Welcome to NCS-Tech!

Good morning all!

The following slideshow is linked to my NECC 2009 set on Flickr – thought it would be neat to display them as I take them – one thing – there will be a lot of photos! I made the embed widget at http://www.flickrslideshow.com/ – cool!

Have a great conference!

-kj-

photo credit: laszlo-photo

Good morning all,

So where are you going to be at NECC? I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones, attending some sessions, visiting the exhibit floor (a.k.a. the ‘boat show’) for the first time ever, and generally just hanging around and capitalizing on as many serendipitous connections as possible! Here’s where I’ll be (mostly), so if our paths cross, please say hello!

Saturday

• EdubloggerCon: this pre-conference is for some the main reason to attend NECC. Unfortunately, due to other committments, I will be arriving a little late and leaving a little early, but I am already psyched about seeing everyone. The schedule looks great too, but don’t be tied to it – the real magic at EdubloggerCon often happens outside the formal meetings. That said, I’m seriously pumped about the session I was literally just able to arrange yesterday, for the 3:00 – 3:45 pm time slot, featuring a conversation entitled “Social Media Policy & Practice for K-12 Districts,” a Conversation with Ann Flynn, Director, Education Technology, National School Boards Association. I’ll be joined by Scott McLeod whom I owe (along with Kathy Rains of Madison City Schools) a debt of gratitude for the connection to Ann. It’s going to be an informal session, a conversation (not a presentation), so if you’re interested in exploring social media and what it means for your district, please consider joining us and sharing your knowledge.

Sunday

• ISTE stuff: most of my Sunday will be spent with ISTE folks for a variety of reasons but one thing of special importance is the Second Life Playground Volunteer / Docent Meet-Up on Sunday afternoon. If you are an ISTE Docent in Second Life you should have already heard about this session and know where to go. I’m looking forward to meeting many new people and visiting with old friends. (I’d really, really hoped to attend Gary Stager’s Constructing Modern Knowledge ‘09 Summer Institute – I’d even paid the admission fee – but duty calls! If you are going to CMK09 please let me know how it goes!

Monday

• I’ve got a couple of sessions planned, some posters to visit, but I also have lots of free time for meetups and conversations. The two big things I’m doing Monday are as follows:

  1) The Second Life Playground, which is being run this year by my friends Lisa Linn (SL: Clare Lane) and Scott Merrick (SL: ScottMerrick Oh). It’s a fun place to relax and explore Second Life with help of some experience educators. The playground is located in the convention center opposite rooms 143 and 144; it runs 8-4 Monday, 9-4 Tuesday, and 8-2 Wednesday. My “shifts” are on Monday from 10:00 – 12:00 and Tuesday from 11:00 – 1:00. Stop by and say hi!

  2) At 2:00 pm, I’ll be speaking on a panel entitled “Best Practices for Encouraging Learning 24/7: Models that Work!” I’ll be sharing about our experiences with The T-Bird Times, a middle school newspaper/media club. Here’s a little trailer I quickly put together about the club using Animoto.

• I’ll also be at the ISTE Connects Tweetup on Monday night.

Tuesday

• I’ll be at the Second Life playground from 11:00 – 1:00, then attending the Bring-Your-Own-Laptop session called “The Answer to NCLB Tech Literacy: Web-based Technology Literacy Projects” from 2:00 – 3:00. Then I have the only bonafide can’t-be-in-two-places-at-once-what-the-heck-am-I-gonna-do conflict, with the simultaneously scheduled (4:45 – 6:15) birds-of-a-feather sessions  “Digital Storytelling Gathering” (run by my dear friend Bernajean Porter) and another run by another crucial PLN in my life, “Calling All Google Certified Teachers“. (Maybe I need to find out if my Twitter BFF Lisa Thumann’s pocket clone has a matching male companion!)
• Also keep your eye on the Tuesday general session keynote, I am told they’ll be showing some sort of newscast from within Second Life as part of the show … details here.

Wednesday

• My morning will be spent “Designing Rigorous and Globally Connected Assignments” (I could have just driven to Connecticut and hung out with Kim Cofino) and then I’ll be visiting the poster entitled “Internet Safety & Responsibility Instruction in K-12 Education” before heading to the Student Showcase area for the highlight of NECC for me this year. I and several Northfield students (including my daughter Holly) will be showing off our middle school newspaper/media club, the T-Bird Times! We’ll be at Table 2 from 12:00 – 2:00 pm, please stop by! We’ll have multiple laptops, a nifty-cool display board and plenty to talk about!

Ok folks enough of this, I’ve got to finish packing and get on the road. See you in D.C.!

