Speaking Web 2.0: How to use 21st Century tools to keep in touch with students & parents

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Feb 272010
 

Are the students of today different than the students of 30 years ago? How about 10? Or even just 3? It is hard to keep up with the pace of change in technology and communication, but as teachers we NEED to be reaching our students on THEIR turf, in the way that THEY learn and understand – and that is probably a little different than how you or I learn.

Here’s a little taste of how your Digital learners view the world – they are curious and they WANT to learn, but they expect to do it a little differently. Meet Joe & his Non-Notebook:

Students today expect to be able to interact with media & information, not just sit back and try to absorb it. Information is always at your students fingertips – is it at yours?

In our presentation today, we’ll look at some 21st Century tools to enable you to walk the walk and talk the talk of your Digital Learners today. Here’s the resources and tools that we’ll look at, and I’ll explain each below. (Note: you can download the presentation from today’s session here)

Qik lets you share your everyday life experiences as it happens with your family and friends — the easiest way to record and share videos right from your mobile phone.

Would your students benefit from having a video archive of your lecture/presentation/teaching available to them anytime and anywhere? How about that sick student at home?

Qik not only allows you to video the classroom happenings, not only saves it for you on it’s site, but people can view it live as it happens and be a part of what is going on. Requires some sort of App phone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others).

How many of you in the room today have a class/school web page? How many times do you update it in a school year? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Never – someone else made the page? Why don’t you keep it up-to-date?

Remember Joe? Remember how he tries to access information? If it isn’t online, it does not exist to a kid like Joe. You can easily keep a kid like Joe happy by creating a new Web site from Posterous. It is simply THE MOST EASY way to keep a Web site current. It is so easy, that you already know how to use it. Ever heard of email? THAT is how you add something to a Posterous blog or site. Here’s what you have to do:
  1. Create an account… Er, skip that. You don’t need to do this.
  2. Email your thoughts, photos, audio & videos along with any Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF file to post@posterous.com
  3. That’s it. You have just created a new web site and made your first entry.
Posterous will email you back telling you that your new site has been created with links to view the post or your site, and to set up a password. Anytime you want to add something to your site, you simply send an email to post@posterous.com and it’s done. It’s even smart enough to figure out what you are attaching and will automatically add audio and video players, links to download your files – it’s all automatic.

Email too tough for you? Try http://post.ly

Poll Everywhere is a service that you can use during class discussion to get instant feedback from your students via text message or web polling or voting. The results are instantly updated on the website, or you can embed a poll into a PowerPoint presentation (now Keynote in iWork on the Mac as well!). 

A basic teacher account will allow for 32 responses for an unlimited number of questions. Questions can be either multiple choice or open-ended in nature. Students LOVE the instant and anonymous feedback that they get, and the teacher can know at a glance what the students are understanding, and what they still have questions about. 

Let’s Try it out. Please give me your best guess as to the question, “How many people use Facebook?” You can also vote via Text Messaging or Smartphone at http://poll4.com with the text messaging code.

Facebook Fan Pages

Now that you know just how many people are on Facebook, how many people would you say regularly check your District, School, or personal Web site? Why not try to reach your students where they spend a lot of their time already? Teachers can create a Fan Page on Facebook pretty quickly and students can become a “Fan” of that page. When they do, they will see all of the updates on that page on their own Facebook page! You can even tie Posterous or any other blog page with an RSS feed to automatically update your Fan page. Post it once and it’s everywhere!

Here’s an example – my SEDC Tech Training Fan Page.

I’ve written before at length about TextMarks. TextMarks utilizes the main form of communications for today’s students – text messaging – and allows for instant alerts and reminders for your students, or their parents for that matter. Create an account at TextMarks, and then set up different groups that you intend to communicate with – different class periods, subject areas, parents, etc. and assign them a unique keyword. 

Once students or parents subscribe to the group, you can send out any message or reminder needed from the TextMarks website, and your “subscribers” will instantly be notified of your message. Reminders and messages to your students that they will actually READ!

Heard of a Podcast? They are great for teaching students in t
he new 21st Century mode of instruction…
WWW: Whatever, Whenever, Wherever

Gabcast is a service that will make recording audio for podcasting or video projects MUCH easier. No longer do you need access to a computer lab, microphones, headsets, and QUIET! Send a group of students to a quiet corner and have them call into Gabcast. Gabcast will record whatever they say into the phone, turn it into an audio file, and make that file available for download. 

Once they have the file, they can import it into other editing programs like Audacity or GarageBand for Podcast creation, or into MovieMaker or iMovie to use that recording for movie making. Easy and convenient audio recording. You could even capture a class discussion with Gabcast that you could then post to your website as review, class notes, or even to help that poor student that has been out ill for a week.

Do you ChaCha? I know that your students know about it. ChaCha is basically a web search with your voice anywhere, anytime. Call 800.2.ChaCha (800.224.2242) or or text-message a question to ChaCha at 242242, and the answer will be texted back to that phone. All is costs is the text message fee, which most of your students have an unlimited plan for. Very handy to resolve any question that comes up during class discussion or for research away from the computer lab or Library.

Ahh, Google. The good folks at Google will let you search for the information that you need the most from your phone. Google SMS is like ChaCha, but more focused on YOUR life and services in your current location. 

Text “weather 84720” to 466453 (‘GOOGLE’ on most devices) and you will get the current weather and forecast for Cedar City. Text “define asymptote”, and Google will give you the definition! Very handy and useful! Here is a more complete list of what Google SMS can answer for you.

