I called AT&T and after discussing this, they added a feature to our phone package called “Purchase Manager.” Sometimes this feature is called “Purchase Blocker,” in either event it’s FREE to add. I think it should be a default account feature. Classactionconnect.com has instructions about adding it via AT&T’s Wireless customer website. We’re not sure how this recurring $10 monthly charge was added to her bill, but it could have been an online recipe site which my wife visited or something else. Buried in the “terms of use” could have been verbiage saying “by clicking download” (or “agree”) you agree to pay $9.99 this month and every successive month for a confusing “Mobile Purchase” which will be buried on your phone bill and will be extremely difficult to find or decipher. One of the lessons learned here is: Don’t give out your cell phone number on ANY website. You never know what the website owner might choose to do with your information.

By adding “Purchase Manager” or “Purchase Blocker” to our AT&T wireless account, no third party entity will be able to add a purchase or subscription to our phone bill unless we, as cellular customers, log into our account and provide a four digit PIN to authorize that billing addition. This is similar to the feature some cable TV or satellite TV customers can add to “pay per view” programs, requiring a PIN to be entered so children don’t accidentally or intentionally make program purchases with the family’s remote control.

If you’re not with AT&T in the United States for your cellular service, check with your provider and see what they call this “feature.” This seems like something everyone should have by default on cell phone accounts.

Today the AT&T representative was very helpful and in addition to adding this free “Purchase Blocker” service, also entered refunds for the $9.99 charged to our account in January and in February by this scammer. A web search resulted in several pages (here and here) where other people reported this same scamming problem with “BULLROARE.” Hopefully you haven’t run into this in the past. In any event, try and add a free “Purchase Blocker” feature to your mobile account to hopefully prevent situations like this from cropping up in the future.

Technorati Tags: cell, phone, att, bullroare, sms, subscription, charge, fee, scam

Avoid Cellphone Text Messaging Scams with free Purchase Blocker Feature originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 6, 2012.

View Larger Map

A 1 page PDF flyer for iPad App Coffee Chats is available via Scribd.

FREE iPad App Coffee Chats

Technorati Tags: app, edmond, ipad, oklahoma

FREE iPad App Coffee Chats start Tuesday, February 7 in Edmond, Oklahoma originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 5, 2012.

A Ponca City mother is outraged. She says her son has been accessing pornography….on a laptop that was issued by the school….and she says school officials are partly to blame. “I was angry, I was really angry at first,” Judy Ferguson said. Judy found her teenage son watching pornography on his school laptop. “When I caught it I took the computer and turned it back in to the school,” Ferguson said.

Life is about choices, and students face a multitude of digital choices when they get online or connected with any device including a laptop, a phone, or other communication tool. This is one reason Oklahoma schools sending laptops home with students not only have parents sign an acceptable use agreement (AUP) addressing SHARED responsibility between parents, students and school officials for student use of technology equipment, they also hold parent training / information sessions when this specific issue is addressed. I’m not sure if Ponca City mother Judy Ferguson signed a form like that and attended an informational session about shared responsibility for student behavior on laptops, but she should have.

In the initial years of the Texas Immersion Pilot Project (TxTIP), I heard multiple stories from school officials about issues and incidents involving student access of pornography and inappropriate material. Any school employee involved in a 1:1 program knows this is an issue which must be addressed. The strange twist to this Ponca City Schools story was that school officials reportedly issued a laptop to the same student who previously got in trouble for accessing pornography right after Christmas break. Again according to the News4 article:

The Tech Director [of Ponca City Schools] said the software the school uses tracks every key stroke and they could see the student attempting to get into x-rated areas but their records show he was never able to access it. Ferguson became even more upset when the school gave her 9th grader another laptop after she requested he complete his assignments another way. School administrators admit that was a mistake. “When they came back from Christmas break inadvertently he was issued another laptop when that was discovered that second laptop was taken away,” Dr. David Pennington, Superintendent of Schools.

I’m wondering how school officials “inadvertently issued a laptop?” (I’m also wondering if they run key loggers on all school computers…) It would be great to see a school response with more information, background, and quotations on this than La’tasha Givins (the KFOR-TV reporter) provided for this article. It is reasonable to conclude the mother of the student saw her child accessing pornography at home: It is highly doubtful she would raise these embarrassing charges regarding her own son otherwise. Understanding this, the technology director’s response which denies inappropriate content was EVER accessed by the student on a school laptop seems unreasonable. Perhaps this was a misquote?

Responsibility for teen behavior when it comes to life online as well as offline lies primarily with the STUDENT. Yes, parents as well as educators share responsibility for guiding and supervising student actions. Ultimately, however, in our society we hold individuals responsible for their behavior rather than institutions. It would have been helpful (from a community education perspective) if reporter La’tasha Givins had provided some of this context. I’m not sure if school officials provided this or not.

When a high student chooses to have sex and gets pregnant, does the local TV affiliate run a segment blaming school officials? Hopefully not.

One takeaway from this article (and others like it which paint 1:1 laptop programs as evil / not worthwhile) is the importance of school officials “telling the story” of positive 1:1 learning impacts early, consistently, and through multiple media channels. In most school districts today, we have barely started to leverage the power of social media to ‘tell our story’ and communicate with parents as well as others in the community about the great things happening in our buildings each day. An example of why this is important is the result for a Google keyword search for “Ponca City laptop” today. Guess what link is the “non-promoted” search result #1?

A second takeaway is the importance of school officials using consistent language with students, parents, members of the community, and media when it comes to laptop learning. We must emphasize “digital citizenship” and the responsibilities which we share to help students learn to make good choices.

Should Ponca City School officials have been more careful to not issue Judy Ferguson’ son another laptop computer after the Christmas holiday, since his mom had specifically asked that he NOT work on a laptop to complete his assignments? Probably. (I say that conditionally since I’m sure there is ‘more to this story.’)

Should KOFR reporter La’tasha Givins have ignored the fact that Judy Ferguson’ son CHOSE to find and look at pornography on a laptop of any kind? Absolutely not. Too many people in our society want to ‘pass the buck’ when it comes to responsibility, and the primary people responsible for these “inappropriate content access actions” were the STUDENT and the PARENT.

Yes, teachers and school officials share responsibility for helping students learn and learn to make good choices. We don’t “pass the buck” entirely to parents and students for everything which happens during school and in some cases, even for things which happen after school. Schools DO bear some responsibility for helping inform and support “good choices with laptops” when they send them home with students. Ultimately, however, “the buck should stop” with the student and the parent when it comes to inappropriate website access at home.

I hope La’tasha Givins will investigate these issues further and write a follow-up article which provides more context for this situation and the people as well as organizations who are involved.

Technorati Tags: city, laptop, ponca, ethics, responsibility, parent

Don’t Blame School Officials if Your Child Chooses to Look at Porn on His Laptop originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 4, 2012.

Changing the cell formatting to wrap and fit was a little different from what I’ve done previously in Excel. There, as I recall I just right-clicked / control-clicked on a cell and then turned on “wrap.” For Numbers, it’s necessary to use the inspector panel and click the button “fit” next to row height.

If you use either of these CX debate flow templates and find them helpful, please let me know with a tweet or comment. Also, if you prefer a different format for flowing CX rounds using a digital spreadsheet please let me know about it. I definitely like transitioning to digital/green debate round flowing, but I’m also open to any suggestions for better ways to do it.

I used the Apple Support article “Displaying Content Too Large for Its Cell” to figure out the wrap/fit steps.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, debate, flow, excel, numbers, iwork, template, classen, classensas

Cross Examination Debate Flow Template for Numbers in iWork ’09 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 3, 2012.

The past three weeks I’ve facilitated lessons with about twelve different 6th, 7th and 8th grade students about storytelling and puppet movies. The first two weeks we used Puppet Pals on the iPad, and last week we used real finger puppets to make some short skit videos. We published some of our work from both weeks to the multimediasandbox YouTube channel. This has been a worthwhile but challenging series of lessons. See my January 19th post, “Lessons Learned Using Puppet Pals on iPads in an After School Program,” for more background. We haven’t created any masterpieces, but we have had fun discussing the story arc and making short videos which (generally) attempt to present a coherent message. 50 minutes isn’t a lot of time to have to create and share stories, but we’ve done the best we could with the time and resources available.

One of the primary things I’ve wrestled with as I’ve considered what to teach these students in “Life Skills” lessons involving the iPad is this: None of these students own iPads or have access to iPads at home. What kinds of things should I teach them which can have immediate relevance in their lives, as well as potential long term relevance? Sure we’ve had fun making some short videos with digital and actual puppets, but these activities aren’t things they can repeat on their own when I leave with the three iPads I’ve brought to class each day. I have had the privilege of being with Kevin Honeycutt in the past when he taught incarcerated, Kansas youth short lessons (on behalf of ESSDACK) and used art as a way to both “reach” them and have important discussions about life as well as learning. I’m no Kevin Honeycutt, I have very limited drawing skills, and the kids I’m teaching in “Tiger Club” definitely aren’t incarcerated youth… but a talk with him on the phone earlier this week motivated me to share a lesson with my students on the possibilities for becoming a digital artist.

I started the lesson today asking who liked to draw, who considered themselves artists, and who thought they were creative. I explained we ALL are artists and have creative skills, but not all of us think about ourselves that way. I asked about how long people have been creating drawings and telling stories, and we discussed how that goes back to “the cave.” As humans, some of us have always been driven to draw and share stories through art. It’s in our DNA.

I shared a story with the students about our Storychasers logo, which we outsourced via crowdSPRING. 99Designs is a similar web community for graphic artists and folks needing design work.

I explained how our Storychasers group received 147 design concepts (low resolution digital art drawings) of logo ideas from 43 different designers from around the world.

Eventually, we selected one we liked which turned out to be the work of a graphic designer in eastern Europe who lives in Zagreb, Croatia. One of the designers we initially considered was coincidentally based in Oklahoma, but we had problems with them providing higher resolution versions of the logo draft they’d made. It’s pretty amazing we paid someone $500 to make a logo for us who we never met and lives all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in another country! This is a real story of outsourcing and digital creativity, and I wanted to share it so my students would at least be exposed to the idea that digital artists can now access a world of work possibilities via the Internet. It doesn’t matter where you live: Creative skills are needed and marketable.

\

I showed students on our printed as well as digital handout where they could access links to FREE digital art programs like the Gimp, that have similar features as Adobe PhotoShop that costs $700 to buy. Hopefully some of them will check it out and pursue some digital art creative possibilities on their own following our “Life Skills” class series.

I next introduced my students to the iPad app Brushes, and showed them several recent creations by my 8 year old daughter, Rachel.

I showed students how the iPad Brushes app lets us “replay” a video of how Rachel made these drawings, and I showed them some other amazing YouTube examples of iPad drawings using Brushes as well. We watched these and discussed the techniques the artists used.

At this point I need to give a hat tip to Marco Torres, who was the first person to share the Brushes app with me several years ago in Maine. Although I haven’t become an acknowledged digital artist with Brushes since I learned about it, I have both played with it and shared it with many people. This is a specific example of how the opportunity to meet and hang out with creative people (which Apple specifically facilitated in my life via various means) has been life changing. “But for” my very brief chances to hang with Marco and learn from him, I probably wouldn’t have been teaching my students about Brushes on the iPad today. “But for” my opportunities to hang out with Bob Sprankle, I would know far less about podcasting, webcasting, and iPhoneography. I tried to communicate this idea to my students today: If we want to learn how to do something, we need to hang out with other people who know how to do it well. That’s how a lot of learning happens. It’s a big reason we need to choose our friends carefully.

In addition to viewing these examples of digital art with Brushes today, I also showed students this video of art created with Autodesk SketchBook Pro for iPad.

Before handing out the iPads to students, I demonstrated the basics of drawing with Brushes using an AppleTV which mirrored my iPad2 screen. Next, I introduced students to the free “Art Snacks” online community facilitated by Kevin Honeycutt and explained they would be drawing a Great White Shark today. We had paper and pencils available, and students took turns drawing on the available iPads (3) as well as my iPhone which had the Brushes app loaded. I had one stylus which students used, but unfortunately broke (the tip came off) during the lesson. Together we watched Kevin’s “Artsnacks Great White Shark” video on YouTube. I paused it several times for students to compare drawings and add to their drawings. As Kevin had suggested to me, some of the kids were really into it and were loving the chance to learn some new art techniques. Others were less engaged, but since everyone could at least draw with paper and pencil this was a lesson that was “doable” by everyone.

Here are some examples of drawings we made in class. The last one is my own. It is risky and takes some courage to share your own art with others, especially when (like me) you’re not very confident in your own art skills. I think this is a good way to model both creativity and instructional risk taking with students, however. We learn the most when we are “stretched” out of our personal comfort zones, and these are times when we try new things that we’re not entirely comfortable doing.

This lesson provided some good opportunities to talk about “important stuff” with students in addition to digital art and drawing skills. When I asked the students what they thought of my drawing partway through Kevin’s video, one of them said, “That looks horrible!” We talked about how those words might make me feel, even though the student quickly said, “I was just kidding.” We talked about bullying, and how important and powerful the words we choose are. I talked about how there are far TOO MANY people in this world who “use their words” to hurt and inflict pain on others. I told the students I sometimes mess this up, but I try to use my words as much as I can to build others up and give them POWER instead of tearing them down.

I don’t know what lessons from today’s “digital art discussions” my students will remember, but we never do when we teach… do we? I felt better about today’s “Life Skills” lesson than I have all year, and I know a big reason the lesson was a success was I used resources provided by Kevin Honeycutt and Art Snacks. If you haven’t shown Art Snacks to your own students, DO IT soon. Not all the kids in any classroom love art and will want to learn more about making art, but chances are high SOME WILL.

Teach your students how to be digital artists, even if (like me) you don’t consider yourself to have very developed drawing skills. We are all creative, and we can all be artists. To be an artist, we have to CREATE things. We need to MAKE stuff. Today, we have lots of opportunities to play with media and not only share digital art, but also sell it on sites like crowdSPRING and 99designs. Share these possibilities with your students too. Making and sharing art certainly has intrinsic value and isn’t all about monetization. Some kids may not have considered these possibilities, however. Your students could not only be outsourced digital designers for someone else, down the road they might also use digital outsourcing for their own projects like we did with Storychasers last year.

Who knows where that shared knowledge may take them and us? The possibilities are exciting.

Hat tip to Cody Birsner for sharing 99designs with me a few months ago.

Technorati Tags: creativity, edmond, ipad, oklahoma, art, brushes, create, kevin, honeycutt, artsnacks, essdack, fpce, tiger, club

Teach Your Students to be Digital Artists (and learn from Kevin Honeycutt) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 3, 2012.

