YouTube isn't just for Cute Kittens? #GAFESummit

So over the last year of my on-again-off-again blogging I have done very little to discuss my use of technology in the classroom.

At the beginning of last year I was living in a tech nightmare. My smart board was not operational, the wiring was connected to a dilapidated student computer on the opposite side of the classroom, I didn't even have internet or network access from my dusty desktop at the beginning of the year. I spent my days lugging my personal laptop back and forth to simply take attendance. For someone who likes to be connected it was nightmare.

Overtime things slowly got sorted out. They reran the wiring for my smartboard, they connected my desktop to the network, teachers got shiny new laptops, and eventually the students also received 1:1 laptops. I was super excited to jump right in and get started with my kids.

My new goal is to walk through some of my trials and triumphs here so hopefully not so many others will have to make the same mistakes that I have.

What motivated me to finally start blogging about technology: GAFE Summit.

I was fortunate enough that my district sent me to the first one in our area this past weekend.
(Yes I said weekend as if the two weeks worth of laundry and grading I've been avoiding didn't need to get done).

Of course being at the conference all weekend left me with no time to plan for this week. Being me I wanted to pick at least one thing I learned this weekend and use it in my classroom tomorrow. Why wait?

While my kids will be getting their own log-ins so we can use Google Classroom (yay!) that hasn't quite happened yet...so all my incredible learning on that will have to wait (check back for some follow up posts soon!)

I walked away with a ton of great online publishing ideas for my kids....but I am not feeling that ambitions on a Sunday night to plan for that (though I can't WAIT to try some and share the results!)

So what to do tomorrow?
I wanted to give my kids a chance to play around in their own Google Doc and to try out the draw tool.
So far we have used shared sheets but have not gone too in-depth with Google docs or sheets.

Possibly because it was presented in my last session or maybe because this seems manageable at nearly midnight but I decided to try my hand at making a quick screencast of a Google Presentation I created on grouping that I could upload to YouTube (which I learned today I really knew nothing about). I was inspired by some of James Sanders "10 Ways to Use YouTube in Your Classroom" and the quality of some of his earlier videos. It made me feel safe to start small.


(Honestly before that session I searched YouTube here and there for educational songs...but thought of YouTube as more like the video below....and if a clip was more than 30 seconds wasn't happening for me)

So tomorrow for Math Workshop we will learn about multiplication by grouping with some hands on math manipulatives (I love my teddy bear counters!), review multiplication by grouping thanks to our friends Moby & Annie at BrainpopJr. and then move into stations.

While at "Practice Makes Perfect" I am going to require students to view the "Multiplication by Grouping" video I created and the video I created to show them how to access their doc and insert a drawing. I want to see what they can figure out on their own tomorrow and what I will have to explicitly teach. They are pretty good with managing folder systems, working off of templates, and cutting/pasting thanks to their weekly technology classes. Hopefully they can apply those skills here if I enforce a little tough love.

If the morning goes well I have a few new tools to share with them during our afternoon literacy block as well. More to come on that.

For now check out my screencast video of multiplication by grouping. I know I could have made it better if I talked and explained things to my students while it was going on but that just wasn't an option for a first attempt at nearly midnight.

I know I know....it's lame but it's a step in the right direction. Perhaps someday my educational videos will be as good as the ones I created to try and convince someone to buy a bigger boat...

Now I'm off to bed. Hopefully I survive until at least lunch tomorrow...so I can start to properly report on GAFESummit and how incredible it was!