Microsoft Research AutoCollage 2008 or Simply Microsoft AutoCollage

Free to any teacher is another great product from Microsoft.  AutoCollage enables a teacher and/or students to use from seven to fifty photographs and create an artful collage.  What a fantastic way to spark a discussion.  What an outstanding method to capture the highlights of a field trip.  What a great way to provide visuals for a report on a specific topic for class.  And the list goes on for creative and purposeful ways to use this product.  I am betting you can tick off another three, on top of the ones I used, without even thinking hard.  So how do you work with  this application?

First, you visit Microsoft’s webpage for AutoCollage and download the application to your computer.  After installation, you launch the program and get acquianted with a very simple interface.  I would pay a visit to the OPTIONS, then ADVANCED, then OUTPUT before creating my first AutoCollage.  This allows me to set how I want the program to handle my top two rated pictures, how much overlap I want my photographs to have, and whether I want the final piece to be portrait or landscaped in orientation.  While still in the ADVANCED options I would also click on INPUT and tick the box so that I get to determine my top two ranked photos.

Now you are ready to create your AutoCollage.  Simply click the colorful CREATE button and browse to where your ( 7-50 ) photographs are stored.  Select the ones you wish to use, and the program uploads them to the workspace or canvas.  Then the magic starts as you watch your photos arrange and re-arrange into a creative collage.  If you are pleased with the results you can save your AutoCollage, email it out to your self and others, or even use is as your new desktop graphic on your computer.  If you are not sure it is the look you want you can hit create again, and your pictures will reorder into a slightly different collage.  Use the create button as often as you wish until you are satisfied with the look of your AutoCollage.

It is powerful.  It is quick.  It is FUN.  Give it a try!  As you are creating your first Microsoft AutoCollage, be thinking of all the ways you and/or your students can use this tool.

Using Bing.com in the Classroom

If you have not checked out Bing.com you owe it to yourself to spend some time on this web page.  As I write this, I have just viewed the picture for today and have been reminded that today is Pearl Harbor day.  There is a fantastic picture of the memorial displayed when you go to Bing.com on 12/7/2011 and as I hover over the picture four “hotspots” pop up.  From one you can click and be taken to an aerial view of the memorial site.  Another hotspot takes you to a web page where reflections about the ships lost in that harbor can be found.  A third takes you to webpages where students can research the history of the event that led to our engagement in WWII.  The last hotspots leads you in to a virtual tour of the remainder of the memorial.  This is almost as good as loading your students up and taking them to Honolulu to see this historic landmark  and there are no parent permission forms to worry about or field trip fees to collect.

Each and every day a new picture appears with hotspots for students to discover that provides focus on the topic and relevant information.  As a teacher you can go backwards on the website to previous pictures which might better integrate the standards you are teaching that day.  This website makes an excellent bell ringer activity, a center activity, or an inspiration for class discussion.

The tool bar or menu at the top of the webpage takes you to:   Explore, Images, Videos, News, Maps, Travel, Search History, MSN, and more.   This is an outstanding page to springboard from as you begin your lessons.  Spend some time today exploring all that is available on Bing.com.

A teacher asked me just today how to search further back than a couple of days.  Try this, if you missed a day or just want to see it again, click the arrows at the bottom right of the screen to scroll through the past seven days of homepages. You can interact with each page just as you could when it originally appeared. And to go back even further, check out the Bing homepage Visual Search gallery.

Teacher Laptops – a Must Read for All

We are extremely fortunate in the Clarksville-Montgomery Co. School district.  Every teacher receives a laptop to use as an instructional resource when they join us.  There are many school districts in the state and the country where that simply is not the case.  Then again, I have written before about our wealth of resources, and how truly lucky we are to have so much technology available to use effectively as we educate our students.  That is not the focus of this blog.  This is an awareness piece for all teachers.  We get comfortable.  We have a laptop at our disposal for use 24/7.  We think of that resource as ours.  Well, it is yours to use as long as you work with us.  Remember that the primary function of the laptop is to assist you with instruction and the bookkeeping that comes with teaching, such as lesson plans and grades.  I was having a conversation with Barb Williams, Language Arts Consulting Teacher, just yesterday and she asked that I remind you of this focus.

