Tech Coach Meeting

I wanted to create some notes from the “smackdown” of 5 minute presentations by our school tech coaches. There was so much great stuff being shared and I was frantically typing to try to log some of the great things that are happening in our schools.

Presentations by Tech Coaches (Junior/Senior High)

1. Google Glass – this device allows the user to wear the special glasses to take pictures and video.  Google is marketing it as the new iPad. What are the implications for education? It would certainly allow students to learn. Imagine if someone was wearing Google Glass and and narrated their way through a problem or a skill.  It would allow the view to see exactly what the user was seeing as he was recording. No doubt there is no end to the cool things that you could do with Google Glass but at what cost? Jason Perlow (@jperlow) writes an article about the potential hazards of the new technology.
2. Green Screen Announcements – One tech coach shared how they do a morning broadcast each morning for announcements and prayer. They use professional looking back drops and they report that the students at the school look forward to seeing the morning announcements. The announcements are done live but certain highlights have been pre-recorded. The announcements are viewed in the classroom by the teacher clicking on a desktop icon which leads to a URL and the broadcast is shown using the classroom projector.
3. Virtual Classrooms – Junior High School – one virtual classroom was created for all three levels (7, 8, 9) of Social Studies. All the students in the school have access to this site. In this virtual space there is a link to separate VC’s for each grade. The content on these sites has been created by the students. For example, some students created a video about the Acadians and have uploaded it to the VC.
4. Adobe Premiere – show the kids the basics about video creation (eg. Digital story) and give them the autonomy and power to learn, collaborate, and create. As the teacher, you become the facilitator and you definitely don’t have to know everything about the software. The advice: “Don’t be afraid to give up control and let your students fly.”
5. School Bundle – new interface which will replace our existing SharePoint portal. Based on a user’s role in the school district, you will see different things when you log in. You can also subscribe to specific feeds and calendars.
6. Tech Coach training site – one of the tech coaches created a collaboration space in which she has uploaded “how to” guides and videos. Many of these tutorials were created by students. Some of the topics: LiveBinders, SharePoint, iPads, Discovery Ed, Google Docs, PowerSchool, etc. This tech coach has created a rubric so that members of her staff can evaluate iPad apps.
7. High School Announcement Broadcasting – TriCaster system. These systems cost between $5000-$7500 for a basic system. Old office in the library has been turned in to a Broadcasting studio. They use the old RCA cables that were run for TV broadcasting…now the cables run to projectors. The segments are prepared in Comm Tech class before they are broadcast. Friday announcements are done live…the rest of the week is traditional announcements. Advice: get the kids to do the work!
8. Frontrow – can capture the audio of a lesson. This is relatively new software…just released at ISTE last year. Teacher wears a small microphone which can work on voice command. These sound files can be uploaded to virtual classrooms and we viewed an example in which a teacher uploaded the sound file with a video capture from his smartboard. This happens automatically when the Frontrow software is running. In fact, it integrates with everything which is being shown on the computer/projector. The cost of the software is around $300 and equipment costs are estimated to be about $1900 per classroom. The teacher’s voice is also broadcasted to the class in the same way as an FM system. These are high quality devices that have excellent sound quality.
9. Dragon Naturally Speaking – voice recognition software…anything that you do on your computer can be controlled with your voice.  “Open Word” was used to open Microsoft Word. The tech coach then talked about the software and everything that she said was captured in Word. There was a little bit of a time lag in the voice recognition but it was fairly accurate.

I hope these notes were useful to you.

New Tool – SMS Generator

I just saw this blog post today.  I think it would be a great assignment in any subject area. Rather than writing about it, I thought that I would use the tool to show its potential.

This is my creation…totally easy to use! You can also embed the conversation but I could not get it to work with my wordpress hosted blog. Click on the picture or the link below to see the entire “conversation”.

http://www.classtools.net/SMS/14_DcX7im

21st Century Fluencies using Haiku Deck

This is a cross post from our School Blog.

Haiku Deck is an amazing presentation tool that is so easy to use. If you are tired of PowerPoint presentations, you will love Haiku Deck. This tool allows you pick a great, high definition image which is associated to the text that you use on the slide. You can also use your own images. When you add the text to a slide, the size is automatically adjusted so that everything fits. You can share your Haiku Deck creations easily and you can also embed them. The presentations look amazing on an iPad but they can also be accessed on the web.

This Haiku Deck was created after members of our school faculty attended the 21st Century Fluencies session hosted by Lee Crockett and Andrew Churches.  The presentation inspired me to create this Haiku Deck.

http://www.haikudeck.com/p/l4PjGJ0BAa/21st-century-learning

Looking at this Haiku Deck helps me reflect back to what I learned during that PD session. Got me thinking…rather than taking extensive notes that I will never look at, I created a great presentation which gives me a great visual representation of my learning. Even better than that…I can share it with others!

