James McConville

Writing a Good Twitter Tweet

2012-01-05T13:23:00.001-08:00

Twitter has been around for since 2006 and now boast 100’s of millions of users. While many of the accounts are inactive, some people are prolific at posting their every thought and activity. As an educator, there are definitely some features that I consider a good post. Here is my list.

Be informative - share something you've found, a resource, educational video. Sending links via email is so '1990's'
Ask a question - an open ended question on a broad topic can get interesting responses from your followers.
Be topical - sending a tweet during a live event. Eg. #canucks during a game to share in the celebration will be read by those at the game and at home.
Add humour - everyone likes to lighten their day with a laugh.
Post an opinion tweet - a word of caution here but nothing gets responses like an interesting point-of-view. Consider adding a link to support your opinion.
Add personal thoughts – when sharing a link to someone’s blog post add a few words that ‘capture’ you that contributes to the message. Idea from Gino.

What else is missing from this list? Send me a tweet @jmcconville1000

Thoughts? Comments? What do you like see in a good tweet?

Software for School Computers

2011-11-04T12:19:00.001-07:00

Here is some software that we have on our student school computers.

Windows 7 is now our standard on school computers that have the hardware required. It has a number of built in features that help students. See previous blog post about Windows 7.
Office 2010 is now our standard software
Windows Live Essentials is a huge improvement to the old photo editor and Movie Maker, see: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials
Firefox as an alternate internet browser.
Mixcraft 5 by Aucoustica is a ‘Garageband-like’ program for Windows. See previous blog post.
Any Video Converter (FREE) – will convert any file format to another.
Paint.net – free painting program
GIMP – photo editing for free
Faststone image viewer and resizer (FREE)
Google Earth – for exploration and the cool flight simulator
Scratch by MIT – computer programming for students
Sketchup 8 by Google – 3D modeling program
FlipBoom Classic – 2D animation program
JING – screen capture software
Lego Digital Designer – 3D online lego designer
YouTube Downloader – FREE software to get videos off YouTube.
VLC Video Player – great media player, will play almost any type of video including the FLV format when you download from YouTube.
iTunes from Apple as a music player and to connect to student’s iPods
All The Right Type for keyboarding skills

Feedback from other educators: Which are your favourites, what software do other schools use?

What I Learned at CUEBC 2011 Conference

2011-10-24T15:32:00.001-07:00

What an amazing, yet busy day at the recent CUEBC conference. As a volunteer member of the executive, this is our largest event of the year. We look forward to and dread the rush of the day. So many conversations and so little time.

This year was overwhelmingly positive, well worth the effort. How else can you be in a building with 400 like-minded educators learning, sharing and thinking.

Highlights

Keynote David Warlick was outstanding. Although I was in another part of the building during the keynote, the live webcast thanks to UpperSports made it possible to participate remotely. Already there is an archive of the event!
Twitter continues to grow in terms of adoption and use. When we first introduced twitter hashtags at a conference three years ago it was a small group who participated. My estimate is there were 100+ educators active on twitter on Friday using the tag #CUEBC, enough that the tag become a trending topic on the live trendmap.
Great presenters – I managed to attend a few sessions and learned from other educators.
- Phil Macoun’s session on Scratch was excellent. Handouts here.
- David Warlick’s session on data visualizations and infographics gave me the idea to look for the twitter trendmap.
Sponsors have so much to offer! I know that other non-profit organizations hesitate when it comes to including sponsors but our decision on including them has always been that they offer something to our members. Companies like Adobe provide teachers with tools that we use on a daily basis and bringing them to a conference allows our members time to ask questions and network.
Welcome to everyone who attended who are now members of CUEBC and also to our two new executive members!

Learning Links

Fabulous learning summary from CUEBC presenter Phil Macoun on his blog here.

Feedback?

If you were there or if you just followed the discussion on twitter post a comment on your insights.

Android for Education: first look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

2011-10-04T17:36:00.001-07:00

If you don’t already have a tablet computer, it is probably on your wish list. Sales of these new types of computers has has exploded and continue to beat all expectations. Apple’s iPad, the inventor of this type of computing is clearly the industry leader. What I wanted to explore is if there are good reasons to look further than the iPad. The Computer Using Educators of BC recently gave me the opportunity to find out!

I’m now equipped with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Early reports make this a remarkable device. It has the best screen on the market, it is running the latest version of Google Android 3.1 Honeycomb and has the processor and speed to match.

Unpacking: what’s in the box

A surprisingly simple package included the bare necessities. Just the tablet, power cords and a 4 page getting started guide. It was an additional cost but a necessary one to purchase a screen protector ($19.99), folding portfolio case ($59.99) and a HD video connector ($29.99). CUEBC bought the Galaxy Tab from BestBuy.

Measures to Compare?

Here are some of the metrics that I’d like to explore in the coming weeks to find out if Apple has finally met it’s match in the Samsung Tab.

Impact - does the Samsung leave a positive impression?
Apps – does the Android market have the development community behind it?
Communication – how is the device surfing the internet and connecting to a wide variety of social networks?
Performance – speed and ease of use?
Value – does the price match the product?

Feedback

Interested in hearing from others, what features does the iPad have that make it irresistible for education?

Secrets to Student Success in Online Courses

2011-08-15T16:08:00.001-07:00

Thought I’d share some of the tips on ensuring student success in online courses.

Blended instruction – we have adopted a program of online learning which blends face-to-face instruction with online connections. Those personal connections in a classroom up the ante for student accountability and responsibility that this is a ‘real’ course and they can’t just let their work slide. This also have the advantage of supervised testing. There are times when teachers need to ensure that the work of students is their own and not just ‘tutor supported’.
Follow-up – as soon as a student misses an assignment or test deadline it is time to contact them. Using an escalation approach from an email, to phone call to parent, to a phone call from the admin team lets the student know that we are concerned about them completing the course on time.
Amazing teachers – can’t say enough about the fabulous educators who make every day engaging, relevant and interesting for students. Kudos to you all!
Use the best classroom tools available. Our suite of tools includes: WebCT (soon to be Blackboard), email, Engrade gradebook and Elluminate Live for virtual meetings.
Did I mention follow-up. It is worth repeating that the more times a school reaches out to a student and parent the more likely they are to ensure their work is in order.

We are wrapping up our summer FastTrack online learning program and had another very successful year.

What I Learned This Week

2011-07-29T09:55:00.001-07:00

Had an exciting return to work this week. Returning from a half year personal leave to work was an interesting transition. Here is the family blog from our travels to Asia.

Here are some of the great things I learned this week.

A cell phone, just a regular (non-smartphone) can be a great learning tool. One feature that I have on my phone is unlimited texting. Using SMS I’ve now setup text to facebook status and twitter. I learned how to do a google search via text and to check the weather. Click on the linked words in the post to find the how-to sites that I used.
Professional learning can and should occur everywhere. Thanks to the amazing organizers at the Building Learning Communities 2011 Conference via webcasting. The physical conference is taking place in Boston, USA and from my little office in Coquitlam, BC I watched the video webcasts and participated in the Twitter discussion by using the search term #BLC11.
Early learners, as young as primary can be fully engaged with the internet and learning from afar. Much of the insight was shared from the Building Learning Communities conference. I attended a great webcast from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano. Check out her blog and twitter feed.

Have so many notes and links from the conference that it will probably take me all next week to explore the suggested websites. My goal is to integrate many of the strategies in my classroom next year.

Now it is time for the long weekend and some biking at Sun Peaks!

Parent Presentation

2011-02-15T08:47:00.001-08:00

Presentation slide with links.
http://www.slideshare.net/jmcconville/parent-presentation-information-literacy

Parent presentation information literacy

View more presentations from James McConville.

Book Review: Tuned Out by Karen Hume

2011-01-29T14:30:00.001-08:00

Karen Hume has compiled a valuable resource for teachers. As teachers, we know that engaged students learn better. Sometimes we call this intuition, but really this is our professional training and experience that has tuned into improving learning for all our students. Student engagement and assessment for learning are the commonality between all teachers, no matter what the subject or grade level. Whether teachers are already using technology to engage their students or not, there is a point of entry for all teachers. Learning through modeling is a powerful way to teach. In this way, Karen Hume is a masterful teacher. Each section of the book is full of links to online activities for teachers to further their engagement with the content. “Tuned out” by Karen Hume is more than simply a printed book. It is designed so that the reader has a parallel experience with the online website. The website is a virtual staff room for teachers to both gather and share ideas. I would encourage readers to join the online professional learning community. The book has joined my personal library as a valuable asset to be kept near-at-hand.
Other books by Karen Hume:

A year of blogging

2010-12-20T13:56:00.001-08:00

As the year comes to an end it is great to look back over the past 12 months. I’ve enjoyed blogging even more over the past year and have a few reflections.

Making sense of statistics

An essential tool for anyone with a website is Google Analytics. There are endless metrics for looking at the visitors to your site. For example I know that there were 2000 Canadian visitors to my site followed by 1000 from the US. Way down the list I welcome visitors from Iran, Malta, Morocco and Turkey!

Most viewed posts

Free software for teachers

SMARTNotebook software and SMARTBoard vs. Mimeo

Teacher gradebooks

I seem to have created a niche around product reviews and and free tools for teachers.

Comments

It is always great to get comments from readers. Most comments on posts come from:

Delicious social bookmarking

Free software for teachers

SMARTBoard vs. Mimeo

Thoughts? Would be great to hear from other bloggers. What did you notice about visitors this year?

iPad in Education: first impressions

2010-12-13T16:08:00.001-08:00

Apple has certainly knocked one out-of-the-park with the creation of the iPad. It is truly a new category of device that augments and begins to replace my traditional computers. With instant on and a great battery life it is a go to device.

Using with students

The Computer Using Educators of BC have launched an ambitious program to put 11 iPads in the hands of teachers and students. We look forward to sharing stories from this initiative as we start in January 2011. My favourite iPad education blog is from Fraser Speirs.

Apps I can’t live without

Unfortunately I have to return my loaner iPad in January. Here are the apps that I’ll miss the most.

Communication

Mail – slick interface for managing multiple email accounts
Safari – the multi-touch interface on the iPad makes surfing the web a dream
Google
TweetDeck – great twitter client
Flipboard – amazing interface for surfing twitter links
Facebook

Reference

Evernote – the free version lets you take notes with audio recordings that sync between multiple computers
SimpleMind X mindmapping
WordWeb – dictionary and thesaurus
Periodic Table of Elements
All Countries – stats on countries around the world
HistoryMaps – view historical events on a map
Wikipanion – wikipedia search engine

Science

NASA HD
Google Earth
Molecules
3D Brain
Planets
Science VL – Glossary of terms
Periodic Table of elements

Math

Calculator
Fractions
Tables – multiplication

Early learning

Flashcards
Alphabet Car

Exploration

Geocaching app
The Weather Channel
AppShopper – a way to find apps that are popular and free
Netflix – app that lets me watch movies and TV shows

Games

Smurfs – my kids (age 10 and 8) love this game. Seems similar to farmville
Angry Birds – very addictive

Wishes for the next version

Some point next year, Apple will release an iPad2. Here is my wish list:

A camera with flash. There are endless possibilities for students to capture their learning and create digital presentations.
Audio application built in for capturing and basic editing of podcasts.
Performance. There have been a few times that the iPad felt sluggish. Faster processor, more RAM and storage will improve in the future. Also, note to apple, please let me have an expandable memory card slot!

Comments?

I’d be interested in hearing from other educators and their initial experiences with the iPad.

Download YouTube Videos

2010-12-06T14:44:00.001-08:00

Teachers in our district are finding that the internet is too slow to watch live streamed YouTube videos in class. Here are some ways to download the videos to store them offline for use. The advantages are they they play almost instantly, don’t take bandwidth away from other educational uses and can stored offline for use from term to term.

Using KeepVid

Keepvid is a website that you can enter the address of a YouTube video that you want to download. There is nothing to install on your computer and compared to other sites that let you download video, I’ve found the advertisements to be less offensive than similar sites. Here are the steps.

Find the video you want on YouTube.
Copy the URL from the address bar
Paste the URL into the box on KeepVid and click Download. There may be a warning message to install a website plugin which you can approve.
I typically select the FLV High Quality Video. FLV videos will play back in a video player like VLC Video and can be imported into SMART Notebook software.
When you click on the file type you want you can save in a folder that you choose.

