Scratch

I am at heart a wannabe computer programmer. I dabble in programing, especially in HTML and PHP code, but I really just know enough to do damage rather than create anything. But programming logic just makes sense to me. One of my favorite things to teach and work with is Lego Robotics, and I specifically worked a good deal with the Robotics Invention System (RIS) 1.0 & 2.0. When I heard that the MIT Media lab (who had collaborate with Lego on the RIS) had created a programming language targeting k-12 students that had the same type of drag and drop blocks that RIS has, I was dying to work with it. But as with most things, it was pushed to the side and I didn't get a chance to really dive in. This summer I made it a priority at ISTE to take advantage of the workshops on Scratch.  Mitch Resnick, the creator of Scratch at MIT, held a BYOL session at ISTE that was one of the best sessions I attended.  We did some pretty basic programming in Scratch, but I could see the potential.  Now, I just needed to find a faculty member who would be interested in trying out Scratch in their classroom.  Luckily, I didn't have to wait too long.  Dr. Micha Jefferies came to me asking how we could take an existing project she used with her elementary education students, creating a board game, and using technology to create the game. This was the perfect opportunity for students to use Scratch to create content-based games.  The purpose of our technology integration was not to learn how to program, but how to use this technology to teach a specific content.  I plan on posting a series about our project and how it is developing this semester.

When technology works....

I have a few blog posts in my mind trying to get out and while I am at EDUCAUSE (see previous post) I will be trying to finally post them. Yesterday, I needed to be in two places at the same time, and I was able to pull it off. While I was here on the West Coast I needed to present at the Friday Institute in Raleigh on social networking and yes, I was able to pull it off. How was I able to do it, you guessed it video conferencing, and it worked :)
This week the Friday Inst is hosting the Teacher Leadership Institute with a focus on teaching in 1:1 schools. It is one of my favorite workshops to be apart of and brings a great group of people together. Unfortunately, this Fall it occurred at the same time as my trip to EDUCAUSE. I was able to be part of the planning team, led by the wonderful Joselyn Todd and Sherry Booth, but I wouldn't be able to do - what I think i do best - teach and facilitate. Once again technology not only came to the rescue, it allowed for us to demonstrate what we have been encouraging our teachers to do, innovate and use technology to transform the classroom experience. So instead of having to be in Raleigh in person, I was able to video conference with Skype and give my presentation as well as ask questions.

So here is my foolproof guide for Video Conferencing on the fly:

1) Nothing is fool proof :)  Have a back-up plan. In my case I created a screencast of my presentation that could be used if we had technical issues. I provided a high quality video to the team leaders, and also placed a version online to be embedded in the institute wiki.

2) Test and test often. One of the downsides of VC on the fly is that I couldn't accurately test the ability to Skype until the day of the seminar.  So we did the best we could by testing the quality of Skype in the room that would be displaying the VC and then I tested in the conference center the first opportunity I could.

3) Don't announce the VC until you are sure you can pull it off.  We never promised a Skype session, so if it didn't work, we wouldn't have to backpedal.  The Skype session was a bonus.  Now this isn't always possible, but in this case it was better to underpromise and exceed expectaions than over-promise and disaapont everyone.

All in all I feel that we really did get to showcase the best of both worlds and I got to be apart of both!

EDUCAUSE 2010

After my ISTE experience this summer I was a bit disenchanted about conferences and how much  I"get out" of attending. I was hoping that attending a different type of conference would be more rewarding and inspiring. I am currently attending EDUCAUSE a higher education tech conference. For the first time in a long time I am traveling with colleagues.  Instead of traveling alone and looking forward to meeting old friends, I am traveling with a group and no one I know (either in person or online) is planning to be here. From a traveling experience it is much more enjoyable and I am having a good time in the evenings. However, I have yet to attend a session that has inspired me or showed me something new. I had been hoping that a different perspective on education would reveal something new and innovative. I made the mistake the first day of going to not only sessions that interested me, but topics that I knew something about. This may seem backward, but I don't want to hear the rehashing of topics I already have heard and seen before, I made a rookie mistake. So today I will be going tosessions I know nothing about, but have a vague interest in. I have high hopes for today and will see what comes......

The Twitter Experiment FAIL

I am a huge fan of Twitter. I have found it instrumental to my growth as a education professional and have made more connections and ultimately friends through using it than I ever thought possible.  However, I have never really gotten my faculty to get on board with the idea of using it in their classrooms.  This summer the perfect situation dropped in my lap.  A professor wanted to actively use Twitter is his class.  It was a large class (over 140 - one of the few large seminars we have in the college) and he had used classroom response systems in the past (i.e. clickers), but wanted to have more open ended questions in class and to give his students options to have a back channel.  This was exactly what I had always talked about Twitter being great for, and I had an instructor that was willing and anxious to use it.  He also had two Teaching Assistant that would be able to man the Twitter stream while he was teaching. I couldn't ask for a better set-up.

