Edtech in the Classroom

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome Nancy Garvey, Director of Digital Learning at Coppell Independent School District and Bria Jones from Bulb Digital Portfolios on to the program to discuss the importance of digital curation through portfolios.  I have been a big fan of Bulb for the last few months and it is an extremely easy application to use and is a fantastic way to teach your students the art of presentation.  Check them out today!

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome Naasira Wahid  from the Sony KOOV team and Andrew Buitron from Barrio Logan College Institute on to the podcast to discuss how KOOV is transforming classrooms worldwide by providing a robust STEM component that allows students to imagine, build, code, and create!

In this episode, you will learn:

Nurture creativity with KOOV blocks:  KOOV blocks come in seven different shapes and seven different colors, opening up a wide world of 3D building possibilities. Inviting to both boys and girls, the blocks help learners to think in 3D and develop spatial awareness skills.

Build robots with sensors and actuators to make them come alive:  Coming complete with over 300 building blocks and accessories plus a plethora of sensors, motors, and LEDs, KOOV opens the doors to almost endless robotic possibilities.         

Drag and drop visual programing:  Using code to make robots come alive is simple, with a graphic interface that’s intuitive for both beginners and experienced coders.               

Learning Courses for all skill levels:  Over 50 hours of content to get students excited about coding, design and STEAM with a wealth of interactive, educational content progressing from basic components to programming logic, structure and processes.               

Explore infinite options with Robot Recipes: Featuring step-by-step instructions, 43 pre-coded designs gives students a great way to build at their own pace and use the skills they learn along the way to create original robots.

Safely share creations, view robots made by others and download code to remix:  By tapping into the worldwide community of KOOV users, students can share creations, code and ideas — all within a secure space that’s well-supervised, student-friendly and incredibly collaborative.      

Compatible on multiple platforms:  Available for Mac OS, Windows, Chromebook and iOS (iPad only)2, the KOOV app is included with every KOOV kit1.              

Ideal for students ages 8 and up:   From first-timers to seasoned junior creators, just about anyone can jump right into KOOV. Even advanced coders can challenge themselves by designing, building and coding their own creations.            

A turnkey STEAM education solution for educators:  Offering curriculum-aligned lesson plans, step-by-step teacher guides, student progress reports and classroom management features, KOOV can be quickly implemented in any classroom to support the STEAM educational approach.           

One kit accommodates up to five students:  KOOV is flexible enough for students to use for independent study or in a structured setting led by an educator. One KOOV Educator Kit can accommodate up to five students.  

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The TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network | @TeacherCast

Edtech in the Classroom Homepage – www.EdtechInTheClassroom.com

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Jeff Bradbury | @JeffBradbury

About our Guest

Naasira Wahid

Naasira Wahid is part of the new business division with Sony Electronics.  In this role she works with new and innovative products from the Sony R&D Team as well as with the Sony Global Education Division on KOOV, Sony’s new coding, robotics and design kit aimed at educators.   Naasira has a background in both operations and supply chain with 10+ years developing strategies relating to new  product launches. In her work on KOOV, Naasira spearheaded the creation of the KOOV Pilot Program which seeks to engage the education community directly to gain a better understanding of their needs and how best to support efforts and curriculum needs in STEM education. The KOOV pilot program allows educators,

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome Shmoop, an online educational publisher that covers everything for test prep to online courses for all grade levels.

In this episode, we discuss:

An overview of Shmoop, digital publisher with engaging, comprehensive curriculum and test prep materials for districts. Shmoop has more than 300 full courses and 8,000+ videos is the only provider with test prep materials for all AP exams, plus SAT, ACT, GRE and more, and multiple practice exams for each. The focus for all content is to make it real, relevant and engaging for 21st-century learners. We’ll talk about:

Why and how learning should be fun

How to integrate humor in the classroom

Why high-quality content is relevant, engaging, and rigorous

What students, teachers, and administrators love about Shmoop

How to design multimedia content that delivers student results

Why schools need to offer well-rounded content, including life skills, financial literacy, arts and music, PBIS, and more

About Company

Shmoop offers hundreds of thousands of pages of original content. Its Online Courses, Test Prep, Teaching Guides, Learning Guides, and interactive Study Tools are written by teachers and experts and balance a teen-friendly, approachable style with academically rigorous concepts. Shmoop sees 17 million unique visitors a month across desktop and mobile. The company has won numerous awards from EdTech Digest, Tech & Learning, and the Association of Educational Publishers. Launched in 2008, Shmoop makes the magic happen from a labradoodle-patrolled office in Mountain View, California (www.shmoop.com).

