Google Earth–Elementary

tw.neisd.net/webpages/sreeve/tcea2008.cfm

Some networks have problems with Google Earth working with IE. Use IE 7.

Check out their web site for resources and handouts and lesson worksheets.

Used as young as K more as demo than hands-on with kids. 

Showed flip book/mini book examples. 

Works best in terms of younger students working in small groups.

Need to emphasize not live images–look at the date–point out to students.

Layers: Borders and Labels always on. Poke around Global Awareness and Gallery–they are most helpful sections. 

Bandwidth can be an issue. Schools may be upgrading their networks to make it practical to use with groups of students. 

Check out the National Zoo Virtual Tour on the web site.

A number of their activities use Google Earth peripherally to locate resources and then use another application like PowerPoint, Kidspiration, Excel, etc. for what the students actually complete/do. Some seem to be mostly the teacher using Google Earth.

Planning the middle school bus route for efficiency. 

They use Kidspiration a lot in their district.

$262,000,000 amount of money for EETT last year–first year was $700,000,000.
NCLB, ATTAIN, HEA: ATTAIN is the proposed replacement for EETT. Want to make sure technology is in renewal of NCLB. HEA is supposed to be replaced last session, this will be up again next session–lots related to professional development.

EETT funds professional development, hardware, software, etc. Big program funded under NCLB.

Federal Budget–2.1% is Education. Most funding there is no choice on–social security, medicare, etc. Only 14.6% outside of education is discretionary. We need to advocate for our issues to maintain funding. We compete with other issues for funding. Letters make a difference.

EETT. Constantly decreasing or just maintaining. President has proposed $0 for last several years because he feels hardware is in the classroom. Congress has restored funding. We have argued to continue program to Congress and they have responded but can’t find money to increase.

NCLB. No reauthorization happen with this administration. Unlikely to be reauthorized until after election. May not take effect until 2011, so we work with what is now. Will probably have a new name and some new programs. ISTE had input into the revised version that has not been moved on and feels good about what has been incorporated. Congress often feels EETT is about hardware. They feel better about professional development. Includes a definition of technology literacy by the end of 8th grade that maps to NETS. An assessment will need to be completed sometime before the end of 8th grade–could be portfolio.

edtechactionnetwork.org Input zip code and get prewritten letters addressed to representatives.

What is the difference between advocacy and lobbying? ISTE does advocacy.

Talk by someone about building advocacy organizations at the state level. Not of interest/relevance to me but seemed worthwhile.

ISTE put out first policy brief. Beginning to line up thoughts, stances as start a new cycle of advocacy. Available on ISTE web site.

Referred to Marzano’s book on building background knowledge to increase student achievement.

Lots of experience working with sped students.

How convince other people that a new technology that will improve teaching and learning?

* Research based
* Promotes student achievement

Remember focus is on standardized test results. SPED students can make the difference in school classification. Need to justify. Needs to be accessible for all teachers and students. Appropriate for diverse learners.

Background knowledge and vocabulary are often lacking in SPED students. There is a vocabulary gap that often starts as early as 24 months. We know direct vocabulary instruction works–especially if linked to content. Best instruction is not just definitions but includes nonlinguistic and linguistic ways. Multiple exposures helps too. Discussion on the terms also helps.

Wikis: The Sell

Addresses background knowledge, vocabulary needs, could include entire school. Not just for the few students, but for everyone.

Wikis up the ante for students because other students (or people) can see.

Every lesson/subject has vocabulary. Suits wiki. Can’t be lost by students. Vocabulary words are often indicated in standards.

Talked about Frayer Model for non-SPED students.

Tough decisions:

* Do you have students pre-write or edit within wiki?
* If pre-write: more polished, can use assistive technology, more emphasis on editing process; however seems very traditional, may be a barrier for some students
* If edit within: students have immediate access to technology and see immediate results
* Often end up using a hybrid approach with multiple applications open while creating a wiki

Lay ground rules first. Add comments to moderate discussion or clarify points. Don’t be afraid to intervene. What about IM-speak?