Use Firefox with the DownloadHelper Addon

Firefox is a very versatile browser. There are 1000’s of free addons that let you extend what the browser can do. One of my favourite addons is DownloadHelper.

Install Firefox and DownloadHelper
When you are on YouTube with the video you want the three balls will spin. Clicking on the arrow will let you select the quality to download.
The higher numbers (eg 1080p will get the highest resolution video)

Download with RealPlayer

RealPlayer is a free install that add functionality to the browswer.

Install RealPlayer
When viewing a YouTube video, on the top-right corner there will be a box to ‘Download This Video’. Click to start the download.
The default save location can also be set by clicking on the arrow and updating the preferences.

One of the advantages of RealPlayer is that the clips can be cropped and trimmed to just include the content that you want.

Photo Editing with Picnik

2010-12-02T14:36:00.001-08:00

One of my favourite new tools for editing photos is Picnik.com. It is fully online so there no software to download and install. It is also great for students to use as the picture is not stored on the site. They can simply upload, edit and download back to their computer.

Themes, stickers and effects are seasonal which means every time you return to the site, there are effect for that season. Right now it is Christmas but Halloween and Thanksgiving were on the site.

Check out all the features

Effects
Includes features such as filters that change the picture to black and white, blur, neon and more.

Text
Select a font, type in the text and click add.

Stickers
This includes graphics such as hats, beards, sport icons that you can add to the picture.

Touch-up
Mostly premium features that you have to buy…

Frames
Add effects that make a picture frame around the picture.

Seasonal
Effects to match the season, your students will always find something new here.

Output sample:

Took my boys, added: Christmas hats, beard, snowman sticker, frame with lights and some text.

Assessment of Student Presentations

Some ideas for evaluation criteria for student presentations (can apply to any digital creation).

Design – uses complex design. Pays attention to layout, colour of media elements.
Conventions – accurate use of vocabulary and conventions.
Impact – Clear and memorable impact on audience.
References – A comprehensive list of websites used for the information and pictures.

Instructional Ideas

Elementary – visual documentation of learning. Have student take photos of things the observe in the classroom or school grounds and add text to explain their learning.
Middle – create an autobiography
Secondary – Socials – create a historical event
Biology – label the parts in a dissection project with stickers and text.

Here is a pdf ‘How to Picnik‘ that you can share with teachers and students.

SMARTBoard vs Mimeo interactive whiteboard

2010-10-25T15:45:00.001-07:00

IWB (Interactive White Boards) is the generic name for SMARTBoards as they are commonly called in schools. I’ve had a number of queries from teachers recently about the pros and cons of each platform so I thought I’d be efficient by posting on my blog and sending along the link.

Disclaimer – these are my personal views and don’t represent the official view of our district. Also, most importantly, I have no financial motivation for supporting either platform.

SMARTBoards

A fast growing Canadian company based in Calgary. They have been around for years as have many of their original boards as longevity of the hardware doesn’t seem to be an issue. A whole ecosystem has developed around their tools. There is certification as a SMARTBoard trainer and resources on their SMART Exchange website are outstanding. In addition, most major Canadian publishers including Nelson, McGraw-Hill and recently Scholastic, make their digital resources available as SMARTNotebook files. These publisher resources already have the interactive elements that would take hours for teachers to create on their own. Their licensing allows for both teachers and student to install the software at home. We have many teachers who assign homework to students to create a lesson in notebook that they then demonstrate to the class later. See previous blog post about SMARTNotebook.

In addition, google search will let you search for SMARTNotebook files. Just put the extension ‘filetype:notebook’ into your search. Here is an example of a search for notebook files with the word ‘science’ on the page.

Pro	Con
SMARTNotebook software is outstanding Notebook 10 is the educational standard hardware is durable	expensive to mount on a classroom wall ($400-$600 depending on building construction)

Mimio

According to the website, they have been around since 1997 and were invented at MIT. My experience with them is much more limited as I’ve only heard about them for about a year now.

We now have a few schools with Mimeo devices and more considering them all the time. The are ‘instantly’ mounted on any pre-existing whiteboard. A word of caution, if you use with an older 4:3 ratio LCD projector, the image size is quite small. Be sure to consider a newer wide screen projector like the NP510W from NEC that we use in our district. This will give a large working space.

Mimio also has a sharing site called MimioConnect with lesson plans, forums and support.

Pro	Con
hardware is cheaper than SMARTBoards instantly mount on any whiteboard works great with a wide-screen projector to get a big workable area	Can’t run SMARTNotebook software as it is excluded in the terms-of-use

Summary

In reflecting on this posting, I realize that it looks like there is a clear preference towards the SMART product but here are some factors that will change the balance over time:

If more educators select the Mimeo due to the cheaper price, there will be a growing critical mass of educators posting and sharing mimeo files
A file converter that converts a SMARTNotebook file to a Mimeo file.

Please comment and share your pros/cons and experiences with your IWB.

Creative Commons–a teacher’s guide

2010-10-06T15:13:00.001-07:00

Where do you get photos for students to use in their presentations? This is a common question from educators as we want students to create high-quality reports and presentation and want to advise them how to follow copyright.

Here are some resources to get the busy educator started.

Canadian Creative Commons was established to give creators and copyright owners different levels of control to who can use and share their work. In the past there used to be only a black and white copyright where you had to pay to use. Many artists and content creator wanted to be more generous and this is why they allow the use of their pictures for non-commercial uses such as education.

Practical Uses of Creative Commons

Flikr

Flikr is by far my favourite site to get amazing photos. There are photographers with amazing cameras that get way better photos that I could ever get and then share them on Flikr. Here is how to use a Flikr photo that has been licensed.

go to Flikr.com
click on ‘explore’
scroll to the bottom of the page and select ‘creative commons’
Selecting Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License has almost 50 million photos at this time. See more lets you do a search.
Save this URL in your favourites http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/by-nc-nd-2.0
When you find a picture you like – right-click on select a size. I use medium for posting on the web. You can now right-click and copy.
When you upload and post on a website, be sure to include the URL of the photo.

Below is an amazing photo of a Mount Saint Helens. I visited it this summer and didn’t manage to get a photo as good as this one.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimculp/2862034386

Microsoft Clipart

Microsoft clipart and pictures are an amazing extensive resource of graphics. The terms-of-use allows for use as long as you own Microsoft Office products which almost everyone does.

To put a clipart onto a website is easy if you have MS word and use Windows Live Writer to post.

Open Word
Insert Clip Art
Search for a graphic and place into the document
Right-click to copy
Paste into Windows Live Writer

Below is a picture from Microsoft’s clip art gallery.

More?

What other sites and sources to people have for copyright free images that teachers and students can use? Post a comment here.

Digital Responsibility Resources

2010-10-05T15:21:00.001-07:00

Here are some resources that may be valuable when working with student in teaching about Digital Responsibility.

Learning Connections

Here are the Provincial Learning Outcomes in British Columbia that I’ve found that related to digital responsibility, social responsibility and cyber-safety.There is a great progression of learning outcomes that progress in grade 1 from, “demonstrate an understanding of appropriate and inappropriate ways to express feelings” to grade 7 with “demonstrate behaviours that contribute to the prevention of stereotyping, discrimination, and bullying”. It helps us know as educators, what student knowledge we are building on from previous grade levels.

CyberBullying

There are a number of great videos on YouTube that teachers can show to their students which would create a valuable discussion about CyberBullying. Here is one from England. I’d recommend watching this video in two parts as the ending may not be plausible to students.

CyberSafety Videos

These videos are targeted to parents wanting to learn more about how the various technologies like facebook photosharing work. There is also great value in sharing these with students as many of them don’t have correctly configured privacy settings.

http://www.learnnowbc.ca/lnbcresources/cybersafe/

Internet Literacy

In BC, the Educational Resource Acquisition Consortium (ERAC) has licensed a program from the Media Awareness Network called Passport to the Internet. Be sure to check out the teacher’s guide that accompanies the resource.

“ An interactive Internet literacy tutorial that helps students develop the critical thinking skills they need to apply to their online experiences.
Using simulations of the most popular Internet environments, this interactive resource teaches students about online safety, authenticating online information, recognizing online marketing ploys, protecting their privacy, managing online relationships and dealing with cyberbullying. “

Students will need an account with LearnNowBC. Here is the direct link to the page with the access to the Passport to the Internet.

Policy and School Legal support

Schools should also know that our BC ministry has also put in place some great documents to support educators in ensuring that our schools are good learning environments. Be sure to check out the Safe Caring and Orderly School policy.

Feedback

I’d be interested in learning more about how students are reacting to these resources. Are we meeting the needs?

FREE software for teachers

2010-09-26T13:09:00.001-07:00

Here is an updated list of software that I recommend for teachers on their personal computers.

List is sorted in order of frequency of use.

Web Browser

If you have a Mac, the default browser is Apple’s Safari, on Windows it is Internet Explorer. However, there are a number of reasons you should consider installing a second (or even third browser).

Firefox remains the most customizable feature rich browser. It is opensource so it is made by people who share their expertise to make one of the best browsers available. Check out all the free addons that expand what firefox can do. My most used, must have addon is Video Downloader which can be used to download offline copies of YouTube videos for use in the classroom that isn’t dependent on an internet connection.
Google Chrome is amazing and fast with all the google sites such as gmail, google docs, reader… etc
Not to be left behind, Internet Explorer is moving to version 9.

Office software such as word-processing.

Microsoft Office is the solid ‘education industry’ standard. If you work in a BC district that has subscribed to the licensing agreements it is a mere $11 to take the software home. Get the license code from your district educational technology team and see more information here: Microsoft Home Use Program
OpenOffice is a ‘free and open productivity suite’ which looks and has many of the same features of Microsoft Office. See: http://www.openoffice.org/
Google Docs – although this isn’t something you have to install as it is FREE and online, it is amazing for educators wanting to collaborate as it has live online editing.
Windows Live Writer – is the blogging program that works with most types of blogs. It makes it really easy to embed photos to posts! See previous post.

Antivirus

AVG Free is all I’ve ever needed. Install, allow the automatic updates and let it work. I recently got to see it in action as it picked up a Trojan Horse on my computer and cleaned it off. Most people start looking for an antivirus once their free trial of McAfee or Norton runs out on the computer they purchased. http://free.avg.com

Video Player

VLC video player is the one program that will play almost any type of video file. This includes the ‘.flv’ video files that are created when downloading YouTube videos using Video Downloader for FireFox (see above).

PDF Creator

Have you ever wondered what file format to save your class newsletter in so that all your parents can open? Well PDF if the most universal file type that can be opened on all computers and retains the formatting.

Cute PDF writer once installed is like having another printer. Once your document is ready, click print, select CutePDF and save the file.

Video/Sound recording and Curricular

JING will capture whatever you have on your screen and the audio from a microphone. It is a great way to explain how to use a website to students. The link to the recording can then be shared.
Audacity will allow you to record sound and create a podcast. Check out the version 1.3 beta.
Google Earth is an amazing way to view, measure and manipulate our physical world.
Microsoft Photostory is a long-time favourite to put voice-overs on pictures. It works in Windows 7 so it is here to stay.

Software to skip…

On my last posting on free software I had MSN and Skype. I no longer use these now that that you can make free phone calls to North America right from within GMAIL. Rumour has it that even Facebook is getting into the free phone. See more on the article by the Globe and Mail.

Others??

I would love to know what others would suggest for titles to have in the educators' toolkit. Post a comment here..

Student Research – Evaluate Sources

2010-09-18T15:39:00.001-07:00

Evaluate Your Sources

When doing research with students it is good to provide them with a set of topics to evaluate a source such as a website. There are many different lists of criteria that are available on the internet. Here is one I’ve created from a few difference sources.

Relevance – Is this the information that you need? Is the information on the site what you needed to know.
Currency – How updated is the information? Can you find a date?
Authority – Do you trust the author(s)? Who owns that domain name? For example, look for websites that end in “.edu”, “.gov” or “.org” as these are typically publically funded rather than .com extensions which are commercial sites.
Bias – For topics that have a wide-variety of opinions such as sport, politics, what is the viewpoint of the source?
Accessibility – Is the reading level appropriate?
Special features – Are there pictures, animation, videos? Is the site free of distractions?

