Monday, March 21, 2016

Up Your Skills with Adobe Education Exchange


Looking to up your tech skills?  Adobe has fantastic online professional development- for educators- on their products.

Here's why I love it (after taking just one course so far...):
1.  It's free.
2.  It's totally online and done in your own time and space.
3.  It's free.
4.  Collaborative environment with Adobe professionals as the teachers
5.  Classroom Applications galore (your imagination is the only limit!)
6.  It's free.
7.  The cool badge you get after completing the course.

I've used Adobe products for quite some time but am totally self-taught.  I was looking for something to spur my creativity and found Adobe's online Collaborative Courses one day.

The first course I took was on Adobe Muse and I am currently taking a Publishing course using Adobe's InDesign.  Both courses are about 4 weeks long.  You can 'attend' the live class each week OR (as I do) go through the week's class on your own time.  Each week the teachers go over content and give you an assignment to create and post for other participants to see and give feedback.  You also get to see and give feedback to other's work, which, can in turn, inspire a more ideas!

Here's my product from the first class- totally NOT done- but a work in progress as our district moves to create a technology continuum that will 'live' online.  This is a website created in Adobe Muse- web authoring software.  You can see how I've organized our work here: http://cusdedtech.businesscatalyst.com.

Check out the upcoming courses:

  • Train the Trainer: Creative Cloud
  • Animation
  • App Design
  • Digital Storytelling with Adobe Mobile and Web Apps
Visit the Adobe Education Exchange at http://edex.adobe.com/professional-development/courses for more information.

Friday, March 4, 2016

GoFormative.com

Goformative.com is an AMAZING resource for any teacher with students in their classrooms.  But...what about educational leaders???  I think so!  After a brief couple of minutes on the site I was easily able to make an assignment with many different question types.  You can create multiple choice, true/false, and short answer questions, but also show your work questions where a canvas appears as a work space for their answers.  You can add images, YouTube videos, and extra text boxes.  I haven't tried it (yet) but you can also upload your previous quizzes and make hem interactive.  But...the piece that toally intrigues me is the way you (the teacher) sees the feedback.  Each question will show mini "screenshots" of each student's answer.  At a quick glance you'll be able to see who's understanding and who needs more instruction.

My perspective is through professional learning sessions so I will most definitely be working this into my next pd...what a great way to check for understanding with teachers, but also a way to get personal feedback on topics in a quick way!