Summer 2017 Professional Development PD Adventures

Greetings from the last month of the 2016-2017 school year!  As we near the end of one cycle and prepare to begin again in July, I have had the pleasure and privilege of recently attending and presenting at two professional development opportunities with one more major regional PD coming in August!

For the third year in a row, I attended the free Innovations for Learning conference in Lexington on June 1.  (For the first time, their registration numbers resulted in a "sell out"!)  In the morning, I partnered with the KDE KyGoDigital team to work with CIO's and TRT's about how Google apps and other key edtech can impact instruction.  In the afternoon, I presented a few sessions on game-based learning / gamification, as well as innovative presentation tools for teachers and students.  This last session was livestreamed via KDE's YouTube channel:

Note: CheckThis, the last web tool in the presentation above, just discontinued its service.

IFL is an incredible and generous opportunity from Fayette County to learn, share and network.  I highly recommend attending it next summer if you can, and follow the conference hashtag at #IFLLEX.

On June 7-9, Jefferson County Public Schools had its first Deeper Learning Symposium.  (Follow their hashtag #JCPSDL.)  Nearly two thousand JCPS educators descended on the Kentucky Exposition Center to expand their conceptualization of what learning needs to be.  As a person who had their presentation proposal accepted (once again on the topic of game-based learning), I was a fortunate non-JCPS attendee.  While several sessions were intriguing, one of the more inspiring sessions was a keynote screening of the documentary Beyond Measure, which happens to feature the journey of Kentucky's Trigg County Public Schools from traditional methods into a new mode of teaching and learning.  I was excited to see educators, many for the first time, talk about using Twitter, competency-based education, the power of PBL, and so much more!

As we look ahead, don't forget that EdCampKY will be at Bardstown Middle School on August 26, 2017.  Be sure to get your free tickets here!

CheckThis

Note: as of 5/31/17 and after five years online, CheckThis has now gone dark. I will keep this entry online only for archiving purposes.  

As our district begins to explore deeper ways for students to apply their knowledge and demonstrate understanding (such as exhibitions and capstone projects), there is a greater need for presentation tools besides Google Slides and MS PowerPoints.  One of the newest ones I've discovered is CheckThis.  They use the term "social poster" to describe their published product, but it's really just a simple website creator.  It's free, extremely easy even for younger users, and students/teachers can log in with their Google account (Twitter and Facebook are also options) to quickly register on the site.

How does it work?   You can access CheckThis via a web tool or an iOS app.  Once you register your account and create your post, you can start by editing the title, subtitle and beginning text.   By hitting the green "plus" button, you can add more multimedia: text, images (uploaded from your computer or URLs from the web), video (YouTube and Vimeo URLs), website links (Google Maps, online sound files [SoundCloud, BandCamp], tweets, or any other site URL), and built-in CheckThis apps such as a poll.

When you are ready, you can publish your "social poster" and share the URL via Twitter and other social media.  One of the interesting functions of CheckThis is that not only can you see how many views the social poster receives, but you can also receive "likes" and comments.

I found this helpful video of a user making a social poster.  I like it because it effectively demonstrates how easy it is to click and add media:

It should be noted that CheckThis will allow you to publish a social poster without logging in, but there are many benefits to creating an account, not least of which is the problem of students putting work into publishing without an account and later not being able to find the URL to edit it further or share.


An example social poster I made about "Ideas for Nearpod" is linked here.

Note the embedded YouTube video at the top, the website linked at the bottom, and the commentary column on the right side.

How could you use it?   As I already mentioned, CheckThis could be a basic website page creation tool to go with digital presentations, especially for projects that wouldn't need the complexity of options that something like Google Sites or Weebly might offer.  It could also be a way of creating online multimedia personal notes, since you could easily switch from text to pertinent links, images and videos.  Lastly, the commenting feature might create an opportunity to have digital discourse, as students give each other feedback and perhaps have a running dialogue.

Downsides?  When I first tried CheckThis and created the social poster linked above, you had another option for creating an account by using an email and password.  Recently, however, they removed that option, which leaves my account in limbo because I can no longer log in via my email.  That's a personal problem, but I had to share, as I have tweeted CheckThis and not heard yet how to successfully merge my "email" account with another option.  Of course, if you are brand new to CheckThis, you won't have this issue.

It should be noted that comments cannot be turned off.  Since these social posters are completely public and cannot be moderated, monitoring of commentary (especially with younger students) may be a necessary burden for the teacher.

Do you already use CheckThis or see other ways it could be utilized?  Please share in the Comments below!