Section: General | Summer Workshop

Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch

IPHONE FUN!

Thu, 06 Feb 2025, 08:01 PM
I use my iPhone for everything and feel I am pretty adept at most things. I have 766 apps on my iPhone 15 Max with iOS 17 and the apps are all organized into folders so I can easily find things.
However, I continue to learn plenty of new things about the capabilities of the iPhone from users on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Threads. I want to share two of my favorites with you. In some cases, if you don't have a newer phone, you may not be able to use some of these tips, but it is nice to read how they work anyway, so you are ready when you upgrade!
TAKING A LONG-EXPOSURE IMAGE
Long-exposure images are beautiful and it is easy to take one with your iPhone camera.
1. Make sure LIVE PHOTOS is turned on. The LIVE PHOTOS option is found in the top right of the screen in the camera (when the phone is in portrait mode) and in the top left of the screen when the camera is in landscape mode. It looks like an icon of two circles with a dotted circle around them. When there is no line through the icon, Live Photos is turned on.
2. When taking a long-exposure image, it is important to find a place to prop your phone. I often use a horizontal fencepost or a wall in the vicinity to lean on. If you don't have anywhere to rest the phone, tuck your elbows in towards your body and hold your breath.
3. Whether your phone is propped, on a tripod, or being held, there is one very important thing you need to do to get a great long-exposture shot. Hold your phone still for 5 seconds BEFORE you take the photo and 5 seconds AFTER you take the picture.
4. Once you have finished the shot. open your image in in Photos, and tap the LIVE icon that comes up. You will be presented with a menu of choices.
5. Pick LONG-EXPOSURE and the magic will happen!
IOS 17 AND FACETIME FUN
With the advent of iOS 17, FaceTime has some cool new on-screen features!
During a call, go to Control Center, tap Video Effects, and turn on Reactions.
1. If you give two peace signs at the same time. confetti rains down.
2. If you give just one peace sign, balloons pop up all around you.
3. If you make your hands into the "heart" symbol, red hearts come out.
4. If you put two thumbs down, you get a thunderstorm.
5. If you two thumbs up, you get fireworks
6. If you make the "rock-on" sign with each hand, you get some cool lasers.
Visit Kathy's Web pages:
- Kathy Schrock's Home Page
- Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything
ASSESSMENT AND RUBRICS

Tue, 07 Jan 2025, 08:08 PM
Assessment of student mastery of content takes many forms. This list includes support materials for assessments that work with the Common Core State Standards and rubrics for many different assessment products. It also contains some information on the creation of rubrics and assessment in general.
If you find a link that is not working, please let me know and I will fix it. Thanks!
Common Core State Standards rubrics
1. K-5 rubrics for writing standards: K 1 2 3 4 5 (more)
2. Text-based writing rubrics K-12
3. Checklist for critical areas in K-2 math
4. Common Core checklists K-6
5. EQuIP rubric for lessons & units: Math
6. EQuIP rubric for lessons & units: ELA
7. EQuIP rubric for lessons & units: ELA (K-2)
8. Grammar & mechanics self-assessment rubric
9. Multimedia rubric for projects to inform
10. PARCC analytic and narrative writing (3) (4) (5)
11. PARCC analytic and narrative writing (6) (7) (8)
12. PARCC analytic and narrative writing (9) (10) (11)
13. PARCC PLDs: ELA all grades
14. PARCC PLDs: Math all grades
15. Rubrics for evaluating OER resources 4 | 5
16. Writing: Informative rubric (Grades 3 | 4 | 5)
17. Writing: Narrative rubric (Grades 3 | 4 | 5)
18. Writing: Opinion rubric (Grades 3 | 4 | 5)
19. Writing: High school style rubric 1 & 2
CCSS Lesson/Unit review rubrics
1. Engage NY ELA Evaluation Rubric
2. Engage NY Math Evaluation Rubric
CCSS and classroom technology
1. Common Core Standards with technology
2. Word cloud of technology in the CCSS
Other Common Core items of interest
Multimedia and apps rubrics
Evidence-based rubrics (EB)
1. EB writing rubric
2. EB professional development rubric
Presentation software rubrics
Online tools rubrics
Rubric builders and generators
Student technology skills
Educator technology skills and rubrics
Activators and summarizers (see new page)

