Random Ramblings

WOW!  Remind me never to apply for 3 session at a conference again! I thought I would apply for 3 sessions in hopes that NCAECT would accept one. Surprise!  The good thing was that we presented back to back to back in the same room and all on the first day.

Our best session was our first one, Digital Photos, now what?.  We had people sitting on the floor.  Kim and I were expecting maybe 20 tops.  You can only imagine our surprise when people kept coming in.  It was great! Of course, we had a few stumbles, but since it was our first time presenting on digital photos, it went very well.  Our Animoto didn’t load in time, but Kim was a huge hit with Gogofrog.  If you haven’t tried Gogofrog, you have to – it’s great!

We then presented Wiki This Way.  We have done this particular session before, so it went off fairly well.  I hope everyone learned something.  We had some great comments from the teachers.  Again, we had a huge turnout, but not standing room only.

Finally, we ended with Creating Magic with Web 2.0 Tools.  Again, this was a rerun for us, but it still went well.  Not as many people this time since it was also during Tammy Worcester’s session.  She is so good, that I really didn’t blame people for attending her session.  In fact, I suggested that a couple of teachers go there and view our wiki later.  But, we did have a good turnout.  I think that we need to refocus if we use this session again.  Web 2.0 tools is just too wide open.  Skypeing with a NASA trainer was the highlight.  The teachers loved that!

Even though we didn’t get to attend many sessions on the last day, there were a couple of teachers presenting their lessons on SmartBoards in the hallway that I thought was one of the most beneficial I have ever attended.   Susie and her partner, whom I’m sorry I have forgotten her name, had some great ideas!  I’m so glad that she made a wiki.  I volunteered to make one for her is she would send me her lessons.  They are great – check them out!

The NCAECT conference was really good this year.  Scott Smith and Marlo Gaddis did a wonderful job.  It was one of the best conferences I have attended in recent years.

Until next time ~ Danita

NCAECT

I had an aha moment this afternoon. I was speaking to one of the teachers at East Lee about East becoming a STEM school next year, when she offered one of the best analogies I have ever heard.  As we were discussing how to get the teachers involved, Misty offered this:

“You have given us an ocean of opportunities this year, but we need to learn the swim first. Start with very basic ideas and how to use them in the classroom, then when we’re ready, we’ll jump in and tackle some of those waves.”

Wow! I’d never though of it like that. She’s right. I have offered an ocean hoping that someone would like to try to find one fish, but if you’re afraid of the water, you’ll never jump in. I was approaching it so wrong. I was throwing so much out there that I was overwhelming everyone and not giving them a life preserver to grab onto.  I should have listened to Jen Wagner‘s Baby Steps post. What I thought were baby steps were actually giant leaps for many people.

Hmmmm…. so many things to reconsider. When you’re an avid swimmer, it’s hard to relate to people who fear the water. I need to go back to that first time I saw the ocean and start from there. To feel the excitement of the sand between my toes – the first time I saw a blog or a wiki.

Misty very kindly told me that I need to come up with step by step ways that teachers can use technology in their classrooms.  As she put it, “just like the end of grade test manual tells you what to say and when”. That might be a challenge, but I think I can do it.

So, I think I will begin next year with wikis. I’ll show the teachers specific ways they can use them in their classrooms and write a lesson idea for each of the four core curriculum areas.  That way they will have something they can read from a script if they need to do so.

Thank you Misty for opening my eyes.  Hopefully, we’ll all be swimming in the ocean by this time next year.

