edtech VISION

In addition to presenting at our local Library Media Conference next Friday, I am sharing how I use Voicethread in my classroom at the upcoming Innovative Learning Conference in San Jose on Wednesday, October 15th at 1pm.  Come join the fun. 

I’ve also updated my VoiceThread workshop wiki at:  http://edtechvision.wikispaces.com/VoiceThread

I’v been browsing through the published conference program and –WOW– there are a ton of excellent speakers I would love to see.  How can I choose???

I’m also excited to see several of the Google Certified Teachers that I met last June and attend my first EduBloggerCon on Wednesday evening. the 15th.  See you then.

This past week I attend the EdTech PD Cadre sponsored by OETC and ODE.  One of our activities was to use a Web 2.0 tool to reflect on one of the goals of the year-long program.  We chose:

A goal of the EdTech PD Cadre is to identify and disseminate best practices targeting technology integration into teaching and learning by focusing on exemplary staff development skills

Here is our reflection post:

Do you want to easily record people’s opinions on the go - well then use the mini-computer in your pocket - your cell phone.  Gabcast allows to easily record interviews, podcasts, speeches, language practice, etc… all on your cell phone.

For our example, we set up a Channel on Gabcast.  I dialed the 1-888 number and put in the channel number that I created during set up.  I began the first episode and recorded an interview with a cadre member - asking them to discuss ideas for effective staff development.  After the interview I selected #2 to publish the episode on the Gabcast website.  Immediately I was able to record a new episode so I passed my phone around 2 times and each interview was a separate recording.

Go to this website to hear our recordings:  http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&id=23214

If you were subscribed to my channel, you would received notification of each new episode in your RSS Reader.

You can also download the audio files and use them in videos, VoiceThreads, photostory, or edit them in Audacity.

Classroom use ideas:

• Record interviews (career, grandparent interviews)
• Make your own field trip audio guide
• Record speeches
• Foreign language practice
• Record opinions about hot topics
• Don’t have enough microphones in your classroom?  Allow your students to use their cell phones instead!

I’m sure you can find hundreds of ways you can use this in your classroom or during your professional development workshops.  Have fun!

Advanced Search - Part 4

Sometimes finding the information you need on the Internet is challenging.  You are not alone.  According to the World Internet stats, there are 1.4 billion Internet users and there are over 200,000 websites registered EACH day.  Heck -there are 14,672,685 individual pages on Wikipedia alone!It can overwhelming when you discover there are almost 60 million search results for “John McCain” and 82 million results for “Barack Obama”.  Most of us are confident when we search Google that the information we need will be located in the first ten results - but that is not always the case. This past month you have been shown different ways to search on Google - like choosing descriptive, specific words, or adding “quotes” around multiple terms, or many of the unique Google search terms such as:  weather, define or local search. If you haven’t used the Advanced Search page on Google - you should consider using it and teach your students to use it too.   You don’t need to remember to use “quote “ or + signs when using advanced search.  The key to effective searching on the Internet is to know which search terms to use to narrow or broaden the results you receive.  Just type in your search in the section for: all of the words the exact wording or phrase one or more of these words I especially like to choose to have more than 10 results displayed.  Want that to happen EVERY TIME you search?  You need to go into your Global Preferences (http://www.google.com/preferences) and change the number of search results you always want displayed. Don’ want to see results in other languages - you can change the language settings to English only. Searching by file types is really helpful if you are looking, for example, a PowerPoint presentation you saw at a conference.  I heard about a PowerPoint template to make Jeopardy games and easily found it by searching for “Jeopardy” and choosing the “PowerPoint” file type. Selecting a specific date will prevent you from receiving old and out-of-date information in your results Another must is to turn ON the SafeSearch filter. A few hints about using the Image Search in Google. When your students are searching for an image using Google image search, the image results come from ANY web page that has been indexed by Google.  Right below the image search bar is an option to choose image size.  This is very helpful to find large enough images so you don’t end up with a pixelated image by trying to enlarge a small photo. In the Advanced Image Search, you can customize your search by image file type, color, size and turn on the SafeSearch filter. Many images found in Google Image Search are copyright-protected images so please consider requiring your students to include citations for their images as well as content information.  Sample: http://temple3.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/barack-obama-official-small.jpg and do not accept “Google Image Search” as a citation. Some other sources to find copyright-free or creative commons licensing images are:   Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org  morgueFile - http://www.morguefile.com/  Pics 4 Learning - http://www.pics4learning.com/  Stock.XCHNG - http://www.sxc.hu/  Flickr/Creative Commons - http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ (NOTE:  Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license - but remember - these are personal photos that people have taken - search safely!) This comic explains Creative Commons licensing:  http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/comics/sharingcreativeworks/sharingcreativeworks.pdf

