Why can't I turn down the pages?

If you find something you like on a page in a book, what do you do?

Turn down page corners ...

Underline ...

Highlight ...

Jot in the margins ...

Circle ..

Draw stars ...

Use sticky notes ...

So what do you do when you find a webpage that you like?

It can be kinda hard to do the same things ...

But some of the Diigo tools can help!

Here are some other resources that might help with Diigo too:

• Diigo in the Classroom

• Getting Started with Diigo Educator Account

• An Introduction to Diigo for Educators

• Using Diigo in the Classroom  

• 12 Reasons Teachers Should Use Diigo

photo credit: quinn.anya via photopin cc

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School News: Drum Up Some Business

Let’s see, equipment… check, location… check, now that you have these things setup what’s next?  Hmm… oh yeah I need some backing to make sure that the School News is a success.

Me, I’m always one to get permission first rather than ask for forgiveness later.  So I would first talk to your school Principal about this new opportunity at the school to help students with literacy, vocabulary, reading, digital-citizenship, self-confidence and presentation skills.  How do throwing out these words help?  That is exactly what having a school news show will do for the students that are a part of the program!  Even for students that already seem to have a good grasp on vocabulary and reading can be challenged because of the presentation component. 

It’s a challenge for you as well being the teacher that has decided to take on this role, as the “Trailblazer” at your school.  If you get the ok from the Principal it is now time to get the ok from the other teachers.  Here is when having a ready to go sample broadcast where you are in front of the camera to show comes in handy.  They will get to see how you react in front of the camera, consider their student reactions and then make a decision.  You could even show the sample broadcast school-wide to students to get their reactions and interest level.  In the schools that I have seen this done the students excited about the prospect of being on the school news cast. 

With that being said now you have to figure out the process to get your students working with you on the news.  I have a few steps that seem to have worked in the past and will share them here.  By all means this is not the end all be all and you may have additional steps or comments about the process, I encourage you to leave me comments at the bottom of the article.

Step 1:  Setting up your Broadcast Team

You want to create the roles/jobs that the students will be doing as a part of the broadcast team.  Anchors, Writers, Production to name a few.  And you want to set a limit on the number of students you will have as a part of the Broadcast Team.  You want to have at least enough so that if someone is out or late there is someone to fill in.

Step 2:  Application Process

Yes I said application.  You want to have an application that students will fill out just as they would for a job.  This will give them some real world experience for life after school.  How you create the application is up to you but some things to consider including as well as the job description is a discipline policy that covers actions in and out of the classroom.  This would also outline dismissal from the broadcast team for student

infractions.  A photo release that needs to be signed by a parent or guardian. You will also want to make sure that you have writing samples from each student and notify them that they will have to complete an on camera live audition using their own material.  During this process it seems that as students want to get involved others that were on the fence come out of the wood work to apply and you tend to have far more than you could ever use.  But the great thing for this is that you will have a steady stream of backups should something happen.  If you have enough interest you could set up a rotation with multiple groups of students.

Once you have all of your applications in and have selected your team now it is time to get the magic started!

Step 3:  Putting the Pieces together

Now that you have identified the students who will be a part of the broadcast team it’s time to get things started. 

Production Team Training: Even though you have assigned everyone to their positions it would probably be best to train everyone on how to use the equipment just in case someone is not there.  The reason for this is that at some point you want this to become self-sufficient where the student have total control of the news show.

Writers:  You want to give your writers a standard script that they need to follow but that they can update and change daily.  That also have to be turned in ahead of time for review and rewrite if necessary.  Here are some standard items you can put in the script.

Daily Announcements, Birthdays, Lunch menu, Weather, Upcoming Events and Recognitions (students & teachers).  Many of these things can be done a couple of days ahead especially things like birthdays, menu and weather.  This can make things easier for students to turn in.  Also you can allow the students to research other things to put in the script.  Items like a word, joke or quote of the day, an interesting fact, something that happened in history on this date.

Anchors:The face of your newscast that can make or break the success of the broadcast.  Something that your anchors need to understand is that they need to be dressed appropriately each and every day that they are on the air.  They are representing the entire school whether or not they are on the air or not.  There are more Do’s and Don’ts for this group than the others because of being in front of the camera.  Practice is also a key component, ask them to go over the script in front of you.  Encourage them to practice at home, in front of a mirror or with others on the broadcast team.  This will help them to get over some of the jitters of being in front of the camera and help steady their speech and nervous tendencies. 

Just having these few things setup prior to jumping into the deep end will prevent a lot of problems down the road and make your School News a success. 

photo credit: woodleywonderworks via photopin cc

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The Instructional Technology Wife Swap

Educators seem to draw inspiration from the funniest areas.  Sometimes lessons evolve from an incredible experience at a teaching conference, and other times teachers just sprinkle clips from “The Simpsons” through a Language Arts presentation to make things a little more engaging.

