If it happened today...

The techie Christmas Story...

The Lead:

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The Hallelujah Chorus

Just a bit of Holiday Cheer for the three of you who have been very good at living with the uncertainty of a new course presented as an independent study. Thanks for sticking with the program and doing what you found beneficial to your own professional development.

I wish for you a wonderful and restful break and a professional future that includes some form of technology leadership... believe me you are qualified.

Dave

The Hallelujah Chorus - handbell 4Ringer - YouTube:

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Dayton college uses Facebook to lure students | The Columbus Dispatch

For your information... now that you know how to use some Web 2.o tools.

Dayton college uses Facebook to lure students | The Columbus Dispatch:

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How to create an Xtranormal Text to Speech Movie

Here's some help in creating your Xtranormal video from TeachereTube. If you search TeacherTube you'll find several videos on Xtranormal including some info on kids' accounts. Give some thought to making an Xtranormal video to introduce a new unit or concept.

TeacherTube Videos - How to create an Xtranormal Text to Speech Movie:

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Movie Maker | Xtranormal

Make an XtraNormal movie and share it with us. Try to get it done in the next week.

Movie Maker | Xtranormal:

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One Semester of Spanish - Love Song

I know Rio will appreciate this but thought Beth and Jess would at least get a laugh. Also, it introduces TeacherTube (it's in Top Rated Videos). Seriously, find and review a video or two on your blog (see previous post).

One Semester of Spanish - Love Song

TeacherTube - Teach the World | Teacher Videos | Lesson Plan Videos | Student Video Lessons | Online Teacher Made Videos | TeacherTube.com

Hey Troops,

Just in case your full-time jobs are not enough to keep you occupied take a look at TeacherTube and review one of the videos at the top of the home page... I like the Top Rated category but choose something that makes sense to you. Write the review on your blog. If possible show the video to an audience (students, colleagues, your SO) and get their reaction. While you are in TeacherTube poke around and see what else you might use. Oh yes, figure out how to link the video to your blog so I can see it when I read your entry. Hint: dashboard and embed are key words.

TeacherTube - Teach the World | Teacher Videos | Lesson Plan Videos | Student Video Lessons | Online Teacher Made Videos | TeacherTube.com:

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homegrown countrygirl

Just a link to a blog created by the daughter of a friend. No tech content but some ideas for blogging in general and some interesting ideas and recipes.

homegrown countrygirl:

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Blog Assignment

Scroll to the Web 2.0 tools of Kathy Schrock's web page to see some resources that you may find useful in your work. Blog a review of one of the tools you find there. Due next week.

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators - Teaching Tools - Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators:

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Beth Newingham's Third Grade

No pressure but here's a classroom website that may give you some ideas on what to add to the one you are building. You might contact the teacher to get ideas for using volunteers or helpers to maintain the site.

Beth Newingham's Third Grade:

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American Teacher: Dave Eggers and Matt Damon’s new documentary is almost as flawed as Waiting for Superman. - Slate Magazine

Interesting article on the movie "American Teacher". But even more interesting is the author's take on the impact of high-stakes testing. What do you think about testing, teacher pay, and the possible impact of technology on teaching and learning?

American Teacher: Dave Eggers and Matt Damon’s new documentary is almost as flawed as Waiting for Superman. - Slate Magazine:

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Japanese Tsunami Viewed From A Car

Japanese Tsunami Viewed From A Car

Not sure how this fits in our course but this is an incredible video... perhaps showing the power of water or a first hand view of the damage done by a tsunami.

Worth watching, you build the lesson around it or pass it on to a teacher who can use it.

We Are Teachers

Here's a website that you might find helpful. Subscribe and get periodic emails that look good to me. Your mileage may vary (YMMV).

We Are Teachers:

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Fact Monster: Online Almanac, Dictionary, Encyclopedia, and Homework Help — FactMonster.com

In working with a social studies methods class I got some good website recommendations from students. Take a look at this one and let me know what you think... I'll pass along some others as time goes by.

Fact Monster: Online Almanac, Dictionary, Encyclopedia, and Homework Help — FactMonster.com:

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Movie Maker | Xtranormal

Here's a link to the "Back to School" XtraNormal site. Check it out.

Movie Maker | Xtranormal:

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Words of Advice

Here's an example of an Animoto we made for our Student Teacher Workshop... do you know Animoto?

