Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Saturday, March 21, 2009

TI3 – Inquiry, Innovation, and Individualization

Sorry again for the unedited notes from MACUL

Working with a disruptive unmotivated population

Blended classroom

Using moodle – computerized everything he has.

Choosing to teach in the most effective manor regardless of the failed state outcomes

Teaching inquiry based requires some level of intrinsic motivation. His experience is it only works with motivated students.

Today's teacher has to be incredible. Normal won't cut it. Teachers last less than five years

Using a split class environment – computers for half and inquiry for half.

Has 16 computers for his room using a 10,000 dollar grant.

Project goals:

  • Every kid 100% engaged. They don't always finish, but they do work.
  • Inquire, Innovation (split the classs – essentially teaching 2 courses at once), individualization
  • Using 4 stations of 4 desktop computers
  • Does a physics demo using a nail bed but it doesn't work to engage.
  • Enrollement key moodle is course name small letters
  • Online Moodle assessments
  • Grade by assessment or portfolio – Demonstrate 70% satisfactory work
  • Late work is overlooked if it is completed


 

Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship - Jason Ohler


So I'm throwing my notes out to the ether in raw form.  Apologies for the errors, but I'll never get this blogging thing down if I wait for perfection. 

   Copyright is not the primary issue
  • redifining community

  • study what we use - with any tech or technique we should look at the impact, the value the cost

  • articulate our fears

  • write a new story

Every technology connects and disconnects
  • we fail to see the disconnect and understand the critical effects of any tech

  • What would the warning label be on the tech we adopt, how does it affect us socially, personally, physically.  Shine a flashlight the tools and see the scope of their impact.
Why are we uncomfortable with tech.

  • It's ubiquitous

  • it's invasive

  • it's rapidly changing

  • it's resocializing

  • sovereignty - who controls whom

  • technology is determining human endeavor - if you have the internet you will surf, if you have a car you will drive whether we need to or not.
We can have what we want
  • If you can have what we want we can have the school we want


  • It's not about the gear the it's about the story, what is the story we want to tell about our schools.  We have to engage proactively.
What's new
  • Disocciated action (place) many activities independent of where we are physcially

  • leveraged action (power) we can use a tool without seeing the effect

  • generalized action (anyone) ownership rights, copy right, asking the open ended questions about our digital actions
slideshare Jason Ohler
 http://www.slideshare.net/jasonohler
View more presentations from jasonohler.

What is our mantra?  not our mission statement
Be a de"tech"tive
Ask the questions
investigate, analyze, evaluate, and recommend.





Thursday, March 19, 2009

Six hours into MACUL

There's a lot to process when you attend a conference, but a common theme seems to be playing catch up. Schools seem ill prepared to provide just in time learning using relevant technology. Just wondering why.

Alan November at MACUL

This will be an on the fly blogging of Alan's keynote at MACUL.

Most interesting question posed so far is when will your school transition from traditional closed book tests to open sourced tests using questions designed to apply information with no limitations on source of info (computers, cell phones, groups).

Now he's discussing how we can put students to work finding the assignments that will address our most difficult concepts. Shifting control to the students.

All children will become curriculum researchers. It's important to assign roles and tasks to students. The importance of researching other viewpoints. Google search "site: ac.uk "General Gage" to refine search results.

Custom Search in Google. Design a custom search engine for your class. This would be useful for our current renewable energy unit. Must have a Google account to customize. Student designed search engines are "more fun". Collaborative: the work of one students contributes to the benefit of all students.

Screencasting tools for student demonstration. The public context of web publishing makes student work important. A different voice explaining a concept may have a greater impact on learning amongst peer groups than the single voice of the teacher according to research.

Student Jobs: Research design team, search engine design team, tutorial design team.

Adding technology to schools is not enough. Real jobs are what make learning important.

Information and global communication planning versus technology planning. Assume we need equipment and move on to the bigger picture of what information and communication we going to generate.

Apologies for any typos.

Monday, January 26, 2009

RESA Think Tank Sign-in tutorial

We can use ning.com's social networking tools to help members of the RESA Think Tank stay informed about upcoming events, discussion topics, projects, and technology demonstrations. Please watch the tutorial below for help getting started with your RESA Think Tank invitation.

Monday, December 1, 2008

iPod Touch in the Classroom

I have been toying with the idea of iPod touches in the classroom for some time. After meeting my wife's cousin from California at Thanksgiving in Indianapolis I am now even more interested. My wife's cousin works for Apple's education department and she was able to share with me some very exciting applications for the iPod touch.

