TIE (Technology Integration in Education) SIG

First of, let me apologize for not keeping our session reports up to date….  My goal is to put up resources and abbreviated session reports from January to April in the next two weeks.

With that said, here is summary of our last session for the year, which focused on Animation tools.

Joanne led the group through an overview of Scratch, (free, out of MIT)   and how she uses it with her Middle school students in North Reading. Besides getting a quick walkthrough of the programming environment we saw several student projects.    The software itself is available at http://scratch.mit.edu  and is linked to a large community of users, sharers and support materials.  Check it out.

Also look at the Constructing Modern Knowledge Conference in Manchester NH this July.  Details at http://constructingmodernknowledge.com/cmk08/summer-institute-cmk-09/

Susan also gave a shorter demo of her work with StarLogo and the digital storytelling combined with animation that she promotes with her students.  StarLogo can be investigated at another MIT site, http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/  Ther is now an open source version available for download, and like Scratch, support resources and tutorials.

A visitor for the session was John Hopkins of hubUnity, a fledgling school/community Web 2.0 hub that is providing free web space for groups and individuals in communities to set up interactive websites for intra-community communication and reporting.  Check out their features more at http://hubunity.com  and see if it provides you with some options.  There is no cost top set up a site for yourself, your classroom, or school.

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Look for session reports shortly including

January – Open Source resources

February – Video in the Classroom

March – Whiteboard Software

April – GPS and Geocaching with Students

Hope you can attend our March session about Whiteboard software… AND we’re traveling to North Reading’s Batchelder School for this. Joanne Coughlin will be leading our activities with hands-on opportunities with a Smartboard and the Notebook software.

Same time. 4-6 on Tuesday, March 10th.

Directions: In North Reading, we are at the intersection of Rt 62(Park St.) and Haverhill St. Haverhill St. to North Reading is just off the Route 129 Rotary at the Reading/Wakefield exit off Rt. 128/95.

About 3.5 miles later, the main entrance and parking is at field level. We share an access road with the rear of the nearby High School. The school’s entrance is the far end from the parking area, and next to some colorful playground structures.

Once in the school, signs will direct you to the third floor, either up the staircase or to the elevator, and then down two hallways to the lab.

There is an elevator if you wish. Just walk past the main stairway, and head for the boiler, maintenance area… Elevator is on left.

Once out of elevator on Floor 3, take a left down the hall (if you walked, the staircase is to your right at this point) and a right at the end down another hallway to the lab entrance . (You’ll see the Library on your right, just before the lab on your left.

Hope to see you there.

Ed

 Half of our group of ten attended MassCUE in November and we shared our goodies with members .  Links connected to presentations can be seen at my Delicious area.

http://delicious.com/ebiggs/MassCUE08

Also MassCUE has posted links and handouts at the Conference website – http://masscue.org/Conference2008/handouts.html

Bev told us about her session with Romeo Marquis, “Where Have All the Principals Gone?”  Along with a general sense that Tech Integration has failed to live up to its promise, the session focused on top-down “buy-in” of technology from administrators as vital for movement forward. Suggestions included also using technology as an area for teacher evaluation, and focus on technology to “do things” with the proficiency in applications as ancillary by-product.  If you want more about Romeo and His ideas, check out his website  “Learning Curve”, http://romeomarquis.com/

Joanne liked her session with Gaby Richard-Harrington, On Beyond Google - Web Literacy for Teachers and Students  Key ideas from the session were  using games to foster efficient searching strategies, including board games like Trivial pursuit, taboo, Tribon; getting search activities from Alan November’s book.  Evaluating web sites is one of those 21^st century skills that can get overlooked and Gaby has  suggestions for tn at as well.  Check out her web site at http://www.strategy2design.com/    You’ll find the pdf of her presentation with more links and resources.

Sue talked about some of the resources fused by the keynot speakers, especially Hall Davidson use of cellphones to keep the audience involved, including Gcast, and Polleverywhere.com  for audience polling of questions of interest. One major topic from the keynote was “to use the technology already being used by our students,”   Sue also attended a Google maps session and more on that below….

Ed liked the session on “Free Websites” with Lori Cooney. Resources covered included  free applications for graphics, content management, world languages, concept mapping, etexts and more.

Her link is in the Delicious  compilation noted above  and directly her  http://www.diigo.com/list/lcooney98/masscue

Check out her treasures.  I liked Kerpoof (online KidPix-style area with animation features)  Newseum (front pages of newspapers current and archived)

 New Tech Teaching at http://newtechteaching.com/Welcome.html  has Google Earth resources you’ll want to explore.  Kevin McGonegal’s session at MassCUE was quite entertaining and eye-opening for Google Earth possibilities with students…  Check it out. 

