Conferencing with Your People

Although the title suggests that I attended Comic Con, I did not actually attend Comic Con. I did, however, recently attend the OETC (Ohio Educational Technology Conference) in downtown Columbus, Ohio.

There's something about attending a conference of your PLN - especially those you don't see face-to-face very often. I know many of these folks not just through professional reputation, but also through Twitter chats and a frequent response for help. It's good to have an actual conversation from time to time. These are some amazing and talented people, my PLN!

Attending a conference with your people is energizing. I left the second day mentally exhausted, but professionally re-charged! The Greater Columbus Convention Center was full of 4,000 educators whose dedication, hope, and positivity reminded me what a noble profession I have chosen. "Teachers touch eternity through their students." ~ Freeman Hrabowski. True that...

Each year that I attend the OETC conference, I pick a focus. This year, I decided to extend my enthusiasm from The Hour of Code, and attend sessions to support my growth in being a Computer Science Evangelist.

It all started in December of 2013. I acted as the Pied Piper for a small number of Dublin Teachers into the first year of The Hour of Code.  December 2015 marked our third year of participation, and the number of "student hours" spent in coding activities has grown exponentially. The Hour of Code has become my thing.

A highlight of the conference was getting to hear Hadi Partovi, the Founder and CEO of code.org, and the founder of The Hour of Code.

A quote that struck me was "How can we change the stereotypes without changing the facts on the ground." Hadi Partovi continued to talk about the discrepancy between girls and boys entering the field of Computer Science. As a woman, I want to encourage girls to jump into computer science with both feet and love it as much as I do. I know girls are just as capable as boys. Loud and clear was the message that coding is more than cryptic text on a page. Yes, it's about logic, patterns, sequences, and conditions. But it's also about working together to solve a problem. It's about communicating and collaborating.

So what now? 
I will continue my enthusiasm, encouragement, and support in The Hour of Code, and provide activities and resources for students who want to continue growing their skills. Next year's students potentially have been participating in introductory activities for 2 or 3 years. We need to have more "stretch" in our offerings for them. That is certainly a nice problem to have!

Dublin is adopting an LMS in the fall. I gathered a ridiculous amount of valuable resources that can be included in a course for intermediate and middle school students. How can I include collaborative activities for students outside of the online environment?

Several "Girls Who Code" clubs have started around the district. As much as I'd like to believe that girls don't need a club separate from boys, the data does not support that. Understand it or not, I'd like to provide girls some opportunities to build their foundational skills and confidence so that they may pursue computer science in high school and beyond.

I want to make a difference.

Published!

If I were to tell you that I am a published author, would you feel like you were talking to a big shot? After all, not just anyone can publish a book, right? The truth is that I have published a book... albeit a 17-page book on the iBooks store where anyone can publish their work. Still, the process changed me.

Let me rewind a little...
I am a Technology Support Teacher in Dublin City Schools. In this position, I focus on tools and their use in the classroom. I help teachers select appropriate tools for a job, and coach them in integration ideas and logistics. I rely on collaboration with teachers where I am the expert at the tools and their potential, and they are the experts in classroom instruction and content. Many teachers I work with are rock stars in workshop model, and I'm learning so much from them!

A couple of months ago, Franki Sibberson asked me if I could come show her kids the Book Creator app. I gladly accepted the invitation, and worked up an example to share with the kids. My focus was the tool and its bells and assorted whistles.

Fast forward to last week...
My colleague Laura Tucker shared with me that Book Creator had added some comic book layouts and features. I was pretty excited, and immediately grabbed my iPad to take a look. The next sentence out of her mouth is what changed everything... "Have you ever published anything to the iBooks Store?" I was game to give publishing a try so that we could work through the process. In order to do that, I decided that my book had to be publish-worthy. I started from scratch because things just got REAL!

