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.