Maybe need to think more about copyright and what students can and can’t (or shouldn’t) use.

Another way to sell is by using Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Advanced students could create wikis for other classes in school.

Wikis are active learning, collaboration, represents collective knowledge, accessible all the time.

Kids think it’s like MySpace. Like collaboration and publication that others can see.

Wikis can complement standard classroom activities.

Advice/Strategy for implementation:

* Think about objectives and what want to do
* Structure the activity (plan ahead)
* Compare to word walls

This session seems limited to wikis for vocabulary rather than other applications in the classroom.

Accomodations may be needed for some students like physical disability, autism, learning, etc. Students may not be able to handwrite well but need to get access to a computer (like head mouse, onscreen keyboard, enlarged fonts, word prediction, switch). May also need instructional accommodations like very structured directions, differentiated instruction and resources, range of accommodations and modifications.

Benefits: natural method of independent writing, more engagement in writing process, independent work, exchange between students/teacher.

Check out his blog, http://johnhendron.net/ for video tutorials and other information. Try http://www.johnhendron.net/digest/google-sketchup/ for SketchUp in particular.

SketchUp was designed for architects. Google bought the company because of Google Earth–use the program to build buildings and place them in Google Earth. Have people build the buildings.

Takes about 12 hours of training to get comfortable–recommended for teacher training.

Set up preferences for mouse for 3 buttons. Set up preferences.

Practiced different shapes, selection tool. Kids might get bored so do via a demo and then have them practice. Easy to develop bad habits that cause problems later in more complex drawings. Good to develop these habits from the start.

3/4th grades supposed to learn about Greek and Roman architecture. He used SketchUp. Can get models quickly from the 3D Warehouse within Google SketchUp to use in class for activities.

3 or 4th grade earliest. May have problems visualizing 3D.

Rotate tool is most difficult to use. Works best with components.

Tried replacing component materials on 3D warehouse model. Some models have several components within them. When you edit one component that has been copied, all the copies change as well.

X-ray tool useful for helping younger kids visualize in 3D what the relationship of inside to out.

Showed examples of teachers/students:

• Foreign Language–Latin students, built a Roman house based on archeological digs and added labels to the different rooms, different thing for them
• Early Childhood Students–modeled ideal K classroom with kids, components, colors, etc.

Mentioned use in woodworking.

Paid version gives more choices for printing and exporting to use in other programs.

Built a simple house with peaked roof. Really need to think about the pieces that go into a house (from a 3D perspective).

Excellent workshop. Very well done.

Audience uses: collaboration, Google Docs, Animoto, Flickr, del.icio.us, voicethread (very popular),

http://www.necc2008.org/forum/topic/show?id=1997968%3ATopic%3A11028

What is web 2.0? How important is it?

• Web as platform (like travelocity–the OS is irrelevant)
• Harnessing collective intelligence (like Wikipedia, collaboration and competition among many individuals–primarily for ideas)
• Wisdom of crowds–(like YouTube, the recommendations you get after you select a video)
• Data as the “intel” inside–(like Amazon, systems take in data by users to give you more information)
• End of the software release cycle (like Google, where everything is Beta and refinements are constantly made and instantly updated everywhere)
• Loosely coupled systems (like Netvibes–mashups where data is combined in many ways with other data
• Software beyond a single device (like Facebook–not tied to a particular machine or device–you just need to login to access your stuff)
• Rich user experience (like Swivel–customized, individualized but also social)

Web 2.0 is active rather than passive. Read/write web. Enables students.

Barriers

• Inappropriate content (instead of teaching students how to cope)
• Teachers want to see a working model before they try in their classroom
• Fear of failure by teachers
• Fear of being first
• Computer is used a babysitter in many schools and that’s what they see computers purpose as
• Students doing inappropriate things on school equipment
• Lots of schools block the network access
• Parents are fearful and pressure school not to do

Students need to learn by doing. Use filtering system that allows flexibility.

