Illinois Computing Educator Resources

The Library Department spent our Institute Day (Friday, February 27th) at ICE, the annual conference for Illinois Computing Educators.  The schedule included an opening keynote and then a variety of poster and breakout sessions. Especially helpful this year is the set of online resources which are posted here. It means that even though we did not attend Thursday’s keynote on the Maker Movement, for example, we can still access the shared notes or look at presentation materials from other sessions like the one which Kathy Garneau  with husband Marc (who is New Trier technology Staff Developer and Librarian)  presented on “My school is 1:1 what do I do now.”  Use the drop down menus at the top of the main page to search by presenter, by day and time and so forth to find materials of interest to you.

This year, tons of resources covered topics like “Creating with iBooks Author” to “Getting the most out of your ChromeBook” and many, many more ideas. In fact, even though they were applicable across a range of grades and subjects, it did seem as though the sessions were more stratified by device and I am wondering what that portends for the future of both the ICE Conference and student exposure to technology.

As always, it was great to see friends and colleagues from sending schools and many local high schools.  I found myself missing Judy Gressel and thinking of how she always encouraged us to come away with at least one new thing that we could use immediately.  Lisa Dettling of Stevenson provided the one for me.  Her poster session was highlighting primary sources now more easily searchable due to a Library of Congress grant to Barat Education Foundation.  I know that are Modern World History students will love the cartoons and other information about Imperialism in the Philippines. Certainly, our AP US students who are building DBQ’s will be grateful for the general link, too.  

But the learning doesn’t stop – it will be fun to go back and review presentation materials from bloggers and tweeters like Nick Provenzano, Josh Stumpenhorst, Vinnie Vrotney, and more.  Also, several of us attended a session on Flipboard and decided  to explore its functionality further at an upcoming Library Department meeting.

Northern Illinois Computing Educators (NICE) mini-conference

Last week technology teacher Maureen Magee attended the NICE mini-conference and was kind enough to share her notes and thoughts with us. Enjoy reading her about conference experience.


See also resources from our New Trier presenters on VoiceThread at the ICE Conference in St. Charles later this month. 
ICE Conference 2010: A Learning Odyssey
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Half-Day Workshop 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM


Presenters: Suzy Tauber and MaryAnn Apple, New Trier High School

What is VoiceThread? In simple terms, it is an easily accessible Web 2.0 online program that can be used with any grade level or in any class to create collaborative presentations,digital stories, student portfolios and more. Participants will view exemplary projects,explore the program, and create a VoiceThread to use with their students.

They have developed a wonderful wiki of resources.

Back at another Rushton Hurley session at ICE

Rushton Hurley: Japanese Language teacher in California. A nonprofit guy...who is sharing content from his organization NextVista which publishes videos made by students.

Video engages students: we enjoyed so many student productions. Zamzar.com will help you get videos on your desktop if Google is blocked at your school. Kids can use this service to convert YouTube files which are currently blocked and use clips in their presentations without having to do it from the teacher computer.

Students often have great questions, e.g. "What is the role of humility in a strong person's life?" Digital video is important for many reasons: there something totally engaging about video. There is a power in unpredictability; teachers are very predictable. Video is unpredictable and therefore interesting. Students want to be intrigued. How do we talk with and learn from our students?
The Power of Video: Surprise me...don't give students too many parameters which will kill creativity.

Students love to celebrate each other's work. Signing out - my battery is low!

Getting Teachers to Adopt Technology

Rushton Hurley: Japanese Language teacher in California. A nonprofit guy...what else do you expect from California.

Free resources for classrooms: Technology had better save me time or help the kids learn better. Period.

Don't
Don't have teachers require themselves to be tech experts.
Don't tie everything to standards. [duh]
Don't sit everyone is a lab for training. (Erika just reminded me about Follett Destiny training!!)


Do's
Remind teachers of their expertise.
Give students options but channel it to the cool stuff. You can do a movie or make a poster. Kids will definitely veer toward the cool stuff.
Talk with students NOT at them.
Why are you there as a teacher? So you (as teacher) can learn something!
Show other teachers something fun. Show them your flickr favorites. Show them with
Cool Iris (Firefox plug-in)! Awesome for visually compelling lessons. Prompts discussions.
Do allow regular (and short) sharing time.
Great clip made for No Food, No Drink in the lab/library!

Do look at what's happening in the classrooms. Don't tell me what you'd do if you had X or Y. Tell me what you'd do with the tech you have now.
Do learn what’s freely available. You don’t need CAD, you can use like Google’s SketchUp.
Do: use targeted spending to focus purchases.
See Lightbulbs section of his website to see videos folks have created.
Textbooks are by definition: BORING. –see videos “Global Views” section.
See also: “Seeing Service”. Videos of service-- Great idea to share with Mitch Jones.
Students need to know that they have “something to give”. The stories are out they – the best that we can be.
Xrl.us/NVnews
Fill out a form to get your free stuff: Send your email
rh@nextvista.org
Loved this presentation. Going back to hear more at 2:30pm.

