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!