that allows me to freely share lessons with other teachers. The work of Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis is creative, and inspiring. They have formed a community of giving through their Teachers Give Teachers page. If you want to create digital lessons, I urge you to investigate the links below. These three amazing ladies taught me the craft of digital lesson design and I am grateful for their support and encouragement.
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Short Films Teachers Love
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Guest: Heather Marshall is a 6th Grade teacher who would much rather create & share great lessons than garden, cook or knit. She shares her work twitter.com/MsMarshallCMS and www.middleschoolmind.com. Watch this show on YouTube (below) or subscribe on iTunes:itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/short…ove/id1086360297
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Teacher To Teacher
Fueled by Coffee and Love
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Fueled by Coffee and Love is a collection of real stories by real teachers. In this book, each teacher shares a story from his or her teaching journey. Some will make you smile, some will make you think, and some will make you cry.
The book, Fueled by Coffee and Love is a 20 Time project created by Mari Venturino. Her goal was to compile stories from a diverse group of teachers about their day-to-day successes and struggles. I connected with Mari through the #SunChatBloggers group, and was happy to share a story for her first volume of Fueled by Coffee and Love. All proceeds from this book will be donated to education organizations. For more information on this project visit her website: Fueled by Coffee and Love Interested in writing for Fueled by Coffee and Love, Volume 2? Mari has started an interest list and will be announcing this in September 2017. |
Shake Up Learning: Practical Ideas to Move Learning from Static to Dynamic
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The novel hyperdoc that I created with Karly Moura, Michele Waggoner, and Sean Fahey was featured as a model lesson in Kasey Bell's Shake Up Learning book.
She wrote about blog post about what makes this novel unit a great example of a dynamic learning experience that goes beyond the walls of the classroom: A Hyperdoc Unit That Will Blow Your Mind! This was the second time that I have collaborated on a project of this size with other teachers, but what I have noticed is this: collaboration with other teachers results in higher quality work than I am able to produce on my own. Instead of having an idea and creating something based on what I imagine, there is a group of people sharing ideas, inspiring each other, adding their unique perspectives and expertise to each other's ideas. This year's project is evidence of how much more amazing your work can be when you collaborate! You can find out more about our collaborative novel unit in this blog post The Wild Robot. It was a great honor to have our novel unit included in Kasey Bell's #1 best selling book in computers and technology education on Amazon. |
The Eduprotocols Field Guide: Volume 2
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I presented a workshop at the Cue Rockstar Summer Teacher Camp at Minarets called Evolved ELA:
Evolve your ELA curriculum and create a community of readers that inspire others through their enthusiasm for sharing books. Ditch those reading logs, dioramas, and comprehension quizzes that are common methods of accountability in standard classrooms and have your students telling each other in the hallways that "Class was so Lit!" Reading is a social activity! Learn some classroom-tested strategies that tap into student interests, the need for social interaction, and that are just plain fun and get your students to be lovers of lit'. One of the main focuses of my session was to introduce teachers to Marlena Hebern's Pecha Kucha style book talk called the Bookakucha from the Edupropocols Field Guide. One of the Eduprotocol authors, Jon Corippo, was sitting in on my workshop session. To say I was a little nervous would be an understatement. Luckily, he enjoyed one of my activities, The Game of Quotes, so much it became a new EduProtocol in book two. Book Two expands on the original protocols by describing some creative remixes, and protocol mash-ups that evolved through classroom implementation by teachers who committed themselves to the theory of teaching students how to learn, described in the first Eduprotocols book. As their students gained fluency in the procedures of learning, teachers were able to experiment with adaptations of the protocols that led to some creative remixes. Book two is not just about the remix, though; twelve exciting new protocols make their debut with suggestions for variations, upgrades, and adaptations. You can read more about the "Game of Quotes" on my blog or in the EduProtocol Field Guide: Book Two. Check out the EduProtocols website for a preview of what you will find in the books as well as some free templates. |
Workshops, SlideDocs & Professional Development
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The path to the DARK SLIDE: Using slides strictly for bad presentations:
A complete guide to using Google Slides for everything from memes, infographics, digital books, Hyperdocs, tutorial videos, and so much more. If students are using Google Slides just for creating bad presentations they are not fully utilizing the creative force of this versatile tool. In this session teachers will have access to examples and tutorials for several applications of Google Slides. We will create something together in a shared slide deck, but teachers will leave with a website that will serve as a resource for continued learning. |
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Evolve your ELA curriculum and create a community of readers that inspire others through their enthusiasm for sharing books. Ditch those reading logs, dioramas, and comprehension quizzes that are commonplace methods of accountability in standard classrooms and have your students telling each other in the hallways that "Class was so Lit!"
Reading is a social activity! Learn some classroom tested strategies that tap into your students interests, their need for social interaction, and that are just plain fun and get your students to be lovers of lit'. |
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Using a short film as a text is a scaffold that enables struggling students to actively participate in discussions with peers about literary terms, without the barrier of their difficulty comprehending complex text and/or language. In this session you will learn how to incorporate the 4C's in an epic Hyperdoc journey through a short film.
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“That worksheet packet really helped me understand the story,” said no student...ever.
Your ultimate guide on how to Hyperdoc a novel & integrate technology in a way that grows conversations about the big ideas that are waiting to be discovered and discussed within the pages of a book. |
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Why go digital? Establish partnerships with parents that support student learning by creating engaging content that reaches your target audience and gets read. Digital newsletters can be viewed on mobile devices, tablets and computers. They can be sent through email, embedded on a web page, and are shared easily to social networks. For families that don't have access to the internet, digital newsletters are also printer friendly.
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Being a teenager can be a difficult time. As a person that observes teenagers both in my personal and professional life, I have seen them struggle with out of control emotions, changing bodies that can cause physical pain or discomfort, negative self-talk, and a general inability to focus on what is important. Why not give them the tool to help them deal with these changes: mindfulness.
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