The Perfect Storm?

    I tend to try to live my life staying out of the peaks and valleys.  Improve gradually.  At least I try.  Don't get too high from the highs, or too low from the lows.
    I've been on quite a high since my Educon trip and I've been trying to keep the momentum.

Maybe it was just the Perfect Storm for me?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrargerich/ / CC BY 2.0

    My beautiful wife and are are expecting our third child, there have been plenty of things on my mind lately.  I knew this trip would give me some time to 'get away' and learn.  I did travel down alone and just finding the hotel was an accomplishment for me!  *No laughing Pohanka!*

I knew some people from Twitter and from NECC last year in Washington, DC.  Thus, I had some people to talk to and hang out with (most notably the three headed braintrust of Debra Garcia, Carey Pohanka and Susan Morgan).  Right away on Thursday night we met the incredible Jenny Luca from Australia and Diane Cordell, a retired librarian from New York.  Later on, Jeff O'Hara from Edmodo fame, and his wife arrived after their flight from Chicago.  Educon was off to a great start for me.  Now, I can't list everyone that I met, however, that aspect of meeting people that I talk to through Twitter made this conference even better.  It also helped my confidence, knowing that I've already communicated with many of these people in education.

     The tour and class visits at Educon were eye opening.  At first it just seemed like controlled chaos.  
Kids were up out of their seats, working in groups, allowed to talk out loud.....and as a result, they were teaching and learning from each other.  The one room I walked in, I couldn't even find the teacher!  
     The CoreValues were displayed in every room, and the hallways decorated with student work.  Did you see the math on the 5th floor?  

Picture taken from my cellphone *Next year, remember camera!

     This table and other math trig graphs were just down from some unit in a health class about Sex Ed that may have gotten a few days of ISS at my old schools!  The students and faculty own the building (except for the 4th floor, forgot what was in there, an architectural firm, maybe?).

     I had to take two tours, one with a larger group, then as I was trying to think about all that I saw on my first trip I went to the Library.  There I sat next to Jenny Luca and she wanted to go for a tour, so I went with here and two nice young men, Javon and Hector.  They both asked what we did and then started us off on our tour to the classrooms they thought we'd like.  For me, it was the drama room with Jeff Han showing his 100-inch touch screen tv, and then down to their Calculus class with Mr. Latimer.  They talked about becoming experts in different types of differentiation and then teaching the class!  They also explained how they work together on these projects and even though they honestly grumbled about them, you could see the pride that they had in completing them.

     The next two days were filled with the Conversations that will require more time for me to think through.  
     I will just say this.  
     It was never a main point (I don't think) in any of the Conversations I attended, however, just building relationships with students, came through in all of them.  Caring for your students like they were your own children and giving them a chance to show what they can accomplish when someone believes in them.  It's stuff we talk about at our ISS meetings every Monday morning and it was all rolled into this SLA school, and working well.  It was eye opening to say the least.

     I started by saying "The Perfect Storm" because of the timing with other things in my life, how crazy work has been this year, then having HIGH hopes for this conference.  Those high hopes were exceeded and it was great to go see a school with clear goals and a faculty working together to accomplish those goals.  Follow that up with two days of Conversations with people (who are much smarter than I), and you have a very inspirational weekend.

     I had to leave after lunch on Sunday, however, I was in Binghampton before I knew it.  
                      Why?  
     Because I was talking to myself and bouncing ideas from the weekend all over the car!  Time just flew by.  I'm still not clear on everything, but realize how much more there is to learn.  
I'll continue to write some more blog posts, and maybe after a few of these I can start making things more clear.

     Thanks for the patience in advance.  There's more to the weekend from my perspective, maybe the next blog post will be about the Conversations that I went to:  
All three Conversations that I went to on Saturday were by the SLA staff, Team Canada was my only Sunday session.
       

    

Momentum

Trying to get my brain to slow down after three excellent days at Educon in Philadelphia visiting the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in action on Friday, and then attending the conversations Saturday and Sunday.

Taken from Educon Wiki: http://educon22.wikispaces.com/file/view/Flyer_educon_10_size_8_x_11.jpg/102802807/Flyer_educon_10_size_8_x_11.jpg

I'm wondering how to continue the momentum, and will be posting more this week as I try to wrap my brain around all that I saw and learned.
Not even sure where to start?  This will take some time. 
There were all of the people I met, touring SLA, my Saturday sessions (all three sessions that I went to were done by SLA teachers), or my Sunday session from Dean Shareski and Alec Couros, or......

Need time.  Hoping to keep this momentum going and how to move forward from here.

For a guy who usually feels like I'm just helping teachers use tools, this was exactly what I needed.

Thank you Chris Lehmann and you're whole SLA team for hosting such an inspiring weekend.

More coming, I promise....maybe I'll start using this Blog Thing?!?!