About our Guests

David Siminoff

David Siminoff is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Shmoop. He has a passion for all things learning, and thinks that anyone making learning not fun should be meh'd upon. He graduated with honors in English from Stanford University; studied English literature at Oxford University; received his MFA from the USC School of Cinema and Television; and received his MBA from Stanford University. He is also a published author and award-winning screenwriter. Before diving into the world of education, David had a storied career at Capital Research Management Company, a division of Capital Group.

Links of Interest

Class Tech Tips: 3 Ways to Make Literature Real and Relevant feat. Shmoop

Shmoop subscriptions and licenses for students, teachers, schools, or districts

https://twitter.com/Shmoop

https://www.facebook.com/shmoop/

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The TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network | @TeacherCast

Edtech in the Classroom Homepage – www.EdtechInTheClassroom.com

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Jeff Bradbury | @JeffBradbury

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Are you enjoying the TeacherCast Network, please share your thoughts with the world by commenting on iTunes today? I enjoy reading and sharing your comments on the podcast each week.

Let’s Work Together

Host: Jeff Bradbury @TeacherCast | @JeffBradbury

Email: [email protected]

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome Jeff Meyer, the Director of Education for Learning.com.

* New Integration with Google Classroom (Fall 2018 Release)

* How are school districts consuming digital literacy

* How can we assess the technology skills of our students?

* Aligning data against the ISTE standards

* 4 pillars for Learning

* Keyboarding

* Do we still need keyboarding skills in our curriculum?

* Keyboarding vs Voice to Text

* When to start teaching Keyboarding Skills

* Online Safety / Digital Citizenship

* When to start teaching Digital Citizenship

* Coding and Computational Thinking

* Business Applications

* Spreadsheets and Word Processing

* STEM Education

* Gamifying Learning in K-5

* Text-based learning modules

* Python Coding in Middle School

* The importance of teaching computational thinking skills.

Why Learning.com?

By 2020, it is estimated that nearly 80% of jobs will require some level of technical proficiency. We live in a digital society. Students must be given the opportunity to learn and develop digital literacy skills – starting as early as Kindergarten. From keyboarding and word processing to coding and computational thinking, digital literacy skills are needed more than ever. Learning.com makes it easy to teach students the critical digital literacy skills they must have to succeed.

About our Guest

Jeff Meyer is the Director of Education and is Learning.com’s resident product expert for our digital literacy solutions who works to identify best practices for internal and external audiences. Jeff has 34 years of experience working in education as a public-school teacher and coach, district curriculum and technology director and administrator. He is passionate about the need to transform education using data-based, inquiry-driven approaches and digital resources, especially with urban students and educators. Prior to his eleven years of service with Learning.com, Jeff worked in the Austin and Eanes school districts, Education Service Center, and University of Texas at Austin, Texas.

Links of Interest

* Learning.com Homepage

* Digital Literacy Curriculum

* Twitter

* Facebook

* Pinterest

* LinkedIn

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome Rachel and Shlomi from Smore on the program to discuss how educators and school districts are using Smore’s robust platform to communicate with students, their communities, and each other. Check out EdTech in the Classroom today for other great podcasts featuring your favorite EdTech companies.

In this episode, we discuss:

Creating a newsletter should be easy and fun, and deliver professional results

Using Smore to update parents, staff (internal newsletter) and the greater community

Learn how your audience engages with your newsletter through live analytics so that you can build smarter newsletters that you know your audience will love

Analytics will show who opened your newsletter, which links were clicked the most, how much time was spent on the newsletter, etc.

Using Smore for your entire school

Streamline school communications and maintain the school's brand with all educators using Smore

Control, track, analyze

The School or District License's Admin can actually maintain some control of the content going out to ensure that teachers and staff using Smore stay on brand. They can do this by creating beautiful templates that are on brand to send out to other educators on the License so those educators can use the pre-made templates and drop in their original content for their desired audiences.

