Digital Learning Today

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@McSquares: Digital Whiteboards for Collaborative Classrooms Sep 02, 2017

Show notes

Jeff sits down with Travis and Anthony from mcSquares, a dynamic new edtech tool that brings personalized non-tech learning back into the classrooms.

About mcSquares

mcSquares are personal, handheld whiteboards that easily snap together on a wall to create a larger, collaborative system that is infinitely flexible and completely customizable.

Links of interest

About our Guests

Anthony:
Along with founding 7 different successful companies and holding multiple patents, Anthony has held leadership positions in creative direction, feature film post-production, technological architecture, advertising production, enterprise product development, computer aided design, hospitality management, and physical product manufacturing.
Most notably, Anthony founded the large, Denver-based consulting firm, EffectiveUI, the world’s first and leading user experience and digital product development firm. EffectiveUI is responsible for the creation of hundreds of award-winning digital products for many of the world’s most recognizable brands. O’Reilly publish a book based exclusively on our philosophies and practices, titled “Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experiences in Software”His most recent start-up, mc squares, was born from lessons learned in running brainstorming workshops within fortune 100 conference rooms. The company has just come out of 2 years of product R&D and has released its first iteration in a long line of collaboration systems.
Travis:
Travis' is a UNC Chapel Hill Alum with a masters in education from UNC Charlotte. His formal career started in education where he taught for 2 years as a Teach For America Corps Member in North Carolina. Following this experience, Travis became the HR Manager for a rapidly growing network of non profit charter schools in Colorado. Since then, he has led implementation projects as an independent consultant for Denver Public Schools and learned a lot about individualized learning in the classroom. When he's not geeking out about the newest uses of technology, he can usually be found with a cup of coffee in his hand hanging out with his wife, two kids, and two dogs in Boulder, Colorado, where every day feels like a vacation watching the sun set and rise (and more often than not, the snow fall!) over the gorgeous Rocky Mountains.

Recorded in 2016

Learn how you can help your students succeed this year with TenMarks Sep 01, 2017

Show notes

While getting students interested in math can be a challenge for teachers, TenMarks has found a fun – and timely – way to get kids buzzing about numbers. Drawing on students’ interest in sports and the excitement of the annual March Madness basketball tournament, the Math Madness contest is a great way to get kids genuinely excited about math! Through a little friendly competition, students have fun, win prizes and gain mastery in math. However, it’s not just about the cool prizes. Participating in Math Madness will spur student motivation and engagement like never before, resulting in significantly improved math confidence. Best of all, there’s no reason to worry about students struggling while competing on their own during Math Madness. TenMarks assignments provide individualized practice through a variety of tools such as hints and videos, all of which are designed to help students persevere and ultimately master challenging math problems. The Math Madness contest, now in its fifth year, has helped thousands of students strengthen their math skills. In 2015, students answered millions of questions with over 84 percent accuracy! Math Madness has amazing prizes such as Amazon Gift Cards and Amazon Fire Tablets that’ll help motivate students in the beginning. However, a week into the madness and you’ll see an enthusiasm for math you never saw coming!

About TenMarks and “With Math I Can”

Developed under the leadership of Amazon Education and TenMarks, “With Math I Can” challenges the nation’s more than three million teachers and their students to take the pledge to replace the notion of “I’m not good at math” with “I am working to get better at math” by embracing a “growth mindset,” the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed, which leads to an increased focus on the process of learning rather than the outcome. Supporters of the “With Math I Can” movement include Stanford University Professor of Mathematics Education Jo Boaler, Character Lab, Common Sense Education, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), Stanford University’s Project for Education Research that Scales (PERTS), ClassDoJo, ASCD, and Teaching Channel. Teachers and students can learn more, watch a video, access resources, and take the pledge at www.withmathican.org.

Links of interest

https://www.tenmarks.com/math-madness
http://blog.tenmarks.com/2016/03/its-not-just-about-winning-prizes-unexpected-benefits-of-math-madness.html
Twitter (@WithMathICan) – https://twitter.com/WithMathICan
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/WithMathICan

Teacher Resources

https://www.tenmarks.com/prepare-instruct

About Our Guest

Meera Vaidyanathan is an education leader who is passionate about integrating technology into education to bring innovation to the student learning experience. At TenMarks, Meera oversees the development of curriculum products and leads the effort to ensure that TenMarks delivers solutions that place the teacher at the center of instruction and provide students with work that is personalized to their individual learning pathways. Throughout her career in the education industry, Meera has held several leadership roles in content and product management, business development, and marketing.