Rubrics for higher education
Related articles
- 18 ways to use rubrics in education
...practical ways and thoughts for both teachers and students
- Creating rubrics
  ...a five-part tutorial on rubric creation and implementation
- Developing and using instructional rubrics
...a pedagogical and practical article
- Five ways to blow the top off rubrics
...innovative ways to create rubrics
- From Now On: 2/98
  ...making technology assessment work for schools
- Guidelines for rubric development
  ...help for the creation of rubrics
- Helping your students with homework
  ...practical suggestions to help students deal with homework
- How to create a rubric that does what you want it to do
...Grant Wiggins offers great ideas in the blog post
- Key differences between summative and formative assessments
- Make room for rubrics
  ...a common-sense introduction to rubrics
- Quality rubrics wiki
...an extensive site dealing with rubric creation
- Tools for writing rubrics
  ...an overview, tutorial, and list of resources for creating rubrics
- What is a rubric from QuickRubric
Alternative & performance based assessments
Electronic portfolios
Graphic organizers
Report card/progress report comments
Textbook adoption and online materials rubrics
Visit Kathy's Web pages:
- Kathy Schrock's Home Page
- Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything
TEACHERSERVER.COM

Tue, 07 Jan 2025, 05:39 PM
I am apparently late to the dance when it comes to TeacherServer.com! Created by USF St. Petersburg Education Professor Zafer Unal, TeacherServer provides free AI tools to assist planning, assessment, preparation, research and more.

It is a wonderful site which includes hundreds of AI tools for both K-12 and Higher Ed. It is totally free and provides well-guided instructions for many types of creation utilizing AI -- everything from creating safe science experiments for the classroom to developing professional development plans, and everything in-between!

You simply pick a tool that meets your needs, fill out a form with the info you want to create, run the AI, easily re-do the info you provided until you get the perfect fit for your needs, and save it to share it out. TeacherServer needs to be in every educator's toolbox!
Visit Kathy's Web pages:
- Kathy Schrock's Home Page
- Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything

POCKETALK VOICE TRANSLATOR

Tue, 07 Jan 2025, 05:32 PM

At the ISTE Live conference in June of 2024, I ran across a very intriguing and useful product. Pocketalk is an easy-to-use voice translator and was created to support the fields of healthcare, government, public safety, logistics, and education.

The Pocketalk is truly a personal voice translator. There are over 84 languages on the devices and they would be a worthwhile addition to any school!
Imagine having seamless conversations with parents at a conference or IEP meeting, providing multilingual support for students who speak any language, and boosting the self-esteem of a student with the instant translation and conversation back and forth with his or her peers! With the number of languages being spoken in schools today, the Pocketalk Voice Translatorbridges the communication gap with its easy-to-use interface and its powerful technology.

I am reviewing the smaller Pocketalk S. I received the Pocketalk S, instructions for setting it up, the charger and cable, a protective case for the back of the device, and a lanyard to keep the Pocketalk S around my neck if I need to. I love the lanyard feature because a teacher could easily converse with a student right at the students desk!

The Pocketalk Voice Translator is already used in over five hundred school districts world-wide and I can definitely see why it is so popular! The Pocketalk comes in two sizes which both have similar features. The smaller Pocketalk S is about the size and weight of the last Apple iPod and the Pocketalk Plus is the size and weight of a smallish iPhone.

SOME POCKETALK PLUS SPECS

SOME POCKETALK S SPECS

Size: 4.8" × 2.6" × 0.45" / 4.4 oz.
330 minutes of continuous translation time
HD camera for image translation
One built- in speaker
Dual microphones
Charging time: 130 minutes
Bluetooth, WiFi, SIM card slot
Complimentary 2 year cell plan
3G (W-CDMA) / 4G (FDD-LTE) / 4G (TD-LTE)
Rechargeable lithium-ion battery

Size: 3.6" x 2.1" x .45" / 2.6 oz.
4.5 hours of continuous translation time
HD camera for image translation
Two built- in speakers
Dual microphones
Charging time: 105 minutes
Bluetooth, WiFi, SIM card slot
Complimentary 2 year cell plan
3G (W-CDMA) / 4G (FDD-LTE) / 4G (TD-LTE)
Rechargeable lithium-ion battery

I put my Pocketalk S through some rudimentary testing. First I translated a birthday greeting to my friend Junior from Brazil.

