Look out for the Glogster!

I stumbled upon a new web 2.0 tool the other day. Glogster.com is currently in Beta and followed by the tagline "Poster Yourself". I find it an interesting twist on social networking, but also had to explore the possible educational aspects of the tool. Within a few minutes I had signed up and was trying to create my own poster or "glog". There are many design elements to play with on the site to make your glog interesting and unique. It was fun to create my first glog with all the different objects. After I was done playing, I got the basic understanding of how this could be used in a classroom.

1. You could have students create "posters" of the topic of interest which would include links, pictures and videos.
   
2. A teacher could use a glog as a teaching tool. He/she could create a glog with all the different parts of the lesson (again: links, videos, pictures, etc.). Think of it as a new-age outline.
   
3. A technology specialist such as myself could use the glog as an advertising tool for an upcoming workshop.
4. Along the same lines, a club or group could use a glog to promote an activity or even they are planning.
   

After thinking of it's uses on my own, I went out in search of those glogs that were already being used in education. Here are a few good ones I found:

• http://andifeyrtr.glogster.com/The-Civil-War-for-what/
  A Glog on the Civil War
  
• http://joshisawesome457.glogster.com/Abraham-Lincoln/
  A Glog on Abraham Lincoln
• http://cybrarian.glogster.com/glog-701/
  A Glog on technology uses in the classroom
• http://cybrarian.glogster.com/Decisions-Decisions/
  A Glog on travel by 3rd graders-great way to show videos.
  

Administrators Get Organized with Google!

Administrators in my school are constantly trying to balance calendars. In a school with around 2000 students and over 100 teachers, there is always something going on in the school community. How can you keep everything straight and make sure that major events don't overlap? I suggest google calendar.
Google's calendar is not only easy to use and edit, but it is also easily shared amongst your fellow administrators and staff. In as few as 3 clicks, you can share your calendar. Each administrator can have their own calendar and then there can be just a general school calendar that everyone can update. All calendars are separated by colors and are easily turned on or off depending on what information you need to see.
To add an event is as simple as a click. You can create a bubble that allows for basic information such as meeting at 3 or you can even add additional information such as how long the meeting will last and where it is located. Events can be shared too. If an administrator schedules a meeting that is to involve the other administrators in the school, he/she can share the event with the others and they will be notified of the added meeting.
The person that is in charge of the overall school calendar can also publish to the web so that the entire staff can access the information. This can all be shared via hyperlink and does not require a google login for your entire staff.
Google calendar can also be easily synched with Microsoft Outlook, ical and several phones.

Technology Camp is a Success!!

I've been talking for quite some time about our county's first ever technology camp. Today was our first day of it and I was so amazed at how wonderful it turned out. We've been working on this for about a year now and there have been many trials and tribulations, but to hear a teacher say that this is the best thing they have ever attended, really makes it all worth while.
We had very few problems the entire day and every person left with a smile on their face. Every technology facilitator left a little tired as we did most of the presentations throughout the day, but we all agreed that it was a success and we were pleased with the outcome.
Our day started with a keynote by Janice Adams from Apple. She talked about a 21st century classroom and how teachers should change the way they create lessons to better accommodate the needs of the students. It was excellent and most teachers I talked to said they walked away with something to think about. That's what we all want out of a keynote, right? I made sure throughout the day to reference a few of the things she said because I know everyone didn't remember everything, but the constant reminders always help.
The rest of the day was filled with 4 sessions, a lunch break and lots of neat giveaways. Each participant got a ticket for every session they went to. Those tickets went into a box to draw for prizes, so if they attended all four sessions, they have 4 opportunities in the box to win. I wasn't sure if this would work well or not, but it really did and everyone was really excited that there was an extra incentive to go to all of the sessions.
My sessions were awesome. I presented all 4 times today as I picked up a session on conducting successful web searches at the last minute. It was tiring doing so many in one day - and all were in different rooms. I got my walking in, that's for sure!
Many sessions were very full while others only had a few. I had one session with only about 7 people in it and then I had one with people standing out in the hallway listening because there wasn't any space left in the room!
It was all very exciting and I'll have more to post after the second day. Please stay tuned as I'll be sharing a plus delta of my own concerning some of the events of the past two days. If you are interested in viewing our camp wiki, here is a link: cabarrussummertech.pbwiki.com

Clean Up Your Space!!

We are in a time that most of the "brand new" teachers have a social site somewhere and probably login every day. More and more, though, we hear of teachers being reprimanded for their antics on their social networking sites. This article from the Washington Post sums it up quite nicely. Is this a problem that should be addressed? I am very aware that some counties draw a line that no teacher can have a social networking site where other counties don't have any policy. So where do we draw the line, or do we need to draw any at all?

This research article on student and faculty relations in facebook found that there were no positive or negative effects on how students viewed the professor after finding he/she was on a social networking site. But, I found it interesting that students had mixed reactions about faculty being on the site. I found similar feedback on this in the article "Is My Space Your Space As Well" by Andy Carvin. Students didn't really like the fact that teachers might be viewing their profiles. One student even comments that people have things on their myspace page that they don't want other people to see such as those with alcohol and smoking. (A whole different blog post on that comment later!). That student, however, does go on to say that having a teacher as their "friend" could be nice when she had questions about homework.

We know that social networking can be a great way to communicate with students. Why not tap into what they already know and use it for meaningful education? New facebook applications are coming available every day including many geared directly toward education. You can do anything from create a wiki within your page to linking your students together to have a group discussion.

