EdTech Avenue

Presenters are using a student response system first to poll the audience.  This is engaging the audience and keeping attention focused while also transfering content information.  Hmmm… what we should be doing in our classrooms?  Yes!!  Resources and more information at http://conferenceconnection2009.edublogs.org/.

These are NETS (standards) for Teachers.  Refer to the ISTE website for more information. These standards are broken into 4 stages in the rubric scale: Beginning > Developing > Proficient > Transformative.

Standard 1: Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity; Performance Indicator A: promote, support and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.  In this example, a teacher is at this beginning level of this standard and show us a tool that will move them to the developing level.

Showing Blabberize - where you can take a photo of the person or animal (or anything), set where the mouth is, and make it “talk” with your voice!

Standard 2: Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments; Performance Indicator C: customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources. Teacher at the developing stage can move to the Proficient stage (facilitate learning, use specific strategies).

Showing their blog at edublogs.org, tour of WordPress blog.

Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility; Performance Indicator B: address the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources.

Showing the free tool “voki” (available from their website above).  Chose a character (or import a picture) and background, give it a voice by text-to-voice, record using a microphone, call in, or upload an mp3. Kids can communicate what they know very quickly and easily.

Standard 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning; Performance Indicator A: demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations. Teacher moving from beginning to developing stage (plan, manage and facilitate).

Showing Wikispaces for Educators.

The are going WAY too fast.

Standard 5: Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership; Performance Indicator D: contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community. Teacher can move from developing stage to proficient (actively contribute, sharing promising practices).

Showing Elluminate. One online virtual classroom, discussion board, whiteboard, document sharing, audio/video, and more. Free for up to three people at a time. We can extend our community and our learning.

Back to Standard 3: Model Digital-Age Work and Learning; Performance Indicator B: collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation.

Move from beginning stage… Edublogs are good for beginning stage. Add Blabberize to that, making it interactive, and you are moving to the developing stage. Add to that the voki element, allowing for even more customization and creativity moves to the proficient stage. Blabberize is not as interactive - voki allows for comments on the element while Blabberize has to be embedded in a comment-friendly place. Move to transformative by putting that all into an Elluminate classroom with kids collaborating together across time and space, even just showing one classroom’s work to another.

They are talking now about the “Awareness Scale.”  I’m not sure from this if it’s something that is available through ISTE on the rubric scale or if it’s something they’ve come up with.  It is being described as where to start with teachers who are not yet in the “active” phase of the standards put forth by ISTE.  These are discussions that should be happening with teachers who are not yet even to the beginning stages of integrating technology in a meaningful way.  There is a good slide in their preso that shows this scale as it compares to the NETS scale.  The presenter is willing to answer questions via email, available on the link above.

Karen is the Technology Coordinator at a school the same size as mine - 320 students.  Tux Paint is an Open Source software package - completely free.

“It’s not about the Tech, it’s about the Teach.”

Over 80 languages available - can be changed easily in the configuration for students needing alternate languages.

It’s a paint program, so images once placed can not be moved or manipulated - only erased.

Great selection of stamps, shapes, colors and variations of all - much like KidPix but free.

http://nets4students.wetpaint.com/ is Karen’s website.  She is a participant in the Johns Hopkins University certificate program mentioned in my earlier post about new NETS and resources.

Templates can be created and shared over a network.

Karen has a Wiki on her site also, with some basic instructions and tips.

Students are sometimes confused when they see the text (Aa) tool and look for the rest of the letters. Karen teaches them that it means you are using the Alphabet and will need to use the keyboard.

Base file type for Tux Paint “Starter” (template) is PNG.  Templates need to be saved as a PNG and make it transparent.  There’s a free program on her Wiki you can use for that.  GiMP can also be used.  Files are also saved as a PNG from TuxPaint to be used outside of the program and inserted, etc.

A separate page off of Karen’s wiki has curriculum ideas - too many to list here!

Simple clicking creates a slideshow of any selected TuxPaint images… wow!  This could be used for very simple animations with older students.

Hiding at the right of the color palette is a link to the wider array of colors.

Fill “bucket” is under the Magic tools.

This was a terrific session!

I chose this session for more personal than professional reasons.  I do read Wes Fryer’s blog fairly regularly and have an interest in how he has included his children in his learning and sharing community throughout his professional blog and now this “family learning blog,” and I wanted to learn more.

