Technology Boot Camp

It is hard to believe that another school year is over. However, unlike the start of many summers, I spent the first two weeks at school. Between participating in our school's technology camp and helping interview candidates for the high school librarian position, my summer vacation was "postponed" for a little over a week. I cannot say anything about the interviews. However, it was an interesting process to be a part of and deciding upon the best candidate for the job is not always an easy task. The technology camp was an exciting endeavor initiated by our two wonderful technology coaches. I like to think of it as a "boot camp" for many of our teachers. It gave them an initiation into the world technology and its uses in the classroom. I think many of them caught the technology bug!

This year our high school participated in the Classrooms for the Future grant. With this grant, the high school hired a classrooms for the future (CFF) coach. The success of the high school caused my superintendent to want to bring on a coach for the middle and elementary schools. Much of what a CFF coach does mirrors and/or supports what librarians do. I was lucky enough to work with two excellent technology coaches, who were always willing to work with me and share ideas. So, I was thrilled when they recruited me to help them with two of the days in the technology camp.

I led a day training teachers how to use Interwrite Pads. I absolutely love my Interwrite pad. Interwrite Pads provide all the functionality of a SmartBoard or a Promethean Board, however, they are mobile. I (and my students) can annotate websites, interact with Word documents, control the computer, and much more from anywhere in the room. Here is the wiki I created for the teachers using Interwrite Pads.

The second day, I led the instruction on podcasting. The teachers used Audacity to create a short podcast. We also talked about how podcasting could be used with students and how to display the students' finished products. This led into further discussion about glogster and nings which led to discussion on all things Web 2.0. I showed them my Web2HowTo wiki and encouraged them to sign up for all the technology camp sessions if they had not already.

The general technology comfort level of the teachers who participated was low. However, they were all open to and excited about learning. As the teachers finished the podcasting session, I left them with a short video that I found on YouTube. I think many of them could identify with the video and it gave them a few laughs.



The technology camp created a forum for teachers to be introduced to, play with, and think about technology and its uses in the classroom. It gave me a forum to interact with many of my teachers at once and discuss new projects to implement with their students using the technologies to which they were introduced. I give a lot of credit to our two technology coaches for initiating, planning, and conducting such a successful camp. I would love to create a "Help Desk" night once a month to build upon this initiative. The idea of after-school sessions for teachers was planted by Kim Corfino's insightful post on PD sessions. To implement a "Help Desk" night once a month would be a great way to provide teachers with the continued support and instruction they will need.

Boots photo used under Creative Commons license from http://www.flickr.com/photos/72731134@N00/275276240/

Glogs, Glogs, Glogs

While this is not the newest tool on the market, I think it is one of the best for educators! Within the past year, glogster has created an education portal for teachers to use with their students. This allows a teacher to create a safe environment for students. Now, students can create their glogs without worrying about running into an inappropriate glog or having an unwanted someone viewing their glogs.

It is so easy to sign-up for an education account. Just visit the edu portion of glogster and set up a class account. If you already have an account, you will want to create a separate account under the edu portal. Glogster will ask you how many student accounts you need and will create the usernames and passwords for you quickly. Within a matter of minutes you will have a separate, private account for each student all integrated within your master account.

An excellent way to display them is to embed the glogs on wikipages. However, there is also a print option and a link option.

There are some great tutorial videos available on creating and embeddinig if you scroll to the bottom of the home page.

Glogs are an amazing tool for your students to use. However, they are also a powerful tool for teachers as well. Use glogs to jazz up your webpage, create a study guide for students, create graphic organizers, host videos and/or audio libraries, create webquests, and much more!

Classroom Ideas:

History
- create timelines (using arrow graphics)
- create historical scrapboks (include pictures,
music, videos, info from the time period)

Language Arts
- create autobiography pages
- book reports
- use as a presentation tool instead of a PowerPoint
- create a poetry glog (find images and music that enhances a poem)

Science
- create an electronic textbook (each student creates a glog around a specific topic from the
chapter)
- create a glog illustrating the steps of the scientific method

Music
- create a glog about a specific composer/artist or genre of music (include sample audio)
- create music library for students around specific composers/artists/genres with some basic
information or links for additional information

Art - host pictures of student artwork

If you have any ideas of your own for using glogster with students, please leave a comment:)


Examples: View a wiki with glogs created by my 5th grade students.



Screen shot of glogster.com/edu taken using kwout.com.

Web2HowTo

At the end of last year, I decided I would try to create a powerful resource for the teachers in my school on various web2.0 applications. I wanted to show them not only what was available, but also provide them with some "how-to's", as well as examples of how to implement in their classroom.


While I'm not exactly sure how many teachers in my school visit this wiki as a resource currently, I hope it will grow into a "go to" place for them.


I recently read Joyce Valenza's blog post on finding the pace of growth, "challenging, and stunning, and staggering." I felt like that post was speaking to me. At times I feel so overwhelmed by the sheer number of amazing web2.0 resources curently available and how many new ones I am constantly discovering. However, as I was reflecting on my web2.0 wiki, I feel that I have found a way to keep a reign on the resources that I want to focus on promoting.


While this wiki may have begun as a resource for the teachers in my school, it has evolved into a resource for me as well. It is a work in progress, and hopefully it always will be a growing "library" of my favorite web2.0 resources to use in the classroom.

Web 2.0 Goodie Bag

I just stumbled upon an amazing web2.0 resource. The Go2Web20 site is supported by TechCrunch who in their own words is all about, "obsessively profiling and reviewing new internet products and companies."

Go2Web20 is a web 2.0 directory that is very user friendly. You can sort by date to see what new sites have been added. You can also choose from a tag cloud - which is wonderful! If a teacher wants to do podcasts, I'll check out the podcast tag to see what it shows me. In my short time playing with this site so far, I know that it will become a go-to resource for me.

I'm really looking forward to exploring this site. I'm sure I'll find some absolutely perfect applications to use in the classroom! I'm sure I'll have plenty to post about as I explore this directory.