Classroom III

Geek EduSquad?

Wow, this is awesome. Can you name all the technology skills they are using in this video?

• Computer:  what brand?
• Software and apps?
• Cell phones?
• camera?

Update: This morning, I noticed that Wes has done a super job filling in the details concerning the “Live from I-35: Moving at the Speed of Creativity enroute to NECC” event! Even after reading about it, I am blown away by how slick and interesting it really was.

This has been a challenging week. The main point has been vandalism of two our our five iBook laptops. It has caused our teachers to simply turn them off and lock up what we have left and just tell the students no laptops until the person that damaged the laptops is identified.

Sure, that punishes the students that are trying to learn and follow the rules. But, when you have one unscrupulous “student” that can destroy 40% of your laptops by breaking the LCD monitors and “no one sees a thing”, and you have no budget to replace or repair them- what else are you going to do. If the perpetrator of these destruction of school property can get away with it, that person will continue to act out. It is like any serial killer/criminal. They habitually break the law. It is a sickness. A mental illness.

I will just be so darn happy when the next seven weeks are over. Call it survival mode. Call it burn-out. Call it what you want, but it is real. It is never ending. Teaching in an alternative school is wearing on my core. I do not want to sound completely disgruntled- but, it is not fun any more.

I wonder how schools with each students with their own laptop handle butt wholes that crack those $400 plus LCD monitors. In the past two years, we have had three broken with only 6 laptops. That is a 50% rate. We may have made a terrible mistake in spending our textbook money on laptops. The iBooks we have been using are four years old and need to be upgraded. Here is the real but- but, if alternative school students are actually becoming more aggressive and angry, would textbooks be more durable?

This question is important to me. With a major portion of our student population now adopting the gang culture’s motto of “snitches get stitches”, the honest bystander fears retaliation from passive aggressive and violent acts of thugs. Even if they witness the LCD getting cracked by a student throwing a metal nut at it, the bully can keep them from reporting what they saw. I am frankly sick of it.

My recommendations to prevent this from happening next school year: If laptops are to continue to be available in our alternative school.

• Students that are assigned to our alternative school need to pay a fee for laptop insurance. This money need to paid before they are allowed to touch or even go into the area laptops are in use.
• Parents and students must agree to pay for any and all damages to assigned laptops not covered by insurance. Example
• Keep laptops in only one classroom. The door to that room must be locked if no one is in the classroom.
  • Laptops Left in Unsupervised Areas

    Under no circumstances may laptops be left in unsupervised areas. Unsupervised areas include the school grounds and campus, the cafeteria, locker rooms, library, unlocked classrooms, dressing rooms and hallways, and any place outside of school. Any computer left in these areas is in danger of being stolen. The student and parent are responsible if a laptop is stolen.

    Unsupervised laptops will be confiscated by staff and taken to the office. Disciplinary action may be taken for leaving a laptop in an unsupervised location

• Arrange the room so all monitors are visible at all times- in a U shape.
• Install close circuit security cameras with web monitoring so the principal can view the classroom at all times.
  • “Call it the No Child Left Unsurveilled Act.

    On Thursday, federal lawmakers will hold a hearing on a proposal to let public schools use millions in federal grants to blanket the halls of learning with surveillance cameras.

    Those grants have typically been used to install metal detectors, lights and locks, as well as paying for security training for students and employees.

    The bill adds closed circuit surveillance cameras to the list of items eligible for Justice Department Safe School grants, ups the funding to from $30 million annually to $50 million and increases the feds share of any outlays to 80%, up from the current 50-50 split.” Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/lawmakers-propo.html

• Install additional security- LoJack in each laptop.  ($49 per year)
• Metal detector: install a walk through model at all three entrances. The front door, our side door, and the door going into our ReDirect building. MSRP - $4,495.00 each.

Professional development in our school is very important. Our students are challenging and have a wide range of needs. To prepare of to meet their needs is never ending. Well, it is not that bad, but some days it if overwhelming. Technology can not fix all our problems, but by sharing and collaborating, it is not impossible.

