The Wired Classroom

While I wasn’t able to make it to NECC, many of my Cooperating School District colleagues were able to, as well as my v/c community friends. Roxanne Glaser and Janine Lim are in San Antonio, Texas, and they are updating their respective blogs with all the stuff that is taking place! To check in on what’s going on, visit VC Rox and Videoconferencing Out on a Lim. Janine has several interviews linked on her blog with content providers, including Tonya Muro and Lisa Inks from Global Nomads Group. Roxanne & Janine, thanks for being so thorough and timely with your NECC blog posts!

 Janine Lim and Sue Porter talk about Read Around the Planet

(Don’t be confused by my screen shot (I liked the picture)!
Please click on “talk” above to see the clip).

To read up on NECC, visit http://www.necc2008.org/.

Did you miss CSD’s Movie-Making in the Classroom class in June? Don’t worry! You still have a chance to work with one of the applications covered in that course- iMovie.

Here’s the scoop: Using iMovie ’08  in the Classroom 
Tues., July 22 | 1-4 pm | $63 CSD member; $89 non-member  

iMovie ’08 makes viewing & working with video as intuitive as enjoying your photos! A built-in library automatically organizes your video, so clips you’ve captured and movies you’ve created are just a click away. With its revolutionary interface, iMovie makes it quick and very easy to browse your library and create movies. You can add movies to your website, publish them on YouTube, and create versions for iPod, iPhone, & Apple TV. 

Apple’s Morrie Reece teaches this class step by step, allowing for plenty of time for you work with the application. By the end of the afternoon, you will feel confident in creating a film using iMovie!

To sign up, go to www.csd.org/tele. 

Editing Digital Images Using Photoshop Elements 4.0
Wednesday, July 9 @ 9 am-4pm | $125 CSD member

In this one day tele workshop, learn from METC 2008 presenter Mike Butler the easy steps to enhance your digital images. Mike more than 10 years experience helping schools successfully integrate technology into their classrooms. You’ll take away your fear of editing using Photoshop Elements 4.0 during the course of this fun and informative class!

Techniques that Mike will cover include: 

• Resize & crop image areas
• Select appropriate resolutions for different image & output types
• Select images areas using the Lasso, Marquee, and Magic Wand Tool
• Optimize image resolution for email and web pages
• Modify, retouch and prepare images for the web
• Remove unwanted subjects from photos, add someone to a photo

Interested? Sign up today at www.csd.org/tele. Spaces are limited!

Today was the final of three days in Movie-Making in the Classroom: Creating Digital Stories and Photo Essays (June 23, 24 & 26 in the tele). Martha & Stacey taught the class, and Karen Montgomery was on hand. Participants had their choice of using Windows MovieMaker (PC), iMovie (Mac), or PhotoStory 3 (PC) to create their movie.

Here is the rest of Carolyn Lesser’s 2008-09 interactive videoconference offerings through New Links to New Learning. For pricing on programs, contact Rebecca Morrison at CSD.

Custom-designed writing videoconference for educators and/or students… This program is offered to give the most flexibility to planners and educators.  Embedded in this program is total control over the content, the number of presentations, the issues and concerns most important to your district or schools, making your enrichment dollars pinpoint accurate at addressing your needs.  Collaborative planning is one of the riches of this custom planning as it brings the element of support and professional development for the efforts of educators concerning writing.  It is a real collaboration between educators and an author.  To view some of the possibilities, visit Carolyn’s website for presentation options.  

Writing Nonfiction Prose or Poetry…#1
Session #1…30 minute conference call from teachers to plan for students
Session #2…45 minute interactive presentation to students…assignment
Session #3…45 minute interactive reading/positive feedback to student work

• Carolyn will choose writing topics appropriate for grade level
• Students will participate in a professional nonfiction writing process
• Teacher input is important…come to conference call with ideas
• Carolyn engages students with enthusiasm for the nonfiction process

Writing Nonfiction Prose or Poetry…#2
Session #1…45 minute conference/call from teachers to plan for students
Session #2…60 minute interactive presentation to students…assignment
Session #3…60 minute interactive reading/positive feedback to student work

• Specific writing topics chosen by teachers/students
• Professional nonfiction writing process tailored & relevant to curriculum, teacher requests, goals
• Teacher input/requests/goals discussed in the conference call
• Added time for student questions following our work together
• Carolyn brings inspiration & enthusiasm to each session

Custom add-ons to any series bring depth and relevance to students & staff~

Now that the school year is over, I think people are starting to this about next school year-  and for high school students and their parents-  about college prep. Cooperating School Districts’ New Links to New Learning offers both an ACT Prep Class and now a PSAT Prep Class, both over videoconference. Trained instructors from The Princeton Review conduct the course and CSD gets you connected to the course. For more info, contact Rebecca Morrison.

