I am very fortunate to be able to attend VSTE this year. Our division had told us one conference a year. I went to the VDOE conference in December so VSTE was not in the cards for me until the ITRT who was suppose to come had his entire family get the flu. I am very sorry his family is sick but I am very glad that I am at VSTE.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The first workshop I attended was presented by QTL's trainer Theresa Bell. The presenter did a sample lesson on how to use Web 2.0 tools. The workshop was entitled, Do You Have the Attributes of a Future Ready Graduate. Preparing Your Teachers for 21st Century Learning. Jobs of the future are already here. In order to prepare students to work globally, we must teach collaboration skills. The lesson started with a plug for Trav's Travels-Geography for Kids, the USA. She used a jigsaw method to divide students into cooperative groups. Each group was provided a puzzle piece. She got the puzzle pieces from here by enlarging and printing out this map, laminating and cutting it apart. The video was shown and students were asked to take notes on the video using the graphic organizer. The graphic organizer contained a table with three columns labelled nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Groups then met back together to choose one word from each column to describe their region. These words were put on an idex card and placed on a word wall. She then had each group open up a google doc and compose a paragraph of five sentences. She said that one child would write the intro sentence, one the hook, one the supporting sentences and one the conclusion. The projects could then be linked off of a wiki for the entire class. Three wikis mentioned were: Wetpaint, wikispaces, and pbwiki. The entire presentation will be posted here by the end of the conference.
I also attended Putting The Pieces Together: Integrating Technology with Marzano's Instructional Strategies. This was an excellent presentation and the entire presentation is online. Sherrie Miller, the presenter also plugged her division site: http://gets.gc.k12.va.us/elementary.
One suggestion that Sherrie made was to present a different strategy each month at a school faculty meeting. This only takes about 15-20 minutes. As each strategy is presented, provide examples of how technology fits in with Marzano. I am going to talk to my three principals. Comment made: There are still people out there who see no purpose for the integration of technology, these could be anyone from teacher assistants to superintendents. People are not going to support any thing that frightens them. Play down the stranger danger and play up the need for ethics.
The keynote speaker, Hall Davidson, from Discovery Education had a message called, Thinking Big as the World Gets Small. His entire message was about why education should allow their teachers to network and then strategies for giving students a voice. It seems from the write-ups of the workshops that the enitre conference is on global communication. He shared the Horizon Project. He also shared the coolcatteacherblog. One point that was made was that 92% of students use social networking tools. We are commiting educational malpractice by not showing them how to use these tools properly. Here was a concernof many of the participants, how can we show students how to properly use these tools if many of our divisions are blocking access to them? It is recognized that this is a matter of concern. The VDOE is making plans to address this with divisions. The Discovery Education Company took a kindergarten teacher and put him in charge of their network. It's working out great! In recent years, if change needs to be made, it has started in the field of education. The pep statement from Hall Davidson went like this:
Educators, we are unstoppable, we will find a way!
Two suggestions made by this presenter, allow students to send in homework through text messaging or by a call in podcast service. He recommended GCast (address below). Anither idea is to purchase a class set of IPods. The entire Discovery library can be stored on one IPod (amazing!) His advice, use the technology that kids bring to school in their pockets. Don't fight it.
We were encouraged to join VSTE (done!), ETAN (done!) and the VSTE social networking site (will do!) Go back to your division and encourage Library Media Specialists and Gifted teachers to join as well. I also noticed that the site has a place for SPED teachers. Noted: VSTE has a large and growing population of members from Australia.
VSTE List Serves
ITRTs send email to vste_lists@vste.org with subject line, Join ITRT
AT send email to vste_lists@vste.org with subject line, Join AT
ETL send email to vste_lists@vste.org with subject line, Join ETL
NECC send email to vste_lists@vste.org with subject line, Join necc09
The last workshop of the day was The Traveling Stories. Brad Fernald and Frank Fitzpatrick from Henrico County have their entire presentation online. These teachers took groups of students on field trips to different cities in the 5 regions of VA. They then had students write about the experences which the teachers turned into podcasts. This presentation was a highlight of their project. This project is VERY doable! It would make a great extend summer project.
Monday, February 25, 2008
New Teacher Orientation Staff Development Mode-This workshop presented their ideas for how to get new hires to start thinking about instructional and informational tech departments in the division. GREAT IDEAS! Would like to discuss this. It's important to start early in the year getting teachers to think about TSIPs, internet safety, and technology integration. It needs to be fun and it needs to model good instructional practices. They have had two themes so far: a carnival and a CSI theme. The entire staff development lasted one hour. The presentation on online.