Diigo offers many tools for collaboration. This is an example of how a list created in Diigo and then using the tools, post in this blog. There are not too many steps to follow. The resulting content can become a resource for teachers to share and comment on in a blog. The content can be searched and archived for future reference.

I hope to send more time annotating my links before sharing them. In my opinion, this could be a great learning activity for students. Hum…could this work?

What do you think?

LEARN NC

tags: lessonplan, teaching

Learning Skills Program - Bloom’s Taxonomy

Teacher Magazine: Give Me the ‘Difficult’ Kids

tags: alternative_school

USA TODAY Education

iMovie FAQ - Home

tags: iMovie

Main Page - GeoGebraWiki Annotated

tags: geometry, learning, math, teaching, wiki

• Learned about this from reading John Hendron’s blog. http://www.johnhendron.net/digest/2008/03/27/a-quote-for-safe-keeping/ - post by blakej

GeoGebraWiki is a free pool of teaching materials for the dynamic mathematics software GeoGebra. Everyone can contribute and upload materials! All contents of this pool may be used free of charge.

• http://www.johnhendron.net/digest/2008/03/27/a-quote-for-safe-keeping/ - post by blakej

Pics4Learning - Tech4Learning

Create A Graph

John Blake’s Class

NC Aquarium Activities Resources

How to Win Respect and Influence Students

Professional Development

Google For Educators

tags: Google, classroom, teachers

Teach Digital: Curriculum by Wes Fryer wiki / cellphones

tags: cellphones

My Dashboard | Diigo

This is blog post created using Flock’s browser with my Diigo dashboard tool bar. I am basically just testing the feature to see what it looks like. I have been impressed with how many features Diigo has. Teachers that are really into using technology to help their students learn may be able to use this tool. However, with the social networking features, I would bet our district’s user policy will not permit Diigo to operate. I understand that the social networking component is optional. However, if the students see a way to “chase rabbits”, the district will not be able to justify its use. Hopefully, it will not show up and I can test Diigo’s functions with my students.

Shared with Flock - The Social Web Browser
http://flock.com

This past week, I have been exploring the new and or enhanced features for teaching included in Apple’s latest operating system upgrade- Leopard. In this post, I attempt to hash-out my thoughts on the new features that I am still shaking my head over. My only complaint about Leopard for educators and students is the price. $13 is about 10% off retail. Hello!!! Apple- you are killing me here. (I know bootleg copies are against the law, so I am not going to say anything else)

I opted to upgrade instead of a clean install. Brad Stocks, our network engineer for our school system recommended a clean install like he had done on his MacBook Pro. The process took a few hours, but I just started the installation and taught my classes. I walked by every time I had a chance and looked for error messages. When no error messages appeared I was happy as a kid at Christmas. Now, I read the first paragraph in the READ ME doc, and threw it in the trash can. Reading those documents just makes you sit in front of the screen and ring your hands like a mad man. I am from the just do it camp and if the install fails, then read the manual. However, I had made a complete backup of the hard drive onto an external drive.

Installation was too easy. When I tried to run iMovie ‘08, it crashed, iPhoto did not work very well but an Apple update fixed something and by Thursday afternoon, iLife apps worked without crashing. My point here is to say some issues seem to have been addressed by Apple very fast.

Now, which Leopard apps have I tried in the first week of use?

