EdTech Avenue

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I read about Wordle on another edtech blog last week.  Thought I’d give it a try using EdTech Avenue as a generator.  I’m not sure how this application might be used, but it’s pretty fun to play with!

This is an actual text conversation between a 14-yr-old teenager and his uncle, while the teen was visiting his grandparents out of town:

Teen: Can you tell me the score of the twins game?

Uncle: 5 to 4 cleveland is up in the 6th

Uncle: sorry now it is 6 to 5 minnesota

Teen: Sweet! Thanx my grandparents dont have a computer or cable

Uncle: I will try to get you a final

Teen: Ok thank you

How do these grandparents form a meaningful connection with their grandchildren?  This teen’s other set of grandparents have a computer with instant messaging and use email regularly.  While I do believe that children should find ways (probably with their parents’ help) to bond with their grandparents regardless of how little technology is used, in situations like this there seem to be barriers that will be tough to overcome.

Those grandparents with a computer and email (and satellite TV) are my parents.  They already connect with my four-month-old son with the technology that mostly we provide - a stream of video they can watch when we set up a time to do so, and a web cam that will soon be located on their end to have two-way audio/video connections between their home and ours.  This doesn’t even include the fact that they can view photos and blog posts almost immediately of their quickly-growing grandson.

Even my son’s grandparents who use dial-up internet access check our blog and respond to email regularly.  Technology isn’t required to maintain that bond, but especially for family that is far away, it sure helps.  Their interests lie away from technology, and when we visit there, we are fairly “disconnected.”  But the important thing is they realize that that same technology can connect them to us and their grandson, and they use it for that reason.

We might even consider Grandparent Games, a site that Wes Fryer blogged about a couple of months ago.  He is using it to keep that connection growing between his kids and their grandparents.

How else can we connect this techno-savvy generation with their grandparents?  Is there other common ground?  I think each side needs to come a little closer to the middle.  There is great value in the bonding activities that don’t include technology - a trip to the zoo, a board game, a shared book, etc. - however, I think each side needs to understand better how the other perceives today’s world.  Personally, I will keep moving as far to the middle as I need to, or beyond, to keep the bond strong between my son and all his grandparents!

Wednesday, 12:00 Noon
McKinney ISD
Mary Carole Strother, Library Media Specialist
Lisa Paine, 5th Grade Science Teacher

This is a different format for me this year at NECC - a model lesson.

Presentation and Detailed Documentation about the program available on the session info page.

Finch Elementary is a Title I campus of about 625 students

86% of students are low socio-economic, 67% in bilingual classes

Video iPod initiative in area of science and language arts/reading

Started with survey to ask about home access to computer and internet; over 50% did NOT have computer, but of those 75% did not have internet.  This sounds similar to my school’s situation.

Time-line for implementation:

• first nine weeks - how to use and care for iPods, download content
• second nine weeks - lessons on iPods correlated with lessons taught in class; United Streaming, converted PowerPoints; explained use to parents
• 3rd & 4th nine weeks - used daily for centers in Science and Language Arts

Great list of favorite podcasts in the presentation - see above, I won’t list them all here.

iTunes Library is organized per-user, so this would need to be configured for each classroom/school situation. This school uses it in a way that the teacher login organizes all, then students each have their own.

Science Lesson: Learned and Inherited Behaviors
Students read an article from National Geographic. Use iPod with headphones with a piece of paper. Make a T-chart with one side for learned and other side for inherited behavior. Watch two video clips on the iPod, then organize them into the two categories on your paper.

Reading Lesson: Caldecott Book Study
Teacher reads part of book “The Man Who Walked Between The Towers.” Students identify new vocabulary, purpose, style, etc. iPod lesson - students watch video of book being read then watch Twin Towers Newscast from YouTube.

Homework example: watch a video then create an Amazing Star web graphic organizer. Write at least one fact you learned about the sun after each section.

I didn’t know iPods had a setting for output to show on projector - that’s cool!

To transport to/from home, students use a resealable lunch bag with school logo. Each one is engraved with inventory number and school name. Check before leaving the room so if it comes back damaged they are responsible. Bring back, put on charger, sign it in. Charger does not go home, just iPod & headphones.

