Terry Shay, Lead Fablevision Ambassador, wanted to share a 10 mg. yearbook with us, his ambassadors. It was too large to email, so he put it in a cool web tool called Dropbox. This tool allows you to have a dropbox on your desktop and access files there from anywhere…There are levels of use, and the low level is FREE. It’s very slick!

A fun way to take a quick trip through a lot of media to find out what’s happening is to use Google’s Fast Flip. It displays the front page of magazines, one at a time, and you can “flip” through them… YOu can go in deeper to the text of articles, and you can also choose the genre of magazine or newspaper. Very easy, very cool!

Much of our world is moving online and as our technologies grow and change, our practice must follow. Six years ago, under the Project Enrich grant, I developed online courses based on instructional strategies that would work for all students. Over the years, I have pushed some tools to the limit to develop and offer the best courses for teachers. As we have seen the technology grow, I am thrilled about a technology found at ISTE: Schoology. Schoology is first FREE online learning course management system that I am aware of.
At the ISTE Conference, I attended every session I was able to about online and/or distance learning. I was involved in white paper discussions with graduate students and other conference attendees who were researching online learning and student completion rates. The following links are a few resources on the previous topics: Drop out Research, Online Learning for the Novice Student, Improving Online Discussions.
For me personally, learning new technology is exciting when I can directly apply it to my work. So in a recent face to face event, I presented resources for teacher leaders in our state to work with Best Practices Online and we practiced using schoology to hold discussions about this topic. As with any technology, if you learn a new tool, practice helps you remember it. We built in time for ”practicing the tools” into our event. I encourage you to go try a new technology such as schoology today!

And finally, my favorite presentation while attending ISTE:

Where the Girls Aren’t

My take-aways from ISTE are many!  I will just share a few here:

Developing, Designing, and Delivering: The Case for Powerful and Productive Presentations – Ken Shelton and Robert Craven

I have seen so many bad PowerPoints that I truly understand the Death By PowerPoint video on Youtube.  I have used PowerPoint in the classroom and will be using it in my new role here at TIE and I really wanted to learn how to use it in a better way. Ken and Robert really talk about the visual impact that your presentation can have and why you really need to tell a story.  I hope to be discussing this in greater detail in a class we are offering this fall ~ Bringing It Home: ISTE 2010!

Yolink

As I installed the extension in Chrome (and you can use it on other browsers) they said this:

Yolink – Search, Find, Create

Find exactly what you’re looking for, only faster. Using key terms, the yolink Chrome extension scans web pages, search engine results, e-books and more to deliver just the information you need. It even lets you peek behind the links so you can

 decide what’s valuable. And then with just one click, it takes you to the exact location of the information, completely shortening your search process.

But it doesn’t end there. Once you’ve found what you need, yolink lets you compile all of your results in Google Docs and Spreadsheets and share them with colleagues, co-workers and friends using your favorite social network and bookmarking tools.  So it not only simplifies your search, it simplifies your life. Not too shabby for a Chrome extension.

I am now ab

le to go to a website, click they yolink extension and enter words to search for. It makes searching the site so much easier and faster!

Foursquare

At first, I thought this was silly.  You set up an account and then you check in at the places you are at.  This alerts your friends – in one or several different ways – where you are.  I found that for the conference, it was extremely helpful.  There was a large group of us that were doing things together, but we would separate to go off to different sessions.  Using Foursquare, we were able to quickly find one another.  Plus, there was the fun aspect of earning badges and trying to become the mayor of a place.  I never managed that!  Sigh!

Plurk

This is not a take away from the conference as I have been using plurk for two years now.  This conference cements the value in networking online and then having the opportunity to meet face-to-face.  Because we already “know” each other, we can come together for very rich and meaningful conversation.  Through this, I was able to be part of a digital jam session, where everyone brought their ipads, iphones, droids, and laptops and played beautiful music together.  We added some digital guitars and used a free, online karaoke site called singsnap.com to add more depth to the jam!

I was also able to meet people that I might not have networked with.  The new friends I have are already proving to be valuable resources. 

While I believe you go to a conference to bring back resources, I know I could sit online and garner many of those.  The face-to-face networking I get to do is something that is truly enriched at an event like the ISTE conference!