The technology tools in this case, digital voice recorders, ARE important for the learning which took place in Renee’s classroom. They are NOT, however, the factor which makes the biggest difference. As I noted in last month’s post, “Remember TEACHERS Make the Biggest Difference, Not Devices,” the WAYS teachers choose to invite students to use technology tools are most important when it comes to learning and achievement. Yes, having access to digital tools IS important. We must remember to focus on the PEDAGOGY more than the tools, however, as we discuss and highlight effective uses of educational technology. Renee’s video is a beautiful example of this.

I found this video today when I was researching links to add to a new page on the Storychasers’ website: Storychaser School Clubs.

Technorati Tags: digital, reading, technology, writing, voice, audio, recorder, nwp, edtech

Use Digital Voice Recorders to Hear Student Voices originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 2, 2012.

Creating MultiMedia eBooks
wfryer.me/ebooks

Snowflake Gets Lost: a FREE enhanced eBook by Rachel Fryer
meetsnowflake.com

Improving Reading, Writing and Critical Thinking Skills with Media
wfryer.me/improve

Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing (eBook)
wfryer.me/pwm

Software I run on my Mac
wfryer.me/apps

Crafting Your Professional Digital Footprint
wfryer.me/footprint

19 April 2011: iPad Training for Business Productivty
www.ipadwithwes.com

Student Media Examples
share.playingwithmedia.com

99¢ Podcasts for Playing with Media
learn.playingwithmedia.com

Mapping Media to Common Core
maps.playingwithmedia.com

iPad App Coffee Chats
1st Tuesday of each month in Edmond, OK at The DIV
wfryer.me/appchat

YouTube
www.youtube.com/wfryer

K-12 Online Conference: 250+ FREE PD videos about tech integration
k12onlineconference.org

Social Media:
twitter.com/wfryer
facebook.com/wfryer

Contact Wesley Fryer
www.wesfryer.com/contact

Moving at the Speed of Creativity (my primary blog)
www.speedofcreativity.org

iPad Quick-Edit Videography
wfryer.me/ipadvideo

Tell a Story in 5 Photos
wfryer.me/5photos

Celebrate Oklahoma Voices: 940+ videos
lc.celebrateoklahoma.us

Celebrate Kansas Voices: 220+ Digital Stories
celebratekansas.ning.com

Celebrate Texas Voices: Digital Stories
celebratetexas.ning.com

Oklahoma CCSS Diigo Group
http://groups.diigo.com/group/oklahoma-ccss

Storychasers: Empowering Digital Witnesses on the Global Stage
storychasers.org

Stuff I Want to Share at OTA – Encyclo-Media 2012 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 2, 2012.

This semester, students taught by Debbie Callison at the Yukon Middle School 6th Grade Academy have been writing and sharing their poetry online using free, interactive websites hosted by Kidblog.org. All the posts written by students, as well as comments submitted by others to each website, are MODERATED by Mrs. Callison. Students have not only been working on the quality and content of their own poetry, but also discussing “What makes a good comment?” Students are identifying specific elements of poems to highlight and providing constructive feedback to each other. Online, student publishing and interactive commenting moderated by a classroom teacher is one specific element of the new “Common Core” standards for Oklahoma students which Yukon Public Schools is currently working to implement at the direction of the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

One of the best things about students sharing their writing online using an open site like KidBlog is the opportunity it provides for parents to provide feedback, as well as teachers and students. Here is a specific example from Mrs. Callison’s 2nd hour, sixth grade English class this week.

This is a post written by Cooper last week, titled, “What is a Champion?”

Later in the day after Cooper wrote that post, Mrs. Callison shared some positive feedback as a comment on that post to accompany comments already moderated/approved. In addition, yesterday (January 31st) Cooper’s Dad logged on to the class website. He also wrote a comment, providing feedback and encouragement to his son.

It takes practice to get better at anything, and Yukon middle school students are improving their writing skills with digitally-saavy learning opportunities provided by Mrs. Callison. Kudos to Cooper for sharing his poem, and kudos to his classmates, Mrs. Callison, and Cooper’s dad for providing constructive feedback! We’re living in times of change, and it’s great to see this example of how Yukon Public School teachers are providing ways to extend learning experiences digitally beyond the “four walls of the classroom” and involve parents as partners in developing literacy skills.

Technorati Tags: kidblog, writing, blogging, poetry

Yukon 6th Grade Parents and Teachers Provide Students Feedback on Writing originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 1, 2012.

Technorati Tags: okc, oklahoma, coco, coworking, collaborative

Help the Oklahoma City CoWorking Collaborative Reboot! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 1, 2012.

http://yesdancan.com is the website Dan Lovejoy built by hand (not with WordPress) to get a job – and he got a job!
- build websites with iThemesBuilder and focused a lot on SEO issues

Other web links for other attendees tonight:
http://www.northideas.com
http://extremevirtualsupport.com
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
http://www.edmondbootcamp.com
http://jfdoes.com
http://social-ism.biz
http://thereproject.com
http://thomasperezphotography.com
http://ignitedmediadesign.com
http://www.alertinternational.com
http://newlookmedia.com
http://www.gfellerstudio.com
http://www.heliumscraper.com (.net webpage screenscraper)

(if I missed your link and you attended please share it via a comment or Twitter)

“It’s tough to be a professional photographer today, because everyone is a photographer”

I shared a presentation on “Go Mobile with WordPress.” My links are on wfryer.me/wp

I also recorded my audio from this presentation using Cinch on my iPad

Now hearing from Dan Lovejoy on SEO and WordPress

Lots of important things to remember when writing for the web
- also important to write SEO (search engine optimized) content
- CRO = conversion rate optimization

Writing SEO copy is hard
- writing natural copy is hard
- writing conversation optimized copy is hard

SEO is optimizing your page or site for specific keywords
- standard line from web masters: if you just build it and write a lot of content on it, you’ll attract the traffic
- “being a content thought leader is a higher calling than SEO”
- there is a scientific process of optimizing specific pages for specific keywords

Avoid using a period in your phrase, but you can use a semicolon, comma, and m-dash or n-dash
- when you define SEO targets you generally want to use phrases rather than keywords
- “the longer the tail” you have using the Google Adwords tool, you can try to find keywords people aren’t ranking for but there is traffic
- you want to look for keywords in the 3 – 7% density (as of now) otherwise you can get ‘thumped’ by Google (Googe either puts a penalty on your page rank or de-indexes you)
- SEO has changed a lot even since November 2011 when I stopped doing this professionally

If you are already in the top six of Google search pages, you’re good
- people are drilling down in Google searches more now (we used to say you need to be on the top 3 pages)
- it is better to be 11 rather than 9…

David Christopher was Google SEO-guru at OPUBCO who taught Dan a LOT

My question about Bing: It looks like optimizing for Google does the same thing for Bing search

WordPress is a GREAT tool for SEO
- all the tools are available
- we use All-In-One SEO WordPress plugin

Post tips:
- make sure post titles contain keywords
- make sure post title propagates to your page title
- write a click-optimized custom page description for each (human readable URLs are very important to Google)
- the META KEYWORDS field doesn’t matter

Watch out for duplicate content, it won’t ‘kill you’ like it used to, but it can dilute the power of your inbound links

Key: cross-posting is bad for SEO, it can dilute the power of your inbound links
- if using Posterous site, set it up to be NO INDEX (change robots tags to tell Google not to look at the site)

Post titles should use an H1 tag on the title
- don’t use multiple H1 tags!
- if your theme doesn’t do this, you need to get a new theme or change it
- make sure you use semantic markup (H2, H3, etc) for internal headings
- use only absolutely necessary plug-ins (page speed matters)

Google indexes keywords that are higher on a page

Good SEO Blogs:
- http://www.seomoz.org
- http://www.stompernet.com

Google tracks how good your inbound links, Google knows what your PPC (pay per clicks) are, your keyword density, your interlinking….
- that is how Google knows about how long people stay on your site
- human reviewers also go to sites for Google (mainly checking for spam and garbage on your site)

Comment from attendee: Google doesn’t put a real person on a site unless it has more than 100,000 inbound links, they don’t care about sites with 10K or 20K links

Any time you have a person creating a real link, that is ‘white hat SEO’
- there is a sea of garbage that people create, that stuff is way down on Google results…

JC Pennys got ‘slapped’ really hard by using ‘black hat SEO’ methods

I HAD TO GO PICK UP MY SON FROM SCOUTS AT THIS POINT, SO I COULDN’T STAY FOR MORE… GREAT STUFF FROM DAN!

Technorati Tags: blog, mobile, wordpress, seo, plugin, plugins

Going Mobile with WordPress and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 30, 2012.

Rachel brought the handwritten draft of the book along with the illustrations home this past Friday. She was missing one illustration (for part 3) so Madison drew that yesterday and delivered it to our house (with her dad) this afternoon.

Rachel was on “cloud 9″ yesterday as we compiled the book together and she recorded the audio for each part. We ended up using RecordPad Sound Recorder to make the audio recordings. In all, for seven “final” recordings Rachel made 35 “takes.” She was very pleased with the final result which she’s shown to all our family on an iPad.

The download page of MeetSnowflake.com currently includes links to download the eBook from ePubBud as well as DropBox. More distribution channels are pending, and we’re going to also create a print version. Rachel and Madison have dedicated the book to their 2nd grade teacher (Mrs. Zahn) and hope to give her a print version for Valentine’s Day on February 14th as a surprise! It’s fantastic ePubBud automatically created a browser-based version of the eBook, which includes the audio recordings of each part. VERY cool!

If you have comments or feedback for Rachel and Madison, please post them on the About page of MeetSnowflake.com.

Rachel asked me this afternoon if publishing this eBook means she might be able to go on more trips with me to teach teachers about technology. I said, “I bet so!”

Few things rival the excitement of working with your own child when they are “on fire” for writing, reading, creating, and sharing. Long live “the writing workshop” in the classrooms of the world! Mrs. Zahn is a GREAT 2nd grade teacher in Oklahoma City Public Schools, and here’s a published eBook to prove it!

Technorati Tags: download, ebook, publish, snowflake, meetsnowflake

FREE Enhanced eBook for Kids: “Snowflake Gets Lost” by Rachel Fryer originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 29, 2012.

I’m sharing a couple sessions at OTA/Encyclomedia in two weeks in OKC and several at Heartland eLearning at UCO in Edmond in early March. These are all listed on wiki.wesfryer.com. My upcoming OKC-area workshops/presentations are:

OTA/Encyclo-Media (Oklahoma City, OK):

• 02-07 Creating Multimedia eBooks – Room 6 from 2:45 – 3:45
• 02-07 Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing – Room 6 from 1:00 – 2:00

(Remember a Google Spreadsheet version of breakout sessions is available via wfryer.me/ota12)

Heartland eLearning (Edmond, OK):

• 03-05 Workshop: Playing with Media: No-Edit Audio Recording
• 03-05 Workshop: Playing with Media: Quick-Edit Videography
• 03-06 Bridges to Musical and Artistic Creativity

Also I’m doing a full day iPad Productivity Apps workshop on April 19th in OKC, information and registration details are on iPadwithWes.com.

It’s short notice, but tomorrow evening I’ll be speaking about designing websites with WordPress for mobile platforms like iOS (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) as well as Android – basically using free mobile themes. This is free at the monthly OKC WordPress meetup, held at “The Div” in Edmond. More info is on the Oklahoma City WordPress User Group’s MeetUp website. I’m not positive but there’s a good chance this session may be live-streamed free via Ustream. If it is I’ll tweet it out.

If you’re in or around the Oklahoma City area, I hope to see you at one of these upcoming learning events!

If you’re interested in checking my availability for a presentation in your district or for your organization, please contact me via the inquiry form on my Speaking page.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, otaem12, wes, wesley, fryer, city, okc, edmond, presentations, heartland12

Upcoming Wes Fryer Presentations in Oklahoma City (Feb – Mar 2012) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 29, 2012.

In the morning and for part of the afternoon, Rachel and I created an ePUB eBook with a fiction book she’s been writing all school year by hand with a classmate. (Literally since the first week of August!) She recorded each of the seven book parts with RecordPad, and I compiled the book with typed text, scanned pictures drawn by her classmate, mp3 files I converted with Switch, and Pages software. We’re getting the last illustration (hopefully) from her classmate to tomorrow to scan, and will most likely publish it on ePubBud, Amazon, B&N Nook Books, and a new website domain I registered for her and am configuring tonight. She created the main website graphic today using Brushes on an iPad. She’s going to give the book away as a free download, but offer it for purchase as a hardback! It’s precious!

This afternoon, my 11 year old daughter worked with two classmates on a science project about the Ejyafjallajokull volcano in Iceland.

Using two laptops, they continued research they had started earlier in the week and created a narrated slideshow video as their “final product,” following the instructions in their teacher provided rubric. They created a presentation using Keynote software, and wrote a project script using Pages. They found photos to use from multiple sources, including Flickr Creative Commons, and included attribution on each slide for the websites where they found the images. I encouraged them to use a minimum of text on each slide, and instead use large images to make their points. (Presentation Zen style.) They recorded their final video on an iPad using “Explain Everything.” To get the Keynote slides from the laptop to the iPad, they used PhotoSync software to transfer the images. The $3 “Explain Everything” app allowed them to create their narrated slideshow directly from the images transferred with PhotoSync. They used my iRig microphone for the recording, and they sound great!

They recorded their script twice, reading it from the screen of a laptop in Pages instead of printing it out. They did a super job, and are justifiably proud of their afternoon of work! I’ll feature this narrated slideshow soon on “Student Media Examples.”

Technorati Tags: ebook, ipad, playingwithmedia, book, volcano, Ejyafjallajokull, iceland, narrated, slideshow

A Saturday Filled with Media Creation and #playingwithmedia originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 28, 2012.

The definition of sexual abuse is broader than many people realize, it’s not just physical touching/abuse. The definition used in this series is: “Any tricked, forced, manipulated, or coerced sexual activity for the pleasure of the abuser. This can be physical, verbal or visual.”

