As the school year gets close to an end, Burlington is just getting started with events for educators. Burlington Public Schools and the BPS EdTech Team will be hosting several free events this spring and summer. Join us for great conversations about education and technology. We will provide professional development sessions and time to collaborate with educators from across the country. Our goal is to break down the isolation in education and help teachers work with each other to create powerful learning resources.

EdCampxEDU
Saturday, June 1

EdCampxEDU is Burlington’s first student organized and lead Edcamp event. Burlington students have been planning the event which will feature conversations about education and technology. Edcamps are an incredible response to poor educational professional development. Edcamps provide educators with the opportunity to learn from each other in comfortable environments using conversations and sharing of ideas.

EdCampxEDU is a free event but registration is required. Please see the event site for more details.

Third Annual Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative
Wednesday, June 26 – Friday, June 28

MADPC is our annual digital curriculum event. The BPS EdTech team helps provide a starting point for the curation of digital resources and materials. Through PD sessions and collaborative time for common curriculum area teachers, participants are able to develop ideas, lessons, and courses for digital classes and 1:1 environments. This event is great for anyone who uses technology in the classroom or wants to learn about how to better integrate technology.

Please note – participants do not need to attend all three days. Please attend for as much time as you can. Due to the extra snow days for many school districts this year we will feature similar PD sessions each day so that you don’t miss some of the opportunities.

The event is free but registration is required. Please visit the event site for more details.

BPS EdCamp Summer Tuesdays
Summer Tuesdays 9am-12pm

Each Tuesday in the summer Burlington Public Schools hosts Edcamp sessions. This year the sessions will be held at our newly remodeled middle school Library Learning Commons. Join members of our team for conversations about many educational topics.

These sessions are open and do not require registration. Please join us for any BPS Summer Edcamp that you can attend.

Stay tuned to this blog and follow our team on Twitter for updates and more information about the events.

May sessions of the How Do I Do That program will continue to feature support for Student Digital Portfolios and Google Apps for Education. All BPS students need to have digital portfolios set up by the end of the school year. Our team will provide support for set up and initial student postings.

Each week we will be visiting a different school in Burlington. Join members of the BPS EdTech and IT Teams for technology support. Share ideas with Burlington teachers and collaborate about using technology in the classroom. The sessions are open from 2-5PM and provide support for many edtech devices and applications.

BPS teachers can bundle hours of participation at How Do I Do That sessions during the school year for Burlington inservice credits. Ten hours of participation will earn one inservice credit. Twenty hours will earn two inservice credits. There is a maximum of two credits for staff members each year.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Dennis Villano, Director of Technology Integration

villano@bpsk12.org

Italian IV Honors Project by John Chellali, Danny Federico, and Gilad Oved
Students used Puppet Pals to create stories that utilized relative pronouns. The song you hear during the recording is sung by John.

Italian V Honors Project by Katya Becker
This is a project I will not do this year, but it is a very interesting example of how to employ iMovie to record and illustrate a book (a much longer text than a poem or most videos). The student who did this project was
exceptionally talented so her pronunciation is almost perfect.

Italian V Honors Project by Billy Restivo
Used iMovie to record and illustrate with images an original poem modeled after Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Sereno.

Italian V Honors Project by Tom Rose
Like Billy, Tom wrote a poem modeled after Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Sereno, but decided to use music instead of his own voice to illustrate the poem.

Kristen is in the same class as Billy and Tom. Her poem is modeled after Josue`
Carducci’s San Martino.

Below is a video I put together outlining the aforementioned operations. If you have any questions, please post in the comments.

Warning

This will not be easy. Simply purchasing powerful technology tools is not enough.

It’s time.

It’s time to work together and build our digital curricula. It’s time to forget about educational content curation being a corporate activity. It’s time to take over the production of the materials that we use to teach. It’s time to collaborate and share across districts and communities.

It’s time to revisit each curriculum. In some cases it’s time to simply integrate new digital resources and materials. In other cases it’s time to completely start over.

It’s NOT time to simply recreate your current curriculum in digital format. It’s NOT time to take your old documents and simply make PDF versions. It’s NOT time to take the easy way out of the curation process.

A few years ago we created the Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative because we wanted to provide educators with a starting point. MADPC helps educators learn about the critical skills needed in digital content curation, production, and distribution. When we started MADPC many Massachusetts schools were just starting to consider 1:1 environments. We realized that the biggest challenge we would face is the fact that we often complete the curriculum development process in isolation. There is no longer time for isolation.

This process takes commitment. There is no magic formula. We must help each other learn about the resources available to us and how best to use them. We must support the technology related skills needed to complete the work. We must provide opportunities to share and collaborate. We must build a network of curating educators.

Join us for the 2013 Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative – June 26-28 at Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington, MA. Registration is now open for this free event hosted by Burlington Public Schools and the BPS EdTech Team. One ticket provides access to all three days of the event. Participants can attend for as much time as they can.

Thank you to Mrs. Guanci and her class as well as Dan Callahan, Pine Glen Instructional Technology Specialist, for all their help creating the videos and explaining the best apps for learning in first grade.

Check out the videos on the Pine Glen YouTube channel. 

Here is the list of apps selected by the class:

In their latest update, Subtext allows Teachers to create assignments with any text or article on the group shelf and provides Google drive integration. 

Teachers can add an assignment by clicking on the + sign

And then Teachers can title the assignment, select pages for students to read, add categorical tags (such as characterization, foreshadowing, etc.), and post a introduction message to the assignment and a message when the students finish the reading.

The other new feature that was recently added was Google drive integration. Students and teachers can now access their Google drive and all of the docs while working within the pages of Subtext. At the top of every page, there is a lowercase ‘g’. When users tap on that the page will flip and users can sign into their Google drive account.