Words of Advice

Might be Working

Dear Class,

I've observed some comments on my blog! This is not normally cause for celebration however, given the difficulty we had last Tuesday I am very pleased. I hope you've signed on to be notified of new posts to my blog (see the sign in thing in the right column). Leave comments and watch the Salman Kahn video.

As noted in an email sent earlier Monday I'll be available to meet at 4:00 on Tuesday the 20th in or outside room 200 Library.

Please blog any tech activities or news so I know you are still alive.


Dave

Internet Memes 101: A Guide to Online Wackiness - NYTimes.com

If you hope to keep up with kids you'd better read this article and click on the links. You may even be able to mention some references that students don't know about. Cultural literacy is cool.

Internet Memes 101: A Guide to Online Wackiness - NYTimes.com:

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Edublogs – education blogs for teachers, students and institutions

An alternative to Blogger... a place to blog specially designed for students and educators. Poke around and see the current contest that encourage student blogging across national boundaries. Let me know what you think.

Edublogs – education blogs for teachers, students and institutions:

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Blog This! : Communicate - Google Chrome Help

If you use Google Chrome as your browser check out this addition to your tool bar. When you land on a web page you'd like to post to your blog just click on the button and it takes you automatically to a new bog post window already populated with the web page URL.

You may grow to hate that I discovered this tool ;-)


Blog This! : Communicate - Google Chrome Help:

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Google Doc from a student perspective

Found this in my Google Reader (check Reader out) box:


How I use Google Docs as a student
from Docs Blog by Google Docs
34 people liked this
Shep McAllister is a rising senior at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, and editor of the popular student blog HackCollege. For the past several years, he has done his college coursework exclusively on Google Docs, and today he shares his five favorite uses for the platform in the classroom.

When I started out at Trinity University, I didn’t know much about Google Docs and relied heavily on desktop word processors. As I became increasingly frustrated with these programs crashing mid-sentence, I thought I’d give Google Docs a try. But what started as an experiment to test Google Docs for group projects and class notes quickly became a permanent solution for all of my schoolwork, and I haven’t looked back once. Here are a few of my favorite uses of Google Docs in college:

1. Work together on group projects
Before I started using Google Docs, group projects were a nightmare. A co-authored paper would fragment into a dozen different documents. Group presentations became last minute scrambles to get combine slides. Any information sharing about our project took place in splintered email threads. With Google Docs, my class groups are able work together on the same presentation or paper simultaneously while sharing links and ideas in a separate doc. The discussions feature released earlier this year made collaboration even simpler.

2. Take notes collaboratively
My classmates and I always get together near exam time to combine our notes and share ideas, so why not do it in real time? I work with friends to take in-class notes on a single Google doc, allowing everyone to come away with a more thorough set of notes than they could have written individually. I discuss this concept in more detail on my blog, HackCollege.

3. Convert PDFs and handouts to searchable text with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
As a student, I get a lot of assigned reading as PDF files. Unfortunately, most of them are low-quality scans from the library, which makes it hard to search through them for keywords or make annotations. With Google Docs’ OCR capabilities, I’m able to upload a low-quality PDF and receive an editable text document in return. This also works well for any important handouts professors give out in class -- I just scan the handout and upload to Google Docs, keeping all of my class material in one place.

4. Save major assignments in the cloud
Writing important papers in Google Docs allows me to access my assignments and papers from any computer, anywhere. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stuck in the library without my laptop, or only have my smartphone handy. With Google Docs, it doesn’t matter, because all of my assignments are stored in the cloud, meaning I don’t have to be tethered to my laptop to get work done. This saved my sanity (and GPA) during finals last semester, when my computer crashed and was out of commission for over a week. Luckily, there was no need to panic, because I knew my final papers and study guides were tucked safely in the Google Docs cloud, instead of my dying hard drive.

5. Collect information from a group with forms
Before I started using Google Docs, organizing my classmates for a group dinner or campus event was a nightmare. Now, I use Google Docs to create web forms to send to my friends and classmates. My friends have gotten involved too, using it for keeping track of club participation, voting on housing for their fraternity’s beach weekend, and even conducting surveys for major research projects.

Posted by: Shep McAllister, HackCollege.com Blogger & Trinity University Student

Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value - NYTimes.com

Provocative article... what do you think?

Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value - NYTimes.com:

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EDUC 6780 Syllabus

EDUC 6780 Syllabus for Spring 2011
EDUC 6780: Special Topics in Technology Education



Fall Semester, 2011 Online with 2 or 3 on campus face-to-face meetings
(tentatively scheduled for August 30 and September 6 and 13, 5 to 7:30 PM, room TBD)
David Heigle, Ph.D. email: heigle.1@att.net and dheigle@otterbein.edu
Phones: 614.488.1541 (home office); 614.204.1797 (cell)

Course Descriptions

The Official Description

EDUC 6780 - Spec Topics Technology Educ
Offers students the opportunity to pursue current educational technologies and classroom integration with these technologies. The specific topic of the course will change as new tools and instructional approaches are developed and disseminated. Prerequisite: Permission of Instructor. Students may receive credit more than once for this course, as topics change.
1.000 TO 3.000 Credit hours

The internet is a dynamic, growing, evolving organism, therefore:

Here’s the “enhanced, updated version” of the course title and description for Fall 2011.

EDUC 6780: Special Topics in Technology Education
AKA “Teaching and Learning via Web 2.0 & Cloud Computing”

Participants will learn how to use Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing tools and resources to enhance teaching and learning as well as for personal and professional development. Topics of the course include (but are not limited to): evaluating and organizing Internet resources; constructing Web pages; creating and maintaining a BLOG; developing Internet enhanced instruction; ethical, safety, and legal issues of Internet use; and learning what is demanded of educators in technology-rich schools. Participants will also examine how to convey these skills and knowledge to students and will collaborate with colleagues to share resources and to build instructional projects using Web 2.0 tools available on “the cloud”. We will relate projects and assignments to 21st Century Skills today’s students need for tomorrow’s world. Alternative topics as raised by students can be explored and integrated into course content.

Course content/desired outcomes are on three levels:
• The Practical: Skills and knowledge that are of immediate use in classrooms, with students, on-the-job, or for personal/professional advancement (E.g. online resources and tools that can be used without modification on-the-job).
• The Theoretical: Learning theory, teaching theory, technical information, and other ideas that inform sound teaching and learning practice (E.g. Professional organization guidelines, state and national guidelines).
• The Creative: What you as an individual participant can combine from the Practical and Theoretical to make “new” knowledge. The creative is very personal and dependent on individual needs and starting points (E.g. a coach may create a virtual soccer camp using YouTube videos, blogs, shared documents, and social networking sites. A kindergarten teacher may use Twitter and a wiki to keep parents informed about and engaged in student classroom activities).


Learning Objectives*
Participants in this course will be able to:
1. Access and use internet-based (Web 2.0) tools and resources for information sharing, remote information access and retrieval, and web-based publishing,
2. Use web browser applications for communications and for research to support instruction,
3. Use automated online search tools to identify and index information resources,
4. Design and publish online documents that present information and include links to critical resources,
5. Design learning activities that foster safe, equitable, ethical, and legal use of technology,
6. Develop collaborative instructional projects that involve compiling, organizing, analyzing and synthesizing of information and use of technology to support these processes, and
7. Evaluate online sources of information that support and enhance teaching and learning.

*The learning objectives are derived from the standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).



Another way of thinking about how a teacher can make use of EDUC 6780 content:

• Alternate organization schema for technology enhanced learning objectives (C3 P3)
6780 Content categories Pupils Parents Peers
Communication Assignments, instruction, curriculum, content, grading, expectations Grading, pupil expectations, calendars, assignments, opportunities to participate Ideas, coordination, help!
Collaboration Help, student to teacher bonding, student to student bonding School to parent cooperation, common expectations, help requests Social networking, common concerns, help!
Creativity Opportunities to create ‘new’ knowledge, alternate assignments, project learning, brainstorming Guided, open-ended home based learning … opportunities for parent participation Brainstorming, think tank activities, cross-curriculum ideas…



Course Materials
• Instead of a text for the course it is required that you join the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Student membership is available for $39 online at http://www.iste.org/membership.aspx. Readings and assignments will be drawn from ISTE print and online resources.
• An optional text book for this course is: Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools by Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum, published by International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).
• As far a practicable EDUC 6780 will be paperless. We will exchange information via electronic documents and printing to paper will not be required. I believe you can opt to receive ISTE publications online only.



