Amazon Web Service Educate Program offers institutions, educators, and students free access to collaboration tools, content, training, and cloud based hosting: With the dramatically increasing demand for cloud employees, AWS Educate provides an academic gateway for the next generation of IT and cloud professionals. AWS Educate is Amazon’s global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to greatly accelerate cloud-related learning endeavors and to help power the entrepreneurs, workforce, and researchers of tomorrow. AWS Educate: Program Benefits Access cloud content, training, collaboration tools, and AWS technology at no cost by joining AWS Educate today. Educators Students AWS Credits (annually renewable) $200/educator - at member institutions $75/educator - at non-member institutions $100/student - at member institutions $35/student - at non-member institutions AWS Training Free access to labs Free AWS Technical Essentials eLearning course 50% off instructor-led training provided by AWS in the United States, Brazil or Japan 50% off AWS certification exams Free access to labs Curated Content Free access to AWS content for classes Free access to content contributed by leading educators Free access to AWS content for homework, labs, or self-study Collaboration Tools Educator Collaboration Portal access Virtual and in-person events Contribute and rate content Private and public discussion forums Provide feedback on AWS Educate Student Portal access Virtual and in-person event to gather information, share best practices, and network Provide feedback on AWS Educate   The post AWS Educate Program appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

FEATURED STORY Uncover the Origins of the Mayflower Compact Discover why most of the Mayflower’s male passengers signed a historic agreement. In September 1620, religious dissenters, called "Separatists" by their detractors, were joined aboard the Mayflower by other English colonists recruited by the project’s financial backers. Many of these newcomers did not share the Separtists’ religious zeal. The ship set sail for America at a time of year when Atlantic storms were perilous. The Mayflower made landfall 66 days later. With tensions threatening to divide the passengers, a social compact was drafted and signed before going ashore. All who signed would submit to the government created, officers elected, and laws drafted.  View Resource RECOMMENDED RESOURCES All About the Holidays: Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a day for us to remember what we’re thankful for. Help your class uncover the history behind the holiday with this short video. It’s a great way to kick off a lesson on Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims, early American history, and more! View Resource Crash Course: Chemistry Chemistry can tell us how three tiny particles- the proton, neutron, and electron- come together in trillions of combinations to form everything. Check out the entire Crash Course chemistry collection and discover a fun new way to teach chemistry through the pioneering efforts of brothers John and Hank Green. View Collection No Nonsense Grammar Explore a range of commonly taught grammar principles for early elementary and middle-schoolers with these fun videos and activities. From the difference between dependent and independent clauses to the correct usage of semicolons, let these resources guide you through the interactives (and perils!) of everyday grammar. View Collection NEWS Time is Running Out! Enter the Get Your Tech On Sweepstakes Today! Get Your Tech On with PBS LearningMedia! Explore resources and upcoming PD webinars designed to help you find new ways to use technology in the classroom. Don’t forget to enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win cool, tech-themed prizes! Enter Now Teacher Tools Tip: Using the Quiz Maker Create a simple assessment for your class in a snap! The Quiz Maker tool allows you to create a simple quiz using multiple choice, fill in the blank, and short answer questions. Learn More The post Thanksgiving History with PBS LearningMedia appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

We are thrilled to announce that this year’s NCCE conference in Seattle will feature the Digital Bug and Tech-Savvy Teacher NCCE Summit featuring Google for Education! Now months in the planning, the NCCE Summit will include speakers popular trainers from around the West that specialize on using Google’s amazing suite of tools to up the game of tech-savvy teachers and students alike.  Details appear below.  Keep an eye on the Tech-Savvy Teacher blog for interviews with organizers and speakers.  See you in Seattle in February! The post Coming to NCCE in February: the NCCE Google Summit! appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

One of the biggest member events of the year starts Monday, December 7th! You must register to win. To show NCCE’s appreciation of educators throughout the Northwest they will be giving away one prize every day for 10 days. Winners will be randomly drawn and announced on social media. This year’s giveaways include: AVer Document Cameras AVer Charging Lockers Casio Projector Califone Bluetooth Speakers ASUS Chromebook Hitachi Projectors SWIVL Lecture Capture Robot Click on the graphic below to register to win! The post 10 Days of Giving is Back! appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Articulate announced their Guru Contest 2015 last month, and the closing date is getting near.  Elearning Laboratory in conjunction with Perfect Performance Training have built an entry for this years competition.  I thought it would be fun to set up a countdown for the last 9 days of the competition. Once the countdown hits zero we will post out entry for everyone to see.  To anyone who wants to enter, go for it and good luck!   The post Articulate Guru Contest 2015 appeared first on The Elearning Laboratory.

