Reflecting on 21 years ...

I have started a new chapter in my professional life. I have changed districts and positions. I know I don't share specifically about my employment or personal life often, but this is a BIG change for me. I've backed off of social media, presenting, and creating because this has consumed my heart. 

It wasn't an easy decision - just ask my husband - but it IS the right decision for me. July and August have been packed with tears flowing freely; getting together with colleagues; phone calls with friends; and wrapping up the final chapter of my career in Ross. After all, Ross has made me into who I am professionally.

I am excited to take the next steps as the technology teacher for another district's middle school. I will work with 6th, 7th, & 8th grades. I already feel welcomed as a new staff member. And as I am getting to know my new professional home, I am finding quite a few similarities, while at the same time - big differences. 

Change isn't a bad thing (as I'm reminded quite often). Change allows for growth. Change allows for new challenges. Change provides new opportunities.

The infographic below is a quick overview of the last 21 years. Position changes, major life events, even the number of shirts I've collected! (And I was excited to use Canva again to create an infographic!)

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New Year's Goals I Can Do & You Can, too!

I had this whole blog written and then I realized I had it backwards. I do not make New Year's resolutions. I have made daily resolutions for the past 2 years. I have attempted to focus on 3-5 personal and 5 school related goals each day. I include big goals and little tasks. I include boring and routine items as well as exciting and thrilling. 

And then I read John Spencer's blog post, Using the SLIME Method for Setting New Year’s Resolutions, and I knew exactly what I had been missing (ok, I actually listened to his podcast, also linked in the article above). 

I LOVE John's proposal to do AND let go ... to keep doing AND get better ... and to have fun. And to wrap it up with the acronym "SLIME"? So fun! And be sure to read all the way through John's post. Near the bottom, he covers the difference between process & product goals. This is critical because I believe they go together. I realize that by having my daily goals/tasks, I am itemizing my process goals in order to achieve my product goals. After listening to John, I realize how important these daily goals/tasks are to me in order to achieve my larger product goals. Yes! 

Here are my 2022 SLIME goals/resolutions - I firmly believe that writing them down and sharing them makes me more accountable. 

Start: use Smore to share out resources in a more "collection" manner

Let go: of the stress & guilt I put on myself

Improve: my time spent with my family - both immediate & extended

Maintain: the new strength training consistency

Experiment: work on a top secret project (or two!)

Can you do this with students? Sure! They may not fully understand it without your guidance but John's graphics and built in suggestions can help. This could also make a great mid-year reflection and writing or video or creative assignment. 

Are you looking for other activities to do with your students at the beginning of this new year? I've started building "The New Year" Wakelet Collection.  If you have something I could add, I'd love to know about it! Please post it below or tag me on social media. We are better together!

2020: We Did It!

2020 has been quite the year! Ups and downs, ins and outs, twists and turns. It's a relief to be able to say "I've done it! I've made it!" ... and I'll bet you feel the same. 😀I truly hope we do not experience another year like this anytime soon.

When I look back at who I was and where I was one year ago, and I think about how I was looking forward to the challenges 2020 was going to bring, I could not have ever predicted what we have all gone through. I had plans for 2020 - and then they went sideways.

I'm not going to spend today mourning what could have been. Instead, I'm going to celebrate my 10 most read blogs from the year as a recap. The pandemic played a major role in what I wrote for the majority of the year - and that's what I want to celebrate. We might all be in different spots, but there are so many similarities that bring us together.

Not surprising, many of the top read are about Google Classroom. It has become a passion of mine to share tips and resources about Classroom. And during the spring closure, I had quite the revelation: we teachers need to stop looking at Classroom (or whatever you LMS is) as teachers. We must look at it as a student and then design our Classrooms with THEM as our driving principle. That shines as a guiding principle for many of my blogs this year.

Here are the "10 Most Read Blogs of 2020" ⤸ 

#10: Google Photos e-portfolio You Can Do - Are you looking for an easy way for students to share their paper work? How about using Google Photos? This is perfect for students of ALL ages! As the teacher, create the album for each student & share it to their account. Using the comment feature, you can also provide feedback on work they upload. Best part ... it all stays connected to the students' Google accounts!

