I seem to always get request to provide lists of apps for HS math. That’s nearly impossible to do sometimes because HS Math is not just one course. It’s many courses. I taught Algebra 1, Geometry and Algebra 2. The ipad did not exist in my room until my final year with my own classroom…two years ago. Back then, my class was enhanced with whiteboard apps where my students did the recording. Now, we have the ability to challenge kids so much more. Below are my list of app recommendations that empower kids to dig deep into the math, collaborate, create and yes…solve. While the list below is a collection of ipad apps tools like padlet, Des-Man and Google Docs/Presentations definitely can and do play a major role in math classrooms.

I absolutely love free easy tools that make my life a bit simpler. Canva and Thinglink both fit that mold for me.   A Page of My DEN Fall VIrtcon presentation created using Canva Canva is a free web based design tool that allows users to create graphics of anything at any size. It’s still in beta so users will need an invite in order to create. I use canva to create almost all of my professional presentations because of its library of images and graphics that truly help to clearly get the message across. Users can purchase premium images from within canva for $1 each but I have yet to use that feature. All of my images have been created free. What makes Canva even more amazing is that by sharing with the "ability to edit", users can collaborate with others to achieve agreeable results. Unlike other tools, Canva simplifies the design process by providing templates for everything from concept to image placement. If I want a particular image in my project, I literally upload it and drag it into its placement container where it is resized for optimal fit. Color matching is even simpler because users can select any color with a hex code to achieve the desired look. Now, add the linking ability of thinglink and create interactive posters, handouts, instructional guides and even app recommendations that lead learners to even more! Still waiting on a Canva invite, click HERE to gain instant access and experience its greatness. You’re welcome! Just leave a comment of thanks once you come back up from air! See a few of the canva+thinglink images that I’ve created below!      

What keeps individuals from speaking up in a crowd? What keeps them from engaging in conversations? What keeps teachers from sharing their work with peers?  Some of it can be attributed to shyness or even introvert-ness. However, in my experience the ability to fully give one oneself in an open forum has been the result of having a lack of confidence. Self confidence is the product of a great relationship with one’s own self. It is a result of being okay with the you that you are and are striving to be. I speak to so many individuals who are hesitant to join the "party of sharing" because they can’t get beyond thinking that they can’t. They head to PLC and rely on the contributions of other members of the staff. They attend trainings and sit…vehemently taking notes. They do this with unknowingly having the same tools and skills as those that they "look up to" to learn from. Instead of teachers standing up…standing out…and sharing their own skills, they are masking their own abilities while building up those of others. This happens because they haven’t yet established the relationship of self. The single most important relationship that we can build is the one with ourselves. The relationship of self is the one that fuels the confidence and spirit needed to forge relationships with others. How we think about ourselves can push or hinder our abilities to share the best of who we are. You won’t even recognize yourself at your best or worst without first acknowledging who you are at the deepest of levels. In other words, you can have the greatest skills on the planet but if you don’t believe in them first…you can’t possibly share them with anyone else. As someone who used to struggle with self confidence, leaving my former self behind was as simple as accepting my own fabulousness. It’s not a matter of thinking that I am above or beyond anyone else. It’s about realizing that I am amazing in my own skin. I am smart and not because I know everything but because I acknowledge that I do not nor do I have to. I don’t try to walk into a room and hide. Instead I walk into a room and join conversations. I share. I write. I OWN ME. Here’s a test…. 1. Take a selfie 2. Create a meme that describes what you feel about yourself. 3. Does your selfie (outer) match what you wrote (inner)? I’ve seen people, myself included, place more effort on the quick selfie, the image that people see. What if more effort were given to make sure that the build up happens from the inside? We wouldn’t have to beg teachers to get up and share. We wouldn’t have to convince them of their own abilities in and out of their classrooms. They would just…BE… A beautiful representation of the best of themselves… Repeat this phrase often… (insert your name), you are amazing, brilliant and awesome. You are the best YOU that you can possibly be. You have something to share that the world needs…that YOU need. No one else can share what you do because what you do is a result of your own genius.  