Important shift (may be similar to invention of printing press in changing the world). Democratic. These tools are transformational. But how are schools responding?

Teacher needs to connect to other teachers doing the same type of things or interested in accomplishing the same or similar things. Teachers need to use whatever it is themselves. They need to talk to administration. Then start working with students.

EdTechTalk

Twitter–need to experience to understand why useful

Pick one thing and focus on it to start.

Trying to bring “in” 2-3 experts into every class (university professor). Model how can be done and encourage them to do. Use Skype, iChat, GoogleTalk, etc.

These tools can motivate students. Don’t be afraid of failure.

Google Docs has lots of features including survey tool.

Kids are doing:

• Blogging in vetted community/closed community
• Ning for posting digital creations and critiquing each other’s works
• Wiki centered classroom paired with a Ning
• Wiki used for everything (university professor)

Check this out: http://www.nextvista.org/

Guaranteed–will not be able to keep up with emerging technology.

Ning is a smaller social community.

Wikis are more versitile than blogs. Ning is for first person opinions. Wiki is facts, organized and referred to later. Should be polished in wiki. Wiki is structured information. Ning is about evolving conversation.

Investigate DOPA. Federal government proposal to withhold funding for schools who have opened social networking tools.

Moodle used. Elgg. Look for open source solutions as well.

For workshops, spend 1/3 time on content not tools.

Kids need to have meaty content before they worry about packaging.

Most loved Comic Hero: Green Lantern, Spider-man (recent survey).

Every piece of work student does, they need to own work and make decisions and decide whether to take feedback from you or not.

Graphic Novels: written in chapters and later on bound together. Not a lot of concensus on what is and is not a graphic novel. Huge variety of genres–including political commentary and documentaries. Literature ones are popular, so are social studies, also math and science to explain concepts.

• 1837–oldest comic
• 1939–Superman, beginning of golden age of comics
• 1954–comic burning, senate investigates relation with juvenile delinquency
• 1992–Art Spiegelman, Maus

Myths:

• Not real writing
• Not deep
• Activity/Play
• Childish
• No effort
• Inappropriate language
• Crude
• Violent
• Hinders Literacy development

What research says: more complex cognitive skill than reading alone–interpretation of images and relation of gutters to meaning. Also introduces more new words than books for kids. Increases reading. Appeals to wide range of age groups.

Start with gallery walk with examples and non-examples. Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI). Beginning of critical friend review. Did PMI for 8 example comics ranging widely in style, content and age.

Check out her web site for detailed information and scoring rubrics.

We next did the organizing/reflecting/decisions on the home base comic. What learned for giving advice to teachers for using comic in classroom. Most are now one pagers in classrooms. Craftmanship part of grade: decorating, illustrating, illuminating. Want illuminating not decorating. About designing information.

• Storyboard/rough draft
• Sequence–story or graphics
• Language of comics
• Story structure
• Difficult to grade so need a clear rubric
• Go over how to provide appropriate feedback
• Decide what best tool for communication
• Use illustrations effectively

Content first. What do you want students to know and deeply understand? How will they demonstrate their understandings? How will we know they have mastered these understandings? Results in less decorating. They need to care about the content and showing what they know. Don’t do superficial tasks/research.

We didn’t do comics, podcasts, etc. We did higher order thinking skills. We explained concepts to each other. Avoid lower level thinking skills. Do application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation.

Not about the stuff. About the purpose and audience, so really about types of communication. She has 16 types in four categories. Important to make thinks more meaningful.

Not about the hardware. About the content.

7 steps to making any multimeida.

• Preproduction: script, find emotional storyline, shot list
• Production: create pieces required
• Post Production: assemble

Vocabulary

• Splash page–need a hook, set up
• Panels–convey meaning so a how-to thing should have panels set up one way
• Gutters–white space should add to the story, intentional
• Graxlixes–international code for symbols (non-verbal) like sweat marks, dust clouds, etc.