#9: Grading Forms in Classroom You Can Do - I worked closely with a 4th grade teacher to create this workflow. Grading and returning a Google Form in Classroom so students can see both their grade and any feedback you provide is not the easiest ... but it IS possible! The key is in the settings you do - and don't worry, if you don't get it right before having students complete it, you can always come back and fix it!

#8: Google Classroom Item Types You Can Do - One of the easiest things a teacher can do to better organize and use Google Classroom is to strictly stick to using the best item type for the material being posted. During the spring closure, I found a lack of understanding of what the items types are "best" for. I share an entire presentation with specifics for each item type. (Be sure to check out the final 2 slides - they are handy, ready-to-print reference sheets!) And when you post your material strategically using the best item type, your students (& their parents!) will have less confusion as to what must be done.

#7: Insert Audio (... for kids!) You Can Do - And amazing update to Google Slides is the ability to add audio! Not only can you add audio, so can your students! When I shared this out in early 2020, my focus was not just on the teacher adding audio, but I shared this geared towards showing your students how to add audio. Step-by-step directions AND a quick-print PDF makes it even easier for you to add audio. Game changer for sure! 

#6: Research Template You Can Do - Many of my blogs are inspired by my day job, but quite a few are inspired because I am also a mom. I teach in a different district than where my girls go school, so I get to see how even more teachers teach. This one was inspired by how my middle daughter was doing research for a report. In all honesty, she wasn't taught HOW to research. I realized that for the most part, we AREN'T teaching our students HOW, so I created this template that ANY teacher can take, insert their specifics, and share it to students to provide a structured approach to teaching students how to research.  

#5: New Quarter = New Classroom You Can Do - With our "new normal", our need to keep our digital classrooms organized is even more important. Many teachers aren't teaching students in face-to-face situations, some are in hybrid situations, and some, even though they are face-to-face, rely heavily on digital classrooms to lessen the use of paper. I STRONGLY recommend starting with a NEW classroom at the quarter/grading breaks. Use these 7 steps to help you, your students, and their parents focus on the now.

#4: A Deeper Dive into Google Classroom Posting Options You Can Do - Did you know there are many posting options in Google Classroom? And just like item types, use them strategically to "better" organize your materials and you'll reap the benefits. Topics, scheduling, and draft mode will allow you to plan ahead, organize, and have material "magically" show up just when you want or need it to. Design your Classroom through lens of your students. It will pay off. I promise.

#3: Classroom Header Template You Can Do - This is purely for fun! Google Classroom provides a somewhat random image for your header. Based on the name you give your Classroom, you might get lucky that it matches the content. However, you CAN choose your own header, or even better, create your own and then upload it for a custom look. But, this allows you to go one step further ... include your students on the design of your Classroom and give them some ownership and pride in the look of the Classroom they use just as much as you. This can be a class project!

#2: Starting Google Classroom You Can Do - How much thought have you put into setting up your Google Classroom - or other digital classroom? My second most read blog in 2020 is one where I share an 8 ideas to really put some thought into as you set up your new Classrooms. If you are an administrator, I also recommend you go through this process as it will give you insight as to your recommendations for the teachers you serve and support. Doing this process as a teaching team, or even whole building, and ultimately aligning the general structure of ALL digital Classrooms will benefit your teachers, your students, and your parents. Not having to "learn" a new structure for each teacher will lessen the frustration at home, and right now, that is super important. 

P.S. this process can work for ANY digital classroom, not just Google Classrooms.

#1: Google Classroom "To Do/To Review" You Can Do - Late summer always brings updates to Classroom and this year is no exception. This year's BIG update was a "To Do" (for students) and a "To Review" (for students). THIS. WAS. MAJOR. With a click on the "To Do", students can now see all of their assigned work for all classes, or just one class. This simple look is game changer! I also tucked in a view of the teacher's "To Review" where you will see ALL assignments, or assignments for a specific class. This blog also shares some overall guidance for Google Classrooms.