More resources:

Lesley University – Evaluating Websites

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educator – Critical Evaluation Information

Criteria for Web Site Evaluation – I like how this presentation has students use the Who, What, When, Where and Why?

Using Technology in My Classroom

2010-09-10T22:47:00.001-07:00

Every year more teachers get access to amazing technology that can support and enhance what they do in the classroom. Teachers talk about how it can be daunting to first introduce something new into their practice. So much of this hold true for technology which is constantly changing.

Advice to myself…

Here is some personal advice for getting started this year with educational technology. I plan on trying to do as many of these as possible this year!

Use what I’ve got. There will always be a better device, SMARTBoard, faster laptop, projector, whatever. Rather than waiting, use whatever I can get my hands on. A laptop and projector is a great place to start.
Good enough is good enough. If I spend an hour preparing a Powerpoint for a lesson or find a few good YouTube clips to show there is always another few hours I could spend planning and preparing but the amount of energy that I spend relative to the value to students decreased once it is good enough. Make some plans and go with it! I might add that this holds true for this blog. I’d like to share more and worry less about perfection :)
Focus on what I want. The internet is the most amazing and distracting environment that I explore each day. I need to be more efficient, find what I want and get onto something else.
Build on what I know. I’m always learning new things about technology and want to figure out ways have them make sense in my teaching. I realize that there are multiple points of entry with technology and I don’t need to know all the details to get started.
Flip It. Look for the positives. When the technology didn’t work the way I wanted to, find the positives and build on that.

I’m really looking forward to using technology with all the learners that I’m working with this year. What else should I add to this list?

Student Created Movies

2010-05-27T10:44:00.001-07:00

Two big ideas for making a great student created movies.

Use close-up shots
Trim the shots – only keep the key action

While there are 100’s of factors that chance a good video to a great video. This post shares two key ideas for elementary students to focus on when making movies.

Use Close-up Shots

Close-up shots are the key to a great video. They engage the audience, let us get to know the characters in the video and display emotion. Take a look at this photo, the close shot gets the viewer to wonder about what is the boy thinking?

In this shot below, it is called a ‘full’ shot. Use these types of shots to set the scene or display some action.

Trim the shots – keep the cuts short.

Keep the shots short. Try to limit each shot to 5-10 seconds, focus on the action and delete the rest. Here is a short lego star wars movie. Most of the shots are under 10 seconds.

Sharing the Video

Sharing and distributing videos with traditional methods such as DVD’s is very challenging and time consuming to create the disks. Many of these issues can be solved by hosting the videos online. There is a privacy feature of vimeo that makes it my preferred hosting service. Of course, when sharing video of students, privacy is key. Having parents sign a public release of photos and video form is an essential first step.

Here are recommended settings to password protect a video. You could then email parents and let them know the password to view. Another great feature is that you can embed the video in your website and still password protect.

See the video below that is locked. Open to view by entering the password ‘piano’.

I wrote this post as I’ve been invited to work with a group of elementary students doing a year-end video project. What advice would you give to a students?

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credits: boy photo by Jess, children chasing pig by surfzone

Websites for Elementary Teachers and Students

2010-05-21T09:41:00.001-07:00

Here is a list of websites that teachers could use to explore in a classroom with students. There is lots to look at and discuss on these sites. Hook up your LCD projector, speakers and enjoy.

Human Body and Mind from the BBC

Flash based site that lets you place organs or muscles in the correct location.

Earth Explorers – Wildlife from the BBC

Stories and information about animals from around the world.

CyberSafety Videos from LearnNowBC

keep yourself and students safe on the internet.
facebook overview and more

Oxfam – mapping our world

nine different activities for students to explore our globe

Life Size Blue Whale

size works great on a SMARTBoard as you can use your hands to explore a blue whale

Panoramas – 3D views of cultural and geographical amazing places

view amazing locations from around the globe.

Newseum – Front Covers from Newspapers from around the world

Front covers of 1000’s of newspapers
Many different languages

Math Illuminations: Interactive math tools

Interactive math lessons like the Bobby Bear one in the picture above.
Search by grade or topic.

TumbleBooks

Must access from your local library. Ex. I live in Port Moody so go to the Port Moody Public Library.
Books that are read aloud by the author.
Some animations and games

World Book

Access through your school website.
Can have text read aloud
Different views for different grade levels.

Looking for more?

Check out all shared bookmarks on delicious!

Quit Facebook

2010-05-18T12:03:00.001-07:00

Could you do it? Could you actually go cold turkey on facebook?

Seem like there is a growing movement of people willing to unplug, disconnect and delete their account. On the site quitfacebookday.com they have set May 31, 2010 as the quit day. So far they have 5146 people committed to quit. Considering there are an estimated 400 MILLION users, this is 0.000012865% of the users. Maybe this is more of a media event as a quick search on Google News returned lots of papers reporting on this issue. My favourite article has to be the one titled ‘Facebook Revolt’ from TMCNET.com.

It seems that all the hullabaloo has to do with privacy concerns and the challenge of keeping photos, thoughts and other facebook activities private rather than public. Facebook has had a number of revisions of its terms of use that make is difficult to understand who can and can not access your information.

Well, if you actually decide to quit or at least explore the option, here are a few things to know.

How to quit facebook

On the top right of the page, hover over account and select account settings. Click on deactivate account. Don’t worry if you aren’t sure there is another screen with the ominous warning and question “are you sure you want to deactivate your account?”

I got a list of five friends (faces blured by me) that facebook claims will miss me and then probing questions on “Why are you deactivating?”

At least facebook as the option of letting them know that you have a privacy concern.

One word of warning, if you do actually deactivate, be sure that you don’t log back in for at least 2 weeks. If you are tempted to check back in, your account will be restored.

Your privacy settings

Perhaps a less dramatic, but still effective way to control your privacy is to dive into the facebook privacy settings. While they are nearly as many layers as an onion, here are a few things to look for.

Hover over account and click on privacy settings. Start with the profile information. My recommendation is that you want to have it locked to ‘Only friends’. The same applies for contact information. If they aren’t a friend, do you really want them to have your phone number… etc?

Applications and website is where things get a bit more convoluted. For example, on ‘What your friends can share about you’ allows your friends to link and share through facebook information that might have thought was for your friends only. It is best to uncheck almost everything here.

Leave a thought or comment here on this blog

Will you quit facebook? Why or why not?

How to Start Blogging

2010-05-10T16:55:00.001-07:00

I attended the most amazing conference last week called Northern Voice 2010. Keynote by Bryan Alexander, here are visual notes.

The conference focused on personal blogging. I’ll be sharing many of the ideas here over future blog posts. The one big idea that I wanted to share today is how to get stated with blogging. I’ve really enjoyed having a blog and realized that many others might be interested in the details on how to get started.

A few ‘easy’ steps:

Choose a blog topic, find your voice. What are you interested in? Take a look at the slideshow below from Monica Hamburg for some great ideas.
Create a blog. There are lots of free servers for blogs. I’m happy with blogspot, might also consider edublogs or wordpress.
Use a blog editing tool. While it is possible to write the blog directly through the web, I use an amazing free tool called Windows Live Writer (featured in a previous blog post).
Start writing – put up your first post, share the link below.

Finding Your Online Voice by Monica Hamburg

While I was sorry to miss this session. The twitter feed from Monica’s session was amazing and help me find the link to her presentation.

credits – mind map of keynote by Rachel Smith

How to Start Blogging

2010-05-10T16:50:00.001-07:00

I attended the most amazing conference last week called Northern Voice 2010. Keynote as Bryan Alexander, here are visual notes.

A few ‘easy’ steps:

Choose a blog topic, find your voice. What are you interested in? Take a look at the slideshow below from Monica Hamburg for some great ideas.
Create a blog. There are lots of free servers for blogs. I’m happy with blogspot, might also consider edublogs or wordpress.
Use a blog editing tool. While it is possible to write the blog directly through the web, I use an amazing free tool called Windows Live Writer (featured in a previous blog post).
Start writing – put up your first post, share the link below.

Finding Your Online Voice by Monica Hamburg

While I was sorry to miss this session. The twitter feed from Monica’s session was amazing and help me find the link to her presentation.

credits – mind map of keynote by Rachel Smith

How Technology is Changing Math Classrooms (for the Better!)

2010-04-29T16:47:00.001-07:00

Guest post by Tracy Beach as part of the EdTech Blog Swap

The American classroom is constantly evolving. Dry erase boards took the place of chalkboards. In today’s lecture halls, the click-clack of laptop keyboards can be heard over the scrawling sound of pen on paper.

Technology can never replace teachers, but it makes an often-times difficult job easier by opening up new resources for teachers and students, fostering individual learning and communication with families, and making a deep pool of information more accessible than ever before.

Let's count the ways technology is changing math classes for the better!

Technology helps make assessment and progress reporting more objective and more frequent. It's imperative that a math teacher knows right away when a student falls behind, but it can be difficult in a busy, full classroom. With more immediate and more granular progress reporting, educators can determine a child's need, and communicate with students and parents outside school hours through email and classroom websites.

Virtual Manipulatives, adaptive curricula, and more

Not every child learns the same way. New, innovative technologies make math learning increasingly individualized. The most advanced online learning programs, like DreamBox Learning K-3 Math, capture every mouse click as a student learns in order to instantly provide the right lessons, at the right level of difficulty, with the right hints, sequence, and pace (and much more) for each individual child.

Virtual manipulatives, such as the ones used in DreamBox Learning (and which are available for any elementary teacher to use in the classroom free) let kids build an answer instead of selecting one from a multiple choice list. Research shows constructing knowledge this way is a more effective way to learn math.

Student progress reporting is being revolutionized by online learning as well. When every mouse click is captured as a student is learning, teachers get immediate, detailed, useful information about where each student is progressing and struggling.

As technology evolves, more and more kids expect to learn at their own pace and participate in collaborative learning and exploration. Students will also need strong tech skills when they enter the fast-changing working world.

Personal response technologies enable teachers to gauge students' skills almost instantaneously. No more having only one or two students raise their hands –one new calculator tool makes it possible for teachers to hear from every pupil in the classroom at once on a math problem. Hearing from every student on a math problem is a major plus for math teachers because they can better assess student learning curves.

The wide, wide world

Technology enables teachers to access data from a wealth of sources and in a myriad of forms – online math games and manipulatives, lesson plans, printables, creative activities for their classrooms, discussion forums and more. With access to these broad resources, lessons become richer and more colorful.

New infrastructures bring the world into the classroom and give kids opportunities to see and experience things they might not have otherwise. They can take a virtual tour of the Pyramids, complete math problems in real time with other kids around the globe on World Math Day, and rocket through space –all from their own classroom or home.

Math Teachers Unite

Teaching, although rewarding can be lonely –educators often collaborate with colleagues, but much of the day is spent in classroom talking to kids. Social media connects math educators across the country. They can share tools and success stories, help each other with various math teaching techniques, and inspire other instructors.

We the Teachers and edWeb.net are examples of social media "clubs" just for teachers. Teachers can share lesson plans, join a group of math teachers, or discuss new ideas in the forums.

And, technology brings students together – they can collaborate and cooperate on tough math problems. They can study algebra together, work out a challenging proof, and chat about this week's math homework right from their computers.

Technology turns the math classroom into a vast virtual space with unlimited learning potential. But in the words of Bill Gates, "Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important."

Perfect Student Computer 2010

2010-04-22T10:52:00.001-07:00

The Computer Using Educators of BC at is again. This week we will be sending out these computers to 10 educators across British Columbia who are part of a BCTF research call Program, Quality Teach.

We will ask them to put the computer in the hands of their students to get feedback. We will post that feedback here on this blog.

Our goal continues to be to find a computer to get in the hands of students that is:

inexpensive – does more need to be said? Well we are looking for a device that any and all students could and would afford to bring the internet into the classroom.
portable – should be small, light, nothing much heavier than a math textbook yet far more useful.
multimedia – needs a webcam, speakers and lots of storage for music and video. Most netbooks have this space but need to check before we buy.
battery life – really we want something that can go a whole day in a classroom without needing a charge.
strong performance – should have a modern operating system, decent boot time to get right into use in the classroom.

