Leadership Conference 8/5/10

This was a great presentation. It applies to every one of us as citizens, not just educators. Too bad our reluctant parents couldn't hear this presentation.

Dr. Doty stated the four goals for this year. All of them center around providing a college-ready student.

Dr. Doty
Wants every student to pursue college
Why such an emphasis on college? Because by 2018 everyone will need it to make it in the world.

63% of all jobs will require a college diploma at least a BS.

9/10 workers with a hs limited to 3 occupational clusters

As economy gets back on track 60% of people without a degree will not be able to make ends meet


RtI
Critical Issues and Skills for District and School Leaders
presented by Dr. George M. Batsche

Dr. Batsche
Birth rate by 2042 the predominant racial group will be Hispanic
82% of hispanics in the US are latino

One of the biggest challenges is how to effectively instruct these ELLs?

For every one of the educated persons, there is a statistic that they aren't able to support the non-educated persons

Once a student is more than 2 years behind there is an 8% chance the student will catch up
If you can increase student achievement you still have a two year gap

If you are more than 2 years behind in HS they probably won't make it or will drop out

RtI is a way of schooling. It is NOT a program.
Goal for RtI -- no kid leaves k without literacy ready for 1st grade
K is very important for all of the ELLs and other kids too

If you cannot read you cannot learn

Even for students who are low-performing when you target instruction at the proficient and advanced levels they are engaged

The most powerful method for literacy instruction is there is no one.

No one method will ever meet the needs of today's learner.

The core of the LEARN act is a mult-tier support (not RtI) differentiated 3 tiers.

98% of kids in special ed are there for literacy/reading issues.

47% of all special ed $ go to help kids read.

Good first instruction is the most powerful thing we can do.

When you have cancer, you have treatment options. We need to do the same in education.

EduBlogger Con 6/26/10

express.smarttech.com allows you to open SMART notebook and notebook express lessons.

yolinkedncation.com
allows you to see embedded links or the URL and pulls out the content with keywords highlighted.

booth 2419

sweetsearch.com
a search engine for students. Only searches 35k sites for schools/they are all curated sites

reminded me of Pioneer Library

metamark.net
URL shortener--easier to get a custom shortened URL than some of the other ones out there

LongUrl gives you the long URL but doesn't take you to that exact place

HugeUrl gives you the huge url but again doesn't you there

LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com
put in a search and gives you a link that will take you to google to search

Read It Later
whenever on a web page that you want to look at later it saves it to your Read It Later list to read at a later date. (would be great from tweets that would be good)

edmodo
Empowers teachers into share real time messages
Create groups and give students code to connect with the teacher in a private social network
Add to library things that you find that you like or waht to share with students

techhead.com
lowest prices on microsoft items

bingle.nu
In case you need to make a bing and google at the same time
the esarch will come up on two sides

google.com/squared
compare and contrast

wordle.net
create
paste in a bunch of text
in between each word add a ~ then it will put them in order

Web 3.0
There is an overwhelming amount of information out there
use the web page she is posting to see how much information is sent in one second-overwhelming.

Teaching responsible use for social networking/bullying, etc.

Facebook-should we open it or not? A school has created a group so they are not able to see your personal page.

Bigger than just digital literacy. It is information curation with a community.

You need to be everywhere and how do you do that?

Ask an Author
An author will skype in for 15 minutes
Henry Jenkins Tranversal Media
Etin Wanger's work on Multi-Membership

#ebc10network is the hashtag for this conference

PLN-
the leader doesn't really believe in the actual term "PLN."

has nothing to do with only the people you interact with on twitter.
P=Personal/Professional, etc.
L=Learning

Twitter is mostly about socializing and not learning. Blogs are more for learning.

There are affordances for social media for learning. It's the terminology that is the question.

I am surprised by the number of people taking notes on paper here at this conference. Strange!

Anytime teachers get together they call it "PLC."
Doesn't make it necessarily so.

We do need to have a common language though.
Everything will have different meanings for different people.

SuccessNet - Pearson -Paul Richins

Most classrooms have some sort of projection system. The way they will use it now is different because of the content with this curriculum.