Conservative studies show sexual abuse is at epidemic levels today
- there are 60 million sexual abuse survivors in the U.S. today
- we have 300 million people in the U.S. so that means 1 in 5 people alive today in our country are sexual abuse survivors
- 1 in 3 females are predicted to be sexual abuse victims before the age of 18
- 1 in 6 males are predicted to be sexual abuse victims before the age of 18
- 66% of sexual abuse victims won’t talk about it until they are adults
- this cuts across all economic, ethic, and racial lines

Less than 10% of sexual abusers will ever enter the criminal justice system
- so 90% of those who want to harm our children are not in the justice system for us to find them with a background check (we still do background checks in our organizations, but background checks alone are insufficient protection)

MY COMMENT: THIS REMINDS ME OF THE ‘DEFENSE IN DEPTH’ STRATEGY WHICH IS EMPLOYED FOR COMPUTER NETWORK SECURITY

Almost 90% of children are victimized by someone the child knows and is taught is “safe”
- “stranger danger” has its value, but is not sufficient awareness

It’s a myth that sexual abusers have a clear, identifiable visual profile
- many are educated, married, have jobs, look like productive members of society
- it’s also a myth that all sexual abusers are men: some are also females
- 85% of convicted sexual abusers are men, 15% are women (some point out cases against women are more difficult to prosecute, so that may contribute to these skewed numbers)
- there is NO VISUAL PROFILE to rely on

Children are not just victimized by adults, peer to peer sexual abuse is high and rising
- children are not only learning about sexual behaviors from adults, they are also learning from it through the Internet

The “abuser triangle” is used by counselors to treat sexual offenders, and it has 3 elements:
1- deviant sexual desire (adults who prefer children as sexual partners)
2- faulty thinking (ability to justify and rationalize deviant desire)
3- access (the offender having access to children)

Molesters intentionally groom both children and “gatekeepers”
- gatekeepers are the people who stand in the way of molesters to gain access to the child
- “molesters are looking for trusted time alone with a child they are grooming”

“edge of the herd” concept: the children most at risk for grooming by a molester / sexual predator / abuser:
- are often on the fringe, in need
- looking for someone to follow or trust
- from a broken family
- from a single parent home
- involved in alcohol or drugs
- interested in pornography

Every case the MinistrySafe law practice has handled involving boys and male sexual predators has involved the use of pornography during the grooming process
- predators use nudity and sexual touch for “barrier testing and erosion” with children
- often use sexual discussions and joking, playful touch and ‘accidental nudity”
- magazines and movies depicting nudity and sex

Keeping victims silent through secrecy, shame & embarrassment, and threats (subtle or direct) are also a critical part of the grooming process

Many people who have been sexually abused or assaulted report feeling some sense of guilt or responsibility for what happened to them, molesters use this psychology against victims

#1 reason kids don’t tell: No one will believe you
- often this is true, because of the way molesters groom the gatekeepers

Common grooming behaviors
- gift giving: single adult to single child
- kid-magnet activities (things children are attracted to)
- repeated time alone with the same child (unsupervised or not easily overseen)
- touchy with children, pushing physical boundaries
- sometimes using playful but inappropriate touch
- breaking the rules: providing alcohol, tobacco and/or pornography (can be other rules you have setup for your organization)

Peer abusers tend to be more opportunistic (they don’t create their own schedule and drive their own cars)
- this should be distinguished from natural sexual curiosity, and we do this by looking at power relationships between the peers involved
- power can be due to age, size, economic resources, social connections (popularity), or differing abilities

Children with different kids of disabilities are particularly at risk for peer abuse

risks are highest any place where clothes come off (swimming/bathing) and any place that is less easily seen

To reduce risks, we should always report any grooming behaviors we observe
- adequate supervisors for all activities are key (use programmatic ratios)
- avoid unmonitored, 1 on 1 interaction

MY COMMENT: THIS IS THE ‘TWO DEEP LEADERSHIP’ CONCEPT FROM SCOUTING / YOUTH PROTECTION PROGRAM

avoid individual gift giving, always better for the gift to come from a group rather than a single individual adult giving to a single individual child

Short term impacts of sexual abuse on children:
- poor self esteem
- shame/guilt
- anxiety / nervousness
- fears / phobias
- loss of trust
- disinterested in person or activity previously enjoyed (we need to ask questions to find out what has changed)
- anger
- self-mutilation
- bedwetting
- nightmares
- rebellion
- running away

Long term impacts:
- depression
- suicidal thoughts or acts
- substance abuse including self-medicating behaviors
- molesting other children (not a 1 to 1 scenario, some victims- especially boys who do not receive any kind of treatment
- drop in grades
- promiscuity / seductive behavior
- STDs
- excessive modesty or affection seeing behaviors
- prostitution (95% of prostitutes on the street were sexually abused as children)

If a child reports abuse:
- listen and respond calmly (don’t respond emotionally)
- be sensitive to vague and partial disclosures (children often test you with part of the story to see if you respond with anger or disbelief)
- it is ok to ask for more questions that simply ask for more information: “Do you to tell me more?”
- don’t ask shaming questions: What were you wearing? What were you doing in that location? These questions can make the child feel they were responsible for the abuse rather than the adult and clam up.
- report this to a supervisor immediately
- NO SECRETS

If the child asks you if you will keep it a secret, you need to respond with something like: “There are some things I can’t keep a secret: if someone is being abused, being hurt, etc.)

statutes by law vary, but generally all states not only require reporting of physical abuse but also emotional abuse and neglect. Many require reporting of “suspicion” of abuse and neglect. Entities we report to, how long we have to report, and what information we have to report varies. Generally we don’t have to investigate, but we do have to report.

Google “Child abuse reporting” for your state (example: Oklahoma Department of Human Services, Child Protective Services)

www.childwelfare.gov also has resources

We need to always create cultures of communication in our programs
- we need to open up lines of communication for policy violations that cause us discomfort also… not to create a witchhunt, but to create a culture where a supervisor can identify “red flag” information when grooming and barrier testing is taking place.

MY CLOSING THOUGHT: THIS IS OUTSTANDING TRAINING, IT’S EXCELLENT IT’S AVAILABLE ONLINE AND THERE’S A QUIZ FOR PEOPLE TO TAKE BEFORE RECEIVING A COMPLETION CERTIFICATE.

http://ministrysafe.com

Technorati Tags: online, training, video, ministry, safe, ministrysafe, youth, protection, sexual, predator, abuser, pedophile, suspicion, neglect, physical, emotion, emotional

MinistrySafe Online Video Training for Youth Protection from Sexual Abuse originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

While the built-in calculator features of Google Search are extremely powerful, the syntax required to use the “Google calculator” requires some study. That process is valuable and good, but I like how Mateusz’ Percentage Calculator does not require any special syntax formatting. The layout is simple and straightforward. He has also included some helpful information about percentages on the homepage of his site.

Mateusz has also created the website Blood Pressure Chart, which provides a cloud-based / web-based way for people to save their blood pressure information so it can be shared with doctors or others the individual selects. I really like the clean look of the ‘forums’ section of his Blood Pressure Chart website, where updates are available about the project as well as other information. I’m going to try and learn what tool he used to create these, it would be great if they are powered with a WordPress Plug-in.

Technorati Tags: math, calculator, percent, percentage, web, tool

Calculate and Learn about Percentages with Percentage Calculator originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

This semester I’m working on a contract basis (thanks to federal grant dollars) as an “innovative instructional coach” in Yukon Public Schools. This morning I helped one of our sixth grade teachers facilitate her first lessons using free, ad-free class blogs hosted by KidBlog.org. In this post, I’ll share some of the configuration specifics for these class blogs and a nine minute screencast in which I demonstrate each step. The teacher has six sections of students (136 in all) so the techniques described here for importing student userIDs and passwords from the district’s student information system can be HUGE time savers!

I am a big fan of free Posterous blogs for publishing student work, including media products. You’ll see multiple examples of student work shared on Posterous blogs on share.playingwithmedia.com, which I created to complement my eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” KidBlog is a great platform too, but it has different advantages. Posterous makes the posting and sharing of rich-media files including images, audio and video very straightforward. KidBlog lends itself best to sharing text, but it can handle most kinds of embedded media. For the teacher I worked with today, as an English teacher it’s important her students have their own directory of posts they can readily view along with their parents. KidBlog automatically creates “student pages” of all posts an individual has published. (Usually in the right sidebar, but this can vary with the selected blog theme.) Other features of KidBlog I really like are:

1. It makes moderation of both posts and comments to a blog very easy / fast
2. It shows how many comments different posts have received on the homepage, so students as well as parents/other visitors can identify posts which “need some attention” and a helpful comment.
3. KidBlog is built on WordPress, so it supports the free WordPress iOS app. One of the 6th graders this morning asked, in fact, “Is there an app for this site?” I was pleased to tell her: Yes there is!
4. KidBlog supports “broadcast” posts, so a teacher can write a single post but have it automatically cross-post (“broadcast”) to all his/her blogs. This is HUGE for teachers using KidBlog with multiple sections.
5. It supports the importing of student userIDs and passwords as comma separated (CSV) files.
6. It supports nested commenting.
7. Students can change their own display name. This is important in our district, since student’s initial network userID is a series of numbers. For the teacher’s purposes, it’s important to identify students by first name. This is also critical for peer and parent commenting, and great the students can change these display names directly.

Today in two of the classes, students submitted over 100 different comments for their peers. Even though we coached students to “be thoughtful” in their comments and not just write things like “Good” or “Awesome,” of course we had some comments like that. About half the students in the first class today had used LightSpeed Systems’ free learning management system, “My Big Campus,” in other classes. Unlike My Big Campus, however, the KidBlog sites used today and I configured for the teacher are OPENLY visible to anyone online (without a login) but all posts as well as comments are moderated.

I recorded a nine minute screencast earlier in the week when I was configuring these student blogs, which shows all the steps I performed to each KidBlog site so it was ready for teacher-moderated posting and commenting today. I encourage you to check out KidBlog. More digital text / blogging platform options are linked on the “Text” page of playingwithmedia.com.

Technorati Tags: blog, kidblog, writing, configure, configuration

Configure KidBlog for Safe, Moderated, Interactive Student Blogging & Commenting originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

On January 26, 2012, we attended a full-day workshop about “Common Core Transition” led by Jan Hough with Marzano Research Lab. These are some of our takeaways from the day. Handouts from Jan’s session are available on the OSSBA website.

Writing Across the Curriculum
One of the most important changes emphasized in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is writing across the curriculum. This means students in all grades, in all content areas, need to be doing more writing about what they are learning. Writing is not just just something students need to do in English class, students need to be writing in ALL their subject areas.

4 Key Steps to Implementation
Jan used a four part framework to explain how school districts are and should transition to CCSS. These four parts are:
Awareness
Proficiency Scales
Instructional Practices
Assessment Practices

These are explained in greater detail on this two page handout from Jan.

Unpacking the Standards
Jan emphasized the importance of “unpacking the standards” for teachers to learn the differences and similarities between what classroom practices they HAVE been doing and the new classroom practices which are expected under the CCSS. Jan provided a template document for teachers to use to “unpack the standards.” Unpacking the standards means taking a CCSS standard and identifying skills a teacher must explicitly teach for the student to successfully master that standard. It was not clear “how many” different standards individual teachers should unpack to adequately understand the CCSS. It seems reasonable for teachers to unpack some, but NOT reasonable for each teacher to individually or even collectively unpack ALL the CCSS which apply to them. Districts which have “unpacked the standards” with their curriculum have created new curriculum maps. This is a process we may include in our transition plan for the current (2011-2012) academic year.

Proficiency Scales / Rubrics
The cornerstone of CCSS implementation from the “Marzano Laboratory” is the creation and use of “proficiency scales” to specify student expectations. These are rubrics which have four levels of student expectations. Jan provided a template document for teachers to use when creating proficiency scales. The Marzano Research Lab provides a free, online “bank” of proficiency scales anyone can access after creating a free account on their website. Quality varies widely for the scales currently “in the bank.”

Written Response Tips
As teachers create assignments and assessments, Jan emphasized the importance of using informational texts. She also emphasized the importance of students citing evidence and writing across the curriculum. Teachers need to work collaboratively with team members on writing across the curriculum.

Ideas for Curriculum Maps
These are ideas we’ve discussed, not ones which were specifically suggested by Jan in the workshop. One of the things we may want to build (or have built) as an action script for Google Documents is a tool to insert different standards into our curriculum maps. We need to make it easy for our teachers to look up and insert CCSS standards as well as PASS objectives for non ELA or math teachers.

Our curriculum maps for each course and each grade level must be “living documents” which are continually open for editing / revision / additions. We will not be well served, going forward into the future, to select a commercial / proprietary tool for curriculum mapping which will require us to pay an annual licensing fee. What makes the most sense, at this point, seems to be using Google Docs as spaces for creating, sharing and updating Curriculum Maps.

The best example of completed curriculum maps we’ve seen are secondary maps from Stillwater PS. North Carolina has excellent resources on ELA and Math “unpacking the standards.”

We’ve created an open group on the social bookmarking site Diigo, called “Oklahoma CCSS,” where we have started to share links to resources. Anyone is welcome to join.

Collaboratively written by Kathy Davis and Wesley Fryer

Common Core Transition Ideas via Marzano originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 26, 2012.

Great job, Google geek and dad Daniel Lee.

Technorati Tags: chrome, video, youtube, media, kids, family, share

A Touching Example of Family Digital Documentation originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 26, 2012.

wfryer.me/ota12

I hope this mobile-friendly conference session format helps you find great sessions at the conference, if you’re attending. This is the first year EncycloMedia (which has historically been held in the fall) has merged with the OTA conference. David Warlick is our keynote this year and it should be great!

I’m playing with a test installation of MobileAP to possibly create an iOS-friendly mobile conference site for breakout session info, but I still need to figure out how to import session data into the mySQL database. Not sure if I’ll figure this out or not but I’ll keep playing with it. It’s a very sweet, free academic conference app I wrote about in September 2009, developed originally at the University of Cincinnati.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, otaem12, ota, encyclomedia, technology, library

Access OTA – EncycloMedia 2012 Session Info via a Google Spreadsheet originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 25, 2012.

Tyler’s description of GarageBand for iPad‘s ability to record songs and then make them available as transposable loops really intrigues me. I need to spend some time playing with it! Kudos to Tyler for sharing this fun project idea, and to the instructors and professors at UCO’s Academy of Contemporary Music!

I’m presenting a couple workshops at the Heartland eLearning Conference March 4-5, 2012, which will explore ways to use the iPad to record and share media. If you live in or near central Oklahoma, please plan to join us in Edmond for this great conference!

Technorati Tags: ipad, creativity, creative, music, garageband

Make a Song with Sounds from Your Kitchen on an iPad originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 24, 2012.

Currently, a transition to Common Core Standards is prevalent in the educational environment. This session will overview key steps in successful Common Core implementation. A focus of the presentation will be resources the Marzano Research Laboratory has developed to support teachers and administrators in this transition from state standards to Common Core Standards.