I hope you enjoy this final week of 2020 and that you are able to rest, relax, and enjoy. Thank you for reading and sharing my blog out. I absolutely love creating, designing, and sharing out what I do. I truly hope that it is helpful. I will continue to share in 2021. And thanks to a conversation with a colleague and friend, I have a pretty awesome one to start the year off with! As a district we will start the new year off remotely and she was struggling with setting boundaries with students in this digital world.

Please feel free to comment below ⤵ - Tweet at me @kiefersj - on Facebook Sarah Kiefer - or even email me sarah@techyoucando.com. I'd love to hear from you!

Uncertain Times You (& I) CAN Do

Today's post was originally going to be incredibly different from what I'm writing ... it's hard to even believe. A week ago, I was coming off the high of working on a wonderful project (which I was going to share, but I'll now save for next week) and now I'm at the beginning of a mandated 3 week shut-down of school.

Let's start by saying this: these are uncertain and historic times. I could NEVER have anticipated this. Prior to Thursday, my district hadn't even closed a single day for the flu! I had been aware of the stress and concern over the COVID-19 disease through my email threads but it hadn't really hit home. When I received the request from Becky, my curriculum director, on Wednesday asking us to clear Thursday morning schedules to meet and help plan for the potential closure ... it hit home. She never asks us to clear our schedule.

During our pre-planned in-service day Friday, we rolled out the best plan we could to our staff. Becky had already given the staff her expectations and guidance via an email. She & other district leaders were making their way to each building on Friday to address the staff in person and answer questions. I was to work with my elementary buildings to come up with distance learning opportunities. As I worked with each grade level team, I reiterated Becky's expectations and did my best to support them. I was so impressed with these teams that I left Friday feeling incredibly confident in our elementary plan for distance learning.

I want to share a few of my take-aways from Thursday & Friday, as well as my plans for the next 3 weeks.

Take-away #1 - 

THIS IS HISTORIC. I've had snow days off school. I've had cold days off school. I even had a few days off when the remnants of a hurricane created a multi-day power outage (important to note I'm in Ohio). I've never had a governor-mandated closure. As one of the kindergarten teams noted in their letter home ... we are all witnessing history! We will all look back one day and remember this. We will learn from these days and we will -hopefully- be stronger.

Take-away #2 -

This is NOT a vacation. This is more so for the mom in me ... I have 3 daughters who are also out of school. They know this isn't normal and I don't want them to be scared. But literally ALL of their activities have been cancelled. ALL of them. As we ate dinner last night, we talked about it not being a vacation. The younger two were sent home with most of their workbooks and the oldest has her school-issued device. They will be expected to be doing "something". I told them we aren't going to stay up late and sleep in late and we are going to have some designated learning time. (Don't worry, I'm not super mean - but I have always believed in a routine of some kind!)

Take-away #3 -

This is NOT homeschooling. I am not becoming a homeschooling mom overnight. I even tried my best to stress this to my teachers, we can't expect the parents of our students to become teachers either. I want my girls to have learning opportunities during this time - preferably from their teachers - but at the least, reading books, doing some writing, and practicing math in some way. I'm not interested in mastering 3 different grade levels worth of content, nor do I want my daughters to be stressed over gaining 3 weeks worth of curriculum at home during this time. Let's be honest - we need to stay healthy and maintain where we are now. Also, we are going to have a LOT of family time, too. We need to keep busy in a different way because we are going to be together a LOT. (Even more so if my husband is told not to come into work any more either ...)

Take-away #4 -

We WILL be slowing down. While this is being forced upon us, I'm not going to say it's all bad. I had even commented in my blog just last week, that time hasn't been my friend and if I could have skipped sleeping, I would have. Guess what? I now have enforced time to really slow down. No running to soccer or basketball or dance ... no cramming in dinner ... no need to set my alarm (but I will ... keep reading to find out why) ... and so on. We are going to experience a very different way of looking at time.

Take-away #5 -

I can choose what I want to focus on. I better understand COVID-19. I better understand it's potential impact. I better understand how I can be smart about protecting myself & my family. Armed with this knowledge, I also am better able to focus. I will focus on keeping things simple ... keeping things "normal" ... keeping things "regular" ... and helping my family and colleagues to do the same. It'll be a different looking normal and regular, but I'm eager to learn.

