IETC 2008

A miraculous thing happens when several hundred like-minded people get together and search for magic bullets that will help teachers improve their craft and students become better learners; Positive Energy.

I felt completely charged and recharged for two days, if you know what I mean. Participants put aside realities of time, roadblocks, district goals, mandated assessments, and, like sponges, absorbed the successes, failures, and possibilities shared by the presenters. To be honest, there was too much to absorb. An overload of information led to huge headaches each day, but that is nothing more than a sign of someone (me!) who still needs to learn to focus on and master one technique at a time which is exactly what I would do as a teacher. I’ll take the headaches, though, and humbly present a summary of the sessions that charged me the most. My goal for you is that you will spend some time visiting the sites in hopes they will recharge you when you feel the batteries running low. Notes for all the sessions I attended are in our TechCoach notebook under the Conferences section group. Please don’t hesitate to ask me for clarification on them!

First, visit the IETC site to see the list of presentations and some links to presenter handouts for other sessions not described below. This is becoming more of a trend at conferences, thankfully, and helps solidify the themes of 24/7 access and collaboration that seem to weave their way throughout the conference sessions.

Electrify Your Blog with Plugins
Rena Shifflet, ISU http://ietc2008.wikispaces.com/

This wiki provides a wealth of add-ons that will help make your blog a more interesting and interactive place to visit. Of note is the ability to use SlideShare to post your PowerPoint and then embed it directly into your blog. Other ideas include ways to add photos, blog visitor tracking widgets, a Skype button and widget from YackPack that allow for live conversations. I was very impressed how a math teacher embeds a Voicethread session that summarizes a collaborative problem solving approach that goes beyond the classroom. I’m interested to hear how you might find Voicethread useful in your classroom and even in your blog. I have lots of ideas, but let’s hear yours first!

Wiki World
Annette Lamb, Indiana University, http://eduscapes.com/sessions/wiki/

The term ‘wiki’ comes from wiki-wiki, which means quick-quick. Annette takes that to heart as her presentations are fast and packed with loads of useful information that will satisfy anyone looking for ways to promote reading, writing and high level thinking across the curriculum. I highly recommend spending as much time as possible exploring this site if you want to learn all about wikis and how you could use them with your students.

Annette is a teacher’s teacher. Her wiki lays it all out in an easy “I can do this!” way. She provides many instructions and examples for the new wiki user. The Teen Poetry Slam wiki rocks and made me wonder about applications of this approach for student publications at Fremd. Various English related wiki projects, and other project ideas covering many content areas are summarized.
This session inspired me to seriously consider moving all of the content from the Fremd Technology web site to the Fremd Tech Spot wiki that I started last year. What do you think?

Technology Treasures
Annette Lamb, Indiana University, http://eduscapes.com/sessions/treasures/

Okay, I got my first big headache right around this session as I got buried with information. The website has three focus questions: How do you find all those great technology resources and ideas? How do you stay current when technologies change so quickly? How do you maintain a passion for teaching and learning? I came away with ideas for helping teachers find partners, real or digital, in an effort to collaborate and keep the technology beast at bay. Technology is, indeed, a sixth prep, (thanks, Nicole, that was awesome!), and being able to have resources available to help learn and infuse it into classrooms is easier with the steps described in this session. The steps are listed below but you should visit her site to see the amazing list of resources to help you understand them.

1. Find Virtual Friends
2. Rethink the Tools
3. Bring Learning Alive
4. Read Professional Websites and Blogs
5. Connect to the Local Community
6. Collect Everything
7. Get Free Resources
8. Locate Free Tools
9. Promote Public Service
10. Use Primary Sources

Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom
Kim Rojas & Katie Orrego, University High School, Bloominton, Ill.
Visit our Technology Coach notebook for instructions on accessing their BlackBoard site that contains all classroom handouts, project ideas and conference materials.

I was very impressed by the infusion of technology into the lessons of these two Spanish teachers and thought their ideas could easily be adapted to other disciplines. They began by explaining how they use MS Word to create Warm up vocabulary exercises (again, follow along at the BlackBoard site) as an immediate classroom engagement tool to get kids thinking in Spanish the minute they walked into the door. Also, Word is used to create simple colored text boxes with words on them for students to move around and create sentences; a very SmartBoard-like activity without using SmartBoards!

Wikis were the next tech tool they presented. Students have to add a vocabulary word to the main page of the wiki and link it to a new page they create. Students use the new page to type a sentence using the word, maybe add a photo and include a memory trick to help remember the english equivalent. Wikis are also used to create stories. Each page has a few sentences students create with two links at the end of the page to other pages. This is kind of like those 'create your own adventure' stories where you choose what you think happens next.

Further uses of technology include blogs, multimedia projects, Audacity for recording, and the use of online video sites such as Youtube and BBCMundo as resources for native speaker inclusion into classroom settings. Again, specifics about how each of these technology tools are used in their lessons can be found on their BlackBoard site.

It was interesting that every participant in the session was a Spanish teacher. They were gobbling up the ideas and sharing their own. I chimed in and told everyone about LiveMocha and Mangolanguages as places to go for tutorials and the opportunity to converse with native speakers.

So, that's my summary. Now, the tough question. How do we know any of this actually helps kids learn better than the the methods used during the last, say, 10 years? This is what I hope to see added to conferences down the road. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of our technology infusion efforts. Watching kids use technology today stills gives credence to the notion they learn differently from the way I did and as classroom teachers, we need to continue to tap into the technology resources available to see what makes them tick. One of the best things I ever did was to actually ask kids how they learn things on their own. Let them babble, listen intently, and begin to look deeply at your own teaching practices for places where a different approach might be needed.

I'd like to hear how using new technology tools are making a difference in your classrooms. Also, do you have any anecdotal evidence that points to improved teaching and learning?