Supporting handouts at http://handouts.wesfryer.com/familylearningblog.

Ok, this is already right up my alley, and the session hasn’t even started yet!  Wes is on a video chat with his daughter Sarah, who is staying with her grandparents.  She will participate in the presentation today.

Wes is using free resource “Poll Everywhere” to take a poll of the use of blogs in schools of the attendees.  http://poll4.com

Showing picture of the fmaily together in a room - almost everyone is on a computer or device of some kind - looks a lot like what happens at my house.  Because they are so connected, it allows them to be more connected as a family as well.  “Nokia: Go Play - 4th Screen” video (YouTube).

Free website called “Contxts” used to distribute contact information, links, etc.

It’s about internet safety - we have to prepare kids for the unfiltered world wide web.  Screen time and other issues are constantly changing with technology.  These screens can connect us.  His kids are reading and watching movies on their mobile devices instead of our “traditional” methods of delivery.

Sarah is now introducing herself and telling us about her activities.  She likes gymnastics and likes to swim; she is going into 4th grade.  She started a show on the internet - an international cooking show (separate Wiki page as well as on the blog AND edublogs.tv)!  The last episode was on banana bread.  She was inspired to be a chef by her mom and grandmother cook (and dad).  She also learned about cooking on TV.  She wanted to do that - put the steps in order and show it.  They recorded it and she edited in iMovie.  She logs into their blog on her own and can add pictures “and stuff.”  She wrote about gymnastics, a poll and a SMARTboard picture this month.  She doesn’t write on her own every week, but Wes encourages her to…

What: http://fur.ly/1rj (free site to shorten multiple URLs into one) to show various posts on the blog.

• Post 1: Daughter is reading what she wrote as an “audioBoo.”  Can map your location - brings up issue of security and privacy - know what you are publishing.
• Post 2: Essay written for school now shared with family.  Evidence of learning and profile item for end of 5th grade.
• Post 3: Sarah’s cooking show post.  She’s used skills like creating music for the background in Garage Band and iMovie to edit and make some steps go at a faster speed.
• Post 4: Teachable moments come up - this one was a comment that was actually spam - teaching a child about why that comment might be dangerous.  The web address in the comment did not resolve, and the IP address of the person’s IP address.
• Post 5: Video from their trip to the medieval festival just after his daughter’s first ride on a camel - value of catching this excitement in the moment instead of later after it’s subsided.
• Post 6: Mother’s Day podcasts.  We need personal connections to technology use before we can get to the higher learning of integration.  He went into his 3rd grader’s class and asked 10 questions of the students, and posted the digitally recorded, no-edit, podcasts.  Inflection, enthusiasm and energy can’t be captured in a hand-written card, no matter how cute.
• Post 7: Talking about the Chilean Pudu at the zoo.
• Post 8: Webspiration character map of Jackie Kennedy Onassis by Sarah.
• Post 9: Book review by Wes’s son.  No hang-ups about mis-spellings, etc., just get them writing. (That would be hard for me.)
• Post 10: A drawing by Wes’s daughter - digital photos of the drawing.  Archives their work, could even add audio.
• Post 11: Podcast (with script transcript) about the glory of being the “snack leader” in preschool.  This is a kind of a spoof, but adorable!  He shared this with the teacher (an opportunity to show them the usefulness and ease of creating and sharing of audio).
• Post 12: Some posts are assignments - 12 ideas shared here.
• Post 13: Book podcast via Ustream by another family (Dawn Decker).  Opportunity to see what they saw (the video), and he was able to see comments from others and changed his understanding of what his learning is and how it affects others.

Edify these kids in their own interests and passions.  It’s fun!  These grandparents have a bigger and clearer window into the lives of their grandchildren.

What do they use?  What can you use?

• WordPress or Blogger
• AudioBoo
• GEOgraffiti (create a story that goes with a place) “Voice Mark the World”
• Plugins are listed on his website (Twitter Tools will post to Twitter when posting to the blog)

Here’s the wave, will you surf, swim or block the waves?  Swimming is dangerous because dangerous things can happen.  But how did you learn to swim?  Did a teacher tell you how or did you get in the pool to learn?  There are life jackets, lifeguards, rules, boundaries… just like out on the web.  Discuss and teach through USING these tools with your children.  You can moderate and block or allow and teach… or anything in between.