Until next time,

Danita
Flickr

Delivering Technology Training in a Manner that Works! by Marty Bowe

• hold professional developments on Saturday
  • how do you get people there on a Saturday?
  • offer prizes and pay
  • started with giving away computers for home use – then running out of money so now giving away 1Gb flash drive
  • any employee can come to the pd – cafeteria workers, bus drivers, aides, custodians, admins
  • ask high level curriculum folks to fund professional development
  • his school has 485 certified employees
  • presenters and attendees are voluntary
    • would this work in a larger district?
  • classes:
    • advanced ppt
    • advanced word
    • basic ppt
    • buying or enhancing a computer
    • cool internet sites
    • digital cameras
    • digital photos and photoshop
    • ebay
    • elementary pinnacle gradebook
    • excel
    • searching the internet
    • groupwise email tips/tricks
    • distance learning
    • mac 101
    • legally downloading music
    • multi-media / moviemaker
    • paperless classroom
    • paperless office
    • project based learning
    • pinnacle gradebook
    • smartboard beginners
    • smartboard advanced
    • technology in the classroom – middle school
    • technology in the classroom – elementary
    • technology in the classroom – high school
    • united streaming
    • My comment: NO WEB 2.0 – WHY NOT???
    • has opening keynote and then go to 3 sessions
      • keynot by Tech director and Tech facilitators
    • asked teachers to teach sessions when he didn’t have enough IT folks
    • added to teacher contract that teachers must attend at least one day
    • going to add web 2.0 this year
      • wikis, blogs, podcasts, second life
• didn’t have resources for followup
• email Marty and he will send the powerpoint and Millionaire slides
  • Bowe@perry1.sparce.org

Until next time ~ Danita

Geocaching … An Educational Adventure

Crystal Turney and Beth Hamilton

http://www.geocaching.com

also on United Streaming

great staff building activity

Geocaching as a learning tool

1.       Stimulates creative teaching

2.       Motivates students

3.       Fosters cooperative learning and teamwork

4.       Promotes higher order thinking skills

5.       Integrates various curriculum areas

6.       Instills a respect and consideration for others

7.       Creates awareness for environment

From National Geographic:

                Crack the Code – http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/activities/01/crackcode.html

Can buy a gps for about $120 – Garmin

http://www.GPSonsale.com

Catawba County Schools, North Carolina has lessons – http://www.catawba.k12.nc.us

DPI will loan GPS out to schools – try local colleges

Patrick Crispin  Googlebots

http://netsquirrel.com

http://netsquirrel.com/powerpoint/complete.html

Google 201 workshop

                Google’s page rank algorithm

• Google on the road
  • 1-800-goog-411
  • Will do cross streets
  • Will text message the directions
• Google Maps
  • http://maps.google.com
  • Map is clickable and dragable
  • Map, satellite, and terrain view
  • Also available on cell phone
    • google.com/gmm
    • http://mobile.google.com

• Book Search
  • http://books.google.com
• Google Scholar
  • http://scholar.google.com
  • Review of journal articles
• News
  • http://news.google.com
  • News search
• Notebook
  • Requires google account
  • http://google.com/notebook
  • Notebooks are shareable
  • Click on star to save it
• Google for Educators
  • http://google.com/educators
• Google Q & A
  • What is the currency of Australia?
  • Encyclopedia facts
• Google calculator
  • Type in math problem and google will answer
    • 2+2
  • Will also do measurements
  • And a dictionary
    • Define:
  • Weather
    • Weather:27330
  • Movie
    • Movie:27330
• Google productivity
  • Google account not the same as gmail
  • Go to http://google.com/accounts
• Pages
  • http://pages.google.com
• Docs and spreadsheets
  • http://docs.google.com

Alan November

Digital Learning Farms

                Jobs kid should do

a.       Designing tutorial

-          Homework will contribute to the good of the whole instead of the individual.

-          Create tutorial groups in classroom by using screen casting software

-          Screencastomatic is free

b.      Podcast reviews

-          Curriculum review teams of kids

-          Have a chart of jobs that change from week to week

-          The learner owns the learning – not the teacher

-          Review last week’s entire work on Monday of every week

-          Gcast.com make a podcast from your cell phone

c.       Curriculum research

-          If kids do Skype with other cultures, they can record it and burn it to a DVD for another kid to take home

d.      Critical thinking on the web

-          Give them problem after problem to have them research

-          Don’t accept all Google search results

-          Have a daily researcher to sit at the computer to find factual answers

-          Teach kids to find patterns of answers

-          Globalize their thinking

e.      Official Scribe

-          Use social bookmarks and RSS feeds with KIDS!