ONE OF THE PARTICPANTS NEXT TO US ASKED JAN ABOUT COMING TO THEIR DISTRICT FOR PD, SHE QUOTED $6K PER DAY AS HER PRICE

Handouts from today are linked on www.ossba.org/ocic

Effective pedagogy in “Classroom Strategies that Work” by Robert Marzano
- curriculum articulation
- instructional methodology
- encapsulating both within classroom management

The instructional methodology piece is the one we hold closest as teachers

Now lets think about the definition of college and career ready
- this should make us think about instructional practices in our classrooms

think about the term “deep understanding” carefully
- if we are to be effective in that orchestration of complex skills, deep understanding is key

Now we’re going to talk about young people growing up today

Reference April 2010 FastCompany article: “A Is for App: How Smartphones, Handheld Computers Sparked an Educational Revolution”
- name things kids today have no concept of because of their generation

We need to think about skills kids need now

Take a look at the research (Wells & Croxton, pg 1)

Schools may once have done an adequate job of equipping and sifting young people to take their various places in the prevailing society, but that world is gone.

Now showing a YouTube video listing short change facts “Did You Know” style

PISA assessment
- “US students scored lowest on the problem-solving items.”

Jobs for the Future (2005) “Fore every 10 students who enter eighth grade, only seven graduate high school on time, and only three complete a postsecondary degree by age 26″

MY THOUGHTS: IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER THESE QUOTATIONS AND STATISTICS IN CONTEXT, AND THAT CONTEXT IS NOT BEING PROVIDED HERE. THIS IS A TYPICAL PRESENTATION OF “NATION AT RISK” STYLE STATS: OUR SCHOOLS SUCK, WE’RE IN A CRISIS, SO WE BETTER CHANGE. NO DISCUSSION OF POVERTY, CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS, WHAT STUDENTS TAKE THE PISA IN OTHER COUNTRIES VERSUS US SCHOOLS, ETC. THE CITATION ON THE PROBLEM SOLVING PISA RESULTS IS DARLING-HAMMOND, 2010, P. 35, BUT THE MAIN FOCUS OF HER RESEACH (FROM WHAT I’VE READ) ABOUT TEACHER QUALITY IS NOT MENTIONED AT ALL. MORE DE-CONTEXTUALIZED CITATION OF “RESEARCH SAYS.”

Two resources to recommend to focus on cognitive skills and cognitive skills
- “The Highly Engaged Classroom”
- “Teaching and Assessming 21st Century Skills”
- surveyed 10,000 teachers, asked 3 questions: top 3 challenges you face as a classroom teacher
– #1 students reading below grade level
– #2 unsupportive home environment
– #3 student not being engaged in the learning process

Cognitive Skills
- mental abilities like logic, reasoning, thinking and attention to detail
- teaching of cognitive skills is not unique to the 21st century (VERY GOOD POINT, GLAD SHE POINTED THIS OUT)
- what is new to the 21st century is the idea that cognitive skills should take a dominant role in the curriculum
- analyzing and using information, addressing complex problems and issues, creating patterns and mental models

Conative skills
- the process of combining what one knows (cognitive) with how one feels (affective) and deciding what action to take in light of both
- understanding and controlling yourself, interacting with others

identifying “faulty logic” is a key element in CCSS

What of all this would we call “securely held content”
- what pieces of content are going to remain with my students forever
- the reality is nonoe of it will (so process skills are most important, not content)

Consider the students you are preparing for the 21st century
- discuss implications for educators and critical steps for successful implications of CCSS

OCIC part 2

How do we use proficiency scales to build higher quality assessments?

We don’t know what those assessments are going to look like?
- what assessment practices to support Common Core implementation?

Need specific items that support level 2, 3 and 4 scale outcomes
- most of your assessment items shouldn’t be level 4, ht need to be distributed

Research by Jorissen 2006: “Most Tachers say they develop their assessment knowledge and practices on the job”

These are about how we prepare teachers to craft assessments

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS DEFINITELY THE KEY TO WHAT WE NEED TO BE DOING IN PD

Rick Stiggins, 2008: “We have trusted those we believe… (trusted our textbooks)

Educators must gain deep understanding of how to develop high-quality classroom assessments that inform instructional assessments

He do we build quality classroom assessments

Recommend: “Classroom Assessment and Grading that Works” by Marzano 2006
- “Formative Assessment and Standards Based Grading” by Marzano 2010
- Teacher-Made Assessments: Gareis and Grant 2008

I believe in dual coding theory, we need both words/text and non-linguistic representations

Forms of assessment
- obtrusive
- non-obtrusive
- student generated

Obtrusive assessments interrupt the normal flow of activity in the classroom

Student-generated assessments are the most underutilized form, students generate ideas about how they can show they have mastered the content, students will create something and share it
- we can’t do this kind of assessment all the time

Classroom assessment = anything a teacher does to gather information about a student’s knowledge or skill regarding a specific topic

“Purpose of assessment is to enhance the experience”

MY THOUGHT: THIS MAY BE THE MOST THOUGHT PROVOKING AND CHALLENGING THING SHE HAS SHARED ALL DAY. THIS VIEW OF ASSESSMENT IS SUCH A FAR CRY FROM HIGH STAKES TESTING…

Why should we do it?
- research reported here shows conclusively that formative assessment does improve learning

A quality test is:
- valid: accurately and appropriately measuring what is relevant
- reliable: consistent and precise
- fair: does not put any group at a disadvantage

Tests/assessments must have these three elements
- we’ll spend the most time talking about validity today (“if you build your lessons on our scales, validity will be there”)

reliability
- refers to the degree to which a test is consistent and stable in measuring what it is intended to measure, mist simply put a test is reliable if it is consistent within itself and across time

Remember the PARCC website has some sample items for assessments, but we don’t really know if those will be representative of the eventual assessments which are developed

We know the following things WILL be in the CCSS assessments:
- assessments may be perforance-based and multiple choice
- assessments may require technology skills to respond to questions
- technology skills will be required to respond to questions (this means kids will take the tests online)
- assessments may require critical thinking, for example: claim-evidence-counter-claim approach, compare and contrast tasks, cause and effect relationships
- assessments may require writing in response to text
- assessments may be timed
- a different approach to instruction may be required

HIgh quality item types:
- true/false use those sparingly (strong statements include a single idea, not multiple ideas for T/F)
- true/false need to be black/white, not shades of grey

Matching assessments
- homogenous in content
- matching set no more than 7
- uneven number of items to be matched or items
- uneven number of items to be matched OR items may be used more than once
- ordered logically (such as alphabetically)
- longer reading on the left, matching items on the right

Multiple choice
- being with question-starter (who, what, where, how, why)
- a single task is articulated in the question
- emphasize qualifiers
- all response items are plausible (no-throw away)
- written in present tense if possible
- avoid negatives (e.g., which is NOT)
- may include context: more complex questions

emphasizing qualifiers
- kids will be required to come up with the BEST answer, so give students experience with that as you craft items

there will be “none of the above” and “all of the above”
- in Nebraska we didn’t allow this on our state test, we thought it was poor test item construction
- a good friend of mine is now a high level test item developer for PARCC and she says these items will be included

Quality Constructed Response Items
- require students to justify their reasoning
- fill in the blank, short answer, essay

tips for fill-in-the-blank
- position the blank at the end of the sentence as often as possible
- limit the number of blanks in an item
- blanks should be the same length
- be sure information prior to/surrounding the blank is adequate
- may use a word bank

Use logs of analogies: those are high level thinking required

Short answer and essay items
- make the nature of the response desired clear to the reader
- develop and communicate a scoring criteria for the question
- provide adequate space for responses

Practice makes perfect
- absolutely include these types of items on your assessments
- Common Core Will!

You do NOT need to build assessments for all of the scales you will use, but you (as a classroom teacher) definitely DO need to craft and use a variety of assessments

Video shown as an exemplar: “Assessment at the Utmost”

My Favorite No
Grade 8, Math, Warm Up Routine
Common Core Standards: Math.MP.6

When I work with district I encourage them to look at the scales and determine which ones could be combined
- you can do that, your design goes into the classroom assessment process

How many items do I need to be reliable?

MY THOUGHT: I THINK WE MAY BE PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE CONCEPT OF ‘TEST RELIABILITY’ HERE, ESP AS IT IS CONSIDERED IN ACADEMIC SETTINGS (HIGHER ED)

If an assessment is valid and reliable, inferences about learning are more appropriate

Fairness: assessment level is appropriate
- readability
- avoid types of bias: offensive content, stereotyping, unfair representation, more…

format: directions, enough space, visually appealing

MY THOUGHT: IF WE’RE ASKING ALL TEACHERS TO BECOME ASSESSMENT DESIGNERS AND EXPERTS (WHICH IS NOT AN ENTIRELY BAD IDEA) THEN WHERE ARE THE ONLINE CCSS WEBINARS (FREE BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN PAID FOR WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS) FOR TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS TO UTILIZE ON SPECIFIC TOPICS LIKE ASSESSMENT CREATION?!

assessment format issues: the format of the test can district students taking a test

around the country I’m seeing a little bit of everything with CCSS implementation
1- year to year model
2- key leader model
3- shared resources model
4- scheduling options: early dismissal, late start, PLC meetings, PD days, summer meeting time

Consider the development of an ‘explicit development model

First and foremost: everyone must be on the same page with respect to goals
- what are our desired outcomes
- identify your implementation process

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS: I REALLY THINK WE NEED (IN OKLAHOMA) TO STOP PUTTING OUR EDUCATIONAL FAITH IN STANDARDS AND HIGH STAKES / COMMERCIAL ASSESSMENTS, AND INSTEAD INVEST OUR RESOURCES AS WELL AS FAITH IN DEVELOPING HIGH QUALITY TEACHERS. TEACHERS ARE THE KEY. I AM THINKING WE SHOULD START AN ADVOCACY GROUP WHICH PUSHES FOR 2 MAIN THINGS:
1- STOPPING THE DRIVE TO LINK STUDENT TEST SCORES TO TEACHER EVALUATION
2- WITHDRAWING FROM OUR FORMAL PLEDGES TO SPEND MILLIONS ON CCSS ASSESSMENTS, STOP STATE-LEVEL MANDATED HIGH STAKES ASSESSMENTS AND INVEST ALL THOSE DOLLARS INSTEAD INTO TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, TEACHER MERIT PAY AS NATIONAL BOARD CERTIFICATION PAY, AND IN TEACHER PAY. GOOD TEACHERS ARE THE KEY. STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENTS ARE NOT SILVER BULLETS. THIS ISN’T 1983, WE DON’T NEED A ‘NATION AT RISK’ RE-RUN. WE NEED TO TURN THE SHIP OF POLITICALLY MANDATED EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE IN OUR STATE. OUR TEACHERS, PARENTS, AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED OVER THE PAST DECADE TO BELIEVE THAT EDUCATIONAL QUALITY AND WORTHY EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT CAN ONLY BE ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH EXPENSIVE, HIGH STAKES ASSESSMENTS WHICH WE PAY COMMERCIAL COMPANIES TO DEVELOP. THAT IS A FARCE AND A LIE. WE MUST CHANGE THIS MINDSET AND THIS REALITY. THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOL IS NOT TO TAKE TESTS WELL. THERE ARE FAR MORE THINGS THAN JUST ‘ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT’ WHICH MATTER IN SCHOOLS. WE MUST ALWAYS PRESENT TEST SCORES AND RESEARCH RESULTS IN CONTEXT. WE MUST TALK ABOUT POVERTY AND HELPING STUDENTS AS WELL AS FAMILIES MOVE UP AND OUT OF POVERTY. NEW ACADEMIC STANDARDS AND NEW, FANCY, ONLINE ASSESSMENTS ARE NOT THE ANSWER TO THOSE CHALLENGES. PASSIONATE, DEDICATED, HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS DEFINITELY ARE A KEY PART OF THAT SOLUTION. THERE ARE SOME GREAT ELEMENTS OF CCSS WHICH WE SHOULD EMBRACE AND IMPLEMENT. THERE ARE OTHER KEY PARTS OF OUR EDUCATIONAL POLITICAL LANDSCAPE, HOWEVER, WHICH WE MUST STAND UP TO OPPOSE AND CHANGE.

WE’VE GOT TO TURN THE SHIP. AFTER ALL, WE LIVE IN THE USA. IT’S TIME TO SHOW HOW WE CAN ADVOCATE FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE IN A RESPONSIVE REPUBLIC.

Technorati Tags: ccss, change, common, core, leadership, marzano, standards, transition, state, ocic, ossba, literacy

Transition to Common Core Standards by Jan Hoegh @marzanoresearch (2 of 2) #ocic12 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 24, 2012.

Currently, a transition to Common Core Standards is prevalent in the educational environment. This session will overview key steps in successful Common Core implementation. A focus of the presentation will be resources the Marzano Research Laboratory has developed to support teachers and administrators in this transition from state standards to Common Core Standards.

Handouts from today are linked on www.ossba.org/ocic

Jan is working on a book titled “Making Common Core Standards Useful” with Dr Robert Marzano

Thanks that seem little often times make a big difference
- story about her sister as a cardio-nurse about a charting error typo

Common Core implementation is monstrous, not little
- has come upon us on a quick manner
- today is pretty little in the grand scheme of things
- but today could make a significant difference in how we go about implementation

One of my favorite examples of brain research:

from Sousa, How the Brain Works, 2005

MY COMMENT: THIS ‘BRAIN RESEARCH’ IS AN URBAN LEGEND AND HAS BEEN DEBUNKED. I AM COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY THAT THIS WAS SHARED AS THE FIRST EXAMPLE OF ‘BRAIN RESEARCH’ AND ‘ACADEMIC RESEARCH’ IN TODAY’S SEMINAR. IN ADDITION, MY GOOGLE SEARCH SHOWS THIS BOOK WAS INACCURATELY CITED ON THE SLIDE, IT IS “HOW THE BRAIN LEARNS” FROM 2006. THANKS DR. JON BECKER FOR SHARING THE LINK TO HOW “The “Learning Pyramid” IS A MYTH AND NOT ACADEMICALLY SOUND RESEARCH. www.learningandteaching.info/learning/myths.htm

There is a lot to consider today with Common Core State Standards

Age = our attention span
- change of state needed
- tops out at 18-20 minutes
- adult learners need chagne also
- 3 ways we will group and regroup

Your table family (a.k.a. the people at your table)
- sorry, you don’t get to pick your family
- your are stuck with them, just like life!