We use Total Traffic Control here in the district.  It serves a number of purposes among which is to monitor the traffic of our network.  Please understand there is NO expectation of privacy on the CMCSS network.  Every email you read/write, every website you visit, every instant message you send can be and is monitored.  If you use common sense, you will be fine.

Now for a definition of common sense:

• I sent an instant message to the teacher two doors down to ask if they were finished with the mobile lab because my class is waiting to use it and has it checked out.  Good!
• I sent instant messages to my husband at work (across town or across the world).  We got into a lengthy exchange.  It ate into my teaching time, but my students were engaged in a worksheet. No!
• I imported digital pictures of my students as they were working on a project.  I am tweaking them on my computer to use on our class Shutterfly webpage.  Outstanding!
• I imported and enhanced digital pictures of my vacation last summer.  Wow, I took 387 great shots of the beach.  No!
• I sent email to my team about a field trip we might consider taking with our students.  Super!
• I sent email to all my closest friends. It was a really funny email my cousin sent me with a video clip that makes you just roll in the floor.  Highly Questionable!
• I took my laptop home to search for great websites to use with my students as we beginning study of a new standard.  Way to GO!
• I let own kids surf the net while my computer was at home.  I was in and out of the room.  Careful!

Your teacher laptop is not your personal computer.  It has been loaned to you to enable you to be a better teacher.  If your children are on inappropriate websites; then, you are putting yourself at risk when you bring your laptop back to work.  That resource is checked out to YOU.  It is for YOUR use only.  Point of  fact, in the Acceptable Use Policy, it specifies that it is for your use alone.  Remember, this valuable tool is issued to you to benefit your work.  The district owns the computer.

Think of it like a library book.  You borrow it, use it, and in the end you return it.  We soon forget.  We soon get comfortable.  We soon begin thinking of it as OURS.  It is not YOUR PERSONAL computer.  It is your computer provided to you for instructional uses.  If you use common sense you will be fine.  If in doubt reread the AUP (Acceptable Use Policy).  It is very detailed and specific.

Always remember how very lucky we are to be provided the resources we have at our fingertips for improving the education of all our students.

Welcome Back for School Year 2009-2010

Where did summer go??  I know for us summer always means training and we certainly exceeded our previous quota this summer.  It was a great summer of training here in CMCSS.  We have disaggregated the input from our surveys, and made notes for how to improve for next summer so reserve some hours for technology professional development next summer!

Today I want to share Wolframalpha with you.  If you teach math, science, social studies, or even a course like music you owe it to yourself to check out this website.  They have a novel/unique/slightly different way of presenting a return of a query.  The results you get back are loaded with data and information that is readily usable for you as you teach and your students as they investigate new material.  Give it a try and spend some time with this product…read and explore the right hand navigation bar “New to Wolfram|Alpha” before you begin.

More soon.  My goal this year is to post more often and shorter segments!

More on Instructional Technology Summer PD Offerings

Last post provided heads up to many of our professional learning activities going on in CMCSS for Summer 2009.  If you missed that posting, you might want to go back and have a look at the brief descriptions for:  Effective Classroom Management for Technology Lessons, Online Teacher ICT, Teacher ICT-2008 NETS Parts I, II, and III.  (Same 18 hours as offered previously just broken into 3 sections so that teachers may self-select the 3 dates for training and not have to commit to 3 straight days!), Advanced Teacher ICT – the Next Level, Creating the Protected Student Web Presence – Glogster, PowerTeacher (2 sessions are devoted to Kindergarten only), CPS – both Basic and Extended Features, Wikis and Blog (and those Bears the Aggegators, Oh, MY!), and Personal Learning Network – PLN.

So what does that leave for us this posting?

We will again work with those teachers who have InterWrite pads this summer, both for training and user’s group meeting.  Remember this is a condition of the grant and no inservice credit will be awarded.  But you do need to sign up on PLAN so that you get credit for the training.

Google Tools…Google provides so many rich and exciting tools to use in the classroom with students that we have developed two separate offerings.  Collaborate with Docs and More will devote its focus on learning to create and share, peer review, and edit whether students are working on a word document, spreadsheet, or presentation.  Or collaboration among your team to work on school improvement plans.  Then Map, Earth, Sky, and Sea day will explore using Google Maps, Earth/Sky/Sea to develop geography skills, math skills as well as create virtual tours/projects/lit trips and more.

