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

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.

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.

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.

I’m finally getting around to writing about my trip to Greenville where I attended the Upstate Technology Conference (UTC) (June 25 – 26), and let me tell you I am still tired and on brain overload even now.

UTC ROCKED! Thank you Cathy Nelson for telling me about this conference. I had already signed up to attend UTC when I was told the dates for the Education and Business Summit (EBS) overlapped UTC. Thankfully, both conferences were in Greenville, SC (practically around the corner from each other) and my new principal agreed to let me slip out of our High Schools That Work (HSTW) sessions on Wednesday to go to UTC instead. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Arriving at J. L. Mann HS I couldn’t help compare the school to my own school. It is amazing: new technology everywhere; whiteboards/LCDs in every classroom; large, open classrooms; ginormous library media center; computers all over the place; TV broadcasting over the computer; message displays in the lobby/café area; a drama/journalism studio; I could go on and on, but I’m sure you can already tell I’m envious! (BTW: Did anyone else notice the stairwell lights were motion censored to come on/brighten only when you entered the stairwell?!)

The other big surprise: blogs, wikis, Flickr, and other Web 2.0 tools WERE NOT BLOCKED! Now, this may have been only to accommodate the conference, but I’d like to believe that this is always the case.

The tone of the conference was set with keynote addresses by Ewan McIntosh and David Jakes. Both were awesome speakers – witty, informative, and engaging. Definitely not boring! If you don’t already subscribe to their blogs DO SO NOW! Both speakers stressed the need for educators to learn to use the Web 2.0 tools that our students and young people today are already using and for educators to develop an online learning community (professional network). Students shouldn’t be learning (and we shouldn’t be teaching) in isolation. Connecting with others enhances the learning!

I’m thankful teachers from my school as well as other Aiken County folks attended to learn from these masters. Hopefully, we can start a movement in our district to bring the ideas and tools to our students, too! A few of the concurrent sessions that made an impression on me were:

“Making Your Podcast More Pro” – Ewan McIntosh: After attending this session, I wanted to immediately take down my podcasts and fix them. Of course, this isn’t practical. At least I have better guidelines for future endeavors. Basically, my big mistake is having long intros. They should be no longer than 10 seconds and should state the purpose of your podcast/what you’re going to talk about so people can decide if they want to listen or not. Another tip, host the podcasts where your listeners can leave comments to promote an ongoing dialog.

“Thinking Out of the Xbox: Creative Writing Through Computer Games” – Ewan McIntosh: “Play helps us understand the world around us.” He equated reading a game (level) can be the same as reading a chapter. Not being a gamer, I was unaware of just how much text could be in a video game. He showed example of a teacher using the game MYST III: Exile to have students write about their thoughts, observations, feelings the game/visual/setting evokes.

“iPod-abilities in the Classroom” – MaryAnn Sansonetti: If you click on the title link, you’ll be taken to her wiki for this session, which has links for all of the notes I took so I needn’t post them here! Since I already have an iPod and am familiar with educational podcasts, I was mostly interested in ways to incorporate them into the classroom. Thanks MaryAnn for all the wonderful suggestions.

“Digital Storytelling 2.0: What’s Next?” – David Jakes: You can click the link in the title above to go to the wiki where the keynote slides and digital storytelling information can be found. Along with various storytelling tools, the message I took away from the Digital Storytelling session is that it’s “the story within the story” that should be the focus of any storytelling project. You’re going for the emotional impact, not the “we did this and this and this…” Use sounds, visuals, music, cutting to images, etc., all to evoke an emotion in your audience. Also, script and storyboard before you put together your digital story.

“Don’t Read to Me – A Presentation on Presentations” – Chris Craft: WOW! Chris used Cognitive Load Theory to show why bad presentations cause students to revert to bad habits because they cannot process all of the information you’re throwing at them (among other reasons!) Talk about a dynamic speaker with such a needed message! I admit, I’ve been a bad PowerPoint user in the past, but I’ve never been a fan of PPT to begin with. Needless to say, I immediately Twittered Chris to come speak at our school! Great thing is, he’s practically around the corner (relatively speaking) to Wagener, and best of all he said YES! Now I have to convince my principal this is a great idea, too! (Carrie, help me out!) Oh, you can also read Ewan McIntosh’s post about Chris’s presentation here.

