Last Day! :(
I don't often hate to see a class end!

FINAL PRESENTATIONS~

Doug's Presentation:
Boyer's Meandering Thoughts
video: broken escalator - good one to show when you want to get a group unstuck
Slide show: a cool app to go and look at different presentations and get inspired
Book: Creating Innovators - Tony Wagner

Celina's Presentation:
Communication & Evaluations
Used the creative commons graphics - Googled it - great resource
Built a presentation to clearly put out there the goals and hopes for the evaluation process to her teachers.
There is an app to capture just the meaty portion of a video (Seth couldn't think of the name)

Angela's Presentation:
Brain Rules - John Medina(she read the book) - purpose of pres. was to explore new tools for presentation & share the 12 rules for Brain Rules

Carl's Presentation:
OMG - Where Have I Been?  A short PP do use with his staff to inspire technology use
"Learning to Change, Changing to Learn"
"Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear" - Anthony Robbins

Breck's Presentation:
Light at the End of the Tunnel - seeing the light technology can bring
Project - Creating a website for her Spanish class

Me!
Doug helped me solve the population of data problem and using a screen shot to capture the finished form after an observation and put it in an email.
An idea to post videos, pics, audio to a Google + site and invite everyone.

Annie's Presentation:
Visions of Grandeur: Finishing her webpage for school
Adding a Principal's Blog to the webpage - for her first blog, she did a history of her type of post. Lots of visuals (college icons, different schools she's worked at, etc...)

Michael's Presentation:
Communication Tools: Or how I spent my summer vacation
Technology is a vehicle to great pedagogy - inquiry education - tech just works great for this.
Use tech. to do things better, if not, drop it. Told the story of his dad with the paper calendar and a bunch of techies on their blackberries and no one can get to their calendar.
2 min rule idea - if you can't get an answer using tech in two min, switch mediums.
Google + - could work good for a PD follow up, staff support and group project management
Bad about Google + - cannot organize documents/files, "Pinterest" style format, social community, cannot directly upload docs
Photobooth - way to communicate - simple/quick and can attach to emails - Good: quick and no word smithing, quick follow up, quick communication of ideas. Bad: only short videos, no archiving
Go To Meeting - not worth it
Blog as an achive - multiple steps to upload, no direct upload of documents
Evernote - all in one collection system, multiplatform, collabortive ( not as good as Google +)
Websites of note:
lifehacker.com - a little bit of everything
Pintrest.com - lots of teachers are on this
IMDB.com -  internet movie data base
Metacritic.com - all movie, TV, music critic all in one place
Squarespace.com - web design templates that are slicker than Google, better for personal blogs

Robyn's Presentation:
Her journey this week to create tools for her job as a Student Manager
Updating the way they do referrals. Robyn used quicktime to record herself as she filled out the old form. She gives the step by step. Then she developed a Google form for the new referral form. She ran into pitfalls using the google form. She discovered she could put the admin. comments on the spreadsheet, but it doesn't give you everything you need. Can't print the form for parents. She won't know when teachers do the form without getting an email (doable). Teachers can't save for their personal file.
She checked out class dojo for tracking behavior. kids can see how they're doing and parents too.

Seth's Presentation:
EdModo
Explained his theory on increasing inquiry based learning.
Using Edmodo to create must do and may do lists for kids to access. Lots of built in differentiation. He'll have more time to meet with small groups of kids this way. He can create lots of links for kids to access depending on their reading level. Videos for all to access.

Yolanda's Presentation:
School website improvements

Bonnie's Presentation:
Blog for students who are using online schools for PE activities

Wow! What a great bunch of presentations! Fun to be with such a dynamic bunch of educators all week! Thanks everyone!

Thursday's Blog 7/24/14

My attempt at uploading my video to my blog. So far not working! :( Maybe it will work when I publish my post. Stay tuned.... If you are reading this I guess you'll know if it worked!
Really fun to play with iMovie today. That's one of those things I've been scared of, but wanted to try. I've seen what is possible, but what little I've tried has just overwhelmed me.

