So...I'm presenting tomorrow at the Area 7 TCEA Conference...and hoping to win the iPad they've been advertising as a door prize! Please send all good mojo my way! LOL.

I'm presenting three sessions...Paperless Classrooms, Moodle and Elluminate for Professional Development, and Cellphones in the Classroom. Wish me luck. I will also be demonstration my TOTAL GEEK DOMINATION and win the title of BIGGEST GEEK by wearing my Personal Soundtrack Shirt from Thinkgeek.com. (love those little monkeys at Thinkgeek!). I will try to get a friend to video me using it so you can see what it is and what it does and why it will ensure my total domination in the "Who's the biggest GEEK" category. LOL!

So...gotta go load up my shirt for tomorrow! Wish me luck! I'll catch you up tomorrow night!

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Knowing how to design and implement EFFECTIVE online learning is vital for educators. The movement towards hybrid and online classes is in full swing in both k-12 and post-secondary institutions. We cannot claim to be preparing students for college if we don't introduce them to this format. And with the emphasis on differentiated instruction, teaching to the needs of the students, and providing individualized instruction, online learning becomes a useful tool to achieve those goals. This venue also allows for extension of the classroom beyond the walls of the school and beyond the scheduled class hours during the day. Teachers can provide students with communication and collaboration tools, resources, and activities that will enhance student learning with 24/7 access.

The course I created is a hybrid class for training on eInstruction CPSPulse Classroom Response Systems. I will probably recreate the hybrid course in our Moodle installation and use it to help teachers get trained on eInstruction Classroom Performance Systems. I may include a bit more help for teachers and some videos/recorded help sessions to better explain the software for them. I will not use the Schoology system as my district has it's own Moodle installation and I like the total customization I can get with that software.

As a staff developer, I have been integrating online learning into our district's professional development for over a year. Our district is embracing the concept of webinars and online courses using our Moodle installations. I also train teachers how to use Moodle to provide hybrid and online courses for their students.

I really had to think about whether or not I had any questions about online learning after this course. I don't really have a question so much as a statement. If we're going to move teachers and professional development into the virtual realm, we are going to HAVE to train our teachers on best practices for online learning. Moving a lecture driven course into a virtual environment doesn't improve the class - in fact it just points out the lack of interactivity and student engagement. We have to rethink content delivery and demonstration of mastery to really take advantage of the digital tools available in the online environment (collaboration, multimedia, interactivity, etc.). There's nothing worse that taking an online class that was just a tired, boring classroom course moved online. We need to teach teacher HOW to teach online - not just how to use the software to teach online.

"Well-developed online courses are are teacher-led, with extensive interaction between teachers and students, and often between students. Because the teachers are so closely involved, students find that it is not easy to cheat in an online course. Given that online courses are so interactive, and that full-time programs provide opportunities for students to interact in person, online students are not isolated, but instead can focus on learning and socializing at different times." (Watson, 2007)

What will I do with this new learning that I've acquired? Keep working on providing relevant, effective professional development for my district and help teachers provide interactive, academically rigorous, multimedia driven courses.

I'm tickled to death because our LTCLs are getting on twitter, learning about Google Wave, and tonight...as we wait to go to dinner to celebrate our dear friend Sandra's birthday...several of them created their first blog.

It's so terrific to be here with such a dedicated group of teachers and librarians. They are passionate, excited, and anxious to learn it all. I just hope they don't hit critical mass on new knowledge...I don't want anyone's head to explode!

I cannot wait to see the viral sweep of integration that will follow them as they return pumped, excited, and with actual examples of how the technology to use with their students! This is how you do it...from the trenches, with real world applications, by real teachers - not technology gurus.

I love this group of syncing sistahs...my twittering team...blogging babes....waving women. You rock girls!

Start with a microphone and lots of echo. Next, get a guy with a great sense of humor counting down the time to the start with cute sayings like "Get Your Con On" (yep, I stole it), and "Experience the Wrath of Con." Chuckles.

Then open with my bud from White Oak ISD, Scott Floyd, setting up the agenda live using wikispaces. We all decided what we wanted to break out and learn, and those with experience volunteered to lead the discussion. My girl Lori and I will be leading a Moodle discussion at 10:30am. Pretty stinkin' nifty.

