Attending a Live Webinar

Live Webinars

    I have attended live webinars for multiple reasons including job trainings, mandatory professional development events, and personal desire. As a part of our Internet Tools for the Classroom class, we were asked to attend a live webinar. I scheduled a live webinar for common core assessments through discovery education. Due to poor internet connectivity, my experience was interrupted shortly after the webinar began and I was unable to attend this webinar. I share this experience because I contacted the people at discovery education to ask how I could still view the content of this webinar. They informed that although they would be unable to share the information with me now, they would be archiving the entire series upon completion. This gave me the idea to start looking up archived webinar series. Wow! There are countless opportunities to take part in webinars on a variety of topics. Although I appreciate the opportunity to interact with the presenter in most live webinars, I realized that many webinars provided a post-webinar Q&A opportunity that can be referenced at your convenience.
   Because I recently received a district-issued Ipad to use in my classroom, I began to seek out webinars that would assist me in using this technology right away. One of the best adavantages of archived webinars is that you can view them at your own convenience while still receiving most of the benefits of viewing it live. I also didn't have to be present at a specific time, and internet connectivity wasn't an issue either.
   The webinar I decided to view was though discovery education and it was titled "iPads in discovery education." Kyle Schutt was the presenter for this webinar. In this webinar, Kyle shared how to download videos from the desktop site to your computer. Since you can't stream the videos on your ipad from the desktop site, he demonstrated how to download the video, convert the format, load it one iTunes, and even create a playlist using multiple media files on the same topic. He also showed the much easier choice to use the mobile site for united streaming which allows you to stream directly. The nice thing about downloading them and placing them on iTunes is that you can access them even without having Internet connectivity. However, the mobile site for the ipad is very nice and extremely functional. You can view the ipad site by clicking here. (Subscription required) Kyle also shared his ability to project his ipad on the monitor by using a VGA input and an app program like expedition.
   Although the webinar was designed to teach views how to implement use of discovery education on the ipad, Kyle did a great job at sharing some other great resources. I would like to share some of those resources below.
       Livebinder - livebinder is an online "3 ring binder" that allows you to curate all your information on a topic and place it all in one neat "online binder." It's a great place to also research other topics and binders users have created. You can click here to explore for yourself.
       IEAR - I education apps review is a community of ipad users that give feedback and reviews o educational apps for the ipad. You can search for specific apps or click on one of the various links on the page to research apps on a topic you are looking for. You can click here to view the page.
   
    Now that I see the wealth of archived webinars, I plan on viewing more as I find them appropriate to my needs, still they do lack the interaction that  Live Webinar offers.

   After viewing the archived webinar, I had the opportunity to attend a Live webinar presented by the same presenter  Kyle Schutt. He also has a co-presenter, Michael Gormon. The webinar titled, "Students as curators, managing new information in the digital classroom," was presented by Discovery Education as a part of a professional growth webinar series sponsored my Plymoth Rock Assurance.
    The major advantage of the Live webinar was the opportunity to interact with the presenters as well as the other attendees. Below I have shared some of the notes I took while viewing the webinar. Ironically, I was using Evernote to take notes, which is one of the tools recommended during the webinar.
 
    The common core - "Educators must share curriculum, effective instructional opportunities, and assessment in order for the school community to accomplish the goals of the common core.
     Students use the internet as a consumer, but we want them to be a user and produce of information  and reinvent information themselves 
    A brief timeline of curation - the slate, the textbook , the film strip projector , lesson plans, files, filing systems, failing cabinets and more filing cabinets,  the computer , the floppy disc, the hard drive, the cd, the Internet, and now, the cloud, 

The tools presented will help to answer the question, "How do you filter the information in the cloud? How to we sort through the information and make it useable, is it useable for all students (closed captioning, can the PDF be read?). Below is a brief description of the tools presented and how they can be used

• Symbaloo - free - create app style bookmarks for online sites /links/ resources. Organize and share the best of the web . Each icon is a link to the site. Symbalooedu.com shows how to use the site for educational purposes. You can discover other user's webmixes as well. Once you sign up for the site you immediately get the EDU webmix that recommends great sites to be used in education. You can choose web mixes for specific educational tools. The symbaloo gallery allows you to search specific topics and filter by popularity and views. You can also view user's webmixes when you find a user whose webmix you enjoy. You can have students create webmixes for subject/topic based purposes.  You can share webmixes using the share tab using he HTML link.  The URL eliminates the purpose to log in but still can access the symbaloo webmix. Gallery allows you to search other symbaloo galleries. You can add other users webmixes to your own webmix folder for future reference.
• Diigo - "Connect,organize, and online bookmarking" (similar to delicious). You can set up diigo account for your students. Free upgrade to education edition. Allows you to add extensions for your browser . You can search community library for other people's bookmarks on a specific topic. It shows views/ popularity ratings to.help you choose the right site. You can also view specific users to see what they are bookmarking 
• Evernote - Evernote is a note taking app that allows you to sync across all devices. I actually used my Ipad to take notes during the webinar since I was using my laptop to view the webinar. I then logged on to the site on my laptop to view my notes to create this blog post. You can create collective notes as a class. Create multiple notebooks. You can share the URL for the note to share the opportunity to edit the note. 
• Live binders - free - digital binder- can use livebinders for projects. There are tabs on each binder for subtropics on each binder. It can be used for presentation, digital story, steps in lab report, demonstration of learning, step by step procedure to show understanding. You can search for binders on topics such as the common core,  then filter your results based on topics such as strictly education binders. You can sort by views/popularity and view that presenters other binders as well. 
• My big campus - Collect, curate, and create. My bigcampus.com/getstarted gives you the opportunity to sign up for the site for free. Registrations takes a day or two to get set up because they make sure that you are an educator setting up the site. It has an  Edmodo style feel. Teachers create bundles of information on a specific topic for students to access for assignment or instrution purposes. Example of bundles - teachers can curate multiple resources and documents on specific topic for student to view so they can access all content based on a topic. It also embeds YouTube videos directly on the page.
• Google custom search -  you create a search engine for just one topic.  Students could create their own search engine. You select the sites you want it to search. In order for the kids to use the modified search engine you will just have students type in that specific URL. 

Some other quick references the Kyle and Mike shared included:

1. Linkyy 
2. Scoop.it
3. Pinterest 
4. Educlipper - Pinterest style education site 
5. Printfriendly.com -  you enter the URL of the site and hit ring preview and it will take out all adds . You can save it as a PDF to send or post on another web page.

The webinar closed up by sharing 5 important tips to remember when using these online resources.

1. Know the site - get the know the site in and out. How to use it. Dangers for students to use the site.
2. Know your district's AUP - does your district condone or allow the site
3. Involve your school's administration - just because a site is blocked or filtered doesn't mean it needs to be. Keep your district officials informed of the opportunity and the possibilities of new sites and see if they can change access opportunities. 
4.  Involve your parents - inform your parents of your involvement in the site and the opportunities for them to be part of it.
5. Teach, model, and monitor digital citizenship - make sure you students understand the expectations and the students understand how to use the internet appropriately. Especially when introducing new sites. 

To see additional information - check out Michael Gormons blog