Adobe Education Exchange

If you've never visited the Adobe Education Exchange, or haven't visited lately, you're missing out a great educational tool.  The Exchange contains 4 major components: Resources, Community, Discussions, and Professional Development.  The best part?  It's entirely free for educators.

Community and Discussions are pretty self-explanatory.  In Resources, you'll find all kinds of relevant and useful activities and lesson plans for your classroom.  In Professional Development, you have the opportunity to take self-paced lessons, attend live events, or participate in Collaborative Courses.  I signed up for the Train the Trainer Course in the summer, but with the hustle and bustle of school starting followed by 5 weeks of writing a federal Race To The Top District grant, I was never able to complete the course.

Check out the Adobe Education Exchange today and see what you can learn!

Google Hangouts/Hangouts on Air

While attending TeachMeet KY a couple of weeks ago, I attended a session by Donnie Piercey on Google Hangouts, which included Hangouts On Air.  I've always been intrigued with Google Hangouts, but have never really attempted to participate in one.  Little did I know all of the tools that are available in Hangouts.

Probably the most interesting thing I saw was Hangouts On Air, where your Hangout is broadcast live for everyone to see.  At the conclusion of the Hangout, the video is automatically uploaded to the user's YouTube account.  You can just hear the gears turning in my head thinking of all the possibilities this has for short PD sessions, mini-meetings, and breaking down classroom walls.

I'm looking forward to "playing" with Hangouts and discover even more possibilities to make classroom instruction even better.  If anyone want to "Hangout" with me, feel free to contact me.

Decide Already

Last week I attended Teachmeet KY in Bowling Green.  In one of the sessions, Decide Already was presented as a way to make decisions among a group of people.  The premise is simple.  You ask a question, propose answers, submit it to your team, and then collect responses.  As is the case with other online tools, Decide Already is freemium.  It comes with a basic free option with the opportunity to upgrade to a paid version.   The free version gets you 50 invitations per month (question X participants), so I'm guessing this means I can ask 1 question to 50 people, or 2 questions to 25 people, etc.

The idea looks great, and I'm still trying to convince some colleagues to try it out to determine the impact for teachers, students, and classrooms.  Stay tuned for the answer!