 And check out the other links on our Delicious compilation at

http://delicious.com/ebiggs/MassCUE08

Our first meeting focused on  Teaching History with Technology. What resources and best practices are at our fingertips for presenting,  researching,  and teaching the past? The National Heritage Museum in Lexington held the summer conference with lots to share.

National Heritage Museum, Lexington, MA
 http://www.monh.org/

The National Heritage Museum is a small but interesting museum run by the Masons and focusing on traditional and historical heritage of Massachusetts. This summer they held a conference one day only on the use of technology in teaching history in the speakers all involved in bringing historical understanding to students at K- 16 levels. 

Much of the activity was motivated by the joint report by the partnership for 21st Century Skills and the National Council for Social Studies.  Together the two groups released a Map of the skills need K-12 for 21st century learning.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills
 http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

The following two sites have many resources, including great interactive areas for to help teachers and studnts “Think about History”.

Center for History and New Media at George Mason University
 http://chnm.gmu.edu/

Best of History Web Sites
  http://www.besthistorysites.net/

Check out some teacher resources  in the sites below.
Center for Teaching History with Technology
 http://thwt.org/
 
Boston Public Library
 http://www.bpl.org/electronic/images.asp

History News Network
 http://hnn.us/
 
Encounters and exchanges in American History
 http://gse.uml.edu/rtah/programs/programs.htm

Historic maps in K-12 Classrooms
 http://www.newberry.org/k12maps/module_10/index.html

Primary Source Learning
 http://www.primarysourcelearning.org/index.shtml

Library of Congress: Artifact Road Show: Constructing the Context
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/99/road/intro.html

Smithsonian: History Wired
 http://historywired.si.edu/text.cfm

American Colonists Library: primary source documents
 http://home.wi.rr.com/rickgardiner/primarysources.htm

Popular Songs in American History
 http://www.contemplator.com/america/

A year ago April, we presented our first session devoted to podcasting  and knew that several members were involved in planning for projects.  This April we were able to hear about these projects more fully.  

Our Wilmington Friends, Brenda and Carol, started the meeting with a overview of their Grade 8 podcasting project.  Students recorded observations and impressions of a NYC field trip and have posted the podcast at the Wilmington web site. The project organization included students working in pairs, scripting sections describing  the trip which included Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, and Ellis Island.  Scripts were edited fully before recording.

Audacity was the program of choice, with the price being right, (free) and both Carol and Brenda taking advantage of the tutorials .  Once student audio was completed,  the web site itself as developed as a group project.  All audio files were available to all students.  A library of audio loops (pre-selected WAV files) was provided in a folder for students;  Front Page was the web authoring application.Students were able to create their web page and audiocast with the raw materials. One of the final projects was chosen among the submissions for a final posting on the school web site.  You can see and here the final results here.  

 SIG Discussion brought out  strengths of the project as the detailed and personal voices of the students, supported by planned script, and the hands on creation by all students even though  the  final posted site was selected among many.   The teacher decision for posting was based on structure and completeness of the podcast, as it was then exported into mp3 format for others to hear, a basic operating procedure for Audacity files.

 Joanne from North Reading gave a comprehensive view of Podcasting basics, with lots of handouts,(see below) starting with sources for listening / subscribing to podcasts, consideration of citations and fair use of music lops, assorted rubrics for podcast creations,  headphone/microphone info, and especially Willow Web as source for podcasting guides  and tutorials.  

Her student projects utilize prompts, allowing student choice of topics, teasers and tag lines for structure , and free music loops from SoundSnap. Here is a sample prompt from here resources. Check out her other resources when you get the chance. 

Thanks to all presenters for a great session. Resources from this session will be added to our Podcasting Resource page from April 2007.

Podcasting Lesson (Wilmington)

What You Need

 MLA Podcasting Citation

Podcasting Rubri

Radio Willow Web 

Before starting, Bev reminded us to vote at MassCUE.org as candidates are vying for a position as member-at-large on the Board of Directors.  One of our SIG members, Joanne, is a candidate, along with others who have contributed in many ways to our parent organization.  Remember to take advantage of your member privilege and vote…

Sue was introduced us to two programs: iMovie and Snapz Pro.  She demonstrated the importing of images and clips to combine in a video creation, along with audio tracks and simple transitions.   Caveats are the learning curve for efficient use of the program, sufficient RAM for movie production, and hard drive space for storage were discussed. Though iMovie is limited to the Mac OS,   Windows users might use Moviemaker (a part of the Win XP installations) which we compared briefly.

Snapz Pro as a video capture program (shareware) and screencasting app were also demonstrated.  Sue has used it to capture online flash movies and save to DVD/CD for classroom use. 

Discussions included access to and use of YouTube/TeacherTube for classrooms, and the network restrictions that make such use problemmatic in many districts.  Even with the proliferation of online video  for learning, barriers exist to easy use and access, including district restrictions  for storage as well as download communication . Sometimes a subscription service like BrainPop or unitedstreaming  can provide resources, but pricing can be restrictive.

