Gif me!

This may seem odd, especially for a tech educator, but I just made my first gif this week! And you know what? It was way easier than I thought it would be!

The first challenge in this year's GEG tech challenge was to create a gif using Screencastify.  Now, I love Screencastify and use it for everything. But I've never used it to create a gif before. 

My first attempt literally was a blank... literally drawing a blank. But my second attempt was actually something useful! All our ECC teachers got new iPads right before the December break. And while I did get everything set up, I forgot to do one thing... If you're stuck on how to get your iPhone photos to be more user friendly, and not that HEIC format, check this out -->

It helped me learn how to create a gif, and it helped out my teachers in the process!

I can't wait to see what next week's tech challenge brings!

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MiGoogle 2019

My Tuesday started extra early with a very long drive, which is not fun for this non-morning person.  However. 

It was a worthwhile drive to a very worthwhile day at the 8th annual MiGoogle Conference.  A few years ago at this conference, I got to meet Alice Keeler for the first time.  This year, thanks to the opening keynote, I became a new fan of Jake Miller and his Educational Duct Tape, In fact, I almost got whiplash because I found myself nodding so vigorously at much of what Jake spoke about, including this:

#EduDuctTape jakemiller.net

This is my new mantra.  Or, really, it's a new way to express the message in which I firmly believe - tech is not the goal of a learning experience, instead, tech should enhance the learning experience while the skill, lesson, or content is the goal.

Jake had *so* many good tidbits and reminders that it was kinda hard to keep up.  The best thing I can offer you now is to follow Jake on Twitter, and check out his podcasts and website, paying particularly close attention to his gifs!

Gifs.  I am now obsessed with learning to make them.  Yeah, there are tons and tons of them out there, but the way Jake uses them, for those mini-lessons, snippets of learning, and digestible bites of knowledge... yep.  Gotta get me some of that.

Aside from fangirling over Jake, I spent time learning about Soundtrap (post coming soon!), Google Keep (finally!), and exploring Shared Drives (an awesome organizational assist!) in addition to presenting on Google Tour Creator and Google Slides.

Interestingly, something that echoed through both MiGoogle and last week's Mercy Tech Talk was the concept of coaching, modeling, and gradual release.  As educators, we model for our students, coach them, and gradually release the responsibility of constructing knowledge to them.  The same applies as leaders in an educational community.  

I do, we do, you do.

This mantra should live within all who work in an educational setting.

Thank you to John Sowash and Sowash Ventures and Lake Fenton High School and all the sponsors who helped make MiGoogle 2019 possible!  Looking forward to next year!