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Today I’m reviewing a photo editing tool, fotor, for my Cool Tool review. Unfortunately, this is the easiest review I’ve done. Right after we signed up for Cool Tools to review, I had a need for a photo editor. Thinking I’d be efficient, I figured I would try fotor out for my needs and for my review. To use the app on my laptop, I needed to download it. That’s when the trouble started. In addition to the photo editing app, I got a browser and a security app – neither which I knew was coming or agreed to. As far as I’m concerned, that’s dirty pool. The first thing I did when I noticed these extra apps was to uninstall fotor. After I did that, the app asked for feedback as to why I was giving it the boot.   I filled out the form and told them it was because I found these other programs and if it wasn’t because of them, they should let me know and I’d try again.   That was about 6 weeks ago. I haven’t heard yet so I’m going on the assumption that the extra programs on my device came a

This post will be about the different productivity tools I think I’ll be using in my classroom. The first will be some sort of desktop/laptop. With those tools, I can see myself using several applications and systems. Calendar – I currently use Google Calendar for keeping family activities straight, and I can see me creating a new calendar just for my classes. That will give me a way to keep track of events from major (testing, vacations etc.) to due dates of assignments. If I am in a school with Google Classroom, I can also share the calendar with my students so they can see important things. I would also consider an organization app like Wunderlist . Email – I can see that as being an important way of interacting with administration and parents. Google – In this class and others in the program, I’ve learned that there is a huge number of things out there to help teachers. From lesson plans to work sheets to class room activities, I plan to honor my previous career

So, at the end of my last post, I had all my mandatory coaching training done, now I just have to wait until the paperwork gets through the school district and the state for my permit comes through. I have to wait until that is all done before contact with the team, so for now I’m focusing honing what I know about the mechanics and adding new drills and game play strategies to my toolbox. My first go-to for this is the US Lacrosse Coaches Education Program. As I already mentioned before, the Level 1 certification I hold focused on the basic techniques – how to teach a kid to pass, catch, shoot and pick up a ground ball. If you’ve ever watched a youth or developmental middle school game, you see how important it is to focus on the fundamentals of these particular tasks. The level 1 courses also gave me important lessons on how to teach the proper way for kids to hit – making sure we are playing a safe and controlled, yet physical, game of lacrosse without reverting to

This week, I’m reviewing a presentation Cool Tool called Slidestory. From their website, Slidestory is a way to create and share presentations .   At first, I thought this would be similar to Google Slides or Powerpoint, but it’s a bit different. What the product does it allow you to record your own narration over top of a series of picture files of your choice. Think being able to record a stereotypical “our vacation photos from an old-style carrousel slide projector” event. As I went to check this product out, three things jumped out at me. The first, the web site shows it’s a beta version. Beta software puts me on guard to start, so immediately I’m skeptical. In order to use it, you also need to create a free account. Now I’ve created accounts with several applications, but the Beta nature had me hesitate a bit more. Then, I noticed at the bottom of the page that you had to download a client application onto your own devices.   Now alarms are officially going off in my hea

Starting with the generic, Dr. Thornburg’s article on his theory of learning spaces made sense to me. .   While pondering (in my cave) about the video we watched in class , I started to realize the connection of the cave and the watering hole (our blogs in this case) are really helping my understanding of the material we all learning in this program. But there was something about the model, as presented in the video, that was bugging me. The first was how my mind looked at the three spaces and immediately thought of sequential steps, based on how the material was presented. Eventually I got through this by realizing the cave/watering hole stages intermix. The other problem I had went deeper. It seemed something was missing. As it turns out, so does Dr. Thornburg.  In the presented article, Dr. Thornburg adds the Lifespace to the initial model to deepen the understanding by doing. That brought it all together for me. Just in this program, we are exposed to the Life stage through b