The two applications that intrigued me most were the graphing/scientific calculator applications and the potential use as a classroom response system. We have been investigating how to replace our aging TI graphing calculators and how we might purchase a classroom response system. Perhaps the iPod touch would satisfy both needs.

I was impressed by the ease in which a 10 year old and even my 18 month old could interact with this device. My wife's Aunt was equally comfortable navigating the applications and using the device. I own a Nokia N810 mobile internet device which has some similar features to the touch, but it is not nearly as user friendly.

Anyone out there using the iPod touch in schools? I've started my quest to explore the potential.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

E-mail directly to blogger

A colleague asked me if you can send an e-mail from a cell phone directly to blogger. Yes you can! And it's relatively easy. Here's a link to the step by step instructions. http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41452

In fact that's exactly how I'm posting now. Minus the cell phone.
--
Kit Hard
Teacher Consultant for Technology Integration
Academic Transional Academy
hard.kit@sccacademy.org
(810) 455-4199

Frog Guts!!!

Students at the ATA are using technology to practice frog disections before they disect an actual frog at http://www.froguts.com/flash_content/index.html. Not all of the content on this website is free, but the free demos are a great way to learn the steps and make mistakes before getting their hands dirty :).




Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Word 2007 and Universal Design for Learning

I am often asked to read tests aloud to students with I.E.P. and 504 accommodations. I usually find it difficult to find an appropriate pace for a group, and students rarely ask to have questions repeated.

One solution is to use the audio insert feature in Microsoft Word 2007 (the feature is also available in previous versions, but may appear differently). The feature is easy to use once you've set up a shortcut on the "quick access toolbar"

The screencast below walks through the steps for inserting audio in to a document. But why stop at tests? Inserting audio clips into your documents is easy, useful, and a nice alternative to the computer voices used in screen reading programs.


Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Quizlet

One of my favorite education technology blogs "The Power of Educational Technology" by Liz Davis, recomended the website Quizlet.  This website is chalk full of premade flash cards covering a variety of subject areas, but I was most impressed by the ability for students and teachers to create their own flash cards and to develop study groups around shared flash cards.  There's even an iPhone application.

Check it out and feel free to post classroom uses and examples in the comments section.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Lit2Go = Free Audio Books with study guides

Lit2Go and Project Gutenberg are two great resources for human and computer read audio books. Both sites are free to use and make texts more accessible for all of your learners.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Using Google Docs in the Classroom

Howie DiBlassie, the keynote speaker for the November 4th PD day, reminded me of a useful classroom application of Google Docs. In classrooms with limited computer resources a teacher can create a generic classroom gmail account and have individual students contribute to a shared classroom resource such as class notes (Google Docs), research (Google Notebook), blog posting (Blogger). I do recommend changing the password on this account frequently as a security measure. Please watch this video reflection for more information.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

November 4th PD Day

Wow! It was a whirl wind tour of Google's Greatest hits. I couldn't have asked for a better group of participants. I hope to keep this conversation going and look forward to hearing where this journey goes. Don't forget to check out my Google Site Page for suggestions, tutorial, and resources for creating your own Connected Classoroom.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Adding a photo with Picasa

I just added this photo to my blog using picasa. Editing photos and posting from Picasa is very easy.
Posted by Picasa

This is a test post...

This is a test post to Blogger. listen

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Sunday, November 2, 2008

Sunday morning

Getting my presentation ready for Tuesday. Thanks to Rose for helping me out.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Uploading a video is Easy



I uploaded this video of our students designing a spreadsheet in Google Docs from our summer Jump Start program. Just click the icon of the film strip on the edit tool bar, browse for your video file, give it a title and click upload. Time to put those webcams to work.

For more information click here.

Posting to Blogger from your igoogle page

A great new feature is the igoogle blogger gadget. It allows you to make a quick post from your igoogle homepage.

It also works as a handy reminder to add content to your blog on a frequent basis. This is web publishing at it's easiest! But be careful, the igoogle page refreshes automatically and could cause a long post to be deleted, keep these entries shoort just to be safe.

Greetings St. Clair County Educators!

Blogging can be a very effective means of reaching your learners during and after school. You can upload assignments, create a forum for discussion, link to other web resources, and embed video or audio resources.

Your Google Account makes signing up for and creating a blog for your classroom very easy. Remember, you don't have to share your blog publicly until it's ready.