Tech Tuesday's - Animoto

Our district is having technology training on Tuesday's.  It is voluntary for people to participate.  So far I have attended a session on Google Search by Sara Berceau, very useful tool to assist students in using sites that have  the type of information required for the activity.

I facilitated a session on PowerGrade Book,  this was a required session for high faculty.  All faculty for 1 faculty meeting had to pick from 3 options for staff development.  I had almost 10 teachers in the room and I was glad to know that John Steltz was able to learn at least 1 helpful tip on putting in grades easier.  I know that I was covering materials too fast and did allow for discussion, but I just so much to share.  So next time I will pair down what I will cover.

Today I gave a session on how to create an Animoto video and to apply for a teacher account.  The teacher account give you access for 6 months to make full length videos.  Otherwise with the free account you can only make 30 second videos.  I had three teachers attend the session and they said they liked it.  I hope so.

School Board Meeting

In order for organizations at my school to fundraiser it needs to be approved at the September school board meeting, so tonight myself and other FBLA (Future Business Leader of America) adviser asked the board's permission to do a fundraiser.

This is the first time we have had to ask permission.  Prior to this year the school board has supported financial my students advancements to national FBLA level competition, but with dwindling budgets this is coming to an end (but amazingly sport kids don't have to pay - another topic).  My co-adivser Cindy did the leg work and filled out the paperwork for this to be approved and tonight we just shared with the board what we would like to do.

It is always good to be visible with the board so they know what the department is doing to help students succeed.  It will be more work for us this year to keep track of the fundraising packets from our students but it should cause less work in the spring for going to our National conference.

Presenting at State Conference-WBEA

I am the secretary for my state business teacher organization and our fall convention is coming up at the end of September.  I was asked to present on my use of Aplia for teaching Accounting online.  I am going to be working with a Cengage representative on it, but I am going to be giving it from the teacher's perspective on what works and some struggles.

It took me about 2.5 hours to pull my presentation together.  Because I had students video tape their statements about aplia and I pulled that together in a video for the presentation.  I then posted the video on YouTube to make it render easier for my presentation.  Usually I post all my videos on SchoolTube, but I am using Prezi for the presentation and YouTube just works better.

Here is my Presentation for WBEA Fall 2011

Aplia 2011 on Prezi

Grad School Class -Active Learning Strategies

As many teacher do I signed up for a grad school class for this fall.  This one credit class is being offered right in my district so I will not have to travel and some of my colleagues took it last year and raved on how they were able to use it right away in their classroom.  With that type of reviews how could I not sign up for it.  I did have to let the instructor know right away that the second night of class I would miss because I have a meeting for our Transcripted credit class at FVTC (then I also found out it was my son's open house, plus I was also scheduled to work a sporting event).  Talk about being overbooked.  I did find someone to take my sporting event duty {THANK YOU}  and I should finish my meeting in time to attend the open house.

I had the first meeting September 22 and it made my head spin.  good information but I had a hard time coming up with how to make it work for my classroom.  I asked questions and I got some assistance and advice on how to work it in a high school setting.

I was in class for 3 hours and then I promptly went to my room to try to incorporate some of those ideas into my classroom for the next day.  It took me from 8 to 11 p.m. but I pulled together two activities to use the next morning.  Now the activities were not that elaborate that it took me three hours, but I was also able to accomplish some other upcoming responsibilities.  I will save that for another post.

the two activities I did were numbered list.  I have the students the 7 steps to recording an accounting transaction.  These steps were cut into slips and as a group of 4 students had to put them in order and tell my why they choose that order.  I will admit that what I thought was the "right" order was disputed by the students thought process.  I agreed that what they had could be correct because they defended their thought process.  I liked seeing the students work in groups and it appears they enjoyed doing some moving and collaborating in a non-evaluated sense.

The second activity I did was a think pair share.  Two students worked on classifying a TAccount and then shared their Taccount with another pair of students and the groups had to agree or disagree with each other.  I did not have as much buy in from this activity but it was good to get them thinking out loud so I could hear what they know from accounting.

Google Webinar - Personal Experiences

I was in on a Webinar on Wednesday.  Deforest High School in Wisconsin shared with the group how they moved through being a Google Apps school.  It was really nice to hear from someone in Wisconsin on what they had to do to be successful.  I know Google Apps can really change how teachers and student share work and complete tasks, but if the implementation goes awkwardly then it can stop it before it takes off.  Luckily or unluckily this is falling under my task list for the year.  I have a great tech person to work with, but roadblocks are a big concern of my for faculty buy in.