We also looked at two free applications.

The first was Screencasting with Jing.

A simple explanation of Jing comes from the TechSmith website - (www.jingproject.com). 

 Jing is an application for Mac or Windows that  is “ ready to capture and share your stuff at a moment’s notice. Simply select an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click Share. Jing conveniently places a URL to your content on your clipboard ready for you to paste the URL “ into an email or document of any sort.

Jing is one of many web-based applications proliferating online for use by anyone online.  Other programs available can edit images (Picnik.com),  store and organize photos (Flickr.com)   or music and videos (iTunes.com ), and  even create and store Word documents (Google Docs). If you want to try it yourself, go to jingproject.com.  The program is available for Mac and Windows machines.  An account sign on (free) gives you space to store any of your Jing images or videos. 

Can you think of a use for Jing?   One obvious use is for tech support, to demonstrate a process in an application and then shared as file or web link. Go one step further….Could Jing be used by students to ..demonstrate an algorithm?  …annotate a web page with narration? ….support a thesis topic?  …and then share with others? Finally, we looked at Stop Animation with SAM.

From the SAM website at Tufts University-
“SAM Animation is a software platform that allows the user to make stop-action movies using a USB or fire-wire real-time (i.e. web camera or webcam) and whatever props the user desires. The software is both Mac and PC compatible and free to all users willing to register with www.samanimation.com.”

• Grew out of research into effects of moviemaking to help students represent their mental models of science/engineering phenomena.
• Available for Mac/Windows
• Need a web camera (USB or firewire)
• Interface also has options for automating time lapse photography
• Export SAM projects as Quicktime for sharing.  A gallery of student work is available for download ( anywhere from 5  to 50 seconds of video). 

We ended at 6, with plans to meet next month on March 11th.  The topic will be “Constructivism and Technology: Possible or Pipe Dream?” Bring a project to share  and we’ll look at student learning and the Constructivist model.

  Hope to see you there!

Math Resources, both software and the online variety, provided the focus for our group this month.

Susan gave us an overview of three software packages - Go Solve (Tom Snyder,www.tomsnyder.com ),  Stages Math (Assistive Technology Inc., www.assistivetech.com) and  Understanding Math (Neufeld Learning Systems, http://www.neufeldmath.com/)

Go Solve Word Problems (Gr. 3-8)  uses instruction in graphics organizers to  assist students in making connections in mathematical situations and understand the algorithm more fully.  Video support can provide a gateway to self-paced study, guided practice, or independent practice.  Tablets of graphic organizers provided structure for dealing with word problem specifics.  Evaluation CD available.

Stages Math:Number Sense  (Gr. K-3) provides accessible activites in eight areas: words for Numbers, Counting, Comparing, Sequesncing, Math facts, Money, Number Line, and Fractions.  Access is provided for multiple input  devices, including switches and touchscreen.  Management system included allows for customization for students and their reports. No evaluation CD available, but the company does provide webinars monthly.

 Understanding Math (Gr. K-10) is a collection of modules ranging from Numeration to Algebra, emphasizing real world math connections, simple screen views, online manipulatives, and accommodations to reach a wide range of students.  Free download previews are available.

Ed provided an update to the TIE SIG Math Resources hot list ( Math Resources: TIE SIG updated Jan. 2008)as well as a link to Cheryl Benson and Lesley Carroll’s Interactive Web Site list from their MassCUE conference session. (Interactive Web Sites (Bension and Carroll/MassCue 2008)) Their first section is all math links.  We also looked at Timex Attack!, a free multiplication facts application in style of a PlayStation adventure game that’s available at  http://www.bigbrainz.com .  Thanks!

Our next is  session February 12th, “Movies, Animation, Screencasting: What’s Possible?”  Hope to see you there…

Our October session played to a dozen minus one attendees as we investigated some Google Applications.

If you really look at the clean spare Google search page , you see signs at the top of the window of the expanding world of Google applications.

We took a look at Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Earth, and Sketch Up.There are more, of course, so everyone was encouraged to delve a little deeper to see what is being offered.

I created an account so I could explore in preparation for the SIG meeting and used Google Docs to create this report on our meeting. An earlier draft served as the meeting presentation outline.

1. Google Docs and Spreadsheets . A brief tour of this area focused on some of the normal editing features a well as some of the Web 2.0 options that are becoming more familiar, especially the Sharing function that allows collaborative work on a document and the Publishing feature that will let me post this to our SIG blog on completion (not sure how this will work but we’ll find out shortly…)

I especially liked the Revisions archive, that denotes changes to a document with one or more collaborators and allow changes to be rescinded or accepted throughout the life of composition. The SIG group branstormed some classroom uses for such collaboration, especially noting the chance for students to work between home and school on documents. Student email becomes necessary as collaborators are invited to participate with email addreses as the logon user name.