Voicethread Updates Jan 15th 2010

In trying to get out the information from the Voicethread e-mail today, I figured why not use this thing I once called a blog?

I'm just copying and pasting from the e-mail. Thanks Steve Muth and everyone at Voicethread.com.

Ideas and suggestions always welcome.

Hello VoiceThreaders,

We have five significant updates to share with you, advanced support for non-Latin text commentary, a tripling of the capacity of student accounts, email notifications of your VoiceThreads' activity, a new unlimited seat license and district pilot program, and the eRacism project, which is breaking new ground in global k-12 collaboration.

Advanced Language Support

We're very happy to announce that VoiceThread now supports the use of non-Latin scripts in text comments. This has been one of our most requested features for some time now, and we're excited to finally release it.

What does it mean?

It means that whenever a text comment contains a non-latin character, it no longer matters whether the person viewing the comment has the correct fonts installed. If they don't, we'll perform some technical magic in the background and make sure they see the text comment in the language that you intended, without any additional work on their part.

The beta release of this feature applies only to text comments, and if all goes well, we'll apply it to other text fields very soon. Because of the technical complexity of fonts and the way that different computers handle them, we can't give direct technical support for this feature. If you have any questions or feedback please go here.

Tripling the capacity of Student accounts

Starting today, we're increasing the capacity of student accounts on Ed.VoiceThread by more than 300%. Students will receive up to 1GB of storage and they can now create up to 50 VoiceThreads instead of the current limit of 15. The students have been very busy and we want to get out of their creative and collaborative way.

Email Notifications, aka, 'The Daily Digest'

You'll soon start to receive an email digest of all the activity on your VoiceThreads within the last day, with direct links to each and every comment made on them. So you'll no longer need to login to VoiceThread before knowing if you have new commentary to view and hear. Please let us know what you think of this new feature, we're planning updates to it and want to find out what your most important needs are.

The Unlimited Seat License for Districts

A new pilot program for first year Districts provides discounts of up to 90%, which grants an unlimited seat license for a fraction of the cost of separate school purchases.

Please contact us for written quote or to schedule a phone call/screen sharing session to answer any of your question regarding the district pilot program and the unlimited seat license.

eRacism Project

A recent project born at the Flat Classroom(tm) Conference in Doha, Qatar by a visionary group of students and organizers is an amazing example of k-12 global collaboration. 16 teams from all over the world used VoiceThread to competitively debate asynchronously the statement 'Differences make us stronger'. The engagement and energy of all the participants is clearly palpable. See and hear one of the recent debates here.

We're very proud to have helped sponsor this project and plan on continuing that support in the coming year. If you're interested in participating in the next debate series please visit http://www.eracismproject.org/

Thanks, and best wishes for the coming year,

-The VoiceThread team

3...2...1...LEGO!

I spent most of my Saturday up at Houghton College for the FLL (First Lego League) Competition. This is put on by our CABOCES Student Programs and I was asked to be a referee...I know, keep the snickering down. I really enjoyed it (even though I had to bring my own whistle....Crandall!).

Sorry- cell phone pic

These 5th-8th graders were really getting into it and had some neat ideas to complete the "missions" that they had to choose from. My only exposure to Lego Robotics was what Jessie Perison showed at last summers' High School New Face. Because of Jessie, I knew about the NXT software and how you put the 'block' into your own lego designed machine to make it move. He mentioned the different sensors and all, but it was amazing to see in a competition format.

The day flew by, and I was amazed at the great sportmanship displayed by everyone. The students are empowered to do all of the talking during the competition. Then, after they complete their mission we explained all of the points they earned(great suggestion from my wonderful partner, Mary Morris). The students listened intently to make sure we all agreed, then they ran off to make changes to their program that would help them earn more points for the next round.

I can't wait to do it again next year. I wish all of our school luck, and especially to these three moving onto the next round in Rochester, NY on Sunday, December 6th:

Fillmore

Randolph (led by Jessie Perison)

Allegany-Limestone

I truly enjoyed watching these young individuals excited and working together as a team to problem solve and collaborate. It made me wonder about other programs that students could get into and I thought about Google Sketchup right away. How about students designing 3-D buildings from their area and sending them to Google Earth? Could you have a similar Google Sketchup competition where they design a few buildings, then have a timed competition? Dr. Mike Doyle and I talked about this awhile ago when talking about Fab Labs and the power of Google Sketchup. Just a thought, I'm sure there are plenty of competitions for Google Sketchup out there.

Anyways, great day, I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

I know I did.

First trial with Google Wave

OK, now that the black banner is gone, I can actually use Google Wave (if I can find someone with an account!). I had one wave with @jenwagner and it was tough for me to keep up. There were only 2 of us! Maybe I'm getting old. I did go to bed at 8:30 last night.
It will take quite a bit for me to get used to. Plus, I think we both noticed a lag on our computers when we tried to go to email and on Twitter.
I did think about kids, though, and for them it would be engaging as things change instantly.
It will take some getting used to for me, but I like it and am excited to have a chance to get in and kick the tires a little.