Here are some of my notes from the Webinar:

Deforest has gmail for grades 9-12, switching to 5-8 in next two weeks.  They don't have a curricular need for email for grades 3-4.  They can lock down(walled garden) the lower levels to only email within the domain.  They have not had a problem with bullying online with email.  Teach the teachers how to supervise

No minimum age to make gmail available through google apps

Deforest uses graduation years as a way to group students.  This is a mirror for how they organize the network.  That way when students move up a year and need more apps, they become available easier than using the group 1st grade etc.

They use the domain name deforestschools.org.  They already owned the domain name.  They are going to switch over all teachers and students to gmail and get out of groupwise.

The use of calendars was huge for signup labs and communicating with parents/peers

These notes will help me to move forward on getting our school up to speed with technology tools, if I can get more teach buy in.  Does anyone have any advice for me on this?

PowerTeacher Gradebook Share Session

I gave a presentation to my peers today on tips and tricks for using Gradebook.  I had spend some time researching what are the new features to the program for this year and even went "old school" and created a handout for people to have when they left.  I was hoping they would use it for taking notes - don't know if they actually did.

One thing that I do know is that I had more information than time.  I don't know if I did a good job of prioritize what I should cover.  I did really enjoy the questions/tips from my peers, but I was worried that I was not going to get through my content and did not let their conversation develop into what could be a great peer sharing session.  That is one of my stumbling blocks on teaching technology I get stuck on getting through all the content I tend to stifle the conversation that can lead to good peer collaboration.  ** Mental note to work on that**

I did enjoy sharing my tips/tricks but I don't know if everyone there was wanting to learn or if they were there because they had to be one session.  I do hope that they walked away with at least one thing new!  The gradebook is a program that we are working in constantly and having a better way to work in it can really streamline your work efficiency.

At the end of the faculty share session I did send out a google form for feedback on which session they attended and what they learned.  I do hope everyone fills it out truthfully so in the future they can get what they need in a way they wanted.

I did learn while pulling together my handouts for this presentation that Word 2010 has a cool new feature for inserting screen capture images!  Check it out under Insert menu, it worked great and gave some very clear images.

FBLA Texting Competition

For Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) we plan activities for during the school day as well as after school.  Our September fun activity was to have a texting competition and ice cream social.  Our club treasurer was in charge of creating promotional materials as well as creating the phrases for the competition.  We had the phrases entered into a power point presentation and clicked through the presentation for each level of competition 

there were not fees for this event and it was a double elimination tournament.  Students really enjoyed entering in the phrases and just being together.  It was a busy schedule night for students at school so I would have hoped for more attendance, but the kids there really enjoyed the activities.

Working with the Library

I am finding it harder to keep up on the blog now that school is in session.  I am thoroughly enjoying my new task of working on technology for the school.  I have been meeting with our librarian and aide that work in the Library to see what needs to be done to get the facility up and running.  Over the summer all new carpet was installed and the distance learning lab was dismantled and an individual learning computer lab was installed.

The computers needed some updates to Java and Flash Player to make it up to par for what students need to do to complete their online learning.  The website is dependent on java and students do not have the privileges to download and run updates (which is a good thing).

Our library has 3 audio studios that have not been used a lot in the last two years so I am initiating conversations on what and how they should be used.  I am not trying to take space or equipment away from anyone, but if it has not been used in the last 3 years except twice by only teachers, can the space be put to better use.

Another piece of equipment that I have been working on organizing the the fax machine.  We had previously a standard fax machine located in the distance learning lab for teachers/students to use to fax documents.  The office staff did not want faculty/students coming in  use the fax machine in the office so this was set up.  But with the distance learning room taken apart, we need to find a solution.  Currently everyone is going to the office, but after some investigation all of our copiers are capable of faxing and scanning.  So I will be working with our technology department to use our current equipment to meet our needs.

More meetings to come but trying to move ahead and streamline work for several people

CISCO Academy Webinar

Tonight I was in on a Webinar learning about how the current structure of my CISCO PC hardware essentials class is going to change.  It looks like they are trying to streamline the management and organization of how schools/institutions use and manage their current CISCO courses.

Because of the limited amount of courses I offer this will change my one course and it was discussed at a much larger scale than is related to me.  I want to be kept up to date on changes but it was difficult for me to engaged because I am such a small role in their big cog of educating students on computer skills.

This is the recorded Webinar

Here is a video some of my student did in my CISCO course.  I really enjoyed watching students  develop the storyline for the video.