Calling All Educators Who Want Free PD!!! #Edmodo #21st Century Pedagogy #Web 2.0

It's official: I am now a Teacher Advocate, Edmodo Support Ambassador, and Edmodo Certified Trainer! I just got my certificate today. And, I am celebrating by sharing a FREE 5 hour PD Course on Edmodo. :-)

For my Action Research Project, I have created a 5 hour Professional Development course in Edmodo about Web 2.0 Technology and 21st Century Teaching Pedagogy.

If you would like to take this course, FOR FREE, please register here:

Socializing Our Classrooms: Edmodo and Google Drive Leading the Way

The following is a presentation for the Computer Using Educators (CUE) of San Francisco. I briefly (in 4 minutes if you can believe it!) will show how my students and I were able to create an social, engaging, and safe classroom using Google Drive and Edmodo as our "Go To" mediums in our 1:1 classroom.

I hope you enjoy it. (PS....I have embedded the Google Presentation directly into this post. So, it will update as I modify the presentation - in real time!!)

Another Great Infographic - Easl.ly

If you have not had the time to play around with infographs, now is the time to try them out. Our students are becoming more visual learners and, as educators, we have to give them information in visual form and teach them how to utilize images to create information.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon Easl.ly, another great infograph for personal and student use.

This product has about a dozen templates to choose from and has a very similar drag and drop feature similar to Piktograph. The designs are modern, sleek, and eye-catching. Most importantly, infographs can be created in just a few minutes and embedded, downloaded, or printed directly from your account.

An email is required to sign-up; however, you do not need to verify that email address. So, students will be able to set up their own account even if email is blocked.

This is the infograph that I created in less than 10 minutes about my website.

Students and teachers alike can easily add these to powerpoint presentations, blog posts, websites, project boards, wikis and social media platforms. 

Great Infographic Sites - Piktochart

- Kimberly Carpenter

This week I have been focusing on some personal projects, and I stumbled upon an article written by Christopher Pappas at eLearning Industry entitled "List of Free Tools to Create Infographs for Your Learners". As promised, I have gone through this comprehensive list and found two great resources that have amazing potential for use in the classroom.

Piktochart is a user-friendly, web-based Infograph creator. (Infographs are those really cool posters/logos that display information and graphs that you always wished you knew how to create!)

Awesome Features:

   1. Free - with limited designs, but they are still great
   2. Drag and Drop - No coding experience necessary
   3. No verification of Email address - so if emails get blocked, they are not necessary to use program
   4. Embed or Link completed project to websites, emails, digital newsletters, or print out.

Simply, click on "Create for Free", enter your email and off you go. There will be about 10 designs that you can use for free.

Here is one that I created in about 30 minutes - my first try!! We all know that are students are faster than we are, but if you are using this in a lesson, you may want to allow for 15 minutes to teach the students how to use the site.

Classroom Application

Have students create Infographics about your content. Put them in groups or have them work individually and then have them present to the class. They can quickly and easily publish this to their own personal blog or you can add it to you class blog if you have one - which you should definitely consider creating.

1. Math - Percentages, Fractions, Area, Multi-variable equations. Create visual definitions of concepts.
2. Science - Explain a Process, Create Definitions with images, Put a concept in context, Labeling
3. History - Use the Time line feature, Cause and Effect graphs, Statistics of Time Period
4. English - Character analysis, Comparing two sources, Definitions, Analyze features within text

These are just some quick ideas. Opportunities are endless.

Feel free to comment or shoot me any questions. Happy Learning.

I'd love to hear any great success stories!!

Newer Beginnings

One year ago today, I created a dream for myself. I was determined to embrace the seemingly new idea of education technology and use every resource I could get my hands on to help my kids. (Yes, I do mean my students, but sometimes I just feel like they are my own children.)

 One year later I have achieved one part of that dream:

1. Students learned how to use technology for educational purposes.
2. Students test scores improved by 17% (I'm happy with that :-))
3. Student success in my classroom contributed to convincing the higher ups to invest in more computers and teacher training - Sweet!
4. I have become passionate about my own learning #lifelonglearner

With this success, and all of the failures, set backs, and heart breaks along the way, I now start my new journey: Teaching Teachers About Tech!!

Now, I aim to complete the rest of my dream. Please join me on this adventure and contribute your own thoughts and ideas.

What do you wish to know more about?
What are your stories?

New Beginnings

To me the phrase "New Beginnings" has always seemed a bit redundant. For aren't all beginnings brand new? Yet, we find ourselves at the beginning of another school year, hopefully emboldened by an ever too brief summer break. The question then remains, how do we make this beginning a new experience for ourselves and for our students?

The purpose of this blog is to bring those new and authentic experiences to you, the forever overworked, unpaid, and under-appreciated backbone of education that we call "teacher". I will focus much of my discussion on tools that you can use in your classroom to address CCSS, but I will occasionally delve into the new pedagogy that surrounds online learning. (But, I will put this in another section so that you will not have to worry with the psychology behind learning...unless you want to.)


So...let's start off with something easy.

Word Clouds

For the beginning of the year, have your students create word clouds that describe themselves. Ask your students questions about their demographics, interests, aspirations, etc as you normally would, but have them create a word cloud instead of writing answers on a piece of paper. 

If you do not have technology: 

Ask students to draw a shape that represents some part of their personality. Then, ask them to fill in the shape with adjectives that describes them most concretely. Pass out markers, colored pencils, highlighters, whatever you have on hand, and watch what they come up with. Depending on grade level, you may wish to provide a list of common adjectives and challenge your students to utilize stronger adjectives - instead of "popular" maybe a word like "gregarious". As students finish their word clouds, have them present them to the rest of the class or small groups and post them around the room. 

If you have technology: 

Follow the same process but utilize a word cloud program like wordle.net or tagxedo.com. Students can use the programs to choose the shapes, colors, and designs of their word cloud. Then, have the students include their word cloud in their own blog or website or have them post it to you class website or blog. Again, students should introduce themselves within the online platform through comments, chat features, videos, audio podcasts, or by something as simple as email. 

Teachers can utilize word clouds as an introduction to new information, activating prior knowledge, vocabulary review, or as a review for assessments.