Paging All Waivers!

This year I was prepared.

But last time around I introduced WikiSpaces and Google Docs to my students mid-term. My adventures were not without setbacks (see Larry's Adventures in Wikiland), but some of the groups and individuals produced remarkable podcasts, videos, web sites and wikis. So then I decided that I wanted to share, blog about, or just show off their work. Consequently, I was generating ad hoc notifications and permission slips throughout the year.

This summer I whipped up three notification / waivers for my three courses. Check out the one I prepared for American Government (Click for pdf).

The document was made with iWork '09. I used a brochure template and found the banner with a public domain search. The Pages application allowed me to easily match the colors of the banner throughout the document. I thought the coolest feature was my ability to drop the public domain photo of the capitol dome into the background of the document. (A one minute Atomic Learning tutorial taught me this trick). Even a clod like me could produce a slick looking document and publish it as a pdf.

My students' first assignment of the semester was to download this document, get it signed and return it to class.

100% of them have done so, and only one parent declined any of the permissions. Pretty cool.

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Photo is a screen capture of Lit into Film course waiver.

Death by PowerPoint and Resurrection by Keynote

I began a presentation last January by declaring that I didn't text or use PowerPoint. The idea was to put people at ease-- They were not about to be overwhelmed by a geeky, loves-all-things-techno obsessive.

Between you and me, I don't have anything against text messages. Neither my job nor lifestyle call for me to use mobile devices much. PowerPoint is another matter. It would be logical to use it in my job, but I've seen so many dreadful presentations that I haven't seen merit in learning how to do it. My greatest pet peeve is the presenter who reads his slides to us. And often the slides are terrifically uninteresting-- too many bullet points, etc. The fellow in the photo below pretty much personifies all that I loathe about slide shows.

BUT, I have had an epiphany. I am working through the Atomic Learning tutorials on iWork '09 with the idea of getting certified by Apple. Learning how to use their presentation software-- Keynote -- has brought unexpected pleasures. While slides serve as the spine for the presentations, the animation options and media integration allow for incredibly dynamic options. Recently, I completed a project that completely delighted me. I have been working on a Keynote presentation about my digital anthology for MAME 36.

I decided that I wanted to create a dynamic overview of the anthology, so I laid down a simple soundtrack with GarageBand and synchronized a set of slides with it. Here comes the cool part-- I exported the slide show as QuickTime movie. Check it out:

The Digital Anthology

So what to do with the movie? It has been embedded as a slide in the over all presentation. I suppose that I may still bore my audience to death, but it won't be because I chosen to use my slide show as a teleprompter.

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"GiardinaKARLSRUHE - Death by Powerpoint" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by alice_c

Self-Stoppers (Anxiety as an Impediment to Change)

I was recently reading Bend without Breaking by Jim Huling. Though directed at a business audience his comments really ring true for schools as well. Some folks bristle at the mention of new technology because they seem to feel that they "must master every aspect immediately." Huling urges us to counter this anxiety by "building a plan for the daily or weekly improvements."

I know teachers who feel enormously pressured to change, and their anxiety seems to paralyze them. Most of what I've learned with tech has come very deliberately. I've become competent with tools like Moodle, Google Docs, and iMovie by using tutorials through Atomic Learning, completing a few modules each day. This gives me the sense that I am making progress. And by focusing on one tool at a time, I feel less overwhelmed.

On a related note, I've often hear the lament that things are changing so fast, that by the time one gets started on something, it will probably be outdated. Well, there is an element of truth to this. Topics that I presented on in January have already drastically changed by July. But rather than paralysis, this calls for learning a "tool set." By playing around at popular sites like iTunes, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and WikiSpaces one can see that A) One can get around one these sites without a computer engineering degree. B) There is considerable transference of competency from one site to another. As I've often remarked, it's easier to jump into the Read/Write Web now than ever before. Despairing that one is hopelessly behind is a pretty lousy excuse for not engaging in the here and now.

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"Frustrated" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by frekur

Three Sweet Shortcuts

Need a Quick Rubric? Talented ed tech consultant Andy Mann showed me Rubistar, which is quite useful for whipping up a quick evaluation rubric for student work. It is preloaded with dozens of templates and categories. It is also fully customizable. In an hour I created three very different and detailed rubrics for my wiki project. While using Rubistar is not exactly intuitive, I have found my way around without the tutorials. (Here is an example: Peer wiki eval). Get your rubric right the first time if you can. Later edits are somewhat convoluted and very slow.

