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and enter to win a $50,000 scholarship & trip to meet Katy Perry From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter So many teachers spend their own money on school supplies for their classrooms. In the US, some estimates show 99.5 of all public school teachers use their money to equip their own classroom. I’m so excited that Staples is again supporting DonorsChoose.org  and partnering with Katy Perry to encourage people to make their donation to support US public school teachers. This is a great campaign that can help a lot of teachers. So, here’s what you can do: If you’re a US public school teacher, make sure you register at DonorsChoose.org now! When you shop at Staples stores, support DonorsChoose.org as part of your back to school shopping when you check out. You can also donate at StaplesforStudents.com  and register for the sweepstakes below. Here’s a cool tip: When you shop at Staples and spend $25, you’ll receive an entr...

Get Netsmartz, the free program to help educate teachers, parents and students. From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter Sextortion is a shocking new way online predators are targeting kids. At ISTE this week, I was upset when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children explained this disturbing trend to me. So, I recorded a show. Educate yourself. Talk to kids. Keep them safe. Listen to this show on: BAM Radio Network | iTunes | Stitcher The time to talk is when they get their smartphone. RIGHT THEN. Share this show with parents, teachers, and everyone. It could even happen to you if you aren’t aware. Today’s Sponsor: Netsmartz Free Teaching Digital Citizenship Course Netsmartz is a free online training program from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This free course is designed to help you teach the latest in internet safety and digital citizenship for your students. It is free. It is online. Le...

Presentation Resources From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter The third panel I’ll be moderating this ISTE is full of some of the best in the business of people who are making and inventing. As with the sketchnoting slides I shared earlier, it will be best to see this in person, but so many of you can’t be here at ISTE 2016 in Denver! Here are the slides from today’s presentation. A big shout out to the panelists: Dr. Jackie Gerstein, David Jakes, Erin Klein, Karen Lirenman, Sylvia Martinez. Lisa Dabbs is going to be our backchannel moderator! We’ll be presenting at 10:15 on the last day of ISTE. Mindsets and Classroom Management for Making and Inventing in Every Classroom from Vicki Davis The post #iste2016 Mindsets and Classroom Management for Making and Inventing in Every Classroom appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow! From http://ift.tt/29c2IRb vi...

Slides and Resources From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter Sketchnoting is a fascination for me. So, ISTE was a dream for me. What if we got some of the best in sketchnoting together to share their secrets and how this applies to education? Well, we submitted and it is happening today!Today, June 29 at 8:30 am at the ISTE 2016 conference, I’ll be moderating Today, June 29 at 8:30 am at the ISTE 2016 conference, I’ll be moderating Sketchnoting in Education: The Best Practices, Benefits and How-To’s of Sketchnoting. Panelists include (alphabetical).  Carrie Baughcum   Vicki Davis   Sylvia Duckworth   Judi Holst   Marie-Andree Ouimet   Kathy Schrock  A big shout out to Kathy Schrock (see her sketchnoting guide ), she has really taken leadership to make this slide deck incredible. While being there in person is best, perhaps you can learn a few things from the slides.   SKETC...

Presentation from the panel Monday, July 27 at 8:30 am From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter This morning at ISTE Tom Arnett, Jon Bergmann, Mike Gwaltney, Aaron Sams, Stephanie Sandifer, and Jerry Obermyer all did an incredible job discussing blended and flipped learning. Shell Terrell shared the session on Periscope. ( watch here ) I tried to upload these slides to ISTE, but they only take 5MB of files and this file is much larger. So, I’ll add the link and here are the slides. ISTE 2016 Panel Blended Learning Classrooms: Pedagogies, Skills and Tools for Teaching from Vicki Davis The post Blended Learning Slides and Resources #iste2016 appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow! From http://ift.tt/29ag0L5 via Vicki Davis at coolcatteacher.com . Please also check out my show for busy teachers, Every Classroom Matters and my Free teaching tutori...

Here's my storify to capture a tiny bit of what happened. From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter ISTE 2016 is here. It is simply impossible to capture everything, so I’ll share what I can. If you’re not here, I’ve included some powerful ways you can JOIN IN! Give it a second to load! [ View the story “ISTE 2016 Day 0” on Storify ] The post #iste2016 Day 0 Recap appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow! From http://ift.tt/28WshAh via Vicki Davis at coolcatteacher.com . Please also check out my show for busy teachers, Every Classroom Matters and my Free teaching tutorials on YouTube .

