Heartland AEA Digital Learning News

Heartland AEA’s Digital Learning Team is excited to announce the keynote speakers for this year’s Heart of Innovation Summer Summit! This year’s Summer Summit will once again be a virtual event taking place from 8:30-12:30 on the mornings of August 9th and 10th. In addition to informative breakout sessions led by area educators and Heartland AEA consultants, we are thrilled to welcome Katie Novak, Jorge Valenzuela, and Jake Miller as our keynote speakers!

Please reserve the mornings of August 9th and 10th to join us at the Heart of Innovation Summer Summit! Registration information will be coming soon!

Heartland’s Digital Learning Team was fortunate to attend the Future of Education Technology Conference last month. In reflecting upon our learning, we gathered “Seven Wonders of FETC” to share. A list of our takeaways is below and further explanations are available by visiting Seven Wonders of FETC.

• Framework for designing engaging learning experiences
• Templates for creating graphic novels
• Ways to use Google Workspace
• Headspace for mindfulness and meditation for educators and students
• Connecting with teachers as a coach
• Free, online video editing
• Screencasting to save time, create lessons, and provide feedback

Please reach out to one of our Digital Learning Consultants if you would like to more information about our learning at FETC.

Over the last few months Google has announced a number of updates to various products. You may have noticed some of these changes as you navigate the Google Workspace for Education, but others are less obvious. We each have our own workflows, which means some updates are more impactful for certain individuals than for others. Several updates that may be important to a wide range of people include:

• Pageless formatting in Docs – Often we produce files for digital consumption rather than for printing and the new pageless formatting no longer constrains our Docs to the size of a piece of paper.
• New view for Gmail – Gmail is getting a new look. As our communication needs have changed, Gmail seeks to keep pace with a new integrated view that features email, Google Meet, Google Chat and Spaces all in one place.
• Link directly to part of a web page from Chrome – Many of us have experienced the problem of providing students a link and then having difficulty getting everyone to the right place on the web site. Chrome now allows you to link directly to specific text.
• Smart chips in Docs – typing “@” in Docs opens a new menu allowing you to add people, content, events, maps, formatting, and more to your Doc.

As mentioned above, these are just a few of the recent updates. The Indiana Google Educators Group compiled a more thorough list of updates and tips for using each of the Google applications.

Please note that some updates may not yet be available for all domains.

Teachers and schools that use Seesaw may be interested in the following resources:

• The statewide PD session, Creating Accessible Learning Experiences, was held on 2/9. If you were unable to attend, here is the link to the recording for the session and the slides from the presentation are available here.
• Seesaw Updates & News from the Seesaw Team - this slide deck is being updated, so it may be helpful to bookmark it or add it to your Google Drive
• Iowa Seesaw Mailing List - please sign up on this form if you would like to receive emails with information about professional learning, updates, tips and opportunities specifically geared for Iowa educators.
• Check out the two Seesaw courses listed below: Seesaw in the Classroom Basics and Seesaw in the Classroom: Beyond the Basics

Teaching is hard work! We all know that it takes a lot of time and effort to design engaging lessons, provide effective feedback for students, build relationships, stay up on current educational trends and research, and to do all of the other things that are necessary to positively impact our students’ lives. These tasks have always been difficult and time consuming, but for many teachers, it has become even more difficult over the past few years. EfficienTEACH is a new project from Matt Miller designed to help provide some relief from the burdens that make teaching difficult. This project will, obviously, not eliminate all stresses or solve all problems, but the goal is to provide tips and guidance on:

• What research and brain science tell us that work effectively and efficiently in learning
• What teachers say has worked in the classroom
• What technology can do to simplify and streamline our work

A unique aspect of this project is that it is not simply one person’s ideas, but rather a collaborative project with teachers all over the world contributing tips, ideas, and guidance to help make teaching more efficient. At this point, the project is an outline focusing on student engagement, communication, feedback, routines, strategies, and more. This outline is open for anyone to leave comments/ideas, so please peruse existing ideas to see what might be useful for you and add your ideas to benefit others.

Matt has stated that, depending on the amount of interest in this project, it may become a new website, a series of blog posts, or possibly a new book. No matter how the project progresses, all ideas will be attributed to those who contribute them.

Our team of five consultants serves the 9 regions of Heartland Area Education Agency and designs and delivers the Heart of Innovation Summer Summit and Webinar Series. We are ready to deliver professional learning focused on effective digital learning and technology integration. Please reach out if we can design learning just right for you!

Email: haeatech@heartlandaea.org
Website: https://www.heartlandaea.org/educators/cia/instructional-tech/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/heartlandaeainnovativeeducators