Category Archives: The Teachers

Google Does Some New and Not So New Tricks

I went to my personalized Google homepage this morning just like every morning. My “must-reads” are there as well as a quick peek at my Gmail inbox, and the day’s weather report. There was a new present from Google this morning! Themes for my page. I confess to liking pretty wallpaper, screensavers, and themes so this was a fun new toy. The themes seem to be customized for your zipcode – they get darker at night or with bad weather.

Google advanced search also does something that was new at least to me – you can specify usage rights! The choices are – not filtered by usage, free to use or share, free to use or share – even commercially, free to use – share – or modify, free to use – share – modify – even commercially. This is a great thing to share with your students, I would advise that they still check for license issues but it will certainly narrow down the possiblities of accidently violating copyright.

A lot of the options that are available from the main searchbox if you know the syntax are also available here. If you don’t know the syntax or don’t want to be bothered with looking it up you can still narrow down your search results by making use of the advanced search page and just selecting the options you want from the drop down and check boxes.

Another nice tool is available if you click More at the right side of the main searchbox and then click Still More you get a list of other Google places you can go to. Click on Alerts to create a search that sends you updates on the topic of your choice. This is a great research tool. You type in your search terms and then specify news, blogs, web, groups, or comprehensive. Then tell Google how often you want to be updated, enter your email address and you will get everything you always wanted to know about your topic right in your inbox, You can edit the alert if you find your results need a bit of tweaking, and you can even place a module on your Google homepage so you can see your information anytime.

A Continuing Conversation about Student Blogging and Possibilities

The conversation that about students posting online has continued both at Assorted Stuff and at The Not So Distant Future . This is such a hot button issue for everyone involved and I hope we can continue to approach it from a positive perspective. Maybe the next discussion after asking questions about how students would feel if various people in their lives were to be the audience for their post, should be the why. We know that part of a student blog is going to be for the grade, but as well as an accidental audience there are also hidden surprises.

For me it is when someone else responds to a post or a comment I’ve written and the gains can be the connectedness, the respect of my peers, friendship that grows from the communication, a clarification of my own thoughts – those sort of things that you don’t think about going into it.  It can be the sense of community and the gratification that comes from finding that others are having the same thoughts, fears, ideas, and experiences that I am and the excitement that you get from sharing those things with others.  They are also not really things we can tell students about because the experience is going to be different for everyone. So how can we get them thinking about the possibilities?
1. Why are they writing?

2. What do they want to get out of it?

3. When they reread what they have written, how do they feel?

4. Would they take the time to read it if it was written by someone else?

5. Do they care about what they have written?

6. What are they passionate about?

7. What stories do they have to tell?

8.  What are they saying between the lines?

9. If their blog entry was a time capsule, what would they want to say to their future self?

10. How can reflection and commenting help them in their educational experience?

Any ideas for additions to this list?

Student Blogging With Positive Online Image

I’ve been doing some reading about student blogging and giving some thought on how to help students look at what they post to promote a positive image online. In particular this post on Assorted Stuff made me realize the need to be more intentional about communicating the things we should be thinking about. This is aside from abiding by a school’s Acceptable Use Policy and whatever a teacher decides to include in a rubric. This is more in the form of discussion with students about how and why they should filter what they post online.
Here are some ideas I’m thinking about:
As a student blogger, before you post, read what you have written with the following in mind:

  • What if a future or present employer read this?
  • What if a family member or friend read this?
  • What if this were printed in a local newspaper?
  • What if this were written by someone else – what opinions might you form about the writer?
  • What if a teacher or student at another school read this?
  • What if your future teenage child or grandchild was reading this?
  • What if this comment were on a screen in front of an educators conference?
  • What if you were trying to find the person who wrote this – are there any personal clues?
  • What if a family member read this?
  • What if your future spouse read this?

Even if commenting on a blog is restricted, you can be quoted and a discussion about your post or comment can find it’s way to another blog. Everything on the internet is searchable, clickable, and quotable so it is always a good idea to step back and look at what you have written with an objective eye.

Google some people to see how clickable they are. If you are a “blogging” teacher you could even Google yourself or someone else in the community that would be familiar to the students.

