Resources from the NICE Mini-Conference January, 2011

January 2011 Mini-Conference

Presenter Session & Resources:  

Briana Allan Share your Inspire-ation: a Promethean IWB Users Group 

Amanda Antell  & Jill Vanderveer Alpha Smart NEO's in the classroom 


David Chan Senior Studies and Google Sites

Steve Dembo   Stacey Edlavitch Favorite FREE Web Tools

Tricia Fuglestad Make Your School House Rock: creating movies for your curriculum

Also: http://www.artsonia.com/schools/dryden1
http://fugleflicks.wikispaces.com/Fugleflick_Index

Ryan Goble Within' Technology, Without Technology

Michael Gorman & Jane Gorman 1. Whales In Lake Michigan? Sizing Up Sites.Seven Simple Steps
2. STEM to STEAM to STEAMIE: Turning up the Temperature! Fit PBL, 21st Century Skills, and Fine Arts into STEM education.
3. No Future Left Behind: Digital Natives/ Immigrants Learn, Transform, Create
Blog, Wiki, Documents: MJGormans_1.doc, MJGormans_2.doc

Judy Gressel Build Your Personal Learning Network withSocial Media Tools

Scott Meech Is there really an App for that? IEAR.org
The LLA to Personal Professional Development:a framework for learning with technology  
Laura Montgomery Be a Global Communicator:Using Skype & Other Tools
Blogging with Books
The World of Wordle

Jacki Naughton STEM Inquiry & Research: A hybrid approach to student research Document: NaughtonSTEM Inquiry and Research.doc

Nick Nicholson Engaging 21st Century Learners w/ SMARTTechnology Solutions

Melissa Rosen Word: More Than A Word Processing Program

Jeff Shaw The One-iPad Classroom
Posterous (presentation available as PDF)
Full presentation w/movies, if using latest Safari
My "One-iPad Classroom" blog

Patricia Sievert Capture the Colorful Cosmos: using space images 

Bonnie Thurber National Poetry Month and other projects in the iCollaboratory 


Christina Wood, Amerigo Carnazzola & Christine Pfaffinger iPad in the science classroomPowerPoint  - Quick Reference Guide of Science APPs 

EduBlog Award Winners and Teacher Challenges

To view the 2010 EduBlog Award Winners: Click here

Here you will read about the top 3 winners of each category. I loved viewing Mr. Robbo, the P.E. Geek's blog which rocks...I was especially interested in postings about mobile apps and one about mobile phone use in the classroom. Great stuff here.  There are so many more that it makes my head spin.
What I would like to do is spend some time (in our session January 11th) exploring these Edublog winners sites.

Another great new program in professional development for educators – something the Edublogs team has named ‘Teacher Challenges’-- are new free online online trainings to model how blogs can be used as effective and collaborative learning tools. The first challenge starts next week January 10th!  How's that for just-in-time learning? The first topic will be “30 days to kickstart your blogging” and will cover topics such as writing effective blogs posts, embedding media, and building readership.

Browse the Teacher Challenge website to preview exciting new topics and to learn from educators around the world:

Future Challenge Topics:

• 30 days to a whole new PLN
• 30 days to use the best of the web’s free resources
• 30 days to ensuring privacy and student safety on the web
• 30 days to increased parent involvement

Let's learn together at AM Exchange.

Today’s Topic: Social Bookmarking and Mobile Web

Raquelle Brennan and Mindi Maneck presented on Diigo and social bookmarking. We logged in and/or created accounts, including applying for an Educator Upgrade. Judy Gressel explained that with the toolbar, diigo will suggest tags for you and you can see how others have tagged a site, plus that if you have bookmarked multiple sites, you can just hit “play as slide show” to create a display as students come into a room. Raquelle and Mindi discussed making lists in Diigo and setting up groups. Raquelle noted that you can follow groups (e.g., diigo in education) and see what others are bookmarking. She also advocated using diigolet since it becomes a single button on your toolbar.

