J.P. Prezzavento - The Bits and Bytes of Education:

In the past year, my school district has deployed over 1,000 Chromebooks to schools.  As I have  spent time observing students and teachers interacting and creating with their Chromebooks, I noticed that very few people were familiar with keyboard shortcuts that would save valuable work time. I created the infographic below to share with teachers and students.  Use the comments below share some of your favorite Chrome shortcuts.  

Recently, I had the opportunity to present at the MOREnet M3 technology conference in Columbia, MO on tech tools for the BYOD classroom. Below is the slide deck from my presentation.  This was my first experience presenting at a conference outside of my home district.  I found this experience to be rewarding and provided me an excellent opportunity to grow as a presenter.   Use the comments section below to share what tech tools are on your must-have list for the BYOD classroom. 

One of the hottest new edtech trends this year is Google Classroom.  The Google Apps for Education team has created a tool that links the power of Google Drive and Gmail into one user-friendly interface.  Google Classroom isn't an LMS that can replace systems like Blackboard...yet.  But educators who have been looking for a place to send, receive, and organize student work stored on Google Drive LOVE Classroom. Below is a YouTube playlist I have created with screencasts that demonstrate a how to do most common tasks in Google Classroom including: adding students to a class, creating, assigning, and returning student work, and more. Use the comments section of this post to let me know what videos you would like me to add to this playlist.

My school district just finished a BYOD pilot program and is preparing to roll-out BYOD to 5,500 middle and high school students early next school year.  As the district’s Instructional Technology Coordinator, I work with teachers to help them transition to teaching in a BYOD environment. One of the biggest obstacles teachers faced while working with student devices has been learning how each student’s device works with the tools the teacher uses in class. In some cases, the lack of continuity between student devices is as small as where to go to add a Google account to Google Drive – on iOS devices, Google accounts can be added in Drive, but on Android devices, users have to go through the device’s account settings to add a Google account. In other cases, we have had to learn through trial and error which applications function differently on Android devices than they do on iOS devices and Windows phones ( Padlet is difficult to use in Android’s preinstalled browser).  ...

Kaizena (Voice Comments) is a Google Drive application that allows teachers to leave audio feedback on their students' Google Documents.  Kaizena is a great tool for helping teachers to maximize the time they spend leaving feedback for students.  The video and PDF below demonstrates how to use Kaizena.

I was recently asked to speak at Meramec Heights , one of my district's elementary schools about social media.  I was very excited to share my passion for social media with the Meramec teachers.  Below is a copy of the presentation I gave to the Meramec Staff.

As an educator, I love YouTube.  I love finding funny videos to supplement my lessons and to provide examples of the concepts I teach.  However, I don't love some of the comments, suggested videos, or related videos that I see when watching a YouTube video in class. Enter SafeShare.TV .  SafeShare.TV allows users to share a YouTube video without having to worry about any inappropriate content popping up on the screen. The video below demonstrates how to view a YouTube video in SafeShare.TV.