Class Dojo is a completely free tool that makes managing classroom behavior easy and fun!  If you have used it before, they recently made some great improvements.  Teachers need to create a free account, enter student names and customize behavior expectations before using with their class.  Dojo assigns an avatar to each student that will be displayed next to their name and behavior points.  Class Dojo can be controled from a computer by accessing the website, from an iPad, iPod or iPhone by downloading the app, or on an android device.  Teachers award students positive or negative points based on behavior.

This tool made difficult behavior situations in my classroom manageable, and changed the classroom culture.  I found that students were more aware, and loved seeing the positive feedback.  Give it a try!

Janae Hunt

There are several approaches to using Reading Street with students in the elementary schools.  One of the main components of Reading Street is the online component.  A challenge has been using an iOS device to present/project Reading Street due to the flash component. 

Some teachers are using the Photon app with little to no lag or drops.  Some other teachers choose to use Splashtop Whiteboard or doceri to remotely control their computers.  All of these options are good.  It depends on the teacher preference.  There have been some issues with Whiteboard.  The issues that have been presented are:  drops in connection, volume reverts back to the device instead of the comptuer, requiring the teacher to stop instruction, go back to the computer, and reset the sound.  Doceri doesn't have those same issues.  At the present time, no drops or issues have been reported to me. 

Photon seems to be to be a great option for projecting the Reading Street content from the iPad without having to use the computer.  Many teachers like this because they don't have to go through the computer.  At the present time, there have been no reports of drops, lags, or volume issues when using the Photon app.

Posted by Sallie Warnecke

 Canvas allows a teacher to:

1. Organize materials by date (agendas) or units of study (modules).
2. Publish important course reminders/due dates on a calendar.
3. Push reminders and other announcements to students as often as needed.
4. Post assignments and grade assignments with a very cool "Speed Grader" feature (which is a mobile app for grading on the go!)
5. Provide multiple ways an assignment can be completed.  (1) uploaded document (2) text entry right on the webpage (3) video submission (4) through a connection to a web service such as a document in dropbox
6. Create threaded discussion.  These discussions can even be graded discussions.
7. Upload a wide range of link files, videos, images.
8. Create quizzes.
9. Conduct synchronous web conferences or office hours for students.

Canvas provides students multiple ways to receive course information.  Students are able to add an email account, even multiple email accounts or receive text messages for push notifications.  Students can even customize how frequently they receive these notifications.  Canvas has created mobile apps for learning on the go.  With Canvas, students can no longer say they left their homework at school!

A free trial version of Canvas can be found at https://canvas.instructure.com/register_from_website if you want to take a look at the features yourself.   With the  Canvas Community Forums and the Canvas Guides, plenty of information is provided to get you started without any trouble.  

In the future, Canyons School District may even be able to provide all teachers with a Canvas account in which students are auto-populated from Skyward and the gradebook in Canvas is connected to the gradebook in Skyward!  Wouldn't that be fabulous?

Posted by Rachel Murphy

We all like using Emoticons within text messages on our cell phones. Now you can also do that on the iPad within any application that you can type in, like Messages or email. All you have to do is turn is on.

Start by going to the Settings app. Then go to the General tab and scroll down to the Keyboard tab. Then you need to click on the Keyboards link that shows 1 keyboard. English will already be there. You now need t click on the “Add New Keyboard . . .” button. Now scroll down to “Emoji” and select it. This will add it to your keyboard list. Now just close this window by pushing the Home button.

Now in Messages, you select who you want to send a message to and then type your message. You can add an emoticon by pushing on the Globe button that is to the left of the Space bar in your on screen keyboard. If you use a Bluetooth keyboard with your iPad, then you need to turn it off to use the on screen keyboard. This will bring up the Emoji keyboard and you will have several pages of Emoji to choose from  like Smiley faces, Flowers, Bell, Car, and Keys. Each of these pages have several pages to slide between to find the Emoji that you want.

