Tag: Smore

Learning, Presentations

Building a PLN

Sonya terBorg

I am sharing some ideas with teachers at my school about building a Personal Learning Network. I have put together a Haiku Deck to summarize my main points and then expanded on these in a Smore Flyer.

Part of my job as a Learning Technology Teacher is sharing tools with teachers so I decided to use two ways of publishing that I don’t always use.

Smore is a great way of putting a lot of multi-media information neatly into one spot. They offer free accounts which do not expire but do have a 5 flyer limit.  Educators can sign up for $59USD per year which gives access to many education themed backgrounds, a default private setting, and unlimited flyers (so your kids can go crazy and make flyers too!).

Haiku Deck is a piece of  presentation software with a Presentation Zen feel.  It is minimalist in design and won’t allow you to fill your slides with thousands of words.  Instead, when you type in a few key words or a sentence with your main point, Haiku Deck will offer you pictures that match those words for you to choose as your background images.  All the images are licensed for Creative Commons use. The only hitch with this one is that our tech department can’t help us with the firewall situation that is blocking access to the images via the iPad app at school.  😦

Any suggestions for things to add to the resources below for people new to creating a Personal Learning Network? Your feedback is welcome! Click on the images below to go to the Flyer and the Presentation:

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PLN

Inquiry, Technology

Technology is a Tool

Sonya terBorg

I really like Smore – a website for designing beautiful flyers. Tonight I doubled the number of Smore Flyers that I have made in my life to make a grand total of 2 flyers.  The first one has been viewed over 6000 times.  We’ll see if this one is as popular!

I was thinking about both the COETAIL course I am currently working on and the unit of inquiry I am integrating on with the fourth grade team at my school.  I had a lot of links to videos that I was adding to an email but these get lost easily.  Instead of a few emails with a bunch of links, I have embedded videos into a Smore Flyer for the teachers to share with their classes.

Their unit falls under the theme How We Organize Ourselves.  The central idea: Technology is a tool that impacts our lives.

If you have any ideas (this is a new unit this year) or have links I could add to my flyer, please let me know!

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Click on image to go to full Smore page.
Creativity, Inspiration

Fifth Grade and Fearless!

Sonya terBorg

Yesterday afternoon, we had our end-of-year party.  Swimming Pool.  Dance Party.  Taco Truck. Slushies. It was a great way to end a great, great year.

This morning, I have the pleasure of meeting my incoming class of students.  I have been thinking a lot about what I want to say and how I want to kick things off. We only have half an hour.  It is the last day of school.  But I still want it to be special.

I started off by writing the typical “Meet Your Teacher” letter which was about me and my dog and husband and the countries I have lived in etc. Then I thought about my new role: Technology and Innovation Advisor. 

So, I scrapped that letter and wrote some thoughts that I really wanted to share. And then I made this:

I plan on giving the kids a business card with this on it.  I don’t know if they all know what the code is or even how to read it, hence the few sentences beside it.  We are a close community and I am pretty sure that it will take very little time for the code to be cracked!  What I do know, is that it will be different for them.  It will make them think.  It might even inspire them to create.  Or have fun!

The code takes them to a flyer I made on Smore.  So easy.  So intuitive.  Love it.

The letter might just be one of the best I have written and was inspired by a post titled “What’s Good For the Kids”. If you can take the time to click here and read it, I would love your thoughts and feedback.