Damon Hargraves

I'm here at ASTE again, and it's great to see all of my colleagues and friends from around Alaska.  ASTE is great for staying in touch, and also meeting new likeminded educators.  I'm loving it.  This year I have two sessions. Pickr.app: A free solution for managing an RTI or Project Based Learning schedule Presentation Schedule video for teachers Schedule video for parents & students Pickr.org Student Broadcasting Untethered Presentation KMS YouTube Channel

SESSION TITLE: Implementing an RTI Schedule at the Middle School Level using Social Media, Board Presentations, Apps, and More Passionate principals work hard to change the status quo in our schools.  Our presentation will help principals see how to make change in a difficult environment with many obstacles present.  Principals will learn strategies for preparing the school community for change in a positive way so that when the change comes, they will be ready to get on board.  Principals will also learn about the Pickr app, which allows students to pick their own tutorials and make ad-hoc groups in a quick and efficient manner. Presentation PDF Kodiak Middle School New Schedule Explained for Parents Kodiak Middle School New Schedule Explained for Teachers Pickr App More presentations from this conference are available at my presentation partner's website JethroJones.com .  We had three sessions.

I started using iPhoto when it was first released for Mac a dozen years ago.  It’s had a good run, but the new Photos app has been a welcome update.  One of my favorite things about the new app is that it is fast…like really fast.  It does all kinds of caching and memory management with iCloud to keep your library as nimble as possible.  Back in the day large libraries would really slow down your machine to the point of being unusable.  One of the strategies that I used with iPhoto on older machines was to break up my libraries.  Every few years I would create a new library, which seemed to speed things up for me.  I also kept different libraries on different machines and ended up just kind of collecting libraries over the years.   Long story short, I have several iPhoto libraries, but with the way things work now I really just want one big fat library for everything.   Currently there is no way to merge or import Photo libraries on your computer. However, you can upload everything f

For a teacher, popsicle sticks are a randomization tool.  You can write student names on them, stick them in a jar, and then use them to help you, as the teacher, to be unbiased when calling on students or picking a student for a job.  Let's not forget that the popsicle sticks are a tool for you as the teacher.  We should not confuse a randomization process for choosing engagement as helping to heighten levels of actual engagement. "Threatening possible engagement is not the same as actually being engaged," said me as a 5th grader. With a critical eye, look at your classroom instruction.  Is there any process in your day that is causing you to inadvertently manifest the above scenario, where compliance is the real goal and possible engagement is used as a threat for compliance?  Is this really what you wanted?

As a grant administrator and school administrator I’m building budgets all of the time. No, really, it happens quite often.  Zero based budgeting and incremental budgeting are two methods that I use.  With the zero based method I start off with a total budget amount in mind and build my budget up to that amount, aiming to have zero money left over.  An incremental budget means that I take the last budgeting cycle amounts and base my new budget on what was actually spent last time, attempting to take into account future needs.  I find that using these methods together is very effective. Obviously, my school district has professional accounting software that tracks the real money, so there is no need for me to adopt another system that tracks actual purchases.  Most of the time the budgets that I create are quick, one-off, planning budgets that help inform purchasing, grant reporting, and grant writing.  That said, the normal Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers tools don’t really allow you to d

This used to be on my wall when I was in Bering Strait School District as the Distance Learning Facilitator.  This was the Student Broadcasting Team event streaming model that we developed back in 2007 and was the one that I used the entire time that I was in BSSD. I still refer back to it today as one of the best models for live broadcasting in rural Alaska.  Two things that are missing from the diagram are the DataVideo mixer and the Skype Chat.  When we used the DataVideo hardware it went between the “Video Mixer” computer and the Tandberg and was used to connect additional cameras.  We also almost always had a Public Skype Chat going for every event.  Students moderated the chat.   Skype discontinued Public Chats  a few years ago, unfortunately. Live event streaming with this setup allowed for a lot of flexibility, lots of camera angles (especially when we added the DataVideo mixer for an additional four video cameras), commentator/interview mics, simultaneous VTC and internet str