Bubbles vs. Balloons–inner vs. outer conversations

• Clouds–lingering small bubbles
• Bubbles–inside
• Balloons–outside
• Caption Boxes–narrative

Onomatopoeia–Baam Argh Aaah Pow

Time to try comic life. Had a checklist of skills and took us through with sample images supplied on flash drive. Remember about image quality for print out.

Craftsmanship Scoring

Content Scoring

Panels have meaning. Visual metyaphors have emotional meaning and symbolism. Don’t forget white space. Consistency of Tone (purpose)

What’s the pacing?

What’s the focus?

What are the revelations?

Comics use a different perspective. Oddly cropped. Extreme closeups.Even with photos, try extreme angles. Use darkness and light to convey mood and emotion.

Task: If you were a dinosaur and in charge of the world; what would be your advice to us today?

her del.icio.us account: del.icio.us/bernajean

Too many samples are lower thinking skills and summary reports instead of much more interesting and thought provoking types. Another mode of communication.

What do we want learning and the classroom to look like? Huron County, Michigan still has 8 one-room schoolhouses that serve two square miles. Two of them are wireless. They are not isolated. What is the value of that connection? What is the value of having a permeable classroom? MatSu school district, Alaska has 25,000 square miles service area. What is value of connectivity for them? What about Peru and OLPC and how it changes their classroom and their world? Is there value in connecting these school districts’ students? Nigerian OLPC again, a one-room schoolhouse. How will learning fundamentally change when students can connect anywhere?

Face-to-face networking vs. virtual networking or a combination of both. Kids have been using networks for a long time. Now its easier than ever with technology and their networks are larger than ever. What happens when kids doing Club Penguin in Kindergarden get to middle school? Can those skills and interests be leveraged? How does it change classrooms? How does it change student expectations? Are you preparing kids to learn online? Think about the free courses offered online by MIT and Yale? What about the podcasting stuff?

Glow check out. Has to do with Scotland. A national interface for connecting kids and teachers online.

Web 2.0 tools are disruptive to how teaching and learning has traditionally occurred. Everyone can participate and everyone can contribute. Wikipedia article on Milwaukee. Encyclopedia of Life.  These can become the new textbooks. Do we need textbooks?  Companies are seeking ideas, feedback, comments from customers to leverage the power of networking. Take a field trip to large Starbucks–watch the networking in action. He wants his classroom to be a Starbucks room sans coffee.

What doyou want your classroom or library to look like? How permeable do you want your classroom or library to be? What do you want learning to look like?

My Literacies: Connect, Collaborate, Create, Contribute. Sequenced on purpose. Students need both information and network literacies.

NCTE–develop proficiency with the tools of technoloyg. Build relationships with others. Design and share information for global communities. Create critique analyze and evaluate multimedia text. Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments. Literacy is malleable and what it is and means changes over time.

The current classroom. Chairs in rows. Must raise hands to talk. Paper and pencil. Individuals. Each subject is compartmentalized. Same classroom as 50 or more years ago.

Teachers need to understand and use skills first for developing a personalized learning network to show students how to do it as well. They need it. School should not be a place to endure.

Learned more in last few years than in rest of professional life because of electronic personalized learning network. Check out his wiki and 15 minutes section. Kids use the stuff but don’t know how to use it effectively for learning.

He’s using Bloglines to read 175 feeds every day. Has a del.icio.us account and taking advantage of the network. Those are asynchronous communications. He uses Twitter, chat for synchronous. His schools use chat clients to ask librarians for help when need it. Ditto mobile lab, etc. Administrators did not like the idea.

