Tech KnowledgeE-notes

DEN and the City March 2012

It all started with a simple online group chat session with 45 of my closest DEN friends as we were talking about the planned Summer Institute to be held in Bozeman. One friend said she wasn’t likely to be able to get there, so I suggested that we all try to do a spring get-together somewhere in between. The next thing I knew, someone had created a Google Doc with a grid to choose the best date and place to meet ( I think it was Trace, but am not certain). We settled on Mar. 30 to gather in Chicago. Gena started researching possible condos to rent (I still daydream about Aqua) but didn’t get a response from any of the condo owners she tried to contact, so she made a just-in-case reservation for two rooms at Springhill Suites on Dearborn. Apparently there was some big convention in town that was taking up much of the hotel space–even our ever-resourceful friend Amy who works parttime at Marriott wasn’t able to get any other good deal for places for us to stay. A few chat sessions later, we were contemplating what to do, and came up with a visit to Second CIty comedy club, so Jan got us the reservations for that. All this happened in a group chat window of Facebook over a period of about 4 weeks. The closer the date came, the more of us got on board until there were over a dozen people involved.

On Friday, Mar. 30, each of us started making our way to Chicago. We came from PA (Jan and Trace), Michigan (Gena, Emma, and Wendy), Missouri (Amy and I), Wisconsin (Peg), and even California (Katie and Genny), and met our friend Liz and who lives in the ‘burbs of Chicago, as well as Jan’s daughter who lives in the city. We came by plane, train, bus, and car. Six states, 12 people, ready to have a grand adventure! (see Peg Hartwig’s post for a more detailed account of our actual weekend’s activities; suffice it to say, we had a great time!)

What does this have to do with teaching and learning and professional development, you might ask? Looking back, none of this would have happened without true collaboration. The Facebook chat window provided the space for us to collaborate in a natural way. (see Liz Charlton’s post describing our networking process.) First we had to have an Idea person to toss out the fodder to get things percolating. Next, we had an Organizer to attend the details of starting the planning process. The Google Doc gave us a tool we could all access to collect data and make decisions. Everyone was involved in the decision-making process, and anyone who wanted to was invited to join in. Those who didn’t choose to be a part dropped out of our ongoing conversation. Others who couldn’t join us, but were just interested in what was going on observed from the background, or offered input as they wished. During our brainstorming sessions on location and dates all ideas were valued and discussed. While we couldn’t accommodate everyone, we did a pretty good job of bringing it all together. Some parts of the process had to be done solo, as we each made our own arrangements for travel. As far as I know, not a single phone call was made between group members until we actually arrived in Chicago; all arrangements were shared to participants and observers alike within the the chat space. A couple of us arrived on the train, five flew in, one came by bus,and three came by car. The best part was, as each of us arrived, we greeted each other with hugs and cheers of “We did it!” It was a terrific feeling of accomplishment just having arrived together.

Isn’t this the very thing that most of us are wanting to accomplish in our classrooms? The whole is ever so much greater than the sum of the parts. Had any one piece of this been missing, it would never have been accomplished; each person’s contribution was important and valuable to the process, and we all used our various strengths to meet our goal. The immense satisfaction we all felt when we arrived was exhilarating, even though we still had more to do once we got there. Celebrating the milestones, such as our arrival, was a very important part of the process. This is what collaboration is all about.

On a personal note, so many times we say “let’s get together” with friends and people we value in our lives, yet the process stalls. One piece of the process is missing and it just never happens. If there is no one to say, “Let’s do it,” or someone to help lay the groundwork, lost opportunities to connect are the only thing that happen. WE did it, not me, not Gena, not Jan, not Trace, not any one of us alone–we were all in it together. And we all grew a little closer this weekend to people whose friendship and opinions matter. We learned together, played together, and had an amazing experience together. Thanks to the DEN for getting us introduced, and creating a spirit of collaboration that has led to some long-lasting relationships with some truly wonderful friends!