To Log in:
http://pearsonsuccessnet.com

Username first_last
PW 6 characters minimum--district standard is district pw

Everything a student accesses is what is assigned by the teacher with the exception of the 2-d print (same as their text books)

Teachers can generate tests and have students complete end of level/benchmark, etc.

mypearsontraining.com is key because teachers can get inservice on demand
envisionMATH page has tutorials for teachers

Good idea to have teachers go over the overview tutorials for the appropriate grade level

Everything in print is also digital (appx 60% more available
digitally than printed)

Tools4MATH - online manipulatives

DimensionM- game environment

ExamView Test Generator has to be loaded to the hard drive.

Can open lessons online and use PDF or with digital resources

All student data is purged in the fall.

All teachers have DVD-ROMs in case the network is down or something.

Teachers can use a .pdf with an interactive white board and save the worksheet digitally.

Click Check computer settings from the home page. You will see green check marks if you have what you need. Flash and Shockwave will be required to use the system. It will say click here to check _____.

iPad users may have problems with the Flash issue.

This program is bi-lingual with a click of a button.

Any change made you must log out and log back in before changes will show.

Lesson Openers:
k-2 interactive story
3-6 video


View-teaching the lesson
Assign-assigns lessons for kids to do online
Information-UT standards and core, including new core
Teacher's Edition

Each lesson takes appx 60 min to complete
They are broken down into Learn, Guided Practice, and Quiz

Guided Practice allows you to go from print to interactive and back and forth.

There are online manipulatives that go with the practice sections.

Quiz is a quick check for understanding.

Consumables for K-2. Not sure about 3-6.

Resource can have k-6 content

Other grades only have their grade level -- choose all three from one grade level.

Print Parent Letter from the roster screen. It shows their username, password, and tech support phone numbers.

The district can also upload the classes.

There have to be students added in SuccessTracker to manage.

Use Parent Night or Back to School Night to have parents go into the lab to see the product.

CBT

This testing has been extremely frustrating at times, and fine at others. The problems we incurred were not in our control. There isn't enough bandwidth at UEN to support all of the schools in the state of UT hitting their servers at the same time. I'm at Park Lane today, and we had machines freeze at the beginning of testing but everything seems be working fine now. It is strange how sometimes it is very easy and other times very difficult. I do hope they get these issues resolved before next year!

iWorks Training

I enjoyed teaching this class with Jethro. He is a very dynamic instructor and I learned a lot from him, just as the participants in the class did. We only had 9 in our class, but that was a very good size for us to be able to provide more one-to-one help. We took turns with helping the class members.

I look forward to this type of training in the fall as we plan for the "23 Things" professional development opportunities.

Butler PD Pilot

The pilot is going extremely well. I will upload some photos from the training. The teachers are engaged and seem excited about this opportunity. I will post the results from the trainings after Tuesday's training.

Butler PD

I am excited about the PD pilot that our team is starting tomorrow and Tuesday at Butler Elementary. We are going to provide full day substitutes for each teacher so that he/she can learn how to integrate doc cams and projectors, as well as eMedia and the productivity lab software in their new computer lab.

The principal asked for these PD days, and Scot graciously approved them. If this is successful, we hope to be able to offer this to more schools in the next school year.

Circumference and Area of circles

These videos were done using a doc cam. Students created circles and wrote the scripts to teach how to find the area and circumference of circles.

C-Forum 3/26/10

ScreenToaster.com

Allows you to capture screen shots and video. It looks good because you can embed the video right into the capture. It would have been good to use with the videos for skyward.

Line2

The new iPhone app that will allow you to merge two numbers into one phone. The app costs $0.99 and the service is free for the first 30 days, then $15.00 for each month thereafter. I am thinking that I want to do this. I have two iPhones now. I would like to be able to only have to tote one phone instead of two. I'm going to do more research on this.

There was interesting discussion from districts. A lot of budget cuts across each district.

Cory Little talked about his history wiki. He said he will never teach without a wiki again. He was using moodle but moved back to the wiki.

Saw a great video from Ocoee Middle School in Orlando.

Also learned photosynch. It is a PC based Win product. I like it, but I think photoshop and photobooth will do the same thing.

New Netsafe cards for all schools in UT

Smokescreengame.com

Company in England and they do creative internet applications. Designed to help facebookers understand the dangers out there.

GPS with Kindergartners 3/16/10

I had the pleasure of doing a GPS activity with kindergarteners last week. They were eager and had a great time. I had parent volunteer for each group of 4 kids. The parents helped the kids find two waypoints, but the kids took turns with the device. I instructed the kids to use the compass on the GPS. What surprised me about this is the number of parents who had no idea how to use a compass!

