VanishingPoint

Ok, I am really think that I should be asking what did you learn this week… but my brain is having time issues right now.  Let me give you a bit of background.  About 3 months ago, a colleague of my and I decided to offer a summer in-district course on Web 2.0… after the course was offered we had four people sign up without even knowing the dates we were planning on holding the sessions… now that was pretty cool.

We had a few goals for the sessions:

• Concept Exposure: We wanted to introduce a number of concepts (and tools) to them, and we really wanted to stress that when leveraging technology in curriculum DO NOT focus on the tool… focus completely on the concept and skill you are introducing and let that drive your “tool choice.”
• Investigation: We needed to provide both time and the incentive for participants to learn the concepts and then encourage (sometimes force) them to explore and experiment with various tools that might fulfill the concepts…
• Direction and Commitment: We did NOT want this to be a typical  “sit and get” with little or no follow through to actually put what you learn into practice. i.e. really make at least one of these concepts truly integral to their personal professional learning or to their classroom.
• Repository: We wanted to have a repository for the participants not only to reference, but to provide practice and to help build out as a future resource… enter: Web20School

I can’t speak for the participants, but I can speak for Mike Bachrodt and myself and I am happy to say that the last four days have been a joy and we have one more left!  I can also say that all of the wonderful teachers we have attending the sessions have gone from amazingly overwhelmed to focused, passionate learners each with a different concept and tool set that they are excited to find all of the nuances of bring into their lives and classrooms.

Here is some of what they have discovered and created:

ToonDoo was a hit!  Here is the first comic of Karl Craddock (scroll left and right)

Samantha Serrano and Jim Nowak blogging

This really has been an amazing week!  I am looking forward to tomorrow and a bit sad at the prospect of the week ending.

THis is an example of blogging from an offline app as opposed to blogging from the internet portals.

Here we are as part of our 5 day session and we are looking at how technology weaves together!

Subscribe Free Add to my PageTest Call from gCast

Live Blogged:  So please forgive any typos, thought fragments, and any other issues.

Steve Dembo:  Discovery Education - NOTE: Steve put forth a specific disclaimer that he is not a lawyer and is NOT recommending anything or a direction in any way what so ever Go Steve!

Steve referenced Tony Vincent: Learning in Hand and Tony’s post on "How to cheat"

Filters are doing the opposite of protecting students it is hindering innovative teachers and keeping them from educating students to the fullest of their capabilities.

While CIPA laws require school districts (to maintain their e-rate funding) to filter internet access - the level and extent is at the discretion of the district - as long as it is NOT putting students at risk.

How do we break down a barrier for opening up filtering: (create a list)

• Where does blogging it?
• Social Networking?
• Digital Stories?
• Email access?
• etc.

Make a list of what skills are necessary for students to have and where should they fall in the safety continuum and adjust your filter and filtering policy accordingly.

References Elgg.net - with this tool, you can create a personalized social networking site that can be completely open to the public or you can host it on your district servers

References Miguel Guhlin’s Walledgarden Wiki - Wiki with a list of free resources that can be hosted in-house on district servers to maintain as much control and safety as the district desires.

Referenced: takingitglobal.org - Social networking site based on and eco-friendly way.  Students from around the world are collaborating.

Referenced: BeRecruited.com

There is a high school in IOWA that is having students do a Google search on their own name to see what gets returned from that search and what does that say about them and the presence they are putting out on the web.  Additionally, they are beginning to look at opportunities to "manage" their online persona.

Current research says that 75% of recruiters are starting with internet searches and using sites like Linkedin to build profile on candidates and support their clients interests.

Virginia is first state in the country that is REQUIRING schools to teach internet safety. They are not requiring a course, they are looking at fully embedding the teaching of internet safety into the entire curriculum

Referenced: online permissions

Referenced: Horizon Project

Referenced: SLA Chris Lehman’s internet policy puts forward their BELIEFS not restrictions or policies…

Thoughts: Be careful about being too detailed when writing and type of internet policies allow yourself to be vague and focus on beliefs not tools, consequences, specific restrictions.  This will allow the school environment to remain flexible.

Scott’s Commentary and questions here: Is there anyone out there teaching students about the consequences of identity theft or impersonating another person?  Are schools responsible for teaching parents about the laws?

Referenced: Social Networking Acceptable Use

http://allthingsliteracy.com 

Live Blogged: Please pardon the incomplete thoughts, omissions, and or errors.

Kelly Doubek  and Anna Beard

How to evaluate software or tools by breaking them down to along literacy goals.

Reading to learn: Reading and writing across content area

Project CRISS, PowerUP, etc

What are your District’s current reading Initiatives? How is technology supporting reading initiatives?

• Data Tools
• Online Assessments
• Student Practice and Skill Reinforcement
• Others

All tools must have a data component to be useful. 

Phonemic Awareness and Phonics (20in)- MUST HAVE MEASUREMENTS AND WHERE THE KIDS ARE GOING.

(Interesting note: data shows more than 20 minutes is not having and more of an impact on student achievement.

• If you are looking to have a tool to assess you need:
• Letter symbols and letter sounds?
• Is there a sound component?
• Is there a continuum of skill included?
• Is there a pre/post assessment included?
• Are student responses, time on task, etc. reported?

Free Tools - Kidspiration, PowerPoint, Kid Pics

Do teachers know how to take student data and then look at the assessment data and beable to find a site or lesson to support the kids?  Is your staff Development supporting this?

Fluency (has not been a focus in the past) (10-15min only)

Is is practicing rate or just accuracy… does it involve comprehension? Expression and phrasing? What software have a sound component?

PowerPoint - Can be used as a fluency tool.  You can record SOUND for fluency

Vocabulary

• Syllables, spelling patterns, high frequency words, word origin
• Is it building "Tier 2" (More descriptive) words? What are they measuring

Tablet PC’s

"Color Shock… using color to dissect the words.How are they using the technology at hand?

Comprehension

Is the text appropriate? If there a variety of genres? Is it measuring both literal & inferential comprehension? (Often there is LOW level comprehension questions…

Kelly will be doing an Administrator Academy on "Going beyond RTI" I will try to keep apprised of the session and get the dates and times in the future..

What tools are out there for free…

Anna Beard - Wireless Generation http://free-reading.net

Literacy is Priceless Blog

Free-Reading - Open Source early education will be K-3 by early summer Has a population of 273K users in 173 countries. Based on a mediawiki platform

Currently showing that teachers can upload lessons and place comments on the materials to build community.

Artists and musicians are now communicating with free-reading.net and providing art and music to align to literacy and vocabulary.

Check this out! It is a song by a group called Flocabulary on the free-reading site.  It is a vocabulary lesson rap about a Chipmonk.      

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Well, here I am at a crossroads. While on one hand I want to start podcasting, on the other I would like for my efforts to have some semblance of quality… I think that I achieve a podcast here. I apologize in advance for the audio quality as I am providing this caveat: I recorded this podcast on the voice recorder built into my MotoQ Global while driving home from my Grad class on Staff Development and Supervision…

SOoooo… you know how you learn things by doing? That is what happened. here. I hope that you find my stream of consciousness appealing: (17min - 4mb)

Show Notes

• Idea of apathy and involvement
• Crushing feeling of being overwhelmed by classroom, parent, and community initiatives /
• Teacher Professional Development - Lack of personal initiative
• It there a linkage between student apathy for learning and lack of teacher intrinsic value in personal life long learning?
• Is there a linkage to the need to provide a “reward basis” for student learning with the need to provide a “reward” for educator professional learning?
• When will we move beyond the excuse of “lack of time”?

References made

• Darren Draper & Robin Ellis
• OpenPD
• Steven Covey - The 8th Habit
• Dean Shareski
• “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” - Richard Carlson

What I learned

• Hold the phone like speaking on a phone to greatly improve quality.
• Have quick sheet for focus of thought
• Think of linkages to other topics / best practices / leadership
• Possibly speak more slowly?

Related Posts

from tag staffdevelopment

• Charlotte Danielson’s framework on changing staff accountability

from tag professionaldevelopment

• Raise Your Hands (Techlearning blog)
• Ustream.tv - OpenPD
• PD 2.0: It’s All about Building Community (Techlearning blog)

from tag learning

• Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Digital World — Open Education
• CASTLE - Home
• eSchool News - SIIA: Get K-20 vision in focus
• The Blog Police Hits the Blogosphere
• eSchool News - Experts: Ed tech must change its message

(more..)

Meme: Passion Quilt ~ Entry by Kymberli Mulford (kmulford)

This photo has been my desktop wallpaper for two months. Yes, it hearkens me back to one of the most wonderful vacations we have ever taken as a family. I love it for its simplicity, its playfulness.

Related to my passion for kids’ learning, however, I see my son as the representative child playing with the big ocean of technology. He puts his toes in, unafraid, and shrieks with delight at the first experiences. He runs away in sheer giddiness, but is always drawn back again, just as the ocean is drawn in waves back to him.

Out there, beyond his scope, there may be dangers lurking in the deep waters. They are not known to him, He is trusting, playful, childlike. The dangers are not yet his concern. For now, they are mine.

As he becomes more adventurous, I will teach him about those dangers that lurk beneath the surface. I will guide his strokes, strengthen his ability to fend off unwelcome experiences, and serve as his lifeguard.

Someday, our roles will shift. He will be more comfortable in that ocean than I. He will need to step up, as all good children do, to protect me in my feeble days. I pray that I have taught him well by then, and that his years of experience as a digital citizen with morals will serve both of us well.

For now, however, we play. Together.

Note: Until Kymberli is able to get her blog up, I wanted to host this meme contribution for her. ~ VanishingPoint

Ok, I have to start with this: I am seriously going to finish the Part III of my “In the Cloud” series but I keep getting distracted. Also, I don’t want my blog to just be about tools and resources. I would prefer to discuss instructional / curricular / and PD issues, thoughts, ponderings, etc. BUT, I keep getting side tracked by Zoho… Dang it all Arvind and Raju stop making your apps work so interestingly! heehee… enter embedding the embedded material… (does your head hurt yet? I think it will in a minute)

OK, so I was responding to a comment that Mike Sansone left on my last post. Mike saw that you could embed a “live” Zoho Writer document right into a Moodle and was wondering how. (If you want to know, click the post link above ) So, i was bouncing between Zoho Writer and my district moodle site when I stumbled into this…

Looking at the editor for Zoho Writer, there was the “Insert HTML Icon” plain as day sitting in the meddle of my screen … just staring at me … I actually think that it “dared” me to click on it… (Frankly, I think it was taunting me… ok I know icons cannot actually TAUNT someone, but it was sitting there peckishly… I SWEAR IT WAS!) Anyway… So, I clicked on it:

and the little embed box opened! Now, at this point I think that my jaw actually was hanging open. I was thinking this is a fluke… there is no way that you can actually embed a video into a document and have it actually play… it’s not like a picture ya know it is well a player of some sort… Then I thought OK, I’ll bite. so I went and got one of my favorite videos, and laid in the embed code and clicked save… and NOTHING changed on the screen… Ok I was right! Ha! I am smarter that the average bear! But, something was still niggling at me… so I clicked on the “< >” icon in the editor and sure enough my embedded code was in there… It just was not visable in the actual document view itself.

Here is a link to the original document I threw together to demo for this post:

http://vanishingpoint.wiki.zoho.com/Zoho-Writer-Embed.html

Here what the document looks like printed as a PDF: Writer with Embed in a document

As yo can see… when the document is viewed natively, or printed you cannot see the embdded code or file… but once you embed the document itself into a webpage or something else you now have a live tool within a Zoho Writer document.

Now, until I can get back on my tablet, or I get less tired this weekend, I need you to click on the link to see what I am talking about. When I get Windows Live Writer back up (or up on this laptop) I will actually embed the documents right into this post.

It is interesting to think about this capability for the future of information literacy. Darren Draper recently wrote a blog post that was “Enhanced” for his Diigo network (of which I am part). While on the surface, the post seems completely normal with all of the detail in the post itself, if you are a Diigo user, and have the sidebar open, you will be able to see all of Darren’s thought about the post itself as annotations. What a powerful way to develop an additional layer of information about a specific page on the world wide web. I see this ability of Zoho Writer to embed a live resource right into the fabric of a document to be right along those lines.

Ok, way too tired, eyes beginning to cross, hope you get he idea I presented here (hey it is late and as of now I have been up for 21 1/2 hours today.) Love to hear your thoughts about possible uses to this “rabbit hole.”

Scott

Greg Noack just posted his first blog post and he relates a great story of efficiency and the utilization and experimentation of new tools specifically Google Docs and Zoho Writer. 

I left a long comment and it got me thinking about my use of Zoho’s myriad of applications and how they might be better used in conjunction with embedding, for classrooms projects and collaborations.  For those of you who do read my blog, you already know that I am a big fan of the folks at Zoho and all they have done "in the cloud." But, I am also a big fan of Microsoft and all of it’s products and the interoperability of their tools set.  I am a huge fan of Office 2007 and OneNote 2007 is about the the best resource any individual and group can have. However, Greg’s post stirred my creative thoughts, and I am currently warring with a paradigm shift my brain is trying to undergo.

At one point in his post Greg made the comment:

Today, I had a chance to try to embed a Gdoc (word file). No luck. Google doesn’t give you an embed code, only a link to a webpage. I wasn’t happy with this  as I want everything inside the security of Moodle. So, I tried Zoho.com, and they DO provide an embed code, not only for their writer, but also their spreadsheets (they may do this for other types,  I haven’t tried it out yet). My co-teacher was really excited about the spreadsheet because when you embed the spreadsheet in a Moodle web page, students can enter data right there online, and there is a link to download to excel right there.

Regarding Zoho… ALL of their apps have an embed feature. every darn one of them!  Anything that you can create in Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, Creator, Projects, DB, Notebook, Planner, and Chat can be shared, collaborated upon, and embedded into other resources … That is an amazing set of interoperable tools that are all "in the cloud."  Additionally, last December (2007) Zoho leveraged  Google Gears giving Writer the ability to edit offline as well as online.  This allows you to take 15 documents offline, edit them, and when you are back online, they will sync back to Zoho’s servers. 

I  really like the ability to move into and out of all of the applications with ease, as well as the ability to bring some Zoho apps into other Zoho apps…

With Zoho Show you can even conduct remote presentations where your clients / viewers can "login" to the presentation anywhere in the world and you can conduct a presentation controlling the slides for everyone at the same time. Pretty cool.

Let’s look at a some educational opportunities:

With Greg looking at Moodle for security options I will use that as a springboard for the ideas below.

Think of this for a class activity. Have your class collaborate in groups in Zoho writer… then they can embed the doc in Moodle… Now what they are collaborating on is a review guide for each of your units… each person in each group takes turns updating each day and if they want they can be in the doc at the same time. Now at the end of the unit, all groups have a tailored review sheet. The best part is:

• With the shared doc you can see the additions/edits/changes by each with history…
• With the embed each time there are changes the entire group sees it immediately
• If you want you can set up the groups to restrict or allow access to the others “view” to compare.
• With the google gears link they don’t even have to be online to access/update. Next time they are online it will automatically update.

Note: you can do the same thing with a Zoho wiki when you show them RSS etc… (no Google gears yet but they do allow backups to local drive)

Now, do that with presentations as well… with the embed you can watch the presentation grow and then make the Moodle page active when your students are active presenting… no “projects” left at home / bad disk / etc

Now, considering a digital portfolio for your kids for the year? Step into the world of Zoho Notebook… You can embed all of their docs, presentations (Show), sheets, plus text / video / audio / ENTIRE LIVE WEBSITES / research for building each of those… EDIT AND UPDATE Writer, Sheet, Show RIGHT FROM WITHIN THE NOTEBOOK!

What to hear a really cool twist. Once everything is in a Zoho Notebook, you can “share" the notebook with read or read/write access (group editing / review)… and you can embed the entire darn notebook into Moodle! How about that for digital learning, archiving, portfolio management… and the best part update any of the originals and poof the Notebook and all else is up to date!

Here are a couple of examples of Zoho Notebook’s capabilities.

My Notes from IL-TCE 2008 Lucy Grey’s "Going Global" Presentation Notebook

Here is a Notebook I created: Think of the Possibilities

Can Google Docs do that? 

Zoho Rocks… oh and some of the Zoho apps have Skype and or chat capabilities built right in… You need any help or ideas/thoughts just drop me a line.

Scott

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