Apparently it’s quite the buzz. I’m so excited!! Eighteen months ago, I asked the Instructional Technology department to provide a blog portal for teachers at PPS. I just knew that if we built it, they would come. And now it’s happening…we’ve had 6 inquiries about blogs in the last 2 weeks. I’m actually redesigning my blog workshop so that I’ll be ready to give the workshop in our “Tech Tuesday” lineup this fall. There are so many ways that teachers can use blogs. My personal favorite is the virtual literature circle. Here are a couple of examples…
Here’s a remeinder about the Internet Safety curriculum. All teachers in Virginia are responsible to teach Internet Safety to their students. You can find the curriculum online here: http://pps.k12.va.us/internetsafety/default.aspx . Most teachers have a couple of lessons to teach in the fall, and a couple to teach in the spring. If you need help navigating the curriculum or teaching the lessons let me know. I will be happy to help.
Wow. There are lots of things going on to prepare us for tomorrow. Last week I did more training then I thought it was possible to squeeze into a week - we trainined all of the paraprofessionals to use Kisdpiration 3, I helped introduce the “Cookie Unit” for 6th grade English, we trained all of the teachers at the “New” Park View, and I did overvew sessions on www.thinkfinity.org at Wellness Day. I got email from some of you asking where I was and when would I be at the buildings…I’ve got training with the TRts this week, so I’m afraid I won’t be at the buildings until next week.
In the meantime, I have a couple of back to school things for you:
Teachnology has started doing YouTube videos for teachers. Here’s something on student motivation that you might want to consider as you gear up for the new year:
Have a great start to the new year, and I’ll be coming by as soon as I can.
I’ve got bunus points because I’ve got Plurk open!!
Learning to Speak Native:
Reference to Prensky: Natives are multitaskers, they prefer graphics BEFORE text etc… they think differently because they grew up connected. Our schools were not created to accomodate these kids. If educators want to reach NATIVES we will have to “just do it”.
We’ve had an information explosion…161 Billion GB of information. Another key trend flattening the world. Open sourcing and tools on steroids (like cell phones). Also Wikinomics - everyone helping to build something better than they can do on their own. Look at the www.curriki.com project or the fact that some things like Gmail are in perpetual beta …not everything is a final draft. The idea is finding innovative uses for things and not necessarily inventing everything. This is the intersection of tools, experts, and knowledge. It’s the idea of a listserv vs. plurk. It’s a conversation and it’s personal. It’s impromptu professional development. You get ideas and professional development that you didn’t even know you need. People share discoveries, request info, social and personal connection, explore new things, professional development opportunities in real time. We are all DEN STARs and we are supposed to share, so we should use these things. VA has a guide on social networking in grades k-12? I need to get my hands on it…Apparently it’s published by the DOE?
Networking allows us to learn how o do what we do and using WEB2.0 allows us to share what we are learning in bigger audiences. So now teachers are becoming as connected as the students we teach. Then we start doing the same things kids do to try to stay connected at work. If you give a man a fish, if you teach a man to fish, ic you connect a man to a fishing community he’ll have variety in his diet.
Natives attends conferences using Live blogs, podcasts, backchannel, skypecast, twitter, ustream even in second life. During packed sessions folks who stream it out can help folks who want to attend. Then you can sit is second life next to others who couldn’t physically be there. www.mogulus.com a virtual broadcasting studio in your computer? www.qik.com plays nicely with mogulus and you can do truly mobile recording. Can’t get parent’s to come to an assembly during the day? broadcast it live and then they can attend while on break at work. Create an on demand video library…
Find a way to share the info that fits you and stay connected.
Ok. So I’m trying to blog live instead of taking notes that will never get transcribed. So right now we are all taking out our phones and waving them at him. We list the devices that we are holding in our hands:
Telephone
Clock
text messenger
still camera
video camera
video player
GPS device
Podcast (Gcast)
Music Player
These are tools that all of our kids have all the time in their pocket at school. It’s a powerful device and the kids bring them to school VOLUNTARILY!! We will not debate whether or not cell phones should be in school. Even those in this audience will admit to taking them away. We need to teach kids appropriate uses. We don’t want to fight this - we will lose this debate. We ought to just make this work. Parents are not going to give up a device that allows them to track and monitor their kids.