Anyways, I added blog-wave@appspot.com as a Contact in Google Wave and want to see if I can post this to my blog. Well, the first thing I learned is that Bloggy isn't working, so I couldn't post this to my blog from Google Wave. We had to go to Cut and Paste!

I also added Tweety (I remember thinking they were going to call it Twave), but can't seem to refresh and get live updates. I did post a tweet from it to Twitter however. To add Tweety, add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your Contacts.

Of course, I found all of this on the Google Wave Forum and in particular, at this thread.

We'll see where this leads, as I build up contacts (hopefully, some of my invites will go through) it will be interesting. It seems pretty confusing right now and I know I'm only scratching the surface, but in a year, could it be second nature?

We'll see.

Google Wave e-mail Invite? Or was it?

I was incredibly excited to see an e-mail invite from wave-noreply yesterday.
I was out in a district, and I didn't open it up until the end of the day because I had tons of work that had to get done.
I didn't think I'd get one, and also thought it was a little odd that it was sent on Oct. 1st at 12:07am and not on Sept. 30th, but I thought, "maybe someone from Twitter invited me in".
Who cares, I got an invite!

My e-mail looked official:

I clicked on the link, but it wanted me to add the Google Chrome browser plug-in.
I did go and check and this seemed to be legit, so I did download it (Might've been my mistake right there!)
Then, when it was done and I got in, all I saw was this:
A tad bit frustrating, if you can't read the top black banner it says:
"Everything's shiny, Cap'n. Not to fret!" Unfortunately, you'll need to refresh.
Wanna tell Dr. Wave what happened?
With a submit box to go to "Dr. Wave".
Now, I felt like I got scammed and began thinking why did I use IE!

Then, I thought, why not try Firefox? NOPE. Same thing.
I went to refresh the page....for a second, it looks good.....then same black banner.
Try it on another computer - same thing.
Download Google Chrome! YES, that has to work! NOPE.
Try it on a Mac with Safari - No.
At home, on another computer - No.

I came back to work today, maybe? Maybe? NO.

If I go to My Account in Google, I see Wave listed under My Products.

I've posted to the Google Wave Forum and wasted a night trying to figure this out.

Did I do something wrong? Maybe it was the Google Chrome plugin?
Let's just say it's been a frustrating day.
Then again, I'm frustrated over a Beta product that's free.

Maybe it's trying to tell me that I have too many other things going on? I would like to try it out this weekend, though. Can anyone help?

Promethean Focus Group

I've been asked to help an area district next year with their Promethean Focus Group of teachers. There will be 20 teachers that will be getting a Promethean Board, and they'll have access to the ActivVote & ActivExpression voting devices, as well as ActiViews for the Science teachers- sometime down the road.

Photo taken from Promethean World and taken using Jing

My goal from the Superintendent is to lead them through this year with two summer kickoff dates (Aug. 12-13th) and then follow up sessions about every six weeks. The only stipulations he put on me was that I need to show them sound educational usages for these Boards, and that this style of group needs to be reproducible for next year (for a new group of teachers).
Initially, I thought to start up a Ning group, so I created one to use. Then, I thought since CA BOCES hosts Moodle for all of our teachers, couldn't I help promote that more?

Wait, just keep it simple.

I don't know how much technology these teacher really use in their classes already.
Keep it simple.
I'll do my best to help them learn the ActivInspire software and give them time to find resources that they can use on Promethean Planet or other sites online.
I'll use this Wikispace to put up an agenda and to give them a chance to not only get information, but to add content to as well.

The great Tech guy there walked me through the training rooms and showed me where some of the teacher rooms are in the building (these will be for breakout sessions since we'll all be in a lab w/ one ActivBoard). We talked about making sure we were on the same page with what the district's capabilities are, and also checked some of the sites their teachers have access to.
For instance, Google Earth and Adobe Connect.
I'm actually hoping to have someone come in on the 2nd day to talk a little about how they use Promethean through Adobe Connect (we'll see).

I'm looking for any other suggestions to show the
"Power of the Promethean Interactive Whiteboard"!

I've heard all summer about how IWB's just make the teacher more of the focus, but my hope is that it can make classes more student-centered? I hope to have students create their own content for a lesson (maybe upload it into their own wiki) and share that with the others in the class, maybe even around the world. Is that asking too much?
Maybe we'll get to Global Collaborations after school starts!?!?

Baby steps to start out.


I'm already asked for plenty of help, especially on Twitter and have gotten advice from @budtheteacher @activeducator ,http://twitter.com/activtweets and a host of others.




What do you think?

Photo taken from Promethean World and taken using Jing