Of course, I have a lot of additional notes (or should I say more messages to myself), and I went to a few other sessions, but this post is already long enough! [BTW, one of my teachers won a drawing at UTC, so not only did she take away the prize of new ideas, but computer speakers, too!]

I also want to say it was great to meet so many of my Twitter friends and people whose blogs I follow…many for the first time face-to-face. It was also a thrill to have lunch on Wednesday with Pat Hensley, Cathy Nelson, Julia Davis, Chris Craft, and MaryAnn Sansonetti … but to make my day even better, David Jakes and Ewan McIntosh joined us! I also want to send out a big thank you to the folks who organized the UTC. You did a phenomenal job and I can’t wait to see what’s in store next year.

Session 1: Blogging and Podcasting – Presenter: Brad Fountain from Discovery Education

• I learned that StreamlineSC (UnitedStreaming) has sound files, which I didn’t know before.
• I learned that I may be interested in becoming a STAR Discovery Educator (some of the many perks include great training and a blog that won’t be blocked by my school district).
• Use a blog as Classroom/Teacher web page for communicating with parents and include pages for: announcements/calendar, assignments, resources, discussion questions.
• That if I add someone to my Frequent Contacts they shouldn’t be bounced by school email (so @cathyjo if you’re reading this, try emailing me again from gmail!)

Session 2: Google Earth Basics – Presenter: Tom Taylor (www.geopackrat.com)

• Wow. Information overload. While I have downloaded Google Earth to my Macbook and opened it up, I had never actually used it before. There is so much to explore and the possibilities for using this in the classroom are NUMEROUS. Not just the Google Lit Trips I learned about at SCASL.

Session 3: Blogging – Presenter: LaQuita Hutchinson

• The best thing to come out of this session is getting my email on her mailing list! She sends out lots of great resources for K-12 education, many of which I will be passing along on future Odds & Ends posts.
• She also taught us how to create a blog using Blogger. While the service seems much simpler to use than Edublogs or WordPress, Blogger is blocked by most school districts.

Session 4: VoiceThread – Presenter: Nic Finelli

• Again, I was already familiar with VoiceThread and had created an educator account, but I have not actually used the service yet.

• The best thing about attending this session were the examples he shared. One idea was to use VoiceThread to document field trips. Have students take along voice recorder and/or cameras to document their trip. Then create a VoiceThread to share what they learned and allow others to comment.

• While browsing for examples on VoiceThread, I also came across this one on Information Literacy Perspectives by Della Curtis that I thought was good.

Session 5: Small Wonder Cameras – Presenter: Bill Sheskey

• While I knew the Small Wonder Cameras were similar to the Flip Video Camera I recently purchased, I knew there were a few differences. The Small Wonder has a flip out display and you can add an SD card.

• The great thing about this session as it wasn’t about the camera, but the lessons/activities examples. One technique was to distribute a photograph to groups and the groups had 3 minutes to decide Who, What, Where and When. After the three minutes, he recorded the groups answers on the Small Wonder camera and showed how easy it was to download the clips to the computer.
• Mr. Sheskey also showed other online tools as well. Picnik a neat photo editing site was one of these tools.

Session 6: Geotagging - Presenter: Tom Taylor (www.geopackrat.com)

• Never heard of this before, but basically it is to place a geographical location tag to stuff: photographs, videos, blogs, etc. and in this case, then mark them on Google Earth. There is no way I can explain it in a blog post. Sorry.
• Neat thing I didn’t know was that if you set the time stamp on your camera to to the same time that is on your GPS device, you can merge the GPS dates tracking file with your photographs and tag your photos with the geographical location right on the photo file itself. Only drawback is that the geotag is of where you were standing, not necessarily where the subject of your photograph is located.
• Tom has some wonderful photographs up on Flickr that he’s taken. I highly recommend checking them out.

As you can see, I attended some really great sessions. I highly recommend the ETV Tech Workshops. There will be another round in July (29th – 31st) and registration opens May 6th. Register early as the sessions usually fill up fast.

