Learning Web 2.0

I wonder why people attend conference(s), technology or non-technology? I use the term, non-technology, but I really cannot imagine that there is such a thing as a non-technology conference.

I will be attending the ICE Conference at the end of this month, February 24-27, 2009. I know there will be teachers and administrators at the conference since ICE stands for Illinois Computing Educators. This is an aspect of the conference(s) that I anticipate. It is the networking with other Teachers, Technology Coordinators, Directors, CIOs, and Administrators.

This will be the second conference that I have attended this year. The first being a conference in Springfield in November called the Illinois Education and Technology Conference.

At these conference(s), I get an increased passion for expanding the utilization of technology in our classrooms as well as ideas for better utilization for the professional and administrative technologies. Mostly because of the successes that are shared during the sessions.

A goal that I have for the upcoming conference is to learn from other schools how they are utilizing their budgets, big or small. As the time comes around this year for building budgets, I wonder about balancing the Capital Outlay, Supplies and Materials and the Professional Development that comes with the technologies.

I will check back in with an update at the beginning of March. In the meantime, please share conferences (technology and non-technology) you attend and one thing that you liked best about the conference.

Keep Learning and Sharing,
chris

Maybe podcast isn’t the correct term or maybe it is.

MyPlick.com allows you to sync audio with slides. I find it much more informational than just uploading your slides, especially as it is becoming more popular to use less words on slides.

MyPlick allows you to upload slides from various sources such as PDFs, Powerpoint, and even Google Presentations. It allows you to upload audio to the site, so no need to host the .mp3 elsewhere.

Here is an example of a recent myplick “podcast” that our JH Principal put together. He is now scheduling a Tech Breakfast for the teachers to learn as we share the process. Give it a try and let me know what you think of myplick and what other tools and techniques you utilize for podcasting.

I am going to try using Flock (Basically is it Firefox for Social Networking).
It has a RSS reader. I wanted to be able to read the items in my Google Reader. This is possible by creating tags in Google Reader and making the tags public. This then can be used to create a blogroll, but you can also subscribe to the page to then be able to read in Flock. Here is an example of the page created by Google Reader

7. Are there other ways to share items in Google Reader?Google Reader allows you to assign tags to individual items. To tag an item, click on the ‘add tag’ link and enter a descriptive tag name. You can then go to the Settings page and make the tag public. A unique URL is created that links to the latest items with your public tag. You can then post this link online or send it to your friends.

Google Reader - Sharing FAQ

I think that the more I utilize twitter, the more I realize the power of the network. The experiences of others are very powerful.  The ability to learn and share is enhanced greatly by twitter and other Web 2.0 technologies.

As I explore more and more of the technologies that are available on the Internet and the impact that these tools have on my education. The more, I realize the impact that these tools can and will have on K-12 education.

Keep learning more and sharing more,
chris

I am presenting this morning at the Missouri Distance Learning Association (MODLA) conference in Osage Beach, MO. (Lake of the Ozarks)


 

Just loaded MaemoWordPy on my Nokia N800. I am using my stylus to type this entry. I am trying to figure out how this unit could be utilized in a K-12 educational environment? Open to all suggestions.

Keep learning and sharing,
Chris

It has been a good year.

I learned a lot this year and hopefully people feel that I have shared a lot as well.

Learning and sharing about edublogs, wikispaces, OpenPD, Ustream, Twitter, Ning, and many other new technologies that we can utilize within the educational environment has been very energizing.

I look forward to next year and having Computer Club for our teachers starting in September. It will also be good to have an office in the Junior High building. We will be implementing the web edition of our student management system which will replace the necessity for Gradequick and Edline.

I get to share with a group of 5th-8th Grade students this summer during TechnoKids summer camp.

I also get to share to a group of Educators at the Missouri Learning Distance Association summer conference.

I look forward to this summer and getting ready for another school year, which will be starting sooner than I think.

Keep learning and sharing,
chris

Next week will be the last week for Computer Club (CC) at the buildings. It has given me a little more time with a few teachers this year to look at technology tools that could assist them instructionally, professionally and/or personally.

I will continue the Computer Club for teachers next year and try to coordinate the materials with Inservice and School Improvement (SI) agendas. Next year, we will actually have SI days that students dismiss at 11:30. This is compared to dismissing at 2:15 in the past few years.

Really we are still very limited on Professional Development (PD) time. 36 hours according to my calculations. Then you take away time for breaks (restroom and eating) and you have even less time. If this was just technology time, cool, but then you throw in RTI, School Safety, Curriculum, Classroom Management, Special Education, etc, etc, etc…

I am not saying these are not important issues, but I am saying we need need more PD time for all of these things.

I recently listened to a Podcast from Sylvia Martinez from a Online K-12 2007 Conference session, where she talked about teaching being one of the only professions where you get training and then go back to your job and are alone in trying to implement the newly gained knowledge.

Also Darren Drape in a recent blog entry that it is important that teachers could get involved with OpenPD. I attended the most recent session of OpenPD and found it very valuable, learning about wikis and blogs and how others are utilizing them. I also value the knowledge gained about the technologies utilized in the process of OpenPD with skype, ustream and wikispaces.

So between CC, Inservice, SI and OpenPD, I hope to reach more teachers with Technology PD next year.

Keep Learning and Sharing,
chris

Thursday night I checked into the Union Station hotel in Indy. When checking in the front desk person let me know, “This is an active train station. Your room should be far enough from the tracks, but you may notice some noise or vibration and we just let patrons know that if you hear anything or feel any vibrations, that it is not a hurricane.”

I said, “You mean an earthquake.”

She said laughingly, “Yes. Not an earthquake and definitely not a hurricane.”

So on Friday morning at around 5:30 Indy time, I was probably the most relaxed person in the Midwest when I was awakened by the vibration and noise of the the closet doors in the hotel room. Not until I turned on the TV around 6:30, did I hear the morning news person say earthquake. I just started laughing and changed the channel and sure enough they were telling about the earthquake as well. 

I always thought that it was tornados, that sound just like a train.

It still makes me laugh.  It was an earthquake, but I just thought it was a train.

I think the hotel will need to need to retrain their front desk personnel and what they tell people when checking in.

Hello All or Noone,

I come to you tonight after several weeks of not writing an entry on my blog. I attended OpenPD this week learning from Sue Waters and others about blogging. I learned that it takes a committment to get your blog to be read and even though it may be read, you may not receive any comments. So Why? Why continue to write a blog?

I guess my main reason for plugging away at writing a blog is that if I write a blog, then I can talk with administrators, teachers, staff, students, parents, and community members about writing blogs.

I started this blog on Edublogs because I knew that more than likely I could keep edublogs from being blocked by the content filter at school because it seemed like it had an Education feel. I (we, Lindsey has taken over) started a blog at blogger.com for our family in order to keep our families updated on what is going on with our lives.

A blog can take many forms including personal, professional, hobby, career, memories, journaling, informational, opinion and can be thematic or can bounce from subject to subject depending on your desired audience. Learn from others how they blog or what they blog about by reading their blogs using a RSS reader such as Google Reader or Bloglines.

So I guess the answer to my own question, “Why continue to write a blog?”, is  just because I should and why wouldn’t I.

Keep Learning and Sharing,
chris