Ed Tech in Our Classrooms

 Hannah sat down with me (via Zoom) to talk about tips and hints about the Google Certified Exam. After listening to her, I am convinced that you should do quite well.

 And fails beautifully. Nice try Elizabeth Austin.

 One of your online-only classmates earned the Google Educator Level One award after taking the test last week. Well done. I will make a brief interview with her so she can share her experiences about how she prepared and what it was like to take the test.  

3D printing in the classroom One of the more exciting up and coming technologies in the classroom is the 3D printer. 3D printers are extremely powerful tools but the barrier to entry can be high, especially with no experience in CAD (computer-aided design) and 3D modeling.  Fortunately, if there's one good thing about the internet it's that you do not need to redesign the wheel! There are many resources available to help with getting started with 3D printing! In class, we talked about Tinkercad which is a great entry-level application to learn the basics of 3D modeling, but there are lots of other resources to explore! Let’s take a look! T-Rex Model In my house, we have 2 printers and at least one is running most of the time. Currently, they are printing a miniature model of a T-Rex skeleton. My husband has wanted to make a mini-museum for a long time and he finally bought the plastic to do it. However, modeling accurate skeleton replicas is easier said than done. What he ended...

 Google Teacher Podcast. They are 122 podcasts deep and they are pretty decent. I think they have managed to keep the chit chat down to a minimum so you can get to the interesting tech stuff more quickly. Here is the link to the most recent one: Build Classroom Community with Google Tools 

This week was the 40th anniversary of my first day as a teacher. I was a mid-term replacement and one of the school's first special education teachers. Since that day, I have taught in rural and urban settings both elementary and secondary, and in schools in Japan, Ontario, and Arizona. I'm proud to find myself now a professor of Teacher Education at EMU. Not too shabby for the first kid in his family to go to university. You never know where this degree in teaching will take you.

There is an interesting group of like-minded individuals across the state called GEG: Google Educator Group . They offer many activities including webinars and competitions.  Yesterday I participated in what they called the GEG Games . Several teachers and Ed Tech-consultants submitted a short video demonstration of a Google tool. We then had to vote on the four best of them. One of my former students, now a teacher in East Jackson, did one with her students.  Take a peek [ LINK ] and you might learn some cool tips and tricks along the way. I did.