Next: your close partners
- some people sitting near you but not at your table
- form groups of 2 or 3
- take 30 seconds to introduce yourselves and then return to your table…

Last one we’ll just use 1 time: an across the room partner
- agree on a place in the room where you’ll meet and work together
- intro yourself and return to your table

4 Modules for Successful Implementation of CCSS (by Marzano Research Laboratory)
1- What are the CCSS?
2- How do proficiency scales support CCSS implementation?
3- What instructional practices support CCSS implementation?
4- What assessment practices support CCSS?

We have developed scales for every CCSS standard, working with leaders around the country

CCSS require us to look at our instructional practices and determine if we’re getting to higher order thinking
- 21st century teaching and learning

Take a moment to think of a time of ‘adjustment’ or transition in your life, either professional or personal
- with your table family, list emotions you experienced

Our group’s answers: anxiety, frustration, apprehension, anger, fear, stress, uncertainty, relief, excitement, relief

“We are transitioning now as a country to CCSS”
- “although CCSS isn’t our new normal yet, it will be”

MY THOUGHT: MANY PEOPLE WOULD LIKE OUR NATION TO TRANSITION, BUT THIS ISN’T THE CASE IN TEXAS AND (I THINK) 15 OTHER STATES

We need to ‘be real’ in this transition time and express these frustrations / emotions
- we need to embrace the change and focus on improving the educational experience for our students
- that is a choice we can make
- look today for things you find exciting

#1 Educators must gain deep understanding of the purpose, organization, and content of the CCSS

“Verbatim note-taking is the least effective way to process and keep information”

Mission statement of CCSS: (focus on bold

consider the implications of these things for us as educators

You as a state [OKLAHOMA] have chosen to be part of the Park Consortium
- states could sign on to either one: PARCC has 24 states, 17 are governing board states (PARCC = Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers)
- Nebraska has opted OUT of CCSS: educators in Nebraska are wondering why they are opting out of CCSS, since it’s coming down the road for everyone

as a veering board state Oklahoma has agreed to
- pilot and field test assessment system components
- administrator new assessment system during 2014-2015
- use results from PARCC assessments in state accountability system

Our state has chosen to take a leadership role, and that is to be commended

MY COMMENT: I WONDER HOW MANY ACTUAL PEOPLE WERE IN THE ROOM AND DECIDED WE WOULD JOIN PARCC AS A GOVERNING MEMBER? THIS WAS NOT SUBJECT TO PUBLIC DEBATE AND DISCUSSION AS FAR AS I KNOW. INTERESTING HOW THIS IS BEING PRESENTED AS A ‘GREAT THING’ WE SHOULD CELEBRATE AND BE PROUD OF.

“the promise of the standards…”
- “These standards are not intended to be new names for old ways of doing business… They are a call to take the next step. It is time for states to work together to build on lessons learned from two decades of standards based reforms. It is time to recognize that standards are not just promises to our children, but promises we intend to keep.”

When we talk about ‘rigor’ in this context, we are talking about “application of content knowledge and skills”

‘teachable and learnable’ = guidance for the design of curricula and instructional materials

measurable: observable and verifiable
- we give students tasks to complete in relation to the standards

coherent: progression of learning
- there are blocks upon which other blocks are learning
- a continuum of learning, you will see this in the standards so you don’t see a lot of repetition in grade levels
- some of the content we were repeating in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade is no longer repeated

grade-by-grade standards

internationally benchmarked: success in our global economy
- our environment is much different now than from when I started in education in the 1980s

What you must do as you get involved with CCSS is get the document in front of you and others you are working with
- starting at the beginning
- our intuition is to ‘just get to the meat of it’
- I was in Ohio yesterday and the teachers there didn’t want to hear about all the steps needed for successful implementation
- like “The Sound of Music” we have to start with ABC… reading the actual document

what observations can you make reading the table of contents

MY COMMENT: IT IS PRETTY UNBELIEVABLE THAT ALL THE MATERIALS FOR THIS WORKSHOP ARE NOT PROVIDED UP-FRONT IN ELECTRONIC / DIGITAL FORMAT. I DID ASK IF THESE COULD BE SHARED AND JAN SAID SHE’D EMAIL THEM TO USE IF WE INDIVIDUALLY SEND HER AN EMAIL. THE PERSON WHO INTRODUCED HER SAID THEY WOULD BE POSTED/SHARED ON THE OSSBA WEBSITE. THIS IS AS MAINSTREAM A CURRICULUM CONFERENCE AS YOU CAN GET IN OKLAHOMA, AND THE STACK OF PAPERS DISTRIBUTED AS WE CAME IN THE ROOM MAKE IT CLEAR THIS IS ‘PAPER-BASED LECTURE LEARNING AS USUAL.” IF WE ARE SERIOUS ABOUT FACILITATING STUDENT USE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES APPROPRIATELY AND REGULARLY IN THE CLASSROOM, WE HAVE TO START WITH TEACHER-LEADERS. (US) WE’VE GOT TO MODEL BLENDED LEARNING, AND THAT’S NOT HAPPENING HERE TODAY.

design and organization: focus on results rather than means
- this means teachers get to do the designing
- teachers are not told how they have to teach something

integrated model of literacy means it’s an integrated approach

we have to focus on research and media skills, those are integrated throughout the document

Only 70% of high school students graduate on time with a regular diploma (Green and Winters, 2005)

MY COMMENT: THAT STATISTIC IS SEVEN YEARS OLD! WHY ARE WE USING RESEARCH FINDINGS THAT ARE SEVEN YEARS OLD WHEN WE ARE IN 2012?

Also: “Approximately 40% of high school graduates lack the literacy skills employers seek.” (Achieve, Inc. 2005)

“U.S. dropouts’ literacy skills are lower than those of dropouts in most industrialized nations.” (A Report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York)

MY COMMENT: WHERE IS THE DATE CITATION FOR THIS CARNEGIE CORP REPORT? WHERE IS THE LINK? HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FACT-CHECK AND CRITICALLY ANALYZE THE INFORMATION BEING PRESENTED TO US TODAY, WHEN QUOTATIONS LIKE THIS ARE NOT APPROPRIATELY CITED? WE NEED TO MODEL BEST PRACTICE WHEN IT COMES TO CITATIONS, AND THESE SLIDES MISS THAT BOAT.

“Our students literacy skills today are not what they need to be”

NAPE focuses on informational text use a lot, so CCSS follows suit…
- significant shift and implications

Reading Design and Organization
3 sections
1- literature
2- informational text
3- foundational skills (k-5)

Where do we go to find literary / informational text
- look at appendices A-C in the CCSS, and especially appendix B for examples of exemplary texts

What does “college and career ready” mean for students?

Content is just good, solid ELA and math content

four strands
- reading (including reading foundational skills)
- writing
- speaking and listening
- language

Numbering System of K-5 ELA Standards
- RL = reading literature
- RI = reading informational text
- W = writing
- RF –
- SL

Need to carve out time to help teachers understand the language / coding system

RST.6-8.3 = Reading, Science and Technology, grades 6-8, 3rd standard

Gaining understanding of the CCSS requires spending time with teachers ‘learning the lingo’ of abbreviations / acronyms in the CCSS

We already do a lot as teachers which is “orchestration”
- an arrangement of events to achieve a maximum effect
- the desired maximum effect is optimum levels of student achievement

MY THOUGHT: ACTUALLY THERE ARE MANY OTHER VERY IMPORTANT AND EQUALLY IMPORTANT OUTCOMES ON WHICH WE SHOULD/MUST BE FOCUSED AS PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS IN ADDITION TO STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Now we are shifting to module #2, looking at proficiency scales
- “Educators must gain keep understanding of how proficiency scales can be used to enhance CCSS processes”

Guiding Questions
- what is a proficiency scale and why is it necessary
- how does unpacking the standards support the development of scales?
- what resources does MRL have to support you regarding proficiency scales?

So what constitutes a clean refrigerator? (brainstorm)
- now discussing use of rubric to establish proficiency scales
- this creates documentation about the content of the standards and student performance

We are going to provide these scales as part of the appendix to the new book I’m writing with Dr Marzano

“the intent of CCSS was to create a national curriculum so students can move to different states and have the same learning”
- my fear is states are unpacking and unwrapping the standards so instead of having a national unpacking, we have 46 different unpackings
- so Marzano Research Labs has taken on the job of unpacking these standards as scales so these can be used as conversation pieces / starting places for conversations

On our proficiency scales, student expected performance is always at score 3 (score 3 is always explicitly taught in the classroom)
- application in real-world contexts

We want to get kids to college/career ready levels

MY THOUGHTS: I REALLY THINK WE NEED TO MORE CAREFULLY CONSIDER IF COLLEGE READY AND CAREER READY ARE THE SAME THING. THE CCSS ASSUME THEY ARE. OUR ELECTED STATE OFFICIALS ASSUME THEY ARE IN OKLAHOMA CURRENTLY (WHEN I’VE HEARD THEM TALK) BUT I’VE HEARD MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNOR’S WORKFORCE COUNCIL STRONGLY QUESTION THIS. THE CCSS ARE ASSUMING STUDENTS NEED A UNIFORM, CONSISTENT, STANDARDIZED SET OF EXPERIENCES TO PREPARE THEM FOR LIFE SUCCESS. I AM THINKING THIS IS ‘OLD WORLD’ THINKING IN MANY WAYS: 1 WAY, 1 SET OF STANDARDS, 1 PATH. THAT IS NOT DIFFERENTIATION. THAT IS FACTORY-THINKING.

Scale development
- now you’re going to create a scale for time and money
- start with level 3: what are all students expected to do? (learning goal / expectation)
- in level 2, include the vocabulary, foundational knowledge, simpler procedures, isolated details
- level 1: with help students can perform level 2 and 3
- level 0: even with help the student cannot perform expectations
- level 4: demonstrations of learning that go above and beyond what was explicitly taught

MY QUESTION: ARE WE REALLY JUST TALKING ABOUT RUBRIC DEVELOPMENT NOW?

Recommendation: Don’t have your teachers create all these scales
- have them go through the process to see what it takes
- scale captures content of the standard on the left side, the right hand shows example activities which pertain to content

Teachers get: “What does it look like in practice?”

We are in the process of posting our Scales as a bank
- access this from www.marzanoresearch.com/Free_Resources/itembank.aspx

MY COMMENT: NOTE A FREE ACCOUNT MUST BE REQUIRED TO ACCESS THE BANK

Now discussing implications: What does this mean for you in your district?

MY THOUGHTS ANSWERING THIS QUESTION:
- OUR TEACHERS NEED PD/OPPORTUNITIES TO DEVELOP CCSS-ALIGNED RUBRICS
- WE OUGHT TO DEFINE HOW MUCH OF THIS ‘UNPACKING’ OUR TEACHERS NEED TO DO, TO UNDERSTAND THE CCSS AND HOW THEY APPLY
- I’M WONDERING WHERE THE FOCUS ON LESSON PLANNING IS? WHAT ARE THE KEY ELEMENTS OF A CCSS-ALIGNED LESSON PLAN WHICH ARE DIFFERENT THAN A ‘TRADITIONAL’ MADELAINE-HUNTER STYLE LESSON PLAN? I ‘GET’ THAT THE MARZANO GROUP WANTS TEACHERS TO USE SCALES/RUBRICS TO DEFINE AND ASSESS STUDENT LEARNING TASKS.

Technorati Tags: ccss, common, core, oklahoma, school, marzano, research, jan, hough, academic, standards, transition

Transition to Common Core Standards by Jan Hoegh @marzanoresearch (1 of 2) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 24, 2012.

If you need to schedule a meeting with folks who are not all users of your organization’s calendar system, my favorite free tool to use is WhenIsGood.net.

Technorati Tags: google, howto, tutorial, calendar, appointment, slots, screencast

Use Appointment Slots on a Google Calendar originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 23, 2012.

One of my favorite lesson memories from middle school was in 7th grade math. My teacher, Mrs. Allen, gave students an opportunity to create math word problems for extra credit. We would work on these word problems the start of class each day as a bell ringer activity. I remember these would be put on the overhead projector. We could earn extra credit in her math class by submitting these problems, but we only got credit if she used them in class I think. I remember making different word problems that involved rock climbing and mountain climbing, because those were things I was interested in. The problems had to do with distances for rappelling, lengths of rope, distances between base camps, etc. I remember it was a good feeling on the days when she used one of my problems and my classmates would work on figuring out the answer. I really enjoyed these learning opportunities because they gave me an opportunity to be creative, use math, and connect math to a topic I was really interested in. I remember including drawings that accompanied some of the problems. I really loved creating these problems and having them used in class. This is one of my favorite memories of a lesson from middle school. Remembering this makes me wonder if someone has already created a website where students can create and submit their own “math word problems?” I think this would be great to do, encouraging students to creatively apply math and share their problems with others. I think it is great to find ways to help students “come up with the questions” for a lesson, especially math, rather than always just solving problems / answering questions that other people have created.

Technorati Tags: ccss, common, commoncore, core, favlesson, #favlesson, favorite, lesson

Creative Math Word Problems about Rock Climbing & Mountaineering #favlesson originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 23, 2012.

  by  paul (dex) 

The most glaring omission from the 1.0 version of iBooks Author is the ability to export ebooks in EPUB format. It’s not there.

The only export formats iBooks Author 1.0 supports are iBooks, PDF, and plain text documents.

This is by design by Apple, but in my opinion it’s a mistake. Hopefully Apple will remedy this in the 2.0 version. We (as educators) need to make our voices heard and insist (whether we’re K-12 or college/university educators) that it’s not acceptable for Apple to ignore and deliberately try to undermine the EPUB standard for eBooks. We all understand Apple is a corporation and wants to make lots of money, but far more is at stake when it comes to digital curriculum than just income for a global corporation. As educators, learners and students, we need the ability to create standards-based e-texts which are compatible on MULTIPLE devices, not just iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. I recommend Mathew Ingram‘s January 19th post for GigaOM, “Do we want textbooks to live in Apple’s walled garden?” for more background on these issues. My answer to Mathew’s rhetorical question is a resounding “No: Not exclusively.”

In the case of my new eBook project, I not only want to distribute this FREE eBook on Apple’s iBookstore, I also want to distribute it on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, and openly on the web. Dan Wineman is 100% correct in calling out the ridiculous, “over the top” restrictions Apple is trying to impose on curriculum authors in his post, “The Unprecedented Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA.”