Well, get ready, folks - this epiphany comes to you courtesy of ‘Wife Swap.’

In case you’re not familiar with the show, ‘Wife Swap’ takes two diametrically different moms and puts them in a worst-case scenario: that is, they have to live the life of their antithesis.  A strongly conservative wife gets dropped into a household of liberal nuts (their words, not mine!), or  the hippie/new-age mom has to deal with a family that believes hunting, tractors, and Jesus are the only way to live.  It’s a show that prides itself on creating conflict for the sake of entertainment.  And, of course, at the end of every episode the wives get to return home to their ‘normal’ environment, and share with their family the bits of wisdom they’ve learned from the whole experience.

This particular pairing saw an etiquette instructor swap places with a do whatever you want, free-range parenting mom.  They both had to live by the rules of their new families for a few days before switching it up and making the new families live by their rules.  So, the free-range mom struggled with formal dinners and table manners class, while the other mom had to deal with unruly kids at the grocery store who told her to “kiss (their) butts.”  Entertaining stuff, just not necessarily life-changing.

But then, when they got to set their own rules, the real education took place. The ‘kids will be kids’ wife learned that some people value respect, but was able to inject a little bit of fun into the family’s proper way of living.  The etiquette instructor showed how manners, along with discipline, could change the entire climate of a household.  Afterwards, her “swapped” husband even said something along the lines of, “I never knew my kids could act this good... but it’s what I’ve always wanted.”

People tasked with changing technology culture in schools -  instructional technologist, technology facilitators, or, my preferred term, technology coaches - are essentially living out the wife swap idea in an educational context.  They hail from lands far away, and bring with them foreign ideas of how life in the classroom should work.  It doesn’t matter that they might also be teachers, or have educational licenses, or anything else.  They are always the outsider.

And teachers, by proxy, act as the family members who are struggling to adapt. Their normal mom is gone, replaced by this new mom with whacked-out ideas about how the world works.  This person might be staying with the family, living in their home, and eating their food, but this person’s belief system simply fails to mesh with the established norm.  Essentially, if technology coaches become the unwarranted swapped wives, classroom teachers become the family members who don’t realize a little fresh perspective might do ‘em good.

Still with me?  Good… because here’s where things get a bit tricky.

See, ‘Wife Swap’ requires new wives to live the life of their predecessor for a short while.  They might put up a fight, complain, cry, and eventually threaten to leave the show, but they still have to adhere to the family norms already in place.  This does two things: first, it gives the new wife insight to the family make-up.  You ever heard the old expression, “to really understand somebody, you have to walk a mile in their shoes”?  This is the reality tv version.  An immersive cultural experience is the foundation of study abroad programs across the world because it works, and ‘Wife Swap’ is no different.

Secondly, this lets the families, or in our case, the teachers, see the new wives in a different light.  It breaks down some of those defensive barriers.  When the families see that the new wife is willing to go well outside her comfort zone, many times to the point of breaking down,  they understand that this new wife is still a wife, and mother, and everything else, but she’s different only because her past experiences are different.  Does that difference make her wrong?  No.  Is her difference of belief system a bad thing? Definitely not. Can the family now learn a little something from her?  Possibly.

It’s our jobs as educators - be it technology coaches, or classroom teachers, or directors of technology, or school administrators - to always focus on learning, and to always focus on the kids.  We let a lot of the “white noise” in educational innovation cloud those two ideas.

And so occasionally, we need to swap wives.  We have to understand together that, just because we both have preconceived ideas of what should be happening in a classroom, doesn’t mean that we’re both right.  It also doesn’t mean that we’re both wrong.  And while technology coaches are responsible for training teachers in new and exciting educational resources, those same coaches should learn as much - or more - from the teachers they’re trying to help.

This philosophy is key if we ever hope to hear our teachers say, “I never knew my classroom could be this good… but it’s what I’ve always wanted.”

photo credit: Profound Whatever via photopin cc

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Symbaloo!!!!!!

When I met with Kindergarten teachers yesterday, one of the teachers said she had seen someone using Symbaloo and would like to learn more about it ...

I use Symbaloo EDU many times each day so I was glad to share!

We started by looking at one I had created with the sites that I visit often. I explained that having all these sites in one place was a time saver for me! And the fact that I could make it look pretty and colorful only made it better!

Then I showed some other symbaloos that I have made that are smaller and might be easier for teachers and/or students to handle ...

For me it is a way of organizing resources that makes them accessible ...

