5 Ways to Know You've Geeked Out for Tech and Ed

Here are five telling signs that you've "geeked out" for tech and ed:

1. When you find yourself in your own race on a Saturday night, running red lights to get to the documentary, The Race To Nowhere.  Here's a shout out of "More power to you" to the ONE other viewer in the theater.  The Race To Nowhere is a documentary worth seeing.   Scott McLeod of Dangerously Irrelevant does a nice job on this blog post of highlighting some quotes from it.  These quotes are enough to spark intense "geeked out" conversation.

2.  When you eagerly check your email inbox on your smart phone shortly after waking up because you know somewhere between the hours of 3-6, your blogging partner replied to the tech/ed related emails you hit send to at midnight.   You've got mail-- music to your ears. 

3.  When a highlight of your day is reading ed/tech blogs via RSS feeds and tweets, a hashtag becomes meaningful, and you discover that there are a whole group of fascinating educators who have nothing better to do on a weekend night than to hang out on Twitter.  We're there...  @CheridyAduviri and @KaceyKintscher  

4.  When you design your own "personal learning curriculum" and listen to podcasts on your daily commute to work in your make-shift classroom on wheels. Their voices and ideas resonate with you throughout the day.  Seedlings with Alice Bar, Bob Sprankle, and Cheryl Oaks  continues to be a favorite!

5.  When you want to spend inordinate amounts of time applying new web 2.0 tools to education. Here are some applications we have made so far.  Tools like Posterous, Jing, Prezi, Animoto, etc. can equate to meaningful learning opportunities and fun!

Look for a future posts entitled "Why the World NEEDS More Tech Ed Geeks"  and "Why You Should Geek Out Too."  

Photo credit:  http://littlegeko.blogspot.com

Blogging as a Springboard: OSU INTO Presentation

We enjoyed giving our first co-presentation at a recent OSU INTO faculty development day.  The Prezi presetation below gives an overview of the main points.  Here are some links and sites we recommended to our audience.

Some recommended posts and links we have made so far for professional development

• Our Networks, Ed Sites and Web 2.0 tools tabs are works in progress.  They provide a place to start exploring and are categorized. 
• (ESOL specific for our presentation audience)  Check Out the 21st ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnival, Blogging Around ESOL, and  Links of the Month: February
• We RSS feed to the blogs and podcasts we have listed as well as others and highly recommend it!

A few posts that show our application of web 2.0 tools in the classroom

• Jing Offers Alternative Ways to Provide Feedback 
• Prezi Meet Jing.  Jing Meet Prezi 
• Mix It Up With Animoto 
• Playing With Words

Blogging Platforms we currently recommend

Posterous
Weebly--educator's account
Blogger
Future posts will continue to highlight these and other blogging platforms for educational uses.

A big thanks to those of you who attended our presentation, gave us additional sites, and expressed ongoing interest!  We invite you to participate by letting us know of future posts, workshops, or presentations you would like to see; contributing links; and/or sharing what has worked in tech in your own classes or professional development.

Happy blogging!

Links of the Month: February

Thanks to one of Cheridy’s TCE students this term for the picture created with Make Beliefs Comix.  This question inspired us to begin what we hope will be a monthly series of our favorite podcasts, webcasts, blogs, and/or links.

PODCAST PICKS

Cheridy’s pick
Click HERE to link to Women of the Web 3.0: Ed Tech Talk #121 (Scroll to the bottom of the page for the audio.) I’ve been intrigued by Skype in the classroom since my father did a Skype presentation at NECC. I am mulling over its possibilities and was delighted to listen to this podcast with one of my favorite bloggers, Syliva Tolisano of Langwitches.  

Kacey’s pick:
Angela Maiers interviewed Debbie Miller, retired Colorado teacher and writer, about her latest book Teaching With Intention. You can listen here.

LINK PICKS

Cheridy’s pick:
In keeping with the Skype theme, here’s a link to Syliva Tolisano’s seemingly amazing project Around the World With 80 Schools.  There are opportunities for connecting with classes grades 1 – possibly higher ed.  Drop me a line if you participate!

Kacey’s pick:
Last weekend, I attended the Oregon Reading Association's Annual Conference in Portland and came home with new reading strategy ideas swimming in my head! One of the presentations I attended was about iPod use in the classroom (stay tuned for the post). It got me thinking about Apps and how I might use them in the classroom. Perfect timing as Michael Gorman blogged ...There's an App For That and reminded me about I Education Apps Review! Thanks Michael! 

In wrapping up the post, here’s a stab at answering the question asked in the comic… Our ideas and links in our tabs at the top of our site are inspired by our passion to learn more about tech and ed integration by listening to podcasts, reading blogs, and exploring applicable sites.  We RSS feed to various blogs, podcasts, and webcasts.  We also find ourselves trying out sites that are in beta.  We are enjoying the journey.  Thanks for adding to the inspiration Theresa!  

Co-post by CA and KK

Check Out the 21st ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnival

Alice Mercer is hosting the Twenty First Edition of the ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnival!  (Wow, people in ESOL really do like their acronyms!  *See the bottom for an explanation of these fun letters.) This is exciting  for a few reasons.

