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.

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!

Last year’s videoconferences on forgiveness & empathy were so popular that we’ve decided to do a series on forgiveness this upcoming school year! We’re working with Lynne Lang of BJC School Outreach & Youth Development to put together five or six professional development sessions together. These sessions will be part of New Links to New Learning’s Mental Health videoconference series. Our target audience is high school staff for the forgiveness series. We’re still working on dates, fees, etc., but once those are set, we’ll post them.

We are also doing three of our traditional one hour videoconferences. Those will start in January and run through March. The interactive videoconferences always run 4 to 5 o’clock central.  2009 topics include: dealing with the death of a classmate on January 8; media literacy and teen behavior on February 12; and peer versus sibling bullying on March 12. 

If you have questions about the Mental Health series or if you want to sign up for any of the videoconferences, contact me, Rebecca Morrison, at rmorrison@csd.org. 

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.

Midwest Education Technology Conference
Call for Presenters!
Strands, Levels of Presentations & Tags

METC 2009 invites you to apply as a presenter for a breakout session or hands-on workshop. More than 1,500 attendees from across the nation are expected to participate including technology specialists, teachers, library media specialists, staff developers, administrators, instructional technology teachers, counselors, and information technology/network specialists. Preference of presenters will be given to those submitting proposals related to the program theme, Technology Tools of Engagement: R U There? or one of the program strands. While presentations may address several of these strands, please indicate the primary strand that best describes your proposal. Strands include:

For complete details on submitting a proposal to METC, visit this link: http://www2.csd.org/csdrpdc/metc2009/presenter.htm. METC is a program of Cooperating School Districts: www.csd.org.

 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.“

Author and former teacher Carolyn Lesser has created a new menu of interactive videoconference programs for New Links to New Learning! Here are just a few of the new videoconference opportunities with Carolyn. The others will be up soon. Contact the Virtual Learning Center for costs and scheduling - all programs are upon request. Carolyn works with students second grade and up.

Writing Nature Prose or Poetry
Session #1… 45 minute conference/call from teachers to plan for students
Session #2… 50 minute interactive presentation & student assignment given
Session #3… 50 minute interactive reading/positive feedback to student-read work

• Sessions will concentrate on nature writing specific to relevant curriculum
• We will connect science with the writing/research process in prose or poetry
• Research will be stressed for scientific accuracy for topics
• Teacher input is very important…come to conference call with ideas
• Carolyn will engage students with enthusiasm for her nonfiction process

Multigenre Nonfiction Writing
Session #1… 45 minute conference call from teachers to plan for students
Session #2… 60 minute interactive presentation & student assignment given
Session #3… 60 minute interactive reading/positive feedback to student-read work

• Teacher input/requests/goals discussed in the conference call
• Each nonfiction topic will be written in poetry, prose, letter, journal entry, dialogue, newspaper article, broadcast, report, etc.  
• My professional nonfiction writing process tailored & relevant to specific curriculum, teacher requests, goals
• Specific writing topics chosen by teachers/students
• Time will be taken each session for student questions
• Each session will be full of inspiration, enthusiasm, and positive feedback

Crafting a Play
Session #1… 60 minute conference with teachers to plan for students
Session #2… 60 minute presentation & student assignment given
Session #3… 60 minute presentation of scenes from students’ plays… feedback to and from groups

• Professional play-writing, techniques presented
• Teacher input/requests/goals discussed in the teacher conference
• Curriculum for the basis of the plays discussed with teachers
• Topics chosen by teachers/students
• Time for student questions in each session
• All sessions interactive