The EdTech Twibe

Yes, Twibe. I’ve been connecting with fellow educators on Twitter since November 2008…  Way before Oprah.  I’ve used suggestions from Twitter Grader and Mr. Tweet.  I’ve picked through other peoples’ followers.  I’ve listed my name on a number of lists of twittering educators.  By far, however, the most effective tool I’ve used to grow my Personal Learning Network is the EdTech Twibe.

Twitter user @stevekatz created the group just a few days ago, and there are already over 400 members.  Some are there for commercial interests, but the majority of users are genuine educators.

If you’re interested in joining the twibe, just send a tweet containing the twibe URL:  http://www.twibes.com/group/EdTech

While you’re at it, check out some of these Twitter users who recently followed me from the twibe:

• @miclaujef
• @jtroutner
• @dpiemme
• @LisaSuhr
• @MHSITRT
• @megormi
• @kewyrick
• @nmangum
• @peggy_s
• And many more!

Join or start a twibe today!

Reflections on Podcasting Workshop

I apologize ahead of time for this 1000 word monster post.  I’m still trying to figure out how to be a better presenter of this material.  If you have some insight, please share it.

It’s reflection time again. This weekend was the regional Teachers Teaching with Technology Conference, and I signed up to present a session on wikis and a session on podcasting.  I have taught several podcasting workshops since 2006, and none of them have been as good as I wanted them to be.  The question I’m pondering is, “Can teachers learn to podcast from a workshop?  What am I doing wrong?

My first exposure to podcasting was at a preconference session led by Karen Fasimpaur at the Hot Springs Technology Institute.  In that workshop, Karen explained what a podcast was, we discussed the educational applications, we learned basic Audacity techniques, there was time to record and produce our MP3 file, and then some samples were played for the group.  Little emphasis was given to RSS feeds or how to publish the content.  Karen’s workshop was a great intro to voice recording and audio editing, but it wasn’t podcasting by the current definition.

The following semester, I was asked to provide a podcasting workshop for the Arkansas Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.  Because I hadn’t worked much with podcasting over the summer, the empahsis of that workshop was on audio recording and editing as well.  The participants seemed satisfied.  They all left with their very own MP3 recording and the ability to repeat the steps, but I felt that something was still missing.

Civil War Blog Project – Check it Out!

One of the 15 student blogs in this pilot project

As I mentioned in a post several months ago, I visited with our humanities department chair about incorporating technology into the American Studies class that most of our 11th graders take.  Between then and now, we laid out some project requirements, selected 10 focus events, borrowed an awesome student blog rubric, created step-by-step instructions for securing student blogger accounts, and pulled the trigger.  The results are some amazing examples of student research and writing.

We’re running this project for 2 weeks.  Each class day, one of the history teachers lists the focus event on the project blog.  Students then respond to the event in character.  Although we require the posts to be based upon research (cited in the post), the students are to write their own posts rather than pasting lengthy passages from their research.  Posts are due by 9:00 PM.  Additionally, each student is required to comment on two other posts each day.

Sample Blog Comment

We chose Blogger because of its relative simplicity.  Only after we got the project off the ground did we realize how convenient the built-in following features would be.  Our teaching team consists of the two history teachers who team teach the class and myself (a computer science teacher).  One of the history teachers had never read a blog post (that he knew of), and the other said she had read but never responded to blog posts.  By the third day of the project, both were reading, commenting, and creating posts of their own quite easily.

Once the project comes to an end and we solicit student feedback, we will present our final report at the NCSSSMST Professional Conference in Washington, D.C.  If this sounds like something you’re interested in trying with your students, please do! We were amazed at the quality of the research and writing.  If you need help getting started, contact me for help via email, twitter, skype, or right here using comments.

At BotBall Training in Norman, OK

Students and teachers learn to build and program robots for the upcoming competition.

I’m having an excellent time this weekend working with 3 students from my school at the BotBall Educational Robotics Program training workshop in Norman, Oklahoma.  BotBall is one of the programs offered through the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics.  As stated on their website, “BotBall engages middle and high school aged students in a team-oriented robotics competition based on National Science Education Standards.”