I was really excited and honoured to find out that the Elearning Laboratory won gold in the Articulate Guru 2015 contest.  Although I hoped I had a chance of winning a prize, the more examples I saw posted online the more my hopes started to fade, and felt gold was out of reach. The file for this course has already been shared online so you can see how the course functions.  In this post I want to take the opportunity to show how the course was designed, the process that it went through and the sweat, blood and tears that turned my hair grey (well greyer). Introduction If you want a breakdown of how it was built technically, this is not that article and I make no apologies for that. The Idea… I wanted to build a game but also wanted to ensure that there were strong instructional design principles behind the design (I will go into this later) This was not the first course that was planned to be entered for the Guru 2015, I originally planned to build a course on sun awareness for kids (and have planned to do this for the last two Guru awards) for reasons I won’t go into this was shelved and I needed to come up with an idea.  I train regularly in the martial arts of the ninja and have an interest in the history of the ninja, that coupled with a course that I built last year for a client gave me the basis of an idea and Enter the Ninja was born. The main aim of my design was not to use traditional navigation and to nudge the user in the right direction. The Master of this modern Dojo … the Design For most of my courses I will do all of the design work, however I knew at the beginning of this I would need an illustrator to help me out.  To get the images I needed  I wrote a rough storyboard in Storyline and added images I got from the internet, almost as a mood board, to give Laura an idea of what I was after, Laura is brilliant at interpreting what I needed and never had to send one image back for correction. I would also like to say that some of my descriptions of assets I needed and how the needed to be provided were overly complicated and Laura helped (particularly in the Release the Water challenge) to reduce my workload and produce a streamlined design. Simplified Design much better than my plan! (Is that an easter egg) The course The deadline for entries was fast approaching, the plan was to create a course with 4 Mini-games and a final test. After completing the storyboard it was obvious that I did not have time to create 5 interactions (Fact! In the storyboard I only had 3 ideas for the mini-game and these made it into the final design).  The Five interactions were whittled down to three, Escape the Room (this already existed from a previous challenge and just needed rebranding) , Shuriken and Release the Water.  Now with a cut down design it was time to start building. Introduction Screen Instructional Design Although this is definitely a game, there are instructional design elements that I would urge my clients to use in their courses, the main body of the game are the mini games, and I would see this as the assessment in a course, it is my belief that you can pass the assessment in most courses you should not need to view the instructional element, in this game if you fail any of the assessments you are passed to a screen where the master shows a video of the game being completed.  This way the learning is reinforced and you are then offered the opportunity to take the assessment again. Instructional Video The Build The initial build took about two days and the base course as you see it now existed in a playable form at this point, I am not saying it was without bugs but it was functional enough to send out to a few people for feedback and testing.  I used a group of trusted developers, colleagues and friends to test my version 1 and got lots of positive feedback but also lots of corrections/criticisms/ideas sent back and for those I am eternally grateful and owe each and everyone of you a pint (at least). Submit After V1 I tweaked and fixed elements of the game, at this point I should probably describe my development process, I generally use the rapid development process and continually refine and redefine my design as the review process continues.  For this course the same thing happened. Graphics got replaced timing got sorted out, fonts got changed and colours were tweaked. Eventually one week before the course was due to be submitted the course it was completed and I could focus again on my clients work. How wrong was I… A couple of things happened to change this and also helped make the course better because of it.  They both happened  because of my children.  I had been working long shifts to be able to complete this and my other work,  I found was building this course late into the evenings whilst my children were around,  one day Thomas my eldest asked if he could play the final version, of course I said "yes". I watched him whilst he played the game intrigued to see how intuitive it was. Immediately I noticed that he was clicking on things that I didn’t expect him to (which is where the plan for the easter eggs came from) I learnt a lot from watching him play and refined a lot of the experiences from this real world test. As soon as Thomas wanted to play so did Holly my youngest again I said yes and this changed the game for the better, two things happened, Holly was disappointed that the Ninja was male, and she also struggled with Shuriken challenge (as the control was keyboard and mouse driven).  Two fixes immediately came to mind one was to add in branching based on age (to make some challenges easier) and also to change the Ninja based on their Sex. In this game if you are under seven the shuriken game is a click and pop game instead of a keyboard based interaction. Your Profile The Easter Eggs I was acutely aware that the course was now only three games long, after watching Thomas I added in 3 easter eggs (one in each game).  I will not ruin the experience for you, but to make it easier I added in an easter egg icon so you know where they are, to view the easter egg itself you must do something more than click on the egg though.  The easter eggs themselves were demos and examples I had previously built, some needed so additional work to match the aspect ratio, otherwise they are unchanged. Very last minute (just before submitting) I added in a final easter egg (Paint the Fence) this is hidden but can be found with perseverence. Submitted With only three days left the game was fully tested and fully built, there were a number of refinements added to again maintain interest, such as a badge system tied to the final certificate. More progress bars and a running ninja, The course was submitted before the deadline and the result is now history. Overall As in every project the final outcome was not the one I originally storyboarded, I always say that all good developments come from a collaborative approach, in this case my reviewers and children made this more than I hoped for and as such, I am indebted to everyone who helped review it and give feedback. I love the Guru competition it is probably the only competition where you are judged on how you use the tool rather than the content (although I am sure that helps) I have now submitted three entries (Unplaced, Bronze, Gold) and I am already planning for the next one perhaps it will be the sun awareness course. Congratulation to everyone who entered! Want us to develop your next course? get in touch. Share this entryShare on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Google+Share on PinterestShare on LinkedinShare by Mail The post Going for Gold! appeared first on The Elearning Laboratory.