Here is what we purchased this year:

Acer 10.1" Netbook featuring Intel Atom N450

Purchased from Bestbuy for $299+tax. See Bestbuy.ca

Intel Atom processor N450 and 1GB system memory
10.1" display
160GB hard drive
3 USB 2.0 ports
Multi-in-1 memory card reader
Pre-installed Windows 7 Starter edition

Software

Here it the FREE software on the machine and links if you want the software on your computer.

Office and Wordprocessor: Open Office
Browsers: Firefox, IE and Chrome.
Communication: Skype
Sound recording and editing: Audacity
Photo viewing and editing: Picasa
Video Player: VLC video player, Windows Media
Antivirus: AVG Free
Google Earth

Installation Process

We purchase Norton Ghost 15 to image the computers to get the same software on all the computers. Of course I needed some help with this, here is the technical team. All the computer boxed had to be opened, labeled, connected to an external drive and CD drive to be ghosted. Total time about two hours/machine.

Early Learning and Technology

2010-04-20T22:22:00.001-07:00

Here are some notes and links for a presentation to parents of preschool aged children.

Big idea with technology is that it is better to use technology to create than to consume things that others have created.

Games

We all play games. Lots of amazing examples in this postcast by CBC.ca/spark with host Nora Jones in an interview with Jesse Schell.

Later in the interview he also has us think about what is a good game.

Internet Safety

For young learners, the key concern is having them click on the wrong link.

Consider using features such as the parental controls in Windows 7 or the FREE Windows Live Family Safety Filter.

Check out the interactive game for children about personal information.

Generational Change

Flow theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Learn

Information for parents on playing safe on Sesame Street.

Some ideas for having young learners create and communicate

—Podcast
◦Record something they are proud of
—Skype
◦Talk to an expert
—Author
◦Write a book review!
—Email
◦Tell someone you are thinking about them

If you have thoughts about early learners and technology then it would be great to hear from you. Leave a comment below.

Delicious – share your favourite websites

2010-03-22T10:41:00.001-07:00

There are so many great educational technology tools, it is easy to forget some of the best. Delicious is one of those amazing tools. It is a social bookmarking site that saves a bookmark online. My delicious account is: http://delicious.com/jmcconville

Reasons to Delicious

If you haven’t been on your delicious account in a while here are a few amazing used of delicious for classroom teachers.

You can access you bookmarks (favourites) from any number of computers at school and at home. This also works as a backup in case of computer crash.
You bookmarks can be embedded onto your classroom website.
Each bookmark can have a comment attached. This can help remind us and our students what activities they can do on the site.
Bookmarks can be shared with fellow colleagues and with students. The network feature is amazing.

How – to

The help on the delicious site has a great getting started guide. Here are the basics.

Create an account. Delicious is owned by yahoo so you’ll need a yahoo account if you don’t already have one.
Choose a delicious username. This will be the link to your online bookmarks. My username is jmcconville so my bookmarks are http://delicious.com/jmcconville
Start bookmarking! When you find a site you want to save there are a few options to save. You can copy the URL, open delicious in another tab or window and click ‘save a new bookmark.
The second option involves you having the delicious browser button installed, you can simply click on the ‘save a new bookmark’ link.
Add a note to remind you what you liked about the site and a few tags to group your bookmarks together.
Expand your network to find great bookmarks from others. Here are the educators that I follow: Imagine all the amazing sites you would find if a group of teachers on a staff shared their bookmarks via delicious and connected in a network.
Embed your bookmarks on your teacher website. Here is a screencast for embedding into sharepoint.

New features!

Delicious just added a feature called ‘Browse these bookmarks (beta)’. View the screencast below for a demo of ‘browse these bookmarks’.

Amazing new bookmarks!

At a elementary teacher sharing session last week. Jane Chabot showed me these two amazing websites that are now on the top of my delicious picks.

Jacksonpollock.org allows you to paint like the great master himself. Everytime you click you get a new colour, the faster you move the mouse the thinner the line.

Please take a moment to add a comment below with a link to your delicious account and your job title. We can then find others with similar interests to add to our network.

Oxfam – Mapping our World

Check out the screencast below for a demo of this site.

Share your Delicious account name

Please take a moment to add a comment below with a link to your delicious account and your job title. We can then find others with similar interests to add to our network.

Class Website – Extend the Learning

2010-03-16T11:18:00.001-07:00

A classroom website can be a hub for sharing and gathering information. I really like the graphic from Free Technology for Teachers. Look at the key words: give, collect, display, links…

from Free Technology for Teachers

Getting Started

Your website can be all these things, just remember to be successful you’ll need to start small. In my experience, teachers like to start by giving and posting information on the site. On a website this might look like a list of links to great websites, homework and planner notes for the day and paragraph about personal philosophy ‘about me’.

Future Steps

Once a teacher has more experience the site can be enhanced to make it more interactive by collecting and engaging students. This might be a wiki, student blog and hand in box.

Managing your Time

One of the most common concerns from teachers is the amount of time to manage a website. Here is what others have found as key strategies for making the website management more efficient.

Have the students do the posting – at the end of each day with the notes that go into the student planners also need to go onto the website. Have a student complete this task each day.
Use the classroom laptop/projector to do double duty. If you are one of the fortunate teaches to have projection technology in the classroom, rather than writing the end of day notes on the board, type them directly onto the site.

Sample template

Our district provides sharepoint as a platform for teacher websites. Here is a screenshot of the template.

Would be interested in hearing from teachers about the key things they have on their teacher website.

Perfect Student Computer 2010

2010-03-15T21:45:00.001-07:00

The Computer Using Educators of BC are at it again. We are looking for recommendations for the perfect student computer. As you recall from our previous posts, here is our criteria.

inexpensive – does more need to be said? Well we are looking for a device that any and all students could and would afford to bring the internet into the classroom.
portable – should be small, light, nothing much heavier than a math textbook yet far more useful.
multimedia – needs a webcam, speakers and lots of storage for music and video. Most netbooks have this space but need to check before we buy.
battery life – really we want something that can go a whole day in a classroom without needing a charge.
strong performance – should have a modern operating system, decent boot time to get right into use in the classroom.

Last year we purchased Acer Netbooks from Bestbuy. While they had a few warranty issues that were all resolved, they weren’t the ‘perfect’ computers. The same as last year, we hope to get the computers in the hands of as many teachers and students as possible to see how they like them. I’ll post thoughts and comments on this blog an in the CUEBC newsletter.

If you have suggestions or want to share a link to a great new computer you just purchased then drop a comment off below :)

Learning in a Digital Immersion Classroom

2010-03-02T16:36:00.001-08:00

When I get asked about models for sustainable learning with computer technology, you don’t have to go any further than Riverside Secondary in our district.

While many would agree that technology infused learning can benefit students, funding computers is a challenge. While most schools have computer labs, wireless computers in core subject areas is harder to achieve. In Riverside’s Digital Immersion course, the students all have a wireless computer, many bring their own but some choose to use a school laptops. The students work together as a cohort and get credit for English/Socials/Science and Digital Immersion. Throughout the course student have the double benefit of learning the required provincial learning outcomes while evaluating and selecting digital tools to best represent their learning. The students also create digital backpacks or portfolios of their work. Many of these are digital backpacks are shared on the school website.

It also seems that the media is picking up the story too. Here is an article in the local Tri-City News (February 25, 2010), “Teenagers are already immersed in technology”.

Here is the video from CBC by Theresa Lalonde

Math Resources – the new electronic standard

2010-02-05T15:11:00.001-08:00

Just this week I had one of those savory nostalgic moments that may not repeat many more times in the future. I received my reviewers copy of the new Math Links 10 textbook from McGraw-Hill publishers. For someone like myself who does everything online from personal banking to working with teachers creating websites there as an exciting moment of opening the mail to find a package. The first crack of the textbook spine and the smell of a new book that I had a small (tiny really) role in creating. Now I’m sounding way too nostalgic :)

In it’s print form this textbook is what you would expect. Gorgeous, high resolution photos of familiar British Columbia icons such as the suspension bridge and totem poles. Rich colour, graphics and layouts with generous white space to improve readability.

Here is the part that really impressed me. The breadth and depth of the electronic resources are outstanding. Not only does the online version have the static PDF copies of the chapters, there is a fully interactive edition of the book. You can tell the publishers are as nostalgic as me as the online resource is complete with a page flip option that even includes the sound of a paper page being turned.

The digital enhancements are throughout the book. You can zoom in to read more clearly, a key accessibility feature, there are videos embedded that feature scientists that use math such as one from NASA. There are screencast problem solving where you watch a hand solve a problem on what looks like a pad of paper. The third type of media is interactive flash problem where student can test their understanding of problems related to the topic in that chapter.

Take a look at this page from the student edition. This sample page has a video of a problem being solved. A place for students to take personal notes and book mark the book and it is all overlaid on the corresponding page from the paper book.

Teacher resource

The teacher resource takes it to a whole new level. I’ve chosen the first page of the chapter and pulled out all the ‘tabs’ that are originally hidden buy can be brought forward. For example, in the overview a number of blacklined masters can be opened as word documents right from the links in the teacher edition.

This image show the media browser that displays the number and variety of multimedia that is available for the chapter.

All sample material can be accessed on this site: http://mhrmath10.ca/

Final thoughts

This brings me back to my original statement. It is clear that the online resource is very enhanced compared to the paper copy. While there are still technical hurdles to overcome such as student access, we can only expect a growing number of student personally-owned devices that can access these resources in the future.

I’d be interested to hear from others about what version (or both) you would choose.

Banning Social Networking in Schools

2010-01-13T22:42:00.001-08:00

I was recently asked for rationales on why social networking sites like facebook, twitter, youtube should be UN-blocked in a school district. Here is my response. I’d be curious to hear what others think!

Here are some thoughts to have the ‘pro-banners’ consider. Students who can afford it already have facebook, msn, twitter…etc on their cell phone. Banning social networking on the district network simply means that the students who can’t afford a personal cell data plan are blocked. There is an obvious moral role that schools play in providing free, open, public access to all children. How is facebook banning any different than book banning?

We are all aware that cyber bullying and off-task facebooking and concerns in schools. My feeling is that education systems have a role to plan in mentoring, modeling and participating in social networking. We need to monitor and shape socially responsible behaviors in our young learners. Blocking the sites simply means that the educators miss an opportunity to teach about the appropriate use.

Also, there are too many professional networks that exist and will continue to exist in social sites. I was recently at a professional development session in that district and found that twitter was blocked. Twitter has become a powerful professional network to learn from and to share.

By the way. I look forward to connecting to you on twitter (http://twitter.com/jmcconville1000). For now, you’ll have to go online at home, school is definitely ‘off-line’ - Tongue-in-check :)

What advice would you give to a district on why they shouldn’t block social networking?

Creating Music: Mixcraft 4 in schools

2010-01-08T11:36:00.001-08:00

Looking for an amazing, inexpensive, creative music composition software that rivals (and beats) GarageBand? If so then test drive Mixcraft 4.

As our district has gradually converted to the Windows platform, we have been looking for a replacement to the much loved GarageBand. Our initial focus has been at the middle school where students have an amazing opportunity to have music instruction as one of their exploration courses. Obviously, most of the music exploration is done in the music room yet a trip to the computer lab with Mixcraft installed can augment music studies by allowing student to creatively compose, edit and share songs.

There are hundreds of music loops in a variety of music styles. When I visited the middle school in our district where the students had been introduced to Mixcraft after just one week of 40 minute periods, they were already proficient at using the software. The software is geared toward novice users. I could see elementary students grade 3 and up making great use of Mixcraft.

The computers where Mixcraft is installed are three year-old refurbished Dell’s. The software ran very quickly without any crashes. The students treated my auditory senses to a wide-array of music styles from orchestral vocals to pop to heavy metal. The girl who had made the heavy metal song did it because her dad loves metal and “it has grown on me when I listen in the car.”

While this school hasn’t yet explored this functionality, there is the feature of connecting a MIDI keyboard, guitar or microphone.

Taking the Software Home

There is an arrangement where student who really gravitate towards music composition can purchase a home version at a reduced cost.