My new favourite app – Skitch

Skitch is an app, made by Evernote, that allows you to write, draw and add pictures to photos, web pages and maps. It is so easy to easy and has tons of educational value. Rather than explain the things that you can do with Skitch, I will show you some creations.

Photos
This photo was taken at a recent PD session. With a few additions from Skitch, the photo takes on more personality…wouldn’t you agree? It also allows for some lame attempts at humour.

I love the fact that you can fuzz things out to protect privacy. This is a great feature for school use.

Web pages
This is the site which we were introduced to at the PD session. Using Skitch, I can show how to use the web tool.

Maps
Skitch is easy to use with maps to show locations and to give directions.

All of your Skitch notes can be saved within the application and can be accessed on a computer. You can also save your Skitch photos to your Camera Roll on your iPad.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Food Hampers

This is a cross post from our school admin blog.

This is a story of Christmas spirit and school spirit.

A month or so ago, we started collecting food for Christmas hampers which will be delivered to some less fortunate families in our community by St. Michael Resurrection Parish.  St. Michael is the parish for the family of schools in our area.  The school part of this food hamper project was spearheaded by our school Chaplain, Mrs. Kim Bremault.

Each block 4 class was given a decorated box and a list of non-perishable food items. For the next few weeks, students were responsible for bringing a food item to add to the hamper. Yesterday, all of the food items were brought down to the staff room so that the hampers could be prepared for today’s delivery.  The staff room looked like the food bank! A group of volunteers prepared the hampers, ensuring that each one contained all of the required items. Some of the hampers were short some of the items so an announcement was made over the intercom, encouraging students and staff to give a cash donation so that last minute items could be purchased.  In ten minutes, we had OVER 700 DOLLARS…this is amazing and shows what is possible when we work together to make a difference.  This not only allowed groceries to be purchased but it will also enable us to provide a large donation on behalf of Austin O’Brien High School.

We were so happy that we were able to put together 30 hampers, in all. These will be delivered to 30 Edmonton families hopefully making their Christmas a little bit brighter. Some of our classes even wrapped Christmas gifts to add to the hampers.  Also, our Foods classes baked cookies and put them in awesome Christmas tins.

All of the hampers were loaded on to one of our school vehicles and we headed over to the Parish.

Father Mitch and Mrs. Lynn Smarsh (a former ECSD teacher who now volunteers at the Parish) were so glad to receive the donation of the 30 food hampers plus all the additional food which was donated by our extremely generous school community.

In the words of our school Principal, Mrs. Debbie Rowley in a message to Mrs. Bremault:

Kim!!

Thank you for the tremendous amount of work you put in to coordinate the hamper project– it was a huge success. Your daily reminders and challenges out to the kids really made a difference. Thanks to everyone on staff and our student teachers for your contributions.

Many people in our school community and at large, will have a brighter Christmas because of the generosity of Austin O’Brien

It is amazing what can happen when a school community works together in a well-connected and meaningful way.  A proud day to be a Crusader!

Student Teacher Observations/Interview Process

In our school district, we have a very unique way of recruiting beginning teachers. While student teachers are doing their final practicum, a pair of administrators will observe that student teacher teaching a lesson. The administrators and student teacher are all from different schools…this is what makes this experience so rich. After the observation, the two administrators will debrief the lesson with the student teacher and give opportunities to reflect on the lesson. A month or so later, the two administrators are responsible for conducting a district behavioural interview with that student teacher. To be eligible for this process, the administrators must take a behavioural interviewing course offered by the Human Resources department.
I had the pleasure to do two of these observations today.
The benefits of this process are numerous:

• It serves to relax the student teacher for the interview. Now, the interview is a continuation of the debrief that occured after the observation. The student teacher is familiar with the interviewers and has more of a chance to share “their story”.
• It is a great way to get out to another school. There are so many things that can be learned while visiting another school.
• It is a great PD!  Today, we spent the afternoon talking about and reflecting on best practice.
• It is a great way to welcome young teachers in to the profession. A positive connection is made and, in my experience, maintained until the interview and afterward. I work with two teachers now who I had the privilege of observing/interviewing while they were doing their practica.
• It allows the interviewers the chance to speak to the mentor teacher…in addition to reading the practicum evaluation (which can sometimes lack personality.
• It allows someone other than HR to conduct screening interviews. I think that it is great that ECSD builds leadership capacity by empowering us to conduct the interviews.

This process is so unique and innovative, that I just had to share it. I look forward to reading your comments.