Within this episode of the METC Podcast, Mike McCann and I continue our conversation on how to best manage your workflow.  Mike moves away from the e-mail client and into three apps that can really ramp up your communication and management in your quest to Inbox Zero.  Check out the apps that Mike shares and connect with us on twitter to share your thoughts.

Episode's Guest:

Mike McCann - Instructional Technology Coach - Wentzville School District - @mccann1776

Episode's Resources:

Google Keep

Google Calendar

Todoist

In this episode of the METC Podcast, I sit dow with Mike McCann and discuss many ways to manage our workflow.  We all receive a bunch a e-mail throughout our busy day and sometimes it can be very overwhelming.  Mike shares some great strategies to manage your inbox to hopefully one day get to Inbox Zero!  Yes, you too can get to zero in your inbox by implementing some of these strategies.  You will notice that no where in the episode does Mike say that this will be easy.  However, I love the tips he shares and the information about the new GMail.  Be sure to connect with Mike on twitter.  

Episode's Guest:

Mike McCann - Instruction Technology Coach - Wentzville School District - @mccann1776

Welcome back everyone!  Thank you for checking out the METC Podcast!  We felt that this would be a wonderful topic to share at the beginning of the school year.  As we all know, it is important for us as educators to ensure that all students are growing.  Some students need additional support and/or resources to be successful.  Well, my guest for this episode is Rashell Mehring.  She is a special education teacher and works with assistive technology for the Special School District here in St. Louis, MO.  At the time of the recording, she worked for the St. Louis Regional Professional Development Center as a Special Education Consultant.

Within this episode, Rashell shares many different resources to assist our students in four major areas.  The resources she mentions are linked below so please check them out.  Also be sure to reach out to Rashell and connect with her on social media.

Episode's Guest:

Rashell Mehring - Special School District of St. Louis County, MO @rmehr02

Resources Shared:

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) at http://www.cast.org/

Understood.org

Jamie Martin at https://www.atdyslexia.com/

Twitter @ATDyslexia

Rashell Mehring Twitter @rmehr02

Text to Speech- Digital text read aloud by a device

Read&Write for Google Chrome (Chrome Extension)

@texthelp

Text to speech feature is a feature that is available in free version for students

Premium features are free for educators sign up using this link https://www.texthelp.com/en-us/products/free-for-teachers/

Snap&Read (Chrome Extension)

Free for 30 days for the trial period

ClaroRead (Chrome Extension)

Speechify (Chrome Extension)

Select and Speak (Chrome Extension) by ispeech.org extension

Built-in sites like Readworks.org

Dictation- Spoken words converted into digital text on a device

Google Docs and Google Slides Presenter notes

Tap on Tools

Tap on Voice Typing

Enable microphone if asked

Tap on microphone to begin and end dictation

Chromebook (Utilize the on-screen keyboard to enable voice typing)

Display Accommodations- font size, font color (minimize the use of red font), spacing between lines of text, words, and letters

Visor (Chrome Extension)

nOverlay (Chrome Extension)

OpenDyslexic (Chrome Extension)

Mercury Reader (Chrome Extension)

Dualless (Chrome Extension)

Tools for Executive Functioning Issues

Google Keep

Google Keep (Chrome Extension)

Location or date/time reminders

Checklists

Color coding of topics

Take pictures of assignments or important information

Voice notes in the mobile app

On the 31st Episode of the METC Podcast, I interview Greg Lawrence from the Wentzville School District.  Greg is the Director of Technology within his district.  We sit down and discuss change.  Change can be scary.  This is definitely true with technology.  Technology seems to change at the blink of an eye.  As educators we know that for many of us, our students tend to know more about the tech than we do.  As we change/adapt with the times, Greg lays out some key character traits that can help guide us through change.  

Thanks to Greg Lawrence for being on the podcast.  He is a fountain of knowledge, and I highly recommend following him on social media.  Check him out on Twitter and Google+.

Thank you for checking out our podcast.  If you are enjoying what you are listening to, please share with others.  Rate us on iTunes and/or Google Play.  Thank you for checking us out!

Episode's Guest:

Greg Lawrence - Director of Technology - Wentzville School District

@greglawrence       Greg Lawrence on Google+   

GEG of Eastern MO   gafemo.org

Professional Development mentioned within episode:

METC Google Extravaganza - July 16-17 

In Episode 29 of the METC Podcast, I had the pleasure of sitting down with two very talented fifth grade students.  Danny and Ethan shared their current project with me.  They have spent their free time working on coding within Scratch a math review game for kindergarten and first graders.  Now this would be cool in and of itself, but these two took this activity a step further.  They have been able to repurpose a previously unused SMART table and turn it into a holographic, interactive tool meant to engage students in learning important content. 

After speaking with these two gentlemen, it was very clear that they used perseverance throughout the process to get this activity up and running.  They tested their idea at various scales prior to building their current version.  While talking with them, they were already talking about how they could make the whole experience better for their users.  Simply amazing!

Here is a link to their code within Scratch.  You can see that it is pretty sophisticated! 

Thank you to their innovation class teacher, Andy Wall for providing the time to sit with these two students.  I also would like to give their classroom teacher, Amy Maledy for allowing these students to explore their passion!

I encourage each of you to visit the Flipgrid space for this episode.  We recorded with their project in view to help give you the viewer a better understanding of what they have accomplished.  Share your thoughts and ideas.