Prior to leaving for college in August, I made a purchase that I thought would help my daughter fulfill her technological needs as a college freshman. I bought a chromebook. I wanted to spend the time walking her through the ins and outs of her new device. She wouldn’t let me and insisted that she could figure it out. She did, for the most part. She found youtube, twitter and her college textbooks. As I pressed her for finding where she would type her college essays, she responded… "This thing doesn’t have Microsoft mom." To which I replied… "No, it has google docs which is pretty great." I asked time and again if she found google docs and her response was almost always a swift change in the subject. I knew that she had not. Instead of using her own device in her dorm, she spent hours in the library typing via microsoft and "googling" research. It is now November and tonight we changed that. My daughter asked me, the "math teaching mom", for help editing her college essay. For someone who refused my math help since I taught Geometry and NOT Algebra II, therefore not "knowing enough" about the topic, the irony does not escape me. Never Used Google? Just Jump Right In! Like most kids her age who have never gone "Google", my daughter was using tools that were familiar to her. In lieu of her emailing me her document, I created a document in my Drive and shared the link to her. Without missing a beat, she pasted her paper into the document, no different than she would when using a Word document.   This is where the magic begins! I started highlighting and commenting right away. The kid was a bit shocked, but in a good way. How on earth was I typing in her document 180 miles away and also commenting like we would on any of our social networks. It was like magic happening!! Remember that whole "research happening outside of the document" part? I encouraged her to find "tools and research", and like a kid in a candy store, she excitedly found that every tool that she needed for class was right there within the google interface. Like Tom Cruise being "had at hello", I had my daughter at "cite as footnote" and "insert". For a heavily independent young lady "going google" was as simple as getting the entry point to do so. She started flying like the wind as we traded editing back and forth, rewording and revising. What used to be a one sided conversation via email was now a collaborative effort and one that she did not need to go to the library to have. The chromebook just got a bit more powerful to this college freshman. It only took three months.    

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad My mother was and is a major source of inspiration in everything that I do. Growing up, she was the local "speaking" guru of our community. To be fair, she still is. Over the years she has coached kids to national titles, scholarships and a plethora of other awards for public speaking. Watching her work is like witnessing art as she poetically translates the words that she writes on paper into the message that she delivers. I think that all of us, myself and my siblings, have fond memories of rehearsals before performing. We did it so much that what she taught us has been forever ingrained in our memories. I created the Haiku Deck above to share the lessons that she taught us about speaking. I’ve also included the comments below which are a part of this deck. However, when the deck is embedded, the comments are not seen. You can view it with its comments HERE. 1. Write with Purpose: Define, Engage Charge A great public speech starts with great preparation…writing with purpose. A good speech captures the attention of an audience by grabbing them at the start, taking them on a journey and charging them with something to do… 2. Be Yourself, Speak from your soul. Regardless of the nature of the public speech, the speaker must always remain true to themselves. Who you are should be evident through your words and delivery. 3. Practice to learn it. Never read from a paper. Your public speeches should be a conversation with your audience. Know your thoughts well enough so that even if you need to look down for a second, you know where to go without hesitation. 4. Don’t be a stiff chicken. Have some personality. Your public speeches should be a conversation with your audience. Know your thoughts well enough so that even if you need to look down for a second, you know where to go without hesitation. 5. Speak clearly. Enunciate every word. It’s not "tha". It’s "the". Don’t say "A" with a short sound. Keep it long as the English language intended. Every phrase should be clearly articulated. 6. Include inflections. Speak with purposeful highs and lows. Changing the pitch of a word when needed is key to phrasing. Those moments must be done with a purpose. No speech should be monotonous. There should be moments when vocal prowess is used to establish a mood. 7. Speak to your audience. Look them in the eyes. My mom used to tell us to find a person in the audience to speak to. If we were being judged, make eye contact with them. Doing this says… I know exactly what I’m talking about! Looking into the eyes of your audience also forms a connection between your message and their thoughts. 8. Be Confident. Act like you own the place. When fully prepared, confidence comes easy. We practiced until we spoke in our sleep. Even through nerves, if all else fails.. Fake it till you make it!