There is one large difference in becoming a coach at the community youth level and high school varsity – bureaucracy. Youth activities rely so much on volunteers they are usually just happy to get anybody, let alone somebody who knows the game. I was certified in CPR/AED and First Aid through work, so I at least had that, although in the early years of the club they hadn’t started requiring those certificates. Before I can have contact with the high school kids, I need a valid Pupil Activity Permit from the Ohio Department of Education. There are some courses/certifications that were no brainers – First Aid, CPR and concussion awareness. A biggie, however, is the Fundamentals of Coaching through the National Federation of High Schools (NFHS).   This is a mandatory training and is available on-line through the NFHS learning portal ($65). This was a little bit different than the coaching basics I had for my US Lacrosse certification. Some of the new information is emphasis

As anybody that has been in a classroom or business conference room in the last 10 years knows, many spaces in which somebody is presenting information have some sort projection technology installed. It may be an interactive white board, LCD projector or even the growing use of interactive LED flatscreens. (Interesting summary here on one analyst’s view of what’s going to happen to interactive whiteboards in North America over the next few years.) So instead of telling you what you already know about the importance and utility of some sort of presentation package, I’m going to instead do a bit of comparison between Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. I’m going to leave Keynote and Prezi out of the comparison. I seldom dip into the Mac world, so I don’t know much about Apple’s presentation tool, Keynote, to help. The quick checks I found on Prezi seem to indicate it’s growing in use, but seems to lag the “big three” in use. Check out others comparisons here or h

This week’s topic in my tech class is Digital Citizenship. This topic really hits home for me. If you’ve read my first few topical posts, you probably have gotten the idea that I’m a bit wary of the openness of the digital world in general and social media in particular. I think my hang-ups fall in three main categories – people’s behavior, the usefulness of the information and the veracity of the information. Personally, I’ve stressed over these assignments because of all three of these categories. From the behavior standpoint, I often enjoy the give and take of a spirited debate. While I try to keep the discussion light during these face-to-face exchanges, it’s obviously impossible to read facial and vocal cues online, so I have no reference as to when to change my tactics. This leaves me with the concern that I’m offending or insulting unknown people. Then they’re upset and I look like an ass. While I’m kinda used to looking like an ass and few people care about my opinio

In my tech class, I have an assignment to learn a new skill and share the journey on my blog. I kicked around a few things, and even had one in mind, when situations change (as they often do). About 10 days before the start of the practice season, I joined the coaching staff of the boys’ lacrosse team at my local High School. I may be understating this a bit, as I doubled the size of the staff. So, how did I get here? Eight years ago, my youngest son started playing lacrosse at the youngest age in our brand-new youth lacrosse program. I didn’t know much about the game, but I found a way to help by being the guy who fetched balls that went off the field and returned them to the sidelines. The next year there was only one coach for 20 middle-schoolers, so I gradually moved closer to the sidelines to help watch the kids during the games. That led to me being an official coach for the third season. I had never played, but I figured that a lot of my job would be just to help manage beh

As I advance in years, I sometimes find myself the strange situation of being the one trying to provide sage advice to younger people. Be they my kids or newly minted professionals who I’ve had the pleasure of helping to train. I often fall back one saying – “Do you remember all the jerks you went to high school with? Well, they get jobs too.” I use this to hide my shock at “adults” that seem to never grow up and rely on the same anti-social behaviors they displayed in their adolescence. Over 25 years in industry pretty much convinced me that not only do the jerks get jobs, they often get promoted and you find yourself working for them. While pursuing my teaching credentials, I’ve come across a couple situations that show me that my new profession is not dissimilar from my old when it comes to adults acting like mis-behaved children. I’m in my second course that has field experience in a local school. So far, both of my experiences have been in different schools and different

Hello everybody. This week in tech class we discussed blended learning. Before we begin, let me give you the definition that most of the resources used for blended learning. According to Christensen, Horn and Staker and the Christensen Institute, “The definition of blended learning is a formal education program in which a student learns: ·          at least in part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace; ·          at least in part in a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home; ·          and the modalities along each student’s learning path within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience.” This class is a good example of this definition of blended learning. We meet most every week in a classroom for face-to-face instruction and discussion on a topic. Then we are given some online resources to continue our learning at our own pace over the next week. The week we