Passion: What is most beautiful and sacred to you?

"Passion: What is most beautiful and sacred to you? What would you feel incomplete without? When you have identified that which brings you complete joy, your own unquenchable desire to achieve that goal will become your passion — the inner drive that turns your dreams into a shining reality."

The Academy of Achievement website (http://www.achievement.org) welcomes visitors at the Introduction to the Keys to Success with this quote. The Academy of Achievement mission is to "bring students face-to-face with the extraordinary leaders, thinkers and pioneers who have shaped our world."

If you or your students are looking for career ideas, or want to be inspired by some of the world's great achievers, this website is a must visit! The Keys to Success include Passion, Vision, Preparation, Courage, Perseverance, Integrity and the American Dream. Through video and text, you will learn from individuals who have shaped history, in their own words. There is also a teacher link to "Achievement TV" — a library of videos that can bring achievers from The Arts, Business, Science and Exploration or Sports (just to highlight a few) to your classrooms!

Imagine if the technology was available to capture reflections like these from leaders of our past. Challenge your students to compare a contemporary leader from this website to a historical one. How would Abraham Lincoln have described his passion? Or, how did Alexander the Great's courage compare with that of General Norman Schwarzkopf, who walked among battlefields that contained hidden explosive mines?

Visit the Achievement Gallery and discover a role model, explore a career, be inspired!!

(photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/rangerholton/1449884129/)

Thinkfinity.org (formerly Marco Polo Education) warrants revisiting

From the Thinkfinity.org brochure: "Thinkfinity delivers top-quality, standards-based, K-12 lesson plans, student materials, interactive tools ... and gives teachers, instructors and parents the tools they need to increase student performance today and create the lifelong learners of tomorrow."

Some time ago, I attended a workshop on using "Marco Polo Education" website resources in the classroom. It was a terrific resource for locating quality lesson plans and information for teaching and learning. The MCI Foundation launched the Marco Polo Education Foundation (MPEd) in 2002, and when WorldCom went into bankruptcy, Marco Polo was in danger of disappearing. Long story short, it is now known as "Thinkfinity.org" and is funded by Verizon:

This free, comprehensive digital learning platform is built upon the merger of two highly-acclaimed programs well-known to educators Verizon MarcoPolo and the Thinkfinity Literacy Network. Thinkfinity is designed to improve learning in traditional settings and beyond the classroom by providing high-caliber content and professional development needed to improve student achievement anytime, anywhere, at no cost.

Thinkfinity partners with great content providers such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of English, National Geographic Society, and soon the Smithsonian-National Museum of American History, just to name a few.

Especially of interest is the free professional development provided to help educators make the most of the resources. The success of the program relies on a "train the trainer" model in which educators attend face-to-face sessions, and then facilitate workshops in their schools or districts. I'm looking into workshop opportunities offered in Lake or Northern Cook County. In the meantime, check out the "self-guided" tour, which takes about 20 minutes.

PBS Frontline Series: Growing up online

If you missed this program Tuesday evening, note that you can view it entirely online!!
Description from PBS - FRONTLINE: Growing up online:

Just how radically is the Internet transforming the experience of childhood? FRONTLINE looks at the impact of the Internet on adolescence through the eyes of teens and their parents and what does it mean to be the first generation of coming of age via the Internet.

There are views presented from teachers, researchers, parents, and students, as well as information that parents need to know to begin or continue to teach Internet safety at home.

Note, there is a "Teacher's Guide to Growing Up Online" scheduled to be posted in February.
Visit: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/ The website also provides in-depth interview with educators, click the "Inside the Revolution" link on the page, or here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/inside/

Do you think we are doing all we can? Look for the "Join the Discussion" link at the bottom of the FRONTLINE page to the post your opinions for the producers, or leave a comment on this post to express your views relating to our community.

Library of Congress and Flickr Unite!

