This blog is rising from the ashes!

Back in 2012, I was really using this blog to display and share learning about instructional technology.  Since then, my professional career has taken some crazy turns and now I'm an Instructional Coach for Technology at Loess Hills Elementary School (which didn't exist in 2012).

One of my goals this school year is to be more reflective and use a blog to be transparent about my learning.  I want to be the best Instructional Technology Consulting Teacher that I can be.  Through my reading, research and experience, I have learned that if you are not reflecting on successes and failures then you won't be able to set good goals and really improve as you should.   Using the reflective cycle and working through stages with teachers will really help me to make an impact on student learning through this year.

Coding integration into curriculum will continue and some teachers have been doing projects and activities with students for 3 years.  This year I expect to see some great progress in this area as a specialty school.  There is so much great work going into how teachers plan and implement computational thinking into their lessons across the curriculum.  After our training in mid June, teachers have some new ideas and a better feel on how to have their projects really make a difference in student learning.

It's going to be a great year, but there is always so much to do at the beginning that makes it seem overwhelming. Reflecting on the last few days of training and meetings, big changes are coming and the goals are locked in for a laser-focus on improving learning.

Flipping over being Flipped

  I spent the last two days in the windy city, taking in "FlipCon2012".  The purpose of this event was really to put teachers together from across the country who are changing the way they conduct their classrooms using technology through video, audio and even pictures.  "Flipping your Classroom" is something that is catching on across the education world.  See a definition here.
I met teachers from both coasts, down south and even Minnesota.  Here are a few of the things I grabbed from my notes during the different sessions that were AHA moments for me. The above picture is our group getting a tour of the venue.  It is a college for media arts in downtown Chicago. An Amazing place with some cool artwork.
1. Flipping assignments does NOT happen for every single thing!  Some things that you teach are better done without video or the use of technology.
2. Not all students are going to gravitate to this process, especially if they haven't been exposed to using technology for learning.  Flipping is a strategy, not a magic bullet for learning.
3. There are teachers that I have worked with throughout this last school year who were "flipping" but didn't' know it.  Just by using things like voicethread, voki and doing screen captures with their workspace software and posting to their wiki's.
4. Training activities that you might do in your class, that take up time are a great way to get started flipping! Things like lab procedures, teaching behaviors during an activity, steps in a process.
5. Lecturing on video is NOT flipping your classroom.  You will frustrate students if you make them sit through a 20 min. lecture video and expect them to retain it.
6. Video creation and editing is NOT the hardest part of flipping your classroom.  The hardest part is deciding what to put on video and building the activities for class time.
7. Flipping your classroom with good formative assessment will create a rich-differentiated environment.  By putting some of your instruction into video and out side of the classroom walls, you have time to give students some individualized attention.

RESOURCES that I learned about while I was at "flipcon2012"

1. http://www.brianbennett.org/ - This was the keynote speaker.  Great teacher and a leader in flipping your classroom.  Brian is a science teacher and has been doing this for about 5 years.  He did an excellent session on nuts and bolts, how to get started that was very informative.
2. The Flipped Classroom - Book! Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams and their nuts and bolts approach to putting together the flipped classroom.
3. https://flippedlearning.eduvision.tv/Default.aspx - eduvision.tv was one of the sponsors at the conference and they captured almost all sessions and posted to this website.  Some excellent resources here for those who want to start flipping.
4. http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html  You may have heard of the JING software for screen capture, which is built into the Workspace software that we use with einstruction whiteboards and mobis.  The Camtasia is everything that you've wanted Windows movie maker to ever be.  So intuitive and versatile.  Great tutorials on this site, too!
5. http://screencast.com/  Get a free account here for sharing your videos to students.  Usually schools don't have this one blocked and creating accounts is free.
6. mentormob.com This one didn't get good reactions from the teachers I was with.  IT's basically a place to create video playlists with resources.  We will be able to this with our new LMS called Canvas, so it works out just fine.
7. http://docs.google.com  I heard so very much about this, however, we are not a google district. Teacher's can still use it.  It's just harder for us to support as a district.
8. http://classparrot.com  This is a tool that is useful for texting students as a group.  I have many teachers who would be excited about this one.
9. http://audioboo.fm  great for creating podcasts.  Students/teachers can record audio.
10. Various others that people have used were also mentioned, like edmodo, moodle, voki, xtranormal, polleverywhere, voicethread, socrative.  None of these were new to me, but using them to flip your classroom is excellent.