• Mail: Well, I do not make it a practice to send email to students, however, I love the enhanced mail features that includes integration with my calendars. As chairman of our School Improvement Team, I have to schedule meetings for our staff. This week, we had a meeting planned for Friday morning. My principal got a call after the teachers left school Thursday about the meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Friday. She could have emailed me and I could have updated the calendar but she forgot to tell us. That is ok, when the teachers showed up for the meeting, they all rolled their eyes at me because I had emailed them from iCal and had invited them to attend. This upgrade works, but Google Calendar is still far ahead of iCal and Apple Mail. My daughter uses Outlook in her job- Apple Mail is a joke to her. However, for teachers, the features are more than most of us need. The most impressive tool in Mail is the built-in RSS reader. I have added several key RSS feeds that I read daily. For example, I enjoy the NY Times - Education feed. I have added an RSS feed from educators using Twitter.
• iChat: I had been testing the use of CamTwist with my students a couple of weeks ago as we explored video casting. I setup a Ustream.TV streaming video account and thought about using them to webcast student presentations. We had talked about trying to find another classroom to share our videos with. This is still something I am considering. The new iChat is really easy to use with students. Today, after my students completed their required “standard curriculum work”, we fired up iChat on a couple of computers in the classroom and launched Bonjour to share what they have been working on as a review. There is a photo from this activity.

I need to take the time to create a how-to video. However, teachers that have iChat in their classroom probably have the technology skills set to run this activity without my help. The trick is to have a firm idea of exactly why you are doing it not how. I used this activity for a motivational activity at the end of a grueling week of them learning about genotypes, phenotype, recessive, dominate, exons, alleles, and biology topics that had them ready to run away from home. Even high school students like fun activities. Reviewing what they have been talking about or reflecting is a great way to end a topic. iChat is a hit and we will be using it on our classroom intranet. It is safe and fun. The record ichat feature is a killer app for classrooms. The photo above is just part of the activity. Students can include images of themselves in their PowerPoint/Keynote projects, or slideshows online or on their wiki or blogs. I want to publish the movies they will be creating on TeacherTube or Google Video so they can include the clips in their work. The movie integrate with PowerPoint and Keynote to really enhance the content. The animated backgrounds are really impressive. Another wonderful use of iChat is how it supports conferencing. I attended a symposium in Chapel Hill a couple of weeks ago and one of the sessions was about how to use the $1o,ooo dollar industry grade camera to connect classes.

• Spaces: This part of Leopard is a winner in my book. Why? In my classroom, I am busy moving from student to student helping them with their learning projects as they work with their peers to master the topics we are studying and monitoring their progress and behavior. I have been very lucky so far this semester to have a group of self motivated high school students they actually love learning. I am challenged to keep up with their progress. I use Spaces on my desktop PowerPC, yup, my 2.5 GHz Dual Processor G5 with 2.5 GB RAM runs Leopard faster than Tiger. I am excited about this! Spaces helps me organize my work flow so I can spend more time with the students. We use Moodle in the classroom. Moodle’s learning management system helps me communicate student progress in that I have the students take quizzes, create HotPotato quizzes of key science terms, and contribute to a wiki page about biology topics we study. One of my Spaces is our Moodle page. I keep another Space with Mail running. The other two include the iPhoto and GarageBand or iChat.
• Front Row: When I hook my computer up to the digital projector, and use this for students to share their projects and conduct oral reports.
• Create Your Own Educational Apps: After reading the article on Wired by Leander Kahney I am going to take some time to read up on  this and try to find time to build something to use with my students. Hum, teach them to use it and see what they come up with.
• It is my goal to upgrade my iBooks with one MacBook per year until I can replace them all with the newer laptops.
  