Now in a session about Web 2.0 with Dave Phillips. Really interesting comments...my favorite? Google's server farm is actually the size of an actual farm! Over 1 million servers. That's a big cloud, honey.

We're looking at Google Wave now. I've got invites if you need one, just give your email and I'll give you an invite. Brief side discussion on student email and the use of gmail by districts.

Lori is over in the blogger's cave learning about eportfolios and the use of WordPress for that purpose with Scott Floyd. It rocks. Obviously I'm a huge WordPress fan....(hello, this is a WordPress blog). Looking forward to getting lots of good tidbits from her when she finishes.

Interesting video (dropped into Google Wave) called the Machine is Using Us...pretty cool.

I'm sold on Google Wave but I need more contacts so we can really use it. I'll probably invite a bunch of our Learning Technology Campus Liaisons and work on a project or some training in it...force myself to work with it.

Okay ...I'm off to get ready for Moodle at 10:30! More tonight!

I will be attending the Lone Star Edublogger Con at TCEA - you should attend to! It'll be a blast! A great way to meet all those people who's blogs you read, who's tweets you follow. Come join us!

For my current Masters' class - Teaching with Technology, we had to go to http://lessonbuilder.cast.org/ and create a lesson using the UDL Lesson Builder. This is an online tool for building lessons - especially those that integrate technology.

The format or lesson template is a good one - asks some important questions about learning goals and assessment. The interface is easy to use and you can print to PDF when you're finished. I particularly liked the materials portion - allowing you to enter all kinds of digital and non-digital resources and materials that it lists (with links and info) for you at the end of the lesson template.

I like the way the template makes you really think about each portion of the lesson - and the helpful definitions and model lessons on the site make it easy to work your way through the process.

We would not use the online part of the lesson planner in my district because we already have lesson planning software - Eduphoria's Forethought - but I think I will take the ideas from the template and create a checklist and "Things to think about" list for when they create their lessons in our current format. I may encourage those teachers who would like to work on a large scale technology project to go ahead and use the builder - and then attach the pdf to their lesson in Forethought...so that teachers can have the benefit of thinking through all of the steps of the lesson.

Overall verdict: Good tool - free to boot! This is definitely one I will be sharing with my teachers.

I am upset about the video quality on YouTube - it looks much better on my PC, but something seems to be happening in the automatic conversion that YouTube does...it's too pixelated. UGH.

I was also unhappy with the 60 second time limit - I really wanted to include a slide with our credits, but you can't really read it because it's not up long enough (or big enough). So here's that slide.

All in all, this was a fun project...just a little untimely due to the 4th of July holiday and the close of the school year (one of my busiest times of year). Still...I couldn't have asked for a harder working group of people! I loved my group!

To see how we planned this video, visit our planning wiki page at http://etlstudygroup.wikispaces.com/Group+Projects+-+Group+1

Just got back from four days in Houston - A.K.A. The Surface of the Sun!!! - at the ASCD summer conference. If you read my early post, you know the trip down was less than stellar - thanks to no air conditioning on the bus and a heat index of 105. There were some other issues with wifi, etc...that if you follow me on Twitter, you're more than familiar with (Hilton.Meh.). So...here's what I learned - some serious, some sarcastic, some silly - from my trip.

1. Air conditioning in Texas in summer is non-negotiable. From the bus to the unit in our room that would turn off every 2 hours (try getting up at 2 and 4 and 6 to turn it back on!) we almost roasted - then you could knock icicles off our noses in the workshops! Someone's gonna get sick with those extremes! Lesson: All things need BALANCE!

2. Almost every session I went in used the same terminology and definitions for teacher/student experience level regardless of the topic (assessment, differentiation, etc.). Novice, Apprentice, Practitioner, Expert. And they all knew that to reach the next level (whatever that means according to your topic) a Novice must acquire skills, an Apprentice must apply those skills, a Practitioner must assimilate those skills into daily use, and an Expert must adapt them for new conditions. It was refreshing to have a common language and scale to use as a self-evaluative tool and a reference. Lesson: A common vocabulary is ESSENTIAL when aligning curriculum, training teachers, or doing just about any darn thing else.

