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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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!

• 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.

This morning, we sat as an admin team and had our annual meeting to begin the teacher evaluation process.  We agreed that we would each conduct classroom observations of our beginning teachers and share our notes before we write up the formal evaluation report which is due at the end of the school year.  To make our collaboration easier, I thought back to a post that I read a little while back by Nick Provenzano (@thenerdyteacher).  We quickly created a notebook on Evernote for each one of our teachers so that we could each add our observation notes.  We agreed that we would title each note by the date of the observation.  The great thing about Evernote is that it doesn’t matter what device I have with me when I do my observations.  I can post my own notes and I can also review the notes posted by my colleagues.  If I want to take pictures of things in the classroom, I can seamlessly add these photos to my observation notes.  It is so easy to share notebooks using Evernote but, of course, the people that you share with must also have Evernote accounts (which are free!)

I think it would be a great idea for classroom teachers to use Evernote to keep anecdotal records for their students.  Teachers with smaller groups of students could create a notebook for every student.  Teachers working with larger numbers of students could create notebooks for students with special needs or students who are at risk.

It would also be great if students could start to use Evernote.  They could create notebooks for their courses and they could share their notes and reflections.

If anyone has other uses for Evernote, please feel free to leave a comment.

Location: https://maps.google.ca/maps?ie=UTF-8&q=lillian+osborne+high+school+edmonton&fb=1&gl=ca&hq=lillian+osborne+high+school+edmonton&hnear=lillian+osborne+high+school+edmonton&cid=0,0,6864804544715228083&ei=Z3qNUJ-fFsWcyQHmj4CYBQ&ved=0CCcQrwswAA

What is EdCamp?
It’s an un-conference format that is best described on the EdCamp Edmonton website http://edcampedmonton.com :
“What is an Edcamp?

An Edcamp is an education focused gathering meant to generate conversation, curiousity and genuine learning. Here’s how it works:

Arrive at the conference with an idea for a session that you would like to lead or with the anticipation of a full day of learning. A session might explore a technology tool, a discussion about best practices, or a collaborative presentation with multiple facilitators.

During the first hour, you will have time to meet and mingle with other educators over coffee. While you converse, there will be an empty session board where you and all attendees can post session titles based on common goals or questions that develop. By the end of that first hour, Edcamp organizers will assemble the schedule to create a personalized, authentic day of learning and connecting.

Over the course of the day, you will have the opportunity to attend up to four sessions. The rule of the unconference is to “vote with your feet”. If a session doesn’t meet your needs, simply get up and move on to another room.”

Register NOW at http://edcampedmonton.com/register/ and bring your colleagues for a day of amazing conversation, learning, and even door prizes!

It’s never too late to register. Walk ups are definitely welcome!

The most significant change that has been made to Instagrok is the “Share It” button. This allows students and teachers the ability to share their concept map (and their learning) with others. I believe that student learning is deeper and more authentic if they can connect key ideas and concepts together to create an overall understanding.  The concept maps that they create as they learn are easy to reflect back on to deepen the understanding.

This is a map that we created as an example:

http://www.instagrok.com/grok/?action=view&result_id=yikDk0V6cdGmSGzBBvoj&query=hudson+bay+company

I created this link by using the “Share It” feature within Instagrok. By looking at the concept map, you can see what we were learning about as we created it.  In fact, I was helping a teacher to prepare for a Social Studies lesson about the Hudson’s Bay Company and how it functioned as a monopoly in the late 19th century.

Wouldn’t it be great if great researchers, scientists, and thinkers of our time were to share their groks with us.  It would serve as an opportuntiy to gain some insight into their thinking by “getting inside their heads” for a brief moment.

Another feature of Instagrok is a slider which allows the user to control the difficulty of the content which they are reading. This would be a great feature for differentiating the level of the learning.

Instagrok keeps a history of subjects that I have Grokked.  What I like most about this feature is that when I choose a previous topic, it starts me back at the first level of the concept and allows me to review my previous learning or learn something new about that concept.

The teacher account allows teachers to create a “class code” that students can input as they log in.  This allows teachers the opportunity to track students and see how they are doing.

I recently showed Instagrok to one of our teachers (Patrice Teveniuk, @PTevy) and this is the comments that I received from her (via email):

Outstanding site!!!!!!!!  I think this is amazing. This is an outstanding site for Social Studies teachers.  It requires less research, as a teacher, to find resources and information on curriculum topics.  With the click of a button, all of related videos, vocabulary and information is there for me.  I no longer have to Youtube everything to find related information.  My ELL students who are taking core subjects can also put in concepts and vocabulary. Works very well. They use the glossary and videos to assist them with their learning.

In my first post, I compared Instagrok to Google’s Wonderwheel, which is now extinct.  I realize now that there is no comparison.  WonderWheel was clearly a search engine which helped the user to find a website.  Instagrok is a learning, researching and concept mapping tool which deepens learning by allowing the user to create cognitive (and visual) connections.

Maybe one day, people will say, “I need to Grok that!”

If you use Instagrok and have some ideas to share, please do not hesitate to leave a comment.