The first thing I did was help him and his TAs set-up Twitter accounts so they could get used to using Twitter, and I recommended they use a product like TweetDeck to help keep up with all the various Twitter streams and searches.  Then, I went into their second day of class for the semester, explain what we would be using Twitter for, give some examples, and help everyone create Twitter accounts.  We also introduced a #hashtag for the class so that they could tag their posts for class.  The #hashtag would be used so that students could not only differentiate the posts they write as being class related, but also so students could search for the class #hashtag to see what their fellow students were tweeting.
There were a few students in the class that already had Twitter and were excited and started Tweeting with the class #hastag right way.  I pulled up Tweetdeck on my computer to show the #hastag search and tweets slowly popped in, but only 3 or 4 people were showing up.  I started to get questions from the class asking why their tweets weren't showing up.  I assumed the issue was confirmation e-mails or maybe it just took the system awhile to get them in.  I left the class feeling OK, we had accomplished what I set-out to do and I felt everything would be working by the next class.  I could not have been more wrong. After the next class session I received several e-mails from the professor and the TAs that tweets were not appearing in the search.  So I did what any good tech support person would do - I googled it, and much to my dismay found:


According to Twitter:

1. You are missing because of current resource constraints: Right now, some users may not be seeing their Tweets because of resource constraints. This is more likely affecting you if you're a new user (with an account less than a couple of weeks old). Our search engineers are working on this known issue, and your Tweets should start showing up in search soon!

In other words these students are not appearing in the #hashtag search and may NEVER appear in the #hashtag search.  I tired to set up a Twibe and a Hootcourse, but the momentum had died, my professor was no longer interested, and my grand Twitter experiment just circled the drain. I'm not sure what I'll do next semester, but until this gets fixed, I doubt I will be recommending Twitter.

Are teachers born or made?

Are teachers born or made?  I live in the realm of licensing, of pre-service teachers, certification and MATs. Yet, I have yet to come to terms with not only what makes a good teacher, but how does one become one? I am reminded of my colleagues that have no teaching certification what so ever, yet are some of the best teachers I know. I remember some of my fellow teachers that had all the right papers, but could never command a classroom. Why is that? I have tried to make sense of it all, and as proud as I am of my institution and the strives the we make, I have to recognize that some people are just born teachers. Maybe teaching is more like an art than a science. Artists can still be artists without all the fancy degrees, but yet people still go to school to hone their craft, to learn more why they do what they do. Does that make it a waste of time? Do they become better artists? How can we grow to respect teaching as a talent as much as or even more than a piece of paper can prove?

Edubloggercon 2010

Edubloggercon Group 2 - I'm walking in at the top of the stairs, didn't quite make the picture.

This was my 3rd Edubloggercon and one of the main reasons I enjoy attending ISTE. The unconference format really allows for flexibility and collaborative learning than a typical conference session.  I get much more out of discussions rather than lectures and I wish roundtables were more common at ISTE. I attended about four sessions and overall I enjoyed the experience. Steve Hargadon does a great job organizing it every year and I was surprised and delighted to see so many new people. However, there was something missing. I'm not sure if it was the size that EBC has grown to, the sessions I attended or what, but it just wasn't the "earth shattering" experience I have had in the past. Maybe it was the sessions I attended, but more than likely the novelty of EBC, combined with the people that were there that first year made such a big impression it is just hard to top. Not that I'm giving up on EBC or that it isn't a great experience, but this year EBC and ISTE just left me a bit, well depressed. Then again EBC was and is like any conference, it is what you make of it and if I don't like something, I need to be the catalyst for change. Now I just need to think about what I would do differently.......

ISTE & Edubloggercon 2010

I am woefully behind in my blog posting about ISTE & Edubloggercon from last month.  I had no idea how fast August would get here! My overall impressions of ISTE & EBC are pretty mixed. Here is my Pro/Con list from this year (or should I call it + / Delta ?)

Pros:

• Getting to Meet People
• Shuttle to convention center from hotel
• Traveling by yourself - setting your own schedule
• Enjoyed EBC and the Edubloggers Cafe

Cons:

• Having to Meet People
• Hotel 20 minutes away from anybody, anywhere
• No rental car
• Traveling by yourself - lonely
• Didn't get a lot out of formal sessions
• Edubloggercon tacked about 2 extra days to the conf experience. Making 6 days total away from home

So what does this mean? Well, I'll be traveling to Educause this October, a higher ed tech conference. It will be interesting to see the differences between the two.  Part of the issue is that I seem to live in this in-between world. I'm not quite K-12, but not quite Higher Ed either.  What I do know is that a conference is all about what you put into it, and maybe I just didn't put enough into ISTE this year.