I'm encouraging the other teachers that attended to post comments here or send me comments that will share the things that they got out of the conference, too.  Stay tuned!

West Middle Students Create Video Games for National STEM Challenge

West Middle School Students Create Video Games for National
STEM Challenge

Article by: Alison Benson

Forty-two students at West Middle School are taking their love of video games to a new level. The students are competing in the national STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) Challenge to create the ultimate video game from scratch.  The STEM Challenge is an activity to encourage the use of science, technology, engineering, and math in schools by tapping into their natural love of video games. The winner of the challenge will have his or her game commercially published.

According to the STEM Challenge website, game-based learning is one of the most innovative ways in making STEM topics more engaging for students, which they need for the global workforce. "The success of complex video games demonstrates that games can teach higher-order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change. These are the skills U.S. employers increasingly seek in workers and new workforce entrants. These are the skills more Americans must have to compete with lower cost knowledge workers in other nations."   

West Middle School teacher Gwen Brewster said in addition to the STEM skills, the students are learning the value of teamwork. "The students agreed as a group that the national winner will come from West Middle School. They want to win, but more importantly, they want to support one another." The students have been meeting three times a week since December to create their entries. The final projects are due on March 12.   

What I've learned this week - 12/8/2011

Exciting week!  So many things learned this week, it's hard to put it all down.  I started this last Friday and it's already Thursday.  It shouldn't take this long to blog!!

1. SmartSync will work, but there is some weird permissions thing that is giving students an error (sometimes).  What did I learn?  When a problem is not defined clearly, it is hard to attack it effectively. 
It seems that when students get the Windows updates that are pushing out district wide, the problems with Smart sync go away.

2. Windows updates can be a good thing.

3. The need for REAL-TIME or Right-on-time PD will NEVER go away.  It's really the BEST model for improving instruction with technology integration (innovation).  However, the practice of this really needs a continual process of problem definition and solution.

4. PILOT programs are GOOD!!  I love to see the impact our pilot teacher is making with 30 ipads in his Lang. Arts course at NHS.  Great Job, Mr. O!

5.  Quickreads is an amazing product.  I can't wait to see if it produces results for student's fluency in reading.  The setup has been fairly painless, except for the fact that it won't work with NComputing setups.

6. Having the stomach flu is NOT a healthy way to lose 10 pounds!

Have a great weekend!

Windows 7 tips

As a district, every computer (now almost 8000 staff and student computers) went to Win7 operating system. For some this has been a 2nd order change.
I ran across this blog post with some simple tips that almost everyone can learn from to navigate this new interface more effeciently.
http://bit.ly/n9NBMI

Have a great weekend!

Change has come!

I have to give big props to our Teacher/Librarians in the Sioux City High Schools!  They have started this year with a bang and really have shown us how important our library's are to the technology integration in the classroom.
With the 1:1 rollout now 3 weeks old, it is amazing to see how quickly students, teachers and library's adapt to change.
There is a post here: http://web20classroom.blogspot.com/2011/09/learning-should-be-messyright.html
about what NOT to do in your school media center.  Our teacher/librarians have taken the opposite approach and reached into to the messy business of integrating technology and learning together.  Neat and quiet doesn't describe our HS media centers.  I don't think it should.

Getting ready for training at WHS July 18-21

http://scteachwithtech.wordpress.com/
This will continue to be added too next week as we kick off our first week of 1:1 training at WHS.