Since I’m unwilling to restrict the intellectual property roaming potential of this new eBook to “just” Apple’s iBookstore, I chose to create it using Apple’s Pages software. I followed the same procedures I used in the summer of 2011 to write and publish, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” For more background and specific steps about how to create enhanced/multimedia eBooks with Apple’s Pages as well as distribute eBooks on Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s Nook eStore, please check out:

• Podcast380: The Summer of Podfading is OVER: Let’s Talk eBooks! (17 Sept 2011)
• 99¢ Podcast: Creating Multimedia eBooks (3 Dec 2011)

These and additional links are available on my conference breakout session curriculum for “Creating MultiMedia eBooks.” (I’d be delighted to share this session with educators at your conference or other professional development event, btw!)

As educators, we have moral obligations to share. Open Educational Resources (OER) are and will increasingly disrupt traditional publishing companies’ revenue streams by allowing learners around the world to collaborate and share digital curriculum. The 1.0 release of Apple’s iBooks Author software is configured to undermine rather than support OER and the learning revolution.

Apple education executives, I call on you to change this in iBooks Author 2.0. Change the EULA so publishers are not locked into ONLY publishing on the iBookstore, and add an EXPORT TO EPUB feature like Apple programmers include with Pages ’09. Until those changes are made, I’m going to remain UNDERWHELMED by iBooks Author.

(The first image in this post was formatted with Creative Commons attribution using ImageCodr.)

Technorati Tags: apple, author, ibooks, ipad, software, ebook, epub, etext

Underwhelmed by iBooks Author Software originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 23, 2012.

In this episode of “iPad with Wes,” author and digital learning consultant Wesley Fryer explains how to create a custom digital newspaper on your iPad using the free application Flipboard. The video is 9 minutes, 17 seconds long

Referenced links in this episode include:
http://flipboard.com
http://google.com/reader

Screenshot by Wesley Fryer, Flipboard photo from photography.nationalgeographic.com

Please follow @ipadwithwes on Twitter and “like” iPadWithWes on Facebook! Mark your calendar to attend monthly “iPad App Coffee Chats” the first Tuesday of each month either face-to-face in Oklahoma City or via a free webcast on Ustream. Please spread the word about my upcoming workshop “iPad Training for Productivity Training” in Oklahoma City on April 19, 2012, in Oklahoma City.

Technorati Tags: flipboard, google, ipad, training, newspaper, reader

Create a Custom Digital Newspaper on your iPad with Flipboard & Google Reader originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 21, 2012.

This video is a 73 second interview with Laquita Semmler, principal of Mustang Elementary in Mustang, Oklahoma. Mrs. Semmler won a $2000 technology grant from the Oklahoma Association of Elementary School Principals (OAESP) at the mid-winter conference on January 20, 2012, in Oklahoma City. She is planning to use the funds from the grant to purchase a new iMac computer and mobile cameras to provide students with tools to be videographers and journalists for their school website.

Instead of Flip cameras, which have been discontinued by Cisco and do not import video in a Mac-friendly format, Storychasers recommends student videography teams use iPod Touches or iPads for quick-edit videography. In addition, an external microphone is a MUST to improve audio quality. (A $60 iRig mic, available via the Apple Store, was used in the video above.)

Congrats to Mustang Elementary students and staff, and kudos to Mrs. Seemler for applying for and winning this student technology grant!

Technorati Tags: oaesp, videography, mustang, elementary, grant, student, win, winner

OAESP Grant for Student Videography at Mustang, Elementary (Oklahoma) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 21, 2012.

If you haven’t already, definitely check out Apple’s official 7 minute, 20 second video overview of iBooks Author. I think this was shared yesterday during the official event in NYC. As you’d expect from Apple, it’s highly polished and impressive. It even features an educational leader / rock star I know, Chris Lehmann: the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia! Chris is the co-author of “What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media” (2011) and the Co-Chair of the EduCon conference coming up next weekend.

Make no mistake: I love Apple’s products and have been transformed in my professional career as an educator not only through the use of those products, but even more through opportunities Apple has directly provided to me to be influenced by other passionate educators. I AM very excited and positive about this week’s announcement about iBooks Author.

However, as we see corporate advertising messages like the video I’ve linked above, let’s keep a critically important thing in mind: TEACHERS make the biggest difference.

Yes our students need access to digital devices.

But TEACHERS make the difference.

Yes our schools need robust, smart networks with great connectivity to a world of content and a world of connections.

But TEACHERS make the difference.

Yes, we need to shift from “adopt on a 5 year cycle,” heavy and unsearchable paper-based textbooks and embrace dynamic, searchable etexts.

But TEACHERS make the difference.

We’re in the midst of some huge changes in our society as well as our schools. There are lots of opportunities we have amidst many challenges. As we face these disruptive changes together, let’s keep one thing crystal clear in all our minds.

Good TEACHERS make the biggest difference.

Technorati Tags: leadership, apple, ibooks, ebooks, mac, macs, change, schools, mobile

Remember TEACHERS Make the Biggest Difference, Not Devices originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 20, 2012.

There are 2 parts of the proposed state evaluation model for teachers: quantitative and qualitative

Quantitative: holding teachers accountable for student test scores
- our state (Oklahoma) “has punted” and said we need more research before we can implement this
- no state in the United States has figured this out yet (tying student test scores to teacher evaluation)
- Florida is furthest along, but they are still in a pilot stage
- the original proposal was to have 50% of teacher evaluation quantitative (student test scores) and 50% to be qualitative (principal evaluations)

The 50% that is the qualitative piece will actually be 100% this year in 2011-2012 in Oklahoma
- it is what you’ve been doing for 100 years, going into the classroom and seeing how teachers are teaching
- identifying strengths and rewarding those, identifying weaknesses and working to remedy those

Every school district in Oklahoma has to pick 1 of these 3 models:
1- Tulsa Public Schools Model
2- Danielson MOdel
3- Marzano Model

Tulsa model was developed from the ground up with funding from the Gates foundation
- Danielson and Marzano are national models, the Tulsa model is local

No model will be successful if administrators and teachers can’t implement it
- if the principal doesn’t have time to implement this, it won’t be successful
- you need to pick a model which is user-friendly for principals and teachers

Now we have 20 different criteria
- Marzano model has 60 criteria
- Danielson has 76 criteria
- Tulsa model has 20 criteria (it had 37 originally)

In pilot phase, principals and teachers reduced the number of criteria from 37 to 20

These 20 dimensions of the Tulsa model are:
- preparation
- routine
- discipline
- learning environment
- establishes objectives
- stresses sequence
- relates objectives
- involves all learners
- explains content
- models
- monitors
- adjusts to monitoring
- guides practice
- independent practice
- establishes closure
- lesson plans
- student files
- grading patterns
- student mastery

TLA (Teacher and Leader Effectiveness Commission) is composed of about 20 people, OEA, AFT, POE, Legislators, PTA, Administrators, School Board Members
- they evaluated systems for 6 months and came out with the recommendation that we have 3 possible systems
- they said the Tulsa system should be the default system, but schools should have options to adopt Danielson or Marzano

State Board took that recommendation and made Tulsa Public Schools Model as the “Presumptive Default”
- also picked McREL’s Principal Evaluation System and Reeve’s Leadership Performance Matrix
- your district will have to pick between these two systems on principal evaluation systems (we won’t focus on this today, however)

For 2012-2013: you will pilot one of the system and money will be available: $1.5 to be spent, 100% to be distributed on ADA basis to help with training ad implementation of selected models

There is no guarantee of future money after 2012-2013

Implementation Flow Chart
1- SDE provides information on TLA Framework (webinars will start in start of February, Oklahoma City area has 25 slots and they are already full)
2- Vendors provide information on systems
3- Districts choose systems (Supt Barresi said by late March at COSA conference last week)
4- Districts receive training on chosen systems
5- Districts implement chosen systems
6- TLA commission Commission and State Board continually receive updates
7- TLA commission and state board select Default Qualitative System and Quantitative Measures for 2013-2014

Principals will be required to attend multi-day training for whatever system the district selects

Now hearing from Tulsa PS

Our seed grant was funded by Gates Foundation and matched with local foundation dollars
- this was a massive effort, lots of time as well as funds required
- no evaluation system is practical if you can’t implement it

MY QUESTION: HOW DO THESE EVALUATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATE COMMON CORE EXPECTATIONS?

Ours is unique because it is Oklahoma grown, it has been validated, we base it on research and best practices (we are undergoing a validation study now)

Driving gains in student achievement
- teacher and leader effectiveness
- student achievement

TLA evaluation system based on observations, evaluations, feedback/support, and conferences
- this is rubric-based

Rubric provides a support document defining professional proficiency for 5 rankings
- a minimum of 2 observations are required, which each must be at least 20 minutes long
- small pieces of evidence gathered over time are the key

“The principal’s intentional study and analysis of the teacher’s classroom performance, guided by the detailed descriptions of the rubric and recorded in the observation form, which simplifies the rubric.”

Evaluation form is a technology-enhanced tool that documents/logs patterns of effectiveness via the rubric

Conferences follow each observation and evaluation, provide teachers with “status check” and “road map” to improve effectiveness

5 tiered approach to feedback and support
- focuses on 1 (“ineffective”) and 2 (“needs improvement”) performance levels and increases in ALL effective areas

Now hearing from Linda Hendrix
- been with Tulsa Public Schools for 13 years, never envisioned my role changing so dramatically because of accountability

Good relationship between district, teachers, and the teacher’s association is critical
- I’ve been on assessment committee for TPS since day 1 when Gates started with us

TLE System Structure: dimensions for teachers and principals (number of indicators follow, and weights)

Teachers: (20)
- classroom management – 6 – 30%
- instructional effectiveness – 10 – 50%
- professional growth and continuous improvement – 2 – 10%
- interpersonal skills – 1 – 5%
- leadership – 1 – 5%

Principals: (19)
- organization and school management – 6 – 35%
- instructional leadership – 2 – 13%
- professional growth and responsibility – 13%
- interpersonal skills – 4 – 13%
- leadership – 5 – 13%
- stakeholder perceptions – 1 – 13%

We recognized we needed weights, so we assigned the rubric calculation to put more focus (80%) on classroom management and instructional effectiveness

SM 2033 was crafted after we started the Gates process
- five tiers of effectiveness
- domains mirror SB 2033 requirements
- evaluation time frames
- supports for improvement
- applies to ALL teachers and leaders

Teacher rubric in detail: “Like a dictionary, the rubric’s descriptions provide definitional clarity as to each level of effectiveness”
- we wanted everyone to perceive the rubric in the same way
- fairness and equity in the process was a big focus for our working group

5 columns going across the rubric
1- ineffective
2- needs improvement
3- effective
4- highly effective
5- superior

Most of our administrators spend far more than 20 minutes in each teacher’s classroom
- rubric provides spaces for principals to put +, -, or another symbol in each category

One example: “the teacher might not have used their smartboard in the lesson, and they need to use technology, so you would mark that on the rubric”

MY COMMENT: THIS HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF FOCUSING ON EFFECTIVE LEARNING AND EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES, RATHER THAN JUST TECHNOLOGY USE (REF LARRY CUBAN)

Foundational idea: you don’t fire teachers and help them improve

5 tier approach to supporting teachers instructionally and improving leaders
1- “Push Pin” (less formal, yet documented) approaches to remedy ineffectiveness

2- Professional Development Plans (PDP)
in Tulsa PS we call this a “Personal Development Plan” to use more positive words/terms than “improvement plan”

3- Quality Experiences Supporting Teachers (QUEST)

We have Quest: intensive 24 day program, a Quest facilitator works with teachers 3 days per week, half day each time
- they model, help create lessons, lesson plan, and more

MY THOUGHT: THIS SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT PROGRAM AND I’D LOVE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT IT

4- “9-week Cohort” focuses on application, reflection and critical thinking tools to support teachers to move to the next level of consistently impacting student learning”

5- “PDP Training Support Cycles” – 2 hour specific topic PD to address issues identified in PDPs, Oct through April

“our system is research based” and “we based this on reliable sources”

MY COMMENT: WHEN PEOPLE SAY THINGS LIKE THIS AND DON’T CITE AS WELL AS EXPLAIN THE ACTUAL RESEARCH BASIS, IT’S EQUIVALENT TO SOMEONE SAYING, “I HEARD THIS FROM JESUS.” THAT MAY BE TRUE, BUT IN THIS ACADEMIC SETTING WE NEED MORE ELABORATION THAN THAT: A FULL ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY PLEASE.

Now hearing from last speaker

MY SUGGESTION: IT WOULD BE GREAT TO HAVE THE NAMES OF EACH PRESENTER INCLUDED ON THE PRESENTATION SLIDES

The impact:
- student achievement gains
- “great improvements in identifying and distinguishing levels of professional performance”
- teacher evaluation: rankings guided and defined by 265 performance descriptions in 2010-2011 9versus 09-10: zero)
- more support for “less than effective” teachers
- “alignment of professional development plans and evaluation findings”

We are working to have teachers evaluated consistently via our rubric
- we have grown as evaluators through collaboration and comparing notes
- leverage teacher and administrator input
- improve system based on real-world implementation
- simplicity is best
- train evaluators, and train them again
- ensure inter-rater reliability
– certification and re-certification process

teamwork, fortitude, engaging outside community was important

our vision is one thing: student achievement

MY COMMENT: OUR VISION MUST BE FAR WIDER AND DEEPER THAN MERELY STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT. BILL GATES AND NCLB-STYLE HIGH STAKES ACCOUNTABILITY LOVING POLITICIANS MAY WANT US TO SAY THINGS LIKE THIS, BUT WE SHOULD NOT. THERE ARE SO MANY IMPORTANT THINGS WE DO AS TEACHERS AND IN OUR SCHOOLS THAT ARE NOT MEASURED ON STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS. STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF OUR FOCUS IN OUR SCHOOLS, BUT IT SHOULD NOT AND MUST NOT BE OUR SINGULAR FOCUS. WE ARE FOCUSED ON STUDENTS, BUT WE ARE ALSO FOCUSED ON ALL ASPECTS OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT AS INDIVIDUALS AND CITIZENS: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, COLLABORATION, ETHICS, CITIZENSHIP, ETC.

From Michael Barlow:
- as this is rolled out statewide, it will be web-based so you can use an iPad or smartphone application
- Enid PS is doing this now

From : “I hate technology and will not use it, I will do this with my paper and pencil, and you can do this evaluation with paper too.”

MY COMMENT: WOW – THIS WAS QUITE AN ANTI-TECHNOLOGY STATEMENT. I WONDER IF SHE USES A CAN OPENER AT HOME?