This week, the Library of Congress blog reported a new pilot project with Flickr:

"If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity. ... Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.
The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. ... "

To view the photos on Flickr, go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/Library_of_Congress. Two sets of digitized photos are available: 1,600 color images from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and about 1,500 images from the George Grantham Bain News Service. More about the project can be found here: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot_faq.htm

These pictures are available without copyright restrictions for educators and students! If Flickr is blocked in your district, remember that these images are available from your Library of Congress Reading Room! The powerful aspect of this pilot, is that now citizens, as Flickr users, can contribute to the information about the photos by entering comments and annotating images as they choose. This is the power of "Web 2.0" -- anyone can have a voice. Educational possibilities are endless!

TED: Ideas worth spreading in your classrooms

The first TED Conference took place in 1984. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design -- where great ideas come together. I first learned about TED from David Pogue, NYTimes Circuits author/technology columnist, when he was a keynote speaker at the IL-TCE Conference last February. (Pogue was a TED speaker in 2006.) Over 150 talks from the TED archives are now available online at http://www.ted.com, with more being added each week.

"TED is devoted to giving millions of knowledge-seekers around the globe direct access to the world's greatest thinkers and teachers.

If you're a teacher, consider incorporating TEDTalks into your classes. They are distributed under a Creative Commons license, and are freely available for such use, so long as you credit the source and do not distort the speakers' intended meaning."

Explore the TED Talks website by theme, talk title or speaker. Talks are usually 20 minutes or less, and can be downloaded in full resolution video, MP3 audio, or embedded on your website, or class Edline page. You can freely subscribe to the TEDTalks Podcasts in iTunes in either the video or audio format, and watch many of the talks on YouTube.

Here are just a few that would be great for your classroom:

Social Science: Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, explains how we are all born with the capacity for empathy -- but we sometimes choose to ignore it.

Hans Rosling's presentation at the TED-conference was an Internet success. His 2007 TED talk, "The Seemingly Impossible, is Possible" shows that a good world is possible.

Math: Ron Eglash talks about his work exploring the rigorous fractal math underpinning African architecture, art and hair braiding.

Science: Watch medical animator David Bolinsky's 3 minutes of stunning animation that show the bustling life inside a cell. Tune into environmental scientist David Keith's talk about a cheap, effective, shocking solution to climate change. Juan Enriquez offers a glimpse of some ground-breaking research to explore the potential of bioenergy. UC Berkeley biologist Robert Full explains his goal of creating the perfect robotic "distributed foot." Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge about particle physics, asking questions like, Can the fundamental law, the so-called "theory of everything," really explain everything?

Communication Arts: Lakshmi Pratury talks about the lost art of letter-writing, and shares a series of notes her father wrote her before he died. This short talk may inspire you to set pen to paper too. Steven Pinker looks at language, and the way it expresses the workings of our minds. By analyzing common sentences and words, he shows us how, in what we say and how we say it, we're communicating much more than we realize.

Applied Arts: Seth Godin's views on "Sliced bread and other marketing delights" spells out why, when it comes getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones.

Wow.

2007 in Review -- You have learned 100 things!

2007 is coming to a close, and as I looked at my Blogger Dashboard today, I noticed this is my 101st post. So, if you have been reading this blog since it's inception, you have (hopefully) learned 100 things! And, if you are a recent subscriber, the great thing about blogs is, that the archive is there, so it's not too late to catch up!

Some of the bloggers I have been reading (see the "More Blogs of Interest" list from Bloglines on the lower left side of this blog) are posting their "Top 10 Lists" and "End-of-the-Year" reflections for 2007, so I thought perhaps I would do the same.

I am typically not one to write deeply about issues or my personal views. The main reason I began this blog was to share information about using educational technology, that I formerly distributed via email. Blogging has also been a great "back up" for my brain. If I find a useful tool or application and write about it here, I never have to look very far to retrieve the information. And, sad to say, as I grow older, these tired brain cells seem to drop information from the memory banks much more quickly than I would like to admit.

I would like to point out, however, this has been a great year for me personally and professionally. I find it hard to put into words the gratitude and great respect I have for those who were instrumental in nominating and supporting me, as I received two incredible peer-recognition awards this year: the 2007 Outstanding Technology Using Educator award from the Illinois Computing Educators (ICE), and the 2007 Outstanding Leader award from the International Society for Techology in Education (ISTE).

