The Next Tech Thing: Minnebytes

Showing posts with label Minnebytes. Show all posts

Monday, April 23, 2018

More Ways to Inform Parents of How Technology Changes Learning

In a continuing effort to inform parents of how technology is used for learning in school, our instructional technology coaches in Minnetonka keep exploring new ideas and formats for this communication. In the past I’ve shared about the Minnebytes that have run in our weekly high school newsletter for the past two years with hundreds of examples. At the beginning of this school year, I shared the middle school version of this Minnebytes newsletter for parents and teachers highlighting Minnetonka iPad Integration.

The challenge of grabbing parents' limited attention seems greater than ever. Parents are bombarded with all sorts of messages and information on a daily basis, whether it’s from school, sports, work, or their personal lives. Messages need to be short and to the point, and of course, catchy and attention grabbing. So often it is difficult for parents to understand how technology tools are being used because they remember school before these tools existed and don’t have a background knowledge or understanding of technologies possibilities in education. It is our continued hope that by keeping parents informed of the many ways we are using technology in school for engagement and deeper learning they will better understand its importance and continue to support its use.

In an effort to better reach parents, recently one of our middle school technology instructional coaches, Sara Hunt, has been creating infographics using Infogram. Three examples are included below. In these infographics she focuses on one specific technology tool students use in our one to one iPad program. She explains what it does, how it is used, includes a link to a video about the app, and includes one or more examples of our students or teachers using this tool for instruction.

How Technology Changes Learning @ MMW (March 2018)
Infogram

How Technology Changes Learning @ MMW (April 2018)
Infogram

How Technology Changes Learning @ MMW (April 2018 Explain Everything)
Infogram

Minnebytes Year 2: 50 More Examples of High School iPad Integration

For a second year in a row our high school instructional technology coaches are compiling a weekly newsletter highlighting three ideas for integrating iPads in the classroom. Each week as they are out in classrooms working with teachers, our three high school instructional tech coaches see these firsthand. They snap a photo, write a few sentences describing the lesson they observe, explain how the lesson fits in with our Teaching & Learning Framework, and then put each of them on a slide in a continuous Google Slide deck.

This is the second time I've posted about this. Last year I wrote about the first round of ideas shared. These ideas continue to be shared weekly with staff as well as parents. It is a great way to educate everyone about the possibilities and power of using iPads and technology in instruction. We continue to track views of these weekly ideas by both staff and parents using the free analytics tools available through Goo.gl/Google.

In addition to these high school examples, ideas are regularly shared at our other schools as well. Take a look yourself at all the great ways teachers and students are leveraging technology for learning!

An Easy Way to Weekly Inform Teachers & Parents of Great Technology Integration

Minnebytes: 100+ Examples of High School iPad Integration

This Year (3 per week)

Sometimes teachers and staff travel long distances to attend technology conferences hoping to return with a few new, good ideas that they can take back to try in their own classrooms. There are certainly some great conferences out there where this can happen. But often I think we fail to realize that we are surrounded by all sorts of colleagues who are doing great things in their classrooms every day. If we had a way to know what these ideas were and when they were happening, we wouldn’t even have to leave our building to get some great ideas.

Over the years we have tried out a variety of ideas and multiple ways to make this happen. We've had success having our teachers share their ideas and best practices for technology integration with one another in short presentations at monthly staff meetings, sharing ideas at “Roundtable” with colleagues during training classes they are attending as part of our continual staff development, sharing and/or recording teacher presentations of their best tips and ideas and making them available online for others, as well as running our own summer workshops and training conferences in house for our teachers.

Most recently our high school instructional technology coaches have been putting together a weekly newsletter highlighting three ideas for integrating iPads in the classroom. The instructional tech coaches see these firsthand as they are out in classrooms working with teachers each week. They snap a photo, write a few sentences describing the lesson they observe, explain how the lesson fits in with our Teaching & Learning Framework, and then put each of them on a slide in a continuous Google Slide deck.

The high school instructional tech coaches send a weekly email out to all high school staff, so that not only do the 175 teachers see these ideas, but the admin, paras, and all other support staff do, too. This is a great way to further educate everyone about the possibilities and power of using iPads and technology in instruction. Rather than having the content and ideas in the email itself, they made a Goo.gl link with just an image teaser such as the one pictured, so that everyone has to click on this link to get to the content. This allows us to see how many views the content is getting per week by using the free analytics tools available through Goo.gl/Google.

In addition to informing our staff and allowing teachers to see one another’s ideas without having to travel anywhere to get them, we also decided to share this information with our families, too. Each week in the parent email newsletter, we are including a link for parents to view: “3 Ways MHS Students Used Technology This Week to Maximize Learning.” So far we are averaging about 84 views/week. The Google Slide show is a live file that we just add to each week, so each time the email gets sent out there is new content for viewers. There is no extra work required and we have the added bonus of having our parents become more knowledgeable about how an iPad and technology are used by their child and the school as a whole, which is great!