I have been using Twitter since this past summer and have gleaned numerous teaching and technology tips from educators online. Sharing links to blog posts and live web casts are better than iCal when it comes to reminding me of online events. So, if you are one of the Twittering Educators listed below or just thinking about participating- just do it!My Twitter user name is: Blakej  Steve Dembo (teach42)URL: http://Teach42.comBio: Education, Technology, and all things geek.Location: ChicagoJennifer Maddrell (JenM)URL: http://www.designedtoinspire.com/drupalBio: wife / grad studentLocation: USJohn Pederson (ijohnpederson)URL: http://www.ijohnpederson.comBio: I do K12 education professional development.Location: Platteville, WI, United StatesEwan McIntosh (ewanmcintosh)URL: http://edu.blogs.com/ewanmcintoshBio:Location: EdinburghD’Arcy Norman (dnorman)URL: http://www.darcynorman.netBio: ed. tech. developer at the Teaching & Learning Centre, University of CalgaryLocation: CalgaryDean Shareski (shareski)URL: http://ideasandthoughts.orgBio: likes soup and just got a haircutLocation: Moose Jaw, SKAlan Levine (cogdog)URL: http://cogdogblog.com/Bio: Barks, growls, and digs for bones on the webLocation: ArizonaJeff Utecht (jutecht)URL: http://www.thethinkingstick.comBio: Technology SpecialistLocation: Shanghai, ChinaWill Richardson (willrich45)URL: http://www.weblogg-ed.comBio: LearningLocation:Marcie T. Hull (ecram3)URL: http://www.ecram3.blogspot.comBio: teacher • artist • house painterLocation: PhiladelphiaBud Hunt (budtheteacher)URL: http://www.budtheteacher.comBio: I’m learning.Location: Colorado, USADiscovery Education (DEN)URL: http://DiscoveryEducatorNetwork.comBio: Connecting teachers to their most valuable resource… Each other!Location: GlobalAaron Smith (theartguy)URL: http://academicaesthetic.comBio: Husband, artist, Christian, and geek. FYI: I don’t tend to list people as friends if they have 1,000s of friends already.Location: MarylandEdTechTalk (edtechtalk)URL: http://edtechtalk.com/Bio: A collaborative community talking about educational technologyLocation:Jennifer Dorman (cliotech)URL: http://cliotech.blogspot.com/Bio: Learning by being clickableLocation: Bethlehem, PA, USABernie Dodge (berniedodge)URL: http://webquest.org/bdodge/Bio: WebQuest guy. One trick pony (so far).Location: San DiegoGraham Wegner (grahamwegner)URL: http://gwegner.edublogs.orgBio: ICT Coordinator and Classroom Teacher - always exploring, always learning.Location: Adelaide, AustraliaLee Baber (LeeBaber)URL: http://web.mac.com/lbaberBio:Location:Charlene Chausis (cchausis)URL: http://educatingeducators.blogspot.comBio: … all about educating educators and integrating instructional technologyLocation: Lincolnshire, ILJose Luis Cabello (idocente)URL: http://ciberaulas.blogspot.com/Bio: EFL teacher in Madrid. http://englishteachinglab.blogspot.comLocation: Villanueva de la CañadaVicki Davis (coolcatteacher)URL: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.comBio: Teacher, blogger, technology geek, MotherLocation: Camilla, Georgia 31730Paul Allison (paulallison)URL: http://paulrallison.blogspot.comBio: I’m a biker, a blogger, a consultant, and a father. I’m a husband, a photographer, a podcaster, & a runner. I’m a searcher, a teacher, a vlogger, & a webcaster.Location: New York, NYKarlana Kulseth (hawaiianbrat96)URL: http://www.karlanakulseth.com/blogBio: Mom, Wife, Student, Substitute Teacher, Photographer, DigiScrapper!Location: Las Vegas, NVcheryloakes (cheryloakes50)URL: http://www.cheryloakes.comBio: webhead,Wow 2.0, technology coachLocation: Wells, MEDavid Miller (davegobe)URL: http://davegoblog.wordpress.com/Bio: Chemist and father of two wonderful daughtersLocation: NE Ohio and sometimes SLMiguel Guhlin (mguhlin)URL: http://mguhlin.netBio: Share more.Location: TexasRussel Montgomery (montgorp)URL: http://mrmont.wikispaces.com/Bio: husband, father, teacher, geek and pilgrimLocation: Perth, WADanielle Abernethy (dabernethy)URL: http://it4teachers.blogspot.comBio: Instructional Technology Coach - not currently linked anywhereLocation: Brooksville, FLDavid Warlick (dwarlick)URL: http://2cents.davidwarlick.comBio: 30+ year educator, technologist, programmer, author, & public speaker.Location: Raleigh, NCSheryl NussbaumBeach (snbeach)URL: http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.comLocation: Virginia Beach, VADavid Jakes (djakes)URL: http://www.jakesonline.orgBio:Location: Naperville, Illinois, USAKristin Hokanson (khokanson)URL: http://khokanson.blogspot.comBio: Technology Integration “coach” come play for my team :)Location: PADanita Russell (DanitaR)URL: http://leecountyschools.wikispaces.com and my blog http://danitarussell.edublogs.orgBio: I am a 15 year veteran middle school teacher now working as an instructional facilitator trying to learn all that I can.Location: Sanford, NCWesley Fryer (wfryer)URL: http://www.speedofcreativity.orgBio: husband, dad, educator, catalyst for learningLocation: Edmond, OklahomaChris Lehmann (chrislehmann)URL: http://www.practicaltheory.org/serendipityBio: Principal of the Science Leadership AcademyLocation: Philadelphia, PAChuck Bartowski (ChuckBartowski)URL:Bio:Location:Stephen Downes (Downes)URL:Bio:Location:bbelardi (bbelardi)URL: http://bridgerblogs.blogspot.com/Bio: Elementary School Library Media Specialist* Web Master* DEN PA Leadership CouncilLocation: PIttsburgh, PAbobsprankle (bobsprankle)URL: http://www.bobsprankle.comBio:Location: Wells, ME USAMartin Pluss (plu)URL: http://martinpluss.edublogs.org/Bio: I am a runner, geography teacher and ICT Integrator.Location: SydneyElaine Plybon (glad2be)URL: http://www.geocities.com/lanerpaloozaBio: Science Instructional Specialist, mom to fiveLocation: Texasrickweinberg (rickweinberg)URL: http://techedguy.blogspot.comBio: I am a technology professional developer for 22 school districts in NY StateLocation: NY/PAphilcrissman (philcrissman)URL: http://philcrissman.comBio: I’m a tech guy who remains convinced he is a creative.Location: MinneapolisCRStengel (CRStengel)URL: http://blog.mtlsd.org/FarFromBlogginBio: Tech Director with great interest in bringing 2.0 tools into classroomsLocation: PittsburghCory Peppler (pepteach)URL: http://cpeppler.edublogs.orgBio: English teacher, dad, tech junkieLocation: WisconsinHallDavidson (HallDavidson)URL:Bio:Location:Eric14774 (Eric14774)URL:Bio: World History Teacher At Bolivar-Richburg Central School Striving To Integrate Technology.Location: Bolivar, NYWIREDScience (WIREDScience)URL: http://pbs.org/wiredscienceBio: WIRED Science premieres nationwide October 3, 2007 (8:00 p.m. PT/ET) on PBS.Location:k12online (k12online)URL: http://k12onlineconference.orgBio: Free worldwide online conference for educators centered on 21st century learning.Location: Third planet from the sun.chanbliss (chanbliss)URL:Bio: Elementary Art TeacherLocation: Florida

