Something to think about.

 

Here's an example of what you can show students to get a concept across.

 

The National School Board Association each year names their "20 to Watch" list for emerging role models for education technology leadership making a positive impact on students and teachers.  We are very fortunate to have Jim Klein included in that list for this year.  Congratulations, Jim.

 Here's the link to the article:

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23368

As a follow-up to Matt's blog about backing up data, I wanted to add this.  Now that we have begun saving our data on flash/pen drives which are digital, many people think of this as a great backup.  In fact it is, but you must consider a few things.  The more you use the flash drive (in and out of the computer to access, add, or change data) it will also go bad. 

Just recently a teacher lost all of her basic communication data that she used during the year that was on a flash drive.  The data is still there, but it cannot be accessed.  We are fortunate that as staff members we have access to a personal place on the server where we can backup data as an additional source, if a flash drive goes bad. Commonly referred to the "U" drive, it shows up under My Computer when you log in with your name and password.  No one can access this unless they log in with your access (and this should actually only be you).

True the server is only accessible at your school site, but better there than losing all your data on a flash and having to recreate it from scratch.

If you have any questions about backing up your data, let me know, and I'd be glad to help.

 

This was passed on to me by Jeff Pettipas at Santa Clarita.  Imagine our back to school celebration with a keynote by a twelve year old.  Quite a speaker here.

 

I have just come across the best online spelling site ever called Spelling City.  As a teacher you can create an account (for free), create your spelling lists, and have students practice their spelling words, play spelling games with the words, listen to the words being spoken, and actually take a spelling test.  The test is then scored and the results can be printed out showing the incorrect spelling - corrected spelling and the score in a percentage.

Actually one teacher at a grade level can enter the word list and all the students at that grade level can then use the list.  Students do not need an account, they just find the list by teacher name or list name.  You can also vary the number of words on a list.  

What a unique way to address spelling in the classroom.  Oh, and by the way, students can also access this from home to practice!

Check it out:

http://www.spellingcity.com/ 

Another great video from Thacher Digital Classroom in Ojai this summer.

 

Through the last year I have been asked about additional training for teachers on the Smart Board.  In most cases teachers have received the initial training when the boards are set up as to how to connect, troubleshoot, and use the tools.  There usually isn't additional integration training for teachers which is probably the most important part of developing lessons and improving student achievement.

Many teachers think that the boards come equipped with lessons, which they don't.  They do have interactive activities, but it's the teachers who must develop the lessons aligned to the curriculum they are teaching.  More ...

We just finished our video assignment for our Trainer of Trainers class. Guess we're over achievers as we are the first finished.  Our goal was to make a video as a training example for when we conduct training sessions.  The video we created was to show teachers how easy it would be to integrate technology into their curriculum lessons.

Here it is.

 

I've been spending this week up at The Thacher School in Ojai, CA.  It's about an hour and a half from Saugus over the hill from Santa Paula off the 126.  We started on Sunday afternoon and have barely stopped except for meals.  

Some of the training has been repetitive for me, but a lot is a new exciting experience.  I've learned how to use the Goggle apps, Google pages (website), and Moodle. today is Multi-Media day.  One of the great things is that soon all teachers in Saugus will have access to California Streaming, with California standards based content to use in their classrooms.  More on that in coming months.

Saugus is so lucky to have 16 teachers attending, with 3 of us in the trainer workshops and 13 in the Digital Classroom workshops.  Everyone seems to be having a great time.

Today classes let out at 3:15 and those who wish can take the bus in to downtown Ojai. I'm hanging around the campus to work on both training projects and Saugus projects.

Maybe I'll even try to catch up on some sleep. 

Now that NECC is over and I've had a little time to absorb and reflect on some of the sessions I was able to attend, I've been following up with some  of the information I gathered. 

One of the sessions was about 21st Century Learners by Ian Jukes.  Jukes has a great website called the Committed Sardine.  If you want to know more about that, I'll let you do the search, it's not difficult to find.  He is a powerful, interesting and energetic speaker to say the least.  I must thank Jim for the recommendation.

Through his website I came across the following video that I think, without a question, is worth a  view.  A reminder that if we need our students to WANT to attend school, we have to make some changes in how we teach.  And that alone can make a huge difference in their learning.

 

 

 

In some ways today was a little disappointing as 2 of the sessions I wanted to attend were full way before the session was supposed to start.  I guess with 18,000 people it's difficult to know what to expect in room sizes for sessions.  

Moodle and "bring your own laptop" sessions seem to be at the top of the list.  As an optimist, I hope tomorrow will bring better luck.  Our presentation is at 11am, the first for the day after the second keynote.  Unfortuniatly I have to pass on the keynote to get set up for the session.  