Adventures in LaLa Land: Staff Development That Works-Again, the staff development was online, http://staffdev.henrico.k12.va.us/~mccallja/LALA%20Land/Welcome.html. Place all staff development materials online so that teachers can pull up materials later. Drive home the idea that technology integration needs to be meat and potatos. We eat everyday, we integrate everyday. Not every meal is Thanksgiving. Staff developments need to start with a survey ahead of time. (duh!, why has this never occurred to me?) We need to practice what we preach: collaboration, communication, rewflection, application. Provide teachers with time during the staff development to create a lesson. This is the MEGA INPORTANT idea to walk away with. To summarize outline for a staff development. 1. Create a front page on the website to hook teachers into thinking about the staff development, two months ahead of staff development. 2. Attach a survey to the front page and send out to all teachers two months ahead of staff development. Give a deadline for the development. 3. One month ahead of staff development, plan sesson and post all materials online. 4. Start sending out nuggets of ideas from upcoming staff development. 5. On day of staff development breeze through ideas for integration quickly. This should not take long, the nuggets will have accessed prior knowledge in teachers and teachers will have a greater understanding of what's coming. During the staff development, 75% of the time should be the teachers using your ideas to create a lesson. 6. Follow up with a survey one to two days following the staff development. Survey needs to be online. Forces teachers to go online to work. Recertification points are NOT given until teacher completes the follow-up survey. 7. Send out the results of the survey attached to the website created which house all documents, ideas, and photos from the staff developpment. 8. Presenters should acknowledge surveys and post their own reflections on the site for the teachers. Additional recertification points are awarded to the teacher if she uses ideas from workshop on her own.
While I was in LaLa Land, Gail went to the workshop on differentiation, entitled Learning Differently, One Size Does Not Fit All. Her expression when she came out was OMG! There was a wealth of resources and ideas to assist with differentiation The presenter gave out her wiki page containing all the resources.
Explore Camp-During the Summer, Turn School Into a High-Tech Camp-Below is the outline from this workshop The brochure can be seen in the voicethread at the bottom of the outline.
Why Explore Camp?
Enhance School/Community Relations
Offer Enrichment Experiences to ALL Students
Utilize Technology
Provide ALL parents with a Summer Opportunity for their Children
What is Explore Camp?
Four Day Summer Camp (Students chose one class and took that class four four days.)
Field Trips
Transportation (from central sites)
Lunch
Supplies
Wall of Fame
Music
Crafts
Family dinner and Awards Ceremony
When?
Summer
Other Options
Teacher Workday
After School
Before School
Where?
Both HCS High Schools
How?
Eligible for Title I
Remediation Funds
Local Funds
Utilize 12 month Employees (Superintendent pushed this with the 12 month employees. The Superintendent taught a fishing class.)
Could Charge
Why?
Enhance/School Community Relations
Career Development
Enrichment Opportunity
Technology Opportunity
Build and Maintain Relationships Between School and Home
Measureable Outcomes
In 2006, 120 Students Participated
In 2006, Explore Camp wat the first "camp" experience for 75% of all the participants
Ofer 75% of 2006 participants showed improvement or no change in daily attendance from the year prior to camp and the year following camp.
37% of 2006 participants reduced their number of daily absences by over 50%
In 2007, 380 students participated
In 2007, the percent of students rating their experiences in Explore Camp as above satisfactory was 92%
Costs
Transportation-5%
Instructors-40%
Supplies-10%
Awards Dinner and Reception-43% (gave away IPods, Local businesses donated or reduced cost)
Field Trips-2%
$40 per student (4th-8th grades)
Explore Camp
Available to students on a first-come, first-served basis
The success of the Explore Camp is directly related to the fact that there are no eligibility factors
Explore Camp is not designed for one specific type of student
Edplore Camp is the perfect example of differentiation because students are grouped by one factor, their interests. Students are not grouped by their ages, ability, addresses, or parents' socio-economic status
Explore Camp Accolades
2007 Virginia School Boards Association Showcases for Success
2007 National School Boards Association T + L Conference-Walk of Excellence Participant
Contact Information
Melaney Reeves Stowe, Explore Camp Director
Henry County Schools
P.O. Box 8958
Collinsville, VA 24078
276-634-4766
mstowe@henry.k12.va.us
WAIT: Web-based Art Interactive Tool-This presentation was on a web based tool which allows students to view pieces of art housed at the Art Museum of Western Virginia and then post online their interpretations, thoughts and feelings concerning the art piece. This would be a great tool to integrate writing, art and technology. Here are the handouts: part1.pdfpart2.pdf The website is here: http://waitstage.visionpointsystems.com/
danah boyd: Don't view technologies as a product of the devel, don't play ostrich, understand and embrace so that you can guide. be willing to learn from the kids.