• These carnivals offer a wealth of information and practical teaching ideas in one single post.  I am getting ready to teach a vocabulary class and am excited to explore the link about vocabulary.  I've also been thinking about incorporating TED Talks into my ESOL class, so the link on Alice's blog about this very topic has me anxious to read on.  

• This also serves as a motivator to explore past ESL/EFL/ELD Blog Carnivals accessible here on Larry Ferlazzo's site.   (Yes, it takes as long to type those acronyms as it does to say them.) 

David Deubelbeiss, whom I recently began reading, will host the April 1st edition.  I am pleased to hear that Shelly Terrell will host a May 1st edition on early learners!

Check it out now!  As a demonstration of enthusiasm, I will try my first tweet in keeping with my 2011 goals for trying out new technology-- it's called a tweet isn't it? (Thanks Alice for following a newbie on Twitter.)

Happy Exploring!

ESL = English as a Second Language, EFL = English as A Foreign Language, ELD = English Language Development, ESOL = English Speakers of Other Language, and the list goes on and on in the field...

Explore RSA 21st Century and RSA Animate

We're enjoying the RSA 21st Century Enlightenment site.  It highlights contemporary issues and promotes social engagement through collaboration.  Plus, it has top notch webcasts.  You can subscribe to their audio and video webcasts or you can listen live.  The upcoming talk is entitled "The Haves and Have-Nots" with Branko Milanovic on Feb 1, 2011.  If you miss it, wait a few days and it will be available with many others on this link. Of course, there's an app for that too.

A fresh aspect of the site is the RSA animate videos.  We first introduced them with the Sir Ken Robinson animate. They prompt interesting discussion. After viewing, you can join the online discussion.  Here's another animate with Daniel Pink entitled "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us."

Meets Ed... Professional Development

Here are a few questions Pink's talk prompted: Do we agree or disagree? What motivates us as teachers to stay in the profession beyond the big, fat pay check at the end of the month?  Do his ideas apply to our purpose within When Tech Met Ed?   How might his ideas apply to educating our students?  Although intrinsic motivation is not new, Pink explores some ideas worth considering as we look for the motivation within and seek to draw it out in our students.

Integration of Visual with Audio

The visual dimension is another advantage of using RSA with advanced ELLs since it integrates the text with visuals and audio!  It can be stopped at anytime to discuss, summarize, paraphrase, work on vocabulary, etc.  Share any good fits you find in your teaching.

Happy Exploring!

Co-post by CA and KK

Reflections from Class: Engaging Students with Storyline Online

I introduced my students to Storyline Online which is a site where famous people read books sponsored by The Screen Actors Guild Foundation. There are about 18 books available with additional activity guides that include information about the authors and links to other websites.

 My students were immediately engaged by the multi-media “show."  The books are filmed and the presentation flashes back and forth from the illustrations to the celebrity reader. There is an option for “captions” on or off, so you can see the text that is being read. I showed my students how they could turn down the sound while the captions are on and read the book themselves. They must read with fluency because the page turns “on time.”  It's no problem if you can’t keep up, you can pause it or go back and pick up where you got off track. They loved this and we practiced reading as a class using the “choral reading technique” which we have been practicing as a group since September.  Reading Rockets has a great explanation and some sample texts to get you started with this technique. 

After winter break, one of my students informed me that she had “become bored” and logged onto Storyline Online with her mom’s Smart phone. A second student chimed in and said that she too logged on with her mom’s Smart phone. I’m not sure why, but I had not thought about the possibility of using a Smart phone. I envisioned students going online with the standard PC.  Just goes to show that I am NOT a “digital native”!

Two Ways of Organizing: Evernote and Dropbox

Get your brain clear in order to get to the creative stuff is what I took away from David Allen's, Getting Things Done. As I try to become more seamless with my organizing, I've read his next book Making it all Work and have been listening to podcasts from David's new GTD site (downloaded through iTunes podcasts). I'm constantly looking for ways to make life "clear."  In a previous post I talked about using DropBox, and I've been using Evernote as a way to help me keep track of web sites (web clipping) for years. It was a kind of bookmarking strategy after becoming frustrated with bookmarks that were unsearchable. With Evernote I can recall websites, documents and pictures in a visual manner. This post about Teachers Using Evernote explains some additional uses!   Uses for Students is also helpful.  With information overload and having to manage in one day what people used to manage in a year, these are a couple of ways to help "link your life" so you can access them anywhere. Paperless? Some day maybe!

Happy Organizing!

Posterous: A Simple, Effective, On-The-Go Blogging Platform

Tech: As I drove to the airport on my departure for the US, I uploaded two apps to my iphone that served their purpose during my travels in South America.  These two beautiful apps go by the names of Posterous and Photo Shop Express.  This link is to an example posterous site I created, BoliviaExample.posterous.com.  It gives an example of how I combined them when I was in Bolivia.

Posterous is a useful site on its own.  I took advantage of the on-the-go feature to make all of my posts entirely from my iphone.  This feature requires wifi access to publish, which created some fun wifi quests for me in the locations I found myself.  I typed and saved drafts of my posts on buses, taxis, hotels, airports, a dessert, mountains, and various cities.  Then, I published them when I located a precious wifi connection.

