Snapshots of Technology Integration

Today was the official kick-off of the Upstate Technology Conference in Greenville, SC. Chris Craft was the keynote speaker for the conference. I was so excited for Chris to get the keynote. Chris has been a friend for a few years and I have seen him grow in to an amazing presenter.

The keynote entitled, Superpowers for Everyday Heros was a exciting journey in to the life and classroom of Chris Craft. He shared many stories of how to get students engaged in his class. In class 326, he incorporates technology in all aspects of learning from settling the class with his gcast of what is happening in the class and the daily riddle to the opportunity for students to create video to show others how to speak spanish, specifically Jeff Corwin. Chris also shared his newest venture is SpanTube, a YouTube for teaching foreign languages. This was an idea that spawned from a class discussion with his sixth grade students.

Chris creatively incorporated his computer’s alter ego, Maria, and video of students to help him through the presentation. It was evident that the man standing on the stage was full of life and passion for kids. We need more Chris Crafts in education.

I enjoyed the Twitter dialogue throughout the day. Besure to search Twitter #UTC2009 and #UTC2009craft to catch up on the conversation. It was great to see the social side of technology so alive in a South Carolina conference. It shows a change is a comin’ to educators in the state. People are starting to connect across the state and world.

The coolest part of the day is I was able to meet up with about 20 tweeps from South Carolina at the Wild WIngs Cafe. The opportunity to sit and talk over a meal allowed for so much sharing and learning. As the conversations flowed across the table it was as if the Twitter feed was speaking outloud. Changes in topics, movement to listen more carefully to what was being said, and laughter. It was great to meet so many of the Twitter folks in person and I hope these relationships continue to develop a collaborative tight network in the state. We need to unite and move forward with technology integration!

Well, I am excited to see what tomorrow holds… Can you believe it TWO blog posts in TWO days?!? WhaHoo! Being around people who are as excited about technology education as I am inspires me to share. I wish every day were like today.

Its that time again! UTC is officially here. I arrived in Greenville, SC today. The official kick-off for the conference is tomorrow morning. Of course I have spent the evening prepping for my presentation tomorrow - Building a Classroom without Walls.

But the evening started with a little socializing with people from my Twitter Personal Learning Network. I met up with @crafty184 - Chris Craft, @cathyjo - Cathy Nelson, @Shirley8153 - Shirley Smith, @jmccotgcs - Jeff McCoy and met a new PLN member @sraweltz - Stephanie Weltz. I must say this is the best thing about attending conferences. The opportunity to talk and share with people who know your struggles and successes is refreshing.

One of the topics we discussed tonight was blogging. I haven’t blogged in months. Not because I haven’t had ideas but because I just haven’t had the time or should I say made it a priority. Being around these folks makes me want to make it a priority. Funny thing is… I have been carrying around hand written notes (who does that anymore) of a blog post on transparency that I have not written yet. So take this as my word, I will write the post… soon.

Today marked the day that Ashton Kutcher reached 1 million followers on Twitter and Oprah sent her first tweet. What does this all mean? To me, not much. Other than I am afraid Twitter will break more often. I am happy that people are finally catching on to Twitter but Twitter has been a special place for me over the last 18 months. I sent my first tweet October 16, 2007. When I did I wasn’t sure what I was doing or what it all meant. I didn’t realize that maybe I was being a digital pioneer in education. But what it turned in to is this wonderful community of people who help me, support me, and challenge me to continue exploring how technology can impact education.

I noticed recently, (before the Ashton and Oprah bandwagon) there was a change happening in Twitter. It was subtle but it was happening. When I first joined most people used comic avatars or images that symbolized themselves instead of an actual picture of themselves. As our education Twitter community has grown a personal touch has come to Twitter as well. Now when I log in to TweetDeck I see more people than avatars. This has been really great. Of the people on my network I probably have only met 20% of them face to face. So now with this transition to real images for avatars helps me connect a little more with the people on my screen.

So to my Twitterverse, I just want to thank you for helping me become a better advocate for technology in the classroom.

Over the last week I have been able to spend a lot of time learning from those people in my social network because I have been laid out with a back problem. Surfing the internet helped hours of time pass. One of the things I was intrigued with is how my network has grown in the last year. Not only grown but expanded outside of education. When I first started growing my network, it was only educators but now I think I have a little of everyone in it. I use tools like Twitter and Facebook to organize and communicate with my network.

