Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Semester Wrap up

    Subject
    Tuesday TIC Tip
    From
    CJ Mcdonald
    To
    EX All; ORALL
    Sent
    Tuesday, December 16, 2014 5:43 AM

    Colleagues,
                    Two whole weeks!  From talking to some of you, it may be busier than during a work week for some of you!  I’ll not pile anymore information onto your “TIC” pile.  I challenge you to go through a few of my old emails and just check out and play with some of the things.  Literally play around with them: I always make a video of my daughter to play with video tools to see if I like it or not.

    Some successes from the semester:
    1. We made it through the printer/wifi/PC chaos at the beginning of the year!
    2. Nearly everybody has been synced to OneDrive and thus has their files backed up!
    3. Kahoot was particularly popular with the staff and students as a formative assessment
    4. The District Technology Committee has been working on K12 Technology standards to guide instructional decisions in regards to student technology use
    5. Seriously: the hottest new mobile game for students is called Trivia Crack.  Its trivial pursuit.  Seriously that’s their favorite (nothing about tying ropes, or juicing candies or call of auto theft….).  I’d say try it over the break but you won’t get anything else done.  They aptly used the word “crack” in the title…

    Goals for 2nd semester successes:
    1. I would like to meet with teams in addition to individuals for technology instruction (so I can cover more ground)
    2. I would like to document that teachers are proficient in:
      1. Google Drive
      2. OneDrive
      3. Office Products
    3. I would like to see a marked improvement in communication with parents and students.  I will continually encourage people to use at least one of these:
      1. Websites
      2. Blogs
    4. Teach surveys as a form of digital turning in
      1. Sharing is laboursome, even in Google where it actually works
      2. Creating a survey for kids to enter a url of their work will make your life MUCH easier.


    Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!  I will have my email “on”, so go ahead and let me know if you have any questions!  I’ll get to them at some point.

    CJ McDonald
    Linn-Mar Community School District
    Middle School Technology Integration Coach
    (319) 892-4856
    LM TICs Website: http://ow.ly/AxFhK


Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Syncing Data, Google Form Making

    Subject
    Tuesday Tic Tip
    From
    CJ Mcdonald
    To
    EX All; ORALL
    Sent
    Tuesday, December 09, 2014 6:15 AM

    Morning all,
                    I hope everything is going well—late Thanksgivings really make the pre-Christmas time fly by!  Since this email is about data, I thought I’d post one of my favorites:

    --- yes I know I’m a dork—I’ve accepted that long ago.   

    Below is the overall data I have for the OneDrive syncing I’ve done.  We are almost done!  I’ve had a lot of great conversations about where and how to save documents! (HERE is the video I made a couple weeks ago about OneDrive syncing in case you missed it last time)


    The way I did the chart above is creating a form (survey) that I fill out after I speak with each one of you.  Then I have created a pivot table and a pivot chart to visualize my data.
    HERE is how to make a Google form (first 8 slides).
    HERE is a video I found on making a Google sheets pivot table.
    I’m learning a little more about these each time I help someone with this, so if you have data or information you’d like to visualize in some way, please set up a meeting with me to help you! 

    Workshops:
    • Syncing OneDrive
    • Using Google Sheets & Excel to visualize data

    Oak Ridge (Computers Classroom)
    • Wed. 7:15-7:45 AM
    • Thursday 3:00-3:30 PM

    Excelsior
    • Tuesday 3:00-3:30 (early this week!  Sorry that’s just what I have to do to make it happen!)
    • Thursday 7:15-7:45 AM

    Go out and dominate today!

    CJ McDonald
    Linn-Mar Community School District
    Middle School Technology Integration Coach
    (319) 892-4856
    LM TICs Website: http://ow.ly/AxFhK