Any ideas to add to this? I would be glad to hear them.

Google Custom Search Engine

I played around with a tool that’s fairly new to me today. I now have a Google custom search box at the bottom of this page that will let you search this blog and my work blog. I wanted to see how easy it was to create a custom search engine using Google’s Co-op and found it completely painless. You follow the link and the click on the custom search engine link and then just follow the steps. They consist basically of giving your search engine a name, a brief description, keywords, and URLs you want it to search. Google creates the code and you paste it into your blog where you wish it to show up. The only thing I changed was adding tags to get it to display in the center of the footer.

I will make one that searches all my favorite blogs. I’m not sure if there is a limit to how many URLs you can add but I wouldn’t be surprised as there was a limit to the suggested keywords you could associate with your search engine (7). The search box is wider than I would like for my sidebar which is why it lives at the bottom of the page. You can even “brand” your searchbox with an image you have uploaded to the web if you like. You can open it up for people to collaborate – either publicly or just those you invite. There is also an option to have it added to your personalized Google homepage.

Combining this custom search engine tool with Google Notebook, Google Calendar, GMail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets and tabs on your personalized homepage gives you a free and very practical research and productivity center.
It would be useful to add a custom search box to a classroom blog that limited your students research to sites you designate. This requires you being able to edit the theme of your blog. Some other ways to use this tool would be to create a search engine to browse items you are looking to buy and limit the search to places like ebay, amazon, and buy.com. A search engine that only returned results from designated newspapers would be useful for debate students.

I hope you found some useful information here and that you will give the Google customized search engine a test-drive. Search some blogs from my education category

Google Custom Search

Link, App, and Information Overload

The TechChickTips blog had a list of Links and one in particular caught my attention. It’s called Litesum and it was created by high school freshman Jake Jarvis. You type a topic in the searchbox and it brings up a summary of the corresponding wikipedia page. This led me to start searching for web apps or mashups that were created by students. While that search took my down several very interesting rabbit holes I didn’t have a lot of luck. I am still searching and if anyone out in the blogosphere knows of more I would be very interested in hearing about them.

One of the sites I found while I was searching for student created apps was called TerraClues. TerraClues is a game played using google maps. There are already some games created but you can create your own too. Using text, pictures, and maps you leave clues that send the player on a search of google maps to find whatever you want anywhere in the world. There is even a teacher area where you could use the game with your class. There is a tutorial game that you can run through without signing on for an account that gives you examples of the type of clues and how it works. Fun stuff!

Another great idea that I was led to was on the Tech Savvy Educator site (which will rapidly be on my blogroll – great stuff here). To recycle keyboards take the keys off and use them for scrabble! The board is created using excel and there is even a hint to tell you that the squares need to be 3/4 inch. I just happen to have a collection of dead keyboards and if anyone at school is interested in giving this a whirl I would be glad to supply them with a sack full of keys!

This site led me to a lesson plan and directions for students creating “MySpace Like” webpages on Medieval characters. The link to the directions is here and the link to the students’ completed pages is here.

This landed me finally at Think:Lab, a blog I plan to spend a lot more time! Lots of food for the brain there. I read a post there that taught me a new term – Participation Culture. You can click and go to an online presentation by Steve Borsch of Connecting the Dots. This term makes more sense to me that web 2.0.

Our students are completely at home with technology. They’ve never known a time without computers and the internet is a part of normal life for them. As they navigate through the information and often as in the case of Jake Jarvis, not only participate but create new ways to utilize it, I look ahead with anticipation to see just where technology will take us next. The interesting question is who will be driving the bus?

A day With Debate Students and a Link

Imagine spending an entire Saturday with a group of teenagers all in business suits (including the ladies) going room to room with carts and dollies full of file boxes (their research and case cards) and hearing snippets of conversation involving politics, the latest unemployment figures, and vocabulary that includes hegemony, solvency and paradigms.

Sounds kind of surreal doesn’t it? That’s debate. A bunch of smart stress puppies putting in many hours (along with their exhausted coaches) and traveling many miles hoping to get just a few extra speaker points and maybe end up with a college scholarship.