Lots of possibilities at home and school, but this is one of those things I have to keep doing or I'll forget it. Challenge will be to build 3 or 4 movies and see if I can get some muscle memory going with both iMovie and Garage Band.

Wednesday's Post 7/23/14

Thanks Angela for the concise list from Doug!

• Using either PhotoBooth or Face Time to create short videos of information for staff, in place of staff meetings or to give instruction (thanks to Michael for the idea!).
• Sharing Google tools with staff (thanks to G for the ideas and walk through Google tools!)
• Google Search Tools
• Google Translate (for parent newsletters or conferences)
• Google Custom Search Engine
• Google Safe Search
• Google Earth (for a Lit Trip or Real World Math)

LibriVox - site where you can volunteer to read a chapter for an open domain audio books or use the site to look up books you can have read out loud to students. Could kids go to this site and read books out loud? Great way to practice fluency if they could keep at it until it sounded fluent? Just checked it out... probably not :(

Lit to go - on iTunes - found examples of 1 minute trailers on children's books. Great models for teachers to use if they were trying to get kids to do book talks. 

iTunes U - dedicated to teaching and learning

REFLECTION

Another great day in class! I'm really enjoying this week. Best class I've taken in a long time.
I can't believe how well I comprehend with the doodling! I showed these to my two boys, ages 15 & 18 tonight and they were blown away. Sir Ken is their new hero! It was interesting to watch them take in both Sir Ken and Dan Pink and reflect on their own school experiences. My youngest son was truly fired up! "He's really onto something Mom!" He's starting high school and hopeful he will have a different experience than middle school where he didn't feel much autonomy. He craves it and really related to the Dan Pink doodles. There was plenty he didn't understand, but he got enough to reflect on his own experiences. We talked about rudimentary tasks and the ones he does around here for a few bucks versus the tasks he has at school. Of course grades came up. We won't go there as we're in Beaverton. :) 
The presentation tips were good reminders and I appreciate the extra resources. I read Presentation Zen a few years back after working with the authors of Daily 5 for a couple of years. I was lucky enough to present with them a few times at conferences and they were jazzed about this new presentation style they were trying. It intrigued me and I bought the book, tried to incorporate some of the ideas into my slide shows for PD's, staff meetings, etc... It's so easy to get back in the bullet mode when we're in a hurry, but it's worth it to go the visual route and be intentional about your words. 

Tuesday's post - 7/22/14

Great ideas:

• Appy Hour - Friday morning share out with teachers on great apps they have found
• Class Dojo - individual behavior management
• Google hangouts for meetings
• Center Court - not a techie thing - post a question and let the discussion begin - question today was, "What has been the best tech integration story in education that you've seen?"
• Diigo - an app that takes websites and articles, etc... allows you to highlight what you want from the reading and saves only the highlights in your library (wondering if Evernote does this?)

Yong Zhao Article:

The Medium is the Message: Educating Generation M

To engage our children, we must use their platform. And that requires major transformative actions and efforts.

But unfortunately, most of our schools underestimate the importance and complexities of media literacy, often reducing it to the teaching of technical skills.

To do any of these requires a shift in thinking, requires us to accept that world our children live in and will live in has changed. How and what we should teach them should also change. But the current education policy priorities are clearly not on preparing our children to enter this changed new world. The Common Core standards and the Race to the Top funds seem to have completely missed the reality of today’s children and the future world they will enter.

Doug Bundy - Beaverton School District - Raleigh HIlls K8 teacher

20% - The notion that autonomy/breathing room for things to get done

150' 

Innovation

Google Lit trips 

Real World Math - using Google Earth to teach math

Sketch Up - app to download

Books I must read:

Drive - Daniel Pink 

A Whole New Mind - Pink

John Medina - Brain Rules

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Reflection on the day!

Yikes, my brain is overflowing with information. Doug was great and really motivating, but it's one of those experiences where I walk away feeling overwhelmed before I start with all I want to learn and do versus the time I have and the know it all to actually do it. He did reinvigorate me with the power of Google. I keep trying to switch over to "all" Google, but get frustrated and impatient in the moment to figure things out as I'm working. I find myself going back to Word and Excel. 

