Author: Teach2Connect

The students of grade 2 are finishing up their units on Maps in Social Studies. In this unit they paid two visits to the lab, once to explore the wonders of Google Earth (navigating to both their school and home) and once, to create a digital map of their own bedroom. The Google Earth lesson was interesting for some (who learned how to use street view and could spin 360 in their drive way) and frustrating for others (whose homes are not yet in street view). Either way, they enjoyed the adventure and liked how they could manipulate the views in ways that no paper map could accomplish.

For their digital creation, we used the online drawing tool found on Kerpoof. This website, which is owned by Disney, allows students to use digital drawing tools to make their creations. I chose this tool over MS Paint because it had fewer choices for editing. I don’t typically like to limit my students but I found that by having limited options for drawing choices, the children were actually given more freedom to create with what they had in front of them. I also like the auto-correcting shape tool in Kerpoof. It allows corrections for circles, squares, and rectangles for those of us with less than perfect drawing hands.

As I have a teacher account for the site, we saved their creations in my account, to avoid having to go through the file server (lots of extra steps for a 7 year old) and then I was able to print the creations out for them to take home or hang in our “map gallery” outside the lab.

This activity was a challenge in several ways for students. Some were not satisfied until their beds or dressers were perfectly shaped and so they spent a lot of time with their eraser function. Some thrived in the creative realm and created maps complete with stuffed animals and doorknob adornments. The project encouraged the students to visualize their rooms in “satellite view” (from their Google Earth experience) and they had to grapple with spatial awareness and creativity.

All in all they walked away with experience in a new tool and a personal connection to cartography. These connections are priceless.

SOURCE: Messiah Kahn

As is quite common when working in an environment with a vast number of resources on a network and simultaneously experiencing on-campus lightning strikes this morning, our machines and network are a bit slow to recover. This is normal, not common, but given the circumstances, it is to be expected. This provides an amazing teachable moment for students.

In our 24/7 connected world, the art and virtue of patience dwindles by the minute. I am completely guilty of having my iPhone strapped at my side constantly almost as if it is my third appendage. But the value of patience and flexibility in the midst of challenges (real or perceived) is incredibly important. This morning, network issues led to a need for flexibility of computer use and space choice. It led to mixed success with log-in’s and typing test completion. But it also provided a great moment for students to exercise their patience and perseverance. My most flowery compliments this morning were bestowed on those who had to fight their desire to throw the tablet computer across the room (perhaps this is a slight exaggeration or a projection on my part) and keep trying or waiting. A further discussion about reclaiming found time to breath could also be related to moment, but alas, time pressed on and logging off ensued.

I am grateful for these teachable moments for life lessons even in the middle of frustration and chaos. Deep breaths Grasshopper.

The world of web 2.0 has so many choices for sharing information. Online bookmarks, wikis, blogs, tweets, webpages with hyperlinks… Then there is the traditional choice of desktop shortcuts and folders. Or the in between of a teacher-student management  device such as Smart Sync. As my position is new to the Lower School, we are still in the process of figuring out the “best way” to manage and share the amazing resources that we can use to work with our students. After adding several links to a start button folder to 20 different machines in the last two weeks, I needed something more efficient.

We are going to pilot Smart Sync in our lab, which is wonderful. I used this program in my “old school”; we used Synchroneyes-the version prior to its purchase by SMART. I love the way this program allows classroom management of multiple machines and allows the teacher to push a URL directly to the students. When your students are still building their literacy, asking them to type a URL or even make 6-7 clicks to find a link is not an efficient use of time.

Also, after beginning to maintain both Symbaloo pages and my old wiki, I created a new school specific wiki to serve as a landing pad for resources. It took less than an hour to move some of my old wiki parts to the new wiki. I was able to reach out to teachers to ask for their favorite resources, which I can then add to the site. If teachers make the page a “favorite”, they will have so much less searching to do and a lot more surfing.

These are both small options on the web 2.0 totem pole, but I’m happy to be carving out a clearer niche as my journey continues as a tech facilitator.

Do you have a resource that you LOVE that you think I MUST have on my wiki? Tweet me and I’ll check it out!

I’ll be giving my first Prezi at my new school tomorrow. I will give it 6 times to 3rd and 4th grade students and I’m super excited to share this tool with them. I’m fairly certain that they haven’t seen a presentation in this way. I wish I could embed the HTML code directly onto this post, but alas, it comes up as gobbledy-gook! Instead, I share the “Intro to Tablets” presentation with you.

After a week of administering computer based reading tests, I’m so excited to work with kids this week that is truly hands-on.

Enjoy!

Today is Leadership Day 2011 and there are so many topics within Ed Leadership that I would love to tackle. But I’m going to go with this one: “You don’t have time NOT to”

In ten years in education I have heard so many people say to me, “I don’t have time for that”. It has ranged from baking cookies for the faculty meeting to meeting with parents to lunch duty to learning new technologies. I respect this protection of time, truly I do. We must know ourselves as educators and humans to know our limits, particularly of time.

In the area of educational technology there are so many factors that cause fear and trepidation for implementation. Many of these are personal, rational thoughts of highly capable, intelligent education professionals. We often interpret this fear as a lack of time. Technology can be a scary river to wade. But we know that there are so many benefits to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and organization found through the integration of technology. By letting fear win over innovation, it is our kids who lose.

This leaves our school leaders with the uphill task of encouraging their faculty and/or peers to break through fear and the ever present struggle with time. If leadership approaches this predicament by encouraging their teachers to see beyond the initial onset of lost time and look to the long-term benefits, we can move a step towards positive integration. Likewise, if we work with our students from the framework malleable intelligence then we must promote that among our teachers as well.  The “ROI” from time spent learning about technology integration and engaging students in collaborative, engaging, technologically-rich lessons may not be evident when we look at the factor of time. Nevertheless, we don’t have time NOT to move our classrooms and schools forward. The time is now.

I will be spending the better part of the next 3 days logging into the sessions at the Reform Symposium. This is a three-day, free, online conference with sessions of a very wide range! I will be checking into sessions about Multimedia and Math, Empowering Women and Girls in Technology, and Collaboration between Teachers and Leadership, just to name a few!

Are you a teacher on summer break hanging out in your A/C today because it is hotter than the surface of the sun? Is it raining in your hometown? Do you really like/need free, easy to access, professional development? Check it out! Here is a link to the schedule for East Coast USA time zoners. Be sure you are using the #RSCON3 hashtag on Twitter to engage in the chats.

“See” you at the Symposium!

This weekend I had the pleasure of spending several hours with two of my favorite people. My nieces are funny, smart, and lovely little girls and it is always a delight to spend time with them. Watching them this weekend was such a great affirmation for me with regard to kids and technology. Just as kids are not afraid to jump feet first into the cold lake on a warm summer morning or get muddy as they hike to the top of a mountain and peer over, kids are not afraid of technology. They just jump in with both feet and figure it out.

J, who is 8 and entering the 3rd grade, picked my iPad (she has one at home) and didn’t even think to ask, can I use this? Or, how does this work? E, who is 6 and entering 1st grade, is the same way. They can move their way through games, books, and videos, as long as you give them the password. And, thankfully, J asked before going to the app store.(Thank you sister for teaching such nice manners!)

This wasn’t particularly new learning for me; to see kids immersed and at ease with technology. But it was truly a reminder that as teachers we must be as fearless as our kids. Our kids don’t care if we don’t know what to do, if we aren’t the masters of the program. Our kids just love that we try and get excited when they can show us something. Complacency is simply not an option in our educational practice. We must embrace the fear of the unknown and jump in with both feet. This is our new task as teachers, to move forward without fear.

A few weeks ago I jumped on the Google+ bandwagon and thought, “hmmm, do I really need another SM portal to check and maintain?” I was an early adopter and early quitter of the Google Wave fiasco, so I wasn’t particularly interested in another profile to delete. I have done my fair share of reading blogs and reviews of the program. The piece that interests me most about G+ is the concept of Circles. I watched a great TechCrunch interview (which I now cannot find anywhere!) that discussed the concept of Circles. Then this morning I read a good post from Kristen Swanson about the idea of Circles.

I appreciate that I am able to separate what I post into different circles so that my PLN gets my nerdy articles but my friends don’t have to endure them. Facebook does have the capability to separate into groups but with 600+ friends, this is too much. I see the use of circles in G+ to be similar to the use of #edchat or #isedchat in Twitter. I don’t know yet what the unique purposes of each will be or if they will mainly overlap but I look forward to the new connection, at least in a limited way.

Need a G+ invite? Wanna be in my circle? Tweet me @Teach2Connect or look me up on G+.

Well, the re-design of the LSL (lower school lab) has not been without hurdles, but it is going incredibly well thanks to the gifted design and construction talents of my new partner in crime at work! Once I settle in there and make a “school-home” it becomes time to really dig into the work of getting teachers excited about the prospect of  technology integration in their classrooms.

I am SUPER excited about this prospect and all the possibilities that can be used to engage student thinking and generate amazing learning results. I definitely have my super-hero-happy-go-lucky hat on but my realistic scarf is never far from me. I know that not everyone will be as super excited about new ways to teach and learn. I’ve only been out of the classroom for four weeks and I totally understand the overwhelming tasks that teachers have to undertake in any given day. But my excitement is undeterred.

I am really looking forward to working with my new colleagues and sharing new ideas. I can’t wait to see what they and the kids can do when we collaborate! In the meantime, I’ll keep churning my idea mill and connecting whenever possible. I will also take any advice from my awesome PLN for strategies for entering the waters of a new school with a new agenda. (Hint, Hint…)

So positive hat (tiara) firmly planted on head and reality scarf hiding in the back pocket, off to churn I go….

(Image: Don’t keep calm and carry on., a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from blackbeltjones’s photostream)

I am in week two of my new professional adventure. I am officially ensconced as a Lower School Technology Facilitator at my new school. This is tremendously exciting and overwhelming. We have been up to our ears in re-designing the lower school (K-4) lab. I am also becoming acquainted with curriculum, the community, and our resources. Soon to come will be goal setting for integration, reviewing outcomes for me and for the technology curriculum, etc.

I am going to lean into the new adventure with an open mind and a positive spirit. Change is really exciting (Did I just say that?). I am also going to look to my PLN gurus for guidance and support. I will do my best to be a good contributor to my PLN community in addition to being a consumer of their knowledge.

Both feet, firmly jumping into the new adventure…off I go!