In general I found a great bunch of kids, able to hold their own in a conversation better than many adults. They support each other, fight like cats and dogs, critique each other and whoa to anyone from the outside that treats one of them badly. Teams from different schools pass each other in the halls asking how they did in their last round and commiserate on the shortcomings of their last judge. I love their humor and drive.
I got to watch two rounds and as always was amazed at the speed and the level of intensity. I was tired and I didn’t have to do anything but listen!

One student shared a link with me that I want to pass on. The site is called Progressive U and their opening paragraph on their about page says the following:

Do you want to regenerate brain cells killed by countless hours on MySpace?*Do you need rehab to cure your Facebook addiction?

Are you exhausted from wading through piles of nonsense on Xanga and LiveJournal?

Stop banging your head against a wall of pictures, and put your brain to good use!

Progressive U is a blogging site for teens with a vision:

The mission of Progressive U is to provide young people with opportunities to discover, analyze, and discuss the values and democratic principles that promote a healthy, just society.

Youth can also earn scholarship money here. A $1000 and two $500 scholarships are available. The rules are available on the site.
This is a great use of blogging and as they say on their site ” Friends don’t let friends waste all their time on Myspace”

I’m off to bed now, watching debate wears me out and time springs forward tonight.

One Foot in the Future, One Class Stuck in the Past

I’m going to do a little complaining and the names have been omitted to protect whoever!

scenario 1: A class that entails completing paper lessons and recording audio on cassette recorders and sending them through the mail to be graded. The students must purchase said cassette recorders and blank tapes, record themselves, put the cassettes in envelopes and then postage has to be paid to send them to the appropriate person who must then put the tape in another cassette player and listen to grade the student. Several processes, several costs, and quite a bit of time is entailed here.
scenario 2: Student records audio on a Mac using GarageBand, sends it to iTunes, exports it as an mp3 file and I upload it to a webpage where the appropriate person needs to do nothing but click to listen. Or the student can record on a PC using Audacity and saves as an mp3. No extra cost, no extra procedure comments could be added immediately with each assignment.

The world may be flat but some colleges prefer scenario 1.

We are trying to bring our teachers and students into an age of literacy at the high school level but how frustrated will they be when they get to college and find out that those skills won’t be put to use? Probably as frustrated as I am right now.

Random Weekend Tips

These are not my own ideas – they’re bits and pieces of things I read this week that I have found useful. I’m so thankful for folks who freely share their knowledge on their blogs. This post is more a reminder to myself about the things I have found and need to put to work.
Gmail – I love it and use it all the time. I read a post this weekend though that made me slap my forehead. I send email to myself On links that I want to check out later or if I’m on the PC and find something that pertains to the mac or linux, I email it to my Gmail account so I can refer to it when I’m on the machine it relates to. I often forget about the post or forget which post it is and I have used the search function in Gmail to find it later but semantic keywords or tags in my subject line to make the process easier and quicker. I will from now on! The article I was reading suggested using the Google toolbar for the Gmail it option. I have resisted this one little Google option thus far but I may have to give it another look.
FireFox – I have used FireFox for several years. The only time I use IE is when I need to check for updates on a PC. I constantly have multiple tags open and in the morning, after I have made my latte and I’m ready to spend a few moments reading and waking up before the rest of the family starts to appear, I open my usual morning reads. Gmail, my work email account, google homepage, and DIGG, and sometimes the local paper. I have a brand new folder on my bookmarks toolbar named MorningReads that contains the bookmarks to those items. When I click on the folder it lists them with one extra item on the bottom – Open All in Tabs. I can now click that one item and all my usual links open in tabs across my browser window. As I excitedly tell my kids about this little trick they roll their eyes and tell me I’m such a geek. They think that they are insulting me but I can’t help it if the idea of clicking once instead of four times makes me grin!