~ MaryFran and Colette

http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/search-tips/advanced-search—part-4

Specialized Search - Part 3

This next set of tips is great to integrate into social studies curriculum. It’ll help your students find primary sources when doing research, and have a better appreciation for just where the events took place. view:timeline When you use view:timeline, your results are broken down into chronologically listed dates. You can filter your search to narrow the time period from which you would like to view results. For example, here is the top of the results page for the query [view:timeline battle of the bulge]: Notice the filter on the right of the page. Narrowing the search to 1940-1944 will give you these results: view:map You can add maps to the search results. [view:map battle of the bulge] will give you a Google Map, with markers that refer to the places listed in the articles in the results. Switch between map, satellite, and hybrid view to give students a better appreciation of the terrain.

Good Luck!
~ MaryFran and Colette

http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/search-tips/specialized-search-pt3

Google Search Features - Part 2

Teaching Your Students About Search - Part 1

• California Student Media Festival 2008
  (tags: video digitalstorytelling film contest mediafestival)

This school year, my fellow Google Certfied Teacher MaryFran Lynch and I began a weekly email newsletter to introduce our staff to all the great tools and features of the Wonderful World of Google.

September 2008:  Welcome back to school and to the inauguration of Tech Tip Tuesday. It is our hope that over the year we will be able to introduce you to some tools that will help you both in your classroom and in your personal life. Every Tuesday, we’ll be sending you an e-mail with a Tech Tip we hope you will try.

To take advantage of many of these tips, you will need to have a Google Account. No need to give up your current e-mail address, you can have a Google Account without having a g-mail address. But more about that later. Today, we’d like to tell you about a Google feature you can use on your phone to get information on businesses.

Our first tip:

411 Calls for FREE!!!  You know how expensive it can be to make a 411 call. But by calling 1-800-GOOG-411 from either your cell or home phone, you can get the same information for only the price of a phone call! Try it! Once you dial, a voice will prompt you to tell which city and state the business you are interested in is located. The voice will repeat what it believes you said. You have the chance to correct it if it gets it wrong. You can always say, “Go back” and try again. The voice will then ask the business name or category. Once the system has the name and location of the business you are interested in, it will automatically connect you!

Want more information? Click here to watch a short video

http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/

Eight years ago when I began as a computer teacher at my high school, the course I inherited was titled “Computer Applications”.  The focus was on practicing keyboarding and learning Microsoft Office products:  Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Publisher.  Students worked through assignments in a textbook - but the lessons focused on one specific tool or skill and did not have any real world applications.

Over the years, I have completely transformed this course - yes we still use the Office products - but that is not the focus.  The focus is on learning — learning how to learn and demonstrating our learning in a variety of ways that have real world application.

This year I changed my unit descriptions to match the updated NETS*S.  I want students to understand that “Computer Applications” is not just about typing in Word or making a graph in Excel.  Today - this course embodies all aspects of what we want students to know and understand in the area of technology.

1. Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
2. Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
3. Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate and use information.
4. Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources.
5. Students understand human, cultural and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior
6. Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.

So now my thematic units are titled:

• Creativity & Innovation
• Communication & Collaboration
• Research & Information Fluency
• Critical thinking, problem solving and decision making
• Digital Citizenship
• Technology Operations and Concepts

I was pleased how well my previous lessons fit so well into this new format.  I think the new organization communicates the wide variety of skills we cover and the importance of each.  I want my students (and their families) to understand WHY we are doing the lessons we are doing and what the focus for LEARNING is in each unit.

I’m so proud of my former student, Mariel Zagunis who won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. She is an incredible student and athlete and one of the nicest people I know.

Gold medal winner USA’s Mariel Zagunis stands on the podium after the women’s individual saber competition at the Fencing Hall of the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Saturday, Aug. 9, 2008. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

This past week I have been at Western Oregon University taking a Flash class sponsored by the TechStart Foundation and the Software Association of Oregon.

My instructor, Chuck Laiti, is a graphic arts teacher at Tigard High School. Chuck has showed us some interesting ways to to introduce Flash to students with some easy and challenging activities. We started with the traditional “make the ball bounce” but with a twist - include ActionScript to start and stop the ball. Also include a shadow as the ball nears the ground. Its a great addition to that activity.