I am reminded of a quote (reportedly in a letter to Robert Hooke on Feb. 15, 1676), from Sir Isaac Newton: "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." There are truly some gigantic shoulders that have provided me with a fantastic "view" of the possibilities for reaching and teaching each and every child, and in my position as a staff developer, the adult learners in schools. I continue to be amazed at the learning made possible by technology in our very "wired-world." And, yet, with all of the tools available, I still read stories about educators who remain disconnected. How sad for them and their students. We still have a long way to go, or do we?

The good news is that we, as educators, do not need to fear attempting innovation in isolation. If I am inclined to try a new approach to teaching a topic, unit or problem, there are literally hundreds of like-minded educators available and willing to assist, only a few keystrokes away. Research has shown that in order for professional development to be successful, it must be ongoing and embedded into daily practice. I truly believe educators must model lifelong learning so that our students can witness the value of learning firsthand. Establishing professional learning communities can help make this happen. It's important to note that communities of like-minded folks can exist in-person or online. Tools commonly labeled as "Web 2.0" provide connections and collaboration in ways not possible just a year ago.

This year, I have made numerous "connections" by networking with educators using Twitter, most recently being introduced to my very generous Secret Elf (online), who I can't wait to learn more about and from. I have "attended" virtually-hosted conferences using Elluminate, and dropped in and participated in informal sharing of topics via UStream.tv, and have shared in kind. I have pondered why educators teach, and have attempted to pay attention to the continuing evolution of technology, and its possibilities, so that I can find the best tools for learning and teaching to share with the adults in my school. I often think of The Three Princes of Serendip, the fairy tale in which the heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” I wouldn't quite place myself in the "hero" category, although I'm amazed by the amount of valuable "learning" information I continue to stumble upon each day, thanks to the generosity of the educators in my sphere.

I can hardly imagine what the new year will bring. My hope is that learning will be great in 2008, for me, and for you and yours. Happy New Year!

XO = Great Learning Tool!

My OLPC XO was delivered two days ago. When I ordered the XO as part of the One Laptop Per Child's Give 1 Get 1 program, I had little idea of the learning potential of this device. The concept of providing a laptop for a child in a developing country had great appeal. The wiki supporting the XO is a great example of the learning that is possible with this device: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities

This is my first experience exploring Linux as an operating system. Several Linux-based programs (referred to as "Activities") such as the TamTam Jam, Turtle Art (logo programming) and Pippy are preinstalled.

Some of the keyboard keys and other hardware components are not yet functional, such as the ability to write on the trackpad with a stylus, however, many Activities and upgrades are in the works. It will be nice to have the ability to "sleep" the laptop.. a feature that reportedly will be coming soon in 2008.

The ability to fold the screen flat, and use the hardware buttons to navigate through the content is an interesting feature that is useful for reading eBooks. I have yet to explore the recording features and I am looking forward to the possibility of collaborating with other XO owners.

I had a bit of trouble connecting to the Internet using our school's visitor access point, since the browser could not authenticate the certificate, but our network manager was able to grant the access needed. Adding the device to my home network was relatively easy.

Will I use the XO for daily computing tasks? Probably not. I'm not that accustomed to the small keyboard, and I feel somewhat limited by the speed (it's not the fastest device I have used). For a child, however, this is one powerful learning tool. Kudos to the XO dreamers and developers who's mission "is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education."

I love "feel good" stories!

I love "feel good" stories, and it seems that at this time of year, many folks devote their time to finding ways to spread a bit of "holiday cheer." While reading Will Richardson's blog today I learned about a 10-year-old child's effort to make a difference by performing random acts of kindness during the 25 days leading up to Christmas.

This might be thought of as a typical activity many youngsters engage in as part of their Sunday School lessons about Christmas and gift-giving. What is different in this instance is that Laura is sharing her efforts on a blog (with Mom's help). And, in the 9 days since Laura began her blog, she has gotten over 8,300 hits and almost 2 dozen children joining her in a commitment to making a difference too!

