New School Year--- 2009-2010

Excitement, nerves, stress, unknown....Those are just a few of the emotions on the roller coaster of staff, students, and parents this past Tuesday as we all began a new school year in Bullitt County, Kentucky. Construction is the huge thing on the radar in our district and y es, it is an inconvenience to everyone involved. Many staff and students are going to be in the midst of it for the majority of the year or more. However, to see the faces of the students on Tuesday in our two newest buildings (Overdale and Roby Elementary Schools) was priceless. I visited both on that first day and asked students what they thought, especially about the modern technology tools in their new classrooms. Some comments I received were "Good!!" with a huge excitement level in the pronunciation. One parent friend on my Faceboook said that her daughter thought Overdale was "as big as a hospital and looked like a mall in some places!"

Yes, there is still on going construction happening at six of our schools. Yes, parents are frustrated and were all over the news concerned about safety of their kiddos. Yes, teacher have minimal tools at the moment in a few schools. Two more new schools are process to open next school year. However, after we all suffer through this temporary inconvenience I am looking forward to the day in the VERY near future that Bullitt County Public Schools is a leader in technology, making us a top leader in student learning!

Here's to making it smoothly through our first week back!

Susan

Pocketing the Planet

I am linking you, today, to a guest blog post that I did on the Promethean Planet website. For those who may not know, Promethean Planet is the site that teachers are able to access in order to find lessons and resources for their Promethean ActivBoard.

Follow the link to see my posting: http://www.prometheanplanet.com/blog/?p=1386

Enjoy!!
Susan

Tech Integration: From a Child's Point of View

I am home from my wonderful trip to Washington, DC and had a great time. I met many great people of which I will speak about in various upcoming posts. I want to start with one of the sessions that stood out the most to me that I hope when I take it back to my colleagues they will feel the same way!

At NECC this past week I had the awesome opportunity meet an eleven year old teacher. Yes, I said eleven year old. Her name is Adora Svitak and she is a very talented writer at this young age. Yes, she is gifted in this area, but she has been totally encouraged by her parents and tutors to pursue this interest and grow in her passion. As I sat and listened to Adora speak about writing and integrating technology, her vocabulary blew me away. Not like some "nerdy" kid trying to show off with big words, but just like listening to another colleague speaking to me in a PD or PLC meeting. Adora travels the country conducting writing workshops for teachers and students. What could be more motivating to kids than hearing it straight from someone their own age?

Adora's grasp of technology use both in her day to day writing and in her presentation skills was also amazing to watch. She was brought to NECC this year by Promethean, one of the premiere Interactive White Board manufacturers. Just watching her use the ActivBoard and student response system in her presentation to us again blew me away. I hope her message from the child's point of view can be heard by teachers and administrators. She talked about the wonderful engagement and defferentiating opportunities that are available through the use of these interactive tools.

Her goal in life is to inspire kids to love reading as much as she does, and to let them know it is the basis for whatever they may be interested in. Through her writing workshops kids and teachers alike are able to hear from a child's perspective the importance of engaging instruction.

Take a look at Adora's books that are listed on her website http://www.adorasvitak.com/ when you get a chance. If you have not seen or heard her speak search YouTube for Adora Svitak.

I've included an interview that was done this week with Adora by one of the local DC TV stations. Toward the end of the interview she references that she will be speaking to a group of teachers at 3:45 that day. I was fortunate enough to be in that session and was given a copy of one of Adora's books and got to meet her briefly!

More NECC posts to come soon!
Susan

Packed and Ready to Go!

Well as I sit here on Saturday afternoon I think I am packed and have remembered everything for my big trip to Washington, DC for NECC (National Education Computing Conference). This is a great opportunity to meet colleagues (educators and other technology users) from across the country to talk and share what is going on in other school districts. I am looking forward to bringing back some new knowledge to my co-workers and the the teachers I work with here in Bullitt County.

My goal is to try to blog my experiences each day either in the afternoon/evening or during a particular session I may be attending. I'll do my very best to update as much as possible. However, if I don't get a chance to blog I will defintely be "tweeting" my experience on Twitter. You can follow me there: @ssjenk6. My Twitter updates are also synced to my Facebook at www.facebook.com/ssjenk6!

Everyone enjoy the weekend!

Susan

KYSTE Wrap-Up

Okay, I got a little lazy last night. Seeing as how I didn't get home until almost 11 p.m. after a night at the Louisville Bats game with the KYSTE group, I hope I will be excused from updating my postings for KYSTE Day 2!