The DEN and the City crew headed to visit the Chicago DE office.

The Fox is in the DEN (or rather, the DEN is at Fox!)

On the beautiful, sunny Saturday morning of October 30, 2010, about 14 members of the Missouri DEN and area teachers were treated to a 90-minute tour of the facilities at Fox Channel 4 in Kansas City led by on-air weatherman Joe Lauria.  Mr. Lauria introduced himself by telling us that he was only in charge of promotion, not production for our beautiful fall weather.  This outing was originally scheduled for September, but had to be postponed due to upgrades being done at the studio.  We were shown into the brand new HD production room where they are making the transition from analog to high-definition digital video.  A highlight of the day was our time on the newly-opened set of the newscast.  Mr. Lauria explained the process of creating a weather report for a news show, and gave each of us the opportunity to practice our meteorological skills in their green screen set.

We finished our morning with a lovely meal at Panera followed by a presentation on Movie Maker led by Amy Cordova, showing how to use the chromakey tool to bring in images and video from DE Streaming and other resources.  Margie Rogers finished off with a short plug on the new iPad site on DE Streaming that can be accessed at http://mobile.discoveryeducation.com

As always, it was a fun day of learning and exploring with friends—thanks to the MO DEN Events team and Discovery Education for making it happen!

Greetings! I am writing LIVE from the MOARKS Regional Gathering for Discovery Education’s Fall Virtual Conference 2010 in beautiful Branson, Missouri. A group of about 20 of us met at the lovely campus of Branson’s West Elementary, where we had a large set up of the virtual conference as well as live sessions. We started with a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit, muffins, and cinnamon rolls that give Cinnabon a run for their money. We jumped into the online conference after it had begun (we didn’t want to start at 8 a.m. on a Saturday!) since we are an hour behind our East Coastie friends. We’ll catch that first session when it’s archived!

Since I’m writing as I’m listening, and am pulling resources from the Chat window, I offer my profuse apologies in advance for any missed credits to anyone for resources shared! What follows are my own notes from the day—there was lots to learn, so I recommend reading this in sections (maybe one presenter a week?!) and checking out the archive when it’s posted in the next couple of days at http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/fall-virtcon-2010/

Our MOARKS group set up a wiki where we’ve posted some resources as well:

http://techortreatmoark.wikispaces.com/

DEN Edmodo group (Use #Area51 hashtag) be sure to join the group; our Edmodo page for sharing is http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/discovery

Kim Adair’s Mini presentation about green screening

http://storiescomealive.wikispaces.com

Kim shared some strategies for setting up green screen editing on both Macs and PC’s. I was thrilled to see just how easy it is to do by just clicking that little Show Advanced Tools button in iMovie’s preferences! I am SO going to try this at home (and at school, and probably here tonight in my hotel room!!!).
Free tool online

http://jaycut.com/

Inexpensive download of MovieMaker can be found at:

http://www.rehanfx.org/shader.htm

This one offers blue and green screen options!

storiescomealive.wikispaces.com

Resources for today:

http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/DENVC2010

http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/discovery #Area 51
Photos from the costume contest can be found at:
hat70anti@photos.flickr.com
Vote this week for your favorite costume! I am personally campaigning to be chosen as “best Halloween use of our new DEN LC shirts” since my vest included the lovely khaki color and looked great with the shirt (thanks, Lance! You rock!)

Virtual Con certificate of Attendance

http://links.discoveryeducation.com/FallVirtConCertificate

Porter Palmer—Why Publish Student Work
Here’s the link to her presentation on Livebinder (lovely little tabs!)

http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=37038

www.publishingstudents.com/researchbenefits.html
from LaQuita Denson to All Participants:

Grades discourage kids’ risktaking to a certain extent, but publishing helps get them to do their best work.