Follow Laura's progress at Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference -- maybe you could post a comment about how she truly is making a difference! It might make you both feel good.

Please speak up!

It's that time of year again - time to Speak Up during the National Speak Up event, brought to you by http://www.tomorrow.org.

Last year at this time, teachers and students at Stevenson joined the national dialog by completing the Speak Up Day survey. This is the 5th year of the Speak Up, facilitating the inclusion of student voices in national and local discussions on education and technology.

This year's question themes are: Learning and Teaching with Technology, Web 2.0 in Education, 21st Century Skills, Science Instruction & Global Competitiveness, Emerging Technologies in the Classroom (Gaming, Mobile Devices, Online Learning) and Designing the School of the Future. Also new this year: the parent survey is available in English and Spanish.

This annual event is now open for K-12 students, teachers, parents and new this year -- school leaders. The Speak Up surveys will be open through December 21, 2007. You may preview the survey questions at: http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/speakup_surveys.html

Speak Up, a national online research project facilitated by Project Tomorrow^SM, gives individuals the opportunity to share their viewpoints about key educational issues. Each year, findings are summarized and shared with national and state policy makers. Participating schools and districts can access their data online, free-of-charge.

All districts and schools, in the current NCES database, are automatically registered to participate in Speak Up. To participate in the survey and obtain free, online access to your school or district’s aggregated results, your registration must be activated by an adult at your school. If your school has not yet joined this effort, there is still time! Browse on over to http://www.netdayspeakup.org/

ComicLife Meets Curriculum and other great resources ...

Last Thursday I hopped on board the Amtrak express from Chicago to Springfield, to attend and present two sessions at the IETC (Illinois Educational Technology Conference). My session on Google Tools for Educators was filled to capacity. I also presented on using Wikis -- one of my favorite Web 2.0 tools. I recorded both sessions and have posted the audio files on the websites. After listening to myself (doesn't everyone hate hearing their own voice?), I think that I need to work on slowing down a bit. However, by providing the audio from the session, at least the attendees can rewind and play back anything that I zipped through.

One of the sessions, "Comic Life Meets the Curriculum," was presented by Marilee Sarlitto from Kildeer Countryside CCSD 96, and Judith Epcke of Northbrook School District 28. Although I couldn't attend, I was able to review the resources on their website, which is a goldmine of information on this very engaging software. I would encourage you to check it out.

Check out the handouts and weblinks from other sessions: http://www.il-edtech.org/Handouts07_Thursday.htm and http://www.il-edtech.org/Handouts07_Friday.htm

'Tis the Season to Help the Less Fortunate

Today you have two opportunities to help those less fortunate in our world. One way will cost you nothing but time, while the other will require that you dig a little deep into your pockets.

1. Feed the hungry and feed your brain!
FreeRice.com will donate 10 grains of rice for each word you get correct in the online vocabulary challenge. ("WARNING: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance...") Rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Visit the United Nations World Food Program to learn more about their successful approach to ending hunger.

2. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)'s "Give One Get One" program starts in the U.S. and Canada today (Nov. 12), and ends on Dec. 31st.
During this time, for a donation of $399, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life (or the child in you) in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving). For all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access. Wifi "HotSpot" access can be used with any Wi-Fi-enabled device, such as your laptop computer or a Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phone.

Live Netcasting Casts Large Net

Time Magazine's cover story in Dec. 2006 told the story "about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before" due to the "new" Web, which has become a "tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter." Here's a small contribution for you to consider.

On Tuesday after school, members of the Northen Illinois Computing Educators (NICE) met after school to learn about teaching with interactive white boards. Two teachers compared the features of Promethean ActivBoards and SMARTBoards and shared their classroom experiences. The meeting was attended by several dozen local educators as well as educators across the country. How? Live netcasting!

Websites such as UStream and Operator11 allow anyone the ability to reach far beyond their in-person audience, by providing the means for live streaming. Users can broadcast themselves "live" using a webcam and an Internet connection, as well as record it for later viewing. There is also a live "text chat" window for discussion during the broadcast -- a technique that has been called "back-channeling."