• Most of her items can be found at http://informationfluency.wikispaces.com
• “Kids are already content creators,” be it good or bad content, we need to make that content appropriate, legal, better, etc.
• She charged us with ensuring that blogs, wikis, nings, and other Web 2.0 tools are unblocked by our schools/districts. We should be illustrating, discussing, showing these tools are essential tools/skills that should be taught to our kids and not block access to our kids. My word: Instead of telling kids we don’t trust them at all (hence the blocking of all websites) we should be teaching them how to be responsible citizens and users of technology.
• Educators (especially media specialists) need to become familiar with Creative Commons and ensure our teachers are using appropriate (and legal) images. No more Google images searches!
• VoiceThread was highlighted and some ideas I thought of were to use this instead of PowerPoint – specific project include family stories and book reviews/reports.
• Apple Learning Interchange: “The Apple Learning Interchange (ALI) is a social network for educators. Find a wealth of content ranging from simple lesson ideas to in-depth curriculum units for K-12 educators as well as a new channel for Higher Education faculty showcasing campus projects, research and more.”

Friday: “Booktalking the Young Adult Book Award Nominees” presented by the Young Adult Book Award Committee. My last official act as a member of the YABA committee was to booktalk The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson. I also booktalked the book The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin for another member who couldn’t make the conference. To start the session, Mary Lou Elliot, our committee Chairpserson, played the podcast episode for Avalon High by Meg Cabot. The podcasts were performed by my Wagener-Salley HS drama club students. The podcasts will be made available shortly on the SCASL website but, at the time of this posting, they have not yet been uploaded. Until then, you can access the first two here and from a link on the Wagener-Salley HS Library Media Center page.

“Google Lit Trips: A Journey Your Students Will Never Forget” presented by Julia Davis, Richland School District One Instructional Technology Specialist. I posted this on an earlier blog post since I thought the tool was such a good one. There are so many possibilities for using Google Earth on it’s own, but Lit-Trips are great way to involve students imaginations and help them understand settings in novels, and possibly timelines/history depending upon how you set up your trip!

And last, but certainly not least, I attended the Author Celebration Luncheon featuring Jamie Adoff, Melinda Long, and Eloise Greenfield. We also learned which books won the 2007-2008 Awards:

Picture Book: Sweet Tooth by Margie Palatini
Childrens Book: The Old Willis Place: a Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn
Junior Book: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Young Adult Book: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Whew! Overall, what I really took from the SCASL conference was a renewed energy and excitement for my profession. And of course, lots of new tools to explore and skills to learn! Thanks to all of the conference planning and organization folks (and especially to Valerie Byrd-Fort) for all your hard work and dedication. It paid off in spades!

“Digital Comics, Graphic Novels, Sequential Art, and Technology Enhanced Learning” presented by Annette Lamb.

Just a few of my many notes from this session are below. I wrote down a bunch more of specific graphic novels I wanted to check out to see if I might start carrying them in my school library. I also jotted down some specific uses for current assignments by various teachers at my school. If you are interested in reading all of my notes, send me a request and I’ll get a copy to you.

• Comics are sequential arts. One panel is actually a cartoon not a comic.
• Marvel has many of their classic comics online.
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
• Check out Wikimedia Commons part of wikipedia free photos that can be used in production. The CDC has a Public Health Image Library students can use in their assignments.
• She uses the Comic Life software package available for both mac and windows, only $20 for individual license, and as educators, can load it to your school and home computers. Make quick comic pages (or books) in minutes.
• Using Graphic Novels with Children & Teens from Scholastic. Click on the box that says: “Click Here for Teaching with Graphix”

The next session I atted was “Jamie Adoff – From Rock n Roll to Poetry/Prose and Everything in Between” presented by young adult novel author Jamie Adoff.

Mr. Adoff was a dynamic and enthusiastic speaker. I didn’t realize he also wrote picture books, as I was only familiar with his young adult novels. I didn’t take notes, as I was to enraptured of his presentation. I did write down that he is the son of Arnold Adoff and the late Virginia Hamilton. Wow, to have TWO authors as parents!

General Session/Keynote Seaker Joyce Valenza – “Web 2.0 Meets Information Fluency: Designing Projects for 21st Century Learners.”