Once signed into Google drive, users can access a previously created document or they can create a new document or spreadsheet. Plus, users can create a running bibliography list, or start a rough draft for an essay they are working on. This feature also allows users to bring in their highlighted passages and use while constructing their essay or research paper. In short, it’s a great, all-in-one application for research and reading.

Since its launch, Subtext has been one of my favorite applications for beginning a close reading of a text, building discussions around a text outside of the classroom, and engaging students in the reading and now, the writing process. Their updates are directly related to what teachers and students want. If you’re interested in starting your class on a Subtext reading assignment, please let me know. You can also follow them on Twitter @readwithsubtext 

There is a growing buzz in the education community about the possibility of moving away from traditional textbooks. While the objective seems clear as to why we should be making this move, the question of how to transition this great shift remains. Educators creating their own digital resource for the classroom possesses great value, but at this point there are still more questions than answers.

The more education evolves, the more it stays true to its roots. Technology does not dramatically change education; it allows us to open it up in different directions. Teachers will always teach, and dynamic pedagogy will always drive the education vehicle forward. The education field always need experts in specified content areas that are able to adapt and innovate their practices from year to year. What technology allows us to do is create broader communities from which we can learn and share.

——–Andy Marcinek, BHS Instructional Technology Specialist

The Burlington Public Schools EdTech Team has hosted the Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative for the past two years in an effort to provide educators from around New England with support for curating and creating digital content. Our team believes that educators must work together to build powerful digital curriculum materials and resources that can be shared and edited by anyone across the country. We hope to break down the isolation of educational content creation and provide educators with the skills needed to build digital content as well as the time to collaborate with each other.

Please join us for #MADPC 2013 at Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington, MA. The free event will feature professional development sessions, product and application demonstrations, collaboration time, and prizes.

Check out the MADPC event site for more details and updates.

Elements of the Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaborative:

Digital Literacy Skills
Digital Media Resources and Applications
Copyright Concerns
Creating an ePub
Content Collaboration

Contact the event organizers if you have any questions:

Dennis Villano, Director of Technology Integration
villano@bpsk12.org
@dvillanojr

Andy Marcinek, Instructional Technology Specialist
amarcinek@bpsk12.org
@andycinek

April sessions will feature support for Student Digital Portfolios. All BPS students need to have digital portfolios set up by the end of the school year. Our team will provide support for set up and initial student postings.

Each week we will be visiting a different school in Burlington. Join members of the BPS EdTech and IT Teams for technology support. Share ideas with Burlington teachers and collaborate about using technology in the classroom. The sessions are open from 2-5PM and provide support for many edtech devices and applications.

BPS teachers can bundle hours of participation at How Do I Do That sessions during the school year for Burlington inservice credits. Ten hours of participation will earn one inservice credit. Twenty hours will earn two inservice credits. There is a maximum of two credits for staff members each year.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Dennis Villano, Director of Technology Integration

villano@bpsk12.org

Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington is 1:1 with iPads. About 860 students in grades 6-8 have been using iPads in the classroom since January. Teachers and students at MSMS were recently asked about how the 1:1 program is developing. Here are some of the early updates about the 1:1 environment and a current top ten list of MSMS apps.

Foreign Language

Students are using iPads to to practice and reinforce vocabulary. Educreations is being used to write vocabulary as dictated and translate. Educreations is also used as a review tool before assessments. Students are accessing Quia.com in order to play games that reinforce vocabulary from class. They have the option of taking class notes in Evernote or Notability. Many students are creating virtual flashcards with pictures or voice attached. Students have shown excellent growth in organization of materials using the iPad.

Music

Students in the MSMS Select Chorus use their iPads instead of sheet music. Students use a number of apps to record their parts when rehearsing. This is useful as they can hear themselves singing the correct notes, limiting the number of times a particular passage needs to be reviewed. Practice tracks are created for each part and designated Section Leaders use their iPad to reinforce music to their peers. The entire grade 6 General Music curriculum is on NetTexts. They can view videos and complete worksheets on particular topics. This eliminates the need to make photocopies. Students love the app and appreciate the consolidated organization of content.

Art

Students are using iPads to find images for art projects and incorporating the digital images into paintings, Photoshop projects, and sculpture. Students are using iPads for digital video art projects as well.

English Language Arts

iPads are being used to find poetry in music lyrics. iPad apps including Evernote and Notability are being used for note taking, worksheets, and practice. Highlighted apps include Edmodo, Socrative, Grammar, and Explain Everything. Students are using Haiku Deck and Explain Everything for presentations.

Math

Students are completing daily MCAS warm up questions and using Notability and Evernote for note taking. Explain Everything is being used for student videos and screen casts as well as some interim assessment activities. Educreations has been helpful for group or partner work and JogNog has been used for MCAS practice and review. Socrative is being used for quiz review and MCAS style questions. Students are using Google Chrome to check their stocks daily as part of the stock market game. They use Google Spreadsheets for keeping track of their stocks and Google Drive for creating letters to their companies. Edmodo is also used for daily homework and test preparation.

Social Studies

Socrative is being used for practice, review, and quizzes. Most students are using Evernote for note taking. Students have created presentations using Haiku Deck and Explain Everything which have been shown through the classroom AppleTVs or Reflector app. Students are also using the Globe and Google Earth apps to locate and describe places as topics are discussed in class.

Science

Students are using Evernote and Google Drive for note taking and science lab activities. Students are reviewing for the science MCAS using the JogNog app. Students are video recording classroom presentations and reviewing projects created by their peers. Many students have used Explain Everything and the camera roll as presentation tools.

MSMS Top Ten List of Apps (as of March 25, 2013)