Another wonderful KYSTE conference is in the books. As I have said over and over: What a pleasure it was to be able to host it here in Bullitt County. A lot of work but a pleasure to host! It was eye opening seeing the behind the scenes action and duties that go into planning a conference such as this and Kudos goes out to the KYSTE Board for their hard work. It was a pleasure meeting and working with all of these great Technology Educators.

I attended several great sessions. One, in particular, that I enjoyed was one on on collaborative tools, especially Twitter. Many of you know, and some have their great fun with it, that I have become quite addicted to Twitter. What a wonderful way to share resources in a professional learning network format. @ujdmc, @techyomy, and @sburton along with @jdscio via Skype presented this session and what a wonderful job they did. Each of them spoke about how they have incorporated Twitter into their day to day job duties as CIO's and tech administrators, etc. These guys also showed the organizational benefits of Google Reader which I didn't know a great deal about. Many other collaborative tools were presented also.

I also had the opportunity to sit in a newly formed user group meeting with some people from Meade County and Madison County to talk about and share ideas about the V-Brick Ethernet TV system that we have recently installed and plan to get more fully off the ground with teachers this August. More about this in another post.

There is so much I could write about here and will probably end up taking each topic one by one and doing a separate post about it throughout the next several days. Much easier that way. So, readers, keep an eye out for future posts on some new resources I have from KYSTE including the collaborative tools, V-Brick Information, and some Microsoft Teacher Resources.

I am looking forward to another week off upcoming and then Sunday the 28th I am off to our Nation's Capital to NECC!

More to come soon!
Susan

KYSTE Day 1

The Kentucky Society for Technology in Education Conference (KYSTE) is in full swing! We are so fortunate to have the opportunity to host this gathering here in Bullitt County this year. Monday and Tuesday consisted of a lot of room set up and preparing and it all came together today at 11:00 when everyone started rolling in, visiting the vendor floor, and having lunch. The first activity of the day consisted of lunch and a Keynote Address by a representative from the Kentucky Secreatary of State's Office. He reminded us of what is out there that our students face online each and everyday. Teaching them to be responsible citizens online is just as important as teaching them to be responsible citizens in all aspects of life. Trey Grayson's office is willing to come into schools in Kentucky and conduct assemblies for students on the Prevention of Cyberbullying.

After the lunch and the keynote, the sessions began. My co-worker and I presented our presentation on the use of the eInstruction clickers in various formats. I talked about this in a post a few days ago. The session went wonderfully with good participation and discussion of the uses of these in various aspects in different schools and districts. Our Kentucky eInstruction reps, Keith Frank and Matt Wheeler supported our session so for the last session of the day we went to support their presentation. Click Here for a PDF version of our presentation. We used this PPT to guide us through the various sites as we demonstrated the various uses of the clickers.

In the last session for today Matt and Keith stepped out of salesman mode and just conducted a wonderful discussion with group about the basic aspects of equipping a room to connect students and teachers to the outside world to enhance instruction and learning. Great job to these guys.

We ended the day with a luau in spite of the storm. The food had to be moved outside but the skies finally cleared and we were able to go outside and enjoy some music and karaoke.

Looking forward to Day 2 tomorrow!

Have a great evening!

Susan

Wordle

Yesterday I talked about our upcoming state KYSTE conference (www.kyste.org/conference) and shared the description of the session that my co-worker and I are presenting on the use of the eInstruction clickers for day to day instruction.

Today I am playing around with a cool site called Wordle (www.wordle.net). Wordle allows you to take a passage of text and arrange the words randomly with the keywords being highlighted. A wordle is a nice introduction to a lesson or an ending to a lesson in order to summarize key points. Very visually engaging for students.

Here is the Wordle I created for my KYSTE presentation: (Click on the small image to see larger version.)



Give Wordle a try for something that you might be planning whether it be a lesson for your students or a presentation for your peers.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Susan

Week off Ending; KYSTE Coming

Well my first week of summer break is about to come to an end. It has been a good one and I've gotten caught up on cleaning and some other chores. We are working next week, but it won't be too much work really. We get to host our state tech conference here in Bullitt County. The KYSTE (Kentucky Society for Technology in Education) Conference is coming to North Bullitt High School next Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the 17th, 18th, and 19th.

More information about the conference including session offerings, accomodations, etc. can be found by visiting the KYSTE website at www.kyste.org/conference.

