Andover Innovation Lab & Instructional Technology Update Andover High School Week Of October 27th- 31st 2014

What a great week to be back after a rejuvenating MassCUE conference at Gillette Stadium! At Andover High School we are really in the flow of integrating Google Sites, Google Classroom and a variety of other technology tools into the classroom.

Class Charts Seating Chart App

 I will start off with a share that I got from researching the ability to create class seating charts online with World Language teacher Jen Deschenes. The Chrome Application which is an application available in the Chrome web store on the Chrome Browser named "Class Charts" allows you to create web based seating charts for your classroom. It is simple to use and will help you create multiple class charts in a jiffy.

Health/Physical Education Department

On Monday I had the opportunity to work with the entire Health/Physical Education Department on the creation of their Google Accounts,what it means for them and how they can begin to create,share and work with students using the tools of Google Drive.


They were a great receptive group and many had great questions about getting started in simple ways. My suggestion for many of them was just using a single doc for their continuing update of homework assignments.

Mike Messina
Diagramming for Game Development

In the Digital Learning course Game Design Michael Messina is developing lessons which encourage students to look at the format in which games are developed with HTML5 for the web. Michael Messina has engaged students on a variety of project development concepts in both Web Design and Game Development and we are excited to see his projects through the semester.

Here is Michael outlining the pixel dimensions for students of a web interface of a game.

Karen Stevens

Karen Stevens Entrepreneurship course has been delving into the creation of business plans for their projects. Karen has been developing rubrics which will help students envision their business projects in terms of the key concepts of a business plan. The students have been excited to work on their own ideas and problem solve their concept development.

Dan Brennan & Bryce Work to update iPads

The help desk has been busy updating the iPad cart for the Social Studies department and preparing their formative projects for review. Be sure to check put their most recent blog writing which includes their perspectives on the MassCUE conference and their project work.





Librarian John Berube fresh off MassCUE has been suggesting some great new tools for staff to use in addition to the many research tools such as Ebrary and Boston Public Library tools he already administers. One tool he found was the presentation tool Emaze which can be alternative to other presentation tools such as Goolge Slides, Powerpoint and Prezi. Emaze's features include a very graphic interface for content and many nice templates.

Google Classroom Interface

Tom Powers has continued to power through the use of Google Classroom engaging his students with
the assignments and the ability to submit them online. He has pioneered the use of the platform at the high school and has begun using the high school lab as a tool with classroom to submit the students audio recording as assignments through the use of web tools such as Vocaroo which enables students to record their voice online and send a link to Mr. Powers in Google Classroom.

Jen with her Memes

My week ended with a great meeting with Jen Deschenes on fine tuning who has included the use of student created memes in her classroom to have students quickly form sentences using a "meme" app on their phones. Memes are small photos with text added to give context or create communication.

Jen is also using Google Drive to store student created audio files for quick sharing within folders on her drive.

Andover Innovation Lab & Help Desk:Taking Over The MassCUE Conference!!

On early  Wednesday October 22nd 5 students left early and  travelled to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro,Masachusetts from Andover High School as members of the Andover Innovation Lab and Help Desk to be part of the MassCUE(Massachusetts Computer Using Educators event in the form of the student help desk featured in the main concourse. The students participating were Eli Gukovsky,Ari Primak, Will Owen and Bryce Corbitt.

With the assistance of Dan Downs and Dan Brennan the students set up a video which promoted their endeavors at the help desk and helped outline the curriculum which they are part of at the high school. The video below helps outline the process of the Andover Innovation Lab and Help Desk.

This was a great opportunity for the students to better understand the huge movement they are apart of which empowers students to use technology more efficiently with teachers and enables them to work on their own innovative technology driven project. Students had an opportunity to network with other teachers who use technology as a main part of their instruction. 

The students also had a visit from Andover Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Marinel McGrath who visited and chatted and tweeted out her visit with the group.

I was also able to present the Andover Innovation Lab curriculum to a roomful of teachers eager to see how we work on our projects and use blogging as a reflective form of the process. The presentation below outlines the design of the curriculum used at the help desk and provides an overview of several of the students projects. This was a highly beneficial opportunity to share what we do at the Andover Innovation Lab and how this model continues to evolve as we integrate technology in the district.

Andover Innovation Lab Student Experiencing Virtual Welding At MassCUE 2013!

MassCUE 2013- Andover Student Help Desk Experience- Vaibhav Patel

We went to Mass Cue Conference, at first we went looking for the 30 hands learning vendor, but we could not find it at first, so we went to the vendors and met the exhibitors and learned a lot of stuff about technology, I also did Virtual Welding. We also tried to get some internships and connections to people associated with IT. Before lunch, we found the 30 hands learning vendor and met Eric Braun, Owner of the 30 Hands Learning, and he gave some nice advice about using technology for myself, and it was useful. Then we had to eat lunch and finally after that we went to work the Einstein Bar, where I assisted people with technical Issues, so basically a help desk. There was one lady that came for help, her problem was that she couldn’t turn up/off the sound in her Mac. Overall a very rewarding experience and great to meet so many entrepreneurs and see the range of employment opportunities in technology.