We will again be offering Differentiated Instruction with Technology Learning Stations for Elementary and Middle School.  Those who attend will learn how and create content standards driven technology learning stations using rigor and relevance to drive the experience for the student.

Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office is for teachers who work with students who work on PCs.  This is a free set of programs/tools that Microsoft makes available to its users.  It has a powerful impact for any middle/high school teacher to ramp up a lesson and to truly get the most from their students work when using Microsoft Office in classroom projects.  It expands the tools available in Office to make students successful.

VoiceThread and Digital Storytelling for the Mac and PC will again be offered this summer.  If you have never attended either of those sessions, they would be well worth your time.  Students love working with multi-media and these are two excellent ways for them to present or demonstrate their growing knowledge of content and much more exciting the writing a report.

Any teacher who is acquiring a Technology Model Classroom next year is encouraged to attend a 3 hour session so they can make best use of all the features that come with the new equipment in those classrooms.  Organizing Your Computer for Success is a basic course that models how to make folders, organize documents, find missing work, use our web servers and just “work smarter, not harder” when it comes to using your teacher laptop or working with students to save their work.  Online Research Strategies for Students will focus on learning to perform valid and powerful web searches with students safely.  Anyone can Google, but our students must be very technology literate and get reliable results when they investigate topics online.

One other to tell you about… Design a Custom Technology Integration Lesson with Online Web2.0 Tools will be offered several times this summer.  Our goal is for you to walk out with an exciting and powerful lesson using technology tools.  We are providing a trainer, a menu of Web2.0 programs/tools to choose from, help selecting which one best fits your goal, and assistance as you build and troubleshoot the lesson.  You bring a idea that is thought provoking and addresses important content standards that must be covered.  Together we will create an engaging lesson for your students that assists them in learning both content and new technology skills.

As you can see we have a wealth of opportunity for you.  Remember also that 18 hours is a minimum only; you may take as many of these “free” offerings as you wish above that level.  So come on in and learn with us this summer!

Summer 2009 Professional Development Offerings

Amazing, as I sit in the office composing this it is April 6th; we are expecting snow flurries this evening!  Then again, not so surprising as the temperature on my weather tool bar says it is currently 37, and that is probably the high for the day.  Makes it hard to think about what professional development you might be interested in for the summer training sessions as you put on a winter coat to come to work.  While all of our teachers were out last week on spring break, the Technology Integration Coaches and myself were busy writing course descriptions and loading all summer training opportunities into our PLAN (Avatar) system so that you could begin making choices, based on your professional growth needs for Professional Development for next school year.  I must say we have another outstanding slate of offerings to choose from this summer.  Details about many of them will be provided in these next couple of blog postings.

Teacher ICT Certification course has been updated for this summer.  All teachers in the CMCSS are expected to become Teacher ICT certified.  This course is NOT for year 1 teachers but any who have completed their 2nd year teaching in the district who have not had the course are encouraged to take it.  Beginning this summer, teachers will need to sign up for  three interdependent sections or parts.  Teacher ICT Part I is conducted online as a basic introduction with some readings/discussions to consider and to allow time to begin brainstorming/thinking about possible lesson ideas driven but content standards.  This facilitated part has three cohorts beginning June 1 and another three beginning July 6.  You must complete Part I prior to attending Parts II and III.  You may, however; register for all 3 parts at once.  That said, anyone who has not completed Part I will need to do so prior to attending Part II, and be finished with Part II prior to attending Part III.  Teacher ICT Part II, is a study of Project Based Learning while integration Technology and Teacher ICT Part III is using Slam Dunk Lessons as a way to effectively infused content with technology when it “fits”.  Technology trainers have worked hard this year to update this offering and make it an outstanding way to really learn to integrate technology with your students efficiently and even, more important effectively.  We believe you will enjoy this approach as many best practices are modeled throughout the 3 parts of training.  There is also being offered a 100% Online Teacher ICT course which will begin early June and run along the same lines of the blended course.  You should be comfortable with online learning and a self-motivated learner, if you choose this approach.  Any who register for this course will be able to audit the F2F (face-to-face) sessions if they need additional assistance.  Both the blended and 100% online Teacher ICT certification offerings are 18 hour professional development experiences.  However, all lesson plans and teacher artifacts must be completed and submitted before certification is awarded.