I went searching for some school districts that have rules for social networking accounts posted online. I found a list from the Jefferson County Board of Education that deals mostly with blogs, but social networking would fall under many of the same guidelines. You may notice that many of their guidelines include "informing" people of what they are doing and how they are doing it. Education is key. If everyone understands what is going on, they will be more receptive to the new technology. This is true for anything-not just blogs and social networking. I can imagine the difference in reactions if a teacher informs the parents that she has a facebook page set up for her class rather than Johnny coming home and telling mom that Mrs. Smith is on facebook!

I truly believe that training is important with this sensitive issue. Teachers need to be informed of how social networking can negatively effect them and how they can prevent that from happening. Most all of the situations that cause a reprimand of a teacher involve inappropriate material on their site which could easily be avoided. New teachers are in a generation of folks that aren't making the connection of internet and real world. All too often I hear of young kids commenting that "oh, that's just on myspace, everyone knows that doesn't matter". Teachers need to be well informed that "oh, yes it does matter". In my opinion, this training needs to be extensive for first year teachers to your district and then a refresher every year after. So much changes with technology and the internet from year to year, everyone needs to be reminded of the importance of not only internet safety but protecting ourselves as teachers.

All this in mind, there are social networking sites available specifically for educational purposes. One, Elgg, is highlighted in this article, titled Don't Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace Myspace. Another, that is growing quite rapidly, is Ning, which is also a great resource for teachers including many specialized groups for sharing ideas in education.

Mixbook makes an A+

I discovered mixbook.com, an online book creation tool, few months ago. I was instantly hooked, but wanted to see what the teachers thought. I pulled in a select few teachers that I knew were interested in technology as this would be the first introduction of a web 2.0 resource. Not only were they hooked, but they made plans to use it in their classes and produced some interesting projects.

Mixbook is very easy to use and the best thing about it is all the different layouts it includes. Teachers tend to like those colorful additions and Mixbook has a ton of them.

If you are just getting started, you can search the listing of books that are already published and use them as a tool to get started. One that I often use to get teachers excited is one on World War I created by a high school class. This is just one example of how a class could use mixbook to cover a topic. If you look at the book, you'll notice that each student was assigned a page to do on their own.

One of our students created a piece on "All Quiet on the Western Front" as part of a project in her English class. This one has already received good feedback from other mixbook users! This brings me to the next great feature of Mixbook. I had this book printed for use in my training sessions. You can print your finished copy for as little as 12.99. That's a pretty good deal and the quality is great.

Are you hungry for Timetoast?

As my husband is a social studies teacher, I tend to pay close attention to new sites that cater to some of the things he does in class. One thing he always mentions is that kids really don't like to do timelines. I recall not enjoying them in school either-not to mention then are a huge waste of paper when done the old fashioned way (which is how most teachers do them).

Enter Timetoast. Your online timeline creation tool. www.timetoast.com

I ran across this neat little tool by accident, but it is proving to be a great addition to my collection of web 2.0 resources. Not only would it be a great tool to use for individual or groups of students in a classroom, but also an awesome tool for your interactive whiteboard. Find a great example here of a timeline for NASA:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/86

In 10 minutes time, I signed up and created my first short timeline (5 entries). It was quite easy to get one started and even easier to add entries. I was pleased that the popup box with the entry information was short. All you need is the title, date, description and an optional picture for each entry. This is great for students and teachers that want to do a quick timeline and don't need a lot of fancy options. You can also write a long description because it is hidden until you click on the entry in the timeline.

Another great thing timetoast does is organizes all of your timelines on one page-with pictures (that you add of course). So, from semester to semester or year to year, they are organized on your main timeline page in an easy-to-find format.

Technology Camp-No Bug Spray Needed!

As a technology facilitator in Cabarrus county, I am faced with the task of presenting several sessions at our first ever technology camp. We are now past 600 participants (no, we weren't expecting even half that many) so we know that this is our shot to really make an impact on the teachers and administrators in our county. I have volunteered to do 4 sessions.

One session, luckily, I get to do with another person. We will be doing something with Mixbook and Toondoo. We have a lot of great mixbook examples because once I found it and showed it to a few tech facilitators, it was being used like crazy! ToonDoo didn't take off quite as well, but I still think it's a great program and now I know how to promote it a bit more. The people coming to these sessions will most likely never have heard of these tools, so we're basically going to do a quick demo of each and give some educational examples of how they're used.

The second session I'm doing is for administrators (yikes-not sure how I got myself into this one). I'm a little excited and a little nervous all in one. It's a little scary doing a presentation for administrators only. It's titled "Let's Get Organized - Digitally". I created a neat little thing on the SMARTBoard that allows principals to do the schools master schedule using smartnotebook software. Before, they had these crazy magnet boards with magnets that I found out cost 1400.00!!! That's insane and I told them so-and then created the notebook. Well, it's a hit in two schools now and I'm hoping with this presentation, it will be a hit in the other schools as well. In this session, we'll also go over the wonderful world of google and I'll show them igoogle and google calendar specifically. I'm going to focus on the sharing part and help them realize it could be an awesome tool for working together.

The third session I'm doing is on Google Apps. This one is for teachers and we'll just go over igoogle and all the neat things that integrate with it like reader, calendar, bookmarks, etc.

My fourth session I adopted after someone wasn't able to do it, but the more I think about it, the more excited I am to do this one. It's called "Using the SMARTBoard in High School". I'm thinking that I'll show several different lessons that I've collected, some lessons from the SMART website and give them a few interesting uses of some of the things in the gallery.

I'm going to be quite busy, but I think it will be a great thing in the end. I'm also thinking that once I have all of these set, I have something to present at several conferences this year! Looking forward to that! NCETC, NCAECT and FETC-here I come!!! Oh wait! Can I fit NECC in there too?