Live Binder is a good way to share info

http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=37038

http://posterous.com Under Settings, you can password protect info! What a great way to share those videos we just created this past week when Digital Hank came to work with our kids!

from Peggy George

http://myschool.posterous.com/

PBL resources

http://www.bie.org/

http://bsmsprojectbasedlearning.wikispaces.com/

http://www.publishingstudents.com/Web-basedpublishing.html

http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=37038

from Jennifer Dorman:
I have lots of PBL resources on my wiki at http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/pbl

Slideshare for sharing PowerPoint!

Glogster may be blocked in your district, but there now is edu.glogster.com
Traci Blazosky has a great Glogster tutorial at https://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgqwv5cr_127g7nqc8fm
Also more can be found at www.glogstergirl.com

iPadio is a good way to share podcasts and phonecasts
www.ipadio.com
You can copy and paste embed code into posterous or wikispaces or other sharing site.
Storybird.com
Great resource for primary kids

http://www.kerpoof.com/

3D stories http://zooburst.com/
toondoospaces.com
Comic and Animation Technologies in the Classroom http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/comic-and-animation-technologies-in-the-classroom/

http://www.xtranormal.com takes text and you can add animations! (some racy stuff, so be careful and check it out)

http://myths.e2bn.org/story_creator/

wonderopolis.org

A request from the Shambles guy—http://youtube.com/shamblesguru … PLEASE feel free to add comments under the video .

Here’s the Virtual Con Twitter site

http://tweetchat.com/room/virtcon

Rita Mortenson from Wisconsin shared a list of web 2.0 sites on pdf
Cool idea I’m gonna steal—sharing a new web 2.0 site every two weeks, and challenge teachers to use them! Way cool! She gives prizes to teachers for trying new tools if they show evidence of what they’ve done.
Link to her pdf’s: http://tinyurl.com/23d6z8k
Someone suggested meeting live to share—I’m loving this!

Word clouds for K-2 http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm

Next up is Whitney who’s at 1 DP presenting Digital Storytelling in a Web 2.0 World

http://hubforteachers.com

Discovery site for teachers to use to teach digital storytelling—wonderful collection of resources!
http://www.writingfix.com/ writing ideas
http://tweetchat.com/room/virtcon has some storytelling resources as well

kitzu.com has digital kits available for free

Whitney just shared Blabberize’s new video download feature and is on to PhotoPeach, a new one for me. I love Animoto, and just got my educator account (it did take me a couple of tries to get it put through, but it’s worth the work!).
Sample video of librarians in the media from Shamblesguru Smith http://animoto.com/play/lJBa0TOaMFUQeDCBRGACJA

http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/

Lindsay Hopkins’ glog on Poe using DE resources was GREAT! http://lindsayhopkins.edu.glogster.com/Edgar-Allan-Poe/ ( I can’t get the link to work…will try to write to Whitney and get a better link)

Cool note—our own Lance Rougeaux is going to be a part of the Polar Bear Expedition! Woo HOO for our DEN leader!

http://links.discoveryeducation.com/VirtCon link to archive of today

List of upcoming webinars by DE

http://community.discoveryeducation.com/webinar

Erin Misegadis from Kansas shared a video on using DE content in Wiki spaces

http://tinyurl.com/26b6cr6

She is attempting to go completely paperless in her classroom
Link directly to the wiki – http://mypaperless.wikispaces.com/

http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/Discovery

http://edmodo.com/den

from Porter Palmer to All Participants:
use this link http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/Discovery
from Steve Dembo to All Participants:

http://edmodo.com/publisher/discovery

Mike B. is not feeling the love—he’s presenting Builders, up against Hall Davidson who’s virtually for the next hour. ; ) Sorry Mike, this is Hall, after all, and we are all groupies!