3. A lot of the sessions I went to talked about feedback - giving rapid, valid feedback to your students so they understand...and they emphasized using that feedback for YOURSELF as a self-evaluative tool. Look at what your kids are doing...how does that reflect on your instruction? What are you nailing? What are you missing? Too often that step is completely left out - we look at what the kids are doing and miss the critical connection between teacher and student. We ignore the cause and effect of our instruction. We do not take responsibility for doing what we want kids to do - learning! We have to constantly reevaluate ourselves using our classroom data to tweak, revamp, start over, improve. NO ONE is so good that they can't improve. And every student, every class, every day is different...so resting on your laurels will only work for about 5 minutes...then it's time to reassess and readjust. This is something teachers don't know how to do, won't do, etc. And all of the research they've projected on those countless screens on countless PowerPoint slides tells us that when the teacher improves his/her skills - the kids improve too! Why wouldn't we want to get better? If you're happy with mediocrity - you're in the wrong profession. Lesson: Instead of just pointing to the students, we have to look at ourselves, our methods, our procedures, our instruction and always be in a state of evaluation, reflection, and IMPROVEMENT! No one is perfect, everyone can AND SHOULD improve.

4. We need to look at what skills and knowledge are implied when looking at our standards. We spend so much time worrying about what we have to "get through" to make it to the end of the year that we don't pay attention to what implied knowledge or skills are hidden in a standard. Does the standard imply that your student knows how to take notes, use a dictionary, research and evaluate information on the web? If it does, you better make sure you give them the background knowledge they need to be successful on that standard REGARDLESS of whether or not they should "already know this." Lesson: Meet your kids where they are not where they should be. Look for potential stumbling blocks built into your standards/curriculum through implied skills and knowledge - and then remove those stumbling blocks for your students so you can level the field and give everyone the same chance to be successful.

5. Dr. Robyn Jackson, of Mindsteps and author of Never Work Harder Than Your Students had a fantastic session that made me dig her book out of the incredibly large pile of professional reading I've been meaning to get through and start highlighting!  # 4 came from that session. During that 2 hour workshop (not long enough) the first concept that she addressed that struck home with me was the idea of currency - we all deal in our own currency. We have "things" or "capital" that we are willing trade our currency (time, effort, etc.) for. It's our jobs as teachers to find ways to turn our content into capital that students are willing to trade their currency for. We do this through relevancy, technology, interest-based learning, relationship-building, etc. How much do you think your kids are willing to trade for a lecture and a PowerPoint? About as much as YOU are probably - and that's not much! Get her book - read about it. Good stuff here. Lesson: If what you have is not valuable to your students, they will not trade currency for it. You have to give your content value that the kids are willing to trade their time and effort for. (And yes...that really IS part of our job!)

6. The second lesson I learned from Dr. Robyn Jackson is the concept of setting the floor. We set goals and often those goals are the ceiling - they are the ultimate pinnacle that we (or our students) will strive for. So in setting the ceiling we tell our students how HIGH we want them to go. But by not setting a floor - we're saying that there is NO cut off for how LOW they can go. Dr. Jackson reminds us to set the floor - we will ALL score at least a 75%. That lets kids know the minimum acceptable score - and allows them to go beyond it (no ceiling!). Don't let a zero be your floor...give them a minimum standard and then let them go above and beyond that. Lesson: When setting goals, be sure to set them so that a minimum acceptable performance is clear - do not let them have one target for achievement and NO LIMITS for failure. Set the floor!

7. Bob Marzano had tons to say that was inspiring and the reactions from attendees were depressing. The first point he made in an afternoon session about school reform was that change has to be systemic to be successful. The teacher sitting next to me, who'd played solitaire on her palm during the session, heard this and said - "well, I might as well leave because I am just a teacher and change has to come from admin and they're not here and not on board." So she packed up and left. At the first break a fourth of the room left and didn't come back. (Okay people, if you haven't read his work and you came in because you know he's famous...wrong reason to attend a session and a waste of your district's money). I believe in the power of one person to affect change...but I believe if change is going to REALLY occur at a school/district level that it has to be systemic. It must be wholly supported and EXPECTED by administration. It needs to be modeled, discussed, debriefed, celebrated, etc. Teachers must be trained and supported and HELD ACCOUNTABLE for implementation. Teachers that refuse should be helped to find a new place to work that is better suited to their beliefs and values. No more closing your door and doing it your way. We stand or fall together. If you can't hang, we'll help you find another job somewhere better suited to your belief/value systems. This is true of administrators too. There have to be some well-thought out non-negotiables. Lesson: You have to WALK THE TALK. Systemic change or reform will only occur with consistency, support, expectation, and accountability. All for one and one for all.