-          Kids aren’t taking notes – only one student – the others are freed up to ask questions and ingest information

David Warlick – Second Life

http://handouts.davidwarlick.com

ajaxchat – mini twitter – after session you can relocate the transcript to a wiki

http://davidwarlick.com/ajaxchat/index.php

tag blog entry:  secondlife and warlick – to be part of the online handouts

“Snow Crash” book about Second Life by Neil ??

** More! More! More! NC Desk

Vicki McKenzie & Kacey Sebsenich – Cumberland County Schools

http://ncdesk.ncsu.edu/ncdesk

Restore and start again using the least number of steps !!! Test is scored on clicks !!  Do the steps in the order that it is given to you – bold then underline need to be in that order.  Use HELP, but go back and restore.

72 Questions

4 sections of 18 questions each

Only 3 sections really count

50% performance 50% multiple choice

Percentages      

                Societal/Ethical 12 -14%

                Database 22 -25%

                Spreadsheet 22 -2 5%

                Keyboard/Word Processing 18-20%

                Multimedia/Presentation 10 – 12%

                Telecommunications/Internet 10-12%

20 Day Plan

1.       Societal and Ethical Issues

2.       Societal and Ethical Issues

3.       Databases

4.       Databases

5.       Databases

6.       Spreadsheets

7.       Spreadsheets

8.       Spreadsheets

9.       Editor/Word Processing / Desktop Publishing

10.   Windows Management / Mail

-          Actually TEACH these programs

11.   NC Desk (Editor, Management, Database, Mail) Spreadsheet Quiz

12.   NC Desk (Database, Management, Editor, Spreadsheet) Word Processing Quiz

13.   NC Desk (Spreadsheet, Database, Mail, Editor) Database Quiz

14.   NC Desk (Management, Spreadsheet, Editor, Database) Spreadsheet Quiz

15.   NC Desk (Database, Editor, Spreadsheet, Mail) Internet Quiz

16.   NC Desk (Spreadsheet, Database, Editor, Mail) All Strands Quiz

17.   NC Desk (Database, Spreadsheets,  Editor, Management) All Strands Quiz

18.   NC Desk (Spreadsheets, Database, Editor, Mail) All Strands Quiz

19.   NC Desk (Spreadsheet, Database, Editor, Mail) All Strands Quiz

20.   NC Desk (Spreadsheet, Database, Editor, Mail) All Strands Quiz

easyCAST – http://www.edtechsystems.com/products.html

I am at the North Carolina Education Technology Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina.  I can’t believe a year has passed so quickly since I attended my first technology conference last year.  The amount I have learned is unbelievable!  The people I have met have all been so helpful and nice to me.

I am coming into the conference with a new set of eyes.  Not the wide eyed – I don’t know anything look, but the look of okay, I know so much more than I did last year and am looking for more!

I’ll do my best to live blog, but after the fiasco at MEGA with David Warlick, I’ll probably save it in a Word document and then paste it here – so web 1.0!!

Until next time ~ Danita

Flickr

That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling for a couple of weeks now. I can’t seem to shake this bug I’ve caught. Wonder if I just might be allergic to the new kitten that Jeff brought home. Hmmmmmm……

We had an interesting workshop on Thursday with the teachers at West. We started with Powerpoint activities like Tammy Worcester’s activities, then we moved on to online games. The real learning took place afterwards when we started talking about Voice Thread. The ideas were flying.

On Friday, I took pictures of my mentees class’ collages. They are going to record their voices and book reports on Voice Thread next Thursday. I’m very excited!

