Vermont Google Educator Group Kick Off

Yesterday, I had the privilege of joining Lucie deLabruere and many other Vermont educators as we "Kicked Off" the new Google Educator Group Vermont (GEG Vermont). The focus of the session was a fun demo slam (sharing really) of Google Apps, Chrome Web Apps, and Add-ons.  Our kick off was just one of the many inspiring sessions and workshops at the Vita-Learn VermontFest 2014 technology conference where hundreds of educators came to share ideas, resources and empower each other to become digital age teachers and learners.

The following presentation contains several links, including the new GEG Vermont G+ Community and G+ Page, and the sign up sheet where presenters provided links to their demos/resources. Our goal is to make the Vermont Google Educator Group an active learning network where Vermont educators embrace the goals of the new Google Groups, which is to...

 Learn, Share, Inspire and Empower 

become part of this community, join GEG Vermont 

Prezi Example for CCV Class

Class Presentation

Back to Blogging

No Excuses 

I've been very lax in keeping up with my blogging. I'm spending more of my energies elsewhere,  I have found that sharing ideas in Google Plus is quicker than blogging, with it's ease of posting text, links, images, and videos and commenting on other's posts. But most of what I do in G+, like in Twitter,  is consume, comment and regurgitate. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it has not been very creative or original. So, back to blogging for me whether or not other's read it.  I plan to get back to becoming a producer rather than just a consumer and to writing about my teaching, sharing my ideas, recommend digital tools for teaching and learning, as well as create new media that communicates my ideas. It goes well with what we are doing in my online course this semester.

New Literacies

This is Week #3 for my online course,  CCV Multimedia Apps & Tools students are exploring what it means to be literate in our world today, what some call the New Literacies.  I've created a diagram which I think represents some of the key new literacies that students and teachers should be addressing. I'm impressed by the discussions my students are having as they watch videos and read articles about these literacies, including Doug Belshaw's TED Video: The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies.

Producers vs Consumers

As I mentioned earlier becoming a producer not just a consumer of information/media is a goal of mine, and something I have my students do each week. In Week #4 Visual Literacy, we will be creating an image that communicates an idea or strong emotional feeling. I've shared with them some tools that they might use to find copyright free images (or they can invoke the Fair Use doctrine if they can provide evidence) and some free web based photo editing tools which they can use to remix/edit their photos such as the Chrome Web Apps,  pixlr or picmonkey. I also have created some examples and tutorials for them to see how I have used the photo editors but emphasis that I'm not necessarily a professional designer, and my media isn't perfect and I look for suggestions from them as they would from each other. The example here is not a final version but it demonstrates how to remix two photos using the layers function in Pixlr.

Thousands of Getty Photos Free to Use

One of the first things we explore in our Multimedia Apps & Tools course is Copyright and Fair Use. It's one of the most complicated concepts to understand particularly finding out;  if, when and how we can use other's work.  Today I read in the BBC News that...

Getty Images, the world's largest photo agency, has made vast swathes of its library free to use, in an effort to combat piracy.

You can go to their website Getty Images and use any image as long as you use the embed code.


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