Next on the menu of sessions is the Teacher ICT Advanced – The Next Level Course – this is 21 hours of professional development and those who participate become a member of a PLC studying best practices from the experts in the technology literacy industry.  This is also a 100% online, facilitated course that runs throughout the summer. Those in the cohort last summer were not ready for the course to end continue to have online discussion with a members only online forum

Effective Classroom Management Strategies for Technology Integrated Lessons is a self-paced, 3 hour online course offered continuously.  Each week the facilitator adds new registrations to the course, and notifies new participants they may begin by emailing complete directions for accessing the course and any other instructions.  Credit is awarded on the last weekday of each month.  So if you register on June 1 you have 30 days until credit is awarded and if you register June 23 you have 7 days.  The course takes approximately 3 hours to complete and is done 100% online.

We are currently writing additional online courses that will become available as we complete them.  All technology online professional development courses are run through our CMCSS MOODLE.

Also offered this summer are PowerTeacher trainings scheduled for near the end of July to train teachers new to the district how to manage their electronic gradebook as well as those who feel more comfortable with training before adopting the new features rolled out in PowerTeacher 1.5.  Two sessions will be devoted to Kindergarten teachers to address their unique needs as well.  Technology Model Classroom training has been slated for those teachers getting a model classroom.  CPS, Classroom Performance System, (blue clickers) training will be offered with “just the basics and getting up and running” offered in the mornings and “more advanced features like using Examview” offered in the afternoon.

New teachers to the district will have the opportunity to attend a “Get Hired/Get Wired” training any Friday morning throughout the summer.  Each group will have a menu of selections to choose from to prioritize their needs in the 3 hours available for training.  They will also be briefed on other technology professional development sessions offered in the district.

Creating the Protected Student Web Presence – Glogster is a new offering this summer.  It stems from requests our teachers have made to have a way to showcase student products online in a safe manner.  Glogster will be our tool of choice.  It is by no means the only tools available nor will it always be first choice.  During the session teachers will be guided through the features available in Glogster and why it is the tool we have chosen.  They will also be given instruction in making use of our www2 server and linking files from within their sites folder if that is a better choice for their needs.   That is what it consistently boils down to in this field.  Finding the tool that works best to deliver the functionality you need today.  And, realizing that tomorrow another tool may better serve your needs.  Our team really likes Glogster and the features it provides that make it a good fit for many of you.  Wikis is another tool that can also be used effectively to communicate student work and course objectives and we also offer Wikis and Blogs (and those BEARS, the Aggergators, Oh My!) this summer.

Last one for this posting…we have a new 2 day, 12 hour offering called PLN or Personal Learning Network.  So much information is available to anyone with an internet connection today that it is becoming imperative to learn to bring the information you consistently search for to you rather than you having to constantly search for it.  This session is designed to bring many Web2.0 tools to you to assist with that wherever possible.  It is stretched over 2 days to allow ample time to practice and “own” those tools which best fits your needs.  There may well be time during class where you are working in familiar territory.  You need to have in mind several areas of interest or need to explore so that your time is devoted to creating your own personal reference library or network to draw from as you plan and teach.

Next blog posting will provide additional details of other offerings being brought to you this summer…until then!

Which Web2.0 Tool to Use?

One of the nice things about my job is that I get to exerience and try out different Web2.0 Tools and then try to figure out whether they will work well in the classroom.  Fortunately, as promising ones become available, there are several teachers I push towards trying out these new finds.  When they “buy-in” it becomes apparent that it will be a tool modeling as we do professional development training and encourage teachers to use as they use technology tools.

This morning Donna Baker, a Technology Integration Coach, sent me an email from one of our librarians, Rebecca Jackman, about Zotero.