 The technology I’m most interested in right now has everything to do with my passion: music. I’m a songwriter and composer, and I just love how new tools can open up new possibilities for me, creatively. Technology tools can do the same for our students. They can discover things about themselves and their creative potentialities—sometimes just by being introduced to a new tool. For me and my creative work, the new tool has been Garage Band. I’ve had a home sound studio for years, but until I had unlimited access to a Mac, Garage Band was an out-of-reach tool that I could never use long enough to incorporate into my own creative process. Now, after a few months of use, I’ve not only discovered and created pieces that would never have existed without this linking of artist and tool, I’m also taking what I gained and moving forward toward other Mac-based tools. I can’t wait to see what might happen next!
So what’s the downside?
Some tools are just so cool they can tempt us away from our creative source—something that can’t be purchased or upgraded. Garage Band, for example, is filled with wonderful pre-recorded loops that can be endlessly configured, reconfigured and manipulated to form all sorts of musical pieces—long and short, fast and slow, high and low, Hip Hop to Classical, Country to Reggae…. It’s endless! And it can be endlessly dissipating, creatively speaking.
Garage Band can’t get at, for instance, my frustration with the Gulf Oil spill, or our tendency as a society to be reactionary in the face of calamities and tensions rather than to be thoughtful and considerate PRIOR to acting. Garage Band has nothing to do with the feeling I get when a particular chord pattern matches up with a specific lyric and melody to say something I didn’t have words for BEFORE they came together. So if I become enamored with the tool to the point of distraction from my own deep well of experience, then the tool becomes destructive—no matter how cool it is! In fact, sometimes the cooler it is—the more impressive, the more likely I am to trade off inspiration for cosmetics.

Inspiration comes from the Greek root meaning to take in breath, or to take in Spirit. Cosmetic comes from the Greek root meaning an ornamentation, or ordering of the surface. Inspiration leads us to an INSIDE-OUT movement, while cosmetics attempt to create a change from the OUTSIDE-IN. Our students can lose themselves, if we aren’t careful, by trading off the deep well of their unique selves for a mere reconfiguration of the surface. At its lowest point, education has sometimes settled for this—for the cosmetic over the inspirational. This is why some people reject technology outright. But this rejection comes because, sometimes, technologies in schools have been abused.
Technology should be a brush or chisel in the hand of the artist, not a substitute soul.
As educators then, we must help our students settle into the delicate balance between the deep well and the cool tools. For me, this meant (and means) stepping out onto my back deck with my guitar and notebook in hand, considering my frustration with our knee jerk attempts to “fix” everything around us, often via a violent or explosive reaction, and then moving back and forth (for weeks, actually) between laying down tracks (both pre-recorded loops and fresh instrumental or vocal recordings), and listening to various mixes (in the car, my iPod as I walk, on our stereo) and seeing how what the technology brings me RESONATES within the deep well of my experience.
Eventually, what it brought this time was a new song, Punch Another Hole.
The growth-intensive use of a new tool, though thoroughly saturated with technology, is not primarily about the technology. It is always about human experience, human expression, human resonance across time and space. Inspiration transcends cosmetics. But technology, when used best, can provide a fresh bridge toward taking in NEW air—a new spirit, inspiration that deepens the well rather than capping it.
And while technology SHOULD cap some wells, it should never cap the deep well of the soul.

Interested in a related NY Times article concerning the current popularity of introducing  imperfection to humanize digital technology? http://nyti.ms/d4Ykee

At ISTE 2010 in Denver, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop entitled “Best Resources for Elementary Integration and Transformation,” facilitated by Boni Hamilton, a doctoral student at the University of Northern Colorado.  Many educators today feel that they lack sufficient time to search for instructional technology resources.  During the session, Boni shared a multitude of high-quality resources across all content areas for both elementary and middle school teachers.  Here is the link to her site:  http://easyintegration.wikispaces.com/Top+Websites. 

Among the most interesting sites that she shared is a site called “Skype An Author,” http://skypeanauthor.wetpaint.com/, a site that provides K-12 teachers and librarians a way to connect authors, books, and young readers through virtual visits.  Many of the authors offer free 10-15 minute visits to the classroom.  This is a great resource that teachers can use as a way to boost student interest in and appreciation for literature.

For elementary and intermediate writing teachers, there is a website called “Instant Poetry Forms” (http://ettcweb.lr.k12.nj.us/forms/newpoem.htm), a site in which poetry forms are provided for students, so that they can type in the “creative” parts.  Once the students have completed a poem, they may push a button and see their poems automatically formatted.  