Have Fun!

Posted by Ross Rogers

The Education Technology Department is now accepting applications for the Educational Technology Endorsement that will begin January 2013.  The endorsement will consist of two cohorts that will meet on Tuesdays or Thursdays.  This year-long program is designed to help teachers, administrators and Achievement Coaches in the Canyons School District become educational technology leaders in their schools. Using the NETS for Teachers as a guideline, the focus of this endorsement program is to teach educators how to provide learning environments that take students beyond the walls of their classrooms and into a world of endless opportunities through the use of various technologies.

For more information about dates and classes visit the Educational Technology Endorsement webpage.  Participants in the endorsement program have the opportunity to earn relicensure, lane change and college credit through SUU.  They can also apply some of the college credit towards a Master's degree.  For more information about that visit the Relicensure Points, Lane Change Credit, and College Credit Information page. 

Educators interested in being part of the 2013 endorsement program must complete the online application.  The application window closes at 11:59 PM on November, 14 2013. 

Secondary Math I teachers received a new software this past week to use with their 9th grade math students!  This graphing calculator software replaces the old set-up that required an overhead projector and another piece of hardware that projected an image that was difficult to see.  

A digital calculator is displayed through the TI-SmartView™ Emulator Software.  Each time a button is clicked on the digital calculator, it turns red, and a history is tracked for students to follow along.  Screen shots can be taken at any point.  

Along with the software, Secondary Math I teachers received a class set of schoolbus yellow graphing calculators for the students to use.  These calculators have a plug at the top to be plugged into the computer for clicking real keys on the calculator rather than using a mouse.

Helpful Hints:
To quit a program on the calculater, press:  

To reset calculator to default settings, press:

To clear the key history on the computer program, click Clear Key Press History.

~Maria Jones

A few weeks ago, I worked with a couple of other teachers in my ed tech endorsement class on a presentation about exit surveys. An exit survey (or exit ticket) is a very short and quick way of checking students’ understanding right at the end of class.  It can be a single question or a couple of quick problems to solve.  The purpose is to check a student's understanding on the key points of a lesson. It also serves as a check for the teacher so that they can see what, if any, material needs to be reviewed or retaught before moving on to another topic in the next class.

One of my ideas for our presentation on exit surveys was to host a live twitter chat where class members could ask questions during the presentation and then we asked them to post a final tweet summarizing what they learned about exit surveys during our presentation. It was a lot of fun and could be used in many secondary classrooms as a means for collecting student feedback. I have seen several live twitter walls/backchannel websites in the past, but for this presentation, I chose to use Visible Tweets and Twijector. 

A couple of weeks later, I set up the twitter backchannel again for our closing presentations. I connected a second projector to a computer running live broadcast of our class hashtag #csdendorse using Twijector (click to see the feed). I thought it would be fun to post responses to everyone's final projects in a group discussion forum. Visible Tweets (click to see the live feed) creates a beautiful, albeit less functional, version of the same information. 

All you need to get started is a twitter account (students probably already have one), a class hashtag (you can make this up, just be consistent), and a projector (though you don't need to project the live feed for this to work.)

Here are some ideas for how to use Twijector or Visible Tweets in your classroom:

1. Exit surveys. Ask students to tweet what they learned in class today using a class #hashtag.
   
2. Class discussions. Students who might be reluctant to ask questions in class can post questions and responses to twitter.
3. Historical reenactments: students can play the role of a historical figure and can send timed messages to relive a historical event. Read about an example of this from our endorsement class HERE.

I also found a really nice blog post titled: "Beyond the Exit Slip: Closure Activities for Classroom Instruction." The article gives some great examples and rationale for providing students with authentic learning activities at the end of a class.

Leave a comment below to share ideas about how you might use exit surveys and/or twitter as an assessment tool.