Reflections

Today was a great day. I had the pleasure to work with a first grade class this morning, reading a story to them, then was asked back into the classroom this afternoon for a math place value lesson. This teacher is EXCITED about using her document camera with her first grade students. I am very excited to be working with the teachers I get the opportunity to. I love my job!!

1st Grade Doc Cam

Here is a first grader showing place value using the doc cam.

Senteo Clicker Training

Today was a very productive day for me. I was able to get into a very reluctant teacher's classroom to work with her kids on a clicker activity. The kids loved it! She is now excited about using the clickers in her classroom. I am meeting with her later today to plan, and she is going to use the clickers for the next few weeks. Yea!

Podcasting in Ed Tech Meeting

We are divided into groups and creating Podcasts using Garage Band. We had a lot of fun with Wade. He decided he wanted out podcast to be about brownies, so our group each talked about our favorite brownies. That Wade is crazy! This was a fun activity.

I learned about ducking. It's not just for hunting or shooting anymore.

Grant Reading at Qwest

It was a very interesting day. I learned a lot of great ideas from the proposals that we read and listened to the group read. We approved funding of $50,000 to be used in technology integration. I really liked some of the grants, but others were a bit weak. We would have liked to fund more. We were unable to fund the whole amount requested for one of the grants. The diverse personalities were also interesting for me to see. It is interesting that even though we are all educators, we all have very different opinions and experiences. What one group found fund-"worthy", other groups thought they were not that special.

I hope to be included next year. I think having this year's experience will be helpful.

Second Grader Creating Shapes

This video is of a second grade student creating shapes using Pages. The students had to draw the shapes, then manipulate the words to match the shapes. We were unable to create a hexagon in the time allowed, so we stopped with the triangle.

C-Forum January

LAN School Demo-good for working with lab activities.
SIRS Data base
Pros and Cons good for secondary.
You can play the audio files which will read the file for you.
Good Online Graphic Organizer. Saves to the SIRS server.
You can email it to your email address after you save it.
There is a 2-hr credit course from UEN on Pioneer Library. It is completely online.

NetSafe
netsafeutah.org

eMedia
Phase 1:
new rollout of:
Blackboard
replace the existing system
New logos
Blackboard integration
new browsing strategies
catalogs
content
Basic functionality is retained.
Can still browse by Utah core
Reading Rainbow-available in snip-its and also in the full episodes
Phase 2:
PBS' Digital Learning Library and other digital repositories.
Safari is best for macs and Firefox for PCs
No longer a Download Now. Right/click then save as.

Thinkfinity
ArtsEdge
Making connections with arts and core curriculum
Use various art forms in the regular curriculum
Explore is hands-on interactives
Always highlight the current day in the arts, a Look, lesson, learn activities.

The photography activity is very good.
There are few interactives but not that many
Comparing Cinderella Stories- you would need to read the different stories.

USOE Update
Utah will be applying for Race to the Top
Every district will get somewhere from $50k-$2.5m per year
Qwest Grant Reading next Friday
Idaho is trying to build a UEN.
They have funding from the state and a foundation to begin.
They are beginning with videoconferencing.
They don't have a good backbone like we have.
They are using Title II D money.
They need help with Grant Proposals
February 16 /webinar/ instructions, etc.
Will come back together the first part of March to
see who gets the funding
Rick needs 20 readers.

Video Conferencing

I've been spending the better part of the past two days looking
at good resources for Videoconferencing. I have found the COSI
and CILC are the best so far. While NASA has some good ones,
I believe that these other sites offer more of a variety for our younger
students, and of course, a wider variety of curriculum topics.

AverPens

My plan is to teach at least one lower grade and one upper grade class about AverPens.
I will develop and help facilitate a lesson to integrate AverPens.

Wikispaces

I am teaching a session at UCET on Wikispaces.

iMovie/Podcasting

This podcast was my first at comparing both Garage Band and iMovie. iMovie was MUCH easier for this type of podcast. I used the illustrations that the students made along with their podcast recordings. In putting the illustrations with the audio files, it was much easier to use iMovie than Garage Band due to the length of each podcast track and matching it with the illustrations. The study of Ancient Egyptian cultures and customs is part of the sixth grade core.