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!

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.

Museums and Ed Tech

Last November I traveled to Washington DC. I spent many hours wandering around the Smithsonian and other museums. After visiting the National Portrait Gallery I wrote on a comment card that I wished there were options to download audio commentary on to my iPod. A month or so later, I heard back from the director of public relations that they were working to design podcasts - some are already available via iTunes and requested that I take a survey on technology and the museum.

I just returned from London where I again visited a plethora of museums. Many major museums now offer headsets with audio commentary available for certain items within their museums. I also searched podcasts on iTunes before I left. There were quite a few from the National Art Gallery in London, but they were mostly monthly, news reports on upcoming exhibits or special events. There were also additional "interactive" portions at most tourist spots with hands-on activities, videos, and interactive Flash-like videos. For example, in the British Library there was an interactive version of the Magna Carta where the user could zoom in on a picture of the document and view a translation in a pop-up window.

Museums are updating to meet the needs of their audience. The staid placards are no longer sufficient in the education of the museum's patrons. As I wandered around the British Museum - which is fabulous- I kept reading the different artifact descriptions thinking....they need an educational technologist to revamp this encyclopedia-like information dump. A couple of years ago I had found a job posting for the British Museum looking for people to help with online content design for school-aged users. With our global community, museums are now required to provide information and artifacts digitally as well as statically. What a wonderful field to be involved with and to observe as it emerges!