Charlotte's Web ThingLink

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Get Googly/EduWin from Dartmouth


Are you missing the Training  icon that should appear in the top right corner of some of your Google Apps windows? If yours is missing, you'll want to make sure you and your students follow the directions to find and launch the program. It is the icon for Synergyse. 

Synergyse is a training program that provides an interactive way to learn to use Google Apps. By following the step-by-step directions, you and your students will soon become Google Apps for Education (GAFE) experts.

Signing into Google Drive and Enabling Synergyse will tell you how to install it and how to get started.
Since lessons are short and specific, teachers may want to challenge students to become Google Ninjas by completing the modules. It can be a great "What do I do when I'm finished?" activity that students can dip and out of whenever they have time.

We'd be interested in you letting us know how it goes. 

EduWin from the "Dartmouth Tech Divas"

I was really excited to be invited to a Dartmouth Staff meeting where some of the students presented work they have been doing in class. Given the low percentage of women in Science and Technology careers, I was especially excited to learn that the presenters would all be girls. Pam Rissman and Tracy Brown teach all these classes. Pam was kind enough to provide me with this report.

"Eleven girls presented the projects they worked on in different STEM classes offered at Dartmouth, highlighting the importance of having these STEM classes in middle school.  The girls from the computer programming class presented Javascript programs they wrote that increased in complexity; the class requires no prior knowledge in programming yet a student can develop their own interactive graphical games by the end of this self-paced class.  Students from the 3d Modeling class explained how they use the engineering design process to develop their own 3d models in Autodesk Inventor which can later be printed out on the 3d printer. The Robotics class students pointed out different parts of a robot developed in class, including the gears and sensors.  Students from the Green Architecture class discussed the concepts and terms they learned to allow them to build models of houses in Autodesk Revit and to design container homes and environmentally green dog houses. The girls from the STEM 1 class showed the link they established between science and engineering by studying friction in mouse-trap propelled cars and other hands-on projects." 

While diva is generally used to refer to singers, I think of diva as a woman of extraordinary talent. There is no question in my mind that each of these students is extraordinarily talented. How wonderful that they are given the opportunity to explore those talents in classes offered here in the Union School District. Can't wait to see what they have in store for the world.

If you or one of your colleagues are doing something in your class that uses edtech tools, please let me know. I'd love to share it with other teachers.