New Team Members

This will be an interesting NECC. We have new team members, Harrison B. and Nancy L., coming on board. Harrison will attend NECC with, however Nancy cannot attend this year. I want to be extra careful to document the sessions and workshops I attend so that Nancy can read my blog posts to get a feel for what I am learning.

NECC is such a great opportunity to recharge my batteries and connect with other educators in my PLN as well as meet new people who will become part of my PLN.

This is the first year I have done pre-conference work such as setting up this ISTE Community blog, signed up for BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop Sessions) as well as scanned carefully through the conference planner. My calendar is already filled for the entire conference. There are so many sessions I want to attend and just not enough time!

As President-elect of UCET (Utah Coalition on Educational Technology), so I am going to attend the ISTE affiliate meeting with the incoming UCET President, Paula Wells. We hope to get lots of ideas for the 2010 UCET Conference.

Counting down, only 9 days before we are there!

Twitter Search

It seems ironic to blog about Twitter search. Why not just tweet about it? Well, I did, but more people that I am trying to reach look at my blog than Twitter. So here goes:

Start Twittering, and use Twitter search! Why? Want to find out about what's happening in Iran, the new iPhone, or even with Angelina Jolie? You ain't gonna find that here. But if you join Twitter and use the search box, you will find out more than you ever thought you would know!

Everybody is sending out little messages on Twitter about their favorite topics. Once you search for a topic, you will see a bajillion Tweets, or comments, about that topic. Here's a short video explaining how to use it, click on the following image:
CommonCraft makes fantastic, easy to understand videos! Enjoy.

Blogging at NECC

As NECC approaches, I wanted to get my ISTE community blog set up. My main goals will be to share my NECC experience with others, network with other teachers from around the world, post comments and pictures of my NECC experience, and have a great time.

I have been following the informative daily NECC posts. Each one has interesting ideas that make me think about technology in education. I love these posts! Pick one, any one. You will enjoy it.

• Blogging the Conference: We’ve come a long way in 3 years!

• Suggest a Question to Be Answered by the Panelists of the debate at NECC

• How does your state measure tech literacy?

• Convert PDF files into eBooks
  

• Planning to Create Lots of Great NECC Content? Share it with Us here!

• Congratulations to The Most Popular Guest Bloggers on ISTE Connects

• Attending NECC Virtually

• Schools filtered like totalitarian police states

• Wolfram|Alpha The World’s Most Powerful Knowledge Engine

Only 10 days before we leave! I am so excited!

The Big Split

Coming on July 1st, the Jordan District will split into two districts:

• Jordan District on the west side of the south Salt Lake Valley
• Canyons District on the east side of the valley.

It has been an interesting year as people have left Jordan to start up Canyons. It does feel a bit like a divorce, but I think a fairly amicable divorce.

We all are working for the students so that we continue to provide them with the best educational experiences possible. Although it is sad that I will not see my friends on the east side as often as I have, I look forward to meeting other teachers and students on the west side on the valley.

I think we are going to have a great year on both sides. After all, it is all about the kids!
Good luck Jordan! Good luck Canyons!

Technology Conferences, Twitter

The 2009 5th annual TTIX Conference held at Utah Valley University was a lot of fun. The sessions are all online.

There was a social media contest to crown the next Grand Poo-bah. Here is a picture of the crown the lucky winner will get.

Lots of Twittering going on at TTIX got me to thinking who I follow and why. Here are my favorite groups I follow:

• UENPD
• Smithsonian
• GoogleatWork
• TED
• PBS Teachers

I am now setting my sights on NECC09 in Washington, DC. I am looking forward to sessions on social media, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, blogging, and Google.

NECC09 - Washington DC

I am really excited about going to NECC this year. I have signed up for some great workshops and look forward to learning more about topics relevant to educational technology.
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Susan Boyle: Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover.

This 47 yr old unmarried, unemployed Scottish woman gave one of the most amazing singing performances I have ever seen.

She came out on stage on Britains Got Talent 2009. People snickered at her before she even spoke, writing her off because of her dress and looks. Audience members rolled their eyes, snickered, and grimmaced when she said she would like to be a professional singer like Elaine Paige seen below:

Then Susan Boyle started singing. WOW. The video has gone viral, and I want to put in my two cents. She is incredible. Here she is singing I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables. She is amazing. I hope we see more of her.

Quicksilver

Sometimes we want our students to be able to REALLY see a message. Quicksilver can help us do that. Look at the image below. See how the word 'quicksilver' really pops out at you?

Want to see how to do this?


The following video explains how to download and set up Quicksilver so you can create those large, easy-to-read messages on your screen. Although there are many other uses for Quicksilver, this post discusses the 'large type' effect you see in the images here.

http://screencast.com/t/PyEHKMjh

There are multiple ways to find and download Quicksilver. It can be downloaded from www.blacktree.com or just Google "Quicksilver for Mac". It will be the first or second hit. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Mouseposé

Some teachers have purchased Mouseposé from Boinx Software and have asked me to create a tutorial on how to use it. So here it is: Mouseposé Tutorial.

Mouseposé highlights the screen area around the mouse pointer and visualizes keystrokes and mouse clicks. For more information about Mouseposé, go to www.boinx.com.