Steve Dembo session: The Power of Glass Schools

Steve Dembo is such a great presenter. Yesterday's session on digital storytelling was great, so I am back for more. He's affiliated with Discovery Education. So he's a former educator now promoting multimedia stuff...another blurring of roles. But he does walk the walk and he's definitely not selling products. He's definitely worth following on Twitter.

View his presentation.
Carl Fish originated a staff development "Did you know"? Now it's been re-mixed with 120 million views. Started with a simple PPT and now it's a multimedia extravaganza with all manner of other educators, re-mixing and making it more fabulous. He took the time to share this out on his blog...so professor Scott McLeod of the Dangerously Irrelevant blog shared it and it went mainstream. The thing is...if you share enough...others will find value in your work. Think about your own skill set and how other educators would benefit from WHAT YOU KNOW!

What does this mean for our students and classrooms? We need to scaffold the social media experience for students starting with kindergartners. Let's not wait until high school.
Examples of teachers doing cool things:
Students are fluent with many technologies such as blogger, YouTube, Facebook, Skype, Twitter, SecondLife, SlideShare, Photostory, Moviemaker. Vicki Davis followed her middle school students as they did projects exploring dozens of technologies to learn. She is the author of the Flat Classroom Project based on Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat.
She wants her students to work across the globe in real time and asynchronously.

Jen Dorman: has much more structure to her projects.

Lisa Parisi: Star Discovery Educator
Podcast using cellphones: GCast. Using mobile podcasting. Students storyboarded podcast and then recorded; published online. Focused entirely on content.

Steve mentioned again the use of the new tool ipadio to do mobile podcasting. This would be a great tool for students to "podcast" in school from the cell phones what they have learned in the library as they progress with their Jr. theme research progress. Can do interviews via 3 way conference call. You can also add a one minutes transcription, title, and key words to your podcast. Students then can subscribe to these feeds via itunes. This doesn't need to be a big deal and all scripted.
Individual accounts are free; space is unlimited.

Maria Knee - Kindergarten teacher. Uses blog for class newsletter adding photos/videos for weekly parent notes. Also included Yackpack! It turns your webpage into a 2 way radio. This opens up page to real time conversations with the class. Parents can pop on and ask how's Tim's cough going? Can open it up during key times during the day. Can have classroom to classroom conversations.
Makes your classroom transparent.

Langhorst's Web Classroom - 8th Grade American History:
Ask an author. An example of a very locked down classroom doing online projects.

Darren Kuropatwa- blogging classroom notes started simply. Then kids started adding visuals, finding extra sources for daily work then sharing out with the class.
Then daily notes got even more elaborate: converted into graphic novel form. Kids got really creative.
Demonstrate their understanding creatively. They even created a class scribe "Hall of Fame". Scribe Post Hall of Fame for daily AP Calculus notes.

Would it be quite as meaningful behind a firewall?

Jen Wagner She does a wordle of the day and has kids guess the theme.
She has great ways of letting parents have a window into the classroom. It doesn't need to be elaborate. Can be a flip cam loaded up to Teacher Tube/YouTube/Vimeo or OSTube - where you have 100% control of it. It's also 100% free.

Student Attention in the Digital Age: Scott Weidig

Pace of Change: How can we look at things differently?
70% of population on Facebook are outside the United States.
Session handout:

Student Attention in the Digital Age

"While there are ample examples of “evidence” that technology engages and captivate students, quite often we hear that educators feel that it either loses it’s impact over time, or ‘distracts’ students into missing the objective of the lesson. Which are YOU finding to be true? Ask yourself a few questions: Has our pedagogy changed and adapted to meet the direction the world is forcing upon our children and students? Should it change? If so, what is getting in the way of change? Come ready to challenge these topics."


Wiki of all presentation handouts for all sessions!

Mario Armstrong- - Keynote Presentation at ICE

Hello from the ICE Conference!

Armstrong's goal is to address strategies designed to help us integrative, creative technology solutions in the classroom. He is having us tweet to him. Steve Dembo won the fastest geek tweet - won a book. Armstrong's a video game aficionado.

We need to learn how to learn again. Armstrong says he thinks technology needs to be integrated correctly. The biggest problem in our field is how to teach students problem solving? He illustrates this via the evolution of the Segway.

Get feedback via real-time feedback from Twitpoll. Working with people resistant to change is a big problem. Budgets are not the biggest problem.

We are re-defining the nature of the "classroom". The classroom can be the mall or waiting for the bus. What devices are kids using now? Here's where the opportunity is for kids:math & science careers will grow by more than twice that of any other profession.
Who's doing What?
About 1/3 of the audience is using Skype. Join the Educational Skype Directory.

Unfortunately, this keynote is short on vision and long on a presentation of cool tools for taking education outside the classroom.

Session I: will most likely attend Sara Kajder's "New Literacies, New Questions, New Research"
1) How do we know what is really working in our pedagogy?
2) What does it mean to research with adolescents?

Session II: Lucy Gray & Liz Lehman (Univ of Chicago Lab School and Arlington Hts. District 25) " Using Technology to Foster Exploration and Reflection in Science" - inquiry based Science learning.

Looking forward to: David Warlick's luncheon event: Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century!


After lunch, it's off to the exhibits.
Afternoon sessions: Will definitely attend Steve Dembo's "Storytelling for the YouTube Generation".