Prior to TenMarks, Meera served as the VP of Content and Product Management at HotChalk where she led HotChalk’s growth and development strategy for K-12. In her roles at CK-12, McGraw-Hill Education, Oxford University Press, and Princeton University Press, Meera spearheaded the acquisition and creation of content for a wide range of K-12 educational materials and encyclopedias (online and print). She has an MBA from Temple University and an MA in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut.

Recorded in 2016

Learn How Adobe Education Exchange Can Help You Engage Your Digital Classroom Today! | @AdobeEdu Aug 30, 2017

Show notes

Jeff sits down with Matt Niemitz from Adobe Education to discuss Adobe Education Exchange, a free resource for teachers to learn how to enhance their curriculum using Adobe solutions.

About Adobe Education

The Adobe Education Exchange helps ignite creativity in classrooms worldwide by connecting educators through free professional development opportunities, teaching materials, and peer-to-peer collaboration.

Links of interest

Adobe Education Exchange: https://edex.adobe.com
Twitter: @AdobeEdu
Matt on Twitter: @MattNiemitz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AdobeEdEx

About our Guest

Matt Niemitz founded and is the Product Lead for the Adobe Education Exchange, Adobe’s first community learning and sharing platform that connects 270,000+ members worldwide. Over 5 years, members have learned from 200+ MOOCs & workshops, shared 10,000+ teaching materials & discussions, and earned 7,000,000+ points and badges. Previously, Matt oversaw Education curriculum development at Adobe. He also helped launch the education program at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, reimagining how technology and earth science overlap in the classroom. Matt studied Geology at the College of William and Mary and holds an Ed.M. in Education Technology from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

Learn Why @ModRobotics Are A Great Solution To Teaching Robotics In Your Classroom Aug 29, 2017

Show notes

Jeff sits down with Eric Schweikardt of Modular Robotics to talk about STEM education in today's classrooms. Learn how your students can learn programming skills through Modular Robotics interlocking Cubelets to create amazing robotic projects.

About Modular Robotics

Modular Robotics is home to more than 50 people who design, engineer and manufacture tiny robots. Every day, we work to build robot construction systems for kids because we believe that toys shape the way children think about the world. Our goal is to create remarkable fun play experiences that impart an intuitive understanding of complex systems and design thinking. Our team is comprised of engineers, software developers production specialists and operators.

Links of interest

Website: www.modrobotics.com
Blog: www.modrobotics.com/blog
Twitter: @modrobotics
Facebook:www.facebook.com/modrobotics
YouTube: www.youtube.com/modrobotics

About Guest

Eric Schweikardt is a designer of tools, robots, architecture and software. He develops concurrent and distributed physical systems with the intention of understanding more about the natural world through model-building. He designed and built roBlocks, a modular robotic construction kit, and is working on evolutionary algorithms for automated design.

Eric finished his PhD in Computational Design in 2008 from Carnegie Mellon University, and is now a visiting scientist at the Cornell Computational Synthesis Laboratory in Ithaca, New York. He studied architecture at the University of Colorado at Boulder and returned there to teach digital modeling and animation. He founded the Allegory Design Group, a web development studio specializing in 3D user interfaces, and worked as a consultant creating architectural renderings and animation for Michael Tavel Architects, Hobbs Design, Wolff Lyon Architects and DKahn Studio.

Eric’s undergraduate research was concerned with pen-based interfaces and the apparent divide between sketching and design development in architecture. This work resulted in Digital Clay, a program that interprets a designer’s isometric (3D) sketches as digital models. Eric has presented work at conferences on Human Computer Interaction (ICMI, TEI), Computer-Aided Design (ACADIA), and Intelligent Toys (DIGITAL).

What does it take to become an Apple Distinguished School? Aug 27, 2017

Show notes

Have you ever wondered what an Apple Distinguished School looks like? Have you ever thought about rolling out a successful 1:1 initiative across thousands of students and teachers? In this episode of the TeacherCast Podcast, Jeff sits down with Ross Cooper to discuss TL2020, a State of the Art, 21st Century vision for the Salisbury Twp. School District that not only is turning heads worldwide, but chasing the lives of students as they become college and career ready.