-Posted by Jared Ward

ISTE2012 -- The Student Film Festival - A Life-Changing Experience -- Scott Smith - Visalia, CA
http://www.vusd.org/webpages/ssmith/index.cfm?subpage=27094
http://slickrockfestival.org/

In June I was able to attend the ISTE2012 conference in San Diego, CA. One of the sessions I was excited to attend was about building a quality student film festival. Canyons School District has produced a student film festival each year since the birth of the District. In 2012 we were ready to raise the bar and increase the level of involvement, calibre of entries, and magnitude of the festival. We had great success and were inspired to do even more to build our festival in 2013. This ISTE session, "The Student Film Festival - A Life-Chainging Experience," gave me a lot of great ideas for expanding and improving the Annual Canyons District Film Festival to even greater heights. Following are notes and ideas I picked up from this ISTE session that might help you with your film festival efforts as well:

Why a student film festival?

• Core academics are strengthened
• Writing
• Research
• Cross-Curriculuar Connection- students write scripts in their ELA class, research issues in their social studies class, and tap the acting and musical talent of students in their schools
• Generative Skills are developed
• Executive Skills
• deliberation, team organization, deadlines, scheduling, managing disappointment
• Communication Skills
• know the audience, emotional impact, body language
• Work Ethic
• "good enough" is defined by the audience, lives change when students see hard work rewarded
• Vision Beyond the Ego
• connection to a local issue, local person, local problem; lives change when students add value to the world
• Resiliency & Self-Reliance
• 21st Century Skills are acquired
• Critical Thinking
• Creativity
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Dropout Rate Drops
• Fun is Back

"In the age of high-stakes testing, the curriculum has narrowed. Compliance now characterizes student learning more often than engagement. Inviting students to be creative and innovative is too rare. Teaching that promotes critical thinking, problem solving and decision making has all but vanished in schools. Juxtapose this culture to the high-energy, creative act of student filmmaking. Fueled by YouTube and inexpensive video equipment, students now have access to a medium that was unreachable prior to NCLB. When students make films, deep thinking takes place. Attention to detail goes way up and new learning sticks. Central to this type of learning is an authentic audience … and that’s where the student film festival comes in." --Scott Smith

Invite students to find something they love.
When a student film festival is produced, the following things happen:

• Standards become clear
• Clarify the standard, rubric, detailed criteria, quality defined
• Students realize quality when they see top films from top filmmakers
• Product is guaranteed
• A festival means a deadline, the Festival becomes a powerful "nagging" teacher tool
• Students learn the sometimes hard lesson of deadlines
• There are closets filled with half-written novels... Films get completed!
  
• Student work is validated and celebrated
• Student achievement increases
• School culture improves
• The upside of school is amplified
• Something good comes from this school
• The school shakes hands with the community instead of extending the hand for donations
• Students are engaged in the community and giving to the community, not just asking for support and money
• School multimedia programs expand
• From club, to class, to program, to pathway
• As popularity increases, demand increases

"Digital filmmaking allows students to share their voice. Too often this voice is limited to the popular student or gifted or advantaged student. The student film festival experience has taught me that students with challenging backgrounds have a rich voice. Working with high-poverty, high-risk students helped me appreciated the level playing field that technology lays. Students of all stripes can make films. Students of all stripes WANT to make films. The student film festival not only affords them the opportunity to make films but it motivates them to make films." --Scott Smith