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter ISTE 2016 is here! I hope to catch up with so many of you out there. Here’s the schedule of where I’ll be presenting and sharing this year. It is always great to go. Since I only go every other year, it is always extra sweet to see people that I’ve not seen in a while. Say hi! If you want links to these events to register, go to my ISTE 2016, Presenter Page. See Vicki’s ISTE 2016 Schedule   Workshop: BYOA: BUILD YOUR OWN APP (WH021) Fee: $113 ($123 after May 1) [Explore and create: Workshop] Saturday, June 25, 12:30–3:30 pm CCC Mile High Ballroom.3A Vicki will be talking about mobile app development with Alefiya Bhatia, co- founder of Crescerance . Vicki was one of the educators that recently collaborated on the MAD About Mattering Project, which involved student app development in response to student heartbreaks. Special Interviews at ISTE While I’ll be interviewing lots of teachers...

What has to happen before you can make your classroom better From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter We have a problem in the hearts and minds of many educators everywhere.  I’m guilty of it sometimes, too. Sometimes my momentum is not moving forward. I can wish for something that never will be and not do what is right in front of me. Alvin Toeffler said, “you’ve got to think about the ‘big thing’ while you’re doing the small things, so that all the things go in the right direction.” The big thing is that students have changed. We don’t have to like it. We don’t have to enjoy it. But we do have to face it if we’re going to teach kids. People who relate to technology by saying “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” are burning their bridges with kids before they even start the trip. Most people want what used to be, not what can be. They spend their time fondly thinking of the past instead of dre...

Educate yourself to prevent the nightmare From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter Picking the wrong technology tool can unleash a nightmare. Don’t think it can’t happen to you. If you look over the shoulder of one of Gord Holden’s 10,000 students,  it looks like they are playing a video game. They are not. They are learning. They are safe, too. Let’s dig into Gord’s three things about digital citizenship that every teacher should know. Listen to this show on BAM Radio Network | iTunes   Show Notes – Things Every Teacher Should Know about Digital Citizenship: A simple explanation to parents about Internet safety. Why some online spaces are like “Lord of the Flies” and what to do about it. How to use 3D worlds to help autistic spectrum students interact in real life. Teaching French, Science, and Democracy in a 3D world. (great stories!) Nightmare things that have happened when teachers pick the wrong too...

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter I have been looking at testing the transcription of a podcast. There are services out there that will do it, but I have concerns about accuracy. So, I’m doing it manually this first time to see if people like it (or not). After some research, I found a service called oTranscribe that is pretty nifty. So, I made a quick tutorial. What I love about this service is both the time stamps and how it links to the audio file. I can even have my daughter help me on it and share the file with her. When I’m done, I can export it to Google Docs! Awesome! The post VIDEO TUTORIAL: How to Quickly Transcribe Audio Files [Video] appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow! From http://ift.tt/1XWDFU6 via Vicki Davis at coolcatteacher.com . Please also check out my show for busy teachers, Every Classroom Matters and my Free tea...

Tips and Tricks for Educators Establishing a Personal Brand From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter Websites crash all the time. It is a common problem for everyone from schools to teachers to businesses to anyone who has a website. Here are some tools that I recommend to help figure out why your website is crashing or just to double check to make sure it is configured properly. Dr. Jim Beeghley has been my go-to guy since this past October when he helped me untangle the technical behind-the-scenes mess of my blog. It wasn’t that my blog wasn’t awesome behind the scenes – it just wasn’t growing to handle the traffic (and sadly the hackers that sometimes come with the territory.)  I’ve gotten to know Jim even better over these past few months. He has a lot that can help all of us make our websites better. Here is his advice on what he did to fix my site. I recommend you check yours with these tools. If you need help with your website, I...

with Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey share five very important concepts in today’s show. In their book, Make Learning Personal, they talk about how you enlist the support of learners beneath their own process of learning. Listen to this show on: BAM Radio Network | iTunes | Stitcher (this show isn’t showing on the Stitcher feed, not sure why, if you like Stitcher, just listen directly on BAM for this show! Thanks.) They argue that student should assemble a “ personal backpack .” This is not a physical backpack, necessarily but includes tools and strategies that help them learn according to their own style of learning. I think this is a fantastic evolution in our thinking, not only about technology but also about learning. Their approach empowers meta-cognition, something we know helps learners progress. Perhaps the most important thing they argue i...

A sample Cool Cat Teacher newsletter From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter Happy 5 idea Friday! Today is the day I send my newsletter subscribers the ideas to help them be better teachers. Right now, I’m actually sending 10 ideas — five for teachers in school and five for teachers out -of-school. I’ve been getting emails with people asking me where this information is online. Five idea Friday isn’t online in a blog post.  You can only get it in my newsletter. Here’s insight on how this works. Blog posts. I post my blog posts and shows here on Cool Cat Teacher. You’ll get great blog posts, how-to articles and information here that you can get in your RSS reader. Newsletter.  I have an email newsletter (you can sign up at the bottom ) that I send 2-3 times a week. On Monday, I focus on motivation. On Friday, I share at least five ideas for teachers. Sometimes during the week I send one other newsletter email about somethin...