THE Hall Davidson
http://webinarmashup.wikispaces.com Hall’s presentation link
Also handouts on Discovery Speakers Bureau site, click on Hall, then go to Handouts link on the right http://www.discoveryedspeakersbureau.com/node/119
rNrjojiip69L@m.youtube.com send videos here…
for downloading a segment of a youtube video .. you can specify start and end time http://dirpy.com/

I just tried to send a short video of our conference to Hall. I hope it worked!

http://www.youtube.com/user/HHDavidson

Time travel via You Tube http://yttm.tv/
Great idea—put video of assignment instructions so kids can replay!!!!

Jing is good screen capture tool, Screentoaster and screenjelly are also resources that were mentioned, screenflow for mac Note: Jing gives you an auto embed code in your clipboard!

IShowU Hd. It costs about $40.
http://screenr.com/xYD PLUS lots of advice and free offerings to do screencasting http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/screencast/

Video format converter at http://zamzar.com

I sent Hall a video of our MOARKS gathering, which you can find at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HHDavidson#p/u/0/fqUaxVuppvA

Amy made one, too; hers will be in our MOARKS wiki.

http://qik.com f
Upcoming Hall LIVE presentation at:
www1.pgcps.org/PUWT

Blog to check out

http://www.shambles.net/blogforest/index.htm

Over 1,800 screencasts for educators basically done by one person http://www.khanacademy.org/

Try http://scribblemaps.com/ awesome interface with Google maps
Hall’s Amazing 3×5 Notecard X-Ray Machine (Free!)

Voicethread on Shambles at http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/vthread/

LOVE Hall’s advice on how to make a broken camcorder into a WebCam!

http://linkyy.com/brokencamcorder.com

Tally from Cali just jumped in to share how to use PhotoStory and DE Streaming

http://tinyurl.com/2ey7wo9

Kyle Schutt’s Wikispaces page

http://mrschutt.wikispaces.com/S-3+HOME

Cindy Lane’s Google Earth presentation via Skype
(I missed the iPad demo in the last virtual con session—will go back and get that later in the archive) I always learn the coolest stuff from Cindy! She showed us how to dive below the ocean’s surface, where to look for cool Google Earth lessons and tools, and how to embed video and overlay pictures into a GE tour.

Our day ended with Doug Mann’s overview of the new Theme section on DE, MediaShare resources, and a chance to play a bit with some of the tools we learned about today. Mike also mentioned that Flash video is available for many of the videos (just have to call Discovery and have them add it to your account), which is great for Smart Notebooks or other whiteboards.

It’s all about the sharing. And the food. The sharing and the food. And the friendships. I always learn so much from and with my techie friends. This is why I love the DEN!!!!

WOW! Just spent a morning with Chris Dede, from the Harvard College of Ed–will try to add links later, but here are my notes…how exciting! 

We as teachers are not prepared for what we have to get our students ready for!

Panasonic challenge of teaching video

Levy & Murnane’s book–The new division of labor: How computers are creating the next job market

 What jobs will be done by people and what jobs can better be done by machine

**Expert decision making  (what to do when all standard methods of problem solving fail and we have to invent something new)

**Complex communications

Content is not as important (will be outdated by time they are adults) as these two qualities

Microsoft video—classroom of tomorrow  Production Future Vision

Auto translation of communication and lessons between kids, Teacher on airplane creating lessons

Way cool scientist working on desk

Augmented reality in airport, shows available services, guides him to meet (arrows on floor) WAAAAY cool!

Digital post-its on workspace to collaborate

Coffee cup with levels, temp—“awake but grumpy” label got lots of laughs

From idea to implementation—amazing concept, man sees request at home, goes out to create what’s needed

 Lifesize telepresence with translation

Complex visual interfaces

Web 2.0 is precursor to this—what is 2.0?  Creativity, collaboration, and sharing

Co-creation process

Most people begin by sharing in 2.0—bookmarks, photos, social networks, writers’ workshops

Thinking—blogs, podcasts, online discussions

Co-Creating—wikis & collaborative file creation, mashups & collective media creation, collaborative social change communities.

Henry Jenkins (MIT, now USC)—New literacies, intellectual and psychosocial

Good list!