Here’s some info to think about:

• Public Missouri high school students who completed The Princeton Review PSAT Clinic averaged of 12.1 pts higher on the PSAT, and the top 50% of student scoring 21.6  points higher, which is equivalent to an SAT scaled score increase of 216 points.
• According to The Princeton Review, when students attend all of the sessions, take all of the practice tests, and complete all assigned homework, average ACT score improvement is three points. 

Today was the Boundless Learning in Videoconferencing tele class. Districts represented were Hazelwood, Ritenour, Francis Howell, Normandy, and Parkway. During the day, participants learned about videoconferencing- everything from the equipment to programs to funding. We connected the class to three content providers- across town, across state, and across the country! Saint Louis University (AIMS), The Discovery Center in Springfield, and the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY all provided v/c demos, sharing what they bring into classrooms. In addition to learning about different kinds of content offered, participants learned where to find programs and the best ways to schedule them. 

We told participants where to find free videoconferences (government agencies like Library of Congress and NASA). Multipoint versus point-to-point were covered, as was “upon request” and set times- common buzzwords. Participating teachers happened to be in New Links to New Learning districts, so we also shared what membership means. Of course, we gave them time ask questions, to click around the Moodle, to check various v/c content provider databases, and to skim all those v/c blogs out there!

K12 Online Conference is a free, collaborative, world-wide program- created by educators, for educators. If you click on the orange box above, you’ll go directly to the website where you will find a lot of information! 2008 is the third year for the October conference and presentations are still needed, according to the site: “this is our second call for proposals for the third annual “K12 Online Conference” for educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice.” The deadline for submissions as been extended to July 11.

A little history: in 2006 and 2007, David Warlick was the keynote, presenting “Derailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning” and “Inventing the New Boundaries”. On the website, you can click around and learn how to get professional development and graduate credit for participating in the K12 Online Conference. There’s a section for “first timers” and a link to the Ning set up by participants. Sounds interesting! All presentations will be archived online, and the conference has a Twitter account to update interested parties. You might want to take a few minutes and click around the website and see what they’ve done, and what they plan to do, and what you can do with Web 2.0.

 In an earlier post, we congratulated Cindy Lane from the  Lindbergh School District on being accepted to the Google  Teacher Academy. She’ll be heading to California next week.  We wanted to learn more about it, so we visited Google (that’s  where we also found the icon to the left) and here’s what the website says:

“The Google Teacher Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google’s free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. Upon completion, Academy participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local region. 

A Google Certified teacher is an educator attended a Google Teacher Academy and is now a Google Certified Teacher. Google Certified Teachers are:

• Exceptional K-12 educators with a passion for using innovative tools to improve teaching and learning.
• Creative leaders who understand their local needs and can spread innovation as a recognized expert.
• Ambassadors for change who model high expectations, life-long learning, collaboration, equity & inclusion, and innovation.
• Certified in Google technology and able to lend their knowledge to you through professional development.

Each Google Certified Teacher has:

• Developed a “Personal Action Plan” to extend their learning to their community.
• Actively participated in the Google Certified Teacher Online Community.
• Shared the impact of their work with other Google Certified Teachers and will continue to do so through an end-of-year reflection.“

Not only does the Virtual Learning Center utilize Moodle with our tele classes, we teach Moodle classes in the tele! Here are the details for the Moodle classes later in the summer:

Moodle Basics: Using a Course Management System to Increase Teacher/Student Connections
Aug. 1,  9 am-12 pm | $63 CSD member; $89 non-member 

+

Intermediate Moodle: Creating Your Own Course  
Aug. 1,  1-4pm | $63 CSD member; $89 non-member 

MOODLE BASICS: Heard of Moodle, but don’t have a clue what it’s all about?  This workshop is for you!  Come find out what this powerful course management system is, how to use it as the one stop website for your class, and how to get your own for free.  Participants will have an opportunity to see how other teachers are using Moodle, and try their hands at setting up various features of this powerful course management open source software.  This is for beginners with no prior knowledge of Moodle.

INTERMEDIATE MOODLE: Already familiar with Moodle and have a pretty good idea how it works?  Now it’s time to practice developing your own course.  Learn the advanced features of this open source course management system and have time to practice them.  Lots of hands-on time provided to create your own sample class and organize it the way you want.  Prerequisite: Moodle Basics class OR prior knowledge/use of Moodle.

To sign up, go to www2.csd.org/tele. You will receive a confirmation letter about two weeks before your class runs. If you do not get a letter, call CSD and ask for Joan Forrest: 314-692-1259.