Feb weekend

Well I have to say that the Feb weekend has to have been the most inspiring and exhilarating yet. Mike Mazyck's presentation and the discussion that followed was the highlight. When we wrote what we felt our schools would look like in 5 or 10 years I was amazed at the variety of responses. It was somewhat discouraging to hear those who were realists as they were rather pessimistic. Some of us, myself included, were probably dreaming. I know I was thinking that if money was not an object what would the possibilities be?
When we examined the progression from web 1.0 to web 2.0 it helped me realize that it is almost futile to predict what our schools may look like. The technology grows and changes so quickly that there are likely to be many incredible breakthroughs that will completely change the landscape of the Internet.
I believe that the only thing we can do is try to stay informed, share with as many colleagues as we can and keep moving forward even if our particular situation seems to be moving at a turtle's pace rather than the speed of a hare. Keep our eyes on the technologies of the future and believe in our dreams.
I left the weekend feeling that I was really prepared to make a difference in my district and with the students and teachers as far as encouraging them to look more to the future and embrace the new technologies available even though we are unable to access them all at school.
Carl's show and tell of virtual worlds was quite fascinating. I guess I had heard of them but had not really explored because I thought they were just game type technologies. Well, now I can see that they can be very valuable and although I have not done much more with them, I am at least open to the possiblilities and hope to do more exploring in the future.

Cool!

I had such a great time at class on Sat. The presentations were awesome and looking at the future of technology in education was incredible. I have more to share at another time but just had to show you this information. The link is to a YouTube video about the Smart Table. I didn't even realize there was such a thing. Right now it looks like it may be geared more toward early elementary learning tasks but... Imagine the possibilities!!

Audacity project

I should have mentioned in my previous post that the tech tools I am working with teachers on are for them to increase productivity. At this time we can access some 2.0 tools as faculty but are not allowed to use blogs, wikis, or other tools with students. I do believe that by introducing these cool tools to my staff that they will be more than ready to plunge in when we do have permission to use them for working with students. One exception so far has been the use of Audacity. Our Literacy Coach wanted to work with students to record books on CD for younger students to use in school. One of our tech people and I downloaded the software and we purchased 6 inexpensive microphones. There were some glitches at first with saving the correct file in the correct format where we could find it but that was easily solved. The students are having a GREAT time and are improving their pace in reading. We will be putting together 4 books with a CD in a zip lock bag. Hopefully we will have 200 sets completed by the end of the year.

Jan. E2T2 Reflections

The videos of Introducing The Book and Stuck On An Escalator were hilarious. I am trying to decide if I should show them at a staff mtg. It seems as though everyone is so occupied with preparing for the MCA's that nothing else seems important.
Before the January session I had the opportunity to share/coach teachers on the use of Animoto, Delicious, Googledocs and Blogger. Having a structure to use for checking how I can improve my coaching skills is great. I found the practice quite interesting and very valuable. I realized that it is easy for me to bring my own personal experiences into the situation and get off topic. I am looking forward to our conversations with Nancy Guldberg.
The session with Elluminate was fun and also revealing. When participating in online classes during my MLS program several years ago we used chat sessions for discussions. It would have been much more effective if we would have had the options available in this program.
A great weekend of sharing and learning!

Image Hosting

Our art teacher is interested in saving photos of student work online so she can use them in projects without taking up so much space on our school server. I suggested she look at Flickr, Picasa or Photobucket. I would welcome any other possiblities.

NVL LVR

The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging ... And When To Use Each One

View more presentations from rohitbhargava. (tags: howto rohitbhargava)

A New Year

The new year has begun with wonderful promise. I've spent some time reflecting on 2008 as an individual, an educator and as a member of E2T2. The year 2008 must go down as one of the most incredible years of my life. A daughter moves to Florida, a daughter graduates from Culinary Arts school and purchases a restaurant with her boyfriend (also a chef), planning and celebrating my new marriage to the man who is the love of my life, my eldest daughter making me a grandma for the first time. Whew... and that's just one aspect of this year.

As and educator I've needed to stretch once again to incorporate not only my love of reading, books, literature, and information literacy as an Elementary Media Specialist but also expand and update my technology skills. As I've trained the Grade 1- 5 teachers and students in the use of our new wireless mobile labs I've gained confidence in my ability to connect with adults as well as students with a wide range of computer experience and skill. I've also become as much or more of a learner of technology as a teacher. I recognize how much faster I learn when I teach the skills to others and the excitement of being looked on as a leader for the school. Most of the time I feel I am just a step ahead or slightly behind the younger teachers who are champing at the bit to get going using the 2.0 tools with the classes.