There are twice as many texters as there are emailers. 16% of homes in US are exclusively wireless - they have no land line phones. 30 countries exceed 100% penetration in cellphones…US is behind because we had land lines before others did. Lots of third world countires allow cell phones, businesses allow cell phones, but they are banned - by your local high schools.
Location based technologies can become location based teachable moments: Write a review after you watch the movie, take a picture of rectangles on the bus. If our non-working hours have been ruined by cell phones, why can’t our students??
Uses for cell phone technology:
Live feeds from cell phones www.qik.com - use IP cameras for school security (Cisco gets it)
Pre/post lesson videos uploaded to a secure site for parents to watch (like youtube, but secure)
Teacher’s video lesson plans or other instructions for the sub
Report on the outcome of a meeting
Create a video challenge for your students
Video message sent to parents (like phonevite, but in video)
Use the phone to video student presentation and then send it to the kids parents
www.Jott.com - turns voice into text (Hall records to twitter from Jott) You can use the same technology to post to Google Clendar -Administrator could use JOTT to document intervention- Jott will transfer voice to email, blogs, twitter etc.
GCAST for podacasting - Student can use it to interview subjects for a report - using their own cellphones - Have students call in to answer challenge questions, answer a prompt, students can recite times tables, or play the piece they were supposed to practice.
Langugae arts: Text a story in six words
Polleverywhere: Free app use cell phone to text and answer a poll
Text message 34381 and they’ll give the food chain and menu item, they will send you the nutrition breakdown.
Go to discoverymobile.com you can get the quizbuilder via cell phones.
Ok. So I’m at the Discovery Educator’s Network National Institute and this is the first day… So I thought this might be like the WHRO Tech Trek experience - I’ve done it before, so I thought I could do it. It’s kind of a formula: professional development followed by project time and then presentations. I’ve done it before…well not this way…
After lunch and the welcome we got an assignment: Find the members of your group and create your own Boom De Yada video in the next 2 ½ hours. I was with the Mid-Atlantic group and we were rather successful.
Talk about a jump start to our week. This is even faster then tech Trek the Next Generation…
Ever wonder what a TRT does during the summer?I mean, TRTs are responsible for staff development…there’s not a whole of teaching staff around during the summer, so what do TRTs do?Well it depends on their contract.Some school divisions hire TRTs on a 10 month contract – they are around when the teachers are.Other school divisions have TRTs around during the summer to do teacher academies and other special projects.If you are a TRT in Portsmouth, you could be in either situation.I have the distinct pleasure of working all summer. It’s great for me – I always know what my summer job is going to be … and there is no learning curve…
So this summer I am working on 13-14 projects in an attempt to get ready for the opening of school.It’s a lot of work, and there are days that I am not sure I will get it all done, but my goal is to close 2 projects a week and beg for mercy when the others don’t get done.Our summer project list was huge…Here’s a picture of it…
I spent most of my time in June working on the TEACH Academy initiative. If you didn’t make it, you really missed a great opportunity. TEACH was a 3 day technology professional development experience. We took over the Starbase Victory facility and ran 7 hands on concurrent sessions every day. Wow. We even had a strand for administrators on Thursday the 19th. We had a great mix of presenters: Debbie Rollins, Tom Spencer, Doug Adams and Paul Barron as well as our own folks.
I gotta give props to Christine Munroe who handled all the registration and all the changes. Karen Streeter who was the visionary who knew we could do it back in January when she dreamed it up and the TRTs who both taught sessions and assisted throughout the week. Special thanks (what is this an Emmy speech?) needs to go to Jason Sullivan, AJ Boone, Bob Roberts and Tami Barker from the engineering and applications groups who gave both remote and onsite assistance troubleshooting and getting things fixed. All hail the Great PPS Websense Nazi who unblocked sites as necessary at the last minute so the show could go on…I know I’ve forgotten folks…you all did so much to help.
Between the preparation and the actual event, I thought I was going to die. When I finally got my car unloaded on Friday and had a chance to unwind, I just fell out. I didn’t leave my house all weekend. My good friend Melissa is a TRT for Bristol Schools and she does a teacher academy all on her own…don’t know how she does it.
I still have to finish the debrief but overall we got lots of positive comments, some lessons learned, and 115 teachers who were immersed in technology and will be ready for followup in September…Oh - I’ve got some pictures…
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