And you should know, it's free. Is it safe as well? The Read/WriteWeb blog reports that with Operator11, "because everything being streamed over the site is taped, and because the users know that, they are far less likely to break the rules or do anything inappropriate."

Credit to Steve Dembo for taking this one step further and setting up a wikispace for educators (EdTV) to post their broadcast links. What's on? We are! You can be too! You are invited to tune in, and learn from our presentation.

Bookshare.org now funded by U.S. federal Dept. of Ed

In my quest to find a scanned version of the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, I browsed to Bookshare.org, and learned that on October 1, 2007, the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S. federal Department of Education made a major five-year award of $32 million to further the objectives of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), by supplying high quality textbooks and educational materials to students with special needs.

This funding is designed to fully support all schools, and students 26-years-old and under, with qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and post-secondary. Bookshare.org will provide these students with access to the entire collection of accessible electronic books, and to software for reading those books. Bookshare.org's website reports they also expect to add over 100,000 new educational titles in high quality DAISY and Braille formats over the next five years, getting students the terrific quality textbooks they need for academic success.

This will save countless hours of scanning and reworking print material for our students with learning and physical disabilities.

By the way, Speak is not yet in the Bookshare.org library. If you have a scanned version that you can share, please contact me.

Amazing Street View in Google Maps

Check out some new views in Google Maps using the amazing "you are there" tool called Street View. Google posted this intro 4 days ago on YouTube and it has already been viewed more than 130,000 times (wonder why they didn't post it on Google Videos?)




Street View is currently available in six U.S. cities: Chicago, Portland, Philadelphia, Tucson, Phoenix and Pittsburgh. And, it's not just the cities themselves, but out in the suburbs as well. The "blue" indicates where Street View is available:

Street View provides a 360-degree view at a given point on the map. Here's a look at our school, if you were driving by on Rt. 22:


Google Maps Help says: "To navigate along a street, click one of the white arrows overlaid on the street to move in that direction. You can also use arrow keys. Street names display within the info window. You can navigate on to another street once you reach the center of an intersection."

I grew up in the city of Chicago here:

The neighborhood is still looking pretty good. I wonder how often these views will be updated. Take a virtual walk!

K12 Online Conference -- tagged!

Vinnie Vrotny tagged me with a meme to help promote the K12 Online Conference, which "opened" this week with a pre-conference keynote by David Warlick. How appropriate, since announcing the K12 Online Conference was to be the subject of my next post.

What is the K12 Online Conference?
The K12 Online Conference could be described as an open source conference, you can choose when, where, how, and at what level you will participate -- AND, there is no cost to you, other than your time!

Congratulations to its conveners, Darren Kuropatwa, Wes Fryer, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and Lani Ritter-Hall who have voluntarily organized this year's 2007 conference, and in the process, have gathered 40 volunteer presenters who will provide information on topics they are passionate about. Add to that: four live events, three fireside chats and one 24-hour culminating gathering that will allow educators from all over the world to connect and share ideas, thoughts, and experiences with each other during the two weeks of presentations, and beyond.

If you don’t have time to "tune in" during the conference dates (October 15-27), you can visit the presentations anytime, which will be available in perpetuity, or when the technology evolves, which ever comes first.

K12 Online Conference Meme Rules
To share either three (3) reasons to participate based on your experience from last year or (if you didn’t attend last year) three (3) things you hope to gain from the experience this year.

My Responses to the Meme

1. I continue to learn and re-learn from last year's presentations. Since I subscribed in iTunes, I only need to dial up David or Wes or Mark to review the information.
   
2. I am grateful for what I have learned, and that I have been able to teach others at workshops and conferences throughout the year.
   
3. What better way to "meet" like-minded educators! You do not have to innovate in isolation! These folks genuinely care that you learn -- and they don't even know you yet.
   

Who is next?

