A Day

About five years ago I had a detour in my career path which I thought was going to be temporary. A technology integration coach was needed in the high school to help fulfill a grant obligation. With much fear I left my familiar third grade world and ventured into the high school. To make a very long story short, my district decided that this was a viable position and hired me full time as a K-12 technology integration coach. I miss the classroom terribly, although I love my current role. This week I have had to make a decision.... there is an opportunity to return to the elementary classroom should I choose to do so. I have lost sleep, made the pros and cons lists, asked for advice, prayed... and I have finally come to a decision. I was made to be a technology integration coach.

No two days are the same. My duties range from teacher professional development, co-planning and implementing lessons and projects, to basic troubleshooting. Teachers contact me via text, gchat, skype, email, and phone. I eat lunch at my desk while catching up on a TED talk or spending quality time with my Google Reader and Twitter feeds and their rich resources. Each day I attempt to gain proficiency with the various Mac and Windows operating systems, accompanying software applications, while trying to keep current with some of our newer initiatives.... iPad and Mimio implementations, a Bring Your Own Device pilot program...

The best part of this job, is that I get to connect with students, teachers, staff, and administrators in all of our 6 buildings. I get to continue to learn! Gone are the days when I would walk into a building and a teacher would ask me, "What do you do?" Phew! I am very thankful that my district values this role, and I feel that it is one that I am meant to hold for a little while longer.

Using Pen and Paper at a Technology Conference?!

So, I headed to PETE&C, Pennsylvania's annual educational technology expo and conference, with devices charged and ready to experience all that the conference had to offer! I was armed, ready to take notes, tweet about them, and backchannel while keeping tabs on my school email and gmail chat. As I left the hotel room on Monday morning I decided to experiment a bit. Rather than lug my laptop for the day, I grabbed my phone, Livescribe pen, and notebook. Could I accomplish what I needed to.... without the appendage that is my laptop?

I took ALL notes in my Livescribe Notebook by writing with an actual pen, checking in on email and twitter occasionally with my phone. I will be using this approach from now on because:

• Things tend to stick better with me and make more sense when I physically write them. It just suits my learning style.
• I did a sync with Evernote and all of my notes are now digital and available on all of my devices. I can still share them out, now they are pdfs. I can still post them to my wiki, share with colleagues...
• I was able to give full attention to the presenters and presentations. Yes, I know this sounds silly, but without the continual tweetdeck updates, chat messages, and email, I could FULLY attend to the sessions.

I still checked twitter and followed #PETEC12, favorited tweets to explore later, shared out resources that I was discovering, but in between sessions or during lunch. So, I feel I got as much information during this conference as I would normally get, but it was a much more rich experience without some of the distractions of "multi-tasking." Yes, I know multi-tasking is a myth. ;)

As a technology integration coach I am continually on the look out for ways to integrate technology WHERE IT FITS, WHERE IT ENHANCES, and WHERE IT MAKES SENSE... basically, when it is the right tool for the job. I think, for me, this is the best of all worlds. I physically worked with the information by writing it, I have it in a notebook, and I have access to it digitally as well.

Using Wordle

I recently facilitated a district course on Web 2.0 tools, and Wordle was a huge hit! Wordle is an amazing creation that allows the user to create word clouds from text. The premise is that words that are used more frequently appear larger than the words used less frequently. Below you will find some tips, potential classroom uses, and a visual of the various fonts in Wordle.

What is Wordle?

Take text, type or paste it into wordle.net, and it generates a word cloud. In a word cloud, words that appear more frequently appear larger.

You can use the ADVANCED tab to enter words and assign them values instead of typing or pasting.

To keep phrases together, use a ~. For example, if you type New York, wordle treats them as two separate words. If you type New~York the two words are treated as a phrase and stay together

Potential Classroom Uses:

These come from a variety of sources....

• create synonym or antonym posters (make the root word larger than its synonyms or antonyms)
• paste student work into wordle to check for over used words (make sure there isn't a check mark under remove commonly used words)
• character analysis, biography, autobiography (make the person's name larger than the adjectives/phrases used to describe)
• paste in famous speeches, provides a nice visual of "important" words
• compare and contrast inaugural presidential speeches, leave out the names and see if students can accurately identify the president
• create class t-shirts with names, activities....
• great "All About Me" project/ice breaker
• holiday/theme "word walls" (i.e. type SUMMER and make it large, type summer related words that students might use in writing and make them smaller
• summary of a book, keywords
• Just about ANYTHING!

Tips!

• I highly suggest creating your wordle text in a word processor first... then save it. It is just about impossible to go back and edit a wordle since they are not saved.... and I do not suggest saving to the gallery. What is placed there can't be taken down. This way you still have your text and a simple copy and paste can save you time over having to recall and type everything all over again.
• TO SAVE and PRINT: You need to save the wordle as an image. In some cases you can right click (control click on a Mac) and save the image that way. If it doesn't work, take a screen shot! On a PC that's a print screen. On a Mac, use SHIFT-COMMAND-4 and your cursor turns into a camera. Drag over the wordle then let go. The screenshot is saved to your computer, most likely your desktop.
• Something to consider... if you are printing a large amount of wordles, consider the background color. Black consumes a great deal of ink.

ISTE Thoughts and Takeaways, Part 2 (Organizing Digital Photos)

One of the presenters I like to see is Leslie Fisher, and I got to two of her sessions. YAY! Here is a plan of attack I developed after attending her session about organizing digital photos. Right now, I have years worth of photos just sitting in iPhoto, some organized into albums, most just hanging out in their event folders.