Now presenters are discussing test scores before and after this pilot program. See presentation notes for details. They focused the iPod lessons on the areas where testing scores were lowest.

Model Lessons from Data Review
PowerPoint lessons with recordings, podcasts, YouTube and some student-created or teacher-created podcasts using PowerPoint, PhotoStory, GarageBand, and more!

I didn’t know when I walked into this session that it would be about iPods, because I didn’t transfer the program description to my schedule of choices for this time slot and had forgotten the details. I’m glad to have had a chance to see how iPods can be used in the classroom, especially application for a bilingual student population. I’ve heard of using them but have not seen it applied. This gives me yet another outlet for grant-writing to bring technology into each classroom without having to purchase a full-sized laptop mobile lab.

Chris Lehmann

I did not attend this session F2F but caught the stream and backchannel thanks to Wes Fryer. I was in desperate need of food and was heading back to my hotel to spend some time with my family when I got the tweet that Wes would be streaming. I was able to multi-task and catch it all, including the backchannel and comments afterwards!

Rather than summarize here, I would really encourage you to take an hour of your time to catch the archived video of this presentation. It was a huge amount of information, but more importantly, there was some great brainstorming going on between the presenter and audience to build project ideas.

Broadcast by Ustream.TV

See the backchannel chat archive on Wes Fryer’s Teach Digital PBwiki page, and Chris’s presentation notes on his Wiki.

25 minutes to start and this session is close to full…

Looks like a pretty even distribution of Macs vs. PCs in the room, maybe a few more Macs.

Christopher Michaud, Nebo Elementary
Music Teacher; next year will also be teaching technology

Presentation and notes are available at http://nebomusic.net/

Why Teach Scratch:

• take students’ sequential and logical thoughts and putting them in a system they can reflect on
• game-making is a form of story-telling
• object-oriented programming avoids typing mistakes and delays
• runs on Mac, Windows or Linux
• encourages open source model
• FREE!
• Programming skills supported and computer science concepts covered (see presentation notes)

I didn’t live-blog this session, as it was a hands-on learning session. It was extremely well-done and fast-paced. I am wracking my brain for where I can use this with my teachers and students! If any of my readers are already using Scratch at the elementary level as part of their core curriculum, I’d love to hear suggestions from you - please comment!

Here is what I created during the session (and worked on about 20 minutes after to teach myself a few more elements):

I can’t express how flooded my brain is with information right now…

Saul Rockman, Michael Jay, Heidi Rogers, Elliot

Presenter philosophies are cute. Looks like a fun group as expected… Grabbing our attention immediately with comedy.  First part of session will be in the style of a Greek tragedy - oh wait… GEEK tragedy!

“Act One” example is use of MySpace being used for class work, conversation between teacher and HR Director arguing about using MySpace and cell phones in class work. Audience participation chorus: “Engagement, Collaboration, Increased Student Achievement; My cell plan includes a dictionary, thesaurus, and a connection to the world-wide-web,” and “MySpace is more than Gossip and strife,” and “Life-long learning, doubled in a virtual world.” Talk of meetings in Second Life and tests not being adequate for assessment…

Stimulus: “Isn’t it nice that someone that’s old can be interested in technology.”

History of new technologies of our past: mimiograph=Adie ?; tape player and slide machine=Sylvester “Sly” Dape; TV=Arcee Aye; Ahzeer Ochs=Xerox; Ivy Ementhaler=IBM?; Ah Pul Thu=Apple II; Melanie Tomlinson=video disc player?; Tex McSage=text message (I missed a few of these details, but they were a fun way to review our past “new” technologies.)

Coming up?

• Twitter Testing. If you don’t know the answer in 140 characters, you don’t know the answer… Causes of VCL WR R: SLVRY, $, STS RITES, etc.
• Wearable Batteries
• Open Source Thinking: If you do it on a test, it’s called cheating; if many people do it’s a discussion, if one person does it, it’s a lecture
• Carbon-neutral schooling: reduce the use of power by going back to pencil & paper?