We also experimented with capturing an image. Erika mentioned how you could create links and pages with images and annotations and have a full lesson plan ready to go if you had a sub. There were questions about public versus private lists – and about diigo versus delicious. The general view seemed to be that delicious is the same idea, although simpler, with somewhat less functionality.

Judy Gressel commented briefly on Group me.com. She noted that one possible concern is with advertising and privacy. Andy Horne asked about whether group members would see your telephone number (a downside with current system). He asked whether they can text you back and wondered about how many people could receive a text simultaneously. We talked about possibly trying GroupMe amongst ourselves to try to investigate these questions.

Linda Straube then segued to a recent report on the State of Mobile Web. She recommended scrolling down to view data and graphs which would be especially of interest to geography classes; It seemed like that this topic (cell phone use) would be high interest for students and offer several points for discussion such as

• Comparing these results versus population figures and literacy rates;

• Looking at the most visited web sites by country

• Observing differences in cultural norms (e.g., attitudes towards acceptability of texting during a meal).

• Noting the relative privilege of the US and Western users which comes across in differing patterns in mobile phone brand adoption and in responses to questions like: “How old were you when you first browsed the Web?”

Our next meeting is Tuesday morning, December 14th at 7:30am in Jim Foster’s office. We will continue with social bookmarking and talk about any questions about diigo. For the majority of the time Raquelle will plan to show delicious, including a sheet with screen shots or other instructions.

In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Erika Eich, Judy Gressel, Andy Horne, Mindi Maneck, Keta McCarthy, and Linda Straube. Ian and Matt intended to join us, but were in conferences with students.

Today's Topic: RSS Feeds

Erika Eich presented on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds, indicating that the real benefit of this tool is that the information comes to you. She used this libguide to support her explanations: http://newtrier.libguides.com/RSSFeeds The examples centered on Google Reader, but Bloglines and My Yahoo were mentioned as alternatives.

Classes which have used this tool include AP Junior English (in support of their Junior Theme) and some Senior writing classes. A few students have experienced problems with their student emails when trying to set up RSS Feeds. Several of our databases have RSS Feeds (including Gale Reference Center Gold). For students, ProQuest may be best – they are able to make it specific and then also unsubscribe over the course of the year. Another factor to consider is when the feeds are set up – since they can appear daily, weekly or monthly so if students need some input every Monday, they may want to set up a weekly feed to appear over the weekend to get the latest information.

We also talked about how the choice of keywords is important, especially for database sources, although feeds can also be set up for individual web sites, such as The New York Times. We talked about how Google Fast Flip has a daily update, too. (See bottom of the page for RSS Feed link after you do a search). Another way to have updates come to you may be using paper.li, especially if you follow people on Twitter. Gressel’s daily paper is here.

Looking at that, led us to Mashable’s weekly post on 100+ upcoming social media events and then we started talking about the possibility of a social media or digital literacy course. If the group wants, we may explore that further in December. We also reminded attendees about this week’s 2010 Global Education Conference, with numerous keynotes presentations archived here.

Our next meeting is Tuesday morning, November 30th at 7:30am in Jim Foster’s office. The topic is social bookmarking, especially diigo and delicious and Raquelle will lead that discussion.

In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Erika Eich, Jim Foster, Judy Gressel, Linda Straube and Matt Stuczynski.

Today’s Topics: Using Adobe Acrobat to make a form

Jim Foster presented on creating forms with Adobe Acrobat. He pointed out the power – and complexity – of this tool, including various options involved with objects, layout, binding, submit buttons, etc. We have used this type of form successfully with students during classes where they completed and printed a form. However, we have run into some difficulties with having students save their work for future reference. Jim is still investigating the best way to have students use and save their input.

We will meet again in 2 weeks (Nov. 16). Tentative topic is setting up RSS feeds – Erika will be the primary presenter. We also noted that the Global Education Conference will be held November 15-19. There will be over 350 sessions. Here is a schedule using Chicago times. If there is sufficient interest, we could attend one or more sessions independently or together and report back to the group at a future meeting.