With all of this being said ... what am I planning to do?

Project #1: Daily planning

Continue my daily planning. Around Christmas break, I started each day with a daily plan. I had listened to Rachel Hollis (of the "Girl, Wash Your Face" fame) and she shared the journaling she had been doing for years. I have faithfully done this EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. since. I set my alarm for 10 minutes earlier, just to fit it in. It has been a fabulous way to start my day and looking back at previous days really helps me to see what I have/haven't accomplished. I'm going to insert the "plan" that I've followed, slightly adapted from Rachel's plan. Feel free to use it or adjust it.

My "take" on Rachel Hollis' journal.

Project #2: Blogging

I've got a plan rolling around in my head how I can use these next 3 weeks to better support my colleagues (and you, my readers). Nothing wild and crazy, but what a better time to try out a new idea than when I'm not incredibly pressed for time? Look for something soon! 

Project #3: Keeping in Touch

I am planning on keeping in touch with my colleagues over this time - so here's your warning! 😁 We have to keep this time away as human as possible. There's always the phone, video conferencing, texting, and email (and probably more options I'm not remembering right now).

Project #4: Keeping a Routine

Like I mentioned above, I'm going to stick to a routine. I'm not going to get up at the same time, but I AM going to set my alarm so I keep my body in a rhythm. I'm not going to stay up until all hours of the night. (I'm going to do the same for my daughters.) I'm going to keep up my workout routine - as much for my mental health as for my physical health. We are going to eat breakfast/lunch/dinner around "normal" times. We might even do some "home ec" and do some baking and cooking! We are also going to do school work Monday-Friday and keep weekends less structured.

Project #5: Home Improvements

What better time to tackle some home improvement than a time where staying home is being encouraged? We've already painted my oldest daughter's bedroom and now we are moving on to replacing carpet with new flooring. My girls are getting some much needed manual labor experience!

Project #6: Continue My Own Learning

I'm currently taking a break in-between coats of trim paint to write this. Since this is really a one-person job, I am able to catch up on some podcasts. While my girls do their reading, I'm going to be able to read books of my own! This is something I've really gotten away from. First up - "Vintage Innovation" by John Spencer. There are a few online activities I might also dip my toe into ...

My bottom-line is I'm going to do my best to keep myself (and my family in as "normal" a routine as possible so we don't get lost in the crazy of this time. We are going to navigate this time - together - as best as we can. I hope that you do as well. Don't be afraid to reach out if you are not feeling connected ... we are all here and we are blessed enough to have multiple ways to connect without being in person. Please take care of yourself and your family and stay healthy!

And when we go back ... and we WILL go back ... I hope I do it better and stronger than I did before. 💖

If you have any questions or comments or if I can help, PLEASE reach out. Please comment below, reach out on Twitter, @kiefersj, or email me at Sarah@techyoucando.com .

#WeAREBetterTogether

A Look Back and Planning Forward ... I Can Do

Today is my final post for the year & I want to look back on 2019 and share plans and ideas for next year.

2019 was a good year for me. A really good year. I love my job. I can't say it enough. I do. And I know I'm very lucky to be able to say that. I've worked with teachers and students on many different projects and I look forward to continuing in 2020.

I also set a pretty major goal for myself in 2019 - to become a Google Certified Innovator. I applied in 2018, but didn't make it. I was devastated (just ask my husband). I knew I needed to submit a much higher quality application the next time, and worked on my application throughout the first half of the year. I have to give a huge shout-out to Becky Tompkins - she reviewed my application and gave me great feedback. I couldn't have done it without her. Over the summer, I focused on, what was for me, the most daunting piece of the application - the video. After realizing a cartoon video wasn't really "for me," I called on my youngest daughter to help with the creation of a screen-recorded Google Slides. She took pictures of me - I used the website Remove.bg to remove the background. (She did such a wonderful job!) I also used Bensound.com for background music. I was thrilled with the way it turned out. This time, I knew I submitted the best application I could have. On August 13, I spent the day checking email and Twitter ... until about 9 pm when my husband showed me the tweet announcing the NYC cohort with my name on it!!! YAY!!! What an incredible feeling and experience! I'll share more on this later, but I want to give a quick shout out to my sister - Angie - for being my travel buddy on this adventure.