BotBall has been around for more than a decade, and they introduce new technologies each year.  Last year was the first time that the game included the iRobot Create, which is just a stripped down Roomba vacuum that has been optimized for experimentation.  This year, they released a brand new processor and programming set-up.

If you are looking for a way to integrate robotics into your program, seriously consider BotBall.  Without giving away the details of the game (not all regions train on the same day), I’ll just say that BotBall 2009 brings the action into a whole new dimension.

This really is a journey…

Like drinking from a fire hydrant!

Winter break has arrived, and most of my colleagues in these parts are spending some quality time with friends and family.  I’m using some of my down time to write my first reflective piece for this blog.

It’s unreal how much I’ve learned since September.  That’s when I started using an aggregator to read news feeds and blogs.  I was already an avid podcast listener, but I really had no idea of the true value of RSS.  In October I started my own weekly podcast for my students.  Now that I’m comfortable with audio recording and editing, I intend to integrate student podcasts into my classes in the coming months.  October was also when I started this blog.  November brought more change; I joined Twitter and started cultivating my PLN.

I feel like I’ve come late to the party, but I don’t feel out of place.  Early on (lol, last month), @cnansen helped me find some folks to follow on Twitter.  Now I’m seeing new names show up on my followers list daily that I don’t recognize but who have so many great ideas to share.  When I needed some help on podcasting specifics, my PLN was on the ball with answers.

This month I was accepted as a Discovery STAR Educator.  That means that I’m an educator who creates and shares innovative curriculum content and who promotes the use of tools like UnitedStreaming.  These activities are nothing new to me, but it’s nice to have a label to apply to them.  I’ve been presenting at regional conferences since 2005.  My school board has never recognized my conference efforts, but they sent me a congratulatory letter for my STAR acceptance.

What a semester! I’ve been playing catch-up with the edublog scene, crafting my own digital footprint, and pondering where all of this fits into my teaching practices.  I’m more “current” than I’ve ever been, and I feel empowered to bring the new ideas that are coming my way into my classroom next semester.

Happy Holidays from MoixLand!

Open Source Braggart?

As a new blogger, it amazes me to read responses to what I have written.  Sometimes, it feels like I’m just writing to be writing… but what’s wrong with that, anyway?

Looking back at my posts, it does seem like a number of my entries are “reference letters” for various technologies or tools that I’ve used and like.  When I read Kathleen Weaver’s latest post Drifting away from Open Source, I was surprised to be called a free sofware braggart.  I just reflect on what works for me.  Often, that’s what I can get my hands on without filling out a requisition.

I use plenty of commercial software in my computer lab.  My computers run Windows and MS Office rather than something like the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project (which I did play with for about a day several years ago).  When we did 3d animation, we used Carrara Studio and Adobe Premiere.  To keep the computers clean, I use Windows SteadyState.

I just want to throw it out there — I’m not a free software fanatic!  Sometimes, software that does one thing, and does it for free is better than some bloated commercial package.  Other times, you really do need to pay for quality.

I’m just sayin’

Thanks to Steve Rhodes for the soapbox picture.  Used under Creative Commons.  Check out his flickr photos.

iTALC + IWB

I was in the EdTechTalk chatroom tonight while Episode 106 was being recorded.  One of the tools featured on that episode was iTALC.  I’ve already featured that tool on this blog, and I mentioned in the chatroom how I use iTALC to broadcast my SMARTBoard to all student screens.  MrsDurff insisted I create an informative screencast, and so I did

The direct link to the screencast is http://tr.im/1zkw

Cool Tool – Zoho Meeting

I recently shared this with some of my students, and I thought it might be useful to this community as well.  Zoho is a new company offering a staggering number of web-based services, one of which is desktop sharing.  Not unlike gotomeeting.com, Zoho Meeting is a tool to share one screen with a number of other users.  This is a pay product, but they let you do one-on-one screen sharing for free.  If you need to show somebody how to do something (or want to help troubleshoot a computer problem), just go to their website and set up a meeting. This is great for helping parents and grandparents! Check it out.