My Plan:
1. Get Adobe Photoshop Elements for Mac and learn how to use it!
2. Attach keywords or tags to photos on import.
3. Make use of the stars for favorites.
4. Hit the delete key more often to get rid of photos. (I keep everything.)
5. Replace my camera card with a better one - one that has rescue software that I can put on my computer.
6. Encourage everyone I care about to stop backing up photos to DVD or CD.
7. Attach my Time Machine backup more frequently ;) and look for a second backup solution.
8. Scan the hundreds of photos I have sitting here from my grandmother (using 300 or 600 dpi).
9. Spend the rest of my summer organizing all of my current pictures.
10. Since every list needs a number 10, learn to use my DSLR as a DSLR, instead of a point and shoot camera. ;)

Some of these things might be obvious to most people, but they were not to me. And, besides, Leslie's humor coupled with great information... awesome experience.

ISTE Thoughts and Takeaways, Part 1

, 

 Three and a half days with brain food and inspiration around every corner... student and teacher showcases, lectures, sessions, bring your own laptop sessions, vendors, playground areas, discussion areas, friends, networking, and very little sleep... that would be my take on the ISTE 2011 Conference this year. To call this a technology conference would actually be only partially correct. I am pleased to see that student/teacher learning is at the heart of this conference.

Keynote speakers were not all self-proclaimed technology experts, instead we heard from Dr. John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and the author of Brain Rules.  My biggest takeaways from his talk:  We know that "every brain is wired differently from every other brain and learns differently... according to its wiring." He admits that there is much we know about the human brain, but much we do not know. When asked if he could design a classroom based on what he knows of the human brain, he was quite clear. Exercise increases brain power (Brain Rule #1). Medina suggests that aerobic activity we at the center of what we do. He went so far as to say that schools should have uniforms and those uniforms should be gym clothes.

As I reflect on my own classroom, which I dearly miss, I remember taking power walks with the students once or twice a day, taking frequent stretch breaks, dancing to learn the times tables, and, yes, the Cha Cha Slide became part of our daily ritual. According to Medina, this helps, but isn't enough. The day would be one huge aerobic class with pockets of learning, instead the inverse is true. Is this practical?  Probably not. But the point that exercise increases brain power is one point that cannot be overlooked. For more about his insightful Brain Rules, check out his website, linked above. It is research combined with anecdotes, making it a very interesting read. He has this is in audiobook form and he reads it to you... it's almost worth getting just to hear him read it. ;)


Time to do more mental digesting before I continue writing. I need to take my own advice, the advice that I give folks taking courses or working through trainings with me, don't expect to "get" everything all at once. This was an incredible buffet from which to sample. I need to sift through my learning, decide what to keep, what to try, what to put on a shelf for later, and so on.

One last bit that I want to share for now... I took all conference notes on various devices, my iPhone, iPad, and laptop, depending on what was charged up and the time, using EVERNOTE.  This is an application that can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, and iOS operating systems and, here's the awesome part, it syncs across devices! That means when I took and saved notes on my iPhone and went to my laptop, the notes were there! All ISTE notes were arranged into one notebook (or folder) and each session got it's own page. AMAZING! I did learn that I could take notes with my LiveScribe pen and sync those to Evernote as well! (More on that later.)

Geocaching, A "Rewarding" Experience

A few years ago our schools adopted SWEBS (School Wide Effective Behavior Support). Unfortunately my understanding of SWEBS is limited as I was just leaving the classroom as it was being adopted. Every teacher has the same set of expectations for students... that they be ready, respectful, and responsible. As part of this approach, students can earn school money that can be spent in a variety of ways. Routinely a school store on wheels makes its rounds to classrooms where students can purchase school supplies and novelties with their school money. Teachers offer other ways to spend the loot, such as having lunch with the teacher, getting extra computer time, or earning an extra recess.

One school, Lakeside Elementary, offers students another opportunity to spend their "Lakeside Loot." Each month the SWEBS team comes up with larger rewards. This month it is GEOCACHING!  Thanks to a mini grant from PAECT, I have ten GPS receivers that we can utilize!  So, in a nutshell, we have a few hundred students paying their hard earned money to use GPS receivers to find hidden treasures on the school grounds.

Here is how I set it up:

1. Purchased 10 Lock N Lock containers and created labels for them. "Lakeside Geocache A, B, C..."
2. Purchased 10 different kids of stickers, placing one kind in each container
3. Found 10 hiding spots and noted the latitude/longitude coordinates of each one
4. Loaded these 10 spots (waypoints) into EasyGPS and sent them to GPS receivers
5. Created a map, complete with pictures, for those helping guide students

Here is how it will work:

1. Students will get a 15 minute orientation on the sport and how to read the receivers.
2. In small groups, students will be assigned an order to follow. This way every group isn't searching for Geocache A at the same time.
3. Groups venture outside and search for their caches. When they find a cache, they take a sticker from the cache to put on an index card. This is their proof that they found the caches.
4. Follow up with be a brief refection piece.... what did you learn, did you enjoy the activity, and what could be changed to make the experience better?

I will check back in after and let you know how it went!


Reflections:  Things went according to plan for 4th and 5th grade. If I had it to do over again I would send an adult with each 3rd grade group. They handled the activity well, but could've used a little more assistance. I was very thankful for the help of two teachers... they stayed with their classes. :)

Our experience was captured in the newspaper!

First Week

Year 2, Week 1 as a K-12 Tech Integration Coach... reflections

This year has gotten off to an insane start! After only one week in, I have a good part of next week all booked. It is soooo nice that teachers know what I do and how I can be of help to them this year. Next week I will be helping people set up email groups, create wikispaces, spruce up and revise current wikispaces, start Moodle sites, use Moodle within their classrooms, create effective powerpoints.... and I know there will be more as time passes. I am thrilled to be busy!