I spent Wednesday & Thursday this week attending the Upstate Technology Conference in Greenville, SC and had a fabulous time!

Wednesday:

Connecting With Tech Savvy Students – Bill Sheskey and Chrissy Robinson

• Oconee County Instructional Technology Integration – Specifically, click on the Teacher Resource page for links to resource that they have tested and are safe for educational use.

• xtranormal.com – type a script and make video snippets to grab students interest.

• PowerPoint with two videos side by side on the same slide – one is a recorded interview (could use the Flip cameras) and the other is PhotoStory  with just visual of what the interviewee is describing (for example, she was talking about a flood and he found photos from the event, put into PhotoStory to run as she’s talking about it)  Great example of low tech “split screen” video!  as well as examples of primary sources – the actual interview & the photos of the historical event.

• 24/7/7 – 24 hours, 7 days a week, on all 7 continents! Our students need to be able to compete globally.  You can also add 365 as everything is available online every day of the year.

• How Google hired workers based on a billboard w/ a math problem that led to a web address, with another problem, that led to another address, and so on until it led to a contact page from Google saying we want to hire you!

• News magazines have an archive of their covers online, why not use them in your research or teaching to emphasis a point/topic you are sharing?

Keynote: Chris Craft!

• AWESOME!  Chris is a dynamic speaker.  I hope you take a moment to go to his blog and watch his keynote.  Just a couple of ideas I wrote down (didn’t write more as I was too caught up in his presentation!):

• Snazzy Videos – short videos he shows at the top of the class. Something the students look forward to watching…(interest motivates learning?? I think that was what he said!)  You can probably catch some at his SpanTube website (Spanish YouTube!)  His class website – www.class326.com and uses Gcast.

• He records his announcements, instructions, reminders, etc. and plays them as soon as the bell rings to begin class.  This way he doesn’t have to repeat them over and over each class, and so he doesn’t forget to mention something to one class!  Also, a routine that the kids stop what they are doing to listen to the announcements and get right into the groove of class.  The announcements are followed by a riddle (could be any type of interesting bell work question/problem).  While they are listening to the announcement, he’s taking attendance and then begins class answering the riddle and straight on into the days lesson.  Smooth transitioning and no down time or lost time at the beginning of class!

• I also liked his sharing the quote from one of his friends that Twitter = Virtual Teachers Lounge.  That is how I view it – as a way to learn and share from educators & librarians who just don’t happen to work in my building!

What Can The Web Do For You? – Susan Isball

This session was geared more toward elementary teachers, so while the resource she shared were great, they just weren’t as useful for me.  You can follow the link to see her presentation and resources.  There was also a gentleman sitting next to me (sorry, I’m embarrassed I can’t remember your name) who is an assistant principal at a high school.  He came in and was doodling and by the time we left had the most spectacular “picture book” quality drawing I’ve ever seen.  He is such an artist.  He said doodling helps him think – and don’t get me wrong, he had a page and a half of notes from the session, too!  I wish I’d snapped a photo of it…he should be illustrating children’s books!

Shhh!  Don’t Tell We’re Using a Social Network – Avis Canty

The social network she uses with her classes is Ning.  Being a member of several Nings, I was already familiar with her topic.  I was more interested in how she organized getting her Ning up and running (research on social networks, administration support, parental permission, ning access, etc.) to pick her brain for my own blog proposal.  I will definately be contacting her in the next few days!

Socializing Time!

Of course, if I’m being entirely honest, the real reason I attend conferences is the socializing!  I had lunch with Fran Bullington and a couple of ladies from her district.  I also attended a Tweet-Up at Wild Wings in downtown Greenville after the last conference session for the day, followed by dinner out at with Cathy Nelson, Fran, and Kim Isiminger (Kim held the librarian position at Wagener-Salley HS before me!)  There was a huge group at Wild Wings – at least 20 – and just like MaryAnn said in her blog that the Twee-up was like a human twitter feed.  With conversations going all over the place and way across tables and everyone jumping in here and there!  Oh, shout out to Mary Mason who let me crash on her hotel room’s fold out couch for the night!  Photo credit: Wild Wings07 from loonyhiker – I don’t think Pat will mind I used her photo!  That’s me in the safari print shirt.

Thursday

Using & Integrating Moodle – Ryan Rucker

An nice overview of Moodle and what it can offer for your class.  Since we already use Moodle, the benefit of attending this session was I now have a contact person to help me troubleshoot my Moodle questions/mistakes!  I’ve already warned him he’s probably going to get tired of my emails!   For teachers whose district doesn’t already support Moodle, you can go to NineHub and they will host your Moodle course.  However, it does have ads and you are limited in the features available with free Moodle hosting.

