3D Design & Printing

3D Printing

3D printing is a new frontier at my school, where they have invested in purchasing 4 3D printers this year.  As many students use iPads, this post is geared to use the touch interface to create 3D objects on the iPad, and export for 3D printing.

This is a work in progress, and as I learn more, I will add more to the post.

Twitter for Beginners

I believe that all teachers should have a way to reach out to others, and build a Professional Learning Network (PLN) of like minded educators.  We all have interests, problems, questions, and need advice.

There are many ways to build this PLN, and there are many educators using Twitter.

Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets". It is a microblogging platform, which allows you to post and show what you are doing, ask questions, and follow an interesting feed of information.

Many people use Twitter to:

• Share ideas
• Develop a PLN (Personal Learning Network)
• Connect and collaborate with people
• Reflect and engage in dialogue with others
• Access to new resources...every day
• Follow interests
• Expand your professional development

Here are some common definitions of commonly used terms in Twitter.

#tags (n):	hashtags are markers placed in a Tweet that can be traced by other Tweeters. They are used to link people interested in similar topics. HashTags are not a ‘source’, they are a label only.
#tagchat (n):	a ‘conversation’ that is connected and followed via a specific hashtag.
@symbol (v):	the transportation method to get a tweet to a particular individual.
Followers (n):	people interested in what you say and share.
Following (v):	individuals who say and share things you are interested in.
PLN (n):	Personal Learning Network.
ReTweet (v):	the act of Tweeting someone else’s tweet. Referred to as an ‘RT’ in most tweets.
Twit or Tweeter (n):	a Twitter user
Twitterverse (n):	a universe inhabited by individuals who are active members of Twitter.
Tweet (v):	the act of communicating via Twitter.
Tweet (n):	a single message communicated via Twitter.
Tweacher (n):	a teacher who uses Twitter to engage in great ideas with students and other teachers.

Common hashtags used by educators on Twitter, curated by @cybraryman1

>_automatic

This is a professional development opportunity that is for any Mac, iOS or Android user. Welcome to >_Automatic - a 2 Week session that perhaps unsurprisingly focusses on automation!

Goals
Introduce ways to make your digital work/social life more efficient and walk away with some tangible 'gains'.

Who is this session for? 
People who are ready to take ordinary tasks, and automate them. It's also for the tech curious!

We therefore dive into 3 levels of automation:

Week 1

IFTTT - the innovative and clever service (brought together with the IF App for iOS and Android) links together many of your favourite social media and broader internet sites - delivering automated tasks and information retrieval. It's actually quite fun to dive into the IFTTT 'recipes', and you too can create your own. Simple to use, easy to setup. For participants in The Fish Bowl this week, we may not make it beyond IFTTT...40 mins disappears quickly in this universe.

Week 2

Automator - This native App to the Mac coordinates applescript with a tidy UI (user interface). It looks daunting at first glance, but we will guide you through some processes that will perform common tasks such as shrinking a PDF with no loss of quality; merging PDF files into a single file; converting image types; pulling text from PDF files; converting to PDF...actually the Automator options here mostly relate to PDFs. Whatever the recipe, Automator can take all the repetitive legwork out by creating automatic processes that you normally do manually.

Extension

AppleScript - Offered as an extension in this session, we offer a look at this form of programming language that is one of the simplest languages to understand, mainly because it so closely resembles regular prose. Great for people who are curious and requires no experience in scripting languages.

Some of our IF recipes from this session (watch this space...!)

Schoology Updated

Schoology Updated

Schoology receives hundreds of requests at any given time for new features and for improvements to their Learning Management System (LMS). 

One way that you can expand your knowledge and understanding of all the features of Schoology, is to explore the Help Centre. It's here too that you can 'Submit a Request', or Vote Up a request someone else has made. It all helps provide feedback to Schoology so that they can improve. 

This session brings to foreground some of the recent changes and improvements to Schoology since our last PD session. Information sourced for this PD is in fact borrowed largely from the Help Centre.
 

Follow the Schoology blog for all the latest Schoology information and updates. 

Advanced Google Search II: Beyond the Dojo

The following post provides the materials and process for this professional development session for teachers and students.

This is a guide to do more advanced searching using the Google search engine, we do not dive into all features, but have selected out some especially useful ones. More will be covered in The Fish Bowl for KIS teachers choosing to attend.

Time: 30-40min

Type: Workshop

Bring: Computer or iPad

Preparation: Get a copy of the presentation

Even More:
Some Lesser Known Searches
14 Ways Students Can Get More Out of Google
Google Like a Boss

Advanced Google Searching for Everyone

Advanced Google Searching for Everyone

The following post provides the materials and process for this professional development session for teachers and students.

This is a guide to do more advanced searching using the Google search engine, we do not dive into all features, but have selected out some especially useful ones. More will be covered in The Fish Bowl for KIS teachers choosing to attend.

This session is activity driven, and begins easy, branching out and dragging more layers into the search. Based on a topic (Ebola Virus), participants take a copy of the Google presentation (as below), select a topic of their own, and then use the presentation as their own workbook, pasting in their search results as they progress. 

Time: 30-40min

Type: Workshop

Bring: Computer or iPad

Preparation: Get a copy of the presentation https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jL7QheidBc_6DPYPxNnpR39E7Ent7u3DewDCeKUXpdw/edit?usp=sharing

The following are links that we found useful in designing this session, or have used in the presentation above: 

http://www.johntedesco.net/blog/2012/06/21/how-to-solve-impossible-problems-daniel-russells-awesome-google-search-techniques/

For students:
http://www.google.co.kr/insidesearch/searcheducation/lessons.html