13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics

This interactive infographic from neomam.com really speaks to me, not only as a visual learner, but also as an educator. Here are a few reasons why infographics have grown in popularity. I think it also gives us a few reasons why we need to present and review information in text and visual forms as well.

Make sure to check out the interactive version in your browser by clicking on this link: 13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics [HTML 5]

IT Summit 2013 - Cool Tools Duel - Dean Shareski and Ewan McIntosh

The 2013 IT Summit in Saskatoon was capped off with a "Cool Tools Duel" between Dean Shareski and Ewan McIntosh.

Who will the winner be this year?

Tool #1:

Dean: Popcorn Maker - Create your own pop-up videos - https://popcorn.webmaker.org/

Ewan: P Clock (Presentation Clock App) - allows  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/presentation-clock/id391324914?mt=8 



Tool #2:

Dean: Haiku Deck - great presentation creation app using photos searchable from creative commons - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/haiku-deck/id536328724?mt=8

Ewan: My Script Calculator - helps students play with algebra and math https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/myscript-calculator/id578979413?mt=8 - WolframAlpha - look up historical data and data to get comparisons: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/wolframalpha/id334989259?mt=8 



Tool #3:

Dean: Twitter Archive of your tweets that is searchable - you can go in your settings and request your archive - twitter.com

Ewan: Earthlapse - lets you explore the universe as if you were in space - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/earthlapse/id522003167?mt=8



Tool #4:

Dean: Aurasma - let's you attach virtual reality overlay to your photo - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/aurasma/id432526396?mt=8

Ewan: 360 Panorama App - Create an tour of a room - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/360-panorama/id377342622?mt=8



Tool #5:

Dean: Glympse - http://www.glympse.com/

Ewan: Paper Fifty-Three App - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003812?mt=8



Tool #6:

Dean: instaGrok - http://www.instagrok.com/

Ewan: Story Cube app - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/rorys-story-cubes/id342808551?mt=8 Street Museum - http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Resources/app/you-are-here-app/noflash/no-flash.html Apps Gone Free - http://appchronicles.com/category/apps-gone-free/

IT Summit 2013 - Presentation by the Thom Tech Catalyst Team

Today, I had the honour of presenting with some of my former colleagues from Thom Collegiate at the IT Summit 2013 in Saskatoon.

We spoke about how we learn, connect, collaborate and inspire each other as a professional learning community. We shared our experiences and numerous resources and tools about how we connect and inspire our students to achieve their very best.

IT Summit 2013 - Ewan McIntosh - Design Thinking: Developing a Generation of Problem Finders

Monday Morning Keynote - IT Summit 2013, Saskatoon

Ewan's blog: http://edu.blogs.com

Creativity... is it something we are born with or is it something we can learn?

Asked everyone to sketch their partner as a warm up. So much fun! There are some very talented wanna be artists at this conference this morning.

How to sketch a human head:

What defines quality teaching? What qualifies as quality learning? Wanted to find the perfect algorithm by trying to blend the best of the creative industry and the best from the classroom and blending them together to create perfect learning.

Students like respect when they take up the challenge and responsibility to collaborate and come up with common learning problems. Making learning real and relatable for them. That way they can take their learning and transfer them into their own learning and relate them to their own world and their own experiences.

In terms of real things, we can tap into our students' own creativity - use a I Wonder Wall where students and teachers can ask questions.

Curriculum mapping allows teachers to map out the curriculum and see where students are at and what they already learned and where they are going. Students can see why they are learning something and where they are going. It organizes thinking, allows for deeper understanding and really allows students to understand the why.

Problem Finders - you need to find a problem that no one has solved and try to solve it.

Making provocative titles - Seven Days to Save the Mill, Playtime is Cancelled, You are not on the list so you can't come in. These are then taken and mapped out with the curriculum to showcase thinking.

Students have difficulty asking higher order questions because they are rarely challenged to ask these questions - Googleable/Non Googleable (an unGoogleable curriculum)

What can we do to make learning relevant to students? The Why We are Learning This.

What is your process? design thinking - immersion - synthesis - ideation - prototyping - feedback

Can we make learning joyful?

John Hattie - "Know thy impact"

Building an interactive WWI timeline as a collaborative for History 20

During our study of World War I, my Grade 11 History students were intrigued by a number of the stories and battles that we were reading about. Out of this grew a project where each student picked an event that took place during the war and then produced a video or presentation to tell its story. The best place to collect these stories seemed to be a timeline. Students independently researched, wrote about and produced a video or presentation in the format of their choice and then we assembled them together on an interactive timeline, using Time Toast. Some of the tools that the students used to create their videos or presentations included Prezi, YouTube Video Editor, Wideo and the trailer feature on the iMovie App for the iPad.

Students were also asked to create multiple choice questions that their classmates could answer while watching their video that we assembled into Socrative. Students then presented their projects and while we were viewing the videos, we responded to their multiple choice quizzes.  A great way for students to stay engaged while watching numerous presentations.

Please check out our interactive timeline: Histoire 20 Collaborative WW1 Timeline

Integrating Technology into the Classroom

On March 13th, 2013, I had the pleasure of presenting to the University of Regina Education Student Society about the integration of technology into the classroom. A variety of topics were covered during the two hour session.

Here is my presentation:

Integrating Technology Into the Classroom from Joanna Sanders

Skype and BYOD - Thom Tech Tool Showdown

On March 7, 2013, Krista Gates and I presented a session to our fellow teachers at Thom Collegiate about how to use Skype in the classroom and how to integrate student owned devices into your practice. Here is our slidedeck from the presentation:

Sharing as a Professional in a Social World

Participating in a professional discussion with other teachers is important to have others understand what you do as a teacher and what you think as a professional. From sharing news, to resources, to ideas, connecting online can make all the difference in your growth and success as an educator.

Here are the slides I presented to the RPSTA Assembly on February 3rd about how to use Twitter and other social media to participate in the online discussion about education.

Orientation for #ETMOOC

I was excited to get started with #ETMOOC this week. I love exploring, discussing, sharing and learning new things with my colleauges. One of the most exciting things about participating in this massive open online course is being able to participate along side my colleagues, not only online, but in my school too. We did the orientation together during our lunch break yesterday.

To get the learning started, I decided to try a new tool I saw someone share this week called Haiku Deck. It is an easy way to add some visuals to any blog post or presentation. I downloaded the app for free on my iPad and easily created this short presentation to try it out. Great way to put words and pictures together! How do you think you could use this tool in your classroom? I think the possibilities are endless!

Haiku Deck: #ETMOOC

Haiku Deck is the best application for creating presentations on iPad

Introduction to #ETMOOC

I am very excited to be participating in #ETMOOC. If you want to know more about this massive open online course about education technology and media, please check it out and sign up! etmooc.org

Here is my introduction so that other participants can have a glimpse into who I am. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Joanna Sanders and I am a French Immersion History, Social Studies and Science teacher in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. I teach students in grades 9-12 at Thom Collegiate. I look forward to connecting with everyone through this course!