A major challenge has been the dictate of the district to stick to using Microsoft Office tools in our technology teaching at the present time. Wow, is it hard to do that! I try to remind myself and the other teachers that we are moving in the right direction and hopefully we will be able to really stretch our wings next school year. Some of the projects that the teachers and I have collaborated on have been: using online databases and search strategies with 5th grade students for biography reporting. incorporating PowerPoint as a way for 3rd and 4th graders to present science reports to their peers, second graders are learning to use the drawing tools by designing their own compass rose for geography and first graders are learning how to use Word and save their work to the school server. These may seem like very sterile, unexciting projects when you compare them to some of the things 2.0 schools are doing. They are for us a necessary beginning in order for students and teachers to become familiar and comfortable with the mini laptops and the new schedules and procedures that have been put in place. Meanwhile those who are trying to open our doors to more access to Internet tools continue to make progress.

I had a conversation with my principal about presenting to our staff some information on several of the tools that I believe will be embraced by them as tools to enhance and improve their work. I wanted to introduce them to Googledocs, delicious and show them some examples from the TIES conference I attended. She put me off and stated that the teachers need to learn to use Word, PowerPoint, Excel and possibly Publisher. So you can see where I need to press on and educate those in decision-making roles as much as possible.

There is good news! The three other members of E2T2 and I will be presenting a session at an in-service for the entire district staff in February. Our plan is to entice the teaching staff with Googledocs, Delicious and blogs.

November

November was an incredible month. Again, we had stimulating discussions about the use and misuse of technology. There was sharing of frustrations and successes. Ryan’s presentation showing what he is doing in his classroom was inspiring.

After learning so much about Googledocs from Molly Schroeder, I went back to school and tried uploading previously created Word docs. Well, I found out that documents that have tables in them do not appear as they were created. That was frustrating. I then tried recreating the tables in Googledocs and was not as successful as I had hoped. Either I did something wrong or there are limits on what can be uploaded successfully.

During this month at my school, I was able to move the laptop carts to classrooms and there is actually a move to hire the tech assistant. When this is finally in place, I should be able to relinquish the technical upkeep and trouble shooting to someone else and then spend more time on working with the teachers with actual projects with the students. Yeah!!

Following Michael Walker’s presentation about digital storytelling I’m wondering if that should be the area I look at for my presentation. Even without the latest technology, it is something we should be able to do at our district. We could hopefully then incorporate pod or screencasting into that experience. I’m going to start doing more investigating into how that might work for us. I plan to present theses ideas to my principal and see what we have available to purchase microphones and more digital cameras. We do have a digital video camera. I’m embarrassed to say I have not learned how to use it other than taping a cassette.

So now, I have to decide where to focus my energies. My time is so limited that I cannot do everything that I wish. I really want to assist the teachers in becoming more efficient with the tools I mentioned earlier. I also want to start using more of the tools in classrooms collaboratively with the teachers. I’m thinking I may have to present the tools like Googledocs to teachers as a group and let them come to me for more information and assistance. Then my focus with student projects will fulfill the expectations of the district as it builds partnerships with the teachers in using effective methods that will grow as we learn to work together.

We’ll see. It’s a start anyway.

October Reflections

Our October sessions were jam packed with hands-on technology learning. Again I had a combination of feelings of exhilaration about the possibilities but tempered by the cruel facts of the present technology restrictions in place at my district. Along with having the opportunity to be in a smaller group while investigating the various technologies, there were some great ideas for how to use the tools. I especially enjoyed getting more familiar with Googledocs. I am hoping that although much of the open source tools are not available at the present time to the teachers at our school, will be able to encourage them to use Googledocs to make their work easier. I know that Delicious would also be helpful for them. I am beginning to think I should focus most of my technology leadership on assisting the teachers to become more productive. That will lead to more comfort and willingness to try other ideas with classes as they become available.

During the weekend I was able to participate in or learn more about podcasting, Googledocs, Skype, Screencast-o-matic, VoiceThread, Scratch, Audacity, Pixlr, Kidcast, SurveyMonkey and too many more to list here. Hamline podcasting 101 is going to be a very valuable resource to share with my teachers.

When I returned to my school one of the first things I did was share the survey I created on SurveyMonkey. We decided to use it as a place to start in our school technology planning.

September Reflections

At our Sept. meeting, we became acquainted with one another as well as the purpose, hopes and dreams of the Technology Integration Academy cohort. The wide range of age, years of experience, academic expertise, the size of districts and availability of technology makes for an excellent and exciting learning environment. As one who learns best in a collaborative group, I am looking forward with anticipation as well as some insecurity to our work together.

Much of our introduction to the changes in the way information is created and dispersed is a reminder of the theory classes I took as part of my MLS in 2005. The theory has not changed much but the tools have been transformed in such a short period of time. By the end of the weekend, I have to admit that I was partly inspired and partly overwhelmed. We looked at so many online tools: Comic Life, Photostory, Googledocs, Twitter, to name just a few.