I'd love to find a way to integrate it all. I feel like so much of my working day is navigating all these systems and rarely do they all talk to each other. My calendar and email don't talk to my other calendar or Synergy. Then there's the new eval system, the data warehouse, OAKS portal, and it goes on and on. My username and password list grows and grows. I feel like I'm swimming in the tech, but never getting good at any of it. Maybe that is the new normal. Someone in class used the term, "tech native." I can compare that to my search for native Spanish teachers for our dual language program compared to a native English speakers who are semi fluent in Spanish. I've learned quickly we must have native Spanish speakers teaching our kids Spanish. I'm the native English chick trying to teach Spanish to our students when it comes to technology. I'm trying REALLY hard, using the language all day, but always feeling like I'm not quite grasping the whole picture! And yet my rationale brain tells me the minute I actually grasp something technology wise, it will change and I'll be learning again! Awesome! So the learning here is to get used to feeling a bit uncomfortable, but keep reaching out and taking the risks. I won't ever be native, but fluent... maybe! 

Monday's Class 7/21

Response to video #1 - corporate leaders:

I love thinking about what the classroom could look like. Our schema for this is so narrow as the classroom hasn’t really changed since the industrial revolution. The idea of becoming a community of learners versus a classroom of learners is awesome! There is so much our students are missing out on by only relying on their 25-30 classmates and one teacher. It’s quite limiting. It's exciting to think about!

Response to video #2 - Sir Ken Robinson:

My notes:

Life is not linear - life is organic

We are obsessed with getting people to college

College starts in kindergarten - no it doesn't

We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education - everything is standardized 

People are dropping out of education because we are not feeding their passion

Children's dreams are around us everyday. We need to tread lightly

What a wise, articulate man. He challenges us to think about many of the things we get caught up in. The college comments are interesting as we are so hyper focused on this notion. I agree that we are obsessed with getting kids to college and the statistics about kids finishing college are staggering, so it makes me wonder what the end goal really is. I disagree that college doesn't start in kindergarten. The moment we capture these little hearts and minds is the moment we start instilling in them the love of learning and reaching out into the world to find their dreams, passion and potential. For many of our kids, college is a word they have never heard in their homes. It is our job to begin teaching them what the choices are. College being one of them. I do agree with him on the crazy notion of a 3 year old having a resume. I was blown away by this as I headed into the preschool world for my own son 15 years ago. I had no idea what a rat race this was. 

Response to video #3 - Sugata Mitra:

My notes:

Good teachers do not want to teach in places they don't want to 

Groups of children can learn to use a computer (hole in the wall experiment)

One computer in a village - after 14 days, kids were downloading and making their own music

If children have interest, then education happens

If there's stuff on google, why would you need to stuff it in your head?

It's the discussion that creates the photographic memory - a child in front of one computer would not get the same results. 

Granny cloud 

The implications of his study are mind blowing and the type of out of the box thinking many of us don't want to do. If this is true, do we need the complicated systems of education we still have today? So many teachers, specialists, programs, initiatives, etc... Are we spending money the right way? 

He brings up the collaboration of children and the utmost importance of this. In a heavy teacher talk system, children often don't communicate on a level they should. We know the research around English Language Development and oral fluency and visuals in learning and yet the majority of our classrooms are dominated by teacher talk and auditory learning. If we think about Blooms or any of the models of higher learning, collaborating and teaching to someone else are way up there. If students were given more time to talk to each other and teachers became more of a 'granny cloud', what might happen? Teacher talk versus student talk is a part of our school improvement plan. We have two strategies implemented. The first is the research around the age of the child being the approximate time they can attend to learning. If you have a room full of 8 and 9 year olds, you need to get the teaching across in that period of time before switching gears to some type of activity. Another strategy is the 10:2 idea. 10 minutes of input and then 2 minutes of output. For younger kids, the ratio can be adapted. Both strategies halt a teacher from hogging the air space for too long and create intentional lesson planning for more oral, visual and active learning.