8. Assessment should not be a snapshot, but a photo album. We need more than just a test to see where kids are, what they understand, how they process. We need to give teachers and students the time to build progress portfolios that track mastery over time. We are slaves to the schedule, the budget, and to time and they reign supreme over the one thing we SAY should be paramount - MASTERY. I understand that this sort of shift will not occur overnight (Marzano says 3-5 years) and that it is an unpopular ideology amongst the schedule makers, bottom line watchers, and pragmatic coin counters. I also understand that what we are doing and the system we are using is not keeping pace with the needs of our students. Lesson: Mastery is a process that needs to be supported by data that has been gathered from multiple assessments over time. Now we need to give people the tools and the time to do it right. The end goal is the same - Mastery - the road is just less traveled but may make all the difference.

9. We must teach our students, teachers, and administrators that it's okay to be a Novice in something. Identifying where you are on a scale is just finding your location...like your location on a map. Just because YOU ARE HERE - doesn't mean you can't move to somewhere else. It is not a judgement or a condemnation...it is a LOCATION. And like any location...you can move from it. Let's just make sure we're moving forward or...like "Weezy" we're movin' on up! Lesson: Take the judgemental aspect out of admiting where we are - and make it all about finding out out how to move to the next level and providing the tools and support to get us there.

10. On a personal note: The lack of decent wifi (or enough power outlets) was an incredible lesson for me in differentiation. My learning style is that of DIGITAL PROCESSING! I need to twitter, blog, voicethread, google, and embed my experiences in order to process them, make connections, get feedback and commentary, and find value in what I've learned. ASCD, for all it's student-focused ideas and forward thinking in curriculum and teaching, is lightyears behind in differentiating for it's Digital Processors. I was uncomfortable having to resort to pen and paper rather than to tweet my notes (all of which can be found here). I was frustrated by lack of power, lack of stable wifi, and by having to pay $10.95 a night to access the internet in my room (I really hate hotels that do that - if the Days Inn can give me free wifi - why can't the Hilton?). But I digress...for all their talk of differentiation, ASCD failed to meet my learning style needs or provide an environment for learning that was relevant to me. Now - I'm an Ed Tech geek, no denying that. I live on my electronics....I'm not ashamed to admit it. I am ALSO exactly like most of the students you will teach. If you can't hold MY interest and I'm here on purpose...with a desire to learn...because you will not let me process/remix/mash/post/and collaborate in a way that is relevant to my world, my background knowledge, and my learning style needs....HOW do you expect teachers to do it with their students? I realize that this is a rather lengthy diatribe over patchy wifi and an inability to Twitter - but it is so much more than that. It strikes right at the heart of the "Power Down" argument - that we force our kids to take an evolutionary step backwards to learn. It doesn't work.

Lesson: If  Ed-Techers want to really make a difference and you want to see integration with academic rigor and technology as a true learning tool...you went to the wrong conference this week. NECC was probably phenomenal and I'm profoundly jealous that I couldn't be there - but I am also grateful. As I sat shoulder to shoulder with more district/university administrators than I'd ever met at any tech conference, I realized that THIS is our battleground. If we want to integrate, THIS is where we must infiltrate! It is necessary and wonderful to meet with like-minded individuals and learn from each other, celebrate successes and become inspired to take those successes and make them happen in our own corners of the world. But the real battle is in conferences like ASCD where curriculum and best practices are being discussed, developed, and disseminated to the movers and shakers, the decision-makers. This is where we have to make our presense felt, to bring our tools and technology, to bring these subjects into the global conversation from the very seat of their power. It's time to bring curriculum up to speed and for technology to dig in deeper. No more fluff, no more enrichment. If we are going to really teach the Whole Child we need to make our voices heard, demand sytemic changes that embrace technology integration on a deeper level (bye-bye internet recess) and we are going to have to collaboratively work with the leaders in the field to make sure that  we can integrate to educate!

And....

I'm spent.

Can I just say...it's stinkin' HOT! We loaded onto our charter bus at about 12pm on Thursday. The trip started out well, everyone excited about the upcoming conference in Houston. ASCD here we come!