Happy Birthday, Gretchen!

I'm sure you noticed the new photo gallery on the right side of this blog. I'm sure you are dying to know how I did that. There has to be a classroom application for this somewhere!
First, the pictures are of my daughter opening a birthday gift and she graciously said I could use the photos in an effort to promote technology use at Fremd. Thanks, Gretchen!

Ever the geek, I decided to take some of the pictures using my cell phone camera and thought I would use this opportunity to share how I got them from my cell phone to my Tablet PC. I don't have a cell phone data transfer cable that I can use to directly download photos to my Tablet, so I had to rely on wireless means.

The Flickr Approach

I have a Flickr account that I use mainly as a resource for getting pictures I might need for a quick presentation and also for quick uploads of pictures if I know I or someone else will need to access them from another computer later. Flickr offers me the additional ability to email photos to my account which makes it useful for me to send photos from my phone to the email address Flickr provides.

Basics

1. Create your account
2. Click on your username at the top of the screen next to where it says, "Signed in as [username]." This takes you to Your Account.
3. Click on the Email link next to the Personal Information section. Your unique Flickr email is listed next to where it says Your Flickr Upload Email.
4. Now, open your photo gallery (or what ever it may be called in your phone) and send the photos using that email address.

Now, I'm not about to attempt to tell you how to use your own phone to send pictures, as there are so many different phones and possibilities for doing this! Stop by to see me, though, and I'll help you figure out how it's done.
Next, I used Flickr to create a 'photo badge' that would generate some html code that I could easily copy and paste into the new HTML widget provided by Blogger. The result is the small gallery of photos you see to the right. There a few other steps involved, like creating a 'Set' of pictures in Flickr for the gallery. It took a little time, and patience.

I also learned that I could send pictures directly to this blog but have had a little trouble doing that. More later, when I figure it out. Or, maybe someone could help me with that part!

The only downside to sending photos from my phone to Flickr is that my phone has a 600 KB limit on file size sending, so, I could not send the 1.3 MB movies I had also taken. Now what?

The Bluetooth Approach

My Tablet PC has Bluetooth technology and so does my cell phone. They can talk to one another like a mini wireless network. I could do this in a forest with no access to any kind of wireless network needed. I had no trouble sending my cell phone movies to my computer. Bluetooth is cool.

Basically, the general process for using Bluetooth wireless technology is as follows:

1. Make sure your cell phone is 'discoverable' by other Bluetooth devices such as your Tablet PC.
2. Right-click on the Bluetooth icon in the lower right corner of your screen and Add a Bluetooth Device.
3. Click Next from the window that opened and let the computer discover all of the devices in my immediate area that had Bluetooth technology installed and turned on. This is a slick way to search for cell phones in your classroom, by the way!
4. Use your cell phone to search for new devices.
5. "Pair" them, if needed, so that they can talk to one another.

These instructions are purposely vague because each cell phone will have a slightly different way of finding and connecting to another Bluetooth device. Again, stop by and I will be more than happy to help you learn you how this is done on your phone.

So, how could either of these techniques be used in the classroom or school environment? Further, Flickr badges are just HTML code and could be used in your class, activity, or athletic website or blog. What do you think? Pros, Cons?

What I Voted For

I voted today and I would like to share not who I voted for, but some of what I voted for and how this might relate to our use of technology. I voted for giving people the chance to share their knowledge and to collaborate with one another to solve problems. I voted for empowering people to take charge of their own lives rather than being told how their lives will be helped or changed. I voted for a strong work ethic. I voted for the hope that technology will be viewed as a tool any generation of user can adapt to, learn from, benefit from, and, most importantly, engage in a wider (global?) conversation with because our world is an investment in ourselves and our future.

We have the power to take ourselves anywhere we desire; whether it is to a physical location on this planet, (or another), or to a different point in our own understanding of what we think we currently know. We can learn in order to get there. Generation-We is growing up but they need to become digital citizens. They are so much like us, learners who believe they can make a difference. What are WE doing in our classes to help them?

Our students share. Do we? Do we know what other educators are doing in the next classroom or school? Do we care? I voted for the chance to share our knowledge. We can share by talking with one another as colleagues and using online storage sites, online photo sharing sites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. to make 'our' work available anytime, anywhere for others.

Our students collaborate. Do we? How often do we give and get nothing back, not even a 'Thank You!"? I am not smarter or a better teacher than you but I can work with you to create something truly magical our students can use to help them learn. I can personally become better at my craft as I glean a little bit of what you do, too. Do we encourage our students to collaborate in the classroom? I voted for giving people the chance to help. We can collaborate by using OneNote, wikis, and blogs, to name a few technology tools.

Our students think. It is our job to help them think creatively and constructively. Engage them. We can teach them to use paper and electronic resources to help them attack a problem, question, or issue, to form opinions and to be heard. We can help them learn to use Web 2.0 tools to organize their research.

Our students communicate. Do we? Certainly we can with one another as we sit in our offices. Let's expand the communication. Do you read periodicals and blogs regularly that are written by teachers or experts in a subject? Do you communicate/contribute your own thoughts to the blog? Do your students blog or contribute to your classroom blog? You and your students do have something to say. It is humbling to find others thinking and writing about topics, ideas, and uses for technology that I would not think about or even know about had I not read their blog. It is satisfying to find others sharing the same concerns, hopes, and dreams for education and technology that I do. It is gratifying to be able to contribute and learn from, benefit from, and engage in wide conversations.

Maybe we use Skype to communicate. Let's bring a scientist, author, accountant, musician, mathematician, coach, athlete, secretary, CEO, plumber, doctor, nurse, and parent, into our classroom and have live dialogues using Skype. We can communicate and technology will help in ways not possible before.

How do you see our students? What did you vote for?