I am looking forward to the presentation my colleague and I are doing entitled "Why Raise Your Hand When you Can Click a Button." Here is the description that I included in my presentation proposal:

This session will cover the versatile uses of student response systems. Using the eInstruction CPS "clickers", the presenters will show how to go beyond manually typing questions into the CPS software by using questions from various places to check student understanding of concepts. CPS clickers can be used within Study Island, ThinkLink (Discovery Education), History Alive, any other document or website that has questions already created, or even a question right off the tip of your tongue. These are wonderful opportunities to engage your students with bell ringer activities and common assessments and gets you out of grading papers all evening. Other uses of the CPS software will also be shown including attaching KET Encyclomedia/United Streaming clips within a question as well as the use of Examview.

I'm sure it will be a wonderful conference as always! If you are an educator join us if you can! Then after KYSTE comes the trip to DC for NECC..Can't wait for that!

Susan

Spring Break & Breathing Earth

Well, I am enjoying a week off for Spring Break. The past few weeks at work have been crazy busy, but in a good way.

For today's blog post I wanted to share a website that I found interesting on twitter post I saw earlier today. It is called "Breathing Earth." I am linking you to a blog post that describes the site and you can visit the site from there. It is a great source for research in geographical studies for students. Check it out here: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/03/breathing-earth-interactive-map.html.

Those who are on spring break..enjoy your week off!!

Susan

Do You Tweet?

Some of you reading this post are going to know exactly what I'm talking about and have been tweeting for a long time. However, some of you are going..tweeting?? Has she gone Cuckoo? A few posts back, I spoke of Web 2.0 tools and Twitter is one of those tools (www.twitter.com).

Twitter is another social networking site. Basically all it is--

is status updates, called "Tweets". I've seen a lot of people "Tweet" when they are on a trip or at a conference for their job or whatever. If you sign up on Twitter.com you can then download the Twitter application on Facebook and when you update through Twitter it updates your Twitter status as well as your Facebook status. I also just recently discovered Twitter for the Blackberry (Twitterberry). This way if I get an urge when I'm out and about at work I can now post a "Tweet."

Twitter is an excellent way for educators to share ideas and resources in a safe forum. Twitter is more of a professional social network, but people in all areas of work and entertainment use twitter to follow their favorite updaters! With Twitter, you sign up for an account and create a profile. You then find people to follow and people to follow you and share ideas through "tweets" or @replies!

Take a look and check it out!

Have a great evening!

Susan

Pictures from KidsFest

You read about the KidsFest adventures demonstrating the Wii and Wii Fit. Here are the infamous pictures!

Christie and Me playing baseball.

Tennis

Bowling

And now for the Hula Hooping



More Hula Hooping

Web 2.0

On Monday's post I used the term Web 2.0 and said I would further explain what I mean by that. Well, let's start by saying that if you are here on Blog Spot reading this you are participating in web 2.0!

By definition, Web 2.0 is a term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, blogs, Nings, Message and Discussion Boards, podcasting, vodcasting, photo sharing/tagging etc. The list is almost endless. Another website that I visited recently explained it this way: Web 1.0 was mainly read only. People got on the web and read articles, found information they needed and that was about it. As the web has transitioned over the past few years in has gone into 2.0 which more collaborative. People not only read, but they interact with others. Even ones they may not know.

Teenagers, of course, have web 2.0 tools down to a right arm science. It is as if they have always had these tools at their finger tips and many of our younger ones actually have. We refer to these students as digital natives. They have never known life without web 2.0 tools such as social networking (MySpace, Face, Xanaga, Twitter).

As educators and even parents it is important to understand how your kids learn. They are learning in a very different way than we are used to. It is so important that teachers try their best to move with the transition and work toward teaching students to be good digital citizens in the Web 2.0 world. As the teachers guide their students to be good digital citizens, incorporating these tools into their instruction will definitely raise the interest level and learning outcomes of their students.

Have a wonderful evening!

Susan

21st Century Skills

Hello everyone! I wanted to write about something today that is an everyday, bottom line task of my job. I wrote on my Facebook status one morning this week the following statement: "Susan is heading to work...teaching Excel to 4th graders and PPT to 3rd graders today!" I got lots of comments on that one that were both surprised and excited and saying how much things had changed. Yes, things have definitely changed. We have an entire new generation of students of whom third grade and below have completely been born and raised in the 21st century. Even those who were born in the 90's have almost been in a world that is completely automated, web based, or connected in some way or the other.