Then the air went out on the bus. UGH! With a heat index of 109 degrees, we were riding on a bus with little to no air. One of my buddies got REALLY sick so she and I climbed into the car with my good buddy, Jana. (She'd met up with us in Waco and was following the bus). It was so hot it melted a bag of gummy worms to mush!

We finally got into our hotel at about 7pm and got to eat dinner at about 9:30pm. Ugh. We just got back to the room and dropped! (What party animals, huh?)

Then we were up at 6:45am and off to learn great things. I waited in line for 35 minutes for a coffee...and hit my first session. I went to The Understanding by Design Technology for Learning session. It was the only session with Technology in the title and it was about using web 2.0 tools. It was cool. Didn't pick up anything majorly new, but got a really good reminder of how forward thinking our district is as far as technology is concerned. A WHOLE lot of districts didn't have ANYTHING or know what any of the sites we talked about were.

Then my second session was about Differentiation and Staff Development. The presenter was great - but the topic got confusing...it was about staff development for Differentiated Instruction but it also talked about differentiation in staff development...huh?

The third session was a 3 hour formative assessment session with Robert Marzano. It was GREAT! We learned a lot, got to ask questions about our grading policy pilot (based on his book) and got our pictures taken with him. He signed some of our books and was generally a really cool guy. His presentation was funny...he had jokes! LOL! Here I am being a TOTAL nerd/fan with Marzano.

Then it was a quick run to a food court for dinner....then I got dragged down to the bar to hang out with the gang. I can't drink after my surgery, but that didn't stop us from laughing (loudly) and cutting up. Props to Dr. P for the awesome MJ impersonation...and that's all I have to say about that! ha ha!

I am angry that I had to pay $10 to get on the internet tonight. Totally crappy policy by the Hilton...you get enough of our money...give us something for free...internet - If the Days Inn can do it...you can too. Sheesh.

I was AMAZED at the total lack of twitter traffic about ASCD. I know it's not a tech conference but come on! If you search #ascdsc you'll see about 4 pages of tweets...and all but 2 of them are from me. What a sad commentary that I'm sitting in a room full of teachers, principals, superintendents, etc...and none of them is sharing, commenting, heckling...etc. through twitter or anything else. You guys really should be building your digital PLN and modeling this behavior! Why do you not know this already?

Well - I've got a full day tomorrow and I'm beat. So I'm going to sleep and lose a few hours of my 24 hours of internet service. (Still bitter). If you're not having just too much fun at NECC then pop on twitter and check out what I'm doing tomorrow! LOL...at least all of my bosses will have proof that I'm here and attending sessions (as soon as I teach them how to use twitter! LOL). Night all.

I've started my second class in my Lamar University Masters' in Educational Technology Leadership. The class is Multimedia and Video Technology. As our first assignment we had to create a photostory. It had to be 3 minutes long and follow the format demonstrated in an article we read. The article (longer than an article really) from the Center for Digital Storytelling was called Digital Storytelling Cookbook by Joe Lambert. It's got some great tools in it...I highly recommend you read it.

Here is the video that I created, followed by some reflection on the process (also a requirement of the class).

The software wasn't an issue - as I teach Photostory 3 a lot. The real difficulty for me was keeping my story down to 3 minutes. I felt like I had to cut out a lot of my personality (I had some funny stuff in there...some emotional stuff too). But I had to cut it down to the essentials (a really good lesson for me...and for students). As I ended my photostory with a simile...I instantly saw the application for storytelling to help students learn simile and metaphor...lots of literary devices. Can't help it...it's the English teacher in me. I don't like the quality of the video from .wmv to .flv through the YouTube conversion. That bothers me, but I wanted to use the software they told me to use.  All in all, it was a good experience for me. I'd done several short examples for teachers to look at as they learn Photostory 3, but having to turn out a complete story really helped me see this from the students' point of view.

In a couple weeks I'll be teaching an iMedia Academy during our Technology Learning Fair. 4 days of digital storytelling and moviemaking. I am going to use this experience (and my example) to help my teachers understand the impact that digital storytelling can have. I hope it will help them to start seeing all the ways that our students can use their own stories to help them learn content in their classes. (I'm ALL over this for English class...but I'm already plotting for all my other core teachers as well...muwahahah)!

Overall, a good experience for me! Hope you enjoy!