2020 is going to be another good year for me. I have my Google Innovator project to work on and bring to life. I have been assigned an awesome mentor - Adi Aharon - and I look forward to working with her. I have the added bonus of support from my curriculum director - Becky Tompkins - as I continue on this journey. My project focuses on helping teachers achieve the goals they set for themselves. Look for more to come!

I also look forward to adding to Templates for Teachers, the site Beth Kingsley & I co-created. We share out templates we've created for other teachers to use (& modify if desired). So far, we have 76! They are all made with Google, so it's super easy to make your own copy. 

Another project on my radar has to do with one of my other passions - the 8th grade Washington, DC trip I co-coordinate with Alyssa Bruck. Two years ago, I created an "app" for our trip. I used Google Slides. I made version 2.0 for last years trip and I have already started on version 3.0 for the November 2020 trip. Super excited about this!!!

I plan to continue sharing here on this blog. Ideally, I will post on Sundays, but  sometimes (like this one) I'm not able to. I also will continue to share out on my companion blog, TYCD: Resources. I'd love for you to check it out! On this blog, I share resources I've come across that I feel have some value. I keep it short & sweet and focus on the link, the audience, suggested content, targeted grade level, along with a short review. This is typically a Tuesday posting. And on Thursdays, I've been selecting a previous blog (from either one) and sharing that out, too. I've called it "#ThrowbackThursday"'s. If what I share is helpful for you, I encourage you to subscribe - to both blogs, so you will not miss a posting. I also share each blog out on Google+, Twitter, Wakelet, Pinterest, and Facebook.

Finally - I want to thank you, readers. Thank you for reading. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your support. I hope 2019 was a good year for you and that 2020 will be an even better year! As I re-read through this, I notice a common theme. I'm not doing it all on my own. My family, my friends, my colleagues, and you are there with me every step of the way. I hope I am there with you, too.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if I can support you:

• email ↬ sarah@techyoucando.com
• Twitter ↬ @kiefersj
• comment below ↴

My First Blog

This has been a L O N G time coming.  I've started and stopped so many different times over the last year.  Each time ... I chicken out.  So, here goes.

I 💖 what I do.  I know I am very lucky to say this.  After 14 years in the classroom, I became a half-time Technology Integration Specialist, while still teaching Social Studies the other half of the day.  The following year, I was allowed to go full-time in the Tech Integration role.  I still can't believe it.

I have to give credit to a few people:

• Eric Curts (@ericcurts) - what an AMAZING guy! He is truly the inspiration for what I'd like to be when I "grow up" 😉 .  Check out his blog ControlAltAchieve if you've not before. He provides inspiration and motivation on making the classroom an interactive and fun place to learn.

• George Couros (@gcouros) - absolutely & highly inspirational! His book, Innovator's Mindset, gives such a refreshing (& smart) view on what education can and should be. I highly suggest you read his blog, "The Principal of Change". Mr. Couros has confirmed and reaffirmed many of the thoughts I've had regarding education.

• Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) -Alice is an amazing powerhouse of Google knowledge. I was honored to attend one of her workshops and I was blown away by her knowledge and creative thinking.

• Here's where I also give a shout out to my awesome husband who listens, encourages, tempers, and ultimately pushes me to follow through on all my "thoughts".  And my 3 girls ... all of them inspire me and force me to rethink my ideas on education.  Without a doubt, being a mom has transformed my teaching.

• And everyone I am honored to work with.  I loved being in the classroom and working with students.  Now that I am working with and supporting all of the teachers, I have an even higher level of satisfaction than I thought possible.

• And shhhh ... don't tell anyone, but I work with some pretty cool administrators, too!

There you have it.  I did it. It's not perfect and I'm sure I'll look back and say to myself, "Oh, geeze! Why didn't you ...", but I'm not perfect and if I wait for perfection, it'll never happen ...