In the educational technology world, we refer to this as teaching students "21st Century Skills." Those who read my status message the other day saw that I was teaching 4th graders how to make data graphs in Excel for science fair projects and 3rd graders were working on a PowerPoint to present as a study guide for their science unit on magnets.

It is so important that we begin teaching these technology skills including keyboarding, multimedia skills, research, etc. in the elementary grades. There are so many other technology and 21st century skills opportunities out there that if they get the basic technology skills at the elementary level they can cover so many other skills in the higher grades such as web design, and incorporate so many other "Web 2.0" tools. (I'll explain that one in a post for another day!)

Keep in mind that the normal subjects such as reading, spelling, math, science, history, etc. are taught from the very beginning from Kindergarten all the way up so why not incorporate those 21st century skills of technology to prepare our students for the work force they will encounter when they go out into this digital world!

Have a great Saturday!

Susan

Technology and Learning

As I enjoy the day off today I just thought I would share our website that we use to help support the teachers in our district.

This is what we like to call out Technology TIPS site (www.bullittschools.org/tis). On this site we have several pieces of information for teachers regarding integrating technology into instruction. Our Training Materials section contains "cheat sheets" and step by step instructional guides for various things that we use here in our district. The Technology and Learning section contains pictures of students and teachers using our various tech tools. You will also find other helpful educational links.

If you are a classroom teacher, technology teacher anywhere please feel free to make use of the site. There is even a section for parents that has information about cyber safety.

Check it out and enjoy!

Susan

Click, Click, Click

In the world of educational technology, one of the most popular interactive devices as of recently is the clicker. Clicker is a generic term for any student response system. These Student Response Systems are yet another "tool of my trade."

The one we use the most here in Bullitt County is the clicker system from eInstruction called the Classroom Performance System (CPS). Any of the clicker systems allow all students in a class to be involved in a lesson by voting for their response as a teacher asks a question either previously entered into the software, a verbal question, a question on a pre-made test or from another website, or right inside of the Study Island program which I told you about a few days ago.

Teachers love the clickers because of the instant feedback given by the program in order to help them customize their instruction for the whole class. Students love the clickers because it is anonymous and the entire class can be involved at one time.The CPS system that I use most often allows, not only for teacher led/whole group instruction and review, but also student paced test taking by using the response pad as a sort of answer sheet much like the old time Scantron forms.

If you are a teacher, a parent, or a student check and see if your schools owns some clicker sets and find out how they can be used to enhance the education of our children. To find out more about clickers visit www.einstruction.com.

Have a wonderful evening!

Susan

Budget Cuts

As most have heard, Kentucky has found itself in a budgetary crisis along with the rest of the country. Unfortunately education keeps being mentioned as a place where some of the cuts may take place. Unfortunately, again, that may entail my current job position.

If you have read my blog before or know me personally, you may know that I work as a technology integration specialist for our school district. My job is to train and be a support for teachers as they use various technology initiatives in their day to day instruction. I am hoping for the best as we work to keep our job position from being cut. We have to apply for renewal of our grant that supplies part of our salary, as well as hope that the state legislature intervenes and does not cut the budgets of local school districts.

If money is cut for local school districts that could be detrimental to our students. Technology would be one of those things that may be cut and, therefore, leaving some of our students behind not. We have come so far in our district and our teachers and students are so excited it would be a shame to have to take this technology support system away from them. In addition to that, our district will be opening two new school buildings in the new school year that will be fully equipped with "Intelligent Classrooms" which means state of the art technology equipment for teaching. If we are not there to train the teachers, that equipment may sit and not get used to its fullest potential.

I am hoping for the best and trying not worry about it, but it does loom on the horizon. If you are a Kentuckian reading this, whether an educator, parent, or private citizen contact your legislators and encourage them to keep education funded by supporting the higher cigarette tax, alcohol tax, or whatever it takes.

We need to be able to educate our students to the best of our ability and that takes money in order to give them the best education possible.

Have a wonderful evening and here's to hoping the winds will stay calm!

Susan

Kid Friendly Video Sharing

As I was watching the news this morning I saw, featured, a new video sharing site. There are many sites coming out from the whole YouTube craze in order to meet the interests of various groups of people. We have TeacherTube and SchoolTube for those of us in education. There is also GodTube for religious type video sharing. The one I saw featured on this morning's news was KidsTube (www.kidstube.com).