Teacher Resource Kit

To get stared as a teacher, be sure it request a copy of the teacher workbook Mixcraft 4 For the Classroom. It is a visual guide that walks the teacher through a number of strategies and student activities. The teacher also got a licensed copy to install at home as we know that this is where most teachers prepare lessons.

With the purchase, there is also a free upgrade to Mixcraft 5 when it is released. The representative that I’ve been working with from Acoustica is David Raimondo.

Bias

In case you were wondering about bias in this blog, I was not remunerated in anyway for this post. I’m just an educator looking for educational technology that provides good value to schools that enhance student learning and engagement.

Teacher Gradebooks: Engrade Canada

2010-01-07T14:14:00.001-08:00

This post is to update my readers about teacher gradebooks. In a previous blog post I shared information about Engrade the FREE online gradebook.

The highlight at this time is that Engrade now has a Canadian version. As stated on their site, “Engrade.ca is hosted on Canadian web servers to comply with Canadian laws concerning government data storage.” This is great news for Canadian educators who need to be sensitive to FIPPA regulations (BC version).

Engrade’s advantage over other gradebooks is that it FREE and is fully online. In other words, there is no saving files and moving them between computers, simply login and update the gradebook. This is also a weakness, we had an instance last year when Engrade was temporarily unavailable during a reporting period. There is an ‘export to excel’ option that I recommend that teachers do weekly.

A real highlight of Engrade is that each student gets a personal login to view only their assignment marks rather than the entire class spreadsheet. Anytime a teacher makes a change to an assignment, the students automatically sees the update. It is also possible to include notes, comments and attendance.

Not to discount other great teacher gradebook software, MasterGrade is a great product that is a locally installed software (Windows and Mac). The benefit of a local install is that it ensures that the teacher has full control of the data file for backup and working between multiple home/work computers. This is also a disadvantage as many teachers doing have the access to install software on district computers leaving them to wait for their support staff. Mastergrade is very affordable (not free thought) and works with BCeSIS classlists. It also has a feature to import the student photos from the school database so that teachers can have seating plans.

Here is a two-page handout that you can share with teachers looking for a ‘getting started’ guide. I’ve posted the PDF to ensure compatibility and a Word document if you want to tweak. Would appreciate leaving my name and link to this blog on the document.

Windows 7 in Education: 2 months later

2009-12-16T09:47:00.001-08:00

Well it has been a few months since Microsoft updated their much anticipated operating system update and overall it has been an excellent experience. Did a session for teachers yesterday who are considering getting Windows 7 on their home computer(s) and here are some of the links that I shared.

My original blog post ‘7 reasons to switch to Windows 7’ http://jamesmcconville.blogspot.com/2009/11/7-reasons-to-switch-to-windows-7.html

Window 7 for teachers by Microsoft. Great post by the Microsoft team that highlights some of the features that teachers will love and use in the classroom. For example check out the SNIP tool and the ZOOM that is now built right into the operating system. SNIP allows anyone to take a screen shot of the whole, or part of the screen and then add pen marks or highlighting. This feature will be great for creating how-to guides or worksheets for students. The ZOOM will work great when connected to a classroom LCD projector to enlarge the key area of the screen to make the text or pictures more readable by students. See more: http://blogs.msdn.com/teachertech/archive/2009/10/22/7-things-teachers-will-like-about-windows-7.aspx

Pros and cons of switching to Windows 7- it is always valuable to think of the reasons to NOT switch. Here are a few. http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3845916/Windows-7-Upgrade-Pro-and-Con.htm

Our district has licensing to offer Windows 7 and MS Office at a reduced price for educators. Ask your district for the link.

From the Microsoft site - Help and How-to that have videos on how to use many of the new features like SNAP and JumpLists. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/help

Unsure what version is best, check out this chart: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare

Videos of Windows 7 features from the Microsoft site

HomeGroup

Takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network.

Jump Lists

Speedy access to your favorite pictures, songs, websites, and documents.

Snap

A quick (and fun!) new way to resize and compare windows on your desktop.

Windows Live Essentials

7 great programs, 1 free download. Mail, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and more.

Windows Search

Find virtually anything on your PC, instantly.

Windows Taskbar

Better thumbnail previews, easier-to-see icons, and more ways to customize.

SMARTNotebook Software: take it home teachers and students

2009-12-15T11:33:00.001-08:00

Did you know that the SMARTNotebook software (currently version 10) can be installed on any school and home computer by staff and students? I’ve confirmed this is a representative from SMARTTech and our district reseller that for every SMARTBoard that is purchased anywhere in the district, teachers and students can install on 1000 machines. For our district, with a growing number of SMARTBoards, we have virtually unlimited installation capabilities.

Notebook 10 is amazing teacher presentation software that works really well for teachers with computers and a projector. It does not need the SMARTBoard hardware to run the software and it runs on Windows and Mac. There are hundreds of subject specific tools and templates that are included for FREE.

For some links on the use of SMARTBoards and the Notebook software visit Anita Strang’s amazing website and blog. She is constantly adding new templates for teachers. There is a great Christmas template she just posted!

SMARTBoard Forum site: http://public.sd43.bc.ca/elementary/Birchland/SMARTBoard%20Forum
Anita’s blog: http://anitasquicktips.edublogs.org

More notebook files online. Did you know that when doing a google search, you can add filetype:notebook to your search text to find SMARTNotebook files that other teachers have shared on their websites? Give it a try!

Painting and Drawing with students: Sumo Paint

2009-11-26T12:20:00.001-08:00

There are a number of free online drawing programs available on the internet right now. I’ve tried Aviary, Pixlr and Sumo Paint. Sumo Paint is a standout for me in terms of application in education K-12. From the image above you’ll see an amazing tool set that it has available. The most commonly install drawing program in schools right now is KidPix. Part of what made kid pix so popular was the great stamp and brush tools. This is where Sumo Paint is a standout in the crowd of free online painting program.

Look at the different brushes available. Don’t forget that brushes can be used as stamps if the flow is set to 100%.

Shapes are also amazing in the program. Try adding shapes onto the canvas and then, while holding the mouse button, move the mouse up and down, left and right. The shape will be transformed and resized as a preview before you have to release and create the shape. Brilliant feature!

Below are pdf and word documents of the file that I shared with teachers in the workshop. My thinking was that in the following eight steps, teachers would have enough skill to introduce the same skills to their students. These are basic drawing skills in whatever program you have:

Draw a shape
Saving and sharing files
Working with layers – this is a big one a most people don’t have experience in multi-layered programs like photoshop.
Brushes
Text
Importing pictures
Effects (or filters)
Saving (again!)

I’d be curious to hear what curriculum integration and assessment ideas that people have to an online painting program like Sumo Paint.

7 reasons to switch to Windows 7

2009-11-02T12:39:00.001-08:00

Like many of you, I have a number of computers at home and work. They are a wide range of vintages of processors and hardware. I was lucky enough to be asked by Microsoft to host a Windows 7 launch party. Despite the comments from my wife about being such a geek, Windows 7 has been a huge improvement in our computing at home and work. If you are still contemplating switching over, here are some compelling reasons, and yes, this includes those of you using Mac’s, Windows 7 is simply the best operating system ever!

Homegroup. Networking has never been so easy to setup and connect computers. On Vista and XP I had a number of file shares for things like documents, music libraries..etc. Windows 7 introduced a concept called homegroup. Once I installed Windows 7 on a second computer at home it instantly recognized that I had a homegroup on my network, simply enter the supplied password and instantly all music, video, documents and even printers were shared. The best surprise was last night when my wife was wanting to print to print wirelessly to a local printer on another machine, worked without any setup!
Libraries. In XP Microsoft created folders called my Pictures, my Videos etc. The problem was that different applications put pictures in other locations on the hard drive creating a challenge in locating them. Libraries is a fresh new concept where any folder that contains pictures can be right-clicked on and added to that library. Finding the 1000’s of pictures of my family vacations could be easier! In the graphic below there you can see that for each type of library you can see my personal documents and the public ones on this computer.
Taskbar. The revamped taskbar with live preview is amazing. If you are like me, you typically have 5-10 browser windows and/or tabs open in addition to 3-4 other programs. For example, right now I’m running Chrome, Live Writer (to write this), IE 8 with 4 tabs and Outlook. Check out this graph of live preview of all my IE tabs. Depending on your computer performance, the preview will even run videos. It is now very quick to find each window and even close tabs that I don’t need any more.
Bitlocker Vista introduced the idea of drive encryption. While it is essential to think about the security of your data, especially on laptops that are more easily lost/stolen, most people didn’t use the encryption. Bitlocker makes this much easier to implement. The most amazing feature is BitLocker to Go. This allows you to encrypt USB keys. I always have a least one key in my work bag or pocket but rarely put much data on in the fear that I leave it behind somewhere. With BitLocker I can password protect the drive in a way that I can make it read/write from another Windows 7 computer or read-only from XP or Vista. It is easy to add a drive to Bitlocker. From the control panel, select BitLocker Encryption, insert the USB key, turn on BitLocker, enter the password you want to use, click next and a few minutes later it is ready to go.
64 bit operating system. I’m a speed junkie, I really like to have a fast machine that is snappy to open files and programs when I want. Windows 7 64 bit is much faster. If you aren’t sure if your computer can run Windows 7 in 32 or 64 bit then there is a application that you can download and run.
Snap and JumpLists. These fun features enhance the way many of us work. With SNAP you can drag an application to the right side of the monitor and it will snap to be 1/2 the width of the screen. Simply drag another application to the other side and it snaps to that 1/2. Great way to compare document or do research while working in Word. The JumpLists are an evolution of ‘recent documents’ from XP. With XP you had recent document for all programs. Now every program can show you the most recent documents or windows you had open. Here is my jumplist for Internet Explorer.
Performance. I’ve been stunned at the broad range of my machines that are capable of running Windows 7. In all cases, Windows 7 was as fast or faster on every machine. Here is what I’ve tested so far:

Acer Netbook with 1Gb RAM with Windows 7 32 bit RC. Ran as fast as XP.
Dell Latitude with 4Gb Ram (my work machine) with 32 bit, just waiting for my tech to get the 64 bit installed.
My main computer less than 6 months old with 4Gb or RAM is way faster with 64 bit.
Dell Inspiron 1525 (wife’s computer), 1.5 years old with 32 bit version is faster and homegroup is amazing.
Other computers I’ve tried out the Release Candidate (RC) without issues, it did a great job of finding all my drivers.

In the links above for each of the items there is a link to a video on the Microsoft site that demos how this feature is used.

Post a comment here and let me know what you think about Windows 7 or if you have any questions about if it is time for you to switch.

Hope. Future. Now. young writers.. voices for the world.

2009-10-27T14:40:00.001-07:00

“I was looking for ways of using technology that couldn’t be done without the technology. Way to provide a real audience for my students. There are certain things that I struggle to do in the walls of my classroom. I hope to develop an appreciation of my student’s writing”

-Jen Whiffin

I was at an inspiring session with master teacher Jen Whiffin yesterday and had to post the information to my blog. Here students are thinking, writing and reflecting on Social Responsibility and their global role and responsibility as citizens. This is the broad umbrella of social responsibility including environmental responsibility…etc

Why it is so imperative that we let other educators know about this is that Jen is looking for an audience for her students. As you can imagine, students are thrilled to have comments on their posts. Take some time to read their writing and leave them a comment with your thoughts and perhaps a personal connection.

Her class is also looking for other students to join their community of of writers. They will accept a story, a poem or even a drawing like the one above with a description. Send your submissions to futurehopenow@gmail.com

photo by 9 year old –Grace

Interested in your comments or thoughts about blogging with students.

Educational Technology Conference – October 23rd, 2009

2009-09-29T12:26:00.001-07:00

The Computer Using Educators of BC

Invite you to the largest

Educational Technology Conference of the year

Hosted in Surrey, BC at Sullivan Heights Secondary School.

Attend this year to find over 50 sessions (including a French strand), two keynotes, 2 mini-keynotes, vendor displays, Friday lunch, Thursday Wine and Cheese, networking with your colleagues, Saturday 1/2 and full day sessions and a CUEBC PSA Membership all included in the $100 conference fee.