I have mentioned that I am impressed with my school this year. I enjoy being in a place where most teachers respect and have concern for others. This year we filled out a rubric to see if kids qualify for Foreign Language in 8th grade. My big problem with the rubric is that it tends to put all the good kids in Foreign Language and all the bad kids in Reading. That is not a good combination. I raised a question about it, and although those who I asked seemed to say, "Well, we know more about the situation than you, so stop making waves" they were supportive after I persisted in expressing my concerns. It led to some quick changes to the rubric, and they were able to change things to be better. I suggested we have an application for the students to fill out that would help them decide if Foreign Languages were right for them. This is what it looks like. I am glad that these teachers and counselors are willing to work together to come up with something that is hopefully better.

Right now it just looks like an alien.

Last year, May 2010, I walked during lunch at work and rode my bike after work, some days. I also weighed about 250 pounds. In 2010, I rode 700 miles on my bike and I was pretty proud of myself. I rode 300 miles in 2009. So far this year, I have ridden over 400 miles; close to halfway to my goal of 1000 miles this year. I am down to 215 pounds now, and I feel great. This has been a good year. See the full gallery on Posterous

I think I am a pretty smart guy, but when it comes to things dealing with medicine, I realize that I am way out of my league. I try to be aware of what is going on, often struggle mightily understanding what doctors are talking about. So, there are two parts to this asking the right questions. 1. Ask the right questions as a patient. For me, I need to ask questions about the things the doctors are saying. So, while I sit here with my daughter in the Emergency room trying to figure out what is wrong with her, I am asking a lot about what they are saying so I can better understand what is going on and so that I can relay that back to my wife who is with the other kids at home. It is the first time I have tried so hard to understand what is going on. Usually, I just trust what the doctors say, but today, I am trying to really understand it. 2. Asking the right questions when you are trying to help someone. There is a stark contrast between the resident and the head ER doctor. The resident was asking questions about this situation (bloody stool) while the head doctor was asking about other aspects of my daughter's health. It was fascinating to see how connecting a couple more dots. As of right now, we still don't know anything. But, I could tell the doctor was trying to puzzle it out. The resident asked a couple questions that led to a specific diagnosis and settled on that. The head doctor didn't agree with that diagnosis because there was something missing. That led her to ask questions about other areas of my daughter's health. It didn't lead to a diagnosis, but it almost ruled out another. The real question is, what are the right questions? That, I don't know the answer to, but here is one idea of how this applies to education. If I ask one of my teachers how I can help her, she will never tell me what she needs. If, however, I recognize a need (by being thorough in my questions to her) and then offer specific help on that area, she will be much more likely to accept it. Have a Good Life.