Let me preface this by saying that I feel myself evolving. I don’t even know exactly how. All I know is that I think about the kids that I taught, know and see. I watch how we interact with the world in which we live. "There’s an app for that" whispers deeply within. What if there isn’t an app for that? What if all that we need to do is guide our learners into a world where they literally interact and they choose how because isn’t that what we all do? We choose…how. I don’t need a list of apps in my real life. I have apps that I use and all of them are authentic to a need. I find what I need when I need it. I explore. I play. I share. I live. My education, completely undefined by an app, has given me a toolbox of ideas to pull from. We should be building an army of critical thinkers who are undefined by the "shiny tools" that we give them but purely defined by themselves and how they think. Either I’m the "worst tech specialist" ever or maybe I just understand that focusing on the tools isn’t enough. Are We Doing Enough? (Thoughts, Wonders and Tech…a poem of sorts) Last night, I spent hours watching videos on youtube. I watched poets, rappers, visual artist, instrumental musicians and dancers. I thought about all the time we spend on the "shiny tools" and the lessons to fit them. I thought about the countless numbers of apps that we shove down each other’s throats. I thought about the insane patterns of testing that are being shoved down all of our throats. I thought about the questions we get about content, "When will I use this?" Now we add an app to the mix, "when will I use this?" I wonder where the "filler tools" end and "authenticity" begins. I wonder if we make that clear for our kids. I wonder if we invest more time into sharing how we interact with the world… If we would in essence be preparing our kids BETTER for a life Where the "shiny tools" and apps aren’t "things" But natural extensions of a toolbox when needed. I wonder if we’re doing enough. I wonder if we’re doing too much. I wonder if we focus on building kids from the inside… In lieu of masking their inside with the "shiny tools" outside If we can help them to BE all that they haven’t dreamed to see. Again, I wonder where the "filler tools" end and "authenticity" begins. Are we doing enough?  

Real problems being solved by kids using real tools… Mostly centered around having access to information and learning how to interact with it. This video is everything! Thank you Google!

One of the benefits of self-hosting my own wordpress blog is having the ability to utilize plugins which can add more interactivity for readers. I tend to get pretty scientific when it comes to plugins. The right ones can definitely add to the overall message of a blog. The wrong ones or too many, can affect loading time which will almost certainly impact viewership. Below is the collection of the plugins that power my blog and also were used to create my widget area. 1. Jetpack I like to think of jetpack as the "ultimate" of all plugins as it packs a massive punch, in essence taking care of the "brand new blogger." Any tools needed to get started are readily available for users. To use jetpack, users must first create an account at wordpress.com. Once both accounts are connected, each tool can be further selected. My top picks within Jetpack are… Askimet - filters our spam comments Notifications - Alerts me of new comments Publicize - Shares my blog to my twitter and facebook fan page Sharing - Allows users to share content WordPress.com stats - Provides data as to who is reading, from where, and what.   Other Plugins 1. About.Me = Pulls in content from my about.me page including my bio, background images and profile pic.  In addition, users can display "apps" from about.me which are connections to other social networks. 2. Disqus Comment System = If only it worked with my current theme! Disqus allows users to use their social media accounts to comment your blog. It literally simplifies the communication process and I absolutely LOVE it! Again, as soon as it starts working with my theme, I’ll be running it! 3. Add This! Follow and Add This! Smart Layer = AddThis is an amazing website that gives users the ability to create "widgets" for social sharing and interaction. What l love about Add This! is its flexible structure and visual editor which helps when trying to envision how a plugin works. "Add This! Follow " is a quick and easy way to create "follow" buttons for blog sidebars. This is how readers will connect to you. "AddThis! Smart Layer" does even more. It adds a vertical share tool, gives reading suggestions to visitors and also provides follow buttons which can be turned on or off. By the way, "addthis" tools work across multiple blogging platforms. If you missed it, please check out their site for instructions.       4. Tint Widget = Tintup.com is an extremely cool plugin/tool that allows users to beautifully display any social feeds on their blog…any blog! There is a catch. With a free account, users can display up to two feeds at a time. To display more, users must purchase and it’s not cheap! With that said, I chose to display my instagram and pinterest pins together using Tint via my sidebar. Images can then be clicked and shared directly from the gallery. The size of each "tint" is determined by the user. With Tint and its accompanying plugin, users can use their social feeds to in essence feed an entire gallery on their blog. Just create the page, drop in the code and you’re done. Every post that you make to your social feeds will automatically show up on the page that you created. Without a paid account, you can only display by username which can be a downer if you want to display by hashtag. You can scroll through my tent below in case you missed it in the sidebar.   social media aggregation   The MOST powerful sidebar widget that is NOT a plugin I probably use my "text" widget more than anything and often before I search for a plugin. The text widget enables users to embed anything into a sidebar area. Cosmetically, there are times when you may need to adjust the embed code’s height and/or width but the flexibility that this simple little text widget gives is well worth it! I use my text widget to display my twitter feed, which I created using the widget tools built within twitter. To link to Braeden’s Art Plant, I embedded a smaller copy of his header and within the embed code linked to his blog. If I wanted to display my facebook fan page, I could do that as well through the text widget. Here is an awesome explanation as to how to do this! Perhaps my most favorite web tool for the text widget is SnapWidget which is FREE web based way of embedding an instagram gallery. What I love about SnapWidget is that it’s literally so simple that you plug in your values, preview it, grab code, paste and you are done! In all honestly, it’s a lot simpler than Tint, which I used. If I needed to show instagram images by hashtag, I would definitely choose SnapWidget instead. Unlike Tint, Snapwidget does not scroll so you will only see images according to the number columns and rows that you provide. The scrolling feature may be a part of the pro version, but it is not free.  

