Tech Educator Programs

Certifications can show that you are willing to go further to learn and develop as a teacher. Certifications for a type of technology can show that you are proficient or at least a working knowledge of the software.

Here are three certifications you might want to try.

Apple Distinguished Educator

This was one of the first certification programs and is one of the most difficult to achieve. To become an ADE, you need to demonstrate you integrate Apple products in innovative ways through a 2-minute video. They give some advice for how to do this, but planning early is important.

Apple Teacher

Apple Teacher is the ADE's little brother. There are two types of certification - Mac and iPad. Each has a total of nine (could be 10 as they are adding more) and each program has five questions that require you to read a scenario about a project using and determine how to solve it by dragging in answers or selecting from a few choices. The tests are free, so there is no reason not to try.

While not available in every country, you can create a new account (with any email address) in a country where it is offered.

Google Certification

Google Certification has a few different levels beginning with the Google Certified Educator Level 1.

From there you can try the Level 2 test. The first two are requirements for the next level of Trainer and Innovator.

The Level 1 test is $10 USD and is scenario-based. It takes about an hour to complete. Google supplies study materials and there are Google Plus groups with people discussing how to study for it.


Others of Note

Many tech apps or programs offer some sort of certification, two I highly recommend are the Book Creator Ambassador program and Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship program.

Going through certification can not only show you know how to use the product but also shows a dedication to learning and maintaining a level of proficiency, so go out, get certified, and share your knowledge.

cross posted to tekiota.com

Using Trello in MYP Design

I started using Google Classroom for the first time this year. Foolishly, I thought students knew how to use it, and assignments started coming in that were in the wrong format or getting "lost".

I was doing some resource gathering for collaboration tools and found that Trello has and education page that gives some examples of how it is used in classrooms to facilitate collaboration, but when I saw the example of the writing process, I thought I need to try this in Design.

The MYP Design Cycle is less of a cycle, and more of a linear process. Yes, students should be able to jump back and forth, but in reality, they go step by step.

(I do realize the way I am teaching plays a huge role in this. And that gives me an idea to let students go through the cycle as they please as long as they, in a way of their choice, "hit" the criterion.)

A photo posted by Thomas Hammerlund (@thomashammerlund) on Nov 22, 2016 at 9:05pm PST

Each student is assigned a card to which they attach their design document with all the criteria. If they have a presentation, they can save it in their Drive and link to it. Images and annotations are also a part of the document.

As the students are graded, I move them along the design process adding labels for quick communication if needed for missing work, or to come talk to me, or one for if they need help.

It is not perfect, so far it is working well. I like that everything is in one place, the process is visual, and due dates are visual as well. 

Teach Curation

Something hit me as I was bookmarking websites today, "I have a lot of tags that are not useful so I should go through sometime and fix them." Finding information and referring to it is something I use all the time. Looking at some of the tags I have used, I find many that are not so descriptive.

Then, for some reason, I wondered what students today do. I don't know why I went in that direction, but I realized (remembered?) that curation is a skill I should teach more.

Automotive Social 

Content by Mr Rohit Bhargava

Image by Welenia Studios 

via Flickr

Come to think of it, teaching how to organize a hard drive or Google Drive is another skill they should learn -- or at least learn different ways of organizing.