Google Notebook – I have been using it for several weeks and have fallen in love with it. You can install an extension so that you can right click on any webpage and a contextual menu item called Note-it is now a choice. “Noting it” saves it to your Google Notebook. It can be an entire webpage, a picture, a quote, a URL or anything else you can right click on. I have been saving items to one big notebook, knowing there had to be a better way to organize but not knowing quite how. This weekend I learned that you can drag-and-drop anything anywhere in the notebook. I spent the last hour creating new notebooks, adding section headers, and dragging things around to organize them. You also have the choice of keeping your notebook private or sharing it publicly. You can export items directly to Google docs and spreadsheets, you can print a notebook, and you can add a note and just type or paste a note directly into the application – great for research, organizing a project, or collaboration. If you have a Gmail account you automatically have access to this application and if you don’t have Gmail it’s worth it just to have access to all the Google apps. I still use a main notebook to capture and then open my notebook and move things around to make them easier to find. I also have the Google Notebook widget on my personalized Google homepage so everything is right there and visible which just seems to work best for me.  There is a great information and tutorial Powerpoint to download here. (warning clicking starts the download)
New Online Application – Mindomo. Online mindmapping. You have to sign up for an account but it’s free. I’d like to see Google add something like this to it’s suite of apps (along with a presentation piece which I’ve already mentioned on this blog). I made a little practice map and it was very straight-forward and simple to follow.

Support Net Neutrality

The very fact that I can publish on this blog makes me a supporter of Net Neutrality. I am going to make an intentional effort to learn more and be more vocal about this issue because to me the internet is the last place people have where freedom of speech truly exists. We read newspapers, listen to radio stations, and watch news shows on TV stations that are all controlled for the most part, by large media companies and so we see, hear, and read, what they want to put out there.

While there are issues in education dealing with kids safety online, validation and quality of information, copyright issues and more, I would rather we work to teach our students how to deal with those issues than open up my browser and find nothing but what my provider decides is appropriate or newsworthy.

I want to be able to choose for myself, and even if no one ever reads what I write, I want to be able to publish it. I want those same things for my kids. If you are interested in learning more about Net Neutrality there is a video you can watch that will give you some food for thought. It’s a little long so get a cup of coffee and have a notepad handy in case you want to jot something down.


Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

Reading Blogs

Scott Mcleod of the Dangerously Irrelevant blog has been responding to a challenge by Miguel Guhlin to find “new voices” and has been showcasing educator bloggers for the last week. I have been reading and growing my feed list with each addition. Tonight I read the blogs of Dave Sherman and Pete Reilly. Mr. Sherman talks about “developing self directed learners” and ties it together with the kind of “what if?” questions that kids ask.

Mr. Reilly challenges each of us with this premise:

What would happen to our schools and our world if every teacher, administrator, and staff member lived and acted from his purpose each day? A purpose rooted in the deepest parts of his mind, body, and soul.

He also spoke of his own learning experience as he reacted to a post of Mr. Guhlin’s and in another post he listed the items he would include in the technology plan if he were leading a district. He also has a wiki for technology planning.

There are so many voices to listen to, to reflect on, react to, and include in our “circle of wisdom” The amazing thing is how many of these voices resonate with the same truths. These bloggers are not necessarily on the “A” list of bloggers. We are all so busy and tend to read the blogs that are easy to find or are written by faces we recognize, who have presented to large groups of educators and maybe have published books but as I try to achieve some kind of balance with the amount of reading I do I will definitely be including some of these writers. They challenge me, humble me, and make me thankful for a technology that allows me to hear their thoughts and learn from them. Thanks to Scott Mcleod for sharing.

One way we can find these voices is through the use of wikis. David Warlick uses a wiki page to embed blog posts from people who attend his presentations. Using the read/write tools that are available we can model the collaboration skills we need to be teaching our students be collaborating in becoming life-long learners ourselves and discover the bloggers and educators in each individual’s way is trying to find the best ways to prepare their students for the future.
Another wiki I visited this week is The Thousand and One Flat World Tales project. The premise is that an alien race has come to earth and angry that they are not finding humans doing any of the things they expect they send a message over the internet for countries to send their best storytellers and they then hold them hostage on their ship while they tell their stories and if the aliens find them interesting they will not destroy the human race. Different grades and schools from anywhere can participate and build this wiki by adding the stories of their own cultures.
I also learned of a new online tool. It converts videos like the ones you find on YouTube to AVI, MOV, Mp4 and several other formats that you can then save to your computer. It can be found at Vixy.net – this will be a useful site!