I think I have only two students that do not have cellular devices, a.k.a. cell phones, this year. They all know about how to cheat on their tests using SMS, or what us teachers call text messaging. I mentioned to one of my fellow teachers that the cell phones they have are more powerful than the eight year old dinosaur/paper weight computers we have them reading on and watching videos. They are not impressed with our old school tech toys.

When I asked my students if they knew about Google SMS, none of them had heard about it. Personalized SMS saves time by saving your location. Google automatically saves your most frequently used location for future queries. You can also text ’set location’ followed by a city & state or zip to save a new location. Then with a few key strokes, the user can Google the phone number of the local pizza place, access weather forecasts, find out what it playing in movie theater 40 miles away, look up directions to the drivers license office, and look up definitions to words on their text that they should have been learning in class when you were trying to lecture them on the structure and function of endoplasmic reticulum. The all know that if they type in the words “define zenith”, it will look like this on their cellular device:

In the unlikely chance that you are reading this on your cellular device, here is the link: mobile.google.com for you to start using this if you have not already mastered the art of Googling on your cell phone. I mentioned using Google to one of our district administrators. The response was honest and short- “I need to have my son teach me about that”. I just smiled and replied- I am still not going to learn how to set my VCR and I refuse to learn how to check messages on my home phone. If they want to talk to me, keep trying or send me an email. On second thought, if it is really important, I want to talk face to face. Send me a video message. Oh, but you can’t because my cellular device is an old cell phone and I do not know how to use anything on it myself except the address book and how to dial a number.

