One Thing On My Mind

Well, I'm back after two days of ITEC conference & two days of illness and I have just one thing on my mind...David Warlick's Keynote Address. His main focus was on "Literacy & Learning in the 21st Century," and how lack of information is certainly not an issue any longer. Students need to know how to sort through the never-ending deluge of information to be smart consumers. They need to have the ability to "mine" the information fields and be able to search out and discern reputable information. He noted that WikiPedia often takes an educational hit because of the nature of a wiki---anyone can edit it. It often posts warnings that material may be biased or incomplete, yet how often do text books post that warning?

We are now in an age in education which we are preparing learners for a future we can hardly imagine. It is not like that of our "factory" past. As educators, we need to adjust our very pedagogy. What worked 25, 10, or even 5 years ago is in the past. Warlick states we should not teach from our pasts, but for the future of our learners. We are now in an era where if a child cannot figure how to advance to the next level in a video game, the answers are only a mouse click away. Warlick even cites a personal example where he was in the middle of our country, looking at an unmarked pyramid & was wondering what it was...so he tweeted on Twitter. From across the globe, in Austrailia, an answer came back. The gal on the opposite side of the world saw his tweet, Googled the information, and tweeted him within a matter of minutes. Not only do we have this world of information at our fingertips, we can now harness it and direct it to come to us through things such as RSS feeds, iGoogle, Twitter, etc...

As we prepare the Sioux City Community School District with the 21st Century Classroom equipment, I think having David Warlick speak to our troops is vital to the success of this project. Equipment is just equipment. Just as overhead lighting is now ubiquitous, so must the "tech. stuff." This equipment is not the magic bullet...our wonderful educators are, and I am so very lucky to be able to work along side them in this endeavor.
http://davidwarlick.com/wordpress/?page_id=2
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

Week 10 Oct. 12- Oct. 16

I'm back..... I didn't have the chance to blog last week because I wasn't at work. My wife gave birth to daughter number 3, so I figured it was a reasonable explanation as to why I wasn't at work. But man alive, coming back to work after taking a week off stinks. Emails to catch up on, appointments to move around, meetings that popped up, but most of all, just getting back in the swing of what is going on.
I spent some good time this week trying to figure out the elementary web sites. How can we improve them?? How can we make this easier to use?? Our solution..... looking at different companies. We need something that is more user friendly. Teachers time is valuable and don't need to be wasting it updating a website that takes 5 steps to complete a process that should take 2 steps.
Also this week, we received our new CPS Pulse response system. So far I like them a lot and are very easy to use. I hope they are more durable than the previous type we had.
Unfortunately at times this week I ran myself in 2 directions at once and had to bail on a couple of appointments. Teresa I will make it up I promise!!!

Where There's a Will...

...there's a way when you are dealing with technology--at least that has been my experience. While passing through my office, Layne mentioned that the Flip videos are not working with PowerPoint. Sure enough, dragging a Flip video into PowerPoint, or even going to Insert>Movie>From File, didn't work. Help files on Microsoft.com indicated that if a video plays in Windows Media Player, it will work in PowerPoint. Unfortunately this wasn't the case when dealing with the Flip .avi files.
Of course, that was enough to pique my curiosity. After trying several ideas with no results, I was in the middle of writing a help ticket to the Flip Product Support site, when I remembered that Flip allows videos to be posted on FaceBook & MySpace--which means a different file conversion. Ah Ha! That was my last hope...but I didn't close that help ticket yet. Sure enough, it worked. I happily exited the help request and shared my triumph with Layne. Now Layne, being the creative thinker he is, used our Interwrite Workspace to record a tutorial on this whole process. I experimented with my own tutorial and posted it on YouTube...Click Here to Watch.