Using Coaches for Technology implementation

Using Technology coaches was important or extremely important to our teachers as we rolled out classroom Dualboards, Mobi's, Responders, document cameras and laptops to our classrooms. In each scenario, more than 88% of our teachers surveyed agreed that the use of coaches was important or extremely important.
I can't say enough about how good Jamie and JoDee are at building relationships with teachers and focusing on student learning as they train teachers to use these tools and others to integrate technology into the classroom. The other chart shows how most teachers feel student engagement and productivity have increased by integrating technology into the classroom. Over 70% of our teachers surveyed said that they CANNOT go back to teaching without these tools in their classrooms.

What an incredible school year!

Yesterday was my 14th "last day of school" in the Sioux City School district. This year has been a wild ride, looking back to where we were a year ago at this time.
Last year at this time we were getting ready to train 300 elementary teachers to teach differently while utilizing new classroom technologies like Interactive whiteboards, Mobi's, Document Cameras, and CPS responders. It's amazing to see how that training has made a huge difference in classrooms around the district. No matter what building I visit, I see teaching that integrates technology to engage, motivate and foster student learning. I cannot say enough about our Instructional Tech Coaches, Jamie and JoDee! They have been an inspiration to me and several teachers who made the leap and tried new things in the classroom this year. The real-time support and professional development they have provided has been the catalyst for excellent learning for students.
We completed 1:1 pilot projects with 3 different classrooms in 3 different high schools. These teachers did incredible things with students and we learned right along side them. Their experience has had ups and downs, but has led our district to a place that we can confidently bring 1:1 initiative to our 10-12th grade students starting next fall! Check out the press release here - http://goo.gl/Q2BAU
The opening of new science wings at 3 high schools was an amazing experience. Coming alongside our HS Science professionals was a huge treat for me. They adapted and adopted technology for teaching so quickly and effectively. Each day working with them was a learning experience!
In 2 of our 3 middle schools, we also worked to install classroom technology for instruction. Utilizing team planning time for training was a new experience. It worked well because it forced us to be precise in the delivery and allowed me the ability to coach teachers more effectively. For example, at NMS, I delivered a 45 minute training on using the Dualboard and Mobi. Then the bell rang and teacher's dispersed to their classrooms. I would then follow them in, show them in real-time, ways to apply what they had JUST learned the hour before. AMAZING results.
A new building called Liberty Elementary will open this year, which is always exciting and knowing that the teachers who are teaching in this new environment are prepared and ready to use the new technology is very exciting.
This summer couldn't be more busy with 5000 computers going from XP to Windows 7. Preparing HS teachers to have globally connected students in their classrooms. Migration of all email to the cloud, implementing Office 2010, and so much MORE!! Not to even mention the 3000 laptops that students will be using that are 3G Verizon network connected 24/7. I just got back from EHS where our 1st shipment Of 1000 was delivered! (See Pic)
The end goal is always to improve student achievement. These initiatives are all part of the greater idea of making our schools more effective and for each and every student.
Layne

Video Resources for Students and Teachers

I've been wanting to put out a post that tells all of the video resources available for students and Teachers in our district. It seems many students get frustrated when trying to access video for projects or learning because much of it is blocked by our districts filtering system (including http://youtube.com). However, there ARE many resources that ARE available to teachers, including youtube videos, you just need to know where to look!
en wanting to put out a post that tells all of the video resources available for students and Teachers in our district. It seems many students get frustrated when trying to access video for projects or learning because much of it is blocked by our districts filtering system (including http://youtube.com). However, there ARE many resources that ARE available to teachers, including youtube videos, you just need to know where to look!


LINKS WITH VIDEOS THAT AREN'T BLOCKED FOR STUDENTS!!

#1 SAFARI

#2 EDVIDEOS -- Here, teachers can login (your district Login) and submit video links from Youtube that fit into their curriculum, then students can go to edvideos and view the youtube video!!

DE Streaming -- You need to get the username and password from your Teacher-Librarian.

Brightstorm

NBCLearn

TeacherTube

SchoolTube

cnn.com/studentnews

Brainpop -- You need to get a username and password for this one, but students can get it from the teacher librarian.