Prior to yesterday, the marketing genius that helped me to complete the style transformation of my blog did not have a web presence beyond Facebook or Instagram which was odd considering his line of work…social marketing. He does amazingly brilliant work but his reach was limited to those that he was connected to through those two platforms only. We had a long conversation about what his intentions were for his business. We talked about the impact that he could have on others just by sharing what he did and maybe even blogging which would provide unique insight into social marketing from his point of view. The odd part was that as I was telling him all that HE needed to do to build his brand, I was internally shaking my head at myself for not doing the same. A few years ago, I developed a passion for "tinkering" with code. I taught myself how to understand the mechanics of the coding that went into web development. I taught myself design tools and using what I learned from youtube and Lynda.com, I started freelancing as a social media manager/Wordpress developer. Through my connections, meaning a best friend with Hollywood ties, I had my first client before I understood how CSS worked. I did this with no real concept of personal branding. It was the most amazingly fantastic "on the job" learning experience that I’ve ever had. The problem was that I was putting my all into developing and extending brands of people that I had never met, yet I wasn’t doing the same for me. Personal branding is really about how you represent yourself to the world. It’s how the world perceives you based on the messages that you convey. If you’re building your personal brand, people KNOW who you are and what you have to offer. For my clients, it was about consistency of message. The facebook, twitter, website/blog and youtube had to cohesively carry the message from platform to platform…event to event…person to person. Postings related to their brand needed to happen on a regular basis and audience interaction was a must. People wanted to know who they were and their job was to make sure that they communicated as such. I was preaching a gospel that I wasn’t even following. I had a blog and I wrote about smartboards. I was much more than that and that is all that I shared. I became known as "the smartboad" person when I really wanted to be known, if anything, for the heart that I put into my classroom, the math lessons that I created and the technology that supported our learning. The problem was that I didn’t share ANY of that. I shared what I thought that people wanted to read at the time…how to make a lesson in smart notebook. I knew better…so much better. Even as I jumped head first into blogging again, I STILL found that I was holding back.  I made a mistake a few months ago in writing about "not needing to write about tech" or math for that matter. I am just as much a tech specialist and math educator as I am a "social media superwoman". I should have been sharing all of those parts of me all along. My gosh…that’s who I am! After finally finishing the ItunesU course, I AM A Brand Called Me, that Lisa Johnson (@techchef4u) shared  and reflecting on the mixed messages that I’ve inadvertently delivered over the years, I found myself sitting across from a "brand manager" who was helping me in restructuring my brand…who had not really branded himself either. I don’t know who was helping whom that day but I can say that we both found a few missing parts of ourselves. Today, I shall take my own advice and the advice that I gave others. If I don’t acknowledge my own brilliant contributions to the world…how can I expect anyone else to do the same? Personal Branding…(The message that you send = What others receive of you) More importantly, the message that I send needs to match what I KNOW of myself.    

My nephew excitedly pulled out his awards that he earned during this grading period. He was so excited that he earned them…yet still not satisfied. The problem that he had was that "A honor roll" kids got a ribbon and "B honor roll" kids got a "zipper thing". What??? (An object to place on their zippers) I took this moment to ask him a few questions. 1. Does the award matter? 2. Do you do well in school because of the award? 3. You haven’t won any awards for your art but you do it. What’s the difference? His response… "I did well in school because I wanted the awards. I just think that if I made all A’s, I should’ve gotten more than a ribbon." Wait, it gets better…. "When I post my art to my blog it’s because I like it and that is a reward. People comment it and that’s a reward. Even if they give a bad comment, it’s still a reward because then I can go fix it." Now, I’m definitely not talking against his school or any others for giving awards. Kids do love them and for some, that may be the only pat on the back that they get…which is sad. However, as Braeden justified his differences in awards, I immediately thought about one particular facet of learning that we want kids to have…growth mindset which is clearly evident in the learning related to his passion. It’s amazing how the awards of Braeden’s "required" learning differs from his passion. Somehow, we need to find the inner area of where those two circles intersect.