Two For Tuesday: 11-6-07

I've compiled all of the Two For Tuesdays (and will continue to do so) on the WHS Wiki page.

1. Evaluating Websites - A quick and dirty way to grade a Website
Thanks to Deeth Ellis, our librarian, for alerting me to this great blogpost and excellent resource for evaluating Websites. You can read about it here.
Check it out, it could be a really useful tool for a research project!

2. Podcasting resources -
All Mac computers come with GarageBand software which can be easily used for podcasting. I've created some How To Movies to get started with GarageBand:

I am going to be presenting at the MassCUE technology conference on Thursday, November 14th on Book Review Podcasting. I have been assembling resources for the presentation on a wiki. This is a work in progress (until the 14th). I'll be adding my slide show and other resources as I finish them.

What Do You Stand For?

According to Robert Evans, the author of The Human Side of School Change, this is an essential question that all leaders must ask themselves. He also suggests that a motto is much more effective than a lengthy mission statement or a long list of goals or values. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, trying to frame what I "stand for" into a motto. So far I have narrowed it down to three:

1. Empowering Students and Teachers to
Succeed in the 21st Century!

There is a lot we don't know about the world that will face our students when they are done with their "official" schooling, but we can probably agree that it will include technology. I believe it is our responsibility as educators to teach students to successfully, critically and competently navigate the 21st century technology landscape. In order to help students to do this, we must first feel comfortable and confident about doing this ourselves. I am committed to supporting both my students and my colleagues (and their students) in their efforts to make this happen.

2. Celebrate the Challenges!

According to Evans, Motorola's 1986 motto was "We Celebrate Noble Failure." Carol Dweck would have been proud! I often hear teachers talk about the many challenges that they face when trying to use technology in the classroom. And I completely agree, the network, the computer, the software, the connection, the browser, the operating system will all present a problem individually or collectively at one time or (and) another. How you and your students work to solve the problem is the key. Which leads me to my third motto...

3. Solving the Problem IS the Work!

An essential component to success in the 21st century is being able to work your way through those technology obstacles. Every time you or your students find a solution to a network, computer, software, connection, browser or operating system problem you are succeeding in the 21st century! That is why it is essential that you put yourselves and your students in the position to do so.

OK - so I probably should just pick one motto. Which one do you like best? Do you have a motto? What do you stand for? Please add a comment and let me know.

Evans, Robert. The Human Side of School Change. Reform, resistance, and the real-life problems of innovation. Jossey-Bass. 2001. p. 261

Two For Tuesday: 10-30-07

1. Instant Feedback: iChat is an instant messaging application, installed on all Mac computers, that allows you to communicate with others in real time. Don't have an IM account - no problem. iChat comes with a feature called Bonjour messaging. Just open the finder, click on Applications and open iChat, log in and open Bonjour messaging, iChat will find all the people in your network who have also opened up Bonjour messaging. Here are some directions for how to do this: http://www.helponechild.org/help/ichatbonjour.html





2. International Photo Sharing: www.flickr.com is a photo sharing Website where people around the world post and share their photos. This is a great resource for copyright friendly images that you can use for presentations and Website. You can also watch photos as they get posted in real time using www.flickrvision.com. You can view a map of the world in 3D and see photos pop up in real time as they are posted. You have to see it to understand it. Give it a try.

Two For Tuesday: 10-23-07

1. Social networking for good rather than evil. There is a website called ning: http://www.ning.com where you can create your own social network around any topic you are interested in – baseball, knitting, technology… It can become a space to talk to people about your interest and find and get to know others that have something in common with you. There are some great public networks – the one I am active in is called http://classroom20.ning.com. It is a network created for teachers that are interested in integrating Web 2.0 technology tools into their classrooms.

You can also create closed networks on Ning that are by invitation only. They are very easy to set up. I have created networks for my school faculty and staff and for some of my classes. This is a new adventure - I'll write more about it in the future.

Here is a video that explains Social Networking (in plain English)




2. Increasing the text size in Word. Have you ever opened a word document and found the text too small to read? Here is a quick fix. On your Word toolbar there is a zoom drop down menu. The default setting is 100%. To increase your text size, click on the drop down menu and choose 125% or 150%.

I hate Conferences...

I've just returned from a TV/Video Educators conference. It was a frustrating experience. I am not very good at sitting and listening to people talk. The first session turned out to be a sales pitch. I thought I was going to learn something about the software, instead I was treated to an apple rep telling me how good the software is. Arghh! Thank you very much - I didn't pay money to come to this conference so you could sell me things that I already own.

The second presentation was a typical PowerPoint with lots and lots of text - and no hard or electronic copy of the presentation. The guy had an interesting project to share, but oh yeah - this is a TV/Video conference - how about showing some video...

The third presentation was much better - finally. She provided us with lots of materials (hard copy only) and showed us some interesting video both about the project and video from the project itself. She also left a lot of time for questions.

The final session was another sales pitch, this time for a TV/Video textbook written by the presenter...I went home.

In less than a month I am going to be presenting at the MassCUE conference about my podcasting project. How can I make my presentation interesting for people like me. I have one hour, one computer and a projector. I have some ideas - obviously I'm going to share my podcasts, I've created a wiki for all of the presentation materials, I want to create a podcast of people talking about the project (could be hard to do, since I am now working in a different school), I hope to use Google presentations and allow for some back channel chat and I was thinking about providing some time for people to turn to their neighbor and share some ideas.

What do you think? What was the best 1 hour conference presentation you ever attended? What made it great? Please share your ideas! I've cross posted this as a discussion over at Classroom 2.0 on ning. Please feel free to join the discussion there as well.

Two For Tuesday: 10-16-07

Two For Tuesday 10-16-07

I am going to try to share two interesting tech tips, tools or Websites every Tuesday.

1. This week I want to remind everyone about an old favorite: http://del.icio.us.
Delicious is a social bookmarking site that allows you to take your Websites with you wherever you are. You can also share them with others. I think this is one of the most useful Web 2.0 tools out there. You can learn a lot more about it by watching this video:




2. Check out Google Docs Presentation. This Google application allows multiple users to view and collaborate on slideshow Online. They can also participate in an Online chat while working together. Mark Wagner wrote an excellent blog post about this tool.

This tool has the potential to allow students working in groups to work together on a presentation without having to be in the same place at the same time. Check out this presentation about Google presentations created by Vicky Davis (no relation) along with many other educators around the world.

Multiple Intelligences

This week I attended the fireside chat with David Warlick as a kick off event for the K12 Online conference. I followed that up with a demo of Ustream.tv with Will Richardson. I ended my evening feeling like my head was going to explode.

Both experience involved watching, listening and reading simultaneously. I found it very difficult to listen to someone speaking while reading what people were writing about what was being said. I could only focus on one stream of information at a time. And, since it was live, I couldn't pause to catch my breath. When I was done, I wondered if I had learned anything. There was so much going on, that nothing really sunk in.

This was my first experience with this kind of learning. I remember when I started reading articles, blogs and discussion forums Online. At first, I printed everything out. I found it very challenging to read on the screen and make sense of what I was reading. I needed to see it on paper to process the information. I wonder if attending to multiple sensory inputs is a learnable skill. In a growth mindset it is. The more I put myself in these situations the better I will get at taking everything in.

So I am going looking forward to the K12 Online conference experience as a place to learn and improve my skills. In fact, I've even signed up to moderate one of the "As Night Falls" sessions. I hope by the end of the conference I'll have grown enough to do that.

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