Teachers Teaching with Technology Regional Conference

Regional Conference
Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts
200 Whittington Avenue, Hot Springs, Arkansas
January 29-31 2009

• Come and charge your batteries! Energize! Share your experiences! Link!
• Hear the latest information for TI NspireTM math and science learning technology.
• Attend sessions for elementary and middle school mathematics and science, algebra, geometry, statistics, pre-calculus, calculus, chemistry, biology, and physics.
• Listen to exciting presentations by teachers who use technology.

Where: Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts and the Arlington Hotel and Spa

When: January 29-31, 2009

Registration is limited to the first 500 registrants.

Reception: Thursday, January 29, 2009, 6:30 – 9:00 p.m., Arlington Hotel
Games, prizes, food and the opportunity to pick up materials before the Friday morning rush!

Sessions at ASMSA: Friday, January 30, 2009, 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM
Saturday, January 31, 2009, 8:30 AM – 11:40 AM

Cost: Non-refundable Registration fee: $50 for ACTM or ASTA members, $65 for non-members, includes Thursday night reception at the Arlington Hotel and continental breakfasts Friday and Saturday at ASMSA.

For more information, call UCA AR Center for Mathematics and Science Education at (501) 450-3426.

Bring your own calculator(s) or use those provided in the sessions at the Conference.

Here is the full flyer with registration form.

Really Simple, eh?

I was born a digital native, but I’m still “Old School” in some ways.  For the longest time, I hated to teach students web design software, instead showing them HTML.  I think it had to do with teaching something proprietary versus teaching something standard.  I’m over those days now, and I teach students to blog and to create wikis if they want to get their content out there on the Internet.  I’ve also come around to another new technology called RSS.

For those who don’t know, it stands for Really Simple Syndication.  RSS allows the computer to bring the contents of a website or a blog to you rather than you going to it.  RSS has changed the way I consume Internet content.

I used to bookmark things that I found interesting and return to those resources periodically to check for updates.  Maybe you do that now.  Possibly you’ve graduated to social bookmarking tools like Delicious.  Still, going to sites to check for content can be a waste of time if there’s nothing new to see.  Instead, make that content come to you.

Whenever you’re on a website, look for indicators that you can subscribe.  Do you see the RSS logo pictured above?  Do you see links called “Feed,” “Atom,” “RSS,” or “Subscribe”?  These are indicators that an RSS feed is present.  Some browsers even automatically detect the presence of feeds and turn on an RSS icon for you.  A feed is just a compacted, machine-readable version of the content you’re already consuming.  If you click on a feed, you may either see a bunch of code (like HTML, but uglier), you could see some snippits of the page content, or you could see a gaggle of buttons all with different logos on them.  Either way, you’ve found a feed!

I’ll tell you what to do with that feed further down…  Just chill out.

Feeds, as I mentioned, are machine-readable.  They’re not very palatable to humans.  You will need a tool to consume the feed.  This is called a reader or an aggregator.  I use Google Reader because it’s a web-based tool that follows me wherever I go.  Some people prefer to use programs they’ve downloaded and installed (but I don’t).

Once you have your feed address, find the place to click in your reader to “subscribe.”  Yes, “subscribe” usually means “pay,” but in RSS terms it only means “sign me up to receive content from this source in the future.”  Once you’ve clicked the subscribe button, paste the feed address into the appropriate box and hit subscribe!

Once your aggregator chews on the new feed for a minute, you should see the content from that source appear in the reader.  Voila!  You’ve subscribed to a feed.  In the future, just load your feed reader up and see what new content has been posted on that site.  If you see something you want to see in its original glory, click the title of the posting.  That usually opens the original in situ.

If you’re not crazy about this feed reader stuff, you can also use a new tool that HP is developing called Tabbloid.  You go to their site, paste in a few feed addresses that you would like to read, put in your email address, select a time of day, and poof!  It emails you a PDF file on command which contains the content from the feeds you provided.  If you’re a paper person, you can even print those things out.  It’s sort of like your own custom magazine once a day.

Using RSS and a feed reader has given me the ability to consume much more material than I previously could.  It gives me the chance to speed through lots of content and then stop when I see something that I care about and spend more time on it.  Give RSS a try!