About Salisbury School District

Teaching and Learning 2020 (TL2020) is an initiative of the Salisbury Township School District located in Allentown, PA. TL2020 is the next phase in the development of teaching and learning that started in our district with TL2014. TL2020 builds on our successes at transforming teaching and learning through technology. The initiative offers increased learning opportunities by providing a personal computing device for each student (1:1), Kindergarten through Grade 12.

Kindergarten and Grade 1 – iPad Mini – available in school
Grade 2 – Grade 5 – Macbook Pro – available in school
Grade 6 – Grade 12 – Macbook Pro – available in school and at home

TL2020.org is the primary communication tool for teachers, students, parents and community about all things TL2020! Links to documents, forms and important information about digital devices for students and parents/guardians appear across the top of the page. Look for fresh content about student work and TL2020 news to appear on the main page.

TL2020 has as its stated goals:

Transformed teaching and learning, guided by the SAMR framework as measured by classroom walkthroughs, observations, surveys and other sources.
Increased occurrences of higher level thinking, guided by Webb’s Depths of Knowledge (DOK) as measured by classroom walkthroughs, observations, surveys and other sources.
Increased opportunities for all students to benefit from online and blended learning opportunities in all content areas including courses/content developed by Salisbury staff.
Increase opportunities for all students to develop and practice literacies that provide readiness for college and career in our interconnected world.

About Our Guest

Ross Cooper is currently the Supervisor of Instructional Practice K-12 in the Salisbury Township School District (1:1 MacBook/iPad) in Allentown, Pennsylvania.He is an Apple Distinguished Educator and a Google Certified Teacher.

How can we bring Coding and Programming into the Classroom? Aug 24, 2017

Show notes

In this episode, Jeff sits down with Kasia Chmielinski to learn how Scratch is being used in over 150 countries in more than 40 languages.

About Scratch

Scratch is a programming language and an online community where children can program and share interactive media such as stories, games, and animation with people from all over the world. As children create from Scratch, they learn to think creatively, work collaboratively, and reason systematically.

Millions of people are creating Scratch projects in a wide variety of settings, including homes, schools, museums, libraries, and community centers. To date, 9M Scratchers have shared over 12M projects to the online community.

Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge. You can read more about Scratch here: scratch.mit.edu/about

Links of interest

Scratch site: scratch.mit.edu
HOC landing page: scratch.mit.edu/hoc
WBB Scratch Studio: h ttps://scratch.mit.edu/studios/1672166/
Cartoon Network WBB landing page: cartoonnetwork.com/scratch
Scratch Twitter account: @Scratch
Scratch Facebook account: Facebook.com/scratchteam
Scratch Foundation site: scratchfoundation.org

YouTube Videos of Interest

About our Guest

Kasia Chmielinski works at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA, as the Product Lead for Scratch. Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) is a free visual programming language that engages youth in imaginative learning experiences to create games, animations and stories. At MIT, Kasia is responsible for defining, designing, and managing the future roadmap of the Scratch project.

Prior to Scratch, Kasia was a founding member of the startup Zestfinance, and before that, a product communications manager at Google. Kasia hails from Boston, but dabbled in architecture and engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong before graduating with a degree in physics from Harvard University. When not in front of a whiteboard or a keyboard, Kasia can be found either tutoring local students in mathematics or upon a bicycle, cycling uncomfortablylong distances.

Kasia can be found on Scratch as @petrichord, and on Twitter as @kaschm.

Recorded in 2015

A Conversation with @EdSurge about todays Educational Landscape Aug 23, 2017

Show notes

Jeff sits down with Mary Jo Madda and Michael Winters to discuss how EdSurge is one of the BEST resources for educators on the planet! Learn how EdSurge was founded and how it operates today.

About EdSurge

EdSurge is a news and information company focused on the intersection between education and technology. EdSurge readers and fans are edtech entrepreneurs, educators, investors, and education policy makers who are interested in technology K12 and Higher Ed.