From Michael Barlow: We are not going to use student test scores in this now, but it is coming
- merit pay is coming, but it’s not part of this bill now

MY QUESTION: SINCE STATE FUNDS AS WELL AS GRANT FUNDS ARE SUPPORTING THE CREATION OF THIS WEB-BASED TOOL, WILL IT BE MADE AVAILABLE FREE TO SCHOOLS AND EDUCATORS? IT SHOULD BE. THIS IS A MANDATORY EVALUATION SYSTEM FOR OUR SCHOOLS TO IMPLEMENT AND IT ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE FREE ONLINE.
- I ASKED MICHAEL BARLOW ABOUT THIS AFTER THE SESSION AND HE CONFIRMED THE WEB-BASED ELEMENTS OF THIS EVALUATION SYSTEM WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FREE.

MY THOUGHTS: THE WORK TPS AND OTHERS HAVE DONE ON THIS QUALITATIVE EVALUATION IS EXCELLENT. THERE IS MUCH GOING ON HERE WHICH IS NOT GOOD, HOWEVER. WHERE IS THE CONSTITUENCY IN OKLAHOMA WHICH IS OPPOSING THE TIE OF STUDENT TEST SCORES TO TEACHER ASSESSMENT / EVALUATION AND MERIT PAY. PEOPLE LIKE MICHAEL BARLOW ARE SAYING ‘MERIT PAY IS COMING’ AS AN INEVITABILITY. WE CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT ACCEPT THIS AS PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS. THERE IS NOT SOUND ACADEMIC RESEARCH TO SUPPORT THE VALUE OF THIS PATH, AND PEOPLE SEEM TO BE RUNNING LIKE LEMMINGS TOWARD THE CLIFF WITHOUT PROTEST. WHERE IS THE PROTEST? WHERE IS THE ORGANIZED OPPOSITION TO MERIT PAY TIED TO STUDENT TEST SCORES IN OKLAHOMA? THIS IS MADNESS AND WE MUST ACT TO STOP IT.

Technorati Tags: education, oaesp, oklahoma, principal, tle, evaluation, leadership, gates, ccosa

Teacher Leader Effectiveness (TLE) and the Tulsa Model #oaesp12 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 20, 2012.

It is absolutely fantastic to be able to teach students with an iPad2 using an AppleTV, an HDMI-ready flatscreen TV, and an open wifi network. The mirroring feature of the iPad2 to an AppleTV is hands-down, without question, the best way to teach a class using an iOS device. (The iPhone 4GS will also mirror to an AppleTV, but earlier iPhone versions won’t and the iPad 1 won’t either.) I LOVE being able to be “wireless” and untethered from the television/display and be anywhere in the room during our lessons.

Earlier today, I helped some elementary administrators setup for a presentation at the Oklahoma Association of Elementary School Principals (OAESP) mid-winter conference using an AppleTV, an iPad and a projector. In that case we used a $40 HDMI to VGA converter recommended in this iEAR.org post and everything worked great. The main lesson learned there was to bring and use our own wifi hotspot. We downloaded all the YouTube videos used in the presentation to a laptop in advance using saveyoutube.com, and transferred them directly to the iPad’s photo roll using the PhotoSync app and PhotoSync Companion software. We did this because when we tested the setup earlier, we found the wireless performance of video playback was slow and choppy at times. This could have been due to the way the conference hotel’s router was configured, and/or because of a lot of traffic on the router. Using a wifi hotspot we’d brought along worked well, even though it wasn’t connected to the Internet. All the videos and the Keynote slideshow were copied offline on the iPad2 used for the presentation, so no Internet connectivity was required.

Getting back to Puppet Pals and our lessons learned… I’m working with 12 students and we have 3 iPads, so they’ve been working in groups of four. Last week we discussed the basics of three act structure, which I’ve drawn and described as “the story arc.” This is the first time any of these students have worked with iPads or videography like this. While everyone has seen movies and has some movie literacy, their initial tendency is to want to have characters fight and zoom around the screen. Last week each group made an initial video (each about 60 seconds long) and today we started by watching and evaluating them. These first videos didn’t have much of a semblance of “story,” but we were learning the basics of the program including how to manipulate characters, how it’s helpful to move characters when they are speaking, how to pass the microphone and speak clearly into it, and how to pause recordings if needed to discuss a plan for the next scene. Different students served as scribes today as we discussed some strengths as well as ways the initial movies could be improved.

Here are some of our lessons learned.

DISCUSS APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE FOR THE CONTEXT
Both weeks we’ve had discussions about appropriate language, considering the fact we’re in a church for Tiger Club and that we’re hoping to share these videos with other people online. Even with these discussions in advance, it’s been important to facilitate both the planning and production of videos with students. Two other adults are available for our class to help the students, but their involvement has been minimal. We want to have fun and are having fun, but boundaries are important and this wasn’t a conversation I was initially planning on having with students before our first lesson started. It’s an important conversation. For one of our videos today I actually had to edit out about 4 seconds which had some profane words which ‘slipped out.’ Fortunately it’s easy to do that in iMovie. It’s valuable to discuss with students the importance of choosing their words carefully depending on their surroundings and context. Reminds me of Ruby Payne’s book.

AN iRIG MIC IS CRITICAL TO ELIMINATE BACKGROUND NOISE
Our first two meetings we’ve just had one iRig mic to share among three groups with three iPads. If you watch and listen to some of our videos from today which are embedded below, you won’t have any doubts about which group used the iRig and which didn’t. The iRig does a fantastic job filtering out background noise in a classroom. Since we have three groups of students working in a small classroom and many are laughing/having fun as they’re creating videos, the iRig is really a must.

REMEMBER YOUR APPLE TV REMOTE CONTROL
Last week I forgot to pack and bring my remote control for the AppleTV, and as a result I couldn’t configure it to access the local church’s wifi network. Don’t forget the remote. It is possible to configure an iOS device to use the Remote app to control an AppleTV, but the device and the AppleTV have to be connected to the same wifi network for this to work. That initially requires use of the remote control.

DOWNLOAD ALL CHARACTERS FROM PUPPET PALS DIRECTORS EDITION FIRST
Puppet Pals for iPad comes in two versions, one that is free (with only a few character and background sets) and the $3 “Directors Pass” version which comes with all the characters and backgrounds. Definitely spring for the $3 version, but download all the backgrounds and characters in advance so students won’t have to do that when they are in class.

PROVIDE SOME LIMITS FOR STUDENTS IN PUPPET PALS
Even if you just have a few character and background sets downloaded and available in Puppet Pals, the choices can be pretty overwhelming for students. It’s always instructive to see how often students will copy or mimic something you demonstrate initially for them in a whole group setting, rather than striking out on their own with novel ideas. (That dynamic is why some constructivist learning advocates discourage showing students examples, I think.) It’s good to model possibilities, but I think it’s also helpful to provide limits. I asked students both last week and today to choose no more than 3 or 4 characters, and no more than 3 different scenes. We have been working to build short, 1-2 minute videos, so this is plenty. In some cases students used more characters in their groups, but generally this limitation has been helpful and students have followed it.

LET STUDENTS DO ALL THE iPAD DRIVING
Even during the whole-group demonstrations of the Puppet Pals app, it’s worked well to have different students do all the clicking and swiping on the app: They’ve “done all the driving.” It’s very good to facilitate this with oral instructions, rather than simply “do it” for students yourself as the teacher. They learn more when they ‘drive’ and they are far more engaged. Most students want a chance to participate, and there are plenty of ways to do that in an iPad lesson with Puppet Pals.

REQUIRE STUDENTS TO DISCUSS AND CREATE A PAPER-BASED PLANNING DOCUMENT FIRST
With just about any multimedia project, getting students to plan, get organized, and in some cases WRITE is the hardest part of the entire experience. It’s also the most important, however, because it contributes the most to the eventual success and quality of the project. This week students did plan and write out more details about their planned videos and stories, so they each have more of a semblance of a narrative. Remember I’ve just worked with these students two times for 50 minutes each week, and it’s challenging to do that without any prior relationship or experiences together. I’m not claiming we’ve created any masterpieces here, but we ARE definitely having fun and I think the kids are picking up some things about telling digital stories. I’m learning a lot too!

I created a new, free YouTube channel tonight to share these videos. (multimediasandbox) Here are the student planning pages for today’s videos (very sketchy and simple, but more than we did last week) and the videos they created. I am particularly proud of this first group’s video, who came a LONG way because of the planning and storyboarding they did last week following our lesson time.

What does it say that two of my three student groups made videos which primarily focused on two groups fighting? We talked about the importance of conflict and tension which leads to an eventual climax/resolution for the characters in a story, but we didn’t insist it had to be about fighting. Next week I’m thinking I’ll have students draw some characters out of a hat that they’ll be required to include in their story, along with a sentence or sentence fragment they’ll have to use and build on for a novel plot. I’m thinking I’ll add an additional guideline that their characters can’t fight. Can you think of other or better guidelines to use next week?

LAND FIGHT

PRESIDENTIAL FIGHT

SHREK 4 REMIX

(no photo of the planning doc is available)

Technorati Tags: ipad, puppet, pals, lessons, learned, videography

Lessons Learned Using Puppet Pals on iPads in an After School Program originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

Areas the state department says we need to do:
- talk with our community stakeholders
- do professional development (do you have a plan)

MY THOUGHTS: WHERE ARE THE EXAMPLES OF COMMON CORE PD PLANS FOR OTHER OKLAHOMA SCHOOL DISTRICTS? WHERE IS THERE A SPACE TO SHARE LINKS TO DIFFERENT COMMON CORE TRANSITION PLANS IN OKLAHOMA? WHERE ARE CURRICULUM MAPS ONLINE?

How are you providing the big picture of who, what, when, where to everyone

The 6 areas are posted, we are going to do a ‘hosted carousel activity’
1- Professional Development
2- Assessment
3- Instruction
4- Curriculum
5- Stakeholders
6- Overview

What are you doing NOW to do these things?

HERE ARE THE PICTURES I TOOK OF OUR BRAINSTORMING IN THESE AREAS

Transition Timeline for Common Core

- June 2010: State Board adopts common core state standards

Transition: 2010 – 2014 teacher development, local curriculum revision, test development

Transition complete: 2014

New standards for math and language arts for Common Core
- there are literacy and other changes
- math and language arts are the only tests that will change

Very important that our students have informational texts to use

Resources
- See sde.state.ok.us
- click Common Core State Standards
- REAC3H Network

Common Core website: http://corestandards.org

CCOSA http://ccosa.org

K2 Center websites
- http://k20center.ou.edu
- http://k20alt.ou.edu

Presentations:
- K20 to the CORE

Park website (park.cc) will be in charge of questions, they are periodically publishing questions and asking for feedback

Very important that students are writing across the curriculum

Key lesson for teachers: good teaching practices and high expectations are the most important elements of Common Core

Strategies:
- Comintas (?)
- lots of focus on students discussing things and being able to communicate their ideas in both written and oral forms

Also K20 offers sessions on Core Tools and Core Design (lesson plan development)
- we are seeing teachers get really excited about these changes

MY COMMENTS: MOST OF THE IDEAS WHICH WERE SHARED TODAY, THAT I HEARD, WERE MORE AWARENESS-LEVEL THINGS. WE NEED BREAKOUT SESSIONS LIKE THIS WHICH ARE MORE FOCUSED ON IMPLEMENTATION SPECIFICS. HERE ARE QUESTIONS I HAD IN THIS SESSION WHICH WENT UNANSWERED:
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS LESSON PLAN TEMPLATES WHICH OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS ARE USING WITH TEACHERS FOR COMMON CORE ALIGNED LESSONS?
- HOW ARE TEACHERS WHO ARE TRANSITIONING TO COMMON CORE THIS YEAR (AND WE HAD ONE AT OUR TABLE) CHANGING THEIR LESSON PLANS FOR CCSS?
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS DISTRICT TRANSITION PLANS FOR CCSS IN OKLAHOMA?
- WHERE IS THE OKLAHOMA LESSON PLAN DATABASE FOR PUBLICLY SHARING (UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES) CCSS ALIGNED LESSONS?
- WHAT SHOULD WE TELL TEACHERS WHO ARE TEACHING A COURSE WITH AN EOI (END OF INSTRUCTION EXAM) WHEN IT COMES TO COMMON CORE? (IT SEEMS TO BE THE GAME HASN’T CHANGED AT ALL FOR THEM AT THIS POINT AS LONG AS EOI’S REMAIN.)
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS WALKTHROUGH RUBRICS FOR OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS WHICH ARE COMMON CORE ALIGNED?
- WHERE ARE VIDEO RESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR TEACHERS TO SEE ‘BEST PRACTICE’ LESSONS FOR COMMON CORE?
- WHERE ARE SCHOOL DISTRICTS SAFELY PUBLISHING STUDENT WORK ONLINE IN AN INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT?

LOTS OF QUESTIONS. NOT MANY ANSWERS. YET.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, ccss, common, core, commoncore, oaesp, oaesp12

What’s So Common About Common Core? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

Information about Mark is listed on the Education Speakers Group website and Nuts and Bolts Symposium website. This is a PDF of the same handout we were provided for today’s keynote by Mark.