MathTV

Khan Academy - Mission is to provide anywhere anytime user-paced learning. These are all Youtube videos, so refer back to #2

Video.pbs.org

Ted.com -- This one is great for getting students to react to some "outside the box" thinking!

Learn 360 -- You need to get a username and password for this one, but students can get it from the teacher librarian.

PRESENTATION SITES

slideshare

slideboom

authorstream

PREZI - You need to sign up for this one, but get on the education version and you still get lots of features for FREE!

Edu.Glogster.com -- This is a great one for student projects.

Voki in the Classroom

A Voki is a speaking avatar that students can create on Voki.com. Use these avatars to re-create characters in a story, give a short speech or explanation, or even for ESL students. For many other classroom uses as well as a tutorial on how to create a Voki, CLICK HERE.

My Mini-Conference Presentation

The goal here is the share in the 50 minutes we have together, 50 different websites that you could use in your classrooms for integrating technology with your students learning. Here we go:

Picnik

Picnik is a site that provides students with some really fun and powerful image editing tools for pictures. You can use pictures that you take with a digital camera, or even a document camera, and do some fun editing, or you can have students downloading pictures and do some creative stuff there. Ideas might be pictures of a place, landmark, monuments, pictures from a field trip, or a way to get students to write about something they did (you can add captions to pictures with picnik)

Picasa

Picasa is another site that is centered around photos. There is also a download on the site for doing some simple editing, but the powerful classroom application here is creating slideshows. Students LOVE to create slideshows of photos that relate to something they have learned. Using Picasa for creation of a picture collage, computer background or a screensaver. Another fun way to differentiate instruction with students using technology.

AVIARY

This is one that I haven't used that much, but it has six different tools all on one site. There is a bird theme here so stick with me:
Phoenix: this is the free photo editor. It's cool, but I like picnik better

Roc: This is the audio editor. You can do some cool stuff with music here, like mix your own ringtones (kids love that stuff!)

Talon: this is cool and easy, it's a screen capture tool. So if you have a picture of something on the web or your desktop, you can capture the screen as an image and send it off, or edit it with picnik.

Myna: another audio editor built into the website.

There are more tools here, but more advanced and we don't have time today.

Maps.google.com

Maybe you have all used google maps for getting directions to get to places or to find out how far it is from point a to point b. However, there are TONS of features here that you may not know exist. Use the My Maps button to build your own maps or have students build maps. You have to have a google account to do it. I first thought of how my daughter could do a walking map of what "used to be" for her Sioux City History project. There are also layers here for wikipedia, photo and real estate. Also check out Mapjack.com Cool stuff.

Timeglider
web-based timeline software for creating and sharing history and project planning. There is tons of potential for creation here with the ability to put in events as you go. Map your entire curriculum if you want, or you could have students creating timelines of their lives so far.

Mixbook

There are many sites that let you create photo collections. Mixbook is simple and lets you embed directly into your own website or wiki.

HippoCampus

This one is more for the secondary folks, but it has an amazing amount of resources and content built into it for several subjects. Our district and the AEA teamed up to purchase a subscription a year ago and many teachers are using it in creative ways. The content is correlated to several different textbooks, not just standards. So this is a tool that you can supplement your textbook material with.

JeopardyLabs
Jeopardy labs allows you to create a customized jeopardy template without PowerPoint. The games you make can be played online from anywhere in the world. Building your own jeopardy template is a piece of cake. They have a simple editor on their site and you can be up and playing very quickly. Let students create the games with your content and try to stump their peers. You'll trick them into learning!!

Readthewords

A great site that will let you type text and turn it into spoken word. You can make the person say what you need and also have it shared out on facebook. For example, you could make it say the assignments, and post it to your fan page then kids can listen to it instead of reading it.

Voki

An even more powerful text to speech tool. Teachers or students can create their avatar and use your own voice to make it speak. Check out Dr. McGrath on his Irving Wiki. http://irvinghawks.wikispaces.com/

Jigsaw planet

This is a fun site especially if you have an interactive whiteboard or a mobi for your classroom. You could use as team building exercise for group work or even an anticipatory set.

