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

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.

  Yesterday I attended the fourth annual  #EdcampKC  at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  For anyone who has not attended an edcamp in the past, it is run in the format of an un-conference, meaning that the participants are also the presenters and facilitators of the day's learning. As always, the day was filled with learning: professional discussions, challenging and changing of viewpoints, and resources...lots of resources.  Below is a list of some of my favorite tweets, images, lists, and resources from #EdcampKC. Pictures from the day Flipped Teaching Notes Appy Hour Notes  Google tips and tricks Formal vs. Informal PD Notes Take Edcamp to your School Notes Love the #edcampkc mural that everyone created together today. pic.twitter.com/lxovxUUgBr — Kyle Pace (@kylepace) November 9, 2013 Let's stop calling them 21st century skills; it's now 2013 so we ...

This school year I embarked upon a new journey in my teaching career:  serving as a cooperating teacher to two of my department's three student teachers.  At first I was reluctant to take on student teachers because I wasn't sure if I was cut out for job of helping two pre-service teachers in what will be one of their final preparations before they get their own classrooms.  However, after a colleague and close friend reminded me serving as a cooperating teacher is one of the most valuable forms of professional development , I realized that this was an amazing opportunity for me not only to offer PD to the students assigned to me, but also this would be an opportunity for me to grow as a professional. Throughout the semester I have or will do the following activities with my student teachers: I introduced the student teachers to everyone they need to know in the building including principals, secretaries, department chairs, and custodians. I created a structured ...

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday.  I am incredibly lucky that this year my birthday fell on one of the first days of summer vacation, so I was able to spend the day relaxing at home with my wife and daughter. Throughout the day, my iPad kept displaying happy birthday messages from my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram friends.  I got birthday wishes from co-workers, friends and neighbors I see almost every day, and from former colleagues and friends from school I haven't seen in years.  Each of the birthday messages I received had one thing in common:  each one made me feel appreciated.  Every year I am touched that people take the time out of their day to wish me a happy birthday. While I consider myself to be blessed with an amazing family and many great friends, all of my students aren't that lucky.  I know that throughout my 9 years of teaching I have had students who don't have people to wish them a happy birthday or to make sure they feel loved a...

This week I have the opportunity to give a brief presentation to my school district's teacher technology team on tech tools to make teachers' lives easier. I am excited for the opportunity to speak to a new audience.  My presentation is below.  Please use the comments section to share some of your favorite tech tools.

For the past two years, I have maintained Facebook pages for both my Language Arts 1 and Language Arts 2 classes.  While I don't have 100% participation from my student and parents, the students and parents who do use the pages have found them to be very useful communication tools.  Like any tool, it took some experimenting for me to make the most of my page, but once I got familiar with the some of the features of Facebook Pages, my class pages have become very beneficial to me as a classroom teacher. Here are my 5 best practices for maintaining a classroom Facebook. 1.  Fan Polls One of my favorite features of Facebook Pages is the polling options.  I like using polls to get feedback on activities and to let students vote for future projects.  Not only does this let me get student opinions and feedback, but also it increases traffic to my Facebook page and gives students an opportunity to be engaged with the page. To use the poll feature on F...