Since it was getting close to time for them to get students, I said I would send some instructions and videos for them to refer to.

When I got a chance to work on that this morning, I was planning on typing out a list and taking some screenshots to make a video ...

Then I decided to see what was already out there since I did not need to recreate the wheel ...

So I started searching ...

And finding things!!!

As I was discovering more and more resources, I began thinking about a way to share these resources with the teachers ...

So I decided to create a Symbaloo about using Symbaloo in Edu!

   

I have not added much yet, but will continue to add resources as I find them!

The great thing is that I won't have to send the teachers something each time I update the symbaloo since it updates automatically!

If you have or know of any great examples/resources on how to use Symbaloo in the Classroom, please send them my way!

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What’s in a name….BYOD, MLC, BYOT?

I have taken a journey over the past 6 months or so regarding my own personal learning as it pertains to the bring your own philosophy in schools.  I have been hearing, seeing, reading and talking about it and never really knew what the big idea was.  It seemed to me to be a good idea but when I would ask people how they were using the devices most of the time I would receive a blank stare or a half-hearted “because they are great for kids to use.”  I wasn’t satisfied with this answer and needed to get more information. 

Back in April our department began working on a plan to help outline and prepare our teachers for this bring your own concept, normally termed as BYOD or BYOT.  Even though this is how most people refer to it we decided, with the guidance from Marty Creech, to rename it as a Mobile Learning Community (MLC). 

As our team worked throughout the month I began realize that I needed to change my outlook on how I saw the ways that devices were used in the classroom.  I do not have as much time in the classroom as my colleagues so I needed to do some extra work by asking question, talking with others to see what they thought of the concept.  At first when I talked to educators their ideas were that they had this great app that would help their students.  When I would ask them how would one app benefit the entire class if it is only on one type of device the response was usually a blank stare or “but it’s a really great app I found and they can use it.”  My response would be to ask if they would pass their device to a student to use or pay for the app on their device.  The usually response was I will show it on the screen for them to follow along.  Which made me think; how is this helping the students.

We looked at it from a new direction.  We said that it should not matter what type of a device a student has it should matter how they are engaged in the learning process.  I had read Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind” and Ken Robinsons’ “The Element” and had seen Pinks’ new book “Drive” and started reading it.  As I was reading and thinking about motivators and why we do things the way we do I started to think about how this could translate into the classroom.  Sure enough by May our department was hip deep in the “Process of Learning” something which grew out of many different approaches of teaching.  From Project and Problem-based learning to CERTL and Learning Focused and even Socratic methods of teaching.  We put together a Process of Learning guide that took the best things from all the others and put it into a smaller more manageable format that could be set up quickly and most of all could be used regardless of whether or not there was access to technology devices or not.

I was still not feeling comfortable in the how my limited classroom time would translate into a convincing discussion with teachers about how this new training approach and the Process of Learning.  With some guidance, coaching and assistance from my co-workers; Marty Creech and Celia Gossett, I started to feel comfortable that I could be a guiding spark to teachers during this new approach to training.  I now feel that I can talk and offer suggestions to teachers based on their needs with curriculum that I did not have before starting this process.  My co-workers have empowered me by supporting and guiding me through this learning process which has proven successful throughout the training workshops we have delivered.

photo credit: eflon via photopin cc

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Do You Have a PLN?

The last couple of weeks I have had some technology issues that I had either forgotten about or had never heard of before. I started to think of what my resources were to try and find the answers to these issues. My first issue was with flash items no longer working on a SMART Board. In the past, I would call SMART tech support and I could be on hold for a long time. So, I just kept thinking about how I could find out how to fix this problem. Then it hit me, ask my PLN (Personal Learning Network). One of my favorite PLN's is Twitter. I posted the question about flash not working anymore in SMART Notebook and asked how to fix it. I then remembered that I was following @SMART_Tech (SMART Technologies), so I went to their twitter feed. What do you think I found? That's right! I found the answer to my question. In less than 10 minutes, I had a solution to the issue. Here is a link to the solution: http://knowledgebase.force.com/articles/Troubleshooting/You-re-unable-to-interact-with-Adobe-Flash-Player-objects-in-SMART-Notebook-software-after-updating-to-Adobe-Flash-Player-11-9-X?utm_content=Active+X+issue+in+11.9&utm_campaign=Software+Updates+EDU&utm_source=Twitter%3A+SMART_Tech&utm_medium=post&WT.mc_id=Twitter%3A+SMART_Tech_Software+Updates+EDU_Active+X+issue+in+11.9.