This program is not free. I am posting this tutorial by request.

Draper Elementary Podcast

I had such a delightful experience at Draper Elementary. I worked with Mrs. Valdez's student teacher, Miss Evans and her class in creating a podcast on sound. I brought in 30 headsets so that each student could have their own headset.


We talked about how students would record their script in GarageBand, add photos, jingles, zingers, and sound effects. Students practiced their part so that when they recorded their final version they could do their best.

We found that we needed more than one hour to do a podcast from start to finish because we wanted students to experience GarageBand, adding images, sound etc. We could have just recorded the podcast with an iPod and a microphone, but that would have just been getting the job done rather than have authentic learning going on.

Mrs. Valdez has a great group of students. They were fun, respectful, and very excited about learning something new.

Using Wikis with Radiology Residents

My sister, Susie Muir, MD, PhD, asked me to help her get a website up and running for UCLA radiology residents to share their cases online.

The residents don't have much time to spend on learning how to edit webpages, so we wanted a type of web page that was quick and easy to use. We decided to use a wiki--and over the last few weeks we developed The Pediatric Imaging Wiki.

We iChat quite often at night tossing ideas around, trying to refine the wiki and make the navigation easy to understand. During this process, we realized that a website is a living thing. It will change over time, and we must to listen to the ideas and concerns of the residents who are using the wiki so that we can improve and make it as accessible as possible. To this end, we created several video tutorials for the doctors to explain how they could start a case page, add the radiographic, MRI and/or CT images and how to add links to resources.

Things are coming along. Several very interesting cases have been uploaded. One med student was so excited about the wiki that she uploaded a case, learned to use a software program to create a movie of the MRI images she had taken, and listed some great resources.

Each Thursday my sister chooses a case of the week and presents an award to the doctor who has uploaded the most interesting or challenging case that week. The interest in the wiki is growing as more and more residents hear about it and want to participate.

It has been a really fun project on which to work. I am learning a lot about radiology in the process. My sister is a brainiac and funny as can be, so this project is not work, but fun.

Mrs. Mackay 's Class Personal Narratives

I have had a lot of fun working at Altara Elementary with Mrs. Mackay's 6th grade class on writing projects. Each student in the class wrote a personal narrative in a program called Pages. Pages is one of the three programs in the iWorks suite. The students had fun choosing a template. There are so many beautiful looking templates, it was hard for some kids to choose.
We then printed out the narratives on white cardstock and bound them into a book using the Cerlox binder. the book looked great!

The next week we recorded the narratives in GarageBand. The students burned two CD's. One to take home and another to tape to the back of their personal narrative in the book. The book will be kept in the classroom. Students will be able to listen to their peers' narratives whenever they have free time.



Mrs. Mackay said that her students were so excited to do this project. They liked writing the story in Pages. The loved recording their narrative. They were super excited to be able to take a CD home for their family to listen to their project.

Mrs. Mackay has a wonderful group of students. I enjoy working with students who are so energetic, nice, and respectful. Great job Mrs. Mackay's 6th Grade Class!

Willow Canyon 4th Grade Podcast

Recently I had spent time with Mrs. Morrison and her 4th grade class working on a podcast about the history of Utah. Mrs. Morrison is so willing to integrate technology into her curriculum, and her students are amazingly quick learners. We had some technical problems, however everybody just rolled with the punches, worked through the issues, and came out on the other side intact and excited!

Mrs. Morrison began by creating a general script for the podcast, and each student was given a part. When I arrived at her class, everybody was ready to learn how to record their script using GarageBand. After a 25 minute lesson on how to use the software, each student was given a headset, and the began recording their script.
As students practiced their scripts, they realized that we all use little idiosyncracies in our speech patterns such as “um” , “uhh” and so on. They kept re-recording their parts and working on making their recordings sound natural. Soon the class felt they were ready to record the final version.

Mrs. Morrison had the students record their script in a quiet room. It only took about 30 minutes to record the entire class. The students had their script with them as they recorded, however they had practiced so much that they focused on sounding natural, and most students required only one take. Recording the final take was the easiest part of all because the students we so prepared. What a phenomenal class!

The next step was to the edit images that Mrs. Morrison and I had collected. The students edited the images in a free online editing site called Picnik. (Side note: Another good free online editing site is Fotoflexer.com) Lastly, Mrs Morrison inserted the edited images into the enhanced podcast track of GarageBand and saved the project as a podcast. The class watched the podcast on their big screen. It was exciting to see how everything came together at last.

Due to a couple of computer glitches and technical server issues, Mrs. Morrison and I decided to upload the podcast to the T4 server. Because the T4 team uses a podcast template, I imported the podcast track into iMovieHD, added some transitions and text as well as the T4 Tips Podcast logo. The podcast can be found on the T4 website. Just click on T4 Tips Podcasts.


A big shout out to Mrs. Morrison and her class for all their hard work. I thoroughly enjoyed each student. They were extremely courteous, hard workers, and a lot of fun!

JOKE FOR YOUR CLASS:
How did the farmer fix his jeans?
With a cabbage patch. (hee, hee)