An experienced educator, Linda Ellers works at the district level helping other teachers understand the benefits of technology integration through professional development offerings.
A quick note….the neighbors are shooting fireworks and the sky is sparkling. The noises range from pop.pop.pop to a siren screaming across the sky. We live in a great country. I’ve seen greens, blues, yellow, white and reds against the dark sky. Simply breath-taking.
Hope all had a great day!
Just discovered this great little widget at LabPixies after seeing it on Laura Smith’s blog. It’s easy to set up and free. It’s fun too. Just register and then choose your mood, add some text, save and send it to your blog or website. So when you change your mood, just change the widget.
Amid the Alamo and 90 degree temperatures, the biggest conference in the ed tech field open today in San Antonio. Trina Davis, ISTE president, urged those in attendance to stand up and be the change agents for education. She stressed educators to dream big and share their knowledge with others. For the a complete story see eSchool News. NECC is an outstanding conference to attend so if you’ve not been start planning for next year. Take a look at the schedule for this year. This year’s theme is “Convene. Connect. Transform.” Today revised NETS, technology standards for teachers, was launched today. Are your skills up to date?
This week I’m in Los Angeles, California at Pepperdine University for my face to face portion of my second year of coursework as a doctoral student. This semester we are working on policy issues, leading change and research methodology. This is my last semester of coursework. I just did a presentation about my consultancy project for Dr. Paul Sparks. I have been working with the National Civil Rights Museum in getting their curriculum online. We are getting close to being ready to launch later this summer. It has been exciting working with Kira Duke, Education Director, in developing this project. I’ve been here since Tuesday and will be glad to get home last Sunday. I’ve had little time this week to get in here and post.
What an exciting three days we had. Eleven teachers spent three intense days learning about Web 2.0 tools and how to apply in their classrooms. We have elementary teachers, computer lab teachers, a librarian and a few secondary teachers too. The group worked hard and never missed a beat. We pushed them fast and hard each day. They are now bloggers and don’t seem to be able to get enough. They have ideas spinning and just need to work out the details. It was so exciting to work with this group. On Friday afternoon we had graduation. They received certificates and a book from Will Richardson, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts.
It was another day of new discoveries. Cindy started the morning with Smart Boards. She showed all kinds of uses for this remarkable tool. Teachers were asking all kinds of questions and telling us they just didn’t know. Next came another blogging mini lesson with Jason. The participants learned more about adding images and the design elements of their blog. Scott followed up with digital photography. He shared a smattering of tips and tricks from the digital safari class and encouraged them to attend one of those sessions to learn much more. (He only had 45 minutes to cram in 3 days of material). Then it was back to multimedia where participants learned about Animoto, Vcasmo and Bitstrips.
In the afternoon we filled their heads with even more. Google Earth and Sky proved to be fascinating and useful to all grades and content areas. Scott introduced iPhoto and Picasa photo software and Jason gave another blogging lessonat the end of the day. Today was my day to take pictures. We were all very pleased with the work from our participants. The day went off without a hitch. I’ve added a couple of pictures here but see the day visit the one of galleries of photos.
It was fabulous! The participants moved through lots of content as the tech team jumped from one tool to another to be sure to get it all in. Today was chalked full of fun things. They set up an Edublog, learned about Google Docs, Zoho Writer, created accounts at X Drive- online storage and got some first hand experience with the camp wiki.
After lunch we moved them to del.ico.us bookmarking and exposed them to short videos in plain English from Common Craft. Then there was more…….Diigo, Trailfire, Furl, Google bookmarks. Later in the afternoon we reviewed Linked In and started setting up accounts, discussed blocked sites such as FaceBook and MySpace then signed up for TheApple, a new social 
bookmarking tool for educators- very cool.
But we still weren’t done with this receptive group so we spent time learning about Jing, Voice Thread, ZohoShow, and Snagit. Then a quick blogging lesson with homework assigned and to top the day off we demonstrated using Skype to call other Skype members- a phone call from computer to computer. Truly an awesome day for all. Wait till tomorrow comes!
I’ve been experimenting with Remember the Milk, a task management system over the web. It is a fun site that lets you create to do lists with reminders. You can set a due date, mark things off, take your list with you on your mobile phone, work with others in planning items and connect to other sites like Twitter, Jott, gMail, iGoogle, Skype and more.
What’s even better is that it just won the best web application for the iPhone at the World Wide Developers Conference.
Like my friend Jason at Your Mileage May Vary, I think the Snowball mic is an awesome tool. 
It’s in my office ready whenever I am. But it is difficult to carry around to schools or events for podcasting and the new Snowflake is a much needed item. I just ordered one. Can’t wait to have a great recording source for quick and easy podcasting on the go. The Snowflake can be used with a desktop or laptop. It mounts easily on your laptop so you are ready to go in a flash.
Blue also offers Blue University. It is a simple process to sign up and take a course or two about sound and using Blue microphones. I’m working at the B.A. level right now. There is actually a test after each module. You can complete a Ph.D. at Blue. I’ll push ahead and complete the B.A. level first.
We are all excited about the coming week. We have been working hard to get all ready for our 12 participants to join us as we learn together. We have a brand new wiki where all they need will go live Tuesday night. We also have a district web site which has general information along with the names of the selected participants. We had over 100 Memphis City School teachers to apply. Narrowing it down to the 12 slots was a bit of work but we have a great group to launch this effort. Our current plans are to offer this event again next summer but have at least two sessions. I’ll keep you posted as to what we share and learn. Watch for photos.