I did attend a couple of good sessions (got some great classroom activities using PowerPoint in unique ways) and met some more new friends from Indiana.  I'm trying to absorb all that I am learning from others as this is also my training ground.

One new tidbit I picked up today emphasizing how fast technology is moving is that the Internet as we know browsers (Firefox, Explorer) has only been in existence for 17 years.  The first browser being Mosaic.  

I haven't mentioned the exhibit hall.  I did spend about an hour there today in two different segments.  Way overwhelmming.  Not sure I want to go back.

Today it's my head that hurts.

This year the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) is in San Antonio.  For me it's both a little work and vacation as I've never been to San Antonio before.  If you can ignore the heat and humidity, along with thunderstorms expected any time now, it's a beautiful town.  

We've walked to the Alamo, the Riverwalk, Mission San Fernando and already been to events at the Convention Center.  Yesterday afternoon in front of the Alamo there was a bull riding event.  Interesting being close up to a real Brahma bull.

 

As far as tech events yesterday I participated in a unique "unconference" called the edubloggercon. More ...

For any of you who have followed our 2 "blogging" communities, you will have noticed the explosion in the use of the Student Community.  If you haven't, please take a look.  

The two Saugus learning landscapes provide teachers and students a place to connect, collaborate and, especially for students, provide them with a place to post their creative works for an authentic audience. 

We have students posting from first to sixth grade, and David Lindsay's sixth graders have recently been very creative with posting essays, classroom designs, and Roman mosaics.

The one huge incentive for all these posts has been the comment area.  Just think how great it is to have your work reviewed and commented on.  For Saugus teachers, if you are interested in having your students participate in the Student Community, let me know, I'd be glad to help.  If you are outside the Saugus USD, let me know anyway.  I can always direct you to a resource to get you started.  We love to collaborate here.  

A few of us were fortunate to have the opportunity  to attend a one day conference in Long Beach created by Technology and Learning, called Tech Forum.  The highlight of the forum for me was the chance to hear Alan November, an educational consultant,  believed to be the first major educator to embrace modern web technologies commonly referred to as Web 2.0 in elementary, middle, and high schools.(Wikipedia)  My post title is a quote from his presentation on Friday.

Among many things that he covered were giving students the "courage to have a global voice".  Amazingly enough, that is just what Saugus USD has done with its Student Community.  More ...

I've been playing around with the recording process on the Interwrite Pad.  This can also be done with any interactive white board.  Jim and I have been working on compressing the size of the files and converting them to Quicktime for easy access and posting on websites, wikis, and in the Communities. 

So here is my lesson on Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Factor.

 

I've also found that without any of the classroom tools, you can use Sketchcast to record your lesson.  More ...

There are constantly new tools available for teachers and students.  With teachers moving away from the front of the room with the use of slates - Interwrite Pads, Wacom Pads and Airliners, one of the newer tools being piloted in various school districts across the United States is the eeePC.  This Ultra Mobile Device (UMD) looks like a shrunken laptop.  It is Linux based, boots in 20 seconds, is wireless and contains all the Internet access and productivity tools a student needs in a one to one computing environment.  One of the great things is that with no moving parts (example: CD drive) it is very durable.  A good thing around students.

They are even selling them at Costco.  The more memory, the higher the cost, but the basic version, which is quite sufficient is $300. 

Below is a picture. 

 

 

Some of our teachers have found it motivating for students to post or read their writing and poetry.  This give the students an authentic audience to comment on what they have done.  The only problem here is the lack of comments on the Student Community.  

If you have a little time to take a look at what our students are doing on the Student Community, please take a moment and comment on a student's work.  You can even have your students comment on their work.  There is no need for an account or log in, jut click on the word "comments" at the bottom of the student post and scroll down to the comment area.  We do ask that you do identify yourself in at least a general way, like "A Saugus 4th grade teacher", "an interested parent", or "a North Park student".

Don't expect the comment to show up immediately as all comments have to be cleared by the students' teacher first.  

It's amazing what a few words of encouragement can do.

Here's the link to the Student Community

https://webapps.saugus.k12.ca.us/community4students/ 

Thanks,

Arlene 

At the moment Desiree Spang and I are at the TRLD 2008 conference in a very rainy San Francisco.  This conference focuses on how technology is used to assist struggling students.  One of the big topics here is RTI which is on all our minds.

There have been some very interesting and helpful sessions with lots of ideas.  Then again,  as at all conferences, there are some presentations that can definitely use a little more focus. Desiree and I presented on her Spang Gang, but I'll leave it to her to post and tell you how it went.  My new tech innovation that I am learning about is Voice Thread.  More on that later.