A main focus of this week, however, was training teachers on the new SOCS Teacher Pages. This is a really a user-friendly template system which allowes teachers to create their own site within our Sioux City Community School's site. After my first meeting, I realized we really needed a couple graphic organizers & handouts. So I created those--which were a big help. For the most part I am very pleased with this program, with one minor objection. Once a teacher logs into Socs and clicks on My Teacher Pages, it automatically creates 27 templates that are ready to go. The problem occurs when a teacher decides to edit their profile--maybe changing their name or fixing a typo. Socs then creates a duplicate set of templates under the new change. With 54 templates available, a teacher must be very careful to choose the correct name, or the Teacher Page will not appear. And sometimes when CAREFULLY choosing the correct name, it doesn't appear. I need to contact SOCS about this, but for right now, I'm clearing them out & re-adding them as a new user. Moral of that story...carefully type in the correct user name & don't change it.
Finally, I am heading off to the ITEC conference this weekend. I am so excited about this & will post what I learn next week!

Week 8 Sept. 28th-Oct. 2nd

Once again this week flew by. This week was a week in which no two days were the same. On Monday, I started off my week by walking through some classrooms and observing what technology was in use and how it was used. I find it really fun popping in to classes that I have helped in the past to see the growth with technology. Also on Monday, we had out first coaches meeting with Mary Jo. We discussed things that we have been doing so far and the importance of relationships, as well as discussed a way to document everything we are doing in the classroom.

On Tuesday, I had a very busy day out and about. I went to a first grade room at Nodland and discussed technology with the teacher, I went to East middle and helped trouble shoot CPS responders with a couple teachers, I stopped by Whittier and sat down with the principal to discuss technology in her building and where she wants to go with it, I went to Irving and trained Mr. Koch in SOCS, and finally I spent some time at Roosevelt working through some issues with Mrs. Bigbee. We got her squared away and her technology is good to go. Sorry for the run on sentence, I was busy!!!!

On Wednesday I went to Unity and trained a teacher in PLATO. We set up classes, assigned assignments and set up for me to come back on Friday during lab time to help out and teach the kids PLATO. I also had some training of my own in PLATO Focus, I need to buckle down and learn that....

This Thursday was my first ever CADRE. I am part of Sunnyside/Nodland. I had a good time meeting new faces and trying to help them out in anyway I could. I feel awkward giving them advice until I learn more about how they do business. Great connections though.

Finally on Friday, I started out my day going to Whittier to talk their principal and a BLT member about a NING that I built for them. They decided they wanted a way to share information, thoughts, and ideas on a NING. So I built one and showed them how to use it. I look forward to seeing how it is being used. I also spent some time Friday playing with equipment and learning more about why things happen the way they happen. I finished Friday co-teaching PLATO at Unity in Ms. Flewelling's room.

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

I was almost giving up hope that I would actually get to go to my desk this week and answer some of the email that has been piling up in my inbox. However, I was redirected on an all day meeting Friday and I was able to spend some time meeting with Mrs. Weltz and Mr. Lang.
Early in the week, I met with the middle school technology teachers and we worked all viewed a presentation on a free tech-assessment that can be given to our students. We also heard about a net-safety curriculum and an online technology skills curriculum from the same company. Pretty spendy stuff, but very good! The website is http://www.infosourcelearning.com/education if you are interested.
I also attended a meeting with J. Wibbels from the AEA and A. DenBeste, discussing how to really utilize the coaching model for bringing real-time help to teachers integrating technology in their classroom to support instructional practice. With a clear and consistent vision, we can make huge progress in this district. J and I also discussed the rollout of our initiative for online learning with a subscription to NROC. More to come on this topic! Later that day, an incredibly excellent meeting with teachers who have the complete 21st Century classroom package in their classrooms. This meetings are excellent because we get to work out issues, share celebrations and really refine the focus and goals of using technology in the classroom. This was just our 2nd meeting, but we are really getting good at using differentiated strategies, formative assessments and technology to make it all efficient and effective. The teachers all agreed that using the responders really changes how you can react to student learning quickly. Our next meeting isn't until October 20th and we'll get to introduce the Pulse responder, with full text answer capabilities!
The audio enhancement was another piece that was getting great praise!
I was able to address some issues out in classrooms on Wednesday and then I did a training with our Health Occupations teacher who received all of the 21st Century classroom tools through a grant. We both benefited from this!
The final touches on the week were mostly centered around planning for the full-scale rollout of 21st Century classroom tools in grades K-8. How it's going look, when it's going to start and what funding sources are going to be used for each piece. From software to hardware, up and down, the classroom of tomorrow is coming to Sioux City Schools in full force!! What an exciting time to be a student, teacher, parent in the Sioux City Schools!
Here's a few websites I'm curious about and wanting some teachers to try: edmodo.com - it's supposed to be a twitter-esque thing safe for education.
Also, Aviary.com, this has photo-editing potential!