2.Google Calendar: while having the calendar features we expect (multiple views, color coded entries, import features) it also has the Share and Publish dimensions, that can make such a document useful to groups of many types. The search function works well in personal calendars as well as public. We had a harder time trying to see the classroom benefits of this area. Some suggestions incuded classroom calendars for teacher webpages, and organizational calendars that were searchable. (Would MassCUE benefit from such a calendar?) The Subscription feature alone might make this a worthy app to take advantage of…

3. Google Earth is different from the first two applications in that it requires a download for its use, and as some of us found out, a robust memory allotment. My Inspiron laptop with 512 MB of RAM couldn’t run the program after download, but an MacBook with a 1GB handled it well. This application, free, will be on my list to explore more deeply.

At first it seems like a pumped up version of Google Maps with an extraterrestrial starting point as you look down on Planet Earth. True enough, you can plug in addresses and zoom from outer space to a bird’s eye view of your own roof top. You might notice that the image is not quite up to date. My house image was about 3 years old, depicting the early stages of a now completed renovation project from 2004. But impressive none the less. Type in something more notable, like “Taj Mahal”, and your space ship viewpoint changes, the earth rotates, and now you end up above Agra and using the orienting controls in the upper rightof the screen, you can move around the three dimensional image of the marble tomb and environs.

Multiple layers of information are available as the Google Earth community labels and tags and adds photos to world locations. Can you sense the opportunities here for enjoyment as well as classroom possibilities? Check out on such possibilities at GoogleLit Trips, where literary works are mapped and supplemented with a global view… Imagine what students and teachers could do to enhance their learning with this tool. We need time to investigate more. Google Earth discussion groups include an Educators forum with ideas upon ideas for use in schools…

Sue expanded on the this area with her mathematical propensities and gave us a hint of possibilities for the mathematics class, dealing with rotation, perspective, and object orientation for students. She also reminded us that some schools still suffer from limited web access or excessive filtering and could make use of screen casting options to preserve a tour of Google Earth for playback later…

4. Sue also introduced us to Sketch Up, a free download from Google, that allows 3D renderings and was impressive with its robust ability to take input from a novice to create 3 dimensional constructs. This free application is worth looking at. Schools could save licensing fees and provide students moving beyond the Kid Pix years with a substantial drawing and CAD experience.

Our meetings usually include other discussions and sharing besides the focused topic and this session was no different. Two topics of note:

1. Sue shared a free application called SketchCast. Think of a small whiteboard area on your desktop where you could draw or type, include a narration of some process or idea, and then save and replay at any time..almost a miniature smartboard operation that can be broadcast later or emailed as a file. Such is SketchCast… Sue demonstrated how a student could use it to explain solving a mathematical algorithm… a form of performance assessment, perhaps? Maybe we can look at this more later in the year when we do our animation/moviemaking session.

2. Carol and Brenda shared their first podcast with middle school students after a trip to New York City. Check it out…we expect to hear more of their efforts in Wilmington when we have our session on podcasting….

That’s it for now…some of us are planning to be at the MassCUE Conference next month so there will be no November meeting BUT we intend to come back and SHARE good ideas and resources for our December meeting… Take care…

We had a very lively first session focused on “Playing with Robots.”  Twelve attendees, (encouragingly large for our group) including several new faces who have joined our Egroup mailing list. 

We spent the first part of the afternoon during setup procedures with personal introductions, sharing of summer tech activities, including some upcoming initiatives, and then went over the proposed calendar of SIG topics for the year.  We had teachers and specialists from Salem, Lowell, North Reading, Wilmington, Burlington, and Newton.  Sharon, a former TIE SIG leader, announced her intention to start a MetroNorth SIG so we need to check that out as it gets started and promoted through MassCUE.

One pleasant surprise was that several others in the group had experience with some robotics activity, and the discussion focused on the Northeastern “Robotics: Assistive Technology” program for middle school students through the iTest / NSF initiative.  The presentation including resource links is available for interested readers.

Highlights of discussion involved impetus to promote and meet the state technology standards, to provide motivating experiences for all students as well as underserved populations (girls, minorities),, tying robotics into the STEM initiative, management and cost issues of providing a robotic experience in schools, and overview of Northeastern’s grant program that provides teacher professional development in exchange for providing after school robotics experiences Grades 4-8.

It was full hour and a half (and we had to hurriedly leave the library space so the local storytelling class could meet in a timely fashion…but it was worth it.   Great session and we look forward to next month when we investigate Google Applications available to all.

Hi Folks,

Hope your summer continues to be a fine one…Sue and I are meeting this week to plan the year’s meetings. But we are also announcing our first session of the new school year…Check out the announcement in the file “September 2007 TIE SIG Announcement”.