Technology – Who and What Do We Use It For?

I just watched the most amazing video. It’s called Raising Small Souls. How I found the video is an example of the ties we create with our conversations online. Another blogger left a comment thanking me for me TCEA notes and that led me to their blog. There I found a link to a video that expresses the “why” we need to make changes in education better than all the talk of a flat world. Yes, we need to prepare our kids for future learning opportunities but we can’t get so caught up in the future that we ignore the very present people that they are now.

We look ahead to the future hoping that we can give them the tools they will need to live up to their definition of successful but we can’t do that if we discount who they are, their unique gifts and talents, likes and dislikes. Each of us has to find our own place in life and everyone has a story to tell. If technology is the vehicle that lets a child tell their story then wonderful. If playing a guitar or painting with oils does the job for them then that’s wonderful too.

Even “back in the day” when I was in school, the classes I remember were taught by teachers who no matter how we were arranged as far as seating, or how irrelevant we now think the curriculum might be, touched something in me that lit a spark and caught my imagination, or gave me an “aha” moment. I treasure those moments even now. It was almost always the force of the teacher’s personality, their love for their subject and for teaching it that made me turn and go down a path I would not have taken otherwise. Often my learning leap was a response to that teacher making me feel as though I had something worthwhile to say on their subject.
Technology can’t replace good teaching – it can only enhance it. It also can’t cure bad teaching. Reading a badly written book online would not make the book any better, but a good teacher can make a book come alive for a student. A good teacher could also help a student use technology to express their thoughts about that book through a video or multimedia presentation.

I love technology – I want to see it used to support good teaching. I also love good books – technology can never take the place of curling up at night with a few cookies and a good novel. If technology can help an author to concentrate more on the story and less on the nuts and bolts of getting it down on paper then it is enhancing the reading experience for all of us.

Concentrating on the story, that’s the real answer. Technology is just a vehicle for telling it. For the audio learner we can provide podcasts, for the visual, videos. We have so many wonderful tools to reach students wherever they are but the tools need good teachers. There is a quote and I can’t find the author so if you read this and know the answer please contact me and I will give credit “The same hammer that can break a window can build a cathedral” We can’t build a cathedral just because we have a big pile of hammers but if we keep the goal in sight we have a better chance.

“Presently” – New Google App?

Internet rumors say Google is working on a new application – “Presently” their presentation component. I will be excited to see it in action. I use Google Docs (Writely) occasionally and I love Gmail and Google Notebook. I’m fairly new to Google Notebook and am in the process of learning more about it. I saw several presenters at TCEA who used it for their presentation pieces and I have seen some examples of public google notebooks. I watched as Wes Fryer reorganized prior to his session. I see it as a very useful tool that I have not paid enough attention to.

I also use my personalized google page for the blogs I read most often. My bloglines account suffers from serious bloat and I seem to do better with the visual approach of having the blogs I read most often laid out on the page showing the most recent posts. I tend to move the feeds around so the ones I find myself returning to most often end up at the top of the page. I also have them arranged with tagged pages with a page devoted to local friends, one for education, and so on. My home page has my email, calendar, local weather and TV guide – things of that sort. It also contains a widget for Google Notebook so I have a constant reminder of what I’m working on right now.

Google has an extension for Firefox which allows you to select something on a webpage, right-click and get an option to “note-it” which puts the clip or page directly on your Notebook. As you research on the internet you can save pictures and snips of information along with the url for citing your sources.
I hope there will be compatibility between Notebook and Presently – what a powerful tool that will be! A cross-browser, cross-operating system presentation tool that would allow you to pull images and text from your notebook to give you the pieces you need anytime as long as you have an internet connection.

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Print, Cut, Fold Make and Take at TCEA

I attended a presentation by the Arlington School District that was geared more for elementary classes but it intrigued me and even high school students like to do “make it” projects now and then. They shared a ton of ideas and gave us the url to the files for templates including a pdf file with lesson ideas and instructions for using the templates.

