ARRA Grant

I just sent the ARRA grant off to Sacramento. We should find out in December! Keeping my fingers crossed, but realizing that LVUSD is better off than a lot of districts.

I really believe that CRS (Classroom Response Systems) or clickers are the future of education. What better way to track every single student in your class? You can track progress, weaknesses, and strengths - all with the click of a button. - You can check progress from last night's homework, or take a spontaneous quiz. All of that data at your fingertips. Now if only we had the resources and the time to set it up and make it work. Summer?

Finding Balance

I had an entire weekend to myself. No plans, no pressing projects, no obligations and it was fabulous. I needed some time to spend with me. Sounds stupid, but I feel rejuvenated.

I love my job - and I am capable of spending almost every waking moment (and some of the sleeping moments) working in some capacity. I check e-mail constantly all hours of the day. In fact once my alarm goes off in the morning the first thing I do is check my e-mail on my phone to make sure there are no major fires to put out. I love the philosophy work hard - play hard. I'm learning to be spontaneous to enjoy time with friends and family when the opportunities present themselves. But this weekend, I took time to read magazines, laze around the house, listen to music and accomplish little to nothing. Balance, for me is about finding and creating the quiet times and I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by things I love - job, friends, family, and every once in a while - nothing but myself.

Time to check e-mail and prepare for work tomorrow. :-)

Working for California Lutheran

I was hired in July to be a Media Specialist for LVUSD. We have consolidated 8 positions into 3 for the next school year. Our department will be managing 14 libraries as well as technology training for the entire district. Sleep is clearly not in the game plan for next year.

In addition to that I have been hired on at California Lutheran University to re-write/design technology courses for the School of Education. The courses will clear the CA supplemental credential in Computer Concepts and Applications. Students must take four courses including at least one course in each for the following areas: (A) software evaluation and selection, (B) hardware operation and functions, and (C) classroom uses of computers. (The fourth is a computer elective.) It seems to me that future computer teachers would benefit more from a course in how to teach computers rather than computer hardware operations or software evaluation, but I'm not on that committee (yet).

I'm looking for articles on educational technology to include in the new syllabi for the computer education courses. Suggestions are most welcome!

CUE Conference

I've been attending the CUE conference in Palm Springs the last couple of days and will be leaving exhausted, inspired, and ready to collaborate! We have a large group from the district attending and I can't wait to get together and share what we've learned.

Highlights -

• Hall Davidson - Discovery Education Speaker
  
• Vicki Davis - Differentiating Instruction
• Cheryl Fiello - Professional Development Training
• Scott Skidmore - Hot Potatoes
• Jon Leister - 21st Century Professional Development

There were many more and I will be adding more thoughts and notes at a later date!

EETT - Roll-out

We have started rolling out our laptop carts to our schools. We've delivered carts and training to two elementary schools and started on our first middle school last week. Each school has received 40 laptops, 1 server, 1 printer, and 1 router. We've worked through a few server glitches and this last roll-out is working extremely well. The elementary school training took place in each 4th and 5th grade classrooms. The middle school training is taking place in the library led by the library media teacher. The kids are so excited about the new equipment and extremely respectful.

The Genius of the Work-Around

Want to teach problem solving skills to our students? Put them in charge of our technology. Anyone who has been in charge of technology, even his or her own computer to some extent, understands the strategy of the work-around. If it doesn't work in one browser, try another. If something seems glitchy, turn your computer off and try again. There are millions of examples of work-arounds and what I've learned from the work-around is that there is always another solution. It may not solve the problem completely or be a long-term solution, but the key is to look for alternative solutions. In essence I've learned to look out of the box.

Example: Last night I was with a bunch of friends who decided to have a pizza and movie night. The movie was downloaded from Apple TV (Apple's best kept secret) and once the food was delivered we settled in to watch the movie. Of course, it didn't work. The movie showed up as a white screen with the timeline bar across the bottom, but no video.

The work-arounds:

• check to see if it's available through PPV (it wasn't)
• check to see if it's available through OnDemand - (it was) - however once we ordered it through "OnDemand" it started 20 minutes into the movie and only recorded 10 minutes of the entire movie. Grrrr.
• checked online to see if RedBox had the movie - (yes, but not anywhere close to us)
• checked to see if Blockbuster had the movie - (no all checked out)
  

Yes by this point we had eaten our pizza!

• restart the Apple TV device (movie worked like a charm)

Now my non-tech friends were AMAZED! They kept mentioning how "determined" we were to see the movie. (Just to add insult to injury, the movie was terrible.) We weren't determined, we were just exhausting all the options. It is the way we think. It is the way we want our students to think. Time to teach problem solving "work-arounds."

Starting the Grant

We had our first Coach/Mentor training on Tuesday. Our 16 coach/mentors were educated and entertained by the LACOE Multimedia Services team as well as TechEd Services. Gina Armenta-Shin is the project coordinator for the grant and did a wonderful job of organizing everything and giving us an overview of the project. We are working on getting our EETT Moodle site updated and will be posting all important documents and updates there. We met with the MIS department today to discuss the roll-outs of the carts and they are confident that we can get everything rolled out in the next 4-5 weeks! It is so exciting. I know the teachers at each site are getting anxious to get their hands on those machines and it looks like it's actually going to happen.