Next we assembled body parts of a cave man to make a walking character. The lesson and pieces can be found here.

Then Chuck shared how he incorporates some lessons of early film techniques as we learn about Rotoscope - which is basically traced animation. I traced the various steps of a walking sequence and then created an animated graphic that keeps walking over and over again.

Next we learned how to make a basic flash webpage with rollover buttons that display icons for flash movies. This was quite challenging for me since I really don’t know ActionScript.

I looked online for photo sequences of skateboarders and found a 16 frame shot of a jump and created this simple movie: skateboard_final. Next I will try a longer sequence and see if I can find a video sequence to use as a basis - somethings that loops continuously.

I’m glad I came to this class. It definitely opened my eyes to other ideas and activities that I can use in my graphic design class. Now to purchase ActionScript 3.0 for Dummies and begin reading.

The media keeps reminding us … 94 days until Election day … we might already be lost - but why not have some fun along the way.

Dale Goodno, the Chief Information Officer at our campus designed this fabulous corn maze for the Baggenstos Family Farm (his sister) near Sherwood, Oregon. This afternoon Dale showed me how he planned out the design (complete with Google images of the candidates) and then translated it to a grid pattern to cover the 6 acre farm.

Who knew getting the message out to vote would be so much fun! They even got national attention. Check out Keith Olbermann’s oddball video description at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ieg2rhV-7xI

• Social Networks in Education » home
  A listing of social networks used in educational environments.
  (tags: socialnetworking education web2.0 ning)
• Teachers Teaching Teachers » Blog Archive » Revisiting VoiceThread - TTT112 - 07.09.08
  We invited Steve Muth, co-founder of VoiceThread, and Colette Cassinelli, a technology teacher near Portland, Oregon who started a wiki that collects examples of VoiceThreads.
  (tags: voicethread 07.09.08 ttt112)
• Knol: a unit of knowledge
  A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.
  (tags: google wiki knol reference research)
• 50 Useful Blogging Tools for Teachers | Teaching Tips
  No matter how you use blogs in your classroom, these tools will help you get started, enhance your experience, or bring the students into the fun.
  (tags: blogging web2.0 tools)
• File Extensions Reference
  A list of file extensions with information about each file type, including how to open the files.
  (tags: extensions reference)

• GELessons.com
  GELessons.com - A Free Public Resource - Providing Teachers with the tools needed to enhance their instruction using Google Earth®, the free program that brings the world to the classroom! A Website By and For Teachers.
  (tags: googleearth google maps)

Last week I joined the 3.1 class at Webcast Academy as an intern.

The Academy is a hands on, collaborative training center for people interested in learning how to produce and host live, interactive webcasts. It is part of the Worldbridges Webcasting Network and was founded to help train those who would like to webcast on Worldbridges, but all are welcome to make use of the open source learning resources and participate in collaborative training sessions.

I’ve embraced every new tool thrown my way and have lurked around EdTechTalk long enough to know that I want to learn how to webcast . I think it would cool to interview and discuss current trends with other technology-loving teachers or even provide a weekly show to follow up on ideas and lessons after I give a conference presentation.

A new project that I will start this fall is an after-school technology club just for girls. We call ourselves Digital Divas 2.0 and I think that webcasting would be a wonderful outlet for expression.

Besides reading through the introduction materials and learning how to set up Audacity and Skype, our first assignment was to record a one-minute audio introduction. The purpose of this assignment was not so much what we said, but to practice using the software, exporting it correctly, applying the ID3 tags and naming conventions. I am pretty familiar with audacity so I wanted to add an music intro (from ccmixer) but decided against it and will save it for another lesson.

The process went pretty well. I drafted my introduction first and recorded it a couple of times to get the timing down. I first found that I speak too fast and tend to slur my “s” (a habit I picked up from my big sister when i was little) so I purposely tried to slow down and make my voice lower. I don’t want it to sound too monotone but not too casual either. It was OK. I made one tiny mistake on my final recording - but its fine for now.

I love all the screencasts on the Webcast Academy. I like being able to pause the lesson, go to my software and make the required changes and then go back to the screencast. Great job guys.

So my first impression is great. I definitely need to purchase a better microphone and record in a quieter place (the phone rang once!). So far so good

Audio: Introduction

Cross-posted at Webcast Academy.net