The Link is http://aisd.net/itd/dir_list_sort.aspx

If you follow this link you can also download their Geocaching Documents zip file.

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Dr. Mary Ann Bell at TCEA

If you have never met Dr. Bell you are missing a treat. Fiesty, fun, and way ahead of her time. She recently started her own blog and voiced concern about how schools are blocking many of the web 2.0 sites that she was planning to talk abou tin her TCEA presentation.

Dr. Bell’s presentation was called Fun, New and Free Ideas and Services Via the Internet. If you click on her name above it will take you to the portal to her site where you can access the links she shared as well as previous presentations.

She gives links to all kinds of useful sites as well as complete text professional online journals.

One link Dr. Bell showed was Starfall, a site for elementary phonics and reading . She recommended some blogs to read and I will list them but let you check out the rest on the handout on her site.

alibraryisalibrary

blogwithoutalibrary

One of the library blogs led me to a great Geography resource – Library of Congress Portals to the World.

Dr. Bell also mentioned Bernie Poole‘s site where you can find tons of resources and if you click on the link on the left side title online books you can download entire books he has written including several wonderful tutorials on using Microsoft Office.

Nancy Pearl was with her as usual. Nancy Pearl is the fabulous “shushing” librarian figurine that travels everywhere with Dr. Bell and gets her picture taken in the most interesting places. You can find her photos on Flickr.

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Blogs and Wikis for a Collaborative Classroom at TCEA

Presenter Jamie Gustin Elementary Technology Coach at Magnolia ISD

Co-presenter Chris Turik employed by November Learning

Most of the November Learning employees use skype -rarely physically in an office -said this is growing as a busness model

Magnolia blogging district-wide, infused into the learning environment

Wiki-how – how to manuals anyone can write and edit good example of use of a wiki
URL http://magnoliaisdcommunities.org/communities/jgustin/

Their experience – teachers usually begin blog as upcoming events and homework, slowly evolve into two-way conversations with commenting

Started blogs in conjunction with teacher webpage, starts static phases in to collaborative (about 600 at Magnolia blogging)

Some teachers working on theme unit about mysteries

Mr. Gustin was going on a one day vacation with his family and using the blog students had to figure out where he was going. He started out with a clue and the students had to use the commenting section to ask questions that would “trick” him into giving more clues. He used his cell phone camera to leave photo clues on Flickr that would appear on the blog via rss feed

Use of cell phone one example of connectivity without a computer

two thirds of the comments were outside of school hours – one was at seven a.m. Stutdents were reading everyone elses comments trying to solve the mystery

He was able to moderate the comments quickly so if someone figured out the answer too quick the answer could remain hidden to give more time for others to solve

resources skype (one example of VOIP)

CILC distance learning message board – can post on looking for a class to collaborate with on a specific subject

ePals another collaborative resource

Fourth grade classes using a wiki to collaborate on a chapter book – one class writes a chapter – another class writes the next chapter and so on

Moodle

Classes set up a wiki on the solar system – using information on different planets students try to create life forms that would be able to survive in the environment (discovered only one student can have a wiki open at a time on moodle)

challenge – teachers has to think about all the processes the student will need to complete the tasks

storyboard helpful

be prepared to edit as they go along

a third grader spotted a factual mistake on a website (chance to talk about validating information)

teach “polite” editing

using the moodle wiki taught the students the mechanics of a wiki before they used wikipedia

community building, collaboration

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More Reflections on TCEA

I have been spending some time this morning reading what others have had to say about the conference on their blogs. These is much out there to read I’m sure more will appear as folks wander home and have time to reflect and organize and post.

I decided I would post on some of my feelings about attending the conference – good and bad, that bubble up to the surface as I read.

Why do I go and what I like the best?
I love Austin. I’m not a city person but I love the variety of restaurants and the people watching is incredible!

February is a “valley” month for me. My enthusiasm and energy hang by a thread. The cold, cloudy weather makes me want to pull the covers over my head til spring. TCEA in Austin gives me a boost over the valley.