ISTE has developed a new “Seal of Alignment” for those programs who are validated by ISTE.  These can “meet” or “support” specific standards.  They examine the quality and treatment of those programs and the rigor they put into it.  Not just the product but how it is implemented is assessed.  “Quality and Alignment Assurance”

Adobe Curriculum:  Includes instructor and student materials for their product including worksheets, presentations and an assessment piece.

IC3 (Internet and Computing Core Certification): Global standard certification program that measures digital and computing literacy.  Launched in 2002.  Currently updating for the new NETS.  Certification Resources include assessments, approved courseware and practice tests.  Schools using this as test-out options, course placement, final exams, and professional development.

eMINTS (enhancing Missouri’s Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies): A professional development resource center for schools and districts, adapting to meet local needs where necessary.  Bernie Dodge is a member of their advisory board, so they work at helping schools use webquests to meet standards.  They offer a full professional development series (2-year program).

School of Education at Johns Hopkins University: Offers an online program for a certificate in school administration and supervision, in partnership with ISTE.  This program meets fully the NETS-A standards.  They are preparing school administrators to be technology leaders.

How do you use a product and implement into your curriculum?  Learning.com rep speaking as an example being used in the Klein ISD.  Klein ISD rep speaking on use — Every student has a subscription to EasyTech from Learning.com.  This is classified as a textbook.  Fully aligned to the standards.  They developed a scope and sequence as an integral component of core content instruction (this is what we do at BT, not separating tech out).  EasyTech Lessons are then assigned for skill development.  Activities are assigned for application of skill and tied to learning objected of the core curriculum.  Technology grade is added to the report card to let parents know how they are doing in the technology mastery of skills.  Read about this program in the latest edition Learning & Leading with Technology (included in the NECC welcome bag, June/July issue, page 12).  Schools who subscribe to Learning.com’s EasyTech will now be able to share content across the system.

PBS TeacherLine: Capstone Certificate Program for teachers, aligned with NETS-T.  Year-long online professional development for teachers who are familiar with technology integration in the classroom.

Thinkfinity.org:  Tens of thousands of free resources to educators, students, and parents.  Also free professional development for how to “effectively integrate Thinkfinity online resources to enhance curriculum instruction.”  Integration Framework: Who uses the resource?  What stratgeies are going to be used - cooperative learning? discovery approach?  What classroom configuration will work best to employ this activity?  What does this activity look like for students?  How will you know if the activity is successful?  (Webinar in July on the Integration Framework.)

Research Study

We need to have a better awareness on how to educate on cyberbullying.  Graduate students in counseling and education came together in this project.  Cyberbullying “refers to bullying via electronic communications tools.”

Seven Types

1. Flaming
2. Harassment
3. Denigration
4. Cyberstalking
5. Impersonation or Masquerading
6. Outing or Trickery
7. Exclusion

Trends
Age: increases in elementary years, peaks in middle school, declines in high school
Gender: girls more likely to be online and cyberbully

Broadband Data Improvement Act in 2008 included Title II “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act.”

Phase I: Adapted previous survey by Li (2006, 2007).  More than half were aware of someone being cyberbullied most were not reported to an adult.  Slightly more boys than girls were both bullies and being bullied, most happened outside of school, over half were not reported, and situations typically happened on average about 4 times.

Phase II:  Focus Groups to further inform survey data, explore the student views and experiences to collect information to use in creating scenarios.  Found commonalities and put in three categories - Reactions, Knowledge, and Coping.  Results said most cyberbullying would take place between the student and someone they know, and most were due to a misunderstanding.  The most common answer for who they would talk to about it was the school counselor, also stating that they felt more adults need to be educated about cyberbullying.

Phase III: Virtual Scenarios fully “acted out” using avatars in Second Life, based on phases I and II: (1) Gossip Goes Virtual and (2) Mark Visits the School Counselor.  Students watched the scenarios and offered feedback.

Recommendations for parents: understand what it is, educate children, be aware, be involved.

Resources:

• CyberSmart Curriculum
• NetSmartz
• iSafe

Showing video of Second Life Scenario, “Mark Visits the School Counselor.”

Q&A
Second Life was used for the video scenarios to link the technology and counseling worlds, this seemed the easiest place to do this in a place that is away from the true counseling and reporting of cyberbullying in person to make it more comfortable for students.

More scenarios are hoped to be added later.

The scripting process for the video scenario used words from students in the focus group sessions. They reviewed feedback from the focus groups and used data and phrasing spoken by the students to create the scenario.

Focus Groups were recorded using digital audio and transcribed later.