I Heard It, I Saw It … Now What? – Debra Belue

One highlights from this session include recording students & teachers booktalking, sharing their own stories, and research projects and recording them for play on their MP3 players (the library has sets of them) which students can check out.  They have a recess book walking club – each student has an MP3 player and they walk and listen to booktalks the teachers, students, or downloads from StreamlineSC.  She has parents give permission for student to be able to check out MP3s as well as to join the club as they are giving up recess. High schools could do for study halls.

Place Based Stories – Michael Edwards

Very interesting.  Documenting local history for future generations – a Memory Project that students can produce to preserve stories before they die out.  Great thing, he’s at Pelion HS which is just up the road from me!  Two ways: Google Earth and iPod Museum Tours.  Geotag and upload photos, documents, audio and video to Google Earth and take virtual tours of your area.  They use different place markers to delineate eras or types of events.  For the iPod Museum tours, everything is on your iPod (text, audio, video) all hyperlinked and organized.  You drive to the location (or walk depending upon the area) and listen, watch, read about the location.  This allows you to physically experience the place.  Here are his resources.

Abort, Retry, or Fail: Management Skills for Today – Jude Hunt

Engaging speaker – very nicely done.  There were a couple of things that stood out:

• Defusing phrases: I Understand; Probably So; Nevertheless; and I’m Sorry.  All used as a complete sentence w/ nothing after them.  They acknowledge the student and his/her “feelings” without agreeing or disagreeing.  Used appropriately they can stop disruptions before they escalate.

• The other was a “refocus” space with a reflections form on why they were sent to “time out.”  This can be a place in your room or preferably a co-workers room – but never the hall or an office where students can just goof off or be seen as a get out class free card.  Gives the student time to chill out without further disrupting your teaching.  What I liked about this idea was the form asked the student what they did to get sent to time out (they have to reflect and understand what behavior sent them there) which then goes into their file as documentation – great for parent/teacher conference and if further discipline is required.  There is a lot more to this concept as well as in his presentation, but I’m trying to be brief here!

Lunch today was spent in the august company of Chris Craft, MaryAnn Sansonetti, and Fran Bullington.  We had an enjoyable hour catching up since our last get together at EdTech.  Today was jam packed with learning, laughter, and looking forward to next year with an opportunity to put some of these tools and ideas into place.  Once again I am amazed at a FREE conference being not only enjoyable, but extremely useful.  The notes I’ve shared here aren’t a tenth of the notes I took.

So a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who put together such a fabulous conference!  Let’s do it again next year!

Updated 3/12/08 to add additional links and photo credits that I forgot.  Forgive me, it was late and I was in a hurry to get something posted! – Heather

Today marked the beginning of the 2009 SCASL annual conference in Greenville.  I am fortunate enough to have been allowed by my principal to attend,   Many of my fellow colleagues in the library world haven’t been as lucky.

Once again, I’ll be sharing my notes and thoughts from my experiences at conference.

I drove up to Greenville yesterday – after a side trip to Charlotte, NC.  I had to stop by the Apple Store to get a replacement battery for my Macbook.  Thankfully, it was covered under my warranty!  I couldn’t attend conference without my laptop!  But it sure made for a LONG trip – a little over 4 hours in total.  Anyway, here are the sessions I attended today:

Storytelling Through Pictures – Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Presented by Donna Goldsmith, Tim Van Heule, and Cathy Arnold – This pre-conference session was an all day experience beginning with a morning ride on the trolley to the Greenville Zoo.  We were met by a zoo guide who provided a very enjoyable and informational explanation of the animals: how they came to the zoo; their care and feeding; endangered species renewal plans; mated pare matching, etc.  Throughout the tour we were given the task of taking photographs to be used in our digital storytelling session in the afternoon.  In addition to my taking photos for the session, I also agreed to be a Roving Reporter for the SCASL IT Committee – I agreed to take photos and video interviews from our group to be shared with the folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  We are using the SCASL Ning to share information and live streaming of some sessions from conference.