I want you to be on fire for your job, which is one of the most important jobs in the world
There are a lot of adult educators who are struggling, who need your help

it’s a great day to be an encourager and not a discourager
- it’s a great day to become a better person

Let’s take this day and embrace it to the fullest

A great day to be a positive force is a negative society

#1 thing young kids are looking for: positive adult role models
- you

I’ve been doing this full time for 8 years now
Think of this activity:
- make a list on a piece of paper of the qualities you want from the kids and adults you work with which you want to see / encourage / support

What is the #1 quality you want from your students
- #1 quality isn’t smarts: it’s a positive attitude and good behavior in the classroom
- know what I wanted from my teachers as a principal
- It was always harder

educators around the world want students to treat me with unconditional respect, and to respect each other
- to get along with each

#3 reason: students motivated to learn
- we’ve got to make sure we are motivated
- when I hire teachers, I look for teachers who are MOTIVATED to be the best they can be

The only person I have a chance to control is myself

I am beneath everyone in this room, but I do have a passion
- if you’re going to be in the teaching profession for 30 years, you might as well be on fire
- we have got to have a super positive attitude
- I didn’t have that when I started teaching

It’s ok to be in school improvement mode, but don’t just stay there
- we must always ask: can I reach one more adult, can I reach one more student
- we have a chance to embrace the day and make the world a better place

Every day we need to look in the mirror and ask if we are treating everyone with unconditional respect
- whatever has become habit in your life is what you do
- that is why we have to have the best habits

“If the butt starts getting numb, the brain is going dumb” – Marsha Tate

Most important thing to me is that the learning sticks

You have got to be willing to take a risk as a successful educational leader

You don’t learn how to teach in college
- it is all on the job training

MY THOUGHT: HERE’S A LOUD INDICTMENT OF TYPICAL TEACHER EDUCATION / TEACHER PREPARATION PROGRAMS

Often we make things too complicated
- fear of embarrassment and fear of failure are the reasons many kids don’t participate in class, AND the reason many classroom teachers won’t try something new in the classroom

The environment for success is key
- what relationships have been developed in your school culture

if we can help create a risk-free environment where students will feel safe taking risks, they will participate far more

Best way to increase student achievement: Increase the quality of instruction
- discipline referrals will go down, test scores will go up

My handout is long, because I’d always rather give you MORE rather than less

Please write down these goals:
- help each person in this “relight your fire” (get the fire back)
- the passion to change the world, unconditional love for everyone

It’s so easy in education to lose your fire

“The Energy Bus” by Jon Jordon

No educator in the nation would tell you they started out wanting to become a screamer, be in survival mode, be an energy vampire

You can’t give away something you don’t have

Great teachers are always looking for opportunities to encourage others and build relationships (with students and other teachers)
- #1 goal is relight your fire

#2 goal: fill up an imaginary toolbox for success

In college you don’t have to have a bell activity, a bathroom plan, and more… but in public education you do
- we want you to fill up with toolbox strategies today to take back right away

bathroom procedure: Yes with a qualifier
- you can go to the restroom after you finish problems 1 through 5

#3 goal: I want educators to network and share

Some of the most effective teachers I’ve ever seen are 1st year teachers
- engagement in the classroom

#4 have fun at this conference

Most effective teachers create an environment where the students do the majority of the work

I have found the better I meet my needs in my personal life, the better I can meet my student needs: have patience

Willard Harley: “His Needs, and Her Needs”
- you have an emotional bank deposit with every person, and you’re either making deposits or withdrawals

What is your spouse’s love language?

support and appreciation = the main thing teachers want from their administrator

Do you know the #1 thing all students need? Unconditional LOVE

the key to relationships is loading up the emotional bank account deposits

with students
- go to their extracurricular activities
- recognize each student’s birthday
- give students jobs in the classroom
- positive parent contact
- verbal praise
- noticing them and commenting or questioning them about it in a supportive way
- calling them by name
- stickers

with adults:
- food
- being there
- ask about family

If you prove that you care for someone through your actions, they will be much more likely to be on board with you

Effective teachers have some signal when they want eyes-on attention from students
- a bell
- repeated claps
- time – out
- ring, ring – hello

If the kids say “oooo” because you have used disrespect or sarcasm, the kids are thinking “you’re just like us, that’s how we treat each other”
- don’t take the low road
- choose to meet disrespect with respect, anger with love… these are the decisions we must make

Learning will be on fire in your classrooms when teachers get the environment right for learning

students can make emotional bank account deposits
- often though that is not their habit

Get the “Cha Ching” going in your classroom
- I taught this to students, we brainstormed on butcher paper

If you think about it, making 100% on the state test is not as important as making deposits
- self-contained teachers particularly have this opportunity

going out of your way on purpose to make emotional deposits and build relationships with others

[THIS IS WHEN WE TOOK OUR MORNING BREAK]

Giveaways Mark used:
- bell with stickers
- tshirts

Talk with students all the time about CHOICES
- everything is a choice, plus you choose the attitude you are going to have every day

sometimes bad things just happen, and we are in a situation when we say, “I did not deserve that.”
- so sometimes we have to force ourselves to have a positive attitude

Positive relationships and the emotional bank account: these are keys in our toolbox

variety and classroom management
- if you don’t have the classroom management right, you won’t want or be able to take your kids to the lab for experiments

24 days to form a habit
- Harry Wong: first weeks of school, procedures, procedures, procedures,
- something always becomes a habit/procedure in the classroom

MY COMMENT: THIS IS ABOUT NORMALIZATION, AND BUILDING A CULTURE

You can re-teach procedures at any time of the year, but the start of the year is the best time to do that

Environment for success: all about relationships and classroom management
- always better to be proactive instead of reactive

Add the words: Room setup
- can determine if your workshop or class is effective or ineffective
- if you don’t work the room, the room will work you
- I don’t prefer round tables, scattered rectangular tables are my favorite to prevent people from keeping their backs to you all day as as presenter

Working the classroom is like working a traffic light (Henry Wong again)
- if you stay at the front of the room, automatically you will have zones or layers created in the classroom
- the farther you are from a student, the more likely they are not going to be participating

College professors don’t have to ‘work the classroom’ like we do in PK-12 education

proximity and positive words are big motivators for student engagement

you have got to monitor as you teach
- assessments must be done in the classroom

As a principal I told teachers I was doing “specific skill observation”
- I was looking for a specific skill

1st one: Traffic Light, work the room

I would be in a teacher’s classroom at least 30 times during the semester
- If I only go in there twice a year,

Do you know teachers like to

#1 motivator after the relationship is SUCCESS with both kids and adults

sometimes teachers don’t get the right strategies in college
- specific skill observation was one of the best things we ever did at my school

Effective teaching is a lifestyle
- getting the correct habits in the toolbox is the most important thing

Here are the strategies that my teachers knew how to use with students for engagement:
- evil eye
- evil eye with signal
- proximity
- proximity with touch
- proximity with note
- whisper technique
- delayed referral
- send on referral
- role play
- bell activity

Comments from participants on most important elements
- building trust within your building

Instead of just asking students “Why?” kick up short answer questions with this kind of script: “I like your answer, tell me why you chose that answer”

#1 predictor of student achievement is the teacher (it’s not the smart board, the common core standards, etc)

you’ve got to fight all disrespect with respect every time

The Five Love languages by Gary Chapman is a great book, and there are other books specifically for adults with children and teen

Love language 1: Acts of Service

Love Language 2: Words of Affirmation
- most men speak this love language

Words have SO MUCH power
- we have got to be careful, say the right words, and do the right thing so we make deposits instead of withdrawals

Love Language 3: Gifts
- if your wife’s love language is gifts, you better get her a huge diamond

Love Language 4: Quality Time
- people that want you to be their BFF
- how do you identify these students: they get to your door early each morning, they are looking for adult role models they want to be with

This is where gang membership starts I think: people are looking for something

Our relationships with everyone is key

if I don’t spend quality time with my spouse, there is a snake somewhere who will
- often when we run into problems with relationships, we are speaking the wrong love language

Love Language 5: Physical Touch

Assignment: Identify your dominant love language (how can people make the biggest deposit for you)
- there is a profile that goes with the book
- when you do the profile with the book you get a pretty good idea

Technorati Tags: relationships, pd, professional, development, classroom, management, instruction, principal

Classroom Management, Effective Instruction, and Student Motivation by Mark Mcleod originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

“Kids will not always remember WHAT you teach them, but they will always remember HOW you treat them”

love affair politicians have with high stakes, standardized assessment

We advocate for:
- growth models for learning for students
- teacher and principal evaluation

pressure now is “a significant part” of teacher and principal evaluation will be based on standardized test scores
- worry is: who is going to want to teach the kids with the low test scores?

We are working on a framework document for what we think would be a fair and effective evaluation process for administrators

Doug Reeves talks about “deep evaluation”
- we think each educator should focus each year on 2 or 3 key things for improvement

Educators have to take the
- theories of change are different for schools than business

Common Core and Assessments
- Park organization is our consortium in Oklahoma
- get involved in that process of developing those assessments
- those assessments will rule your life if our educational politics continue as they have been tracking

National renewal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) for is an uncertain pathway right now
- all 3 proposals now scrap AYP but keep annual testing
- both House and Senate versions also scrap subgroup targets
- both let states decide evaluation processes for teachers and students, those without a framework will have to develop one based significantly on student test scores

NAESP’s Recommendations for ESEA Reauthorization

Low performing school models (4 of them) must be used in the waiver package: all include firing the principal first
- we continue to fight for a fair and objective evaluation for principals

There is no legislation which is perfect
- what we must do as a group across the nation is raise the volume our voices as principals in these discussions
- we need to tell our stories in different strategic ways

My advocacy team came up with 3 P’s
- protect: the critical role of principals (research tells us how important principals
- promote: our own vision for education reform (we are the professionals, we must remind ourselves
- preserve: preserve the principalship by prioritzing professional development

Last year President Obama used backdrop for education with a backdrop of 3 R’s
- responsibility, reform, results

“leading the learning” would be my backdrop
- competence, culture, and connections
- I believe accomplished principals must have competence
- provide meaningful PD, communicate effectively, differentiate support
- leader in the design of a strategic school plan
- here’s our map for where we are going…

Principals are creators of culture
- you empower your staff
- meeting diverse student needs
- setting alignment across grade levels
- may be creating a professional learning community
- formalizing expectations
- encouraging teachers to take a risk, and if they fail you will work with them

Michael Fullen: If principals are not in tune with the school culture, your culture will manage you

recruitment is key: not just among teachers but among all constituents

now is the time for us to be ruthlessly strategic about who we are and what we are about

I encourage you to always do what is right

Closing thank you: for beginning your day early, staying late, getting to that pile of reading, doing lunch duty more than you should, for early morning sub calls, for knowing when to let a parent vent, your ability to coach ineffective teachers out of the profession, for being brave enough to sometimes buck the system, remaining calm amidst many storms, knowing when to make a decision, for caring, striving for excellence (not necessarily perfection), raising the volume of the voice of our profession. and much more….

A Call to Increase the Volume of our Profession in Educational Politics originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

I haven’t decided who I’m voting for this year for President, I’m ideologically aligned with many Rootstrikers and I don’t think any of our current Presidential candidates are. Whatever your personal political leanings might be, it’s an important time to discuss the election with U.S. students in our classrooms as well as media literacy. How do you know what to believe when you see something in the media or online? What authority do you trust? Why? How can you check the facts and weigh bias? Why do these questions matter?

Go forth, fellow educator… and teach both young and old to ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. Some of them will be good ones. No one is serving hemlock today at your school, thankfully. Bring forth your best efforts to encourage critical thinking. The future of our nation hangs in the balance.

Technorati Tags: media, politics, video, youtube, pac, super, superpac, unitedstates

The Best Political Spin Money Can Buy originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

While the new draft rules are available on the SDE website, I can’t find a link to submit “public comments” on either the Oklahoma SDE News Blog site (ok.gov/sde/newsblogs), the old SDE homepage or the new one. If you know where information is posted about submitting public comments on these draft rules please let me know by leaving a comment. The document itself does not provide any guidance or contact info for people wanting to submit public comments.

I haven’t read through these in detail but will in upcoming days. I’ll probably submit “a public comment” if I can learn where and how to do so.

UPDATE: Eric Hileman let me know comments can be submitted via email to rules@ok.gov.

UPDATE2: The following link provides instructions about submitting public comments for this proposed rule change: www.sde.state.ok.us/Law/Rules. The published impact statement for this rule change is also worth reading.

photo credit: HikingArtist.com

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, online, course, courses, k12, sde

Supplemental Oklahoma Rules for K-12 Online Courses originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 17, 2012.

The cost of activating an iPhone with AT&T is absolutely ridiculous. Since I have several kids, and eventually want all of them to be able to use smartphones, this is a real concern for me. Our family wireless bill now exceeds a monthly car payment, and I am not “OK” with this situation being considered “normal.” Because of these concerns, I recently figured out how to jailbreak and “unlock” an older iPhone 3G for one of my kids to use and put it on the T-Mobile network on a “pay-as-you-go” plan for $15 per month. This plan provides unlimited texting, phone calls for 10 cents per minute, and no cellular data. Since my kids primarily text and rarely make voice calls, this plan is perfect. It’s half the price AT&T would charge me to add an iPhone line to our existing family plan ($10 per month) plus activate the cheapest, AT&T-mandatory data plan ($20). Here are some of the things I learned getting that iPhone switched over to T-Mobile.

AT&T currently makes anyone using an iPhone on their network activate a data plan, and the cheapest one is $20 per month. There is a setting on more recent iOS versions to turn off cellular data entirely, and it might be possible to turn that off so AT&T never finds out you’re using an iPhone with a SIM card you activated previously with another phone. When I gave one of my kids my older iPhone a year or so ago, we activated it by switching the SIM card from their older RAZR phone and putting it in the iPhone. A few weeks after using it, AT&T sent my child a text message announcing they had recognized their phone was an iPhone and therefore activated a mandatory $20 per month data plan. We didn’t ask for that data plan, we didn’t want that data plan, but AT&T didn’t and doesn’t care. One of their objectives as a corporation is to soak everyone who is a customer for as much per month as they possibly can. This makes me angry and frustrated as a customer, and is a big reason I chose to figure out how to switch at least some of our family phones over to T-Mobile.

Different cell phone carriers use different technologies. AT&T phones use SIM cards because they operate on the GSM network. That is the same network used by T-Mobile, which is the reason an “unlocked” phone (including an unlocked iPhone) can be used with either AT&T or T-Mobile in the USA. That’s not the case for Verizon phones, because they operate on the CDMA network. The English WikiPedia article, “Comparison of mobile phone standards,” provides some good background on the relative advantages and disadvantages of these phone types. If you travel internationally outside the USA, you definitely want to use a GSM phone since about 80-85% of the world’s cell phones use GSM. If you have an unlocked phone, you can purchase a local SIM card in many countries and use it in your phone. This can be a good way to avoid “international roaming fees” which some carriers (including AT&T, depending on your plan) can sock you with if you use your ‘normal’ SIM card out of the country.

It’s remarkable and ridiculous at some level to see how “locking phones” has become normal in the United States, along with absurdly expensive rates for cellular data access. Countries including Lebanon, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Singapore require (currently) all phones sold in their countries be sold UNLOCKED. This means customers are free to use those phones with any available wireless carrier, without going through the tedious hoops I’m about to describe to unlock an iPhone 3G.

If you’re interested in unlocking an iPhone and switching to T-Mobile, I recommend you find someone who has prior experience both jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones to help you. This is something you can figure out how to do successfully using trustworthy websites as well as YouTube video tutorials, but there ARE risks as well as drawbacks to carefully weigh. Understand the following:

1. Apple does not support jailbreaking or unlocking your iPhone and doing so can void your warranty. (If you “just” jailbreak and don’t “unlock” you should be able to re-install the iOS firmware and restore your iPhone’s software to it’s original / non-jailbroken condition, but depending on circumstances this may not always be possible. Unlocking almost always voids your warranty.)
2. Unlocking can require overwriting / changing the “baseband” for your iPhone which can be an irreversible action.
3. It may be necessary to update your iPