What If . . .

We would like to explore the possibility of the idea of giving teachers laptop computers to replace their desktop computers. As I explained in our study group meetings this week, we are just beginning to gather input on the pros, cons, consequences of what this might mean should we ever have the resources to actually do this (which we don't presently have).

We are gathering input from the technicians on what the technical implications might be. We would like to gather input from teachers about the following:

1. What implications might there be for instruction in classrooms if teachers had laptop computers?
2. What would the implications/needs be in terms of staff development?
3. How might management of data and information, organization, etc. in the classroom be affected?

Click on the "Comments" link below and let us know what you think - good, bad, or indifferent.

21st Century Skills

Alan November, an internationally known "ed tech" consultant, was the keynote speaker at a regional educational technology conference held in Binghampton, NY last March. His presentation talks about what skills kids need in order to be able to be successfully productive and independent in today's world. Mr. November is an entertaining speaker. I've heard him speak several times and he always pushes me to think about classroom practice and the role technology can play in that.

His presentation was "vodcast" (video podcast) on the NYSCATE (New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education) website. You can view and listen to it at this link, (scroll down to find the video version and then click, "listen") or see a slightly edited version of it at the link I sent to you all in my email.

Please listen and make a comment here. Also, at our next meeting, I'm going to ask you to choose a topic(s) mentioned by Mr. November, for me to go into further detail about at our final meeting on May 31st.

And, if you listen and post, that counts as 1 hour of time for those of you trying to meet the inservice requirement for the study group.

There Are No Shortcuts

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast, There Are No Shortcuts. This is a very inspiring look at education by a 5th grade teacher in Los Angelos, Rafe Esquith. The podcast is a recording of a presentation he and some of his students did at the Texas Computer Education Assocation’s annual conference on February 10, 2006. The podcast was recorded and posted by Wesley Fryer on his site, Moving at the Speed of Creativity (I highly recommend his site as well.) In this presentation Mr. Esquith talks about technology in the classroom, but in very different ways. He uses technology very much integrated into real life experience and skills to reach students in an LA elementary school with over 2,000 students, K-5, where more than 90% of them are below the poverty level and speak English as a second language. However, he doesn't focus soley on technology use either. What he has done with his students is incredible. And he doesn't use technology in the ways we are used to hearing about. It's listening to teachers like this that makes me long for a class of my own again.

Please take a listen and comment below. Since the podcast is about 50 min. long, listening and then commenting can count as your whole April online time and half of your May online time.

WikiVille

Here's a cool idea I came across. This wiki for kids was recently started in the UK but the idea is for kids from all over the world to add information about their schools and their towns. So far, there are no schools in New York who have added information. Maybe we could get the ball rolling!

Welcome to WikiVille 21st Century students building a world-story of life in their home towns.

Has your town been WikiVilled yet?

For every place in WikiVille there'll be stories & stuff about

• school life from the day-to-day to hopes & dreams

• home life from jobs & chores to happy places & things that could be better

• about the past as well as the future

PLUS WikiVille:Community Portal projects help needed

Picasa and Flickr

Our next in-person meeting will focus on 2 online photo tools, Picasa and Flickr. The photo gallery to the left was created with Flickr. Just thought you might like to see one of the cool things it can do.

The pictures are KidPix slides that Suzanne Monagan's and Sarah Carlson's first graders created to illustrate what "respect" means to them. I then exported them as image files and uploaded them to Flickr to create the gallery. You can click on any image to see the full size image.

You might also want to take a look at the Respect Week Blog. That software wouldn't let me post this same type of gallery so I created a different type of photo gallery there. Respect Image Gallery.

The "new" Ask Jeeves

Hello all,
While watching TV the other night, I saw a commercial about the Ask Jeeves Search Engine. It's now called just Ask.com. Well, I was intrigued, so I checked it out today. WOW, I love it! I absolutely love the way that searches can be narrowed down. You can also do the same for images. It also has a great tool called Binoculars Site Preview. This allows you to get a "sneak preview" of a web page when you mouse over a Binoculars icon next to a search result. You can save time by quickly previewing a search result before clicking on it. I think this will be a great asset for the students doing research. They can really zero in on specific information, like inuit clothing for example. They can also widen their search. I suggest you check it out when you get a chance, it's not the same old Ask Jeeves...It is much improved...http://www.ask.com

Technology Integration Discussion Podcast

I've taken the recording of our recent discussion on technology integration and have published it as a podcast. Click on the title above to go to my podcast page. Scroll down to find "Episode 2 - Integrating Technology" podcast to listen to it.

For those of you who missed the meeting, this would be one way to catch up on the discussion that you missed.

Be patient when you get to the podcast. It's a fairly large file (about 40 minutes worth) so it takes a minute or two to download. You can listen to it right on the computer. You don't need an iPod or other device to download it into.

And, while you are in a listening mood, you might want to listen on the podcast we made at our first Village Elementary Podcasting Project meeting. It's a super quick one ~ about 3 minutes, I think. When you get to the podcasting page, just scroll down to the bottom to find "The Journey Begins."

After listening, feel free to come back here to comment on either podcast or on the subjects of the podcasts.

Picasa

This post is really from Ed. As soon as we get his blog access fixed, he will be able to post on his own, but for now I'm acting as his "distribution center." :-)

From Ed . . .

I’d like to know if anyone has had any experience with Picasa photo software that’s free from Google ( http://picasa.google.com/index.html ). Maybe this something to explore, blog about, and add to a future meeting agenda.



I was excited to discover over vacation that Picasa does many of the common adjustments that I’ve used in Photoshop, only easier. It seems to also organize photos visually in windows that are easier to sort/move individual photos or folders. This may be just the ticket for our students to integrate technology, photojournalism and art.

Instructional Technology - Input Needed

I really need your input. As I think I've mentioned, Connie Duff has reconvened a district wide technology committee to examine and revise the district technology plan. I am the facilitator of a subcommittee charged with looking at instructional practices.

This subcommittee has concluded that, although we do have a fairly well equipped capacity for technology integrated instruction to occur, K-12, it doesn't seem to be happening on a consistent level district-wide. Some teachers integrate technology into instruction quite a lot and their students have a technology-rich learning experience. Some teachers use technology in limited ways, focusing primarily on having students word process reports, use the Internet to conduct research, and create PowerPoints to demonstrate learning. Some use the drill and practice type games online to practice skills as well. Still others use technology with students rarely, and if they do, it's mostly just for word processing or free time games.

What we are trying to identify, and what I'd really like your input on, is as follows:

• What are the barriers that prevent teachers from using technology more during instruction?
  
• What are the technology related skills and experiences we think our students should have when they leave elementary school?
  
• When they leave the middle school?
  
• When they leave the high school?
  
• What should we be doing to help teachers move toward a more consistent level of technology use during instruction at the elementary level?
  
• At the secondary level?
  

We do have District Technology Standards and Performance Indicators. (Click here to view them.)

• Are these still appropriate?
  
• Do they need revision?
  
• A new emphasis?
  
• In what ways?
  

I would like your input posted here but I would also like you to share this input in a discussion at our next in-person meeting on March 1st as well. I am thinking of recording this discussion to use in a podcast. This is a dilema faced not just in Hilton, but in schools across the country.

Thanks!

The Collective Knowledge of a Class, K-12

Another BOCES colleague of mine posted the following idea on another blog, referring to the concept of wikis and their ability to create a community of people sharing knowledge.

Imagine if we started a wiki with a group of kindergartners next year, and by the end of their K-12 education they could have a copy of the collective knowledge their class created? What possibilities does that present?

What an intriging idea? Any thoughts?

The Olympic Venues on Google Earth

I just discovered something kind of cool today. You can add a layer in the "My Places" section of Google Earth that shows all the Olympic Winter Games Venues. Just click on the title above to go to Google Earth Home. Near the top of that page is the link to click on to download this feature.

When you have this downloaded, and you have it on your screen, you will see it in the "Places" section on the left-hand side of your screen marked as a "Temporary Place." To keep it permanently, click on the "OlympicVenues.kmz" and then go to Edit > Save to My Places. That will keep it in your My Places folder permanently.

Also, if you mouse over the venues on the map, you'll see a yellow box around them. Click and it will open more info and links to related info.

Boy, I wish I had known about this BEFORE vacation!

“PBwiki makes creating a wiki as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich”

On the subject of wikis . . .

There is a product called, "PBwiki" that gives you some free space to create a wiki. Fred mentioned this product in his comments to the wiki post below. It's a bit less "scary" to use with students than Wikipedia, I think, because you can close your wiki and password protect it if you want. I was thinking that it would be a neat idea to have students create their own wiki documents. For instance, if all the 3rd grade students are researching and studying regions, wouldn't it be cool for them to publish their research in a wiki, that they could all contribute to, collaborate on, and then have stand as a resource tool for others in the school, next year's 3rd graders, and so on.

I set one up and played with the idea a bit by posting the directions, images, etc. for how we introduced the new log ons to the Kindergarten students this year. I thought it might be a good way to share instructions, lessons, etc. in a format that people could add to. I originally set it up for my BOCES Instructional Tech Specialist (ITS) colleagues and me to use, but it can be expanded to include you as welll. You can view this wiki by clicking here Tech Resources
and entering the password, bocesits


Check out the PBwiki tour!

Try it out for yourself. Get a free wiki at PBwiki.com.





What do you all think? Is this a viable technology to use with elementary students?

Digital Illuminations: Wiki Follow-Up

Digital Illuminations: Wiki Follow-Up

Thought you all might be interested in a post and links to some articles I posted on the blog I'm collaborating on with the Instructional Technology Specialists at BOCES.

This is about wikis. If you aren't sure what a wiki is, very simply they are free encyclopedias, online, that anyone can add to or edit. Click on the Digital Illuminations title at the top to go to my post on the other blog and find the links to the articles.

Click below to go to Wikipedia, the most famous wiki on the web, to learn more.

Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

In this English version, started in 2001, we are currently working on 937,624 articles.

Wikipedia FAQs - Categories - A–Z - Portals - Ask a question - Site news - Donations
Culture | Geography | History | Mathematics | People | Science | Society | Technology

I'd love to hear what you all think about wikis.

Podcasting with Students

I don't know how many of you are familiar with "podcasting." The short story is that podcasts are audio files posted online that you can listen to on a computer, or you can download to a portable device such as an iPod (hence the name "pod"casting). They are kind of like having your own, personal talk-radio show.

There are millions of podcasts online and a fair number of them relate to the educational side of things. Many are adults talking about technology and education issues. The Education Podcast Network is one place to go to find some of these. You might want to listen to a few to get a feel for what they are.

However, how to involve elementary students in podcasting is sometimes hard to imagine. There is a teacher, Bob Sprankle, in Maine who is doing some excellent quality podcasting with his 3rd/4th grade class. Their site, Room 208, has some great podcasts you can listen to. He also has a teacher site, Bit by Bit. If you are wondering what this can sound like, I highly recommend checking out Bob's sites.

I would LOVE to get some podcasting projects going with students in Hilton. If you might be interested, or if you know of another teacher who might be, please let me know. I'm thinking these could be things such as: around the school interviews on a topic, maybe even friendship and/or bullying to tie in with the action research we've been doing; poetry readings; persuasive essay readings on a topic; a reader's theater, maybe even like the old radio serials with a different episode presented each week; or any other type of audio presentation. I'd be happy to work with the teacher and the students, so you wouldn't need to feel like you would have to do this independently. Maybe we can talk about it at our next in-person meeting.

readinga-z

Have you tried this books on line website yet? Well it's a great tool to enable you to get additional books for you readers workshop. Not only does it have a variety of levels of guided reading books, but you can download plays from the Readers Theater section, select passages from the Fluency section to help improve reading rate and fluency or use the variey of activities from the Vocabulary section to expand your word study activities. (These are just some of the sectios in this site!) I've used the plays for some of my struggling readers and they love it! The guided reading section offers a wide variety of topics and genre with many social studies and science titles. A word of caution here... the Readinga-z"letter" level and the Fountas & Pinnell "letter"level are different. However, each book has a correlation chart on the back cover listing the Readinga-z level, Fountas & Pinnell, Reading Recovery and DRA level. Guided reading books also have some worksheets for each book which cover a wide variety of skills. Some of these worksheet are O.K. and some I'd pass on. You need to look them over. Many worksheets are not directly tied into the book so they can be used in isolation, perhaps for additional practice on a skill already introduced.

Readinga-z.com is definitley worth looking into. Some teachers are presently involved in a pilot program and are able to obtain full access. Try Readinga-z.com and if you'd like to see more, ask your Reading Specialist and she'll either give you the info you need or give you the name of a person who can answer your questions (I hope!).

20 Tech Skills

To make it a little easier to navigate all the links on that 20 Skills Every Educator Should Have site (see the post below), I've listed the topic titles here with a direct link to that topic's section in the article.

I definitely don't have all of these skills, nor have I seen all of the info in these web sites, but I think it's a great place to begin exploring some things. My take is that some of these things are only needed or valuable in certain contexts and other things I don't think are necessarily necessary at all, for the most part. If there are topics you'd like to focus on during our meetings or online, just let me know.

1. Word Processing Skills (begins at the bottom of the page and goes onto the next page)
2. Spreadsheets Skills
3. Database Skills
4. Electronic Presentation Skills
5. Web Navigation Skills (begins part way down the page)
6. Web Site Design Skills
7. E-Mail Management Skills (begins part way down the page)
8. Digital Cameras
9. Computer Network Knowledge Applicable to your School System
10. File Management & Windows Explorer Skills
11. Downloading Software From the Web (Knowledge including eBooks)
12. Installing Computer Software onto a Computer System
13. WebCT or Blackboard Teaching Skills
14. Videoconferencing skills
15. Computer-Related Storage Devices (Knowledge: disks, CDs, USB drives, zip disks, DVDs, etc.)
16. Scanner Knowledge (begins part way down the page)
17. Knowledge of PDAs
18. Deep Web Knowledge
19. Educational Copyright Knowledge (begins part way down the page)
20. Computer Security Knowledge

Technology Integration and Instruction

This past summer, Ben Rudd and I taught a course called, Technology Integration and Instruction, or something to that effect. In the process, we created a Technology Integration and Instruction web site where we posted a wealth of resources for teachers to use to help integrate technology into instruction.

Please use the link above, or use the links to classroom web sites on the district web site, to visit our site. Explore a bit and choose something from there (or from someplace else) to try using with your students in your classroom.

Then post something here on our blog to tell us what you tried and how it worked out. Please post links as appropriate so that we can look at the tool and maybe try using it ourselves.

Explore and Share

Choose some sites from the article below and explore them. You might want to choose a category of particular interest or one that you've never heard of before.

After your exploration, share here something of interest, something useful, something that surprised you, etc. Be sure to give us a link in your post so that we can visit the site you are talking about.

20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have, or Should They?

Please read 20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have by Laura Turner and visit some of the web sites listed.

How would you rate your skills? Did you find any of the web sites particularly valuable?

The New Literacy

The ubiquitous presence of technology in our world is changing the type of literacy we need in order to be functional citizens of a world of global communicators. What does this mean to us as teachers? What does it mean to the way we teach literacy skills to our students?

Read The New Literacy by Sara Armstrong and David Warlick. In order to view the article, you will need to register on the site, but it's free and painless. What do you think about this article? Write some reactions here. You may post your thoughts as comments to this post or by creating your own post.