Becky wrote, “I think sharing our best resources is a great idea.  The single best thing I’ve found this year is Zotero.  This is a Firefox addon that allows students to gather and annotate the resources they are using for research projects.  It is free, easy to use, and really helpful.  Once it is installed (free download) you have a link at the bottom of the browser window – when clicked it opens a half window at the bottom for saving bookmarks and making notes, bibliography references, whatever you need.  Click again and it goes away but saves all your sources.  Last week, one of my students discovered the Export link, which makes it possible to conduct research at school, export the Zotero file, mail it to yourself, then import to Zotero on your home computer.  Could also be done with social bookmarking perhaps, but I find Zotero much more friendly for the research process.  The kids rave about it – it is one of those “hey, what’s that – that’s cool” apps that once introduced, has spread from student to student.

Now if our students are already using it, and they find it beneficial for research and writing; then it is a tool that needs to be investigated.  So, I spent part of this morning in Firefox, downloading Zotero (I downloaded the 1.5 Beta version).  Once I restarted Firefox, after the plugin was installed, Zotera now lives in my bottom task bar.  With this new version your notes and tags go from computer to computer with you.

If you have a few minutes it is well worth your time to investigate.  Another thing I really like about the website is that they have a video right on the front page that walks you through exactly how the process works and additional help if you need it.

After this latest find I went in search of a webpage that I have referenced often.  Go2Web2 is a Web2.0 directory.  No matter what tool you are searching for there are many flavors that all work similiarly and yet with subtle differences.

Will Richardson and I were in an email discussion this week over the reason he uses Pageflakes as opposed to iGoogle.  I have seen a webex not long ago and he was using many Google tools, but where I would have natively gone to iGoogle, he demonstrated Pageflakes.  His response was that it was the tool he found first, and it did what he needed it to do.

As we develop Professional Development here in the Clarksville-Montgomery Co. School District we will more and more be introducing new tools to make teaching and learning easier.  But, we will be working with what the tool accomplishes.  It will be up to the teachers to choose which flavor best meets their needs.

Everyday new web tools come on the internet and I always enjoy when a particular tool make a task or job easier.  And tomorrow… there will be yet another great new tool our there for me to love!

My Latest Find!

We were working away in the office the other day, while many of you were home enjoying the snow, and as we were discussing some upcoming professional development opportunities several documents were shared.  Okay, you may be asking yourself… and I care why?  You care because we were using my latest, greatest find to share them.  Not only could we share documents from computer to computer; I also use it to keep all my documents synced from one computer to another.  I can go home, log in, and my computer at home will flash across the screen…you have 3 documents updated.  The most beautiful part about that is I have done NOTHING except save my documents.

Enough suspense?  Is she ever going to tell us what this lastest find is?

You owe it to yourself to have a look at http://www.getdropbox.com .  Now, it is a free service with 2 gigs of storage, which is plenty if you are talking documents not pictures and movies.  Free is also good and I go into it knowing that when it is free:  1)It may not stay free, or 2)It may not always be there, but 3)Free is great for now!

I shared this with my good friend, Mitch Skau, who downloaded it to his Mac immediately.  I got a lovely email from him just days later as his Mac crashed suddenly/unexpectedly and he took it all in stride because he had all his most important documents backed up already to GetDropBox.

We have preached backing up your files many times in trainings, but it is one of those things we just don’t practice unless we have a signficiant crash and it costs us dearly or we are just people who follow the rules (I am more the first case type.)  So have a look at GetDropBox.com and see if it might be a good fit for you!

Long Overdue

Hard to believe Thanksgiving is upon us and the last time I sat down to write a posting was near the end of September.  The good news is that PowerSchool is up and running fairly well, given this is our first year in implementation.  It has definitely been intensive in the amount of time and people resources that have been consumed with making it successful in this school district.  I know everyone on the implementation team is happy when our teachers, students, and parents are pleased.  All have worked long hours to make it successful.  Personally, I will be able to breathe a sign of relief when we get the first semester completed and all those grades moved successfully to historical.  Then and only then, will events begin to become routine, and we can focus on other projects with greater attention.