Facebook has a great app called Friend Wheel. The app allows you to connect all of your friends in Facebook. When I refreshed my Friend Wheel it reminded me of a Keynote session at UTC last summer. Ewan McInstosh talked how teachers/educators are very comfortable talking with one another but not with others. Seeing my new wheel shows that I am finally taking that leap outside the education world.

You don’t have to be able to read the names. Just look at the connections. Are you connected? What are things that you do to build your network and connect with others?

If you can’t tell I am very excited about getting my MacBook. On Friday, I made a trip to the Apple Store in Charlotte. Here are some photos from our first meeting.

I have to say I am in love…. The MacBook is so sleek, clean, and easy to use. About 10 years ago I had a MacInstosh desktop and loved it but changed to a PC because at that time it was a little harder to be in a PC education system. Now the integration with Mac to PC is virtually seamless and I am happy to be back with Apple.

Anyway, if you have any words of advice, hints, shortcuts, or things you love about your Mac share them in the comments below!

A while back I received an email from a teacher at one of my elementary schools. Kim Spivey is a Reading Strategist at South Kilbourne Elementary School and was thinking about ways her students could improve their reading out load. She wanted to do a podcast of her students reading their character narratives of  based on The Diary of Anne Frank. Kim was working with three students who were in 4th grade. While reading the book, students learned about point of view. The short podcast looks at the point of view of Hitler, Anne Frank, and Anne Frank’s father during World War II. In their brief writings they covered the over all tone of the person. Prior to me coming to help. Kim’s students did all of the writing and practiced reading out loud.

The day arrived to record. I showed up in the class and the students were excited and nervous to make this podcast. With a few practice tries we successfully recorded their voices as they tried to get in to character. Now it was time for the fun… adding affects to set the mood and tone.

Here is what they came up with? What do you think? Not bad for 4th grade huh?

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While surfing youtube tonight… I found this video that I can TOTALLY relate to. I love my I.T. guys and when they help me out I take them cupcakes. ijustine does just that for Twitter. Isn’t that the best way to someone’s heart? LOL Enjoy!

I have had a lot of compliments for my last post on Building a Classroom with out Walls pt. 1. Tonight, I watched a Microsoft commercial that summed up why we as educators need to begin to move in this direction if we have not. Microsoft’s new ad campaign is called “Life without walls.” Take a look…

Kylie at the age of 4 can do something that a lot of grown adults are afraid of doing. One of the collaborators on my survey, Steve Dembo gave the following advice,

Be bold, don’t be afraid. Don’t hesitate to comment, don’t hesitate to befriend ‘big names’, don’t think twice about contacting people directly or replying directly to them. Be active. Don’t be afraid to register for sites, to create usernames or to do something goofy. Don’t be afraid to fail, because you will…. often. Celebrate your successes and do so publicly. Don’t refrain from sharing because you aren’t the first, or because you don’t think it’s worthwhile. Let other people be the judge of that. And give them the option of deciding. You may not think it’s worth sharing, but other people might.

Don’t be afraid of being the first either. If you have an idea, act on it. Don’t wait for somebody else to.

Be active. Be the innovator. Be the change.”

For Kylie’s sake… as Steve says, “Be the change.” Reach this child. They are all in our schools whether we are ready or not.

So are you ready to build the foundation for your classroom without walls? We hear buzz words like 21c. learning, classroom without walls, RSS feeds, social networking, Personal Learning Network, blogging, wikis… What does this all mean? To answer that… you as the teacher need to look in to some of this before you ask your students to dive in.

I would like to focus on how you can create a Personal Learning Network (PLN). Daniel R. Tolbin defines a Personal Learning Network “as a group of people who can guide your learning, point you to learning opportunities, answer your questions, and give you the benefit of their own knowledge and experience.” Who needs to be in the PLN? Anyone who can point you to learning opportunities you are interested in.

How do you create a PLN? To answer this question. I pulled the resources of my PLN.  One of the ways that I have created a PLN is through a website called Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging site that wants everyone to answer “What are you doing now?” Seems silly but we educators can take anything and make it an educational tool. Educators from across the world use this site to share resources and ask questions to help further their technology integration skills.

So last night I sent out this call…..

Within a few hours I had all of the results posted here. The responses are so wonderful. Please feel free to read the entire document but I have summerized their responses below.

1. Begin reading educational blogs. Who should you read? Well that is really up to you but I can suggest some great educators to start with. In no particular order, here are some of my favorites.