Here was my thinking process:

1. What should I write about? It had to be something personal so that I had something to say. I decided to write about The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium since that is near and dear to me!
2. Who was my audience? I decided that children would enjoy a book about the zoo, so I picked primary students as my audience.
3. What features did I want to include? 
• Primary students would likely respond to pictures, so I wanted to include photos that I had taken. 
• Many children have experiences of their own at the zoo, so I wanted to teach them about some of the animals. Text blocks would provide children with some information.
• Since some of the words may be difficult for young children to read independently, I wanted to have the book read selections aloud.
• Sound effects would add a fun factor!
• Links - YouTube playlist of my own zoo videos and interactive activities on the Columbus Zoo website.
4. What was my voice? Rather than being very formal, I wanted my book to sound like me and have an informal, conversational tone. 
5. How would the book flow?
• establish the voice in the role of docent
• overview of the sections of the zoo - representative animals and the section's logo
• showcase my favorite area, The Heart of Africa
• share some interesting facts about a few animals 
• favorite experience - the LOUD call of the Gibbon
• some favorite animals
• credits, why the zoo is important to me
6. What specifics did I have to do to make the book publish-worthy? I had to be sure to model good digital citizenship by giving credit to pieces of the book that weren't my own. I carefully checked that spelling, grammar, punctuation were correct. Fact checking was important. Ensure that all links worked.

Publishing is a game-changer. Before I was considering publishing this book, I was focused on the tool. Once I shifted to publishing, my focus changed. It became more about the writing. How many students focus too much on the bells and whistles and not enough about the writing? Could publishing be the light switch for them too?
     

Since I've published this book and shared it with colleagues, friends, and family, I've had some unexpected conversations. Franki Sibberson, my writing workshop hero, asked me to come back and talk with her students about my thinking process. Friends shared with me that they downloaded my book and read it with their child. Twitter was all a-flutter with accolades. My mom thinks I should quit my job and become a writer!

What could publishing do for your students? Could they be transformed, too?

Check out Franki Sibberson's blog this week! She shares her perspective on Book Creator as a writing tool, and her students' writing process in workshop.

Visit Jon Smith's website where he talks a lot about the Book Creator app and his students' publishing to the iBook Store.

Google Collaboration and Developing New Authors

In Mrs. Cramer's fifth-grade class at Glacier Ridge Elementary, a free-writing activity gave birth to four new authors. Acadia, Logan, Aleyah, and Alyssa learned how to collaborate using Google Docs. Google gave students the opportunity to write together... any time, any place, and from any device. Their short story became a 42-page book, part 1 in a series. The authors are now in sixth grade and continue to write together to create additional books in the series.

Read their book here:
Great Scott, The Hidden Power

Check out my interview with the authors! I love hearing these kids talk about their writing and how it changed them.

Student-Created, Centralized, Searchable Book Trailer Library

I recently attended the Dublin Literacy Conference.  Cheryl Angel and Marisa Saelzler talked about student-created book trailers, and how they use them in their buildings. They shared that when students are able to view or read trailers and recommendations from their peers, those books are immediately in high demand.  This is happening in some form or another throughout the district, but in isolation.

With all of the focus on authentic audience and relevance, I had a lightbulb moment.  Why not collect all of the trailers into a centralized library, and allow kids from all over the district to have a bigger audience? The added benefit would be that the number of available trailers and recommendations would be huge.  Sound overwhelming?  Our district uses MediaCore which makes this process very simple.  Let's take a look...

Have kids talk about their books.  They can write with paper and pencil, or with a word processor. They can draw a picture and record themselves talking about the book.  They can make a short commercial.  Any of these items can be digitized for the online library.

Digitize the book recommendation or book trailer.  If a student writes a book review on paper, use an app such as Scanner Pro to turn that book review into a PDF file.

Students using a tool such as Pages, Keynote, Word, or PowerPoint can export their final product as a PDF file.

If a student draws a picture, use a mobile device to take of picture of that drawing.  Students can use that digitized picture in an app like ExplainEverything to add narration, and the final product can be exported as a movie.

Upload the digital object into MediaCore or whatever digital library your district utilizes.  In our case, empower students to upload their work into the student projects area.  These trailers will be reviewed by a teacher, then switched to the book trailer collection.

When uploading an object into MediaCore, we have to agree on the "particulars," such as naming conventions and tags to include.  The tags will allow other students, teachers and parents to search for books by title, author, genre, or reading level.

Share!  With MediaCore as well as other video libraries, the collection can be embedded into any existing website.  MediaCore also allows teachers to copy a link to the collection, and post the link on a website.

Do you have a book you want to feature? Perhaps a book written by an author who will visiting your school? If you have an individual book trailer or recommendation to share, each object has its own embed code and sharable link.  Use Twitter or other means to get the word out about these objects.

Use the link to create a QR code for book trailers.  Copy the link for a particular trailer, paste it into a QR Code Generator such as QRStuff.com, then print the QR code and slip it in the inside cover of a book or on a student-created poster.  QR code readers are free and available on most mobile platforms.

Search for a book.  Go to the video collection and search by title, author, genre, or reading level.  Look through the objects returned in your search, and make a wise selection based on peer reviews.

Thanks for reading these ideas.  I'm excited to get this off the ground and be able to share our collection with the world!

Professional Book Chat using Google Docs, Wikispaces, and Twitter

I'm a Technology Support Teacher.  It is my task to help teachers not just with the nuts & bolts of district productivity tools, but also in classroom technology integration that (hopefully) helps to transform instruction.

Last spring, I was approached by Jennifer Wolf who asked for assistance.  Usually when teachers ask for help, they have a particular tool in mind.  In this particular case, the puzzle was open-ended. When Jen and I put our heads together, the result was amazing!  She had a clear view of her goals, and I had my "techie toolbelt."

The puzzle...
Jennifer wanted to lead a book chat with reading teachers in her building.  The book, The Common Core Reading Book by Gretchen Owaki, was full of big concepts just begging for opportunities for rich, educational conversations.  The challenge... It was to be a summer book chat.  Hmmm.

The solution...
We decided that a Twitter chat would be a good place to start.  Twitter provided the flexibility for folks to join in from anywhere, even from an adirondack chair during a beach vacation! (That actually happened.)

Here's the nitty-gritty...
The more we brainstormed, the more ideas we generated that could make our initial idea even better.  Here's what we did.

1. We set up a wiki so that Jennifer and I could both act as editors.  We felt that the wiki could act as a one-stop shop for participants.  In the wiki, we included the project rationale, chat questions, Twitter archives, shared Google Docs, and other miscellaneous resources.
2. We set up a Google Doc that was published and embedded on the wiki.  On this doc, participants could view the questions ahead of the chat as they were doing the reading.
3. We set up a Google Doc per topic so that teachers could share key ideas.
4. The participants began with a face-to-face meeting so that we could get everyone set up on Twitter, and practice the basics of a chat.
5. Each subsequent week, teachers participated in the Twitter chat remotely.  As I said, the questions were posted ahead of time on the Google Doc and embedded in the wiki.
6. Following our live chat, we archived the chat and embedded it the website.
7. Throughout the week, teachers were able to put together what they learned from their reading and the chat, and populate a shared Google Doc on the website.  Each Doc had a table that encouraged teachers to think about how the week's reading anchor standard applied to other content areas.

Take a look at our finished product! Feel free to try this process with your own book choice and your own people.  It worked out really well.

https://ccreadingchat.wiki.dublinschools.net/Home

Thanks to @jennifertwolf for this puzzle and for seeing it through.  I look forward to seeing what you'll do this summer.  Another chat?

Hooked on Twitter Chats

I jumped in about 6 months ago, and now I'm hooked.  That is, Twitter chats.  At first I felt nervous to participate and was self-conscious of my low number of followers compared to the rock stars I was encountering.  I have been working, thinking, and collaborating for 27 years to hone my craft.  I figured, what the heck?  Although Twitter chats are new to me, I do have good thoughts to contribute and can learn a lot in the process.

I'm going to try to put into words my thoughts, tips, and what I feel is so swell about interacting with strangers on Twitter.

1.  Those strangers aren't strangers for long.  Once you interact with collegues from across the country on a thought-provoking series of questions around a topic of common interest, you learn a lot about fellow participants pretty quickly.  That in only 140 characters at a time!  It's amazing how I run into familiar faces in different chats throughout the week.

2.  Twitter chats are full of warm fuzzies.  I've found participants in Twitter chats to be polite, encouraging, and renewing.  Every time I've participated in a chat, I've left feeling so proud of the profession I've chosen.  

3.  I'm a lot like Pavlov's dogs...  I drool every time I hear my alert bell indicating a new favorite, retweet, mention, or follow.  It may seem shallow that these aforementioned notifications make me giddy.  They just do.  You fellow Twitter chat junkies know what I mean.  It's a little thing, but it's affirming.

4.  For me, Tweetdeck is THE tool.  I have separate, customizable columns that allow me to see the hashtag, mentions, and specified notifications (favorites, retweets) all at the same time.  I keep all of my favorite Twitter hashtags in columns, and just rearrange the current chat so that it is next to my mentions and notification columns.  Some of the bigger chats with lots of participants go pretty fast, and I don't want to miss anything.  Oh, and it auto-refreshes.  Nice.

5.  I'm not limited to learn from people in my own district.  I'm making professional connections with people from all over the country, and learning from all of them.  It's affirming to me that we are all educators with very similar goals, challenges, ideas, lingo, techniques... no matter where we live.  It's unifying.

6.  Although highly unnecessary, it's kinda fun to take part in Twitter chats while among actual people.  It's great fun to participate in a fast-paced chat while sitting on your deck with a tall iced tea in hand, but it adds just a little something to gather with some friends at the local DQ or coffee shop for some parallel play.  Having actual running commentary along with the virtual running commentary is pretty fun.  It's also a great way to help colleagues get started in Twitter chats if they're new.

7.  Here are a handful of chats I like... (a handful of these are on hiatus for the summer)

• #DUBchat - Is a chat for Dublin Schools (my district), and a fair number of crashers.  All are welcome!  Thursdays at 7:00pm, but moving to Tuesdays at 7:00 in August.
• #OhEdchat - I do like an opportunity to get to know folks I will likely encounter in person at OETC.  Mondays at 9:00pm.
• #EdChat - This is the biggie.  All the heavy hitters are here.  Huge, fast-paced, and intense.  Tuesdays at noon and 7:00pm. 
• #NBTchat - No Box Thinking chat is refreshing, out-of-the-box topics around the craft of teaching.  Sundays at 8:00pm with pre-chat at 7:30pm.
• #COLchat - Culture of Learning chat is focused on creating the ideal classroom learning environment.  Mondays at 9:00pm.
• #TLAP - Teach Like a Pirate - C'mon!  The name alone should make you want to check it out!  Mondays at 9:00pm.
• #NT2T - New Teachers to Twitter is great for educators new to Twitter chats to learn the ropes.

My suggestion is to give Twitter chats a try.  Pick one of the chats I've listed above, or Google "education twitter chats."  Pick a chat that looks interesting.  Put it in your calendar, and set an alert so you won't forget.  Lurk at first, learn the ropes with your water wings on, then dive into the deep end.  You won't be sorry!

ExplainEverything App

The ExplainEverything iPad app should be named the DOANYTHING app.  As far as creativity is concerned, this one is the boss.  The neat thing about this app is that it rolls the functionality of several apps into a one-stop-shop.  Rather than learning a bunch of apps that do some of these tasks, why not learn this one that can truly do it all?

From the Morris Cooke Site:
"Explain Everything is a presentation app that integrates content from many sources that kids and teachers can use to create lessons, tutorials, and more. Users can import photos, PDF files, movies, and more from many sources to use in the presentation. Onscreen drawings, annotation, animation, and audio can also be included. Explain Everything can also be used as a whiteboard with the iPad video display. Used correctly, Explain Everything can take presentations to a new level."

• Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere. 
• Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere. 
• Create slides, draw in any color, add shapes, add text, and use a laser pointer. Rotate, move, scale, copy, paste, clone, and lock any object added to the stage. 
• Add new or existing photos and videos. Import PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and RTF files from Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox, Box, WebDAV, Email, iTunes, and any app that allows you to open these file types using "Open In…". Export MP4 movies, PDF documents, PNG images, or XPL project files directly from your iPad. 
• No account is necessary to use Explain Everything and share creations.

ExplainEverything and an iPad as an Interactive Whiteboard:Use your ExplainEverything App as an interactive whiteboard. Using Keynote or PowerPoint, export the slide or slideshow as a PDF file, save it to a specified cloud service, then import it into ExplainEverything.

Import a PDF file into ExplainEverything. Try this example...

Here is an example with many of the tools being used...


Morris Cooke Blog
Morris Cooke ExplainEverything Video Tutorials