We had a lot of fun creating our personal learning networks. I really wish I had saved mine after doing it in Gliffy and Wordle. It would be fun to do again at the end of the course and compare the two.

The link below to A Brave New World was awesome and I promptly showed it to the tech committee at my school as well as my principal. They were impressed but because of several tech issues at our school and the delay in getting our laptop project going were also discouraged that we have difficulty envisioning ourselves becoming a part of this new world.

A Brave New World-Wide-Web (David Truss)

Another to share:

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Michael Wesch)

Weekend Reflections

As I went back to refresh my memory of the amazing depth of resources we have been exposed to and during the first months of E2T2, I realized that I was not addressing a specific area necessary for the credits I am hoping to receive from Hamline. My reflections so far have not specifically addressed the weekend session activities. Since I have taken notes at each session I will attempt to rectify the situation in my next posts.

Mobile Laptops

Hi all,
I am actually at home today because of an appt. later. Decided to check my school email and found an invite to Twitter. Well, I guess I need some assistance. I realized I had already registered but really cannot figure out what to do with Twitter. Even checking the help menu etc... hasn't helped. Old brain syndrome I guess.
Oh, and I had an unusual but fun week last week. Our school was finally able to start working with the mobile labs that were purchased at the beginning of the school year. Apparently, some glitches caused delays. There is supposed to be a tech aide hired to work primarily with the laptops. This person will not be allowed to do any teaching. Because they are only posting for the position, in the next week or so, they hired a substitute teacher for me and I went around to the classes last week orientating the teachers and students. It was a great experience! There are definitely some issues. Some of the laptops shutdown in the middle of students work, a couple of them wouldn't shut down. Some had updates start or had second log on screens come up. We just kept pulling out laptops to replace those. There were one or two that did not start. I'm hoping that the connections had not been plugged in tightly.
Students and teachers both seemed very excited. The teachers are rightly concerned about how to schedule the labs. There is one mobile lab for each grade level 1st - 5th. There are only 15 laptops in each lab. Since we have anywhere from 22 to 27 students in a class with 3 - 4 classes per grade, that will be a major issue. I used two labs in each class for the orientation to make sure each student had one.
The projectors and teacher laptops that are stationed on the top of the carts are not tied down yet and we almost lost a projector. There is supposed to be a digital camera with each cart also but will be coming later I guess. The labs will eventually be kept in one of the grade level classrooms but until then they are crammed into the head room that is located within the Media Center office. Last year it was decided that we as media specialists could not have a key. My principal had to come down to open the room up each time I had to get it. That, of course, will change when they are in the classrooms. Sorry if those last comments sounded crabby but that has been a sore point with us media specialists.
Well, I guess I’ve written a book so will close. Looking forward to Friday. Have a good week!

Still struggling

Well fellow students, it has been a while since I have written. I am finding that I think very often about something that I could/should write on my Blog but am busy and put it off. Later I have forgotten the thought or idea and the opportunity has passed. It seems that part of the difficulty for me is that I am not by nature a writer and do a lot of mulling over in my own thoughts. I am not used to putting my thoughts and ideas down on paper for others to read.
Following our last class I spent quite a bit of time looking around at different blogs I thought would be valuable in my professional life. Very interesting out in blogworld!! I have put several of them on my Blog. I also enjoyed playing around with the tools and adding a few other pieces to my Blog. I also enjoyed trying out the Delicious social bookmarking site. I registered and started saving bookmarks in Firefox. Then when I was using IE at my school, I found it quite awkward. I haven’t really figured out how to use this tool enough to make it beneficial. I believe that may be why teachers in my district get frustrated with any new technology. There is usually not time given to staff to practice new technologies in order to be comfortable enough to use them with students. As our text tells us, we must be willing to explore these new online tools with our students even when we make mistakes. This will have to be part of my responsibility as we move forward. I will try to be a role model in this area.
It happened again. I wrote the note above yesterday, was interrupted, and haven’t posted it until today.

Blogging problem solved

I was very very frustrated when it seemed that my blog was not working. I must have spent almost an hour trying to figure out what was wrong. I even started building a new blog. Well, eventually I found out that I had logged in with the wrong email address. Jeepers, creepers! So, I deleted the 2nd blog I started and hope now to be able to use this one as I wanted too. That's the thing about new technology. It seems to take me so long to get it figured out.

E2T2

Life has sure been interesting lately and has really put a crimp in my time to get familiar with and use my new blog. I had set one up last spring when starting the 21 Things on a Stick program offered through Minnesota’s seven multicounty multitype library systems. It was a fun experience but as with anything new in technology I've found "if you don't use it, you lose it". So, this is my second attempt at a blog. I am hopeful that I will find it a useful tool and in the process can begin to spread my wings as a tech leader in my school community.