(side note—lots of keys being tapped, people taking notes!)

Don Leu   New literacies’ characteristics

Distributed Education—the next model for schooling post-industrial era (it’s on its way out, not what our society needs)

Keep school as place to keep custodial function, place for kids to go and be safe, parents trained as tutors, informal coaches & mentors in community to help complement teachers

Colleges of ed still needed, but change, too:  to train teachers, tutors, coaches and mentors

Boston Tech Academy in Boston

Lottery based school, many kids below level, want all to go to college, laptop school

Model based on personal heroism, couldn’t do on a massive scale like we need 

We need a way to create this on large scale

www.microsoft.com/education/demos/scale/index.html

New National Ed Tech Plan—Chris helped with this

(he calls it the “Trojan Mouse” strategy—Education plan with technology as an engine—what is 21^st century learning?)

http://www.ed.gove/technology/netp-2010

What do adults do with “wicked” (complicated—multifaceted) problems—need a team to do together, no one person has all the expertise to do this

Define problem first to decide how to approach (ex: Human Genome Project)

Situated learning and transfer—the reality:  nothing looks like the education we’ve had (ex: new doctor tossed in, start with simple tasks so you can learn tacitly in a series of apprenticeships, from fringe to center of community as build skills)

Immersive Learning

Multi-user virtual environments—immersed in virtual contexts with digital artifacts

Virtual reality–full sensory immersion

EcoMUVE projct—Institute of Ed Sciences (US DofEd)

www.ecomuve.org

Middle school science—causal complexity focus, complex dynamics of a real eco problem

Ex: Computer model of Black’s Nook Pond in Cambridge, MA owned by Cambridge Public Schools, offsite science lab

Shows change over time, used modern gaming engine

Helps teach kids the front end of inquiry—what is the problem (not a set up lab with answers expected like we had)

Virtual tools—magic sub to dive into pond to view (Miss Frizzle LIVES!)

Follow a specific atom to explore the flow of matter throughout an ecosystem

Our current assessments can’t measure this type of learning, current tools are invalid

Use immersive interfaces to tackle the assessment part of the problem, too—orientation, problem identification, experimentation, competing explanations—complex quests, not multiple choice—have 90 minutes to do this, can do “what if”scenarios to see what happens

Not dependent upon reading abilities as much as our current testing system (ESL, LD…)

Cognitive auditing—cool concept  Can see the kids’ thinking processes, too much info, need to chunk this data so you can see what they understand, and what the gaps are

http://virtualassessment.org

Products of inquiry vs. processes of inquiry

Formative and diagnostic assessments—not Summative (too late to fix them!)

IF we did these well wouldn’t need summatives! (ex: barcodes eliminated stores being closed for inventory for days!)

Ubiquitous computing—gaming industry is helping education to create the engines for what we can do to help kids

Transition to mobile wireless devices which is where we are heading

Roku’s Reward  HP video

Augmented reality gaming (cute!)

Lots of laughs as he showed slide of Little Professor calculator, “biggest tragedy of (his) life is that he looks like the Little Prof!”

More mobile devices coming—smartbooks, scaled up cell phone, always on, long battery life, always connected, location aware

In four years, price point of $200 for SmartBooks, with $15 per month data services acc. to Qualcomm

Schools not buying, but families would be…

Migration to cloud computing, use of resources, allows devices to be less expensive

Inclusive Model of Pedagogy and Assessment—knowledge in context, distributed across a community

“Industrial era school is not a good container to put this into”

parallels shift from one-room school to larger buildings, grouping to ?????

Our leadership challenge, reinvent education

(showed slide on why successful companies go out of business—Christenson, Horn, & Johnson Disrupting Class)

Miss strategic opportunities, etc. 

Sea Change from Ariel’s song in The Tempest (Shakespeare!) “full fathom five…”

“suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange”

Let’s not use a century-old model and throw away half of our kids by losing them