Technology Notes & Resources

Pinterest Overview:

• An app for saving an organizing images
• Great for sharing images with others, or organizing your own
• Common uses - get inspuration for careers/hobbies, store images of dreams, ideas and thoughts organized, share ideas with others
• A "pin" lives on a "board"
• Boards can be made based on topic, category, etc.
• Can pin and post from a Google extension
• Posts with multiple photos get pinned often
• Can make boards private or public

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Social Media Conversations About Race Annotations:

Using Kami, a new annotative tool, we took annotations on the article "Social Media Conversations About Race". This article described how social media has allowed for a spread of opinions on debated topics by individuals, particularly related to race.

Twitter Overview:

• Twitter allows for "microblogging", or sharing short messages up to 140 characters
• Common actions:
• Retweeting - sharing tweets another user posted
• Liking - flag tweets to view later or recognize another's comment
• Post origional content - share your works or opinions
• Follow - follow other users who share your interests
• Block - keep your account secure by blocking sketchy users
• Hashtags:
• Use the "#" sign with a popular word or phrase to create a hashtag
• Expands your audiance to people who are interested in the particular hashtag
• Profile:
• Select a professional profile photo
• Use your header to express your interests and what you are all about
• Share about yourself and your interests in you bio to get people to follow you
• Media:
• Media is 40 times more likely to be retweeted if media is included

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How to Stay Safe on Twitter:

We are finally getting more in social media, now that a cohesive community has been created within NEW. Hopefully using social media we will be able to share our projects and work, while also connecting with peers and professionals. It was necessary that everyone within our class knew how to be respective citizens within our community before we went online. To start our social media works, we would be tackling Twitter. We began by brainstorming and understanding how to use twitter safely. The big ideas that we came up with are shown to the right:

Using these ideas we created a fun, informative video:

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Online Annotations: 

A tool we use quite commonly in this core (and I am sure you have seen me reference it in different blog posts) is "Diigo". This is a chrome extension that allows users to annotate all sorts of online sources. For example, suppose you were another teacher reading through Tucker's blog post about student discussions. You wanted to implement something similar, but you wanted to individualize it to your class. It could be helpful to jot some notes down on the page where you can reference them and the entire post later.



It is super easy to highlight different phrases and to make notes on them as well. As soon as you highlight the text the option to annotate presents itself!

Referencing both the article and your annotations is easy...just go to the Diigo website and you can view your entire library of annotations.

This tool is great for making some notes on interesting things you are reading, as well as when delving into a deep text or piece of research. With all the internet usage we have in our core, Diigo has been a staple in our researching.

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Instagram Tips and Tricks Guide:

Because both September Spotleson and I are pretty familiar with the popular social media app, Instagram, we created a fun, how-to guide involving the little things that makes one’s feed more organized and nice looking. This is not intended to be a “Google Slides Presentation” per se, but rather a flip through guide. That is why the front is not necessarily as large as that required for a presentational slides.

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Organizational Tools :

Being that NEW core consists of three periods and many different assignments, it is necessary to have an effective way for keeping track of due dates, homework, exam days, etc. We explored two different ways to do this, the first being Google Calendar. 

Pros: The great thing about Google Calendar is that you can easily transfer events from our class calendar onto your personal calendar. In addition, it is preferable for some people to look out at a calendar type layout for the week or month. Also, phone alerts are available.

Cons: Some people are not big on the design of the calendar, as it can get crammed. Also, if assignments are placed on the day they are due, students might forget about them until the day of, if they are not looking far ahead on the calendar.

The next option serves mostly as an app, called Wunderlist, but it is also available online. This is for the people who work well with lists. Different lists can be created, and checked off when the assignments are completed.

Pros: Because different lists can be created, there is the potential for more organization. There could be a list of things due one day, and another list of things due another day. This can be easily accessed from the phone or computer. Text alerts are also available.

Cons: If users do not separate assignments into different lists, then their list of assignments could get very long and intimidating. This approach is not as easy to keep up with deadlines.

Currently my personal preference has been the "Work Checklist" feature in my blog, because I am a "list" type of person. Plus, it has been very convenient to have all the links available right there. I do not get text notifications, or anything fancy like that, but it seems to be a good fit for me in terms of this core. However, for my other classes where I am not using Blogger, I am going to look into the other ideas.

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Coding:

Expanding our knowledge of all things technology-related, we have picked up with coding through Khan Academy. As someone who is in AP Computer Science, I have some background in coding and I know there are a variety of different ways to code, partially based on the coding language. Through Khan Academy we have been using Java C++, particularly in animation and drawing. 

We watched a video about animating a car (above).

Later we made our own "Exploding Sun". You obviously cannot see the animation, but hopefully you can understand that in the real program the sun increasing in size, and the car drives forward. Some other projects have involved creating pictures out of line segments, ellipses, rectangles, etc. As time goes on we will accumulate more coding skills, and explore other coding languages.

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Webinar:

A webinar is a seminar on the web, which involves a slides presentation with a voice over, that lasts about an hour.

