It's About Time

...there never seems to be enough of it, especially if you are a teacher. I often say, jokingly, that I want to work at Google. (My credentials wouldn't even get me in the door.) But one aspect of that company that intrigues me is what they call "Innovation Time Off"--or 20% Time. All Google engineers are encouraged to spend one day a week on a project that interests them. (G-Mail and Google News are a product of this time) Think of what a teacher could do with 20% time! In a recent interview with David Warlick, when questioned "What's stopping teachers, what are the challenges they are facing?" he replied

I think one of the biggest challenges facing them is the lack of time. Surgeons don't spend all of their time in surgery; lawyers don't spend all of their time in front of the jury. There's a lot more to teaching than just teaching. It's about collaboration, research, and materials development. There's a lot to teaching today that wasn't part of the job a few years ago. We have to understand that and somehow restructure the day. What we need is for teachers to work eight hours a day: four hours in instructional supervision, four hours in professional planning. Just think what a classroom could be like if every teacher had four hours of planning every day! Just think about the learning that could take place. Isn't that the kind of classroom that our children deserve?

Now I know the answer isn't simple or even something we all can agree upon. But I truly believe that what we are intending to do as a district--the responders, document cameras, projectors, 1 to 1 laptops, technology coaches, etc--can make a dent in that precious lack of time. I totally understand that the prospect of this equipment is exhilarating for some yet intimidating for others. Of course, the student use of technology, information, and learning is our ultimate goal, but if we can demonstrate how this "equipment" can ultimately save a teacher time, I think we will have everyone on board.

This time factor brings up a story I was sharing with Layne earlier. One night, during my first year in my leave of absence as a first grade teacher, my ten year-old son said "Wow, this is the first movie you ever watched with us." (It wasn't, of course) When I protested, he replied, "It's the first movie when you didn't have work on your lap." And, he was right.

Oh...if only I had a set of responders...

Digital textbooks and students with laptops

Hey all,
The article below was published in 2003, but has gotten recent attention due to California’s digital textbook initiative:

http://www.edutopia.org/maine-laptop-initiative

http://www.micdl.org/

It took almost two years for success stories to start flowing.

Click the link to read the article and watch the video.
Excerpt from article: The laptops have spurred a host of projects that often cut across disciplines and allow students to go more deeply into subjects, in contrast to "mile-wide, inch-deep" instruction. Such projects, says Ship Bright, executive director of the Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute (MLCI), help answer the question: "How do we make these laptops more than a $2,000 pencil?"

What I take from this article is that it takes a huge, long-term commitment of more than a few people to make a project like this successful.

Another Digital textbook resource: http://ck12.org/flexr/

Comment below with your reactions!!!

The Beginning of Change

I recall last spring during my interview saying that I believe our district is at the tipping point when it comes to instructional technology, and the majority of my work this past week is the beginning of this "tipping."

If you recall from one of my previous posts that I had a "fire in my belly" about the new direction this district has committed to by requiring technology classes in the middle school, then you will see what a HUGE step this is. I'm a little jealous of the middle school technology teachers, because that was the position I left behind; but to be a direct part of this paradigm switch is the reward. So, my work this week consisted of reviewing our standards, benchmarks, and core indicators and updating them to reflect the 21st Century skills our students need, yet are currently lacking. Then...we had to take these core indicators to create our NCLB 8th grade technology assessment. With some awesome feedback and input from our very talented and knowledgeable middle school tech teachers, we have a nice draft to present in an upcoming meeting.

I was also able to land in a first grade classroom this week. My goal was to see how doable the CPS responders were with the little ones. I built a patterns activity/quiz using CPS for PowerPoint. For a lot of people, PowerPoint is a familiar application, and is kind of a natural starting place. It is a nice feature of CPS. I intentionally created this lesson with only two answers per question (A or B)...just to eliminate some of the confusion. I also set my lesson up to automatically send the answer, rather than having the student have to press"A" and then "send." (BTW...I am not a fan of the design of the new responders, the undo and send buttons can be confusing for some) But I eliminated this concern by bypassing that button.

The first graders did wonderful with this, and the reports that CPS generated provided nice feedback about each student's understanding of patterning. Working with these little ones was another reward for me, but perhaps the biggest reward of the week came when the teacher told me I had renewed her interest in using these devices.

This week was a big win...

RSS Feeds

I have been working (in the evening) this week to ensure the information I am interested in reading searches me out rather than the other way around. Using Google Reader as a gadget in my iGoogle page, I have subscribed to my favorite sites and blogs (including this one).

What is so neat about this is that because I have set iGoogle as my home page, my information appears everytime I open my browser...no matter where I am in the world--as long as I have a computer with the Internet, I have all my "stuff." (Yes, I did subscribe to The Sioux City Journal's feed) but I also have Alan November, David Warlick, and ISTE's feeds. So...tonight when I opened my browser, Layne's latest blog about his T&L Conference stared me in the face. I didn't have to go out to the WWW and check to see if anything new was posted to this blog. Time saved...and admittedly I probably wouldn't have searched it out on my own tonight.

Think of what we could do in the classroom with this. Students could filter and direct information on any topic to come straight to them...and from many different sources with different perspectives. Just think of how differently our own network news programs can present an issue; how would the same compare to a more worldly view? Subscribing to these RSS feeds can pull in that information to compare and contrast. And we all know that a lack of information is not an issue in this age. How to sort, organize, evaluate, and validate is, however. Rather than reading/regurgitating information a textbook, students are required to use higher order thinking skills. And it's free!

Another article that so magically appeared on my iGoogle home page was a neat analogy of Differentiated Instruction to how the National Weather Service presents its online info. Check it out:
http://novemberlearning.com/maybe-i%e2%80%99m-the-slow-kid/

Jo Dee

T+L Conference Report

I recently attended the National School Board Associations Technology and Learning (T+L) conference in snowy Denver, CO. It was my first National Tech. Conference and it was an excellent experience. It was really the best of the best coming together for 4 days to network and share information about this mystery of efficiently and effectively infusing technology into teaching and learning. They setup the breakout sessions in tracks. This was helpful, because it provided continuity to the information I was taking in. I tried to stick to the track of "Digital-Age learning culture". However, I did stray some because there were some excellent sessions outside my chosen strand.
I heard about several things, but nothing "breakthrough" that I had never seen before. The biggest "buzz" topics, in my opinion were:

1. online learning, using moodle/blackboard with the classroom instruction. Cited.org


2. 1:1 computing, giving every student netbooks or macbooks to use for school instead of textbooks.


3. Google wave. Some people were saying that this is the next facebook. I was able to score myself an invite to wave, so I should be waving by the end of the day :)


4. Finally, just using all the tools that are already there in a more effective and efficient way. The two Keynotes were exceptional, Frans Johannsen (book link) and Marc Antonio Torres [website]. Both spoke about being innovative and allowing students to be PRODUCERS of information instead of consumers of information.

Overall, I feel like we are in a very exciting place in Sioux City. The next 3- 4 years, implementing new technology, new buildings and differentiated instruction will prove to create huge learning opportunities for students and for adults!

MORE LINKS:

Awesome Presentation Tool: http://prezi.com/

Amazing Timeline Creation Tool: http://timeglider.com/

Impressive FREE photo editor: http://aviary.com/

Another Free Image editor: http://splashup.com/

Another cool Presentation/tutorial tool: http://voicethread.com/

Easy YOUTUBE downloader:
This is the easiest Youtube converter ever! Now you can convert and embed Youtube videos by simply :1. Typing a word (Kick)Change this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

To this... http://www.kickyoutube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE2.

Left clicking on a word (Go) Upper right corner.

Right clicking on a word (Download) and it will save that video to your desktop! Sweet!

I also still use Zamzar, because it emails me and I like email. :)

Google Gadget called Motion Chart: [link]

Make Word Clouds from any document or spreadsheet: http://wordle.net/

Animate in videos while you watch them : http://videoant.com/

I love http://delicious.com/ and I openly share my bookmarks this way: http://delicious.com/hennl check me out!!

http://ning.com/ This is an amazing networking tool and we just conducted an online meeting through the chat portion. Wasn't ideal, but it worked.

http://dimdim.com/ and adobe connect now are two online meeting sites that are free. I think dimdim allows for 20 free and connect now is only 2 or 3.

Google Voice and Google Wave - look these up, they are cool!!

Google Books is an amazing tool that is just going to get better: http://books.google.com/books

Okay, I better quit now. Gotta save some stuff for future posts!

Layne

Teacher Web Pages

I'd have to say that this has been the week of teacher web page training. I've thought long and hard of how to present this so it makes sense to everyone. While I was out sick a couple weeks ago, I was able to create a teacher handout with step by step instructions and screen shots. I also created a storyboard just so our teachers had a visual representation of all 27 of Socs "Teacher Page" templates. For the most part, I'd say things ran pretty smoothly. My biggest recommendation for teachers beginning a web page is to start out small and work into something more dynamic. The problem occurs when a teacher get students and parents hooked into their site, and then he/she doesn't have the time to keep up with it. It very quickly becomes outdated, and once users decide the information is not fresh, they will not return. So when you do have some time to update, you will no longer have an audience.

I'm not advocating that teachers create a static page, because that is exactly why we had to change our website format. I suggested to some of our very beginning website creators that they just maintain the "main" page for a while before hyperlinking other pages. While long, scrolling pages are not desirable, using just one page for information is a good first step.

I'd say the most confusing and frustrating thing our teachers are facing with this website creation is the fact that although the web-editing software looks like a word processor, it is still an html creater...which sometimes takes on a life of its own. The best solution to this is to create an "invisible table"--a table with the border set at zero--that way you do have some control of how your page will appear.

Speaking of confusing and frustrating...CPS--student paced--responders--WHS...not even going to get into it now because it has been blogged about before, but we need to have some serious conversations about this. This CANNOT happen when we roll this out, or we will have people shut down & turn away.

Week 12 Oct. 26- Oct. 30

The main thing I got out of this week....... Expect the unexpected. I will leave it at that.

This week was a very challenging week. So much going on and so little time. On Monday I went to Nodland and explained the new websites to their teachers. It was fun and challenging at the same time. Only one of me, but many teachers at different levels so it was hard to keep on track. Eventually I just threw the script and plan away and I ran around like a chicken with their head cut off. :) It will work out. It is a long process and we will get there, we need to be patient and work within the boundaries of what the website actually allows us to do.

The rest of the week was just training here and there, modeling the technology to teachers as I taught a class, plenty of troubleshooting, and putting out fires. We continue to have some issues with CPS even though we have installed the new CPS Pulse. Are the CPS responders working as seamlessly as we had envisioned, not even close. We are still having too many issues that shouldn't happen, and it's not user error.

I also continue to be bust going around to classrooms in our district recording teachers use of anchor activities. I do have to say we have some awesome things going on in our district. Keep up the hard work and more technology will be in your rooms before you know it.