Arlene 

Recently I've been asked about varying websites for teachers who wanted to integrate technology into their lessons.  Even places to have students use in the classroom during group rotations.  I've decided to periodically list a few that I come across that can easily be bookmarked for students and teachers to use.

First is the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives.  This site is great.  It's broken down by standard strand and grouped by grade level.  Students can use these activities on a stand alone computer, with an interactive whiteboard, or a wireless mouse pad like the iPen, Airliner or Interwrite pad.  

Try out the Money activity in the 3rd grade  number sense section. 

http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

 

Next is not so much a website, but a newsletter with links to multiple themed websites.  Eduhound is part of T.H.E. Journal (Technology Horizons in Education) and focuses on the classroom. You will receive a weekly newsletter with information on the current theme.  The link below is the current edition with a calendar theme.  Check it out.

http://www.thejournal.com/the/newsletters/eduhound/currentissue/ 

 

Heres' one more that is a great Literature one.  It's called Lit2Go.  The University of South Florida has created hundreds of grade level mp3s that can be downloaded or just listened to on the web.  Everything from classics to poetry like Three Blind Mice. A great listening center.

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video/Literature/Poetry/Lit2Go-Audio-Files-for-4th-Graders/23885

 

I hope these websites are helpful.  Please feel free to post information about great websites you know about.  I'll be posting more later.

Arlene 

There have been many conversations of late about Smartboards, and other new hardware to add to classes.  It’s great to have all these things in the classroom, but it’s also very unfortunate to see the initial enthusiasm wane after teachers realize that most of the hardware requires curricular input to align to our texts and to design lessons to communicate the curriculum.  And this takes time, a very precious commodity in a teacher’s life.

 

I want to be perfectly clear here that I have nothing against Smartboards.  In the hands of a teacher who puts in the time to access lessons aligned to the curriculum, and allows their students the opportunity to interact with the board, I think they are great.  But too often the interactive part of the board (and this applies to all brands) is done only by the teacher without any student involvement except to watch.  How does this change what we are already doing by standing up in front of the class?  And “canned” lessons do not always stress standards as needed.More ...

I've been thinking about this for several days after reading Jim's posted questions about the effect, or lack of effect, of the various student improvement software that is used.  I know that here in Saugus we have Reading Counts, Read 180, Read Naturally, Study Island, and several other programs used both in the classroom and in Intervention sessions.

At the moment I think the results are still out.  Mostly because there is more to improving student achievement than just providing software programs that taunt their expertise.  Don't get me wrong, I do believe that these programs can definitely make a difference in student achievement, but there is more to just providing software for students to use.

 We have become so entrenched in teaching the curriculum we often don't look at the assessment data that should drive our curriculum and intervention.  Do we need a reading program that emphasizes comprehension when what some students need is word analysis and vocabulary?  Do we need a math program that works on application  when students don't know their basic math facts?   Unless we take the time to determine what each child needs in our classrooms - using just the STAR data, or using Edusoft - and following up with regular benchmarks to determine that the students have mastered the standard, we will never be able to provide in class, or out of class, intervention to improve student achievement.   

There are plenty of software programs out there that provide the necessary skills for students to improve as long as we know what a student needs.  For those students who have participated in consistent intervention directed at their individual needs and where benchmarks have been taken, it would not surprise me that their scores have improved.

 

For those of you posting podcasts in either the Teacher Community or the Student Community I recently came across a bug that sometimes prevents the playing of podcasts from the "View All Posts" area.  Jim has told me that it happened several weeks ago with the latest update of Firefox.  I haven't tried yet, but if someone is using IE (Internet Explorer) it may not be a problem.

When a person goes to listen to a podcast in the "View All Posts" listing, it won't play.  If they click on the post icon, and go to the actual post area for that person, they can play the podcast just fine.  If you are notifying anyone of the web address to find yours or your students' podcasts, make sure you give them the address of the actual post.  Click on the Podcast title to get there.

Hope this helps.

Arlene 

For any who use the Teacher Community you may at times need to add a hyperlink to your blog to share with others.  I noticed when I went to do this the other day that the hyperlink icon is shaded out.  On my query Jim explained that to activate the hyperlink all you need to do is to highlight  the item you wish to hyperllink and the icon becomes active.  Once active you can create the hyperlink.

 I hope this provides helpful to you.

Arlene 

For those of you who make use of this great source, I wanted to let you know that it has changed names.  Marco Polo is now Thinkfinity.  Verison, who ownes and manages the site, has left the main portion of the site as it always has been with the various subjects and curriculum  links, but plans to expand the site even further.  If you have never checked out this site, please do.  There is everything from interactive lesson plans to great downloadable maps. 

Here's the link:
www.thinkfinity.org