Sharing about @EdTechSummitsA with @k2pglobal & @kevin_baloyi for @GlobaEdCon! #GlobalEd16 #GlobalEd #ETSA16 #AfricaEd

I’m super honored to be delivering a keynote with Karen Kirsch Page (@k2pglobal) and Kevin Baloyi (@Kevin_Baloyi) about our experience being part of the EdTech Summit Africa 2016 team. This was the fourth annual EdTech Summit Africa adventure organized by Karen Kirsch Page (who goes by K2) and her co-producer Mona Ewees (@EweesMona). It was a life-changing and amazing experience to travel around South Africa, Swaziland, and Ghana for 30 days with a group of volunteer teachers. In between days on the road or sightseeing, we led ten summits for educators where we offered participants a choice of workshops about integrating and learning with technology for themselves and their students. My particular workshop was about using GoogleSites to create an online teaching portfolio or class website.

Here is the link to listen to our recorded session about EdTech Summit Africa:
https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/recording/playback/link/table/dropin?sid=2008350&suid=D.BE5B832274C28DF9329C95CE151808

Here is a link to listen to all the recorded session from 2016 Global Education Conference (plus, archived sessions from previous years are available from this page too):
http://www.globaleducationconference.com/page/2016recordings

Here is the link to see the full line-up of the conference schedule in your own timezone:
http://www.globaleducationconference.com/page/sessions-and-schedule

Here is a link to the press release for the Global Education Conference (@GlobalEdCon) now in it’s 7th year!
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/11/prweb13840884.htm

Here’s more info from the Global Ed Conference 2016 site:

The Global Education Conference (GEC) is a collaborative and world-wide community convening designed to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting educators and programs. Our primary event seeks to present ideas, examples, and projects related to connecting educators and classrooms with a strong emphasis on promoting global awareness, fostering global competency, and inspiring action towards solving real-world problems. Through this conference and associated events, attendees will challenge themselves and others to become more active citizens of the world. Participants are encouraged to learn, question, create, and engage in meaningful, authentic opportunities within a global context!

The Global Education Conference welcomes participants from all over the world and encourages presentations in any language. Training is provided in the conference platform, Blackboard Collaborate, and presenters are encouraged to take ownership of the presentation process when scheduling and promoting their sessions. The purpose of this event is to elevate and empower presenters to share their knowledge with a global audience.

We have partnered this year with iEARN to host their annual conference and youth summit in tandem with the Global Education Conference. iEARN typically hosts their conference in various conferences, but for logistical reasons, they’ve held it online twice with the GEC.

Additionally, the Global Education Conference Network organizes three other events. See http://globaledevents.com for more details.

Here are the slides we’ll be using during our keynote presentation:

Sharing the wonders of @Vocaroo with @dorakio and @kinderbanks for a 3rd grade podcast project.

Akio Iida (@dorakio) and Harry Banks (@kinderbanks) co-teach a 3rd grade class at The School at Columbia University. It will be a major loss to me and The School when these two move on to other adventures next year; Akio will be at Seoul International School and Harry will be at The Ideal School of Manhattan.

I love to pop in on their classes and see how both Akio and Harry integrate technology seamlessly to innovate teaching and learning. Their students use a variety of hardware and software without focusing on the tool so much as the process.

Today, I saw they were reviewing podcasting examples with their students in preparation for an upcoming project. They set up a Google Site for this and had attached audio files. I suggested they try uploading these files to Vocaroo and gathering the embed code so the audio would simply play within the same page without opening a separate window and without having to download the audio file to a local machine.

Vocaroo is pretty amazing. Because there is no need to sign up for the service or enter any personal information, using it with younger kids seems safe. While I’m no lawyer, I teach others to use technology academically, respectfully, and responsibly. Fingers crossed Vocaroo abides by COPPA laws and users make wise choices about the content of their audio posts.

With Vocaroo, you can either record directly on the website or upload an existing file. They you are offered you a URL, embed code, and multiple sharing options (email, Facebook, Twitter, QR code, etc…) Plus, you can even download your Vocaroo audio file as an MP3, Ogg, FLAC, or WAV. If you want to delete your message from their server, you have that option as well at the bottom of the page.

6th graders are sharing their Renaissance Photoshop projects

6th graders are uploading their finished Renaissance Photoshop collages to a shared album on The Gallery (our online photo repository powered by Drupal). I chose a few to include here. Katelin O’Hare and I are pretty pleased with the results.

We asked each student to write a reflection about the project on their personal digital portfolios. These are Google Sites that they curate and maintain for multiple years. Each academic year has its own Announcements Page on the site, and they add Posts for each artifact/description they include.

My slides from “Redefining Collaboration with Google Apps” at #NYNJGS13

Today, I’m presenting at Google Apps in Education NY/NJ Summit. This is my first Google Apps Summit, and I’m excited to be a part of it. I’m a big fan of Lisa Thumann (@lthumann), and she worked hard to put together this event.

My session is Redefining Collaboration with Google Apps from 10am-11:00am in Room 318. Here’s the description for my session on the summit’s website:

Presented by: Karen Blumberg, Technology Integrator, The School at Columbia University This session is geared towards: Techie, Teacher, Admin Level of Session: Basics

Google Apps for Education provides tools that enable a community of teachers and students to collaborate differently. With shared Calendar, Presentations, Documents, Sites (and with the advantage of Google Drive), a school’s population can communicate paperlessly, plan dynamically, and work productively and efficiently.

We’ll discuss a few examples of how Google Apps enhances our 21st Century classrooms:

Teachers at The School at Columbia University share meeting notes in a single Google Doc that is added to at every gathering.
6th grade scientists curate their personal Google Site to keep track of notes, lab work, data, and assessments.
7th grade historians locate articles and add them to a class page using the “announcements template” on a class “Current Events” Google Site.
8th grade English students share multiple drafts of their creative writing in a Google Doc that they share with their teacher.