Tues Tech Tip - 9/22

There is a great feature in Blogger to help your parents more easily connect with your blog. They can follow your blog by email. Unfortunately, this feature is not turned on by default. So let's work through the steps to turn it on.

This is a quick video of the process:

First, you need to go to the "Layout" option in the main Blogger page.

Second, you will "Add a Gadget" to the sidebar-right-1.

And finally, you will add the "Follow by Email" gadget. You will have to scroll down a bit to find it.

Thank you to Mrs. Gable for asking the original question.
The article where these directions were derived is:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/03/engage-your-audience-with-follow-by.html

STEM Design Day - Explorations

Our first Design Day has come and gone. The students went through rotations and tried all four STEM projects. They will then choose their top 2-3 and work on these in more depth. The students got to work on coding with codecombat.com, Aurduino's, Sphero's and LittleBits.

The Arduino group was the most technically challenging and was where I spent most of my time. I was able to teach the 45 min course to 3 different classes. We led the students through an Blinking LED example build. We used this video from MIT as the basic guide. We are using Sparkfun Redboards and Chromebooks, which required some modifications of the lesson.

The biggest breakthrough for pulling this lesson off was Codebender.cc. Chromebooks are becoming very popular with school districts, but they do have some downsides. One main drawback is that you cannot run additional software on them. Codebender saw the need and developed a Chrome App to get Arduino's running on Chromebooks. And, since it's a Chrome App, it technically works on any machine that runs Chrome. The setup process for Codebender is very easy and they streamlined the connection process into just 5 quick steps. We had an entire class of 6th graders running Arduino sketches on their Chromebooks in less that 5 minutes.

This is my sample build and the sketch we used is located here on Codebender.

New Job, New Journey

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of change. I had fully intended to return to Singley Academy for my 4th year. I was going to be the CTE Department chair and I was excited to grow my leadership experience. My teaching position was great, the people I worked with were great, and the school leadership was great. Everything was good.
Then, my friend applied for a job in Grapevine and listed me as a reference. I filled out the reference check for her and this is where GCISD is sneaky. Once you finish the reference check, you are dumped into the open jobs listings for GCISD. One particular job title caught my eye; "STEM Technology Integration Specialist." Clicking on it showed me a job listing for every fun technology used in schools, including robotics, coding, Arduino's, Raspberry Pi's etc. I had to apply. It was a Wednesday evening that I submitted the application. Thursday morning, I dropped the kiddos off as Wesleyan Academe for their summer programs. There was also a big church garage sale going on and I was perusing the wares when I got a call from an unknown number. I answered and a VERY energetic woman started speaking. She was talking a mile a minute and described the job, asked a few questions, and scheduled an interview for later that day. Her enthusiasm was very clear and I wasn't sure what I had just gotten myself into, but I was excited. I ran home and started researching the school district, the campus, teacher blogs, etc. I had a great job already, but I take interviewing very serious. And everything I saw about this new job seemed awesome.
Interviewing for a job is much easier when you don't NEED a new job. If I didn't get the job, I would still have my current job to go to. I felt very comfortable going into the interview and, to both of our surprises, a previous coworker was on the interview panel. The interview went well and my new principal called that evening to offer the job. To recap, I applied Wed. night and, less than 24 hours later, had a job offer on Thursday night. This was fast and I had to talk it over with the family and sleep on it. But, it was fate and I accepted the offer on Friday morning. There was some stickiness getting out of my contract with Irving, but that was sorted and I started this new journey with Cannon Elementary.
I started the job and had to hit the ground running. I'm learning as fast as I can, helping as many people as I can and trying to figure everything out. I still haven't finished unpacking my boxes in my new office. I'll get to that eventually, I'm having too much fun right now.