Building a Student Film Festival

• Start with a mission
• How close to the industry to you want to take the kids?
• Do you want to focus on an event or issue in the community?
• What are your production, copyright, and release expectations?
• Identify existing resources
• Find the county film commissioner 
• Contact the county human health services department because they have a lot of money to support the education of health issues in the area. If you can connect your festival to those issues, they can financially back you.
• Local junior colleges and/or universities - work with their film departments
• Define the scope of your Festival
• What grade levels?
• What's the standard?
• Market, open up social media channels
• Establish a brand
• What is a name that will get people interested/intrigued?
• Is there a name you can use besides the district film festival?
• Make a budget
• Communicate your content expectations
• Check out the criteria examples used for the SlickRock festival
• Secure judges - Do you narrow down the entries first? - Each judge is only asked to judge 3 or 4 categories - 4 or 5 judges per category - View the entries before they are sent on to the judges to filter - Phanfare can be used for the judges to view so only the judges know where to go to find the films - Judges' scores narrow down to the top 3 nominees, then hold a dinner to debate who the final winner will be
• Find local industry people
• Local film critics
• TV, news, movies, commercials
• Online judging
• Make a to do list and delegate
• Produce the event and recruit an historian to document it.
• Post-market to build next year's festival (Strike while the iron is hot.)

What is the role of the teacher?
"The teacher’s role in this context is meant to clarify the learning target for the student, to offer frequent descriptive feedback, to expect excellence, and to open 'broadcast channels' so the student’s work is appreciated by a wide audience...
Digital filmmaking advances academic achievement. In the new Common Core, students are asked to write more toward authentic topics, to persuade, to narrate. Films require a well-written script that defines the characters, the conflict, and the resolution. Films can be narrative stories, persuasive essays, situation analysis, or dramatic/comedic representations. Filmmaking is likely to open cross curricular doors. An issue may be researched in a social studies class, the script written in the ELA class, and acting and music talent is tapped from the arts department. The teacher’s role to frame clear learning targets for each film assignment and offer regular descriptive feedback is vital. But the Festival motivates the task and caps the experience." --Scott Smith

Examples of Festivals

• International - ISMF
• California State - CSMF
• Regional - SRFF
• County
• District
• School

FAQ

• How do you handle submissions with adult themes?
• Only the adviser can submit a film to the festival for a student.
• The principal has to sign off on the submission.
• You can censor and deny films for too much violence or mature themes.
• Teach the students that they can leave some things to the imagination.
• What about films that seem to have too much adult help?
• Have the students sign on their form that it is a student-created film.
• It still might happen.

•  Copyright issues?
• Release forms required for all information, media, and people in the films.
• Teach the students about copyright.

• What about the large numbers of entries?
• Limit the number that can be submitted per school.
• Play all the entries all day starting at 9am in the large theater.
• Then have a cycle of limos to bring the kids from a couple blocks away and a red carpet for the awards ceremony.
• Hire the junior high band to play at the red carpet.
• The others are there to take photos and greet all the kids coming out of the limos, news crews are interviewing, and younger kids are asking for their autographs as they go in for the awards held in the big movie theater.
• Get 3 or 4 girls to wear their prom dresses again a second time to hand out the envelopes and awards.
• Show clips of the nominees and show the complete winner.
• Pick a time that fits your district's social calendar.

Ideas for Improving Your Festival:

• Make commercials for local companies.
• Music videos - music has to be composed and recorded by the kids
• PSA - about local issues
• Foreign Film category - films created by foreign language classes
• Find the county film commissioner
• Issues can be a category with specific requirements rather than a theme for the whole festival. ie. The Suicide Prevention category
• Poster contest for the next year's festival during the current festival - announce the winner of the contest at the current year's festival
• Hold the festival at an actual theater - try to remove your festival from the school feeling so that it feels like industry

My teammate Camille Cole and I have presented several times about the benefits of podcasting in schools. The benefits of podcasting parallel the benefits of producing a film festival. If you would like to view the presentation  we created about our podcasting projects, click here. We have also developed an outline of topics that teachers may want to teach their students as they prepare them to create festival entries. You can look over these topics and film examples here.

The Canyons School District Ed Tech team has already begun preparations for our 2013 film festival. I am excited about the great ideas I picked up from Scott Smith at ISTE and how they will help us improve our festival even more. Check out our website to keep tabs on our film festival and to get information about submitting films! http://prolearning.canyonsdistrict.org/annual-canyons-district-film-festival.html