Technology- can’t believe how fast it is changing. It is a real challenge to keep current– I try.

I am on pins an needs about this device. I wanted an iPhone, but after trying the iPhone in the Apple Store, decided that it was just to difficult to type on and I really would not use all the whistles and bells. All I want on my phone is a button to answer my incoming calls and an easy way to dial emergency numbers and my family.
Also, I want to see the next generation of the iPhone.

When I saw that the new ipod would have WiFi and touch screen, my mind started racing.

As if you need another source “confirming” the launch of new iPods at Apple’s September 5th event, along comes DigiTimes riding their wave of Taiwanese component manufacturing insiders. According to the folks who brought us the Powerbook G5 (No DigiTimes, we won’t forget), Apple is due to drop a new Inventec Appliances manufactured, flash-based widescreen “iPod video” with touch-interface (widely rumored to carry the iPod Touch brand) sporting WiFi and an iPhone-like UI when it ships “at the end of this month or early October.” Also in the cards is a Foxconn manufactured iPod nano with more storage and iPhone-like UI at the same prices as existing models and higher capacity iPod shuffles from Asustek. So yeah, it falls in line with all the other rumors but that doesn’t mean we’re buying it.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: ipod

Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts blog post made me think about using an Apple computer in our school district. In Cathy’s district, they ask Mac users to purchase a service contract out of their own pocket with Apple. It seems school districts must not be able to negotiate service contract with vendors unless they are based on hundreds or thousands of units. I really do not understand how this works. However, if I was Apple, I would make a deal with schools that would at least match their competitors. Maybe they do and I do not know about it

It has been a real treat for me to use Apple laptops in our district. I have used an Aluminum PowerBook for years, and upgraded last year to a MacBook Pro. I only sent the Al PowerBook back once to have the latch replaced. It was covered 100% using the warranty. Carrying a laptop to workshops, in and out of the school house, and running it basically 24/7 and it never hiccuped. Prior to purchasing the Apple, I used laptops from Gateway, Dell, IBM, and a couple of what I call off-brands. I have never really had any major issues with warranty covered issues with laptops. Call me luck. Sure, I have fried memory and reformatted hard drives. But nothing to really cry or whine about. My major nightmares have been with operating systems. Do you remember the constant reboot and re installation of Me. OMG, don’t get me started. My mother has an HP desktop with Me still running on it. She has a nice Dell laptop with XP on it , likes her desktop for Internet and email because it is connected to her printer. I understand why she like it. She uses her laptop at her lake house, or on the road as she travels. It is too much trouble unplugging the printer and Internet Ethernet cable. I need to set up a wireless network for her. I love my Apple AirPort Extreme. It works like a dream. That is what I need to give her for Christmas. I would have to buy a 802.11g Wireless Notebook PCMCIA Network Card, Ethernet Card.

When I read about Cathy’s school system “maintenance agreement”, I would like be interested to find out if that covers EVERYTHING. Batteries also haunt extended use of laptops. Mine seem to last about two years. Warranties do not cover batteries- as far as I know. Laptop screens are not covered if you drop the laptop. So, what does a maintenance agreement cover? What would it need to cover? There is no way they would pay of updating OS X or iLife or iWorks.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Apple, Cathy Nelson,

In a rush to prepare for the beginning of school, but had to post this link to a cool resource for teachers this year. I am working on a couple of grant proposals so I have to get back to work. Check out the resources on GoKnow.com.

http://www.goknow.com/