Remember to tag...

It's a hard habit to get into but I am finding it very helpful.

Meeting with Susan, Keith and Kim

To discuss w/ Keith, Susan, Kim:
- hosting Moodle for a few teachers next year
- access to installing software, browser updates, etc.--power users?
- student email aliases
- better publicize what's available--some teachers don't know what they can ask for
- Better distribution/accountability of the tablets to substitute for smartboards (are people sitting on them?)
- pass on faculty responses to survey--want projectors, tablet-type things
- possibility of hosting wikis? Coordinators supporting pbwiki?
- Show the wii
- Discuss tech training website--integration with park staff page.
- Money (for subscriptions, etc.)--not next year--future budgets
- Their questions, comments

Note: let's not do feel the need to give them a full demo of everything we've been doing--let's focus on questions, and they can learn about the things themselves later

Digication

I've been in touch with digication and they're going to add you both as users so we can really test things out. However, we might decide to abandon this right away. They gave me a quote for the department - 10 teachers, 20 students - for a little over $300 per year. For the whole MS and US it would cost THOUSANDS. Meanwhile, I still love how easy it is to use.

RSS subscriptions feature added to Blogger!

Check out the area to the right...Blogger has just added some features including an area there that makes it a lot easier to subscribe to the blog. When I clicked to add an RSS feed of our blog to my Google Reader, it gave me an error the first time, but then it seemed to work great the next time I tried it. I still don't know how to get rid of the "Subscribe (Atom)" at the bottom of the page, though.

Snapz Pro with Movie Capture

I am looking at Snapz Pro for capturing video screen shots...I never needed that feature before but in writing the online tutorials I found it a little frustrating not to just be able to put in a little video showing how I clicked and opened things! Waiting to hear from the company to make sure it is in fact true that I don't have a license to cover that feature already. See Ambrosia Software for details. I believe it is a Mac-only program but I'm sure there are comparable things out there for Windows.

PBwiki tutorial done

Comments and tips would be much appreciated.
Wiki Help

Ning--Growing on me!

As I work on the tutorial for Ning, I am really very impressed with it. Uploading photos and movies is VERY easy. I think it might almost be more useful for what I have in mind for my 6th grade classes than pbwiki. I have a fairly specific set of purposes and I don't really have a lot of HW assignments as I would for a different type of class.

Chat

cPros:
- multiple people can be typing at the same time, which actually increases the amount of participation you can have, especially from people for whom conversational wait time is a bigger problem.

Cons:
- thoughts sometimes get shared out of order. (Then again, that sometimes causes them not to be shared at all when face-to-face--I'm thinking of faculty meetings where you don't end up making your point because the conversation has already moved on past it.)

Telecommuting

We're trying out working from home today, partly to experience the kinds of interactions that many of our students have on a daily basis in the evenings, and partly to make a few life arrangements easier for us on this particular day. We'll be using Diigo for links, the blog as a notebook, and chat programs as quick communication. We're going to be looking for the strengths and weaknesses of this arrangement and these modes of communication.

Wii Remote Continued

Today I was able to put an infrared LED into a mini-flashlight and have the Wii remote detect it. I still need to test it on an actual whiteboard since I'm not sure if the LED I am using is powerful enough for the remote's camera to detect from that far away.

Wii Whiteboard Progress...

I was able to convert an LED squeeze flashlight into an infrared LED "pen" that the Wii remote could detect. I have to test it for whiteboard distances, though; the infrared LED might not be powerful enough to be picked up by the Wii remote's camera from a longer distance.

Tutorials are a pain

They take lots of time. Screenshots are labor-intensive. We'll see how far I get on my three, but I'll definitely finish the pbwiki one.

Copyright and Online Safety Section

I have been working on a section on the parktechtraining wiki called "Copyright, Privacy and Other Considerations." I think that although a lot of this is common sense, for teachers who haven't done a lot of this up until now or who haven't really thought about it in a systematic way before could benefit from these guidelines. As I'm writing from the perspective of a middle school teachers, some of what I have put there may seem overly restrictive for the Upper School. (I know from experience that MS teachers have been very receptive to using these guidelines whenever I've brought them up.) Open to suggestions and edits!