I tag: Lucy Gray, Joe Brennan and the TechChicks (Anna and Helen)

Technorati Tags: k12online, k12online07

Great new tool from Google!

Each week in the Staff Development Lab, we offer a "Power Lunch" learning session that focuses on ways to integrate technology. Faculty and staff members are invited to "learn as they munch" -- they bring their lunch to the lab, and we provide a short demonstration (about 20 minutes) and a beverage and treat (cookies, granola bar, etc.).

Last week's topic was "Google Tools for the Classroom" which focused on using "Google Docs" -- word processing and spreadsheet files that can be shared, co-authored and edited in real time, on the web. Documents can be public or private, and can be shared as "view only" or with editing access. CommonCraft has recently published a great introductory video called "Google Docs in Plain English" -- see: http://www.commoncraft.com/video-googledocs

As I was preparing for the session, I created a handout to share with the attendees, along with several sample files for the demo. However, as I was sharing the process for uploading files, I was surprised to see that in addition to uploading Word and Excel files, Google now provides an online presentation tool!

Users can upload PowerPoint files, which can be edited using a web browser. Similar to the Docs and Spreadsheet tools, collaborators and viewers can be invited, and the final presentation can be published for all. There is a even a feature for presenting "live" across the Internet and the ability to interact with the internet-based audience.

There are about a dozen background templates for creating a presentation without first uploading a PowerPoint file. Limitations are: not more than 10mb in size, and unlike Docs and Spreadsheets, presentation files cannot be downloaded for further editing in PowerPoint.

What a great educational tool for students who are given "group" projects. No worries about who had the most recent copy of the presentation. No worries about file incompatibility. Yay Google!!

Helping Educators Become Technology Literate

There are many considerations in helping educators become technology literate. I think it is especially hard these days, given the amount of information we and our students are exposed to on a daily basis. Not to mention the fact that technology, both hardware and software, continues to change and evolve at a rapid pace. It seems that as soon as you become comfortable with a tool, a new and improved version is released. As much as I embrace the use of technology, and how it can enrich students' experiences in the classroom, I sometimes find it challenging to "keep up."

I was clearing out some old email messages and came across a discussion I had with an Instructional Technologist from Texas about trying to help teachers become more technology literate. My response to her inquiry included the following questions:

• What are the "technology" expectations for your teachers?
• Are technology goals defined at the local level by the stakeholders, or are they state mandated?
• What is the teacher's mission for integrating technology?
• What are their frustrations?
• Do the teachers have access to reliable technology tools?
• Do they understand where or how technology can improve learning?
• There are always beginners, adapters and innovators when it comes to using technology, yet every school seems to have a few teachers willing to take risks with technology, does yours? If yes, these teachers need to be your evangelists! They need to spread their excitement!
  
• How can the technology innovators in your school, help those still struggling?
• Can you enlist the innovators in your school to share their best practices and success stories? Often, one teacher doesn't know what another is doing, and some very awesome things could be happening in your own backyard that should be showcased!
• Time is a precious commodity that teachers never seem to have enough of. If your evangelists can show how they have overcome the time obstacle, it may inspire others as well.
• How do you allow teachers to experience, and most of all celebrate, success? There is nothing more frustrating than going to an inservice day, or training session, and come away feeling they will never "get it," or "this will never work in my class."
• As an instructional technologist, what is your biggest challenge in integrating the technology?
  
• Do you offer assistance in the classroom?
  
• Are you designing technology-rich lessons or are the teachers expected to create them?
• Who teaches the students technology literacy? Do you have a computer "person" who does, or is this the teacher's responsibility?
• Can you show teachers how technology can make their lives easier?
  
• What kind of information in small bits can you offer, that will show teachers how technology supports learning? Or, help their students to learn better?

Perhaps you are in a position to provide support to educators and have asked (or answered) these questions? I would love to learn your tips.

Whew! We're rolling now.... hmmm... what to learn?

It's been a bit of a hectic start to the school year. There is always a flurry of things to get done, and most everyone has questions, even though we hadn't changed many things over the summer. One major undertaking was that our campus became totally wireless this year. Since so many of our teachers are using laptops, this is a welcome upgrade! It has somehow affected our ability to iChat in BonJour though. We just don't "see" each other anymore.