In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Ian Duell, Erika Eich, Jim Foster, Andy Horne, and Linda Straube.

Today’s Topics: More on Building a PLN

Judy Gressel continued her summary of "Build Your PLN Using Social Media Tools" on building a personal learning network. The link to the Prezi is here. She encouraged participants to just begin to "listen" to those who are blogging, etc. and to then take the step of creating your own voice and environment. She showed a video of Will Richardson saying that we have to do this for ourselves in order to understand how this works so that we can help our students be prepared for the future. Richardson will be online next Wednesday, October 27^th; more info here.

JudyG showed the pervasiveness of Social Media with this chart.

For setting up a blog, she suggested using Blogger. She also suggested looking into Feedblitz for subscribing; and RSS Feeds to follow information. Questions? Bring them to our future sessions or see JudyG. Wikis were mentioned, including a simulation and those by Warlick and Rheingold – see last meeting’s notes (below) with the Prezi for more links. Social Bookmarking – another area to investigate. Request was made to consider the topic of Social Bookmarking and separately RSS Feeds and possibly setting up a Blog for future sessions.

And then Twitter…. JudyG uses paper.li to gather the info that she follows; link is here. Judy and others made the point about how much they have learned from following Twitter – more than attending conferences. You can follow individuals or follow discussions like #edchat or #edtech. She recommends using a TweetDeck or other organizing device. Judy uses Twitter for her advisory parents also.

We finished with a video whose presenter said how we connect… is not about the tools…it’s about the personal connections and learning from each other. On that note, we will meet again in 2 weeks (Nov. 2) and talk about creating forms with Adobe Acrobat.

In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Ian Duell, Erika Eich, Jim Foster, Judy Gressel, Andy Horne, Keta McCarthy, Linda Straube, and Matt Stuczynski.

Today's Topics: Recent NICE meeting; eBook Virtual Summit; Build a PLN

Matt Stuczynski, a NICE Board member,shared his experience from last Wednesday's (September 29, 2010) NICE meeting called "Share-A-Rama" in which many teachers shared tools and resources in Highland Park.

Matt's Advice: Try to attend the next NICE meeting October 26, Deerpath Middle School in LakeForest. 
Topic:  "Do more with less!"

Share-A-Rama at recent NICE meeting
Some of the most interesting topics were:
ereaders
ipad applications --ReaddleDocs for iPad
Mashpedia
Libguides
Evernote
BLIO

Linda Straube shared what she learned at "Ebooks:  Libraries at the Tipping Point: An LJ/SLJ Virtual Summit" a day long webinar held on September 29. Linda shared highlights from the keynote:

It was amazing to hear that there were 1800-2000 attendees, with hundreds of school libraries represented! The number of ebooks available continues to grow. Only a small percentage of libraries currently carry ebook readers. Laptops and netbooks are the primary ways which libraries/patrons access ebooks. Currently, 6% of responding school libraries circulate dedicated ereaders.

The preferred ebook formats are still all over the board. It's very complex and multi-layered in terms of choices and reading formats.  There is significant confusion surrounding which platform to adopt. Moderator Joyce Valenza mentioned "eConfusion". Much needs to be done in the way of education for librarians and libraries.

A new tool introduced during Ray Kurzweil's opening keynote was BLIO - free download for reading digital books for windows computers. More download platforms will eventually be released.
iPad seen as exciting device because in recent studies, handwriting helps with retention.

Judy Gresssel presented a summary of "Build Your PLN Using Social Media Tools". The prezi is embedded below. There is some interest in having a full session on building a personal learning network.

Building a PLN: Start Where You Are Using Social Media on Prezi

In attendance: Raquelle Brennan, Ian Duell, Erika Eich, Judy Gressel, Keta McCarthy, Linda Straube, and Matt Stuczynski.