Once again, I didn’t take notes as I was too much in awe of the speaker. I do remember the challenge she gave us to begin using the items she went over and that if these are blocked in our schools/districts, then it’s our job to see that this is changed. I did write down three things:

• Subscribe to Alan Levine’s Cogdogroo Wiki & blog
• Tip to search for photos in FlickR using not just nouns, but also by verbs and adjectives, too!
• Image Chef to create custom graphics see the one I created “Wagener-Salley Rocks!”

After the Keynote, I volunteered at the SCASL Store booth for a little over an hour and then went to lunch at Monterrey’s (one of my favorite Mexican restaurant chains).

The last session of the day I attended was “School Library Websites: The State of the Art – Information Landscapes for 21st Century Learners” presented by Joyce Valenza and one where I was one of the facilitators!

As with the Keynote, I’m blown away by all that Joyce Valenza does and had to share with us. Many of the items she shared I had already been introduced to by Cathy Nelson, but it was wonderful to see how they are used in schools. Once again she charged us with seeing that these tools are unblocked and used (used appropriately!) in our schools. Items she showcased: Twitter, Skype, Amimoto, and VoiceThread.

At the end of the session, I was both pumped and exhausted. I made one more pass of the vendor booths and then went to Richland County Public Library to pick up some books needed for my booktalking session on Friday. Then I headed home.

Even though the session didn’t start until 10am, I made sure to get there in plenty of time to get a parking spot in the conference lot. I arrived at around 8:30, signed in, got the facilitator packet and proceeded to wait for Dr. Pat (who arrived at around 9:00.) Good thing she got there early, as the items she requested for the room weren’t there! The conference staff was really helpful in finding a computer and VHS player (and even speakers) on short notice. Since they couldn’t get a table, I brought in the one I was lugging around for drama…guess it was a good thing I didn’t clean out my car!

While most of the ideas shared at this session were for the primary grades (puppets, storytelling, picture books) some of the techniques can be adapted for middle and high schools. Young Adults like these things, too, even if they pretend they don’t. However, no matter what the topic, I really needed a shot of Dr. Pat’s enthusiasm more than the content. No matter what she talks about, I always leave feeling inspired and recharged. Notes I jotted down include:

• Model Reading – ask teachers/staff to take some time to come down to the library and read a magazine, newspaper, or even a book! Let students see the importance of reading.
• Team Approach – get folks from the community to use the library, too! Open your doors (and advertise) that the school library is their library, too! Of course, will need to verify the feasibility of this with administration first! Would be great if we can as the public library has limited days and hours it operates and offering a place for the community to find their information needs would be wonderful. Also, work more closely with the public library.
• Purpose of the Library: support & enhance the curriculum; enrich other required & elective curricula; support personal enrichment; and support professional development. Outcomes: supports and enriches classroom learning; broadens student & teacher interests; and inspire lifelong learning.
• Use the PIE approach for programming: Planning (bulk of the pie), Implementation, Evaluation.
• Know what’s happening in your community: read newspapers, gather calendar of events (sports, school, holidays, churches, community, etc.) Go to the mall and note displays, slogans, and trends.

Since I had to lug the table back to my car (or carry it to the next session, NOT), I missed the first concurrent session. Instead, I had a nice long conversation with Mary (Media Specialist at Busbee Elem.)

Went to the Exhibit Hall Opening (5:30 – 7:30) and walked around all of the vendor booths. Okay vendor selection, same ones as always, and nothing really exciting. Did like that Walden Media had a booth with lots of great posters, activity guides, and even a free book! Stopped over at the Exploratorium and spoke with the folks from my old stomping grounds (Richland County Public Library) and met Cathy Nelson face-to-face for the first time. We’ve been communicating via email, Skype, Twitter (not really), and each other’s blogs ever since she introduced me to RSS back at EdTech in October.

After the exhibit hall closed, Cathy, Mary, and myself went out to eat at California Dreaming and talked for another two hours! Needless to stay, it was really late before I got home (45 minute drive from Columbia!) and I was still so jazzed from all that happened and that I learned that day that I had a hard time winding down enough to sleep.