List of Workshops

Conference Schedule

Conference Schedule

Thursday

6:00 Registration Opens

7:00 Wine and Cheese

8:00 Keynote – Chris Kennedy - Assistant Superintendent of Schools for West Vancouver.

Friday (Vendor Floor open 7:30 to 2:00)

7:00 Registration Opens

7:30 Breakfast

8:30 Keynote - Steve Hargadon - Web 2.0 as the Future of Education – Founder of Classroom2.0

9:45 Sessions

11:30 Lunch / CUEBC AGM

12:15 FSL/Immersion Mini Keynote

12:45 Sessions

1:00 Changing faces of Distributed Learning – Mini Keynote

2:45 Thank you and Door Prizes

Saturday (Lunch on your own)

7:30 Registration

8:30 to 2:30 – Four All Day Sessions: Classroom 2.0, Quest Atlantis, 3DS Max and

9:30 to 11:00 SMART Notebook 10: Embedding interactivity into your Lessons

11:45 to 2:00 SMART Notebook 10: Best Practices for Digital Content Development

by September 30, 2009

to get the $100 Early Bird Rate.

Blog Birthday – great to be one year old!

2009-09-22T17:05:00.001-07:00

Well today is the one year anniversary for my blog. For those of you still thinking if you have enough time/motivation/content for a blog, I can tell you that it has been well worth it.

Reasons to have a blog!

Time. While it does take time to write the blog, find pictures (what is a post without something to look at) and create the links it has been well worth the time. I’ve been a very modest blogger with just 27 posts in the past year. My goal has always to just find about two topics a month to share. In some ways it has been a time saver. Some of the emails that I get about things like FREE software, can be responded to with a simple link the post.
Motivation. It is great to have a consistent (albeit modest) daily hit count for my blog. In the past year there have been readers from 43 countries. Welcome to all, leave a comment and a link to your blog!
Content. One of my beliefs is that we all have something to share. To others, we are always an expert on something. As an avid reader of 30 or so educational blogs and 100’s of news RSS feeds, I wanted to contribute after years of reading (and lurking).

If you don’t have a website hit tracker I highly recommend Google Analytics. Here are the stats from my blog.

Digital Immersion at Riverside Secondary

2009-09-17T09:35:00.001-07:00

This morning I’m working with a grade 9 class at Riverside Secondary. Under the amazing leadership of Jeremy Brown and Elizabeth Bancroft with the support of the administration team they launched an exciting, engaging program for students. Student stay together for the full mornings each day this semester take Science 9 and a Digital Immersion course. Next semester, Elizabeth Bancroft takes over with English and Socials. There are a number of structures that their team has put together to ensure student and program success. All the student self-elected to join the program, they are engaged and enthusiastic. They are also very patient, as you can imagine when working with technology, there are times when things go wrong. The school has a robust wireless infrastructure and the room is well supplied with electricity around the walls and in the centre of the room. The students all have modern laptops. Some have privately-owned computers but the majority are using Dell Netbooks supplied by the school.

My small contribution this morning was to have the students download and install Windows Live Writer (see previous blog post). They then connected the program to post blogs on their internal sharepoint blogs. Their topic was researching and sharing “Breakfasts from around the world”. They will then have access to read and respond to each other’s blogs.

The teachers have approached this like an action research where they are actively learning and experimenting with new ways to have student make the best uses of Web2.0 technologies while covering the prescribed learning outcomes of their respective courses.

One of my key determinate of a quality program is would I choose it for my children if they were in Grade 9. The answer is a resounding YES. I couldn’t help thinking how this program would be great social environment to use the internet to research the topics and share. As a teacher I would be thrilled to teach in an setting like the one designed for these students. I hope we see more of these types of programs.

Reference: The picture from the internet.

Internet Filtering in Schools

2009-09-10T15:54:00.001-07:00

Under the guise of student safety, many school districts are choosing to block various websites. My personal favourite excuses for blocking sites because students are ‘off task’ and ‘facebooking’ too much. Using this train of thinking, students will somehow be more on-task and focused when we block sites. I guess this would mean banning books would improve student reading?

I work in a great district which blocks almost nothing beyond the most inappropriate sites. We have a broad belief that the internet is an educational resource that should be open to all current and unanticipated future uses. We believe that educators are creative caring individuals and will think of ways to use social media and other sites in ways we can’t even imagine right now. I’m a huge proponent of keeping the internet open and free for all students and teachers.

There was a great twitter discussion on September 9th about this topic. You can find the tweets under the search term #edchat. There was an amazing response and re-tweet to this original post ‘RT @plevy: All schools and universities should open access to social media #edchat’

Thanks to my blogging colleague Lisa Reid for getting me to think about this topic in her blog.

I’d be interested in hearing from others. How much is filtered at your school/district?

Traveling with family in Oregon

2009-08-05T13:04:00.001-07:00

Just returned from an amazing trip through central Oregon and the coast. Here are some of the details for those interested in visiting these amazing locations.

Sun River, Oregon

A master designed community in the high desert in Oregon. It is mostly large, custom home on large lots. It has an extensive network of cycling paths to and from every part of the community. Although you can get anywhere on a bike, the distances are quite long due to the sprawling lots that the houses sit on. When at the resort be sure to visit the Observatory for star gazing, the pool with slide, the stables. Also, be sure to pack an inflatable boat or inner tube as the Descutes river is a calm two hour float and can be shuttled as the rentals are expensive from the marina.

Newberry National Monument

This state park is an amazing collection of volcanic sites. We visited the following locations and highly recommend them.

Lava Butte great views of the surrounding area.
Lava River Cave Lava ran through this tunnel cave for years and hardened around the outside to make a mile long underground hike.
Lava Cast Forest These are the remains of tree trucks that were surrounded by lava and then burned away.

Bend, Oregon

Bend is a city that reminds me of Nelson, BC. It is full of local businesses that cater to an active lifestyle. Everything from yoga studios to bike shops to noodle houses (two visits there!) and coffee roasters to service our every need.

Lincoln City, Oregon Coast

Surfing and skimboarding at Devil’s Punchbowl. This stretch of beach is protected by an off-shore reef that keeps the waves to a 3-5 foot safe beginner’s size. The cliff on one side acts as a wind barrier making this a great location to spend the day. Visit the state park website.

Surf lessons and rentals. At the south end of Lincoln City is the Lincoln City Surf Shop. The owner, Mike Jipp took me out for a lesson and I ended up renting a board and great wetsuit from him for only $40/day. Also check out the awesome staff at Oregon Surf Shop they have fabulous gear at great prices. Check out the deals I got. A cool T-shirt $10, skimboards for the kids $20 and a wetsuit for the two year-old $34. In Oregon there are no sales taxes!

That me about to head out for a chilly, fun dip in the Pacific Ocean at Devil’s Punch Bowl.

G.ho.st Virtual Computer – not quite ready for education

2009-07-08T15:37:00.001-07:00

If you haven’t already tried this out, there is a free virtual computer that is available online.

This is like having a personal computer that you can have anywhere that you get internet access. The G.ho.st VC has chat & email applications and can store plenty of files in its 15 Gb of space.

Features that work well

The interface, in general, is excellent. It is flash based and unlike most flash content on the web today doesn’t have the functionality such as the right-click. G.ho.st has a rich interface with many of the Windows like functionality under the right-click such as new files, copy and paste.
Mail – here is the email client, it works very well and is featured similar to Gmail or hotmail and can of course send to addresses outside of g.ho.st. You can also configure the client to pickup your email from any POP or IMAP server.

Technical issues

zoho word processor and spreadsheets. It was a great feature that G.ho.st included Zoho applications in the Virtual Computer. However, despite multiple attempts and re-boots I’ve never been able to run the zoho word processor or spreadsheets. The first few attempts there was an error message, now nothing happens.

Here is a picture of my g.ho.st desktop. I’ve got my personal background, sticky notes, CBC top news RSS feed and quick access to my files.

Some unusual facts about g.ho.st that educators should be aware of before having students use this service. There is a powerful set of tools to share files. You can share with ‘friends’ which would work well for teachers and students in a class. It is also possible to connect your g.ho.st account with your Google Docs. When I did this all my Google docs showed up in an explorer view, it even displayed all my Google folders. As an educational environment, my concern is about the publically shared files. A quick browse of ‘most viewed’ and ‘most stared’ returned a lot of pornography and cracked files. Seems like this might become an alternative hacker community. At this point in time there doesn’t seem to be a safe search filter.

Learn more about G.ho.st

I’d be interested to connect to other educators using ghost. My g.ho.st ID is jmcconville.

The Perfect Student Computer: part IV

2009-07-06T16:13:00.001-07:00

We had our first warranty repair on one of the six netbooks that we purchased. For those of you that have been following this series of posts, the Computer Using Educators of BC purchased six netbooks to test the use of and promote student computers in education. We were looking for low-cost, high-use computers. Archive of previous posts: part I, part II, part III.

Another highlight of this project is that we will be giving the six computers away to delegates at our fall conference. Register now for ‘Turning the Classroom on the Edge of 2.0’, a conference about using the best of the web in your classroom.

Problems with the Acer Aspire One netbooks

Here are the notes from Dennis in regards to the recent repair.

Went to the website found the warranty/support link.
Entered in the serial # and purchase date of the computer.
Acer sent me an email with instructions on how return the product – choice of drop off or pickup; I chose pickup by Purolator. Repair depot was located in Burnaby
Sent an email when the repair was finished and couriered it back by Fed Ex
Picked up on May 4, delivered on May 14. Total of 10 days. A little long for a repair I thought considering the repair depot was in Burnaby.
Acer paid for all shipping costs.
Repair comment on the invoice: “Replaced Battery” and “It has been thoroughly tested”

The bottom line was that it was fairly quick and very easy to get it repaired. Kudos to Acer.

Here are the notes from a problem that Anita had.

I also wanted to update you on my Son’s Acer Aspire. I wrote the following out for Staples when I brought it in – I am just passing it along to you FYI as I know you have been collecting info about them. I had to take it in to Staples as it has been giving him trouble lately and now it will not boot up at all. They are looking into it. What has been happening:
On boot-up a “checking file system” screen would come up (looks like the screen that happens when you run a ‘check disk’)
It would run through and then boot up fine (thought Graham says it has been quite slow)
The last time this happened prior to bringing it in it indicated:
- “windows is verifying files and folders”
- “Windows found problems with the file system that could not be corrected”
Following this it just cycles through the “checking file system” screen again repeatedly
A while back I found out that Graham has been powering off with the power button rather than going through the correct processes – I am wondering if this has damaged it.

Would be interesting to hear from others on your model of netbook and issues that you have experience.

Windows Live Writer

2009-06-19T10:21:00.001-07:00

Microsoft in an effort not to outdone by Google recently released an amazing suite of free tools that are Web2.0 enabled.

I’m writing this post in a program called Windows Live Writer. Download for free from http://download.live.com/

Here is a preview of the interface. It follows a similar layout to MS Word but is simplified and optimized for blogging.

Here are some of the great features to check out:

it’s free – maybe I mentioned that :) but one of the barriers of having something all students can use a common product is overcome by having it for free on any district owned or personally owned computer.
It allows any picture to be copies and pasted from the internet. It then uploads them automatically to the server in a photos folder. Functional simplicity at its best.
Works with multiple blog sites. I can use Windows Live Writer to post to my sharepoint site, my live account and more.
Great options to control layout in tables, font colours and more. Personalize at will!
Can insert with one click links to sites, pictures, photo albums, maps, video and more.

I’d be interested to hear what others think of this program.

Live Mesh: your files everywhere you want them

2009-05-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

Here is some amazing software that every Computer Using Educator needs to install.

It is called Live Mesh Beta from Microsoft and the tag line on the website is 'Synchronizing life: sync, share and access the information you care about- wherever you happen to be. There are so many possibilities with this software. The feature list is so deep and I can't think of any other simple application that does so much.