EdSurge has keynoted with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, hosted an edtech video chat at the request of The White House, is one of TED’s top “education blogs to follow,” and in 2013 was awarded “Most Influential Community Builder” by GSV Advisors

Links of interest

https://www.edsurge.com/

Camtasia: Screencasting Made Simple for Teachers and Students Aug 21, 2017

Show notes

Jeff sits down with Jason Valade from Techsmith Education to discuss how easy it is for teachers to be Screencasting in the Classroom for their students. In this video, Jason shows several great reasons for creating screencasts for the classroom.

Learn how educators across the country are using video to transform teaching with flipping, project-based learning, and to get more choices in how they teach. Join former educator Jason Valade as he provides inspirational ways to teach more effectively and enrich experiences in and out of the classroom, including an introduction to popular video creation tool Camtasia.

About Techsmith Education

Based in Okemos, Michigan, TechSmith provides over 180 countries around the world with screen capture and recording software for individual and professional use. We've made it our goal to give you tools that work just like you do, across multiple devices and locations.

Our desktop products, such as Snagit, Camtasia, TechSmith Relay, and Morae, make it easy to create compelling, polished content you can share with anyone. Paired along with our mobile apps and integrations we're helping people collaborate and share across different devices and make sure you can be productive wherever you are.

By constantly listening to customers and innovating new ways to solve technology challenges, TechSmith has moved to the front of the visual communication field. Now more than 200 employees strong, TechSmith develops a variety of applications that narrow communication gaps through images, video, online hosting, and remote usability testing.

TechSmith has always helped you make great images and videos to communicate your ideas. Now we're making a new commitment: to help you collaborate and share across your different devices and make sure you can be productive wherever you are.

Links of interest

Jason Valade, Customer Success Manager, TechSmith

In Jason’s six years as an educator, he continuously tried out new digital tools in his classroom. Now Jason brings his expertise to TechSmith, showing instructors how to use technology to transform the way they teach, and the way students learn.

Gifted and Talented: How do we support our most advanced learners? Aug 19, 2017

Show notes

Jeff sits down with Katie McClarty from Pearson Education to discuss Gifted and Talented education. Learn how the Center for College and Career Success can help you and your students.

About Pearson

Pearson is the world’s leading learning company, with 40,000 employees in more than 80 countries working to help people of all ages to make measurable progress in their lives through learning. For more information about Pearson, visit http://www.pearson.com.

Links of interest

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pearsonplc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pearson
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PearsonEducation

Blog post:

http://researchnetwork.pearson.com/college-career-success/gifted-talented

About our Guest

Katie McClarty, Ph.D.Center for College & Career Success

Katie McClarty leads the Center for College & Career Success. She heads a team of researchers in planning and executing research in support of the Center mission, which is to (1) identify and measure the skills needed to be successful in college and careers, (2) determine pathways for students to be college and career ready, (3) track their progress along the pathway, and (4) evaluate effective ways to keep students on track. Dr. McClarty has authored papers, chapters, and presentations related to college readiness, standard setting, assessment design, computer-based testing, interface design, teacher effectiveness, and next-generation assessments. Her work has been published in journals such as the American Psychologist, Research in Higher Education, Applied Measurement in Education, Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research & Perspectives, and Educational Researcher. Dr. McClarty holds a doctorate degree in social and personality psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Show Topics

Pearson’s Research & Innovation Network and the Center for College & Career Success
Study about the impact of skipping a grade on gifted students. What are the benefits of acceleration for gifted students?
Are there any consequences for accelerating a gifted student?
“A Nation Empowered”
The role of technology in helping gifted students becoming successful

Recorded in 2015

Should your school be investing in Microsoft Surface Tablets? | @MicrosoftEDU Aug 18, 2017

Show notes

Jeff sits down with Jacqueline Russell to discuss why new Microsoft Surface Tablet is the perfect solution for your digital classroom.

About Microsoft Education

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics, and personal computers and services. Its best-known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. It is the world's largest software maker measured by revenues. It is also one of the world's most valuable companies.

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About mcSquares

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About our Guests

About TenMarks and “With Math I Can”

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Teacher Resources

About Our Guest

About Adobe Education

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About our Guest

About Modular Robotics

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About Guest

About Salisbury School District

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About Our Guest

About Scratch

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YouTube Videos of Interest

About our Guest

About EdSurge

Links of interest

About Techsmith Education

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Jason Valade, Customer Success Manager, TechSmith

About Pearson

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About our Guest

Show Topics

About Microsoft Education

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