Within the classroom. Calculus class in Canada. Created a community inside class and reached beyond school. Used a blog in Blogger and had students enrolled as contributors to the blog. Has a Google Calendar embedded. Has ClustrMaps on blog so when kids create content, they realize who is reading. Has a Flickr gallery where students post digital pictures of different calculus concept–students overlay in Flickr their comments explaining how the picture element applies to the concept. apcalc06.blogspot.com Has links to resources, tag roll, feeds to other math blogs, a del.icio.us sidebar, has SmartBoard and takes slides into slideshare and puts on blog. Scribepost–each student takes turns writing it–they don’t know until after class which one is the one for today and post to blog. Comments by classmates and others from outside. Has a scribepost Hall of Fame for particularly good posts. All this stuff is free but integrated for learning environment. He also has students create a Exam Prep Wiki–basically 12 questions the students work on collaboratively outside of class. Teacher structures and provides some guidelines. Big issue is getting kids to go back and change something that is already done–need to force students to do that to go back. Teacher looks back at history and evaluates student performance/contribution to wiki. CHECK THIS OUT FOR EDMT 380 wiki. Has Google Translate tool, Answer Tips. and video tutorials.

Collaboration between two classes in different countries is not easy. The biggest challenge may be getting the teachers working together comfortably. What about kids in one class mentoring other class in different school and maybe a different grade level. Ethereral Walls. Clarence Fisher. advicethroughetherealwalls.blogspot.com Involves lots of growing pains. Not easy but is it of value? Is it worth the effort? Think about potential. About getting students involved in learning and school.

Not really ready to go yet, will talk about plan to do so. The standards are legislative and a longer process than they thought it would be.

English & Math are close to recommendations for revised standards. Social Studies are started. Not much done on ITLS. Stuart has done some alignment with NETS, AALS and Partnership for 21st Century.

We are signed on to te American Diploma Project as well as Partnership for 21st Century. Both are working to change education to make it more relevant to present and future. Object is that when students graduate from HS and go to college they do not need to take any remedial classes or ready to go to work.

Probably the final set of recommended math and English one will come out this summer. They will need revision to fit with the various partnerships.

As committees go thru standards think about the P21C and others.

ITLS probably will start this year in terms of revision.

Social Studies: originally looked at the existing standards and came up with curriculum plan/sequence (what is taught in what grade). Called this grade level foundations. They tend to be concept based (16 concepts and 3 study areas). Civic literacy, global literacy and economic literacy. They wrote focussing questions for each grade level. Reframed focus to get students literate in those three literacies. Broke up into 5 skill areas: knowledge/information skills, communication skills, interpersonal and self-directional skills, reflection skills, inquiry/critical thinking and problem solving skills. Tied to the standards. Hopefully ready this summer. A draft form is available upon request.

Also looking at new NETS-Students for alignment. Handed out tables of alignment. A lot of terminology used by ITLS are now support or secondary standards. ISTE is more process or global standards. There will be fewer standards in number but wider in terms of scope after refresh. Finding common themes and terminology. Want to develop that across all the Model Academic Standards. Need to develop a common cause and realize part of a greater whole. Will have all alignments done by time of regional meetings in fall. This doesn’t tell teachers what they have to do–need to make sure these are done as well–performance indicators. The bullet points in the original were supposed to be suggestions, not all that is required. So that level of detail is really the responsibility of schools and school districts. That will make and nutso result throughout the state. Would be better in my opinion if had a standard curriculum across the state. But DPI wants to give schools flexibility which doesn’t really help with students transferring across districts. Still an issue about the state tests for content–will students know what is tested at a particular grade level.

ITLS existing. Standard A is really original NETS-Students. Again, bullets are examples of how to achieve the A.4.4 (the performance standards). Mostly computer skills. That’s what ISTE got rid of in their refresh. Standard B is information and inquiry. Do we really need Standard A? Is Standard A implied by all the other standards?

Where go next? Do something at the regional meetings in fall. Maybe local control is less of an issue now because of standardized tests. Maybe more state guidance would be appreciated by local schools.