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Blogging 101 - Beginning Your Blog:

1. About Page
• Why you are writing about specific topic
• What background do you have in this topic
• Do not share personal information
2. Sidebar

• Encourage visitors to your blog to subscribe
• Short "about" 1 sentence about you
• Include a photo of yourself
• Include links to any social networks you want readers to connect with you
1. Blog Post Titles
• Most popular font size is between 20 and 36
• Black font is preferred
• Not too many words: preferably 6-8 words or 50-70 characters
• Focus titles on helping rather than telling
• Suggest a better way to do something
• Exaggerate and use positive superlatives for a strong emotional headline
2. Blog Content Tips
• Beginning should hook reader
• Posts can be 300-500 words. Say less and blog more!
• Use subtitles to clearly label different parts
• Always include at least one piece of media (pictures, videos, info graphics)
• Conclusion can involve a summarization, mic drop, or an invitation to join the conversation

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How to design a strong Google Slide presentation:

1. 10-15 slides of content + a side of MLA citations
2. Font = at least 30 point font so it is large enough to be read
3. Use the same font for every slide and make sure it is not a distracting font
4. Cite all media and resources
5. Stamped media: http://citationmachine.net/index2.ohp and http://johnjohnston.infor/flickrCC
6. Do not include too much text: let media tell the story 
7. High quality media - avoid clip art and watermarked images
8. Information should be known - do not read tons of information from slides
9. No complete sentences: words and phrases only
10. Correct spelling, uniformity, organized nicely

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How To Create A Kanbanchi:

Kanbanchi is a great organization tool when working in groups, or simply to organize your person tasks. However, because it is such a unique tool it may be difficult to navigate initially. These instructions will walk you through how to use/create a Kanbanchi.

When you first create an account and log into Kanbanchi this screen will appear, exhibiting each of your Kanbanchi projects. To get started select one, or create a new one typing in the tool bar.

You will be taken to this
screen. This is called your "Dashboard" and is where all your tasks will appear. If at any point you would like to have multiple Kanbanchi projects, or dashboards, open at once you can click the "Add Tab" button shown below and located at the bottom of the page.

To get started, click on the name of your Kanbanchi located at the top left of your screen.

This will bring up the information about your Kanbanchi. Here you can write a description about your Kanbanchi.

If you scroll down a bit you will see a list of "Colour Tags". These can be altered be simply clicking on them. You can customize these to say whatever you want...if you are working will a large group you might want to put committee names on these, or individuals names. You can put priorities, reminders, what order you want tasks to be completed in, etc. Basically these tags are just another opportunity for you to individualize and organize your dashboard. Later on I will show you how to filter your dashboard to see only certain cards, and you can filter based on colour tag.

Now before we actually start created cards, let's get familiar with our columns. These again can say whatever you want. Click on one of the columns. Information will show up on the right side of your screen, allowing you to change the column name, description, and maximum amount of cards allowed per column. I typically do not limit the card number, however this can be helpful if you are creating a very large dashboard with so many cards that scrolling down is a pain.

Now that we have our columns created we can begin creating cards, which are the actual tasks, reminders, etc. or the content of the dashboard. Click on the plus sign under one of the columns. It does not matter which one you do because the cards can easily be switched from one column to another.

Type whatever you want onto the card.

Next click enter and your text is turned into a card.

Click on the card you created to pull up all the information, shown on the left side of the screen. The following instructions show how to customize the cards even further.

Begin by clicking "Add Colour" at the top left of the information window. A list will appear with all the Colour Tags you designed earlier. Select one.

This will now appear on the card as shown.

Back to the information window: click on the little paint pallet as shown to choose the color of the card.

Slightly below there is a "Set priority" button which allows you to select how important each task is.

The priority and color are shown like this:

A little bit below the "Set priority" button is an "Assign to" button which lets you assign the task to a specific person (of whom the Kanbanchi is shared with via Google) or a group of people. If you assign a task to someone then their initials will appear on the bottom of the card. Along with assigning the card to someone, you may also insert a time frame for the task. 

Next let's attach a file. This can be a Google Docs, link, photo, etc. Links and docs show up as a link on the card.

If you click on the "Attach a file" button, this screen will show up allowing you to choose something from your Google Drive or to upload from your computer.

Select an attachment and something like this will show up under "Attachments".

Scroll over your chosen attachment and click pin. This will make your file show up on the actual card, rather than just in the information section.

In the case of a photo your card will now look similar to this. With another form of media a link may just appear at the top of the card.

That's about it for the card customization. Now click back on the name of your dashboard in the top left comer.

At the top of the information click on "Activity". This shows you a written version of progress taking place on the Kanbanchi.

Next to "Activity" select "Branding". Here you can change the background of your Kanbanchi.

Now that we are done customizing your Kanbanchi, let's click on the "Filter" icon shown next to the clock in the top left of your screen.

Filtering a Kanbanchi is super helpful when you are working with a large Kanbanchi with tasks assigned to multiple groups. Here they can filter the cards according to a variety of aspects.

Our Kanbanchi is now all done! Drag cards between columns according to how progress is going, or for whatever purpose your dashboard is being used for.

Here is an example of a Kanbanchi I made, all filled up with different cards.

I hope these instructions helped you, and good luck with your own Kanbanchi!