MovieTeacher46.com has a list of movies where bullying takes place to use as a discussion starter.

In this session, my main goal is to gather sites that will be helpful to our teachers who have a growing need for bilingual resources for their students.

http://www.lorilopez.info is her portal site of FREE resources.  Here are some she highlighted:

• Flash Quizzes for Grammar – http://a4esl.org/q/f/
• Internet Picture Dictionary – http://www.pdictionary.com/spanish/ (there is also an English one)
• ABC Espanol – http://www.poissonrouge.com/abcespanol/index.html (interactive!)

I am not going to list all the sites here as they are all on Lori’s portal.  There are some incredible resources here, but make sure you leave yourself time to really explore some of them.  Others she highlighted are:

• Storyplace
• Zoo Madrid
• Maya & Miguel
• PBL Checklists (also in English)
• Pasadena ISD (has presentations (PowerPoint) for instruction in English and Spanish)

Here in D.C., NECC is off to a bright and early start.  I actually skipped out on the opening keynote and reception last night and instead took a trip out to see the Pentagon Memorial.  I think for me it was a good choice.  I’m trying to find a balance between seeing our nation’s capital and working hard to gather information to further our technology program at Blessed Trinity.  I have picked sessions based on what our needs are and have also noted some sessions to view later with the fairly new feature that allows video-on-demand for some sessions.  Here are the sessions at the top of my list - my “top five” if you will:

• BET on Technology: Bilingual Educational Technology
• Cyberbullying: Using Virtual Scenarios to Educate and Raise Awareness
• New NETS, New Assessment
• The Answer to NCLB Tech Literacy: Web-based Technology Literacy Projects
• Differentiating NETS*T: Moving Teachers Toward Transformative Technology

I’ve been trying to include some of the McREL standards in my own technology standards for IHMCS because they include some basic engineering concepts. These standards appear to come from the “Standards for Technological Literacy” from the Internationa Technology Educaiton Association (ITEA) and address technology and design in a much broader way than ISTE’s standards.

As I see it, my students are missing out on the public schools’ industrial tech classes that are offered in 7th and 8th grades and I’m the closest equivilent to that teacher. (I really only have control of my own curriculum up through 6th grade, so it’s a busy year.)

Way back when, I taught in a public Jr. High school with a well-developed industrial tech program. Kids weren’t only learning about the basics of building materials and electrical work (typical industrial tech stuff), but also the basics of computer animation, photography, genetics, etc. More recent industrial tech syllabi show an emphasis on CAD basics, the design process, and hands-on projects that incorporate math/science/tech concepts. (drag/friction/force, geometry & graphing, invention/innovation, green technologies, etc)

I certainly don’t have the time or knowledge to teach everything that an industrial tech class offers, but I am trying to break away from a computer-only curriculum.  I’ve also been looking at including some engineering-ish stuff in the lower grades, too. There are a ton of resources out there, but I’ve only recently come across the ITEA standards as a way to organize and prioritize the curriculum. My 1 trimester of 6th grade engineering/design lessons are pretty hit or miss, but I look at it as a start. If anyone else is interested in nailing down a curriculum that works for our particular limitations (lack of a budget for starters), let me know! I see this as supplementing our ISTE standards, not replacing them. You can see some of the resources I’ve gathered on my Delicous page under STEM, STEMblog (ethics and discussion topics more than activities) and Design - http://delicious.com/m.white/STEM

I”m not sure why I feel so enthused about this topic, but I do think that it might engage those kids who need more hands-on learning (kinesthetic/tactile learners…we can all name them in our classes!) and give them a chance to be successful, creative AND learn something in the process.

I make a video each year to show at our Grand Gala for Blessed Trinity which is now a promotional tool for our school.  This year’s video was something special and therefore has been used in-house for different promotional events.  I hesitated posting the video on our website due to copyrighted music I used for the background, but now I really want to do it, so I’ve started the process to get permission.  I wouldn’t say the process has been difficult, but it has certainly been time-consuming.  I thought if others were heading in the same direction, a compilation of resources might be nice, so here it is!

Background Information About Copyright:

Two university websites, Vassar and University of Texas, were helpful in explaining in plain English what I might need.  The UT site has some other helpful resources in their Crash Course for Copyright as well.  Copyright Kids also had some very clear explanations.  A post at the Films for Learning Community cemented for me that I would need a license by its direct statement about using a track behind video for promotional purposes.  The Steve Gordon Law website explains quite clearly the difference between a synch license and a mechanical license, topics that helped me greatly later in my search.