UPDATE: This article is translated to Serbo-Croatian language by Jovana Milutinovich from Web Geeks Resources.

Engage Your Students with GPS! Links to Today’s UCET Presentation Resources

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Feb 262010
 
First let me thank you for taking your time and coming to my UCET presentation today. If you'd like to use or review the resources that I discussed today, just follow the links below:
Session Summary:
In Utah, 24% of the Class of 2011 were not proficient in Math portion on the UBSCT. In the SEDC (Southwest) region, some of the UBSCT concepts that??students??have done very poorly on are the understanding the concept & calculation of area, and solving one-factor equations. There is a need to present these concepts to many of our??students??in a new way. Global Positioning System Receivers (GPSr???s) can be an effective and engaging technology tool to help??your??students??understand these concepts and enable??your??students??to experience math in their world in a new way. We will cover how to use a GPSr to find the area and perimeter of a location, calculate the slope of a hill (& the distance up that hill!), and even how to figure out the volume of water fall on??yourschool campus during a rainstorm! Not a math teacher, that???s OK! I will show you over 50 ways to integrate??GPS??into??your??instruction in any classroom.

Thinking in 3D with SketchUp

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Feb 262010
 

SketchUp is a tool for creating, editing and sharing 3D models. The SketchUp “secret sauce” is a unique set of powerful tools that are designed to be easy to learn and use. This amazing and powerful software has been made available to all Utah schools free of charge from Google! Come and peek over my shoulder for a quick primer on how SketchUp models are made, what they can show you, and where to go to learn more.

Google Docs in the Classroom

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Feb 092010
 

Google Docs is a great alternative to the old way of writing papers for English class using Microsoft Office. Gone is the need to purchase their software for your computer at home, emailing documents back and forth, using flash-drives or even floppy discs that always seem to be where you are not to save files to (do you still use floppy disks?), and all of the other hassles associated with keeping track of and using those files. All you need is a connection to the Internet, and your files are there.

Today we’ll take a look at how you can use Google Docs for your classwork – for English and for any other class. I’ll also show your teacher how she can make template files for you to use, and how you can use them, to eliminate the need for all of those dead trees and copies of class assignments. Here’s the Google Docs QuickStart Guide, and we’ll learn more about Google Docs in the following presentation and video.

If the above video space is blank, you can watch it here.

Here’s an example of a Google Form – Please take the quick Pop Quiz!

To submit a template to your domain template gallery, just follow these steps:
  1. Log into your Gmail based email (Ironmail.org today).
  2. Click on the ‘Documents’ link near the top left of the page to view your Google Docs home.
  3. Create a new document with the information or format for the assignment (if you have not done so already), save it and close it.
  4. Click ‘Create new’ –> ‘From template’.
  5. Click Submit a template on the top right of the templates main page.
  6. Click Choose from your Google Docs and select a template from your Google Docs that you’d like to submit.
  7. Click Select.
  8. Enter a short description, pick one or two categories for the template, and select a language.
  9. Click Submit template.
Note: Contact your domain administrator to add some new template categories for you or for your subject to make the organization of the templates a little easier for your users.
To use a teacher-created template, just log in to your Google Docs home and click ‘Create new’ –> ‘From template’. Choose the template category, select from the main list, or search for the template that your teacher made using the search field near the top of the page!

Media Rich Educational Resources – YouTube, eMedia, and Podcasts

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Feb 052010
 

Some quick links for today’s training – I’ll add more information as we encounter it!

– YouTube Home
– Having problems viewing videos? Get the latest version of Flash
– YouTube Handbook: Watching and Collecting Videos
– eMedia, accessed through Pioneer Library
– Get the latest version of QuickTime & Windows Media
– iTunesU K-12 home
– Lit2Go from University of South Florida – free audio books for K-12

Recovering from a Computer Hard Disk Failure on the Mac

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Feb 022010
 

This is never a good feeling when you get the “Sad Mac” icon when you want to hear the glorious ‘Bonnnggg’ of a happy Mac booting up. The first and best thing you can do to avoid this catastrophe? BACK YOUR SYSTEM UP! A solid backup scheme and regimen may seem like a pain, but when trouble strikes, theres no better feeling in the world – well, almost no better feeling – to recover all of that work that had been lost to the ether.

Recovering your data is no guarantee. The best thing to do when a drive fails is to stop using it immediately. If data gets lost or corrupt, the computer can overwrite your precious bits in the process of trying to fix it. Turn off the machine, and try the steps below, in order of least painful and expensive, to most.

First, do you have the system CD’s/DVD’s that came with the machine? If so, put them in the drive and power up your computer with the “C” key depressed. That will force the system to boot from the optical drive on the installed system on the disk. Once it’s up, you can run Disk Utility to repair (or at least try to) the drive.

If you don’t have your original boot disk, do you have access to another working Mac? If so, you can connect the two via FireWire and enter the ‘dead’ computer in Target Disk mode by powering up the machine and pressing the “T” key. This will, in essence, turn your computer drive into an external disk that you can hopefully mount and do some scanning and repairing with Disk Utility.

If neither of these are an option, you can try to get a hold of a DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro disk that has some higher firepower disk repair utilities. We don’t have one for any OS X systems, unless it’s 10.2 or 10.3. A current version may set you back $99 or so, but that may be worth it to you.

Beyond that, there are services that you can send your disk to for a data recovery attempt. Here’s a link to a Utah business that does this sort of thing: http://www.utahdataservices.com/hard-drive-data-recovery.html