Course Evaluation

40% Projects
5 or 6 projects will be drawn from the following list:
● Create and maintain a blog*.
● Create and maintain a web site*.
● Participate in creating and maintaining a common class documents/wiki.
● A research paper on a topic drawn from class readings or discovered web sites.
● Individualized learning project related to your field of study/interest.
● Group learning project with other 6780 participants using Web 2.0 tools.
● Individually developed projects related to personal or professional needs.
* Required projects

30% Weekly assignments (graded pass/fail)-
Probable assignment topics
● Weekly written responses to readings, blogs and other prompts.*
● Responding to online surveys, peer inquiries for suggestions and help.*
● Contributing to EDUC 6780 Group community resources.*
● Participating in an educational listserv or social network site.
● Advanced use of online search engines and Web 2.0 tools.
● Finding and evaluating your school’s technology use practices and policies.
● Evaluating and making use of educational videos such asYouTube and TeacherTube.
● Others as appropriate to advance learning.
* Required assignments.

30% Active online, face-to-face participation, and creative effort:
● Creativity: Making “new” knowledge- critical/creative thought.
● Timely completion of assignments (these are weekly and usually can be completed by an individual).
● Timely completion of projects (these are more involved than assignments and are longer term. They may require working with others).
● Regular participation and online interaction with the instructor and classmates (no hiding in the back of the electronic classroom).
● Timely communication with instructor about problems and difficulties.
● Supporting your classmates with online help.
● Reading and self-directed learning as appropriate for graduate students.
● Face-to-face (2 meetings), meeting with instructor as required or requested.
● Online interaction between and among other participants via email, blogs, wiki, and web sites.
● Contributing to project-based learning, both as an individual and within a small group.


Technologies Used

● High speed internet connection that does not filter the tools mentioned below (check your school filter if you intend to use a school account to work on 6780 projects).
● An available email account that can be checked frequently (be sure I have your preferred address).
● Up-to-date PC (Windows XP, Vista, 7) or Macintosh (OS 10.xx) computer w/ MS Office or clone, an up-to-date internet browser (I use Chrome and Firefox) with the ability to listen to audio, view video, download and access various file types.
● Digital camera, web cam, video camera, camera phone and compatible software
● Web search engines: Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Answers.com, Digg, etc.
● You will need to register for a gMail account with Google. Additionally, access many to the tools listed below may be necessary to complete course work:
○ Twitter
○ Facebook
○ Blogger
○ Wikispaces
○ Wordle
○ Google Docs and Google Groups
○ Animoto
○ Weebly
○ Skype or Facetime
○ YouTube
○ TeacherTube
○ Symbaloo
○ Glogster


● Other Web 2.0 tools and sites as discovered by the instructor and other participants

Assignments (readings, internet exploration, and BLOG entries and communications with the instructor and fellow students) are due on a weekly basis. You should budget about 3-5 hours per week for assignments and course housekeeping.

Projects will be spaced across the span of the semester approximately 2 weeks apart. Projects may take the form of a PowerPoint-like presentation, a Prezi, a YouTube video, or other internet based media. You should allow 10 to 15 hours of worktime over the span of two weeks for each project. Some possible topics are listed above but you are highly encouraged to develop your own project topics. A final project due the last week of class will demonstrate what you have learned in EDUC 6780 and what your plans are for using teaching and learning technologies in the future.


---------------------------------------------
Campus policy on Academic Integrity
All members of the Otterbein College community of learners are expected to follow the rules and customs of proper academic conduct. Proper conduct includes avoiding academic misconduct as defined in the Campus Life Handbook (pages 25-27). You are encouraged to help each other learn the course material. Unless specifically prohibited, you may discuss homework problems and lab projects with one another. Participants in these discussions enjoy the benefit of deeper and greater learning.
This course includes both individual and team assignments. For individual assignments, the work you submit for evaluation must be your own; created by you while thinking it through. Any individual work submitted for evaluation (assignments and exams) that includes work done by another, copying of another's work, or the result of following another's step-by-step keystrokes and mouse clicks, violates the academic integrity policy of this course. For team assignments, the work you submit will be the product of the team. Taking credit for work that you did not participate in also violates the academic integrity policy of this course.
When academic misconduct occurs as described above, you will receive a zero grade for that assignment or exam. The misconduct will also be reported to the Office of the Academic Dean. If a previous academic misconduct offense is on your record, you will receive a grade of F for this course and a referral to the judicial system.