Sync files between two or more computers. LiveMesh uses any messenger account that you already have. Once the client is installed your operating system will have an option to 'add folder to Live Mesh...'. Selecting this option will start the sync process. When you get to any other computer with live mesh installed the folder will be there but semi-transparent. Clicking on the folder will allow you to select the location that you'd like the folder stored on that computer. That's it, the folders are now synced between the computers. Add a file, make a change and it is replicated across all computers.
View files online. This is an amazing feature. Even when I'm not on one of my computers with LiveMesh installed I can still log into mesh.com to view and open my files.
Share files. Once you you have selected a folder to add to LiveMesh you can then invite other members to that folder. You even have three permission levels of owners, contributors and readers.
Remote control another computer. There are lots of free applications such as VNC that allow remote desktop. The challenge is knowing the IP address of each computer you want to connect to. LiveMesh takes care of all this. From the same website mesh.com, there is a tab called 'Devices'. Simply select the device such as work laptop and click 'Connect'. It is the same as sitting at that computer. The interface is quite slow but this is useful for the times where you just need a file or information from another computer.
Work on Mac and PC's. While I haven't tested the Mac client there are lots of posts on the LiveMesh developers blog about how this works and information about the fixes they have put into place to get this running. This is big progress for Microsoft to build an application that works right on a Mac. Can someone test and let me know how it works?
Lots of storage. Even in the beta version there are 5Gb available.

If you are looking for resources and support, here is the getting started guide and an overview to read.

What uses have others found for Live Mesh?

What is your Professional Development Passion?

2009-05-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

Big Ideas in this post:

Be singular in your Professional Development focus.
Professional development needs passion, commitment and accountability.

As educators, there are many areas of our practice that we would like to improve, change, revamp and even discard. This is the time of year, during the final learning stretch before the summer break, that we think about our focus for the following year. As educators, we take time to reflect and think about what worked with students, what to do more of and what to change.

Our district staff development department had a planning session with my favourite mentor Sharon Jeroski. I went away with a renewed belief that to have effective personal professional development, educators need to select one single focus, find a group of similarly minded educators that want to work together. In other words, professional development needs passion, commitment and accountability. There are always many aspects that we want to change but to be successful we need to focus on one singular item each year. In our district, here are the broad topics for our action research learning teams that educators select as a focus of inquiry: assessment, critical thinking, diverse learners, ESL, french, healthy living, leadership, literacy, music, numeracy, social responsibility and technology.

We at the Computer Using Educators of BC hope that your focus includes the integration of technology into classroom instruction and that you will join us at our annual fall conference. Our theme this year is "Turning the Classroom...on the Edge of 2.0".

Feel free to comment on this blog post. What is one thing you would like to implement, tackle or take on next year? What is one problem that you would like to change? What significant thing would you like to accomplish?

Why don't our leaders Twitter?

2009-04-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

Feeling a bit lost lately, hopefully others can shine a light on what is going on.

Here is my personal journey to twitter and how it became a core part of my Personal Learning Network (PLN). I was introduced to it by Brian Kuhn and Chris Kennedy. Like many, I didn't get it at first and didn't even get an account, sticking to social networking in Facebook. It was the star power and dynamic social energy of Barack Obama that hooked me to twitter. He now has almost a million followers. The idea that a major politician would talk directly to me was electrifying. I was thrilled to learn about the views of a politician without having the filter of the media. Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid newsreader however, it was the idea of having a direct, first-person connection that drew me to the free social network that twitter provides.

Here is my current conundrum. We are in the midst of a provincial election and there seems to be a void in social networks and direct connections being put out by our would-be political leaders. Not only that but the president of the NDP is now telling me that I don't know about facebook (see Globe and Mail article). Comments like that seems to tell me that the party isn't serious about reaching out to the socially connected, and might I suggest, younger generation.

I've been looking for the candidates. Take for example Ray Lam who has now resigned due to his inappropriate photos on facebook (see CBC article). While he is clearly active on facebook, a twitter search turned up nothing. My local riding candidates are Ian Black and Shannon Watkins. Here are links to the public sites that I could find: Traditional Website (Shannon, Ian) Facebook (Ian has a link to Gordon Cambell), LinkedIn (Shannon, Ian), Twitter (nothing, note that Ian had a link to Twitter on his site but it lead me to the Liberal leader, Gordon Campbell). The standard webpage that the NDP party is using has a lot to be desired, at least the leader, Carole James is on Twitter and currently has about 1200 followers. However on the NDP party site, there isn't even a mention of social networks like twitter, facebook or YouTube. Looks like the Liberal party is at least aware of these environments.

What do others think? Does it matter that our political leaders aren't part of social digital networks? Post a comment here or tweet me at: http://twitter.com/jmcconville1000

Blood Donation #41

2009-04-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

As promised in my previous post. I'm blogging about my blood donations. My goal to have 50 donations before I'm 40 years old. I might have a snag in that the next clinic close to my home is out of booking times for the next session. This means I can't donate until July. I'll probably keep checking to see if they have a cancellation.

Here is some more information that I've learned about blood donation in Canada. The person who puts in the needle used to always be a Registered Nurse. They no longer have RN's do this task, there is a new category of workers called Phlebotomists. If you read this news alert from the CBS site, they talk about shortages of staff, my guess is that there is also a cost savings over having to pay RN salaries for all parts of the blood donation service.

Here is a neat home-made video from someone wanting to promote blood donation. Check back here for updates on my progress towards my goal. Looking to book your appointment? Find a clinic and then call the booking number: 1-888-2-donate

The Perfect Student Computer: part III

2009-03-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

The quest by the Computer Using Educators of BC for 'The Perfect Student Computer' has been wildly successful. For those of you reading this post for the first time, here is the link to the research on the different netbooks available, and the initial review of the Acer Aspire One device we selected.

As a recap, our organization is looking for a computer that, in the hands of students, would transform education across the province. Our belief is that if students have a full-featured device, with software capable of accessing information, creating documents and other multimedia representations of their learning, it would provide educators with the freedom to change how they teach.

To this end, we purchased six computers, and distributed them to the members of our executive. Each of use has used them in different ways. In my case, I've loaned the computer to a number of educators at different grade levels to try the computer them self, but more importantly, to get the computer in the hands of students.

Here is some of the feedback:

Dennis lent the computer to a teacher-librarian at his school that used it with primary and intemediate students for researching the internet. She liked that it had a good battery and was even useful for students working in pairs on one computer. Another classroom teach in the school loved it so much that she bought one the next day at Costco.
Carol is a district student services teacher who works with teachers and parents of special needs students, after using the CUEBC netbook, many of the parents immediately purchased a device for their child as they quickly realized the potential of having constant access to a computer in school would benefit their son or daughter. We also found that the netbook was even able to run DragonSpeak Natural (voice recognition software).
Mike uses the netbook in his classroom each and every day. He already had a number of netbooks running Linux but the students prefer the Windows XP operating system for its ease of use and familiarity.
Terry used it with his grade 4/5 class and they were impressed by with the speed and portability. Many are considering purchasing their own as they fit nicely into their back packs.
Anita purchased an Acer Aspire for her son about 3 months ago after James showed her one. Her son already had a laptop but it was quite heavy for him to be carrying to and from school each day. He read and agrees with the comments of the other users in this blog. It was a bit of a learning curve for me to network it (having had no previous experience with networking) but it was doable. There are video tutorials on You Tube which were helpful. He said he especially likes that the Acer is not heavy, and that it has good speakers -- meaning he can turn them up nice and loud to watch ACDC videos :-) Overall Anita and her son are very happy with it's performance so far.
Julia passed the netbook around to TLITE teachers and we found the size and weight ideal for kids. The keyboard was great for small hands but there was an initial challenge for my hands to get used to the repositioning. It eliminated the need for trolleys and enabled teachers, like myself, who move from school to school to be able to carry several computers to the users, redefining notions of “classroom” and where learning can take place.

Things we would like improved

As it can be expected, these machines are not 'perfect', I just use the work to increase hits on this post :) Here are some issues to consider:

Hardware issues - out of the six machines, there is a trackpad that isn't working and one that occasionally can't find the boot drive. They are currently under warantee but long-term durability will have to be considered in a future post.

Other advances in the technology

As to be expected in computer hardware, there have already been advances on the technology and reductions in cost. For example:

ASUS now has a 10 inch screen model for about the same price and a multi-touch trackpad. See the current price.
Most excitingly ASUS has a full touchscreen model on the horizon. See news article.

If you are an educator or student who has one of these netbook for use in teaching or learning we would like to hear from you. What are your thoughts, are these the 'perfect student computers?' Feel free to comment to this post!

Twitter - Two Words

2009-02-24T11:09:00.001-08:00

I've been looking to post about Twitter. I was spurned into action by a posting from Angela Maiers (an EduBlog award winner) posting about twitter in two words. She asked us to answer the question that we get asked constantly by those who don't twitter, "why bother"

My two words to describe why I twitter.

Learn - each and every time I open twitter there is at least one link to a new idea, resource or interesting news article. While this may be great, it does lead me in
Share - As I work or research topics of interest, I select tidbits to post to others.

Below is an image mosaic of my twitter network. I learn from these people every day. My clicking on their image you can follow them too.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Graduating Class - Student Portfolios

2009-02-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

I was recently invited to be part of the Heritage Woods Secondary Graduation Transitions event. There were approximately 300 graduating students who talked, sang, drummed, presented and demonstrated their person accomplishments and discussed plans for their future.

It was a stunning event on so many levels. It was an organizational marvel by the staff, lead by Sue Kirby and Marilyn Nunn, where 20 tables were setup for concurrent presentations to teachers, district staff such as myself and notable community members such as the City of Port Moody acting mayor, Bob Elliott, former Olympian, Leah Pells as well as the elementary and middle feeder school teachers and principals.

Without a doubt, the most stunning part of the event, was the students themselves. The quality of the presentation and the attributes of our grads was at such a high level that it leaves me with such hope for the next generation of leaders.

Here are some of the young people in our community who will graduate this June and, without at doubt, become the future corner stones of our communities.

Amanda - a ballerina, a dancer and a writer. She has worked through the adversity of a dance injury to return to the sport. In the meantime, she has discovered her new voice as a writer and publisher as demonstrated in her recent article in the local paper and her personal fashion blog.

A graduating girl who has found a calling as a girl guide and now a pathfinder who is proud of her accomplishments and who now volunteers to lead the new, younger girl guides.

A boy who is an accomplished composer, badminton player, avid comic book reader who enjoys travel. He even performed a song for the panel that was an original composition about his achievements and dreams for the future. He hopes to perform this in front of his entire graduation class at convocation.

A girl, who as a new Canadian, was inspired by her photography teachers to now persue training at Langara College.

A boy who loves to work as a cook at a local Iranian restaurant. He has recently discovered his passion in a creative writing course and wants to pursue political science and one day become a lawyer. He read us one of his recent poems.

I was so fortunate to meet these young adults. All the best, I look forward to following your continued learning achievements. Welcome to the world of adulthood!

Interrobang - punctuation for the rest of us

2009-02-18T12:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the great detective work of Aamer Haleem, host of CBC's show 'The Point' for their always engaging and sometimes controversial programming. Their recent show sure had me laughing. I have the double blessing (and curse) of being married to, and have a father, who is an English teacher. Please excuse grammatical errors in this blog you two!

The conversation was about the Interrobang and why it is a needed punctuation mark for the English language!? Look, I just had a need for it!? Anyways, look at the video below then post a comment. I'm collecting thoughts about other punctuation marks that should be added to our loved English language for us non-English teachers.

Thoughts or comments?!

graphic above thanks to: http://dailyloaf.ca/

Blood Donation #40

2009-01-30T10:44:00.000-08:00

I recently made a trip to my local blood donor clinic. Blood donation is one of the community 'volunteer' activities that I make a priority in my personal time. This last visit was a personal milestone in that it was my 40th donation. With that in mind, I'm setting a personal goal for myself. I would like to have 50 donations before I turn 40. This will be tough as the rules only allow someone to donate every 56 days and if some family event forces me to miss my donation day then I get off-track at my local clinic. Anyways, I'll be doing my best to attend each of the upcoming sessions.

Here are some great reasons to give blood

Obviously, it helps someone in need of blood through injury, operation...etc. When I'm donating I always think of the kids at Children's Hospital. Those children need the blood way more than me.
the process is quite quick. Canadian Blood Services has done all they can to streamline the process with appointments etc. This last donation was under 45 minutes.
according to this site it reduces free radicals due to too much iron. Might be a health myth but 'I found it in google' :)
There are free cookies and juice when you are done AND they give cookies to my kids.
It is like dieting as your body has to make new blood. This is definitely not scientific and probably nilled due to the cookies above. Anyone know how many calories are donated in a pint?