My next technology issue was how to import a document into SMART Notebook. This time I went straight to Twitter and posted the question directly to @SMART_Tech. I also am a member of a SMART Notebook Users Group in Edmodo, so I posted the question there. Within 5 minutes I had the answer to my question. As soon as I saw what the solution was, it was a head-smack moment. I remember that from when I first learned how to use SMART Notebook but I had forgotten about it. The answer was open your document (pdf, word, etc.), click on File, click on Print, and print to SMART Notebook. Simple, right! 

My point in sharing all of this is how awesome having a PLN is. My main go-to's for learning is Twitter and Edmodo (after my awesome co-workers and boss of course). If you are not a member of either, I encourage you to join. They are both free and have great educators that are willing to help.

Image was created using Wordle. 

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An Inside Look at School News

Your Principal comes to you and asks you to start up a news broadcast at your school.  What do you do?  Where do you start?

Well, it seems like I have been living this dream for a couple of months straight now and want to share some tips and tricks with you on what I have done as I talk with schools.

Now this is just what I have done and by no means is the end all be all of setup processes but maybe you can pick up something along the way.  I will be breaking this up into a couple of blog articles because I can get pretty wordy, and I want you to come back.

So according to this scenario where do you begin? Well, at the beginning of course.

Where do you start? Let’s talk about what you need to have to get things going.  What kind of equipment do you need to have to do a newscast?

Actually this is the easiest part of the whole process.

Really, you might be thinking, yes it is.

So what should you have? Do you need to buy anything?

Whoa, hold on now let’s just take a look at what you have right in front of you first before we start trying to go through that long buying process that every school system has.

(At the end of the blog I will put in some other additional things that you could use to create a newsroom.)

Equipment:

A camera that’s it, that’s all, nothing else.

I am not talking about a Digital or Polaroid camera; I am referring to a video camera.  What type of video camera do you need?  That’s easy depending on what type of computer you have it, might be right in front of you.

Yes I am talking about a Web Camera; you know the one that is built into your laptop or one you may have purchased to go with your desktop computer.  I am of the firm belief of using whatever you have access to before buying anything.

So you have your webcam what else?  You do need to make sure that your webcam does have a built in microphone that is important.  If it does not then you will need to have access to a microphone that can plug into a computer.  I will explain a little more about sound in just a moment.  OK you have the video camera w/a microphone what’s next?

Now you need a space.

Location:

You want to make sure that you have an area set aside to be your newscast location.  It can be anyplace you have available in the school. A small area set aside in a classroom, Media Center or one of those wonderful Cafegymnatoriums.  (It took me a couple of years to be able to pronounce the word.)

The ideal location would be one that is separate from high traffic areas like a dedicated room.

I know that this is not common for most schools, so use what is available to you.

Now that you have figured out what space you are going to use what’s next?  My suggestion would be some chairs and maybe a table, a table is not always necessary though.  As long as you have a comfortable seat for your students to sit that is all that is really needed.

In this area I would also try to eliminate, as much as you can, any additional noises by using what is available as a sound break.  You could use partition walls, book shelves, mobile coat closets, desks, carpet squares, rugs or anything else that could create a noise barrier.

Broadcasting:

Now that we have our equipment and a location to broadcast from how do you get the news out to your entire school?  There are many ways to do this; I will outline a few of them that have been successful in our schools:

• A quick and easy way is to just record the newscast with the students and then post the video up for the school to see at a later time.  To do this you will need to have a computer with some sort of recording software on it.  If you are using a PC you could use the built in Windows Live Movie Maker, or if you have a Mac you may have iMovie which you can use.  Both software applications have the ability to record from a video camera and then each have some tools for editing and saving the video to your computer to post for all of the students and teachers to see.

• A second way is to use an online resource to show the newscast live.  A website that allows you to do this is Ustream.TV, the site allows you to live stream video and audio over the internet as long as you have a network connection from the computer your webcam is attached to.  You will have to set up an account on the website for streaming but it is free at least the last time I used the site it was.  You will set up the station to watch, make sure that the camera is connected and visible by the website.  Then you will get a link that you will send out to the school for classrooms to click on and watch.

Ok I mentioned before about sharing some other ideas for Equipment, Location and Broadcasting.  These are the beyond the basics of what is listed above:

Equipment:

• Video cameras:  Camcorders, singular or multiple to use with a video changer for multiple camera angles.
• Sound: Sound boards to allow for multiple microphones whether wired or wireless.

Location:

• Room:  A studio room that is already sound proof and wired for the equipment.
• Broadcasting:  Closed Circuit Systems can be used if available or a web-based broadcasting system.

This is just a small start to get a newscast going in your school.  Over the next couple of weeks I will talk more about the behind the scenes things that need to be done with student expectations and some interesting tools and techniques you can use to make your newscasts more interactive and fun so stay tuned for more.

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