Speaking of other projects…we in the CMCSS district will begin using Avatar to register for professional development starting in 2009.  This is a robost system with many features we will all enjoy.  There is a calendar on board so that if you are interested in seeking professional development during a particular time frame, you can search to see what is available.  There are also a few differences we will be adjusting to with this new system; however, I think they will assist us in providing the strongest professional development possible.  Even if some take a bit of getting use to they do provide best practices when giving professional development to a district as large as CMCSS has grown.  First, always remember it will take you three (3) clicks to be truly registered for a class.  You put your selection in your “shopping cart”, confirm your choice, and then register.  Second, if you must drop an offering you will need to provide more lead time when dropping or withdrawing.  Three days prior to the professional development the participant looses the ability to drop a course online.  This is a very good feature from the provider’s stance.  Numerous times last summer we would have capacity sessions showing on the day before only to walk into sparse participation the day of training as several would drop at the last minute.  This is frustrating and difficult for those planning to provide quality sessions.  It also shows a lack of consideration.  Forgiveness will be granted for EMERGENCY situations only and will require a phone call.  Failure to cancel appropriately will mean the participant is fined for non-participation.  Next, the wait list system is even more refined.  When a wait list is generated and space becomes available the first person on the list is contacted via email.  That person has 24 hours to respond.  If they do not log into the system and accept; they are bumped to the end and the system contacts the next participant.  This allows a very long wait list to be placed into a course as speedily as possible.  Another feature being provided is an online course evaluation.  In fact this can take several forms and even be sent out weeks later for follow-up evaluation.  Some will reserve credit being awarded until the online evaluation is complete.  Last for today’s post, those submitting an inservice to be held will need to work further out on the calendar to get them posted.  We are looking at four weeks from submission to posting to allow all parties sufficient time to review and respond with the need for revision before it becomes available.  This work flow system is a bit different, but will allow more diverse offerings and allow those who approve professional development to make sure we are offering quality, needs driven professional development at all times.

Web2.0 tools continue to intrigue and consume other parts of my day as we strive for ways to assist our students in becoming sought after as they enter the job market.  Collaboration continues to become more and more important.  The ability to problem solve and work as a team are skills the best in the corporate world will be searching for as they look for employees.  Balancing that with providing technology literacy will have to be another posting for another day soon.  Just know it continues to be on my mind.

Have a very restful and blest Thanksgiving Holiday!

Taking a Breath

Wow, it feels good to actually be able to take a breath, even a short one… Normally, our summers are non-stop with technology training, and those first few weeks when schools are back in session, we here in instructional technology get to catch our breath before we are out in schools modeling lessons and holding professional development experiences.  Not the case this fall with the district rolling out PowerSchool.

Let me say here, we appreciate all the positive comments on the training experience.  We were able to train 1000 teachers in a week and with our Point of Contacts in each building many more were reached.  We could not do without the POCs as they are the eyes and ears of where we have trouble spots.  My appreication goes out to each and every one of them.

We have made it past the first progress report and are busy designing the Kindergarten progress report and then Report Cards.  I say cards because we have several to design to meet the needs of all grade levels.  Please be patient as we work to make each the best we can make it.  We always look forward to feedback.  Remember also that what maybe a good idea is not always feasible or possible given the diverse grade levels/needs and the program we work within.  Still all ideas and suggestions are considered and honored whenever possible.

Let me turn now to technology integration for a bit.  We are going to try some Saturday offerings this year.  My teachers, all 1900+, are tired at 4:30 when we hold afterschool sessions, and with all the other district work going on after school it is almost impossible to find a date that works for all.  I realize some do not want to give a Saturday, but we promise to make them outstanding learning experiences for those who need professional development sessions.  The Technology Integration Coaches will also hold some sessions in the buildings they are working in, but only when sufficient numbers are willing to meet.  Last year sessions were held with an expected crowd of adequate size due to participate, and for one reason or another few would come.  This Saturday will be our first with a target audience of our new teachers, model classroom training, and InterWrite training / usergroup.  In the future as we do a Saturday offering there will be a variety of sessions held.  Some will be 6 hour while others will be 3 hour and the many topics will be varied.

Teacher ICT Certification sessions will be held this year but most likely not until next semester.  During the school year we will be revamping that course to match the new National Education Technology Standards for Teachers adopted by ISTE this past summer.  Stay tuned for details.  The revised training will be held for the first time next summer.