1/3 are approached by things they do not want to see
32% of music released last year was digital only
1/3 share music, videos, etc online
10% contribute to online collaboration projects
50% nonconformists are the popular kids in school. These are the kids who are not doing things the way the teacher wants it done. They are using digital media to create and respond to learning opportunities. Teachers and adults don't know how to take these kids.
The problems come when kids don't have anyone to show them how to share safey. Kids are doing things in fifth grade that we did in college. Bad things are still happening but stats are getting better. Twenty-percent are still becoming victims because they have had no one to show them how to be safe. Educators need to be aware of the following tools:
blogs
skype
twitter
Ning
social networking
Privacy is a thing of the past on Web 2.0. Kids need to know what to expect. How can we teach them to use these tools safely if we are not familiar with the tools. We must teach cyber ethics and issues. Teach them like they are use to using. Go to YouTube/TeacherTube and download videos and use them to teach internet safety. What is posted on the web, stays on the web.
How to Reach the 21st Century Mind-Using Multimedia in the Classroom to Impact Learning- Here is the presentation from that session. M606.pdf
Breaking into the Minds of the Unmotivated Learner-This entire presentation was online. IT gave ideas for reaching students who don't want to be there. Classroom behavior is poor, teachers do not want to integrate, etc. Use StarBuck Sessions to motivate teachers to sign up for professional development. Offer free luch duty for teachers. Run a contest. First teacher to . . . . .
The ITRT needs to take the video camera with them at all times to capture images of students using technology appropriately.
I started out at a DEN Differentiation workshop called Discovery Education Streaming and Differentiated Instruction-How to Engage Every Learner in Your Classroom-This workshop is on the CD so I am not going to post all the notes. There were a couple of websites he mentioned that were not part of his presentation. I am committed to trying the Quiz Builder. The presenter seem to hint that students could take a quiz at home. Our kids don't have their own log in for U/S so I am not sure how this is possible.
This workshop is good but I am not learning anything new. They are basically showing various lesson ideas from Smart Board, Power Point, and Inspiration. She is pulling up many sites and showing them on the smart board. I do like the power point ebook. She just said that she doesn't know how to make the book start immediately but I do. My informational technology supervisor showed me how to create an auto start file.
Provide background knowledge by using lots of visuals. Vocabulary makes a HUGE Difference in achievement (Marzano, Building Background Knowledge)
Background knowledge makes the difference! To close the gap we need to Build Academic Vocabulary
1. Teach specific and consistent
2. Actively engaged
3. Lynell Burmark, Visual Literacy Use image rich literacy. Writing in pictures is a high level skill. We live in a visual world. Our brains are wired for images. Our brain processes 60,000 times faster than text. The eye goes first to image and then to color.
Einstein in his imagination took a ride on a beam of light before his theory of relativity.
Where do we get images to use in the classroom?
Scan children's artwork
internet
digital cameras
use video
The more streams of information we have coming in the better we focus.
Student: "The chalk and talk lecture is like going down a highway at 30 miles per hour. We have lots of time to look to the left and to the right and it's easier to become so diistracted that we miss the right turn. In a multimedia classroom, we are going down that same highway at 85 miles per hour. You have to stay alert and focused or you will crash and burn."
1. Teacher describes the the student. (Show only part of the picture at a time. Gradually show more. Have students guess what the word is.)
2. Students explain the term in their own words.
3. Students draw a picture of the term (Students could create a podcast, VT, Photo Story, etc)
4. Use the term in different context.
5. Discuss the term with others
6. Play vocabulay games to reinforce the term.
IPod's First Commercial
After giving us the reasons to use lots of pictures, the presenters went quickly through Photo Story, Movie Maker, and Audacity to demo how to create student multimedia projects.
After the workshop I mentioned to the presenters that I would be bringing this back to my schools; especially the reading first schools. The presenter gave me his copy of Lynell Burk's DVD of training videos.
Presentation of new Board Members: Janene and Mary (Next time I will be listed)
Treasurer's Report: George (sponsorships)
Advocacy: Bill & Heather (We have a huge potential as an advocacy group as noted in the success of keeping the ITRT position. Start telling our success stories. Share how much more could be done if more money was provided. Go to Ning website and share. ETAN: Over 600 signitures from VSTE went to the legislature in one weekend. The server crashed. Lobby Day: Show off projects to School Board. Visit local legislature when they are at home.)
Getting Involved: Laura & Beth (It starts with volunteering at the conference.
Other News: Karen ( To continue taking part in VSTE, we will need to have access to the Ning site.)
Closing Session: Prizes and give-aways
Others are beginning to Twitter about VSTE
Here is the online presentation from It's a Small World After All...Integrating Google Earth into the Virginia Standards of Learning Looks like it was a good one.
part1.pdf
three.ppt
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