-kj-

Technorati Tags: NECC09

photo credit: Joshua Davis (jdavis.info)

Hey everyone,

Apologies for falling off the blog post wagon of late, summer’s officially here, and that can only mean one thing: it’s PD workshop / conference season, that most wonderful time of the year when I get to bounce around like a ping-pong ball in a clothes dryer in search of people to learn with and learn from … basically, at PD workshops I’m leading and conferences I’m attending. Summer also means I blog less often, so please forgive me if it’s a while before I press the “Publish” button again.

The week began for me last Friday, actually, as I had two major workshops to prepare for on Monday and Tuesday. Father’s Day observances notwithstanding, it was a very productive ~ 60 hour stretch, leading into my first committment of the week: a 1/2 day workshop at Principal Kenyon Kummings’ Glenwood Avenue Elementary School in Wildwood, NJ. I spent the morning with a room full of teachers hungry for ideas to help them teach more effectively using technology. We explored many resources together, including several featuring SMART notebook collection sites, literacy resources, web 2.0 tools, and more. There was good discussion, an unexpected tangent or two, and a very productive hands-on stint in the media center’s computer lab. (Kicked myself for not having everyone in there to begin with – what was I thinking?) We ended the session with plans for a pair of two-hour follow-ups, which we are in the process of scheduling.

Hopped in my car and made a run for the border, the NJ/PA border that is, a.k.a. the Philadelphia International Airport, to catch my flight to St. Louis and Elizabeth Helfant’s Mary Institute & St. Louis Country Day School. As I sat down to wait for my flight, a talkative and precocious four year-old named Isabel decided she wanted to have a conversation with me. With nodding approval from her Dad just a few feet away, she joined me on the floor of the terminal and we surfed the web together, checking out the great early learning activities at Starfall.com, PBSKids.org, TVOKids.com and a few others. 45 minutes later, it was time to board, but I could have spent the rest of the afternoon right there!

Wedging myself into the narrowest jet airplane I’ve ever flown in, I cracked open my copy of Anthony Muhammad’s outstanding book Transforming School Culture, which I started weeks ago. The two-hour flight was over in no time and soon I was with Elizabeth getting a ride to dinner. Alec Couros, who had just finished his day-long workshop at MICDS, joined us. Tomorrow it would be my turn.

The MICDS campus is stunning, starting with the palatial conference room where we would be for the day. I got set up and started my pre-event slideshow, a collection of some of my favorite FAIL photos. Soon the participants began to arrive. We were able to begin promptly at 9:00 am, thanks to the superb logistical support by Greg Stevens and Patrick Woessner, who work with Elizabeth.

My presentation went smoothly, for the most part, with everyone working diligently and asking great questions. A short break for lunch and we were back for the afternoon, which wrapped up a little earlier than I’d planned (must. slow. down.) I met Susie Toso, who “knew me” from this blog (Hi Susie!) and who came to the session expressly to see me and (she’ll chide me for saying this) the Internationally-acclaimed Kim Cofino who would be presenting the next day.  Patrick led us on a walking tour of the stunning campus facilities (here are some pics in Kim’s Flickr stream), then we caught the Greg Stevens Golf-Cart Shuttle (no air conditioning?!?!?!) before getting a ride to the airport. It was an incredible day. I feel so very fortunate to have been part of the 2009 MICDS Summer Learning lineup. Thank you, Elizabeth, for having me.

The flight home was smooth and before I knew it I was home gearing up for NECC. I leave tomorrow. Thanks to Mary’s expert glue stick skills, the display board for our Student Showcase on Wednesday is finally assembled, though I wish I could say my presentation on Monday was in as good a shape! NECC promises to be amazing, and I’ve left giant chunks of time uncommitted so that I can focus on meeting friends old and new, as well as partaking in the best sessions I can find. I’ll post about NECC tomorrow – I’m already up way past my bedtime and tomorrow’s a travel day. G’nite all!

-kj-

Today is the last day of school. The relentless rainfall of late that has turned Northfield into East Seattle apparently is going to continue for a while. Oh well, at least the entire eastern seaboard is out from under a drought warning.

I have a love-hate relationship with this time of year. I love the sounds in the halls, the smiles on the kids’ faces, the anticipation in the air. I hate that as of Monday, I’ll no longer have those five daily 42-minute slices of heaven, the opportunity to explore, share and learn with my students, who, almost without exception, are intrinsically motivated little bundles of joy & energy eager to soak up every bit of knowledge they possibly can. One thing is certain: their learning won’t stop, it will just continue without me, until September … for all but my fourth graders, who are moving on to fifth grade and our middle school just upstairs.

And so it’s always my fourth graders who I will miss the most, the majority of whom I’ve taught from Kindergarten until today, their entire educational lives. I often complain about having only 42 minutes once a week to teach each class. It’s easy to forget that while a “regular” teacher has them all day, I have them all year, year after year, for five years. Pretty cool.

