Twin Cities Start Up Weekend EDU 2016 - Introduction to Ermarie - Part 1

I attended Twin Cities Startup Weekend EDU 

#TCSWEDU 

It was a blur of a weekend. We started Friday night at 5:30pm with the opportunity to pitch an idea. Then, moved into forming teams to create projects around popular pitches and ended with a presentation of the final products on Sunday evening at 6pm. 

After years of asking other people if they had a solution or could create a solution, I finally took care of it! 

What is the solution for? As a teacher in Minnesota, I need to attend 125 hours of Professional Development (PD) every five years. I also need to attend PD on five different topics. With a June 30th deadline, I need to turn in all of my documents to the state of Minnesota to renew my license. 

For the last eight years, I have kept all of my documents in a file folder or three ring binder. Even though I would try to stay organized and keep a running total of my hours, it would always turn into a mess that would require hours of organization and compilation in order to turn it in. 

As a person who is pretty interested in technology, I turned to cloud storage options to try and help with this mess. While I didn’t have a problem with the options I tried, they just were not created for this situation. I always thought: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place that I could organize and save all of my documents somewhere online that I am in control of?” 

I look forward to sharing more information with you about Ermarie (the name has changed from DigiDocs during startup weekend to now Ermarie). Ermarie will help you easily save your documents to your own online secure storage space. Documents can be uploaded from your computer or captured with the camera on our phone. When the time comes to share your documents, you have the ability to easily share a link with a time limit that you set. 

The two qualities that make this program stand alone from other options are ease of use and ownership. A key feature of Ermarie is that you are the owner of the information, the information follows you wherever you go. I look forward to sharing more of Ermarie's details with you! Try it out www.ermarie.com and then PLEASE give me your feedback!! We are in the very early stages of sharing this great app with people and are eagerly awaiting your feedback!!  bit.ly/ermariefeedback

The team behind DigiDocs (now Ermarie) and one of our mentors Eric Nelson https://twitter.com/FANgeopolitics celebrating after a long weekend!

Google Drive Bingo for Beginners

Tonight I will be leading a Community Education class on the topic of Google Drive for beginners.

Planning for tonight my goals include

• How to access Google Drive
• Introduction to Google Drive
• Creating, accessing, and sharing Google Docs
• Finding items that were shared with you

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I will be sharing Kasey Bell's Google Drive and Google Doc Cheat Sheets. You can find them here. You can find her on Twitter @ShakeUPLearning .

As a way to wrap up class and check for understanding, I am borrowing Alice Keeler's Bingo Board. You can find her on Twitter @AliceKeeler . Here is her blog post and template. Here is my version of the Bingo boards with the "I can" statements I am hoping my attendees will walk away from class with. 

Presidents Day 2016

Today I am one of many teachers who won't be at school working, many of us are at home working. Today is Presidents Day. 

Here is a list of what I will be doing today, what are you doing?

1. While drinking coffee and watching the morning news, I am scrolling through a recap of the Twitter chat #MNlead that happened last night.



2. I recently found theducationcalendar.com which is a crowdsourced, searchable map and calendar of education events around the world. If you haven't seen it yet, I would recommend checking it out and adding events to it!



3. Have you attended a free day of learning around computer science in elementary education? If you haven't, I invite you to join me at any of my upcoming Code.org workshops! Learn more about the at bit.ly/codewithangiews



4. I am preparing my presentation on Formative Assessment tools for this Wednesday. I get to have an hour with new educators to share a few best practices and have a discussion around what they are doing and what they would like to do . Do you have any tools you love and want to share?



5. I am working on finding funding for my trip to ISTE 2016! I will be speaking at the conference. I have applied to be a volunteer and have received a scholarship from CMLE (Thank you!!) Any suggestions for other places to look?



6.Working on the last few finishing touches for my MN iOS Summit presentation on why and how kids can code in your elementary classrooms. I think pictures speak louder than words, do you have any pictures you love and would be willing to share with me? I am looking for students who are working through any computer science lessons, with or without technology.


7. Checking email. It seems as though it is a never ending task! It is a great treat to get emails like the following.   I love to hear how people are implementing their learning and of their "problems." This is a great problem to have! Do you have a story to share? Feel free to email me kalthoff@pd.code.org



Now it's time to refresh my coffee cup and continue on with my to-do list. The first thing will be to check in with EdSurge  and see if they have anything about theeducationcalendar and if not I will share it with them!

Free Music You Can Download!!

Have you ever found yourself searching for music that you can use in a video project? What about your students? I know I have!!! I would like to give a Shoutout to Jim Sill for this tip:

Go to :

https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music

to browse and download free music for your projects!

Inserting Text Boxes into Google Docs

As I was setting up a Google Hangout On Air today, I came across a Google+ post from Eric Curts. He explains how to insert a version of a text box into a Google Doc. Currently, inserting a text box is not an option, but inserting a Google Drawing is an option. Here is his video explaining how to do it!! It's a great tip that I have never thought of!




Click here to access his blog post.

Bitsbox

A few weeks ago, I learned about a subscription box that teaches kids to code. On the website I learned the company was started by a couple of dads, who use to work at Google,  to chase their dreams and build stuff for their kids. They created Bitsbox!

In celebration of Computer Science Education week they had a sign up for teachers to try it for free! When I signed up, I also signed up for their news letter. Yesterday I got an email with a great explanation of what coding is, exactly.

Here is what I learned " Programming is the act of writing a computer program, and computer programs are written in code. Because of this, many people say "coding" instead of "programming", but they mean the same thing. You'll sound cooler if you say "coding"." To learn more visit their site.

Exploring More Code Options - ISTE 2015

In my prior ISTE post, I explained how I will work to implement the Hour of Code and Code.org's courses into classrooms  I work with.

While I think Code.org is great, and I will almost alway start with it, there are other options for our students. Erin Schiller and I, decided to explore more of these options and create a course in Schoology with what we found. We are still creating the course, but it will be done by December 12.  IF you would like to try it out after December 12, please email or tweet at me! We are co-leading a preconference workshop "Code Camp" at Ties and running it through this course.

We are creating the course as a guided experience. Once educators complete a task in Schoology, a new folder will be opened for them with their next task. All of the tasks are created to be done with a colleague or two. We feel that by working with others through these new topics, a deeper level of learning will occur. Educators will also need to provide proof of each task completion by turning in an assignment. While people will be turning an end product, we will have more of an emphasis on the learning process and experience and not as much on an end result.

Here are the e three task cards I created for participants to try and share their understanding.



The first task card gets people working together. Two educators will work together to pair program and complete four puzzles in any Hour of Code tutorial from Code.org's website. They will take a screenshot of their last puzzle showing they completed at least 4 puzzles.



The second activity is low tech. First, a group of teachers will watch a video about "perseverance." Then they will have access to directions to a lesson about building a foundation. They will work together to build a product out of toothpicks and gumdrops that can support a book for 30 seconds. They will take a picture of their product and post it to Schoology.

The last activity I pulled in involves using a Sphero. Teachers will work through the first Macrolab lesson provided by SPRK. They will learn how to program the Sphero to adjust time, distance, and speed.  I will have one with me during the workshop for people to use. If people complete this activity on their own, they can still download the app and explore.

My hope is to help other educators explore some tools that are available to them that they can use in their classroom to help students understand how to problem solve, collaborate, and create.