Wii Remote/Wii Whiteboard Hack Continued

Went out to Baynesville Electronics to see if they had an infrared LED flashlight or some infrared LEDs...bought some and some switches and such to try making a pen from scratch. My first attempt did not work but I am going to keep trying. I have also found a 99 cent LED flashlight that I might be able to pull apart fairly easily and swap out the LED with one of the infrared LEDs. I am having fun with the puzzle of trying to build the light pen (it would make a not-too-hard project for some of my more advanced tech kids, actually, so I think I will buy a Wii remote for my classroom if only for that purpose) but if this is going to be a practical solution as a low-cost alternative to the interactive whiteboards or Mimios (which still cost quite a lot more, $600-800 for the most basic model depending on the vendor), I think we will have to look for pre-made pens or for something that is extremely easy to modify without looking clunky like the one I built. Or have kids do it. More to follow...

Meeting with Louise

Important things to take away:
- Pay attention to the initial rollout, in terms of cost, time, and faculty burden. Maybe consider recruiting groups of people who would definitely get on board.
- Tailor rollout/pitch to divisions.
- Meet with Matt and Kim to show what we've been working on, discuss different needs of different divisions, talk about ways to train, and invite to add ideas to wiki or whatever method of rollout.
- Talked about privacy, school image, comments on webpages.
- Money will be available for various implementation issues through Program Implementation fund.
- Talk to Keith and Susan about building money into tech budget in the future.

Making Implementation Fun!!!

I am actually not kidding about doing this; I think (most) people would enjoy the humor and it might make this seem like a friendlier undertaking. In our "9 Tech Tools You Should Try in 08-09" (or whatever we are going to call it), we should include some kind of incentives, like merit badges (which could be like the badges people put on their social networking pages or blogs...maybe Carolyn's class could design some for us?!) which they could earn if they completed certain tasks at any point in the year. An example of a task: "Set up a blog on Blogger and invite Samira, Elliot and Carolyn to join." Once we get the invitation, we email the badge or send a password to a page where they can get the badge, etc. I am willing to put some time into this if you think it's worth it!

For Implementation

For each of the "tech essentials" we are planning to encourage folks to try at least once during the 08-09 year, we should make a quick list of what it's good for. This would then be followed with more detailed information about the tool, specific links, tutorials, examples, and so on. Example:

PBWiki is good for

• collaborative projects and discussions
• posting photos, videos, links, and other items for students to access
• posting files

Ning is good for

• allowing each student to have his/her own blog and photo album accessible by everyone in the class

etc.

(There are better things to include for PBWiki and Ning, I'm just typing off the top of my head.)

Thoughts for my classes (Samira)

• I definitely want to use a wiki for my course page.
• I have always wanted to do more with the idea of "emerging technologies" and current events in technology with my students but time has been a problem. I could set up an article or video each week on the wiki and they would be asked to read/view and respond as a HW assignment.
• A Ning network or a wiki would be a great way to have the kids record their group work when they do their iMovie projects.

Calendar Thoughts

Pros & Cons for various calendars:

- Google Calendar: pretty (pro); can do groups by email invite (neut)
- 30 Boxes: integrated into pbwiki (pro); reader can see calendar w/o being able to edit it (pro); no edit history (con); having trouble getting the personal one I set up to find the pbwiki one (con)
- Plans: eh
- Scrybe: looks good (pro); has offline sync (pro); still in closed beta (con)
- Backpack: looks great, but substantial cost (con)--didn't really explore it
- Ourcal: graphics courtesy of 1998 (big con)
- CalendarHub: eh, but looks fine
- Moodle: calendar events not mutually exclusive (con); automatically would sync w/ assignment dates (pro); good for making announcements (pro)
- Yahoo Calendar: just like Yahoo mail--a little visually busy (con); about the same kind of permission settings as everyone else (neut)--no way to have admin vs. lower editor privileges where the lower editors can't change each other's events

Online Survey/Quiz Software WITH IMAGES?

I want to find a quiz maker like Survey Monkey only one where I can put in photos or screenshots for kids to use when answering questions. Does Moodle do something like that? On my list of things to look for if nobody else has ideas...