Although I opted to post from my iphone, it is also easy to post from a computer.  The autopost option allows users to post to many different platforms, including Blogger, Vimeo, and You Tube.  Settings can be made private or public.  A site can be configured for individuals or for group contributions.  Pictures, videos, audio files, and documents can all be posted.  Here's a link to FAQs about Posterous.

The P.S. Express app helped spruce up the pictures I snapped on my iphone.  I only used the edit feature, but this app has more to offer as well.

Met Ed (Applications):  The simplicity of Posterous has a lot to offer education as does the option to use it with a smart phone,  ipad, etc.  I am looking for ways of making smart phones my friend and not my enemy in my adult ESOL classes. (See Kacey’s post on their future projected growth.)  Here are a few of many possible uses in the hands of the students:

• Science:  Documenting the steps in an experiment.
• ESOL:  Taking and describing pictures of new vocabulary words.
• Writing: Using a series of pictures to write a story or as an alternative to a book report.
• Collaboration with other classes:  Teachers and students pose questions and classes in other locations respond.

Happy blogging!

Collaborative Reflection from Across the World

(photo taken at Sal de Uyuni, Bolivia)

This post has taken some twists and turns from the first draft.  At first, the purpose of it was to highlight our top useful web 2.0 tools of 2010, thinking of the new and eye catching.  After a few exchanges of emails half way across the world from each other (Kacey was on winter break in Oregon and Cheridy was vacationing in Bolivia), we agreed that some of the most useful tech tools are ones that we´ve tried and found to be true over time.  Some initially seemed too simple to put in a post, but in part due to Cherídy´s recent travels to some remote places, we realize they really should be cherished for the multiple purposes they serve.

OLD WITH NEW TWISTS

Email:  You are communication. We both remember a time before you existed.  With syncing capacities to  smart phones, etc. you make communication possible on-the-go in multiple locations. 

Blogging: You speak for yourself in your capacity to offer a place for reflective thinking, a platform to share ideas, etc.  When put into the hands of students, you spark creativity and possibilities. We will be highlighting various blog platforms in upcoming posts.

Jing:  We are so very fond of you!  We will continue to look at other screensharing tools, but for now you are the one for us.  Thanks for helping Cheridy provide feedback to her online students.

RSS Feed:  Thank you for aggregating all of our favorites into one place.  We feel like we get a daily dose of professional development while reading posts from our favorite educational blogs in one place.  You simplify life.  We highly recommend you to others.

Skype:  We hear some of the young ones saying you are old school, but we read many new, promising ways of using you in education, particularly with the beta Skype in the Classroom.    Rod Luicer talks about Skype in the Classroom on his Clever Sheep blog.  The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators, a free download accessible here, contains a chapter about you written by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano.

NEW TO US

Dropbox:  We have mentioned you before.  You have saved the day and made access to important documents available in multiple locations.

Diigo:  You make marking and sharing favorite sites so very simple.

Smart Phones: We love your versatility and potential uses in education.  You create a mobile classroom for Kacey as she listens to educational podcasts during her daily commute to work.  Student access to you is growing, so we are looking for ways of incorporating you into the class.  Kacey had a positive experience with your use reported by one of her students using you to read.  Cheridy´s kiddo enjoys using Story Robe and Story Kit free apps on her smart phone. Cheridy used Posterous on her travels. We will be highlighting more of your uses! 

FUTURE EXPLORATION

iPad:  Kacey enjoys having her own baby, and Cheridy is admittedly a tad envious.  Cheridy has noticed a marked increase in your appearance in her adult ESOL classes.  You hold promise.

Google Voice:  Kacey currently uses you and is exploring your educational possibilities.

Twitter: We see potential in you and hope to step up our experience and knowledge about your uses in education.

This list of tools reinforces the purpose of this blog-- exploring technology as a tool for educational and professional development.  The first draft was hand written because Cheridy didn´t have access to tech.  The pencil and paper tools served her purposes at that moment.  As teachers, we have many tools at our disposal, sometimes high tech and others times not so much.  A variety of these tools will meet the needs of our students as well as our own.  With that in mind, we hope to add to our repertoire of tech tools to choose from in 2011!

Happy exploration!

A shout out a long time in coming!

I became familiar with Bob Sprankle and his work through Room 208. Listening and reading what he and his students were up to transformed my thinking. Wow! That really was in 2005? I continue to listen to the Seedlings @ Bit By Bit  podcast where Bob is joined by Alice Barr and Cheryl Oakes. Congratulations on 100 shows! Bob is now an Elementary Technology Integrator in Wells, Maine. Though I have never met Bob I'm always interested in what he is up to. His latest focus is working with parents and technology TechTime at Wells Elementary School. I hadn't seen this video he posted and thought you might enjoy it. Technology the size of a building now fits in your pocket!


You should also check out Bob's Lab Lessons for K-4th grade and Link of the Week.
Thanks Bob (Alice and Cheryl too!)!