Ok fine, but what do these kids, my kids, have to show for the five years we’ve been together? How have they grown as individuals? How do we measure their progress? Is it the sophistication of the artifacts saved in their network drives? Their scores on the Study Island technology proficiency assessment I gave a few weeks ago? Their typing speed & accuracy rates? Their command of the digital tools that comprise my classroom? Their ability to safely navigate an increasingly complex online world? Their kindness to one another?

Or is it … their love of learning?

Growing up, my teachers loved teaching; they truly taught me to love learning. It was the gift of a lifetime, one that took on extra special importance when I entered the classroom six years ago in pursuit of my dream, a second career in education. Now, I get to pay it forward, and teach an entire new generation of students to love learning, too.

That is why *I* teach!

-kj-

Good morning all,

Please accept my apologies for not posting much in the last few days – the last weeks of school are always hectic, but this year things seem to have been even crazier! Making matters worse, I’ve got two or three supermassive blog posts in my drafts folder, and until I churn them out, I’m going to be even more distracted!

But I digress … on to today’s post!

The inexorable march of gaming into education continues with this latest announcement from the Florida Virtual School (FLVS). “Conspiracy Code” is a game-based high school history course cleverly utilizing an immersive 3D virtual world. Available as a free download (PC only – sorry Mac!) the premise:

“High School students will develop a deep understanding of American History as they control Eddie and Libby; fictional characters in an espionage-themed adventure set in the fictional, near-future metropolis of Coverton City. In the game – or course – students must build their knowledge of American History in order to stop a vast conspiracy that is threatening to erase and change the course of history.”

Certainly sounds engaging. But what will they actually DO?

“Students test their knowledge during in-game challenges, engage in student-to-student collaborations and discussions, exchange information with peers (similar to group projects), and eventually use their knowledge to complete culminating mission assessments, each step eliciting a higher-order analysis of the material.”

This is no first-person shoot-em-up with a candy-coated history theme that might be fun to “play” in a computer lab for a couple of class periods; in fact, reading the course overview, one gets a sense of the massive scale behind this application, and the amount of time (online, offline, in school and at home) that will be necessary to finish it. Heavily influenced by research by FLVS subject-matter experts and researchers from the University of Central Florida, this is serious business, “hard fun” as Seymour Papert would say, though the people best suited to make THAT judgement are kids that actually play this game. Since it was just announced, we don’t have a ready supply of those people yet, so, we’ll have to wait!

What I find most interesting about this is that the game relies heavily on “real world” research and face to face collaboration; the “simulation” is merely an environment where that work can be assembled and leveraged, and, presumably, where connections can be formed, inferences can be made, and genuine learning can occur.

Pretty cool stuff. Might be ideal for a summer course on history or an after-school club for those schools not yet ready to integrate something like this into their curriculum, but who knows? How about an experimental elective? I’ve seen the course lists at my local high school; they do some pretty creative offerings. Why not design a history elective around this program? What have they got to lose?

Hope this helps,

-kj-

Good morning all,

Here’s another awesome resource for Summer Camp Counselors – hope you’re tagging them for all those rainy days when kids can’t be outside playing like they’re supposed to be all summer!

Anyway, have you been to TVOKids.com recently? It’s a fantastic interactive learning website for kids aged 3-10 produced by TVO, essentially the Canadian equivalent of PBS.

I’ve been a fan for years (just used one of their activities a couple of weeks ago in Kindergarten, in fact). I got re-acquainted with the main site the other day by my friend and colleague Bill Lingle. His link to “Bees and Honey” reminded me of what a great site it is for early learners. That particular activity wonderfully introduces/reinforces the basic skill of mouseover, click, and click-and-drag, perfect for children just learning to use a computer. It’s a great example of the quality and detail of the activities available in Gisèle’s Big Backyard:

One of the great advantages of this site – its intuitive navigation, which makes it easy for kids of all ages to use – is its achilles heel from a teacher perspective. In short: there’s no easy way for you to know what the content of the activities are until you’ve played each one. The site map is some help, but, to really understand the concepts presented and where it fits with your curriculum, you’ve got to basically play (or at least preview) every game.  The good news is that grabbing URLs is easy so you can blog them or add them to your classroom website (or online bookmarking service), maybe even create favorites on the browsers in your classroom. That way, you can be sure that the kids are spending time on the material you want them to.  Gisèle is WONDERFUL (I love her voice, it’s so unique)! These could make fun whole-class review activities with an interactive whiteboard but it’s best use is one-on-one. In any case, our youngest learners will benefit from time spent here, I’m certain!

Hope this helps,

-kj-

Good morning all,

Thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Carol Ferguson, I am writing today about yet another amazing Read-Write-Think resource: Learning Beyond the Classroom!