Admin (or admins) of the license have access to a Management Dashboard to view everyone who is active on the license and take a look at what is being sent out! We even have some schools who use the dashboard to create fun games and incentives for teachers/staff to communicate more.

Smore Academy built in on-boarding. The built-in on-boarding ensures that all teachers/staff on the license get the proper training they need to be successful Smore users.

The future of Smore

Even better analytics

Smart tracking (how people engage with your newsletter to help you learn from Your audiences behavior)

Hot spots on the newsletter

Built-in onboarding with Smore Academy

coming now + more in the future

Newsletter template sharing

About Smore

Smore enables you to create beautiful newsletters, share them everywhere, and track your results. It's fast and easy to update your class, colleagues, and community members. More than 800,000 educators across the globe use Smore to create gorgeous newsletters. Features like custom designs and enhanced analytics enable educators to quickly master their message and update students, parents, and colleagues in an engaging, professional way. It's easy to look amazing.

How Can Smore Be Used In The Classroom?

In this example, we are using Smore to create professional development tutorials for our teachers.



About our Guests

Rachel Epstein

My name is Rachel Epstein and I am the Head of Business Development and Sales at Smore. I've been with Smore for 3 years and I love working here! We are a fun, dynamic and creative team that makes coming to work a pleasure, really! I am originally from New York and went to college at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I received my MA from Tel Aviv University in Environmental Science. Outside of work, I love backpacking trips, skiing on powder days and traveling whenever possible 🙂 I've been living in Tel Aviv for the past 5 years, enjoying the Mediterranean lifestyle and incredible food.

Links of Interest

Customer Support: support@smore.

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome Asmund Furuseth from Kahoot! To share the launching of a brand new Kahoot! Certification program for educators worldwide.  For more information about Kahoot!, please visit www.Kahoot.com

In this episode, we discuss:

New Kahoot! Certification Program

Launching on August 22, 2018

How to create “Game Based Learning” with Kahoot!

Formative Assessment

To Introduce new topics

To reinforce learning goals

Why is it important for students to be able to create Kahoot! games

Students can think about quality questions and answers

Students have a deeper understanding of the content when creating questions for their peers

New Integrations with Apple’s Schoolwork App

Amazing use cases of Kahoot! in the classroom

“Blind Kahoot” Where teachers use Kahoot to introduce a new topic

New In-App Quiz Creation

New user interface and spreadsheet importer for importing questions into Kahoot!

About Kahoot

Since its launch in 2012, Kahoot! has turned game-based learning into a pop culture phenomenon around the world. The game platform hosted over 70 million monthly active users and has a library with more than 50 million learning games, created and shared by fans in more than 200 countries. Kahoot! is on a mission to make learning awesome for learners in all contexts. The company is headquartered in Oslo, Norway with offices in London, Austin and Palo Alto. Let’s play!

About our Guests

Before meeting Kahoot! co-founders in 2013, Åsmund ran a wind turbine technology company called ChapDrive. He also advises and secures funding for various startups, where he holds Board Director roles.  Åsmund has a Master of Science Degree in Physics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

He owns a vintage sailboat and would like to spend more time sailing in the Oslo fjord (that he can see from our office window).

Links of Interest

https://www.facebook.com/getkahoot

https://twitter.com/getkahoot

https://www.linkedin.com/company/kahoot/

https://www.instagram.com/getkahoot/

Follow our Podcast

The TeacherCast Educational Broadcasting Network | @TeacherCast

Edtech in the Classroom Homepage – www.EdtechInTheClassroom.com

Follow our Host

Jeff Bradbury | @JeffBradbury

Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

Kahoot Certification Program (Launching August 29)

Kahoot! Integrates with Apple’s Schoolwork App

Create Quizzes from inside Kahoot! App

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Daily Math Fluency helps students develop efficiency and accuracy of basic math facts for K-5 students.

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome California Teacher of the Year Alex Kajitani on the program to discuss Multiplication Nation, a fantastic learning platform that helps students get a head start in the math classroom.

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we welcome Natalia Ulianets from SelfCAD on the podcast to discuss their pretty awesome 3D modeling application.  SelfCAD is an online 3D Modeling and Slicing program that allows students to create amazing physical structures no matter what platform they are using.

In this episode of EdTech in the Classroom, we learn how LearnPlatform is helping school districts of all sizes make data-based decisions about the technologies that are implemented in classrooms.