Labels for Gmail Like so many other things in life, I am slow to move toward a trend, but when I jump in I go head over heels. Such has been the case with Gmail. Despite the fact that my daughter and wife have been swearing by it for months, I only recently made it my main account. But when I commited to it, I decided to go through the entire Atomic Learning tutorial so that I would become aware of all of its nuances. I then discovered that many users don't realize how easy it is to "tag" one's mail with a label. I find that these labels are particularly useful for short term purposes. For example, when I was developing my staff development proposal I contacted several academics about their research. Five of them replied at various times and we began different levels of correspondence. By tagging each response with a label, I could bring up all the mail with a click whenever I worked on my proposal. This was much more efficient than the typical folder system.

Cross Platform To Do List. This tip is the most idiosyncratic, but it has been a major change in how I go about my daily business. For years, I faithfully carried a Franklin Planner through the work day. I'm a compulsive list maker and my planner kept me quite happy making daily list after daily list. But now Google Docs serves that purpose. I have created a Google Doc titled "To Do". This document is published to a url and I have tagged it with my most commonly used Delicious bookmarks. The bookmark then appears on my Firefox toolbar at home and at work, on my Macs and my HP. It updates through the day. It makes me oddly happy.

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"Shortcut" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Wagman 30

QRS Redux

On January 6, I conducted an in-service for fellow teachers on tech time-savers. I followed this up with a presentation called QRS (Quick-Rich-Simple) for the English Department. While in-services are now indefinitely on hold, I'd like to offer another QRS set in this post.

A Published Calendar I wonder if my tech-leery peers know how easy it is to publish a calendar and then link it to Moodle. I'm partial to iCal myself, but I am also familiar with Google Calendar , and it offers many of the same features. I have chosen iCal to provide all my work and personal calendars because...

1) It synchs all my computers as well as my iTouch. Like Google Calendar it thrives in the Cloud.

2) One can easily publish a calendar as an html. Consequently, I can make up a detailed calendar of class assignments, publish it, and then copy & paste to Moodle. Presto, the students can easily consult a calendar that is easily updatable.

Temporary Delicious Tags Ironically I have not exploited the social bookmarking feature of Delicious which has made it so popular. Nevertheless, it is a key feature of my daily computing life. The tag features combined with Firefox Toolbar allow me to place any set of bookmarks one click away. And here's a wonderful teaching application: Suppose that you are prepping for a day's lesson by doing some online research. As you find your charts, graphs, photos; mark them with a unique tag. Later, you access them as a group, edit, and then select pop them into your toolbar for class. If you wish, you can connect to a data projector and share them as you go through your lesson (and/or the kids can subscribe to this unique tag). I use this shortcut all the time in my social studies classes.

iTunes University If you have not done so already, the next time you visit the iTunes Store, check out this marvelous collection of academic lectures. Choose your field, whether it is literature or mathematics and you will find something compelling from one of the world's greatest universities. By and large, these lectures are more suited for a college educated person like you than your students. But for your own edification or enjoyment, you can access them free of charge and then subscribe, download to iPod, or burn to CDs.

Would you like to share a QRS tip on my blog? Email me!

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iTunes University screen capture with Preview, 2/27/09

Staff Development, Part Three

Final of Three Parts

In part one of this commentary I characterized a typical teaching staff by their receptiveness and integration of new technologies: Pathfinders, Jumpstarts, Too Old / Too Lates, and Naysayers. The research I have down bears out this divisions as typical within any organization facing significant change. In part two I presented a proposal for moving from a scattershot approach to staff training to a more structured emersion in order to create a greater number of Pathfinders.

As Theodore Creighton asserts, "For any movement of change to . . . positively impact teaching and learning, a large number of faculty and staff must be involved in the movement." My school has reached this crossroads. In 2009-10 all students in the school will have immediate access to extremely powerful information gathering and networking tools throughout the school day. We have the opportunity to be in the vanguard of educational change. But a recalcitrant staff has the ability to undermine the best attempts at curricular change, marketing campaigns, and even retention of younger more technology savvy staff. I think all but the least resistant could be enlisted in a team effort to provide better resources for the entire school. After a modicum of training we could participate electronically in building these valuable projects without creating special meeting times and schedules. Staff would engage in the same kinds of collaboration experiences we wish to provide our students. And really, if the school is committed to the program, no one should be exempt through special pleading of being "too busy." I suggest that after we have reaseched tipping point of pathfinders (see part two) a set of interdepartmental projects be initiated. The possibilities are limitless:

* Creation of a virtual exhibition space for student performance / exhibitions.

* Create a virtual media center of video and podcast resource material collected from "experts" in the school and neighborhood community.

* Collect virtual museums of hyperlinks/videos/photos on subjects which cross department themes.

* Compile social bookmarks and Dyknow best practices for types of class (e.g., AP) or teaching styles.

* Build a directory of school blogs and blogging resources.

* Create 21st Century research guides and resources.

* Design independent study modules for students with unique interests or needs

* I read with interest "Well Connected Parents" in the 1/30/09. Washington Post. A 21st Century school should be interested in getting ahead of the curve with a social media design which includes parents.

As I reflected in Tinker Toy Playland, educators must deconstruct old concepts of curricular subjects and units. The interdepartmental projects I suggest could advance meaningful dialogue about research, learning styles, and digital literacy as they apply in a world where Everything is Miscellaneous. Craig McLeod takes his IT blog title, from the following quote: "Our intelligence tends to produce technological and social change at a rate faster than our institutions and emotions can cope with. . . . We therefore find ourselves continually trying to accommodate new realities within inappropriate existing institutions, and trying to think about those new realities in traditional but sometimes dangerously irrelevant terms" (War: The Lethal Custom). With a relatively small investment in human resources a school could guide its stakeholders toward some to some extraordinary experiences.

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"Bruno e Sandra com seus MacBooks Pro" Creative Commons Flickr Photo by Marco Gomes
Thank you, Theodore Creighton for reviewing the full document from which this post is adapted.

Staff Development, Part Two

Second of Three Parts

Nancy Sulla argues that technology integration has to be accomplished "one teacher at a time", hand in hand with "culture building." I completely agree. My two proposals focus on one-on-one training and team building. The goal is to more deeply embed the practice of technology and transform the school learning culture. In my last blog, I divided the staff into four categories of tech practice and receptiveness. Proposal #1 provides deeper involvement for both the top two, "Pathfinders" and "Jumpstarts". Proposal 2 proactively includes the "Too Old / Too Late" and "Naysayer" groups in vital team projects where they will be encouraged by peer influence and motivated by a goal they help choose. In other words we will teach the teachers through the same methodology we adopt for our students, plugging them into a growing network of co-learners.

Proposal One

This proposal calls for a Flat Classroom staff development course led by experienced Pathfinders. As Dona Hickey points out, "Too much technology too fast overwhelm[s] novices." Instead of continuing to lob numerous, dazzling, apps and tricks at the staff, we would engage them more deeply with selected Web 2.0 applications. They would learn about applications, practice them and begin to network them interdepartmentally.

I stumbled upon one of Scott McLeod's many impressive wiki resources at CASTLE. When I looked through the media collection on wikis, social bookmarking, video, blogs, Flickr Creative Commons, Google Docs, etc.; I realized how close we were to being able to produce some terrific resources and presentations at our school.

A limited set of these Web 2.0 tools could be selected and really taught to a group of "Jumpstarts". Then they and the "Pathfinders" could engage the rest of the staff in interdepartmental collaborative projects. A Curriculum Committee could predetermine the project goals. The development course would look something like this:

*The group would meet an hour a week for 12 weeks.
*Two or three project based skills would be presented such as video, blogging, wikis.
*Participants would explore and consider each technology for three or four weeks.
*The last 2 or 3 weeks would be spent on laying out blueprints for the interdepartmental projects.
*The projects would then be plugged into department structures and enlist all staff (more on this in next blog post).

I envision a master Pathfinder leading the course. This proposal would initially address the Pathfinders and "Jumpstarts". It would require the investment of creating paid time for the participants, but it would not require outside "experts". It would exploit the experience of the Pathfinders and give the Jumpstarts the impetus for truly engaging in technology.

My next proposal would engage the rest of the faculty and has the potential for dynamic impact on the learning culture.

Come back Wednesday for Part 3.
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"iPhone...Eye Phone?" Flickr photo with kind permission of John of Dublin
Thank you, Theodore Creighton for reviewing the full document from which this post is adapted.