After returning to the convention center and a boxed lunch, we met back up and were introduced to various storytelling tools.  See the presenters website for the tools they discussed: Flickr, Glogster, Photostory, etc.  After uploading our photos to Flickr, we were to use one of the tools they covered and create our own digital story of out trip.  Sorry, I don’t have one to share as I didn’t get to that part – I was too busy talking and going through others photos!  I kinda got sidetracked by all of the giraffe photos everyone took.  I love the giraffe.  I don’t know if you can see it in this photo, but the female giraffe is resting her head on the male giraffe’s back.  How sweet is that?  Another highlight of the giraffe segment of our trip was watching the little kids try to throw crackers to the giraffes – not an easy feat.  We learned that a zoo worker would go out later in the day and collect all of the crackers that didn’t make it to the giraffes and then feed them to the pair.  It was interesting, if someone sad, to see how the giraffes had to contort to reach the crackers on the ground.  

Can We Work Together?  Using Collaborative Tools

Presented by Cathy Nelson and Fran Bullington – As a member of the IT Committee, I assisted Cathy, Fran and Anne Lemieux with streaming the session using UstreamTV.  This was one of our efforts to include folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  I was in charge of the camera and chat room (once we figured it out!)  I am by no means an expert and I apologize for the poor camera work.

The session focused on using Wikis and Google Documents to collaborate with teachers and/or students to collaborate on group projects.  If/When I get the links to the session, I’ll update this post with them.

Reflections

While I truly enjoyed both sessions – the Zoo and the picture perfect, beautiful day were wonderful and I had fun working the camera for Cathy and Fran’s session – I must say the highlight of the day was having dinner with Cathy, Fran, Anne, and Doug Johnson! Fran took us to Flat Rock where I had a tasty meal and we shared fabulous conversations and laughs together.  I bet we were the highlight of our waiter’s evening!  Doug is a HOOT and a witty fellow!  I’m looking forward to attending one or two of his sessions, as well as his keynote, tomorrow.

Well, its getting late and the first session starts at 7:45 tomorrow morning and I want to make it there on time, so gonna hit the sack.

Photo Credit:

Greetings from SCASL 2.0: Experience the Journey @ your library.

DSC01317 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

DSC01315 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

More from Thursday:

I forgot to mention the fun I had last night at dinner with Cathy Nelson, Jessica Donaldson, Chris Craft and Fran Bullington at the Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery – after Chris made us walk all the way around Broadway at the Beach!  Not that I minded, too much, as I don’t believe I’ve ever visited there at night.  It was neat to see the lights and walk over the bridges.  And I got a kick out of watching Chris get so excited about feeding the fish.  Those were some HUGE fish – they were even biting the ducks!  Of course, I also teased him about the idea that you’re supposed to work OFF a meal, not work up to a meal!

From the “Encouraging Reading Through Technology” session I wanted to expand more on my notes regarding the “Senior Athletes Read” program.  The READ posters/trading cards are of only senior student athletes.  The posters are displayed around the school and at the games.  Their school has a specific block/period during the school day (4th block?) for athletic practice.  During this block, the coaches have made arrangements for the athletes to read to elementary classes.  The media specialists design the posters and trading cards and photograph the students.  The posters are printed on an HP Designjet printer and are laminated.  Other items I failed to mention include banners promoting reading are paraded during pep rallies “Win, Fight, Read” or something like that.  Another program was their book club – they read The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson and invited their local coroner to participate & talk about her job. Resources on their handout:

• Photostory
• Scholastic Video Booktalks
• Blogs
• CrazyTalk
• Turning PowerPoint slides into a screen saver

Friday:

I did decide to sleep in an extra hour!  So there were only two sessions I attended; however, both were excellent and ended EdTech on a high note.

Reaching Out Beyond the Walls: Distance Learning for Everyone – presented by John Woodring.  Despite some technical difficulties with the Internet access, this was an interesting session using Wiziq for distance training/meetings.  I’ve been toying with learning a system (preferably free) that we can use in our district media specialist association to provide access to our meetings/workshops for folks who can’t make it in person to our meetings.  Despite the technical difficulties, I found it interesting to chat with folks he’s been collaborating with.

Using Excel for More Than Spreadsheets! – presented by Donna Goldsmith from the SC Department of Education.  She showed examples of using Excel for interactivity in the classroom.  This session was awesome and Donna was a blast.  I so would have loved to have been in her classroom as a kid (or adult!)  Since she said her materials would be on the EdTech website, I didn’t take notes; however, as of right now they are not there.  I’ve emailed her for copies and would be happy to forward them on once I get them.

I will say the items she showed were real “wow” as well as “duh” moments for me.  For example: inserting a map of the US as the background (turning off the grid lines) then using comments to enter the state name/capitals (making sure to resize the columns and rows really small).  You could also put a picture of any diagram (cell structure, disection photo, etc.) of anything you want to label and use comments and/or create a matching type worksheet.  DUH! moment for me.