I hope to get support from my blog readers in helping me achieve this goal. I'll also post updates on this blog. Anyone else want to join me and set a goal?

Delicious: Sharing Links to Great Sites

2009-01-23T12:25:00.000-08:00

If you haven't yet created a delicious account then this post is for you. Here is a brief list of reasons why you need a Delicious account.

links can be shared across any number of computers
others can subscribe to your updates an join your network to see links and vice-versa. Once you add others to your network it is quick and easy to save their bookmarks to your delicious account
tagging links is far better than putting them in a folder as each item can have multiple tags allowing you to find the site in multiple ways.
it is a great environment to collaborate with students as you can create custom tags (eg. McConville-block-A) which then allows that list of links to be viewed from all users.
here is the official word from delicious about how the tool works.

Getting started:

Go ahead to delicious.com and create yourself an account.
Install the browser buttons, these make it very quick and simple to save a site to delicous when you are surfing and want to save a site. The new plugin for Internet Explorer is amazing, it syncs your links across multiple computers and stores them offline. In Firefox, install the delicious extension.

Over time

Your tags will sort themselves into group of the tags that you use most often. You can view this as a cloud in which the most common words are in the largest font site. Not only does it look cool, it represents the tags you feel are most important.

Going beyond the basics

Here are few things to try once you have some sites saved and your Delicious cloud is starting to form:

Post your link cloud on a website or blog. My cloud is posted on this blog.
If you are a long-time delicious user like me (since March 2006) you need a tool to look for dead links. Check out this tool I just found called freshdelicious. The tool just helped me find and remove about 20 dead links.

I look forward to hearing from others on how you use delicious. Be sure to post your delicious account address in your comments!

James http://delicious.com/jmcconville

What students have to say

2009-01-05T13:56:00.003-08:00

I'm blogging this as I listen to students on their views on education. Being part of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) 2009 conference. There are speakers and educational researchers from around the world. Sessions I have attended include middle school curriculum choices that improve learning at the secondary level in Holland and 'Conditions for School Transformation' from Cathy Wylie from New Zealand. See the complete list of presenters.

What I'm most engaged with at this conference is the student voices. There are a group of 12 students from around the province at the event. As they attend sessions, they are taking photos and writing blogs. Here is the summary page with aggregates their blogs. Here is a small sample of what I've learned so far:

Models for student mentorship from Melanie

Importance of student leadership from Henry

The value in having student input into educational technology from William

How teaching is a two-way process to have learning from Eva

Many of the student blog posts have multiple comments from the educators at the conference, there is an ongoing dialogue between the educators and the students.

Even if you aren't at the conference, I would encourage my readers to visit these student blogs, comment on the student's posting and ask them a question to further the discussion. This has been a great experience for me to learn from students. I would be interested in hearing how others think dialogue could be setup and fostered in our classrooms and schools.

The Perfect Student Computer

2008-12-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

Here is what we have selected as a test model for our 'perfect student computer'

As you have followed in previous blog posts, our provincial organization, the Computer Using Educators of BC are on a quest for the 'Perfect Student Computer'. As the price of computers continues to drop, it will allow the purchase and Our list comes from our experience and conversations with classroom teachers about what type of computer we could get into the hands of every student in our class. Here is our list:

Must be cheap
Light and portable
Good battery life
Capable of capturing multi-media
Decent performance

I intentionally leave processor speeds and memory size off the list as the goal it to define the perfect student computer by what type of device we would recommend to students and their parents. The research with a table of technical specifications, prices and links to resellers is in this blog post.

The computer that was selected is the Acer Aspire One. What I like about the Acer:

Great price. These machines were purchased at Bestbuy for $399. Bestbuy was also a gold sponsor at our 2008 conference.
Good reviews. The article in this month's edition of Computer World magazine was very favourable towards the Acer machine.
Comfortable keyboard. Although this machine is for students, I did try my large hands on many of the different models and found touch typing easy and efficient for taking meeting notes.
Lots of storage. With 140 Gb hard drive there is plenty of space to take copies of your favourite movies and pictures whereever you go.

Things about the Acer Aspire One that we would like improved in future models:

Better battery life. This model has a 3 cell battery which is less than the 4 or 6 cells of some of their competators. However, I've managed to get about 3 hours of working time with the power saving options optimally configured.
Trackpad buttons. The Acer has the trackpad buttons on either side of the pad. This saves space but is difficult for manuvers like the drag-and-drop.

Questions from the field

I've had a number of people ask me how do you install software without a CD drive? While this is a fair question, I think it comes from the paradim shift we went through when the first iMac left out the floppy drive. Here is the answer. This device is a 'netbook' meaning it is designed to be connected to the internet or network. This means at home I connect the netbook to my home computer which has a CD/DVD drive by a process called mapping. Details about how to do this can be found on the Microsoft website. This allowed me to do CD installs. The rest of the software was downloaded and installed from the internet. The list of free and opensource software installed is here. One highlight for me was the Google pack which provides a great utility to download and automatically install a large number of titles including the most customizable browser, Firefox.

Other questions that have naturally arisen is about having this netbook as a teacher computers. The thinking being that if they are so good for students then they would be good for teachers too. I don't think this laptop is ready to be the main computer for teachers. It's small screen and keyboard will not be condusive for sustain lesson creating or on-screen marking. That being said, the three USB ports could connect to an external mouse and keyboard and the VGA port can connect to a large secondary monitor, can transform the netbook to a 'docked' workstation. The portability factor will be huge for many people as the 2ish lb weight makes it a take anywhere device.

At this point, we purchased six machines and they are with the executive of CUEBC. We look forward to feedback, comment and thoughts on our journey to find the 'Perfect Student Computer'.

Talk About Assessment

2008-12-08T12:39:00.000-08:00

Keynote with Damian Cooper

Talk About Assessment: Strategies and Tools to Improve Learning

Book: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Talk-About-Assessment-Strategies-Tools-Damian-Cooper/9780176289164-item.html

Website: http://www.damiancooperassessment.com/

Below are my notes from a session with Damian Cooper. He is an excellent, high-energy presenter.

Big goals of the session:

Assessment needs to be good for students. Should not be biased for language, gender…etc. Assessment should be flexible.
Assessment needs to be manageable for teachers. Must be efficient and effective. Note: we must hold students accountable to hand in quality work.

What has changed with students?

They can access the content in many ways but they lack the wisdom , we need to teach the skills.

"Expecting Excellence" and "Success" are the titles of most of the educational journals. Our job as teachers is to ensure that all our students are successful. We need to get all our students across the finish line.
Differentiation is what is we are about. Myths are that there are no standards. With a criterion referenced model we hold the standards constant and
Use Backwards design - what is essential for students to understand by the end of this unit?
The big ideas of classroom assessment

Assessment serves different purposes at different times
Assessment must be planned and purposeful
Assessment must be balanced and flexible
Assessment and instruction are inseparable because effective assessment informs learning.
For assessment to be helpful to students, it must inform them in words so they know what they need to do in order to improve.
Assessment is a collaborative process that involves self, peer and teacher.
Performance standards are essential.
Grading and reporting is a sensitive and caring process by a teaching professional

Differentiating Instruction & Assessment. Here is a great reminder of what we know but forget as we get busy lesson/unit planning.

Instruction
Students bring different knowledge & experience to school
Students learn at different rates
Students learn in different ways
Assessment
Not all students are able to demonstrate their learning in the same way
Not all students respond the same way to test pressure
Some students need more scaffolding than others

Views on homework

It is an important skill for students to life beyond school but should not be for marks and should not be testing the math skills of parents. It should be for practice.

What are we already doing in assessment for learning?

Do I include ALL students in the questioning?
Do I provide individual feedback to promote improvement?
Do I provide opportunities for students to use the feedback for improvement?

During the session we had a number of times where we discussed the ideas presented to us. Damian also shared some video clips from classrooms modeling these strategies. This DVD is included with the purchase of his book (see above).

In summary, if you get an opportunity to work with Damian Cooper, I would highly recommend him as a presenter.

FREE Student and Teacher software

2008-12-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

Now that I have the six new student netboooks the next step is to install the software. Just like everyone, we want full functioning machines and our current budget for software is zero. The great news is that there are now so many options for great educational, fun and productivity software that doesn't cost a thing. Here is my initial list of programs and links to find and download them.

· Photo

o Faststone Image Viewer and resizer: http://www.faststone.org/

o Picasa 3: http://picasa.google.com/

o MS Photostory: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

· Video Player

o VLC video player: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

o Windows Media Player 11: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia

· Antivirus and Antispy

o AVG Free: http://free.avg.com

o Spybot: http://www.spybot.info

· Sound

o Audacity (and LAME MP3 encoder): http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

· Communication

o Skype: http://www.skype.com/download/

o MSN: http://get.live.com/messenger/overview

o Google talk: http://www.google.com/talk/

· Browser

o Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/download.html

o Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome

· 3-D animation

o Blender: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

· PDF Creator

o Cute PDF writer: http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

· Curricular software:

o Google Earth: http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

Office/Productivity software (thanks to Darren's comment that reminded me about this category, it is funny how I forget to basics when focussing on student engagement).

I would love to know what others would suggest for titles to have in the educators toolkit.

OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org
Google Docs: http://docs.google.com

I would love to know what others would suggest for titles to have in the educators' toolkit.

Applauding Assessment for Learning

2008-11-24T15:31:00.000-08:00

Attended an amazing professional development session last week with keynote, Ruth Sutton. She is an expert in speaking about and supporting assessment for learning. If you get a chance to hear her, I would highly recommend her as an engaging, informed presenter. Here is link to a similar presentation that Ruth did earlier this year.

Here was the need-to-know, big 5 principles of assessment:

“The provision of effective feedback to students
The active involvement of students in their own learning
Adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment
Recognition of the profound influence assessment has on the motivation and self-esteem of pupils, both of which are crucial influences on learning
The need for students to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve”

Personal Connections:

I was able to make a number of connections to the work that I undertake on a daily basis with all the action research learning teams that I facilitate. Here is how she described the 'changing teaching habits - according to Addiction Theory' (Proshaska).

Pre-contemplation
Contemplation
First step
Discomfort and floundering
Practice
Confidence
New habit
Coach someone else

As teachers undertake professional inquiry there is definitely a process of changing habits and the middle step commonly called 'implementation dip' which Ruth fits the stage of discomfort and floundering.

James McConville

Writing a Good Twitter Tweet

Software for School Computers

What I Learned at CUEBC 2011 Conference

Highlights

Learning Links

Feedback?

Android for Education: first look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Unpacking: what’s in the box

Measures to Compare?

Feedback

Secrets to Student Success in Online Courses

What I Learned This Week

Parent Presentation

Book Review: Tuned Out by Karen Hume

A year of blogging

More ideas than posts

Making sense of statistics

Most viewed posts

Comments

iPad in Education: first impressions

Using with students

Apps I can’t live without

Communication

Reference

Science

Math

Early learning

Exploration

Games

Wishes for the next version

Comments?

Download YouTube Videos

Using KeepVid

Use Firefox with the DownloadHelper Addon

Download with RealPlayer

Photo Editing with Picnik

Check out all the features

Output sample:

Assessment of Student Presentations

Instructional Ideas

SMARTBoard vs Mimeo interactive whiteboard

Summary

Creative Commons–a teacher’s guide

Practical Uses of Creative Commons

More?

Digital Responsibility Resources

Learning Connections

CyberBullying

CyberSafety Videos

Internet Literacy

Policy and School Legal support

Feedback

FREE software for teachers

Web Browser

Office software such as word-processing.

Antivirus

Video Player

PDF Creator

Video/Sound recording and Curricular

Software to skip…

Others??

Student Research – Evaluate Sources

Evaluate Your Sources

More resources:

Using Technology in My Classroom

Advice to myself…

Student Created Movies

Use Close-up Shots

Trim the shots – keep the cuts short.

Sharing the Video

Websites for Elementary Teachers and Students

Looking for more?

Quit Facebook

How to quit facebook

Your privacy settings

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