Pocket Mod

This site bills itself as a new way to stay organized. But I like to think of it as a way for students to create little books. Do you storyboards with students and then go to PocketMod to have them build a little book that you can print and share with others.

PhotoSynth

This is one of the more cool sites I've seen in a while. It allows you to upload photos and then stitches them together to create a really cool view of how the pictures fit together. There are several locations around the world listed, so it would be great for learning during the Rocks unit in third grade or in middle school geography when learning about a specific place in the world.

WikiSpaces

I haven't found a more simple, efficient and effective way for teachers to build websites than wikispaces. The interface is simple, it's great for communicating with parents and students alike. You can bring in videos, links, upload powerpoints, have student discussion threads. ALL FOR FREE! Amazing!

Makewee

I love the name of this site more than anything. My kids have been reading biographies of some great American heros. A fun thing for them to do is go on this site and try to make a wii dude that looks like that figure. You can also save them and make them your avatar for a wiki or facebook, twitter if you are not comfortable using your own picture. Also http://www.myavatareditor.com/

Wordle

Many of you have already used Wordle. This is such a fun way for students to look at how they use words. The more I use it the more I learn. Check out this post for some creative ways to use wordle http://techlearning.com/blogs/24518

Tagxedo

Tagxedo takes wordle to the next level, allowing you to create visually fun word and tag clouds that look like images. We'll do one with this presentation if we have time.

Flu Trends

I love showing people this because it really brings home how powerful the data we collect really is.

Skype

So many of you know about skype. It's a popular site tool among millions of people everyday. However, do you know that you can use skype to get help on your computer? There is a feature in skype called "share your screen" and you can skype your friend who is good with computers and ask them how to do stuff you can't figure out. (I know this because I have to show my mom about once a week how to attach a photo to an email). Also, the new version (5) of skype lets you video conf. with more than one person at a time.

delicious.com

Everybody should have a delicious account. Delicious allows you to save your favorite websites to the web and then tag them for their subjects. In this current world we all go between 2 or more computers daily. If i didn't have delicious, I would never be able to find that very important site that I need!

Alice

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. If you want to motivate kids to do storytelling in a creative and fun way, this tool is for you!

SlideShare

Another great web tool for sharing slide presentations and letting students create for differentiating your instruction. Create and account and away you go. You can share to almost anything on the web.

EdHeads

Amazing, deep thinking games here for kids. There is problem solving here and the content really makes you think. There's links for lesson plans for teachers here too.

Glogster

Another great tool for allowing students to create online. In school you have to use http://edu.glogster.com so you can use the education version. It's basically a web 2.0 tool that allows you to create an interactive poster. - with text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more.

TeacherTube

Ofcourse you have heard of youtube, but have you seen teachertube? All videos centered around educational content, so it keeps things safer for you and for your students. It used to be slow and not very exciting, but more and more content seems to be showing up and adding to the value of this site. Not to mention the connection now with Pearson and Teachervision.com

Teachervision

Tons and tons of classroom ready resources here, just waiting for teachers and students to dig deep into for more and more learning!!

http://www.gliffy.com/
Finally, Finally! I looked for years for a free alternative to Inspiration software. Gliffy IS the answer! Of course it is not as robust, but it does what you want it to do for idea diagramming, venn diagrams, flowcharts! Teachers, have fun with this one!!

Google Sketchup
No, i didn't just spell ketchup wrong. It's google's free drawing tool and it is MEGA powerful. It is a free download. If you go to the gallery, you will be blown away but what can be created in this simple tool.

You Send It

Have you got a HUGE file that won't go through email. Use this simple service to get it there. Send up to 2gb files. But make sure the other person is ready to receive it, because it gets deleted after 7 days.

Google Books

If you are a book lover or just an avid reader, you NEED to know about google books. Create your own bookshelf, find reviews of books you want to read and browse by subject. Take your students to this site and help them find books they might be interested in, great for unmotivated readers!