Another resource that I found to be fascinating is a site called “Learning Science,” which contains an aggregation of some of the best interactive science sites for all grade levels:  http://learningscience.org/.  This site contains rich educational resources for many of the different science courses, including physical science, life science, and earth & space science.

For math teachers, there is a site known as the “National Library of Virtual Manipulatives” ( http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html), which provides students with immediate feedback as they continue to hone their individual math skills through games, puzzles, riddles, and other interactive methods.

Social studies teachers may want to visit a site called “Digital History,” a site that has great units, digital resources, and an interactive map/timeline.  Here is the link:  http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/.

For foreign language teachers, there is a site called “Digital Dialects”  (http://www.digitaldialects.com/), which allows students to enhance their speaking skills through a variety of interactive exercises.

Physical education, music, and art teachers may want to check out the following websites (respectively) for great activities to integrate with their students:  http://kidshealth.org/kid/; http://www.exploratorium.edu/music/; http://www.kerpoof.com/.

There is literally a world full of resources waiting for all elementary and intermediate teachers at their fingertips!  Enjoy!

Last week Ryan and I attended the OTA Sessions in Sioux Falls. Focused on social media, the event brought together people from the arts, creative fields like advertising and marketing, and businesses and non-profits that are increasingly using Facebook and blogs. A speaker who captured our attention was computer scientist, artist, and storyteller Jonathan Harris. He talked to us after his presentation about the project We Feel Fine as well as an idea that guides his work. Ryan produced a short edit of Jonathan’s interview:

Staff members from the Rural Learning Center in Howard, SD were at OTA too. Check out the blog ReImagine Rural to learn more about how topics discussed at OTA relate to our communities and their futures. If you’re intrigued and want to attend next year’s OTA Sessions get connected here.

• Educational Leadership:Multiple Measures:Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards

  tags: digitalwhiteboard, Marzano, studentachievement

  • Using interactive whiteboards was associated with a 16 percentile point gain in student achievement.

  • statistically significant relationship with student achievement.

    • The first is the learner-response device

    • the second feature is the use of graphics and other visuals to represent information

    • and the third feature is the interactive whiteboard reinforcer—applications that teachers can use to signal that an answer is correct or to present information in an unusual context

  • Teachers should think through how they intend to organize information

    • Digital flipcharts should contain visuals, but those visuals should clearly focus on the important information.

    • Teachers should discuss the correct answer along with the incorrect answers, making sure to elicit opinions from as many students as possible.

  • Interactive whiteboards have great potential as a tool to enhance pedagogical practices in the classroom and ultimately improve student achievement. However, simply assuming that using this or any other technological tool can automatically enhance student achievement would be a mistake. As is the case with all powerful tools, teachers must use interactive whiteboards thoughtfully, in accordance with what we know about good classroom practice.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

If you haven’t been to www.thinkfinity.org recently, you might want to check out one of its content partner sites. ReadWriteThink has gone through a site redesign and I think you will love it. If you search the lessons, you will notice a new little feature where you can now select the state standards for that lesson!! So now each lesson in ReadWriteThink can be quickly aligned to SD Standards. They have a lot of other new features as well, so please visit the website and check it out. I would love to hear your comments about the features you find exciting and useful. Please comment.

As many of you have already heard, Verizon and Google have made an alliance! This is good news for Verizon Thinkfinity also!  This alliance will allow all lovers of the Thinkfinity site to find even greater value. The first step is to register in MyThinkfinity which is a simple link at the top right corner of the Verizon Thinkfinity site.  (Remember, everything in this site is FREE!) The next step will be to watch for the new site redesign of http://thinkfinity.org . This is coming in the very near future! With this site redesign, you will find the web2.0 tools housed in MyThinkfinity. Some of these features include bookmarking, collaboration communities, sharing with others (I am guessing we will have many connections such as Facebook and Twitter), and widgets that you will be able to take from the Verizon Thinkfinity site and place our your webpage.  Also, be aware that four of the content partners are also going through site redesigns. So don’t be surprised if one day in the next couple of months, when you open ReadWriteThink, ArtsEdge, Xpeditions (soon to be called National Geographic),  and EdSitement, you find a new more updated look and feel.  If you would like to learn more about face to face or online trainings for you or your school, please contact me at any time. 

SD Verizon ThinkfinityState Administrator – mtorgrude@tie.net