Michael Jay, Edusystemics

New Break-Thru Technologies: Lecturization vs. Individualization

Prior research in 3D, Assessment

New problem - how can we keep students engaged as we tend to needs of a diverse class of learners? Needs a pragmatic solution, not just a set of pedagogical strategies; should it require no professional development and yet keeps students busy.

Existing Solutions: handouts (word search, crossword puzzles), mentoring (”teacher’s helper), ‘gods must be crazy’ strategy (show them fire and hope they stay intrigued).

One Existing Solution: intelligent white boards

• Basis for understanding how humans learn - brain research (’having a brain is highly correlated with the ability to learn’); learning styles listed using a parallel with hair styles as descriptors for: (1) open to new ideas, (2) bigger ideas, or (3) tied to past
• Historic precedence - began with hieroglyphics; adults communicate by drawing on walls; youth want ownership of their learning — both of these have been going on forever
• Historic devices: image of a pre-historic-type hand-held device…  ‘Groogle’, ‘Reader Raptor’ (Learning Company has been around forever)

1 year research project: paleoethnopolypedagogicedunography

• Initiated by an Earth Science educator on sabbatical who received a Halfbright Scholarship
• Exciting new product to keep students engaged
• “Smart but Bored” - Low cost/High value! image of ruler with random words, compass (handed out example)
• Uses: Spin-in, Spy with it, Draw (circles with pencils, spirograph); Use as a balance; Measure with it; Measure with more detail - Vernier; Use words to answer questions in any discipline
• Sometimes educators don’t understand when students… missed the end; something like take their learning into their own hands
• Looking for leadership to develop products in new company (the Cave Men)

What a great fun way to look at the status of educational technology today.  Not too much information about anything new or strategies, but I got what I expected from the session.

I’m waiting for my 11:00 session… decided I’d better be early if I want to make sure I get a seat!  Today I’ll be live-blogging following sessions (assuming I get in):

11:00 a.m. - LOL @ NECC: We’re Baaaaaack!

12:30 p.m. - Using Scratch to Teach Programming at the Elementary Level

sorry, no 2:00, I have to eat sometime!

(maybe) 3:30 p.m. - Assessing Student Technology Literacy

Monday, 3:00 p.m.
Cristin Frodelia & Andrew Chang, Google

This session was not live-blogged due to the lack of Wi-Fi in the theater. It surprises me that after all these years, NECC still struggles with getting dependable Wi-Fi at every session. It’s really too bad. I like to be able to go directly to referenced websites during a session so I am in line with what the presenter is showing me as well as to see if I need to take notes on everything or if some items are on the session information page. I would think it would have been especially helpful in a commercial session for online tools…

This is also the first time I’ve had to plug in my laptop today. It lasted two full sessions as well as a few times throughout the day, I’d say at least 3 full hours!

Technology needs to keep up with how we are working today. Collaboration is key but is difficult when working with technology. Building infrastructure for a network to create a system for sharing documents was expensive and a lot of work. That’s the idea that pushed the creation of Google Docs and got them into education.

“Cloud Computing” is Google’s term for this - data and applications are available on the internet for multiple devices and operating systems.

Security Concerns?

• they will not share your data unless you ask or for necessary infrastructure necessities, or if something harmful is found
• keep your data as long as you want
• remove your data when you ask
• enable you to use your data elsewhere

Free Apps:

• Docs (Word Processor, Spreadsheets, Presentations) for collaborations and version control
• Mail, Chat and Calendar

Paid Apps for security compliance - not sure what this is; they didn’t expand on it

Google Apps for Education

• free for all of your users
• No advertising for students, staff and faculty
• 6.8 GB (and growing) mail quotas
• domain name
• phone support

I can see applications for my school right away - faculty committees, teacher web pages, faculty collaborations, curriculum maps, lesson sharing…
Can create documents and sites, assign users and rights all in one place. It’s user-controlled.

Arizona State University is using Apps now with 65,000 students. It took 2 weeks to deploy. Opt-In User Migration was student-driven. It saves them about $65,000 annually.

Huge benefit is with support and upgrades - online apps update automatically without extra work for me, short of training on major changes. Support and maintenance is done by them.