Dean Shareski

Alec Couros

John Pederson

Will Richardson

Vicki Davis

David Warlick

Cathy Nelson

Chris Craft

Jeff Giddens

Steve Dembo

Lee Kolbert

2. Begin using an RSS aggregator to keep up with your blogs. Google Reader is the reader I use. If you like to find out more about it, take a tour. Bloglines is another aggregator that is commonly used. I consider my Reader to be a big newspaper. Everyday the blog posts I am to subscribed all all feed into my Google Reader. All I have to do is open it and all the posts are there just like the articles in a news paper.

3. Begin commenting on blogs. Become a part of the conversation.

4. Instead of keeping your bookmarks on your computer, begin using a social bookmarking site such as Delicious. Lee Kolbert, a Technology Programming Specialist from Boca Raton, FL suggests, “Using an online bookmarking tool, such as Delicious.com, allows teachers to bookmark their bookmarks online and access them from anywhere. From there, I recommend teachers share their Delicious usernames and add each other to their networks. To build a global network, teachers can start to click through and add other users who have similar interests.”

6. Alec Couros suggests, “try microblogging (twitter or plurk). Find other educators that are passionate about social networking. See the resources people share. Have fun. Learn. Contribute. Twitter in education is a type of gift economy. People help each other. People learn from each other. We all benefit.” and “Experiment with other media and social network. Try Facebook. Browse Youtube and TeacherTube. Become aware of how all of this work. Find out how kids are using it.”

When you are ready to try Twitter or Plurk, here are a few tips.

A. Fill out your bio information. People in the education network are more likely to follow you if you have bio information about what you do.

B. Find someone you know or respect in the educational world and begin following the people they follow.

Now go off and explore…. build your network… “If you build it, they will come.” - Field of Dreams

Do you students ever experience anxiety over performing in front of the class? Earlier this month I worked with Anne Shealy at Hand Middle School to try and combat student anxiety with performance. She decided she wanted the students to perform their monologue by recording it as a podcast. The students really enjoyed recording because they were able to use an iPod to do so. I asked Anne to reflect on the process and here is what she had to say.

Podcasting is something that I had wanted to try for several years now. I subscribe to several podcasts and felt that there was definitely potential for using podcasting in the classroom. I found the chance when my students wrote monologues in response to Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Veldt.” Students analyzed a character from the story and then wrote a monologue from that character’s point of view. Students performed them in class, but I didn’t see the level of performance that I was really looking for. One boy stood lifeless in front of the room to read his while another girl just begged to go ahead and read hers because she wanted to get it over with. Of course, there were those who love the stage and did a great job hamming it up in front of the class.

By offering the students the opportunity to create a podcast, I was hoping that I would reach some of these students who might not perform well in front of a crowd. I was hoping that they would take risks with their performances that they might not have taken in front of the class. Though I have not heard their finished products, I have hopes that many of the students did just that. The boy who had once stood lifeless to present his monologue was completely engaged with the project. He had received an iPod for Christmas and loves to talk about it. I was able to watch him record his monologue and I definitely saw him move into character and bring life to his presentation.

One of the most interesting parts of this project that Ms. Sansonetti and I both noticed was the level of engagement for all of the students. By using this technology, kids were turned on. They listened intently to instructions regarding how to use it. They knew this was a privilege and they did not want it taken away. They knew that we are planning to post these on the school website so again; they stepped up their level of performance so that they could show their best work.

All of the kids loved it, but here are few comments:

“It was fun because we got to use a cool modern device. It forced me to think about how I presented my monologue and if I read too fast and if I changed my voice well enough to get across how my character was feeling at that time.” Lauren F.

“I thought the pod cast was really fun. It was cool that you never had to use a computer. The micro-mini plugged right into the iPod. I also got to know someone a little better.” Nic

“I thought the podcast was a cool and interactive way to share our monologues. It also helped by faking away some of your nerves of having to perform in front of people” Armanis

“It was fun to change from normal class into technology with the iPods and with Ms. Sansonetti.” Danny

“The podcasting was cool because it let me learn how to do podcasting. It forced me to get into a character and change into another character. Thanks for letting us do the podcasting.” Anakul

“The podcasting was cool. I had fun because I got to hear my own voice.” Jalen

“The podcasting made me very much realize that I needed to project my voice a little more and stop being afraid to talk in front of my friends.” Paris

“I thought the podcasting was easy and fun. Doing that made me read with expression which I would not usually do.” Katie L.

“The podcasting was really fun. Everyone in the class enjoyed it . . . It helped me to practice speaking with good drama and voice and mood because it made it easier without people around to embarrass you.” Collin