Presentation materials

IT Coordinator in Downer’s Grove, IL.

• Can every subject be studied within a geographical context?
• How will you help your students make meaning of visual information?
• How does this change teaching and learning? What’s possible?
• What are the logistical and technical requirements? How does this all work?

A challenging technology. Everything is on the online resources. Feel free to use in other workshops as long as attribute to David Jakes.

CA wildfires–lots of info communicated near real-time via Google Maps and Twitter. Where evacuation routes, hotels with rooms, meeting area, fire lines, etc. were marked and changed as needed.

Google Maps needs a Google login. Build in Google Maps, export as kml and import into Google Earth. Showed multiple views and what’s there. Then went to My Maps. Create a new map. Some schools would let kids have a Google login. Went to the maplets like realtime earthquakes (browse the directory). Gives access to different layers of data. Then looked at census data. Can show multiple layers at once by selecting appropriately.

Way to get kids actively involved in history, “You are there” kind of thing.

Has alternative AP Biology based on 8 big questions. Create presentation within Google Earth rather than PowerPoint. Think about this creatively. Teachers or students can create content.

Showed how to create a map, add a placemark, add a hyperlink, add an image. Easy enough to do. Cautioned about images being on line. Talked briefly about Flickr. Can also embed YouTube/TeacherTube video. Talked about collaboration feature briefly. BUT need Google login. Remember about district blocking certain sites like YouTube. View in Google Earth, try to save as kml first. Explained about kml and kmz files.

Let kids spend first 15 minutes playing with Google Earth. He’s demoing most recent version of Google Earth. Google Sky is your own personal planetarium. More complicated but have more capability. Check out the Add Content button. Showed Dafur, Diamond Trade, Google Lit Trips. Could kids collaboratively create a placemark? Could 20 groups create the route and teacher compile it?

Have kids create content in online web editor. Copy the code and paste into Google Earth placemark.

Where can I have kids use cell phones to create content? Think about Evoca. Other uses of cell phones in K-12 classrooms. Also Voicethread.

Use appropriately. Each has benefits and drawbacks.

Over 175 people for presentation.

They are UStreaming the presentation.

John Pederson stuff http://www.shiftedlearning.org/wiki/Cool_Tools

David Jakes stuff http://jakes.editme.com/CoolNewToolDuel

Check out this stuff when have time or even when don’t. Looks like some good stuff.

PicLens looks real interesting.

Flip Camera by John. Looks pretty good. Not great but not bad either for the price. Has built-in USB connection. No cords. 640 x 480 video. Perfect for kids. Catches sound. Holds about 1 hour. Uses AA batteries.

SearchMe is not perfect yet. But the start of a visual search.

Google Docs: decent web-based products can use school/home, etc. In spreadsheets, showed Share. Invite people to fill out a form. Way to do quick basic survey.

Google Street View: zoomed in on Dallas. Will it immerse kids in history? Take to cities and have them look at actual sites of events. Can mark and embed the 360 map on another web page.

Skitch: Mac only for now. Can annotate, resize, etc. Then automatically upload to whereever.

Slideshare is PowerPoint on video. Free account.

drop.io makes a drop box for files online. 100 MB for free. Password protected.

Use Flickr for digital storytelling. Currently 2.3 billion images on Flickr. Went to FlickrStorm and did Dealy Plaza search. Demoed what to do to grab some pictures. Then download tray and copy URL that results and it shows as link that leads back to search results. Way to presearch/filtered search of Flickr pictures.

Box.net: productivity tools. 1GB online for free. Nice having access anywhere. Can share, edit in Zoho, post to a variety of blogs, create a link to the file.

Kerfloof: FOR young kids. Looks neat–not sure how spelled.

Create a Graph.com: don’t need an account. Works well for kids in schools. Can be used at home.

Jakes: Almost every kid has a cell phone. Use with Evoca.com. Call evoca and then basically have a podcasting tool. Quick and easy to do. Not greatest quality.