It's All About the Memory...

Several of our issues this week were solved by a simple memory upgrade. At one of our schools, our board would not stay callibrated. In fact, at one point, I'd move my pen down the board & the cursor would move to the left. It was like watching a mirror image. I thought to myself, "Self, I would not have the patience to deal with this in my classroom on a daily basis." (Kudos to our very patient Mrs. V!) The software really wasn't the issue, & after brainstorming with L & L, we concluded it was the memory. Memory was installed; I checked it out today, and all is well.

Speaking of memory...a good tip with our CPS responder software is to remember NOT to delete your database. Everything you've ever done will be gone. (Sorry we couldn't recover it Mr. W!) :)

I worked on Skyping this week. We have two middle school and one elementary room that I am using Skype to communicate. The two middle school classes are social studies classes and are looking to contact classes in other countries. I got the audio to work perfectly, but tried to use our document cameras as the webcam. I know it is possible, but am just about ready to go out and buy a webcam--the doc cams aren't the greatest for Skyping anyway.

Heard a great story about responders this week. One of our teachers (Mr. W) was watching the results as the students took a quiz using the responders. He noticed one student who really didn't put much effort in--he was just pushing the same button for all his answers. Typically the teacher wouldn't have known this until later that evening or the next day when he checked the quizzes. But the responders allowed him to immediately redirect that student. He also noticed that as they finished the quiz, one student did not pass. Before that child ever left the room, he was able to show him his results and schedule a time later that day for reteaching. That student was awe-struck. That teacher said instead of always trying to "catch up" he was able to be proactive and make an immediate difference. He compared it to coaching on the field & how he is able to give immediate feedback and direction on the spot and have the player make the proper adjustment. What these responders are doing is allowing the teachers to teach, coach, & guide rather than checking & grading.

The one thing I've made my goal and tried to follow emphatically is when a teacher is needing assistance to get out to that classroom immediately, or at least as soon as possible. I just know that as a teacher who wants to try new things to enrich my teaching & student learning, if I had a technical issue, the waiting, waiting, waiting is the what would frustrate me the most. So I make it a priority to at the very least get some help if I cannot solve the issue. I want to make a difference for those teachers. I want them to feel supported.

Week 7 Sept. 21st-Sept. 25th

This week was truly a better week. On Monday I was out at Leed's and spoke with a teacher about using video in her classroom. I also was at Joy for PD on ITPDP. Some teachers discussed using technology in their plan. On Tuesday we had our monthly AEA coaches meeting. We had a great discussion and continue to outline our mission. Tuesday after school, we had our monthly Diff and Tech meeting. We discussed the highs and lows of our project as well as saw demonstrations with the equipment.

Wednesday was the best day of the week. Jo Dee and I finally finished up moving all the elementary websites. Some of the websites took just a few minutes, while some took a few hours. It was a great relief to finish this project. It was like a huge weight lifted off our shoulders. On Thursday, I went out to Longfellow and talked to some teachers about downloading an E-book they needed for PD on Monday. Solved some basic issues and went about my day. Finally on Friday, Brad from Office Elements, Jo Dee, and I went around to our buildings and met with teachers answered questions, and did some demo's. It was a well needed trip with Brad and reassured with many people our commitment to making this initiative a success.

As you can tell, I was very happy with his week. I know next week will be the same. Right......