I learn but I also learn what I need to go learn. I take notes and listen, then run on to the next presentation. There isn’t a lot of time to absorb, so for me a lot of the real learning takes place in the months after I return, but I come home armed with new questions and new places to find answers. I get to the conference feeling like a dry sponge – it’s only after, when I wring all the juice out that I start seeing the value.

I make friends with colleagues. On a day to day basis, even the people in my own school are busy and TCEA gives us time to discuss and learn more about each other. I always come away with a deeper sense of who they are and what they believe. We work together in a field where relationships matter. Relationships with our students and the support we give each other.

I can get a feel from the discussion during and after for the climate of educational technology.
What I don’t like – the crowds. I want everyone to benefit from the conference but I also feel very stressed trying to negotiate the conference hall weaving in and out of all the other folks doing the same and I really hate it when I have hurried to get to a presentation only to find them closing the door because it is full. Luckily there are usually others to slip into.

Cell phones. This is my biggest pet peeve. If you need to make a call – do it between presentations and while you are in a session put it on vibrate or TURN IT OFF. It’s rude, it’s distracting to the presenter and the other attendees and unless you are a brain surgeon or waiting on a transplant organ you will have a hard time justifying that phone ringing to me.

Teachers who think it is okay to laugh and talk among themselves during a presentation. I don’t think they would tolerate that in their classroom during a lecture.

The cost of drink and snacks in the conference hall. If you want to get every minute you can at actual presentation there is no possible way to leave to eat. I was gratified to find water stations around but anything to buy is limited in choice and expensive. I think TCEA could do a little bit better job at feeding their attendees without breaking their budget.

I know that this conference is huge and I can’t begin to imagine what it takes as far as organization and logistics and all in all I think the conference people do a great job. Back to my reading.

Why do you go? What do you love/hate about the conference? What would you like to see done differently?

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Digital Media Academy

I was fortunate to attend several sessions by the DMA people. Beth Corwin was awesome and I would love to attend one of their week-long “bootcamp” classes. They had 25 dual-boot iMacs set up for hands-on learning and they were lightening-fast 45 minute bare bones tutorials but they gave enough info to get you started with some great hints and tips thrown in.

I attended iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, and Garageband as well as Flash 8 and Adobe Photoshop. I sat in on Motion as well. I learned after the first day to get signed up on their list as they had plenty of chairs but if you signed up you got to “drive” the computer. I will add more about some of the sessions later when I have had time to go over my notes and get what little I had time to take into a more coherent form but the best to me were the ones on Garageband and iDVD. We played a little with creating music in Garageband but also created our own short podcast and that was the part I was most interested in. We used loops for background music, recorded with the built-in microphone, added a few sound-effects and voila!

Mine was pretty lame but it was fun and not too terrible. I definitely would plan to script it if I was doing it for real but you can also edit within Garageband so you could delete any tracks you want to disappear. I discovered I can be just as nervous and giggly as high school girls having to record their French homework for the first time. It’s a whole new ballgame when it is you faced with the mic .

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Beyond Four Walls

Notes on I.T.S. Beyond Four Walls

Presenter Ms. LaDonna Conner from Carrolton-Farmers Branch

I actually ended up in this session through a happy accident. The session I was planning to attend was full and this was in the room where the next on my schedule would be presented. I was so glad I got to hear this one.

They have given all of their teachers iPods and traing on how to use them. They purchased a podcast server and the teachers commit to producing 4 podcasts a year.

They invested a lot of hours in training and had everything broken down into steps.

They use podcasting for staff development, staff meetings, communicating with parents and the community, lessons that can be subscribed to, and interactivity for their school website.

http://www.cfbisd.edu/

They had a device called a Belkin Tune Talk that you plug your iPod into and it makes it a recording device. As a teacher you hit record, set it on your desk and continue your lecture and you end up with an audio file you can edit in Audacity and create a finished podcast!

Imagine having your lectures saved so when a student is absent and comes to you to find out what they missed, you point them to your podcast and they get to hear the entire lecture.

Imagine a student missed taking notes on part of your lecture and having the ability to replay it to fill in any gaps in their notes. I’m so glad I “accidently” got to learn about their program.

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