One of the teachers in the workshop asked if I would have a session on the new web2.0 tools I have found. Are you kidding me??? Tell me when you want it and I’m there! So, I have gone from begging teachers to come to my workshops to them asking me to give them more. Tell me, how fabulous is this?

Until next time ~ Danita

Flickr

Don’t forget the K12 Online Conference begins today! Click on over and learn something

Until next time ~ Danita

I am so excited! All the paperwork has been completed and the teachers have all signed their contracts for our workshop this summer. Dr. Len Annetta from NC State University is coming to Lee County to work with our middle school teachers on making educational virtual video games. Have I said I’m excited?

Dr. Annetta wanted 9 teachers from East Lee and West Lee. Being the pessimist realist that I am, I told him I didn’t think we would have that many from each school; in fact we may not have that many from both schools. Well, boy oh boy, was I wrong!

We have 34 signed up! Can you believe it? That’s a fantastic number! I’m so proud that there is that much interest. The fact that the teachers are receiving a stipend and a laptop might be some incentive, too, but hey, at least they’re coming! I plan on blogging about our progress this summer. I can’t wait to make my own game

The games will deal with all the discipline areas and integrate science and math. Dr. Annetta is hoping that we will develop a database of games for teachers from all over North Carolina to use. The first year the teachers will work on making their game. The second year, we will be bringing kids in to test drive the games. Can you imagine how much fun they are going to have?

Side note: My class is hard! My first assignment was a bomb. Thank goodness that the professor has the philosophy that students need to reach mastery. That means she’s going to let me re-do it. Thank goodness! Keep me in your thoughts – I need it! The next 8 weeks are going to be interesting to say the least ….

Until next time ~ Danita

Flickr: Teachers discussing ethics

Excellent. I love it when teachers are so hungry for ideas that they are almost foaming at the mouth. Kim and I did a presentation this afternoon on PowerPoint and how you can use it for more than presentations. Great ideas spawned from the discussions amongst the teachers.

We did presentations on how to create:

Personalized Sticky Notes

Accordion Books

Mystery Pictures

Mini Books

Brochures

Study Notes Bookmarks

Information Bookmarks

Acrostics

The teachers ate it up. They loved it. I know I learned quite a bit before we began planning for the workshop and even more during the discussions. I had previously only used PowerPoint as a presentation tool but, there are so many more uses!

I finally uploaded my first video to TeacherTube. I was expecting a lot of trouble, but it was soooo easy! Check out Gregg Halkuff’s multiple presentations on Japan. He did a great job, but the cameraman (me) doesn’t have too steady of a hand. Well, Ron Howard had to start somewhere, too, right?

The only regret I have in my new position is that I don’t have a group of kids to call my own. Oh, how I would change the way I taught if I had known then what I know now. Discovering web 2.0 has opened my eyes in such a way, I would feel like a new teacher going into the classroom.

Maybe, someday I’ll go back. Maybe …..

Until next time ~ Danita

I couldn’t find any pictures of a dog foaming at the mouth, so you get this one from

Oprah.

Now, that’s a DOG!

This video is part 2 to Karl Fisch’s mega popular “Did You Know” video. I like how the additional information makes you think a bit more about what you know. Great video to present to administrators. See what you think ….

[youtube]65wE6yFYgP8[/youtube]

YouTube: Did You Know II

Until next time ~

Danita

I had another 3 am brainstorm. Wonder why our most impressive ideas come during inconvenient times – in the shower, in the middle of the night, in the bathroom?

Well, my bright idea was to make a wiki for teachers to find ideas for using Web2.0 in their classrooms. Not bad, huh?

Now, the problem… I can’t find the time to do all this myself. I need help. I have copied ideas from other websites and authors, giving them credit of course. The wiki is in it’s infant stage and very rough. Please feel free to help with the design, too.

I’d love for you to add ideas to the wiki so we all can benefit. Please pass this along to others so we can have a great wiki for teachers new to the Web2.0

Great Idea Wiki

Until next time ~ Danita