So, now that things are settling in, it's time to set our goals for the coming year. In our professional learning community, we are committed to life-long learning. So, what will our learning consist of? What tools will we use in our classrooms? Will we risk trying something new? How will we learn? Who will teach us?

The web is a wonderland of both useless and useful information. I love the fact that so much information is online and freely available. So much to learn, so little time. But, here's something to get you going. Check out Common Craft, where complex items are explained in plain English -- "their product is explanation." Confused about Web 2.0 tools such as Social Bookmarking, Wikis, and RSS? The Common Craft videos are great starters to introduce you to these concepts.

Happy learning!

Your Mission: Keep Learning!

Welcome back to school!
As we begin to gear up for another year, we have spent the last several days working with staff and teachers to "get them up to speed" on the changes and improvements that have occurred during the summer.

In our back to school "learning" sessions, we provide a brief overview of the web-based services for which we are fortunate to have subscriptions. Being a "technology trainer," I am most appreciative of the wonderful online tutorials at Atomic Learning.com. If you have never visited this website, (or haven't visited it lately), make some time to go there soon.

There are many free tutorials available without a subscription, such as the beginning-level tutorials in each topic, AND, for a limited time, visitors have access to a workshop series on how to use pbwiki (a super easy to use wiki site -- free for educators).

Atomic Learning has also recently aligned their offerings to State standards, and have provided a search tool to find topics or lesson accelerators by State, subject and grade.

Our local ISTE affiliate, the Illinois Computing Educators (ICE), provides all members with a subscription to Atomic Learning. The cost of ICE membership is less than an individual subscription to Atomic Learning, so you might want to take a look at joining ICE -- which provides additional benefits, and the opportunity to connect with like-minded educators!

Keep learning!

Apple Releases iLife 08 !

I've just spent 20 minutes viewing highlights of Apple's newest release of iLife 08. iPhoto has been updated with some great features, such as the ability to organize photos by "event." iPhoto automatically sorts photos by events according to the day photos are taken. All the photos from one event can be skimmed through in a small preview window. When viewing the photos in a single event, iPhoto provides a "hide" feature for pictures that you just don't want to throw away, but you might not want to view all the time.

In addition to some new printing templates, I was most impressed by the new Web gallery for sharing photos on .Mac ("dot Mac"). Photos can be published/uploaded with a single click and viewed on any web browser in a variety of ways -- (reminds me of viewing photos in Flickr) and high quality downloads for printing are available as well.

The best feature is that others can add or upload to your gallery!! I have been a .Mac subscriber since it was first given away free (currently $99 per year) and now .Mac subscribers are being given more webspace, increasing it to 10GB combined storage for mail and web publishing! Yay!

iMovie has been totally recreated to allow "super-fast movie creation" using a built-in library of video clips that you can skim through to select sequences as easily as selecting text. Drag and organize sequences in the new project window and share your finished masterpiece in your .Mac web gallery, reportedly in higher resolution than DVD. Or, publish directly to YouTube is also an option in the Share menu. Among the formats the iMovie now accepts is DV, HDV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and AVCHD.

Of course, iWeb is still available for publishing websites that include blogs, podcasts, and photos in creative albums. However, now iWeb also provides web-widgets for adding interactive content such as embedded YouTube videos and "interactive Google maps." Google's Ad-Sense program is also available as a widget, if you choose to use this (I hate ads on webpages).

GarageBand 08 has a new feature for musicians. Take the "stage" with a hand-picked virtual band, (just turn on and off instruments) to create music using your own instrument, voice, etc.

Check out iLife at http://www.apple.com/ilife/. Upgrades are $79.

Be sure to note the system requirements: iMovie requires OS X 10.4.9, and an Intel processor, a Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0GHz or faster), or an iMac G5 (1.9GHz or faster). iMovie HD 6, previously distributed with iLife ’06, is available for download for those who have purchased and installed iLife ’08 at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html