I didn’t stick around for the Luncheon.  Mom and I had a nice lunch at Margaritaville and did a little more shopping and walked around The Gay Dolphin before heading back to the condo.  You can see more of the photos my Mom snapped while we were in Myrtle Beach on my Flickr Photostream.

Saturday we had an early breakfast (well early for me since I don’t usually get up unil well after 10am if I’m on vacation or weekends) and checked out of the condo.  We stopped at the 501 Tanger outlets, had lunch, and headed on home.  Since we were passing by the Sumter Outlet mall, we just had to stop – boy is it NOT worth the stop.  There were only like 8 stores, but Mom could have stayed there and spent some money at the Antiques store.  We got home after dark and couldn’t bring outselves to empty out the car.  Spent all day Sunday unpacking and getting organized for today.  Since there was no food in the house we headed into Orangeburg to the IHOP!  Pecan Coffee Cake Pancakes, YUM! So, another fall vacation has come and gone.  Time to get back to work.

PS:  Oooh, reminder for everyone to plan for the Upstate Technology Conference: “Teach Tomorrow Today,” June 23 – 25, 2009.  The Call for Presentations is open.

Not to make anyone jealous, but I’ve actually not been to work all week.  *grin*  I’ve been enjoying the nice (well it WAS nice) weather over here in Myrtle Beach, SC.  Each year I take the week off of school to come vacation for a few days and then attend the EdTech Conference.

Mom and I arrived in Myrtle Beach on Saturday, and I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day to drive/arrive.  Yes, you read right, my Mom comes with me each year – hey, she lets me use her time share exchange so I don’t have to pay for a hotel!  The least I can do is let her tag along and be her chauffeur for her shopping excursions.  Such a hardship on my part isn’t it?  Sunday was an equally beautiful day; however, Monday through Wednesday it rained.

This year, to save my school/self money, I became a full-time volunteer for EdTech in order to receive free registration – all I have to do is attend assigned sessions and scan peoples badges for those wanting to receive recertification credit.  How cool is that?!  The beauty is that I was assigned almost (if not all) of my first choices in sessions.  Gotta love those EdTech folks!  I also helped stuff conference bags Tuesday night.  Let me tell you, those EdTech folks are a hoot!  I never thought I’d have fun stuffing bags.

Anyway, as a way to 1) prove to folks (sic principal) I did attend sessions, 2) have a record of my notes for referral, and 3) share what I’ve learned with you guys, I’ll once again post my notes and thoughts about my conference experiences.  So here goes:

Wednesay

Your 2.0 Sandbox: Come Play and Learn – presented by my good friend Cathy Nelson.  I hadn’t planned on attending any sessions on Wednesday, but since it was for Cathy, I of course volunteered to facilitate!  As always, I had fun.  I also enjoyed going to lunch with MaryAnn Sansonetti, Julia Davis, Jessica (sorry, can’t remember your last name!), Cathy, and Chris Craft.  MaryAnn sure loves hush puppies!

SC Online Resources – presented by Catherine Giddens from SC Department of Education – focus was on online professional development opportunities for South Carolina teachers.  They also mentioned Thinkfinity.org (formerly MarcoPolo) and DISCUS.

I was invited to attend a DEN dinner by three different people (thanks guys!) and got to hear more about OnePlaceSC and the great services Discovery Education provides.  My whole lunch group was there along with some other folks I know (in person or by reputation) and I’m seriously considering applying to be a DEN STAR Educator.

Thursday

Today I had a full schedule of sessions to work/attend.  The day started with a bang, started to peeter our, but then finished on a high note for me.

Encouraging Reading Through Technology: Ideas on How to Promote YA Books - Presented by CayLen Whitesides and Robin Mitchell from York Comprehensive High School

Awesome session!  Well worth getting up early to attend.  Here are my notes:

• Use Photostory Booktalks (written/performed by students) as part of their independent novel projects.
• Put message on the marque outside the school (at the road) “Read More Books” so passerby’s are reminded to read, too!  In our case, we’d put this on our internal message board.
• Senior Athletes Read: The media specialists create READ posters of the high seniors to post around the schools.  The seniors choose the book they want to be photographed with and the location of the photo shoot.  The media specialists also created “trading cards” of the seniors with the READ photo/poster, team name, student name, and jersey number on the front.  The back contains their stats: graduation year, position, height, weight, AND FAVORITE CHILDREN’S BOOK.
• In conjunction with the Senior Athletes Read, the school’s COACHES organize the student athletes to go to the elementary school to read to the youngsters.  They hand out their trading cards to the kids (’cause to the elem kids, the high school students are their heroes just as college and pro athletes are our kids heroes)  Of course, their school has a block (or in our school, a class period) assigned as athletic practice.
• Author cards – similar to their senior trading cards, but the front is the picture of a book and the back contains the authors webpage, a couple of other titles, and just a bit about the author.
• Book flyers – picture of the book, summary, and other titles.
• Book PowerPoints – cover of book, book summary, StreamlineSC (United Streaming to non-South Carolinian’s) video clips for relevant info (example, for The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti they included a clip about elephants and another about teen panic attacks.)
• But the best of the best (for me – and a “duh” moment) was the idea of using a digital picture frame as a literacy promoter.  They save their PPT slides as jpegs and load them to the digital picture frame to highlight whatever they are promoting – be it a single title, an author spotlight, a genre’ spotlight, etc.  She also stated they wrote a grant to pay for purchasing them!  How cool!  [An audience member stated that they now make digital photo frames that play MP3 and/or .avi files.]

Cool Free Tech Tools for Teacher Use – Presented by Michael Edwards from Pelion High School

Presenting freeware products that could be useful in classrooms.  The majority of the items are “games” that he created himself using Mediator software.  I would link to them, but don’t have his permission.  If I obtain permission, I’ll update this post.  The tools he shared include: Cool Timer, TI Flash Debugger, Random Student Picker, Jeopardy 3/4, Adventures in Learning, Koosh Ball Kraze 1 & 2, Trivial Pursuit, President Squares, Think Link, Wheel of Knowledge, Beat The Clock, Seen it: Physical Science Edition.

Apple – Engaging Learners with Innovative Technologies – presented by Janice Adams – showed us some tips and applications in Mac OS X – Leopard.  Included: dictionary app, widget feature in Safari, calculators (standard, scientific, programmers) and Grapher (graphing calculator app).  There were more, but I can’t recall them right now.

The next session I went to was horrible and I won’t embarrass the presenter by documenting it here.  The name for the session was a TOTAL misdirection and if I hadn’t been assigned to scan recert cards, I would have walked out.

Is There a “Second Life” for teachers and students? – presented by Gary Senn.  I’m a total beginner with the whole Second Life phenom.  I had already created an avatar (Sayrah Glazner), and finally was able to get off of the Intro Island prior to the session.  This session was good for me in learning more about how to move around/interact and for places to visit in SL for educators.  I was too busy trying to manuver w/in the program to take notes.  I still don’t know/believe there is a place for SL in my school (or any school), but I had fun learning more about SL.

Overall, today was a good learning day.  I hope tomorrow will be, too!  Somehow, the EdTech folks forgot to assign me to an 8am session, so I’m thinking of sleeping in another hour before heading out to the convention center. Think anyone will miss me?  Of course, the sessions all look like vendor pitches, so I don’t think I’ll miss out on anything…no money or clout to purchase their stuff!

***Note to me for things to bring next year:  a power strip!  I was surprised to see how many people brought laptops.  I’d say the number trippled or quadruppled over last year.  In most sessions there are only one or two power plugs and you have to get there early if you want to plug up or recharge your batteries.

Today, all Aiken County Public School teachers and administration were required to attend a mandatory inservice to hear Dr. Ben Caron, author of Gifted Hands and Think Big. I was looking forward to hearing Dr. Carson’s address and was not disappointed. A few of the tidbits I remember (hopefully correctly – any errors are my own) and/or wrote down include:

In response to parents bringing their kids in to be diagnosed with ADD – Yes, they do have ADD because of your plopping them down in front of TVs as soon as they can sit up. For allowing them to spend all their free time on computers and video games. Parents, wean your kids off of technology (TV, computers, video games, etc.) and start spending quality time with your kids. Get them reading, involved in sports, and make connections with your kids to slow their minds down. Parents are the ones who are ADD – they aren’t paying attention to their kids.

“There is no such thing as useless knowledge.” Learn anything and everything you can. READ! Reading leads to learning.

“Teachers are the ones who tell you why you CAN do something, not why you CAN’T.” Don’t focus on students limitations, have higher expectations for them. Also liked that he said stop making excuses – no matter what the student’s situations/limitations, they have a brain and they can use it. Excuses only hold them back.

Peers = People encouraging errors resulting in stupidity. Dr. Carson told of how after discovering his capacity to learn in elementary school and middle school, he entered high school. He faltered his freshman year by listening to his peers instead of following his own path.

I must say I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Carson’s address and thank our district and community leaders for arranging to have him come and share his experiences, thoughts, and beliefs with us.