It works along the same lines as YouTube and all the others, but it is geared for kids who are younger, but still want a way to share their talents and abilities without them or their parents having to worry about them accidentally running in to something inappropriate. Here is what I copied from their About Us Section:

Monitored Video Sharing for Kids: KidsTube.com was created with the purpose of providing a Safe and Fun environment for people of all ages to upload, share, discuss, and encourage each others creativity. With that simple goal and these guidelines, we hope you enjoy the site and help us to promote its success by becoming a part of the community today!

History: Kidstube.com began as a small group of concerned grandparents, parents, and young adults living in and around Webb City, Missouri, USA. We want to encourage like-minded grandparents, parents, and their children, to become part of our community, participate, visit often and promote our success, but most of all, start recording and submitting your own original home videos to help us make online video viewing better and worthwhile.

Check it out and share your thoughts! Enjoy!

Have a wonderful Sunday.

Susan

Students on the Island...Study Island

Good evening! We finally made it back to school today here in snowy Bullitt County, Kentucky. This gives me a good opportunity to talk about another "Tool of my Trade!"

For the last year and a half our school district has subscribed to a web based program called Study Island (www.studyisland.com). Study Island is built from state standards for each individual state and is made to be used as a tool for instruction, review, assessment practice, etc. The activities within Study Island are very versatile using various presentation techniques including test modes and game modes to help motivate and engage students. Teachers have the ability to set up their own class roster and make specific assignments for their classes using it just like they would a worksheet or page out of a book. Activities in Study Island be done either at school or at home if the student has Internet access.

One of the coolest things that our teachers love about Study Island is the fact that it can be used for whole group review and flashbacks using the eInstruction Classroom Response Systems or generically referred to as "clickers." Study Island and eInstruction have partnered together to make the use of the "clickers" user friendly for teachers and giving them the ability to quickly review concepts with students and allowing them to gain instant feedback.

So, if you are a teacher or school employee take a look at the site. If you are a parent or know someone with kids ask their school about it!

Enjoy and have a great evening.

Susan

PhotoStory

Good evening! It's time for another tool of my trade! Today I want to talk about PhotoStory which is a free download from Microsoft. This is a great way to get students involved in Digital Storytelling.


I just spent today at one of our district elementary schools with two 3rd grade classes creating a PhotoStory video that went with their study of Martin Luther King, Jr. Students had drawn pictures that showed various aspects of the Civil Rights Movement and various scenes of freedom. One class had a Reader's Theater and another class had a poem. I let each class record their performance of their play or poem using Audacity. With PhotoStory, the user is able to Import the pictures in and make transitions, record narration, etc. At the end, the user can attach music or sound files. We attached the student recitations along with a short clip of the ending of King's "I Have a Dream" speech. The students were so proud.


Another use of this program has been used from a group of 7th grade students I worked with last year. They had written a memoir piece for their writing portfolio. We had them bring in photographs and put them in PhotoStory and narrate the story using the writings from the memoir.


At the end of the PhotoStory once the pictures and sound files are attached, the project can be saved as a Windows Media File. Photostory is a great alternative or next step up from PowerPoint.

Enjoy the Evening!

Susan

Active Learning with the Activ Board

I've blogged a couple of times about some of the "tools of my trade." I had a picture in a previous post of the document camera which, if you remember, was red and looked like a space ship or something. If you look in the picture above you can see the document camera image projected on the left side. My co-worker and I were doing a model/demonstration lesson for a 2nd grade teacher at one of our district elementary schools using counting money and making change as the topic. As you can see the document camera allows us to put real money underneath it and project it, in clear detail, up on the board.

Now to the image on the right where you see the student and me standing. That is what I really what to point out today. That is called an Activ Board. It is manufactured by a company called Promethean. You may have also heard of a SMART Board which does the same thing just a different manufacturing company. Whichever one you are using, Activ or SMART, these boards allow you to interact with the projected image from your computer. With the Activ board the teacher or student takes a pen in hand and is able to mouse click, write digitally on the board, and manipulate a huge resource library of graphics and interactive images. There is also a wonderful website with lesson resources for teachers that they can download lessons that are already pre-made into "flipchart" format.

Students that I have interviewed after using this say it makes learning more real and interesting for them. Teachers have indicated that after years in the profession it makes them enjoy teaching again because they can see that students are much more engaged in the lesson being presented.

For more information and pictures of the Activ Board go to the following websites: www.prometheanplanet.com or www.prometheanworld.com.

Hope you have had a great day!

Susan