Tech Conferences

I am currently attending the California League of Middle Schools /Computer Using Educators conference in Monterey, CA. I've attended a number of fascinating sessions from data-driven decision making to converting a Wii remote to an interactive whiteboard. (Can't wait to try the last one out!)
Of course, the available technology was not nearly as advanced as the sessions and while wireless was sometimes available, it was down more than it was up and not available at all in over half of my sessions. I find this VERY frustrating when I'm at a technology conference, and I couldn't help but find a parallel to how our kids feel in our school settings. They are wired constantly via phone, iPod, and portable game devices, so why are we keeping them from using these resources. People have told me at many different conferences that they have turned the wireless access off because they want us to listen to the presenter. I'm not wired to just sit and listen. I need to synthesize what I'm learning and post to Twitter or my blog or take notes for myself in Google Docs. Why squeeze me into a four walled box when I'm just not wired that way? Well, the real problem is we're doing the same thing with kids - and considering that our "technology" savvy events aren't technologically enlightened, how can we expect it to trickle down into our schools?

Wiki Updates

We've been working diligently on updating our wiki. We have added a number of video tutorials (created by Kim Ellis of AHS) on Aeries ABI and Jeanne's been adding lots of FAQs on the elementary report cards and teacher web pages. We are also adding to the links portion of the site, but I'm not sure it's a very user-friendly layout. Any suggestions on ways to organize great online resources?

Aeries Resources

I have created an introduction video on setting up your Aeries Gradebook. You can view it below. We've also found another school district that has posted Aeries ABI tutorial videos. You can find those videos here.

Wrong Again

Ok, so I attended another meeting regarding the grant and I was wrong again. It looks like the focus of the grant will be on the Language Arts teachers. However, the equipment will also be available to teachers who are interested, but not initially. Sorry for the confusion and false hope.

Clearing up the Grant

The grant we received includes the training of 150 teachers, but only those who teacher 4-8 grades. The standards that we are critiqued by the state are only the Language Arts and Social Science standards, but we do plan to train all interested teachers. We will also be looking for tech leads at each school. Anybody interested?

Grant

We have received $1.3 million dollars in grant funds through the EETTC grant. The grant covers grades 4 - 8 so we will be working with that subgroup from our district. The grant includes funding for wireless laptop carts to be located at each school. By my calculations each elementary will be receiving 40 laptops via 2 carts and the middle schools will be receiving 80 laptops via 4 carts. Teachers must attend training in order to have access to these carts, but I think it will be a great opportunity for both our staff members and our students. Now we just need to work out the details. :-)

Wiki

We're working on ways to better communicate with the teachers in the district. Please check out our new training wiki. You can even search for information on specific topics by using the search box on the left.

Visit http://techiesteaching.pbwiki.com

Creating technology stations

We've redecorated our room, and have a little more space to move around. We even have some space around the room to make technology stations. Now we have to decide what to place in those stations. We have a "podcasting" corner, and I think we'll put some sort of scanner system at another one. That way teachers with old documents/photos can scan them to upload into Moodle. Any suggestions for other stations? We can probably have 1 to 2 more.
Thanks!

Setting up your Aeries Gradebook

This tutorial walks you through the basic set-up of your Aeries Gradebook. We will continue to create additional tutorials to give you more information on using Aeries.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Additional Resources are available here. Just scroll down to find the Aeries material.

Aeries Training

What's the buzz about Aeries? Well as our student management system it does make some things much easier. For example - you will no longer need to input your students into your gradebook program. With a push of a button your students are enrolled in your class and any change in Aeries is modified in your gradebook too.

Also, at "Grade Reporting" time you will no longer have to input grades for each student using the those pesky drop down menus. All you need to do is click on the "Import from Gradebook" link and presto-chango your grades are all there.

We will be putting together another video tutorial on setting up your Aeries gradebook by the end of this week. You can also attend one of our Aeries classes offered September 10 and 17 at the DO.

Video Tutorials

Welcome to Techies Teaching. I will be posting a blog on current trends in technology and resources available for teachers in the LVUSD district and the world!

Check out our tutorial on the teacher website builder found on YouTube.

This is Part 1 of the series and is a demo from Agoura High School. If you are a teacher in the district at another school, the demo will be applicable as soon as you are logged-in to your webpage.



Additional videos including part 2 can be found at http://youtube.com/LvusdTosa.

Digital Cameras

I just returned from a seventh grade field trip to Costa Rica. We traveled with three adults and 14 students for a week. It was a great trip, but what was amazing to me was how beneficial the digital cameras were for the learning processes. The kids would go and explore a section of the rain forest and then come back to our guide and ask questions about the plants and animals they had identified. It made the educational experience much more personal for them because they were the ones bringing the questions to the adults. My colleagues and I were talking about all of the possibilities these cameras could provide. While we were walking we developed a Rain Forest Scavenger hunt that we had the kids do on the next hike. It was fabulous. Next time I'll bring my laptop so we can then put their pictures together for a slide show.

With the implementation of new technology, the way we teach will be changed dramatically. We're now trying to give parents constant feedback by posting grades online and listing homework as well as creating much more interactive environments in which to teach our kids. Whew....no wonder we're always tired.

Careers

I've often asked myself what am I going to be when I grow up and I always have an answer. I changed my major 11 times in college and each time it just felt "right" and I knew it was my true calling. Now, I'm trying to figure out what my next option might be and I'm leaning on the idea of teaching online. I've researched and applied to a couple of different online high schools, and I've looked at some of the online universities and I'm just not sure that I am all that qualified. My undergraduate degree is in English Education with a minor in Educational Technology, and now I'm completing my Master's in Educational Technology at SDSU. Do I need to get a Master's in English to teach online? What are others doing? How did they get their online teaching jobs? What are their qualifications? Is this a career for a much later time in my life? Can anybody shed some light on this future career choice for me?

Addendum: Ok, so I have teaching certificates in Iowa and California. Time to get a National Certification I guess. It is so hard to plan for "anytime" "anywhere".