PsykoPaint

It is photo editing meets paint and it allows for tons of creativity and artistry coupled with extreme ease of use. Let your students run wild with it. Give them each a picture from a story and let them transform it into their own artistic genre, or have them create their own original work. Be creative. Have a blast!

EyeFi

Great gift idea for that person who never downloads the pictures off of their digital camera. It's a memory card with wifi built in. You don't have to clumsily mess with wires, just use a wireless connection and post your pictures to picasa, flickr, or whatever.

Blogger

I love blogger because it is so simple and integrated with google gives it tons of features. There new template creator is WAY cool. If you want students creating blogs, they will catch onto this quick and you can make them completely private from the rest of the WWW.

zamzar

How much do i love this site! change any multimedia file you find into the format you want with zamzar. completely free and so simple. They email you the link when finished. Want the song from the background of the video? Just pump it into zamzar and change the format to MP3. SWEET!

VideoAnt

Super cool site that allows you to annotate on a video while watching it. Powerful if you have a Interactive whiteboard or a Mobi.

Animoto

Simple and EASY way to make really cool video from pictures. My kids are young and it took them almost no time to figure out how to create and then post these to a website.

Voicethread

You cannot deny the coolness of this tool A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too.

Freeplay

If you have students creating video or slideshows, you know there is always a need for background music. At http://freeplaymusic.com/ you will find TONS of loops and styles. Really motivate kids by letting them know that they can create their own ringtones from these loops too!

vlc player

this one is a download, but I don't think any computer should be without it. It plays everything and it's fast! I used to get really tired of wanting to hear a song and having to wait for itunes to open or windows media. Now, with vlc, I don't wait and it always works, video and audio!

Einstruction Workspace
Another download, but the tool in workspace for recording your screen is incredible. Very simple and you can have students explaining to other students with a video recording how to create a blog, or wiki or voicethread. This is a great way to differentiate for students. my tutorial

Google Reader

Let's say you are really getting into the technology thing and you have your student's start blogging. However, you don't want to visit each of the students blogs and read every post. You can use google reader and have all the blog posts come to one place where you can read them all at once. Cool, huh?

Twitter

If you are not on twitter, you should start today. Not because you are so interesting to follow. Because there is SO VERY MUCH information out there. It's a great place to get ideas, throw out questions and get feedback from others around the world. Twitter is a place where there really IS no such thing as a dumb question!! Also check out http://search.twitter.com. Better than google for up to the second news!!

Garfield Cartoon creator

Who doesn't love this fat cat and his crazy personality. Engage students with this game to help them learn about parts of speech, conversation building and all kinds of word games. Have students create a conversation between the characters about how to stay safe online.

comic strip creator

Another fun comic strip creator that can be a VERY engaging way for students to have conversations about subjects you want them to discuss. They love to create and create with a purpose. This is a great tool for doing just that!

BrainPop
Curriculum based content in a fun and animated form. This is not normally a completely free site but our district subscribes so we get to use it for our students! It's a great resource for all ages and it has some really great content that is well organized. There are even standards associated with many of the videos available.

PREZI
Create visually engaging presentations or have students using prezi to build presentations that cut the fluff and puts information in a different look than what powerpoint can provide.

youtube addin for Powerpoint

Have you ever struggled to put a youtube video into your powerpoint. Check out the youtube addin for powerpoint. You have to have an internet connection for this to work. Makes adding video very simple for ppt.

Newseum

Want current events? Check out this site sharing front pages of over 800 newspapers from over 80 countries! Amazing conversation starters here.

Posterous

Set up posterous account and they give you an email address. You send your blogposts with picture attachments, files, whatever to that email and they make it appear on your blog. Almost magical!

Bacon

i can't wait to show you this one. This is strictly for amusement, but I love it. Who doesn't?

The Technology Mini-Conference is HERE!!

I have been working feverishly over the last few weeks preparing for our technology focused Professional Development day. Doug Johnson will be our keynote and there are 15 different sessions for teachers to attend. We will truly be "differentiating" our professional development by allowing teachers to choose how they will learn for half of the day!
Check out http://scteachwithtech.wordpress.com for the list of sessions, downloads of peoples presentations and the schedules for the day!