Docs works with any device with any internet connection on any internet browser. Don’t have to email them back and forth or worry about which version is the most recent. No worry about version variations between home and school. For me, that would also eliminate students moving files and folders around on the network and “losing” them. It saves changes automatically and logs who made what changes, so teachers can track who worked on which part of a project. Teachers are hearing that students are more engaged when collaborating online - that’s what they’re used to doing right now. Students can then invite the teacher to view the document (hand it in) and the teacher can work on reviewing, commenting and grading it from their own computer wherever they are. If students are directed to save a specific way, documents can be sorted by the teacher. You can see when students have worked and saved and track progress. Students can then easily publish their work to the web, accessible to the class, school or to the web. I would bet we could create groups for parents to see their child’s work too. All of these features are available not just with word processed files, but also spreadsheets and presentations. Forms can be emailed and automatically processed in the spreadsheet! Presentations can be played by all students individually with a chat window to ask questions and make comments - students are engaged. Spreadsheets make planning & admin tasks easier. Sheet with each student’s name, then from class to class a teacher can make notes about good work by students; admin can look at the end of the day and announce good work. I would be able to use this for data about students who register and/or withdraw throughout the year.

Organize field trips - teachers could check students off and admin can see it. We might be able to use this for our school lunch program!

Monday, 2:00 p.m.
Juan Camilo Rozo

live blogged

Presenter is from Bogota, Columbia, and is giving quite a bit of background about the city, society, economics and education. He teaches in an international school.

Using Blogs

• Have a class blog to post assignments, deadlines, information, etc.
• Create a “summary blog” and have students take turns posting a summary of what was covered each week.
• Have students create individual blogs and post their work there (use the comments section to give students feedback).
• Create a “best productions” blog to display the best work you receive. Not sure if I like this for my school. I can predict lots of parent complaints of favoritism.
• Use as a journal.
• Have students find blogs about their hobbies and interests to practice reading English. Not intended to be used as educational classroom material but good practice. Write a summary of what they read and include a link.

Using blogs instead of written journals is motivating to students - they are more willing to do it when they will be published and out there on the web.

List of examples presented. I won’t list them here - see the conference session information for links.

Challenges may be that students will begin chatting online and posting in a more informal language, but it is part of the teaching process to remind students that they are being published and should use formal language.

Using Podcasts

Benefits: can listen to it while doing other things, adds a new dimension and learning style, and has efficient access to hundreds of topics in one application. Other benefits would be the passive download and free subscriptions.

Creating a podcast is simple and free. Need only a computer and a microphone to record. There are free podcasting websites and free software (Audacity is a popular one in education right now).

• Spice up your lessons with surprise activities and listening activities (example was for students who thought they “knew everything” about English; he recorded samples from various dialects and styles of English, as well as foreigners speaking English, and these students could not understand any of it!)
• Communication with school community
• Book discussions (students take turns talking about what has happened in the book thus far) help students review at the same time as they hear English and practice speaking.
• Book reviews
• Post assignments to review what has been done over the week or post student work or presentations, etc.
• Interviews
• Student audio plays

Presenter giving examples of podcasts his students have created. Students had to write scripts, choose which one was better, choose music and sound effects. There is an English podcast published weekly for ELLs by someone from England and someone from the U.S. living in Japan. Has examples of English spoken by these two men as well as recordings of other dialects and accents - “The Bob and Rob Show.” There should be a link on the conference resource page.

Using Wikis

Open content management system - anyone can edit it.  It tracks who made what changes and when because users are required to log in.  Different from blogs, wikis are edited, not commented, and organized by topic rather than date.

Presenter used example of wiki pages created by users of the ePC including information about how to do lots of things with this computer.  It’s a community of people with a common interest creating their own reference desk!

Lots of free sites to create wikis are available on the session information page.

• Movie/Book reviews
• Collaborative stories about a topic
• Classroom reviews - tests or what was done that day/week
• Tips
• Write a novel

We didn’t really get to video production, but the presenter is very excited about it because of new accessibility of good tools for video.  Very motivating for students and requires them to use many skills (write script, read and review, listen, cooperation and collaboration, multiple intelligences).  Can use cell phone, digital camera or actual video camera.  Software - Movie Maker (Windows) or iMovie (Mac) are both free.  Videos can be made using still images, text, motion video, or a combination of any or all of these.