K-12 Online Conference

The K12 Online Conference began on November 30 and will continue through December 17. Please visit the site for more details. This conference provides a great opportunity for you to attend sessions live, or at a later time, to learn about innovative ways to include Web 2.0 tools into your teaching.

I certainly do not expect you to attend this conference. I know how busy you are! The nice thing about this conference is that links to the presentations will be made available so you can look at them at a later date. I will be attending as many of the sessions as I can and will summarize them in this blog.

Here is a flyer that provides an overview of the conference speakers.

The complete schedule, unfortunately, lists times in GMT, so you will have to subtract 5 hours in order to figure out the times in CDT. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on this!)

Other Resources
K12 Conference Wiki
K12 Conference Ning
K12 Conference Blog
Follow on Twitter at K12Online
Follow on Facebook at K12 Online Conference

Tech Forum - Chicago, April 24, 2009

I am at the Tech Forum Conference in Schaumburg, Illinois, today. I will be attending two sessions and will summarize the notes below.

EduPodcasting

Steve Dembo, Ben Gray, Dick Diener

This is an informative session on Podcasting.

In 2004, there were only 24 Google search results on the term, "Podcast." The same search on the same date in 2005 returned over 100 million results. Quite a leap!

Podcasting facts...

Podcasting is easy to do and does not involve any complex technology. A digital camera or cell phone is all that is needed. Software can be used ranging from easy to complex depending upon what you want to do; Audacity, Audio MP3 Sound Recorder, GCast, and Gabcast are a few pieces to consider. Web tools can be used, too, like Drop.io, hipcaster, and clickcaster.

The Barrington 220 Podcast Network is an impressive effort to bring school events to the community. Their goal is to create better communication through interaction. It is important to get "buy-in" from administrators and School Board members, so they create podcasts with members of these areas. Students always host the interview and learn how to create and publish the podcast.

Cell Phones in Education
Steve Dembo, Discovery Education

Check-out the Angry Professor on Youtube...and the extended version....

How can cell phones be used in the classroom?
www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls

This site lets students send a text message responding to a poll made at this site. This can be used as a student response system. Multiple choice questions can be made, too. This can actually be downloaded into a PowerPoint presentation. Free and cost versions are available. The messages can be moderated and you can actually download the messages and see the phone number of who sent the message, if you interested in doing that.

Other suggested uses: (from those in attendance)
Take pictures as a lab progresses
iphones allow internet access when there is no internet available. So do most other cell phones.

Why use expensive camcorders and other video equipment?
Visit www.filmonthefly (A mobile Phone Video Challenge); another free service. Students can create a cell phone video response to a prompt a teacher puts up at this site. See http://filmonthefly.ning.com/ for some examples of cell phone videos.

Liz Kold(b?) is holding a picture challenge. Also, see http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/.

Scott Meech runs http://www.iear.org/, an iTouch site that reviews Education apps. There is also a ning associated with the site, http://ieducationappsreview.ning.com/. Join his site to be a reviewer!

What's the Debate? (discussion from those in attendance)
We live in a fear-based society. Many other countries embrace the use and educate students and parents on the use of cell phones as educational tools.
Cheating. You can have kids bring them to the teacher desk before the test.
Age. Ask when it should be appropriate to use it in the classroom.
Ignorance. Teach decision makers how to use their cell phone.
Safety. So many people send out wrong information during an emergency. However, parents are for cell phones in terms of safety. There has to be a balance. It is worthwhile to go to http://www.helium.com/ and search on cell phones for safety related articles. The debate goes on!

http://www.udefn.com/ can be set up to send you back what you are looking for; weather, news, etc.

http://plodt.com/ provides real time feedback on many topics, like opinions on a debate. You can also rate the debate as it is going. Students can rate your lesson, too. Wow, instant feedback with comments from the students. A graph is created of ratings vs. time. This might be great for evaluating your lesson from an understanding/confusion aspect. I'll have to investigate this site further, but I like the concept.

Nice job presenting, Steve!

I would like to let everyone know about TxtDrop.com, a free online service that allows text messages to be sent to cell phones from the internet. I've used it and can easy reply to the message so that it gets sent back to the email address that sent it. Give it a try!

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?

2008 ICE Conference

My first workshop of the week was Web 2.0 Tools for Developing Differentiating Digital Content. Quite a bit of time was spent on learning to use the Digital Generation's Curriculum wiki. I liked some of the philosophy that was discussed as Web 2.0 tools can be used in different ways for different learning styles.

Using the wiki, however, seemed difficult. We had to learn some formatting commands in order to place pictures, add audio, etc. The wiki I created is called Understanding Matter. If we want to move teachers away from being web developers, I'm not sure this particular wiki is the place to go. There are other options such as wetpaint, wikispaces, pbwiki, etc.