I then used the camera to translate a portion of a textbook in English to German. I took a photo of the English text with the camera, then OCR'd the text, and I could listen to the instructions both in English and German!

There are a number of other features on the Pocketalk Voice Translator. In addition to the camera translation option, there is a group translation feature that allows users to chat with multiple Pocketalk users by creating a chat group. There is even a useful money exchange converter and length, weight, and temperature converters, too!

The Pocketalk Voice Translator is a great tech support tool for schools!
There is even a software management tool available to provide the district with analytic reporting of usage and translations, manage all the devices, and monitor the needs of the users, as seen below.

Find out more about Pocketalk for education and read some case studies here. And be sure to look at the full specifications for the devices here for the the Pocketalk Plus Voice Translator and here for the Pocketalk S Voice Translator. It is amazing what these devices can do to support teaching and learning in a meaningful way!

SAMR AND BLOOM'S AND TECH

Tue, 07 Jan 2025, 05:22 PM
SAMR AND BLOOM'S
SAMR is a model designed to help educators infuse technology into teaching and learning. Popularized by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, the model supports and enables teachers to design, develop, and infuse digital learning experiences that utilize technology. The goal is to transform learning experiences so they result in higher levels of achievement for students.

I feel teachers need to both create tasks that target the higher-order cognitive skills (Bloom's) as well as design tasks that have a significant impact on student outcomes (SAMR). My thoughts about the the model are further down this page.

I feel teachers need to both create tasks that target the higher-order cognitive skills (Bloom's) as well as design tasks that have a significant impact on student outcomes (SAMR). A visual to illustrate that follows.

Educators will argue they have seen redefinition tasks that only target the remembering level or have a creative assessment that is only at the augmentation level. Of course that is true, but I believe we should be planning for technology tasks, activities, and assessments that include both the higher levels of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and the transformation area of the SAMR model.

My vision of how the Bloom's and SAMR models work together and intersect is below.

You can download a PDF copy of the image for classroom use.
samr_blooms.jpg
Download File
Here are some useful SAMR links by others.
- Oxnevad -Using SAMR to teach above the line
- Anderson - SAMR flowchart
- Oxnevad - The SAMR ladder through the lens of 21st century skills
- Zita - SAMR Haiku Deck presentation
- Work - Models for understanding technology integration: SAMR
- Guhlin - Classroom activity learning rubric
- Brubaker - SAMR: Model, Metaphor, Mistakes
- Holt - SAMR Model and Starbuck's Coffee
- Tucker - Beyond SAMR: The Teacher's journey to technology integration
- Moroder - EdTech frameworks: Why I don't use TPACK and SAMR with my teachers
- Nearpod - Practical SAMR models
- RHP123 - Applying apps to learning tasks with SAMR
- Cash- SAMR examples Prezi
- Swanson - Rethinking SAMR
- Cedarbur (WI): SAMR planning model and their lesson planning template
- Edutopia: SAMR a powerful model for understanding good tech integration
- Best: The SAMR model explained with 15 practical examples
COGS OF THE COGNITIVE PROCESS
I began to think about the triangular shape of Bloom's Taxonomy and realized I thought of it a bit differently.

Since the cognitive processes are meant to be used when necessary, and any learner goes in and out of each level as they acquire new content and turn it into knowledge, I created a different type of image that showcased my thoughts about Bloom's more meaningfully.

Here is my visual which showcases the interlocking nature of the cognitive process.
Here is a link to a download of the cogs image.
cogs_download.jpg
Download File
BLOOM'S AND TECH
Jen Roberts (@jenroberts1) has developed a great model that concentrates more on moving from traditional teacher-created tasks to student-centered, tech-infused learning. She calls it TECH. Her blog post about her development of it may be found here. I love this model and feel it is easier to implement and for educators to understand and learn from.

My version of how Bloom's and TECH work together is below.

You can download a copy of this image here.
Visit Kathy's Web pages:
- Kathy Schrock's Home Page
- Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything

Source site...

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General

Section outline

November 2025

SAMR AND BLOOM'S

COGS OF THE COGNITIVE PROCESS

BLOOM'S AND TECH