After reading up on the rules, I realized I would need to find the copyright owner(s) and ask permission and probably pay for a license to use their work as part of my video.  I was still unsure, however, about what kind of license(s) I would need and who in the world to contact!

Finding the Owner(s):

Many of the sites I found pointed me to three places to look for the publisher or owner of the copyright for what I wanted to use.  I began with those: BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.),  ASCAP (American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers), and SESAC.  The BMI, ASCAP and SESAC search tools were easy to use.  There is also a search at the United States Copyright Office website, but that was less helpful with the information I had (a popular song title found many results).

There also seem to be companies out there whose sole business is to manage licenses and permissions for a copyright owner.  At least that’s how I interpret it - one example I found was ICG (Integrated Copyright Group).  There’s a good search tool there too.  When I went to the website for the copyright shown on the album for the music I was using, it had contact information for ICG under “Mechanical Licenses Contact Information,” so I started there.  The reply from that person stated that he didn’t think they represented that song, so he couldn’t help.  But he led me again to the three “Public Rights Organizations” listed above.  He said that each music publisher is represented by one of those three PROs, so when searching, one should have the contact information for the publisher or licensing agent.

The ASCAP ACE search brought me to the publisher/administrator of the song’s copyright.  I drafted a letter to the person listed there (there wasn’t a website or email, darn it!) explaining what it was I was seeking in hopes someone could help me get started in the right direction.  Someone there responded via email clearly stating what I would need for my purposes and how to obtain the part they administer.  Here’s where it gets tricky…  The publisher of the song itself is someone different from the owner of the copyright of the recording I want to use.  So I need to obtain licensing from both parties.  For licensing the song, I need a mechanical license granted by the songwriter, who in this case is represented by someone else.  This allows me to use the video on our website for one year and make a promotional DVD.  For licensing the recording, I need a recording license.  For that, I had to find the owner of the recording copyright.  I found a couple email addresses on the website for the recording company, so I sent them the details and asked for help.  They came back with very helpful information as well.  They offered two types of licenses - a master license would allow me to make unlimited copies of the DVD and sell them, and a demo license allows me to make up to 75 copies not to be sold.  Both include use on our website.  Since I only want to make a few copies of the DVD which will not be sold, I will get a mechanical license from the publisher of the song and a demo license from the publisher of the recordings.

Results:

Both of these licenses were surprisingly less expensive than I expected and can be obtained quite simply now that I have the information I need.  I’m in the process now and glad to have gone through it to do things the right way.  Now that I’ve done it once, I’m not nearly as hesitant to do the same in the future when the video changes, which I know it will…

They didn’t go to kindergarten, but with some convincing, these two platforms have finally learned sharing nicely the space on my external hard drive.

I have this huge drive that would easily fit a backup for both my PC and Mac, but it took some time and research (and a little luck perhaps), to get it to do what I want.  I knew I could format a FAT32 partition to be read by my PC, but my backup file using XP Backup would be much larger than that.  My plan was to create multiple backup jobs (as undesirable as that was).  I created two partitions using my Mac’s Disk Utility - one FAT32 for my PC backup, and one MacOS partition for Time Machine.  I had it working that way but decided I wasn’t satisfied.

Then I thought about using SwissKnife made by CompuApps.  It’s a free partition and formatting software for Windows.  I used a couple months ago to format a hard drive to FAT32 to use with Symantec Ghost for work.  When I opened the drive on SwissKnife, it showed the FAT32 partition, but it showed the rest as free space.  When I tried deleting the FAT32 partition with the intent to replace it with a NTFS partition, it made it all free space and in essence made my MacOS partition magically disappear into the crowd.  Back to square one.

My next thought was to do the initial formatting on my PC.  I used SwissKnife to format an NTFS partition for my PC, then also created a FAT32 partition for my Mac.  Then I connected the drive to my Mac to see if it found the drive, which it did… good… keep going…  I used Disk Utility to then erase the FAT32 partition and create a MacOS partition instead.  So far so good!  I have connected back to my PC, and the NTFS partition is still intact.  I was able to perform an XP backup onto it, creating a file MUCH larger than the FAT32 file size limit.  And it is currently connected to my Mac running a Time Machine backup.

Perhaps there may have been an easier way to achieve this?  But regardless, I win!