Joel Zehring

My district is shopping for a student email solution, and I think Google Apps Education Edition should be at the top of our list of possible tools. The following is an email draft that I’m planning to send to the members of our district technology advisory board prior to their next meeting, where I’ll give my Google Apps presentation. Cold-start meetings waste a ton of face-to-face time, so I’m hoping this email will give us some runway to launch into discussion about the best tool to meet the needs of our students and employees.

First, I’d like to frame the problem: We need a tool that engages students and employees in online collaboration. There’s a cost to using any tool, including time investment or financial investment. We need a tool that delivers extensive benefits to students and employees with minimal investment of time and money.

Next, the pitch: Google Apps Education Edition is the best solution I’ve seen for our problem. The suite includes applications for email, calendar, word processing, spreadsheets, and website design. It’s all web-based, so users can access the full-featured tools from any computer with internet connection.

Google Apps are designed around collaboration, rather than just providing individual productivity. Conversations over email are threaded to show the back-and-forth dialog. Multiple users can edit a single document or spreadsheet simultaneously. Internal and public publishing is built in to every application for quick, secure sharing with a class, a school, the whole district, or the whole world. Best of all, Google regularly updates its applications with new features and improvements, so we know that we’re investing in a tool that will grow as our needs grow and change.

I’ve included a few links below if you would like to learn more before our meeting:

Information and examples:

• Google Apps for Education – Free email and apps for schools
• Google Message Security for K-12 Powered by Postini
• My class blog (created with Google Sites)
• IDEAL portal (Teachers can try Google Apps for free through Arizona’s Department of Education.)

Video links:

• Why Google Apps for Education? Overview of Gmail in Google Apps
• Share a Calendar Google Apps Education Edition
• Google Docs in Plain English

If I’ve missed anything, make sure to straighten me out in the comments.

Students love good video games for two reasons:

• They present contextualized, actionable problems.
• They deliver immediate, logical feedback based on player actions.

I wish I could say the same for the typical public school class. Too often, students wait  days or even weeks  to get feedback on assignments that are standards-based but devoid of any context or over-arching story.

Two questions:

• How can I incorporate these core characteristics of good video games into my classroom?
• Are there any educational video games that incorporate these core characteristics? Do these games allow teachers to track student progress simply and authentically?

Scot McCleod had some insightful points about the value of video games in this post: Video games and learning: Individualization, simulation, and complexity.

This is a response to Scott McLeod’s call for posts for Leadership Day 2009.

No meeting should ever start without the input of every member of your organization. Computer and communications technologies provide an unprecendented number of options for soliciting, collecting, and aggregating ideas from large numbers of people.

• Ask a question. Make sure the question is related to the goal of the meeting. If you don’t have a goal, ask for suggested goals.
• Collect input from any person willing to throw in their two cents. Open multiple channels of communication to get more diverse input. Email, voicemail messages, web forms, blogs, wikis, or suggestion boxes with slips of paper allow people to engage where they are comfortable.
• Aggregate the input appropriately and review the input before the meeting. Without aggregation, the input of your members is overwhelming. Too much aggregation will scrub the input of any authenticity.
• Conduct the meeting. Set an expectation that each participant in the meeting will audibly refer to some idea in the input at least once during the meeting.
• Tell the story of the meeting and publish it. This seeds interest and ideas for the next call for input for the next meeting.

Certainly, there are cases where this procedure would need to be modified. If the goal of a meeting is related to sensitive information, then the questions and stories that are told must be sufficiently vague. Sensitive subject material is not an excuse for closing off the meeting from input.

Ultimately, this procedure for conducting meetings is not about technology. It’s about valuing and engaging every member of an organization. It’s about generating buy-in for policies and programs rather than mandating compliance from the top down. Technology (when carefully implemented) simply accelerates the process of engaging and conversing with large numbers of people.

This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also writes for OnlineColleges.net, an online college resource.

After preparing lessons, teaching students, and grading papers, many teachers find that there is very little time for anything else. That’s where the web can help. The Internet is flush with websites specifically designed to help people be more productive. Here are 25 sites that would be useful to teachers.

Dumb Little Man – This well-organized website offers all sorts of tips to help people live happier, more productive lives. New tips are added each week.

Lifehack – One of the most popular blogs on the web, Stepcase Lifehack is entirely devoted to providing tips and tricks to help people get more done on a daily basis.

Lifehacker – Lifehacker also offers tips and downloads for getting things done. New tips are posted everyday.

Productivity501 – Productivity501 is a productivity blog with frequently updated entries on time management, organization, productivity, and technology.

Unclutterer – This blog is all about getting organized and staying organized–in your home and in your career.

Netvibes – This free web service allows you to create your own personal home page with all of your favorite blogs, news feeds, social networks, email services, widgets, and websites. Putting all of these things in one place is guaranteed to save you a few minutes each day.

Google Reader – Google Reader boosts your productivity by bringing all of your websites to one place and notifying you know when new content is posted.

Clusty – Clusty was designed to help people conduct faster and more effective searches on the Internet. It sorts results into topic-based clusters to eliminate the time it takes to sort through unwanted results.

Hooeey – Hooeey helps you become more productive on the Internet by analyzing your browsing history and offering suggestions on how to better use your browser.

Ref Desk – If you need to check a fact quickly or get kid-friendly info for the classroom, Ref Desk is the place to go. This award-winning website offers tons of search engines as well as an enormous online collection of reference materials.

Lesson Plans Page – HotChalk’s Lesson Plans Page makes it easier for teachers to plan lessons by providing nearly 4,000 free lesson plans and other classroom resources.

TeAchnology – Teachers can get free access to thousands of resources on TeAchnology. The site offers nearly 8,000 printables and more than 30,000 lesson plans to help teachers save time.

Online Worksheet Generator – This online worksheet generator can be used to quickly create math worksheets, word puzzles, word searches, word scrambles, and more.

BookFinder – BookFinder makes it easy for teachers to find the books they are looking for. This meta search engine searches multiple sites to find the cheapest price.

Engrade – This online classroom community offers an entire suite of free web tools for teachers. Features that will help with productivity include an online assignment calendar, gradebook, attendance book, and secure messaging.

Edmodo – Edmodo is a communication tool for students and teachers. It can be used to share notes, files, and more.

Class Marker – Class Marker not only allows teachers to make professional-looking online quizzes, it also saves teachers time by grading the quizzes automatically.

Phonevite – Used frequently by school systems, Phonevite is a free phone service that sends recorded telephone messages, reminders, and alerts to other people.

Remember The Milk – Remember The Milk is the ultimate productivity app. You can manage and update your tasks from anywhere, get IM reminders, and share your tasks with other people.

Task Coach – Task Coach is an open source task manager that can be used to create and manage to-do lists and personal tasks.

TracksLife – This free web app tracks everything with customizable databases. And if you ever forget something, TracksLife will send you a reminder via email or RSS.

GradeFix – Although this homework management system was designed for students, it has features that would also be useful for teachers who want to stay on top of projects.

30 Boxes – This online calendar has all sorts of handy features and couldn’t be any easier to use.

TweetLater – This free Twitter app can help teachers who use Twitter better manage their account. The app allows you to type all of your Tweets up whenever you want and then set them to drip on the day you decide.

TweetDeck – TweetDeck is an all-in-one browser that can be used to better manage and update Twitter and Facebook accounts.

I responded to Scott McLeod’s call to teachers who use video games in their classrooms. Here’s what I’ve been using lately with my students:

I use the customizable quiz games on ClassTools.net to make test prep fun and engaging. Students compete in small groups in one of the arcade-style games to qualify for a tournament of champions. And they study for Science tests.