Post comments here if you need more information. It WILL be a great learning experience for all of us!

Layne

A New School Year Begins With Facebook & Twitter

I haven't contributed to our blog since the end of the school year last year. Although our Microsoft Settlement is progressing much more slowly than we had hoped or even planned, I'd say it is a blessing in disguise. We have had a chance to start a partial install of our projectors, DualBoards, responders, Mobis, and document cameras, which has enabled us to work out some technical issues as well as touch base and work with those classrooms. (And, I would have to say that E-Instruction has been quite helpful in working out some of our technical issues this week).

Another exciting step our district has taken is to open up Facebook and Twitter on our network so teachers can work on their class pages. In fact, I have experimented with my own Coaching Fan Page. I have it so I can post updates via phone texts which also feeds into my Twitter Account. AND...this blog feeds directly to the Facebook Page.

To take it a step further, I have opened up my Google Bookmarks and Google Reader and linked them to my Fanpage. So, it is like one stop shopping.

-Jo Dee

Tech Training

We are in our second full week of training elementary teachers starting today.  We are getting some really good feedback.  I think the best part of having this training is to see the teachers become more comfortable with the tools and really start to see the benefits to them in the classroom.  In this short amount of time, our goal is to have teachers not only learn the tools, but to create a comfort level with our tech coaches, build relationships within their buildings for support and also see the benefits of integrating the technology into their teaching.

Some of the best feedback that we've gotten is that teachers love the time we give them to play and they love the book we created for them.

Starting Wed and Thurs.  I'm going to video the training (using 2 different cameras).  This will allow us to post the training sessions on line using Creation Station from SAFARI-MONTAGE.

The fun continues.

Layne

Leadership Academy Presentation

Technology is Good, but people are better!!

1. Technology does not make students learn better!

• What we (teachers and students) DO with the technology is more important than the technology we use!
• 
  
• The hope is that teachers will harness the technology to do things in the classroom that better connect them to their student's learning!
• STUDENT LEARNING IS KEY!!
powered by Splicd.com
powered by Splicd.com
Story of Rich Wilmesherr: 8th Grade Science Teacher at West Middle School. Rich was selected by his principal to participate in Differentiated Instruction with Technology added to his classroom. After 2 weeks, Rich was determined to try at least 1 piece of technology with the differentiated strategies he had learned. Several weeks after school started, I was in WMS to work with some teachers in the 8th Grade pod. I saw Rich in the hallway. He grabbed me by the arm and looked me square in the eye and proceeded to tell me that I was dead meat if I ever made him go back to teaching without the equipment we put in his classroom.

{Sorry, I had to remove student videos}

Think-Pair-Share: HOW HAVE YOU HAD TO ADJUST WHEN USING TECHNOLOGY?? INSTANT FEEDBACK.... Is that a problem??





Story of Tina Mulvihill:
Mrs. Mulvihill teaches math at East Middle School. She was not a user of technology nor a proponent of using technology with her students. She had the same training that Rich received. Tina walked cautiously into using Diff and the use of technology. Throughout the year, Tina walked carefully into differentiating her instruction by taking 1 section of pre-algebra and adding student choice. She eventually used all of the technology available to her in different ways and the students did as well. Tina wrote on the ning to share what her year was like:
TINA'S NING POST



{Sorry, I had to remove student videos}







Think-Pair-Share: What have you experienced in your classrooms when trying to do things with technology that you couldn't do before?






Gwen Brewster:
Project Based learning with same training as the Rich and Tina:
Gwen Teaches Language Arts -





{Sorry, I had to remove student videos}




Forester's students after 30 minutes with the board...
{Sorry, I had to remove student videos}


Jayse talking about why he likes Mrs. Foresters class!
{Sorry, I had to remove student videos}






Jane Warren Story:
Mrs. Warren taught the gauntlet last year, from English 1 (every student in one section had their own computer) to English 4 and AP English.
A VERY stressful year, but some of the work students did was INCREDIBLE!