These Read-Write-Think people are INCREDIBLE. Just goes to show you what great sponsors can do when they partner up with dedicated educators! Learning Beyond the Classroom is pitched as a “summer” destination site but it sure looks to me like something that could be used all year. The site offers a terrific collection of  highly detailed literacy activities, booklists, podcasts & videos, charts and more:

Summer Camp Counselors, take note! You have an entire digitally-enhanced multimedia curriculum here, ready for the taking! When I first saw the site I was thinking it would be linked to programs like their renowned Student Materials Index. Instead, these are set up as an adult-guided resource, lesson plans really, not something you would let students tackle on their own. Middle and High School students could probably figure it all out, but, there’s way too much text and hyperlinks to capture their attention. So to me, the site begs for adult interaction, but with that, you will be more than set. The materials are so good, in fact, I have to question why it’s being pitched as a collection of “summer” activities. Why not use them all year ’round? They are that good!

Hope this helps!

-kj-

Good morning all!

Today’s feautred site comes to us by way of the excellent Teachers Love Smartboards website (and mailing list!). It has implications for art teachers, possibly math and science teachers as well!

ThisIsSand.com starts off with a simple grey square that begs you to click on it. Doing so gets you the basic instructions: click your mouse to drop sand, press “C” to choose a color, and you’re off! The sound effects (which I find pleasing but others may not) can be disabled by pressing “M” (for “mute”) while in the application. Sand pours as long as you hold the mouse button down; dragging it around the screen distributes the falling sand accordingly, allowing you to create intricate designs (which, depending on your screen resolution, may take a while to complete!) There is no “undo,” though you can erase the drawing and start over by pressing “E.” It’s oddly soothing and challenging at the same time. You can use the arrow keys to cycle through colors and creating amazingly intricate designs. Check out the gallery:

Looks like some people have a LOT of time on their hands – and a quite a bit more patience than I do! In case it’s not available when you load the gallery, here’s a link to that US flag someone created.

This could be a ton of fun in art class towards the end of the year – perhaps students could be paired up with others doing “real” sand art and the results could be compared! Anyway, the site is fun and totally worth exploring as the school year winds down. Have fun!

-kj-

Good morning all,

For the second day in a row, I’m featuring a great resource found via tweet from Sheri Burkeen, an Early Childhood Center Technology Coordinator for PK-SK girls based in Memphis, Tennessee. (I actually blogged about this site back in December 2005 but it’s changed a LOT since then, and, new content is still being added!) This is another gem for you summer camp people!

This amazing collection of simulations will educate while it entertains. We used the weather activity earlier this year and it was fantastic – did exactly what we needed it to as a culminating activity, loaded quickly, was simple to understand and apply. The Teacher’s Guide (also available in .PDF format) has helpful tips about using the site as well as pre- and post-tests and state (Ohio) / national science standards included. The animation quality is particularly excellent, with vivid drawings, great use of sound and dialog, and kooky characters kids will love.

The Simple Machines activity is also excellent, particularly for elementary kids, as it does a great job explaining how simple machines are part of everyday life. It’s not all fun and point-n-click games though – the Crash Scene activity is extremely detailed and realistic (perhaps too much so, there are actual crash scene photos included.) Some of the other activities are also a little too realistic – the Virtual  Hip Replacement activity has actual photos too – ugh! Definitely spend some time reviewing this site before using it with your kids.

The site is actively seeking funding for a new activity on force and motion. Consider chipping in to help them out!

Hope this helps!

-kj-

Good morning all!

Came across this great resource via tweet from Sheri Burkeen, an Early Childhood Center Technology Coordinator for PK-SK girls based in Memphis, Tennessee. And what a find it is! Perfectly suited for after-school summer fun (camp counselors, take note):

My StoryMaker is a free, easy-to-use, Flash-based interactive story development platform developed by The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, with the generous support of Carnegie Mellon University and The Grable Foundation. The basic idea is that you start by selecting characters and a goal:

(Note: in my opinion, it would be helpful for students to explore the site first to get acquainted with the characters, settings and other available elements prior to developing their story.)

You are then presented with a basic editor (with a handy talking “Story Helper” guide present at all times):

and you start creating the story by adding characters, items, objects, settings & dialog (some of which is automatically generated):

You then simply drag, drop and arrange the items you want, adding dialog and pages, etc., until your story is finished. When you are done, you can choose to “share” your story, which generates a unique six-digit number that can be plugged into the StoryMaker main site and retrieved! But wait, it gets better … you can also choose to PRINT the finished story, generating a wonderful, colorful, foldable custom book! This is just too cool! It could be used for SO many language arts projects. Best of all, the interface is highly intuitive / extremely simple and no registration is required – just visit the site and start creating!

Hope this helps!

-kj-