Metamorphosis Video
The PingNguyens sing "Take AP!"TAke AP english video

LOOKING AHEAD -

• How will students having email effect your teaching? students learning?
• Would you use social media to connect your classroom more effectively with students?
• Using Pinnacle Analytics INSIGHT - How will you use this REAL-TIME data to direct your instruction?
• What one piece of classroom technology would push you into differentiating instruction more effectively?

RESOURCES!!
The Internet

Garrison Sites

food fight video

Brain Pop

DUDE!

What do I do on here??

I must apologize first and foremost. I haven't blogged on here in so long that I really had think about what my password was to log on. That is not a good sign. I haven't been lazy, stop laughing, I have just been so caught up in the preparation of training for this summer and the training we are doing in the month of may that everything else gets put aside.

Currently in the month of June, we have about 280 teachers signed up to take our training on the 21st Century Classroom tools that will be rolled out this summer to their classrooms. I couldn't be more pleased. 280 represents about 70% of our Elementary Staff. I think that is an amazing number considering everything that goes on during the summer.

Before we train the teachers, we have decided to train all Administrators and Instructional Coaches. If those 2 groups are not on board with what we are doing. We should stop now. Principal feedback so far has been wonderful.. They need to relay to their staffs the importance of what we are doing. If that message doesn't get relayed, some teachers will struggle to see the value in what we are doing.

I have a very positive feeling about what we are currently doing and also our plan as we go forward. We will always have a few bumps in the road, but it's how we respond that will make our venture a success.

Random is Good

I have found myself in quite a random mood today. I have jumped from CPS-Interwrite installs on laptops (for our training next week), to dealing with CSP equipment issues, to tweaking our Presentation, to visiting the student I mentor, to Tagxedo, to creating a Blog Help Video, and now to my blog...

I supposed that is why I have been so fascinated with Tagxedo today. Similar to Wordle, and Word It Out, it takes chunks of texts and randomizes the words according to the # of times it appears in the text. Except this allow you to change the shape of the text. (I've blogged about the possibilites of using this technology in classrooms earlier this year.) You do need to have the free download of Microsoft Silverlight, though.

Quick Post

Met with the installers for the technology for our FIRST school this am.  We gotta get this school installed because all of our training is happening here.  There are so many little nuances to think about for each room.  From cabling to mounting to screen size on the wall, how it mounts over a regular whiteboard, where is the doc. camera going to sit and be convenient for teachers, should they run their cable TV through the projector? What cables do running cable TV through the projector?  How do I get installers access to the buildings, is there power in the ceilings?

ARGHH...

an educational conversation

Today, Glenn Beck had a conversation with Stephen Dubner (author of Freakonomics) regarding the idea of getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education. Below is a portion of the conversation:

BECK: How do you mean? What needs to change?

DUBNER: Well, you could argue a lot of things need to change. There's a program in New York City right now. So same school system that brings you the rubber rooms, New York City, public school system — where I live, in New York City — also brings a pilot program called the School of One, which I think we'll be hearing a lot more about in future. It's a very small pilot program right now.

What it does is it takes all the students in a classroom and instead of having one teacher up there individually trying to teach 30 kids
— now, kids learn differently at different paces in different ways.

What this does is it uses technology to figure out what each kid is learning every day. They take a test at the end of every day. It goes in the computer. There is an algorithm that essentially determines a playlist for each kid.

Instead of the iPod playlist, you have a workstation playlist. Every kid is being taught every day in a variety of modalities — meaning, sometimes it's a teacher with a large group. Sometimes, it's a small group of kids. Sometimes it's one kid with the computer.

We're in the 21st Century. We're surrounded by wonderful technology. And it's time that teaching and the art of teaching and the science of teaching are kind of brought up to that.

We really need to rethink who that person is in the classroom.

View the whole article HERE:
I thought this was VERY interesting in light of the recent conversations I've been having at the Iowa 1:1 conference and also working with teachers.
Leave your reactions in the comments. I'd be interested to see what people think regarding the 21st Century learner!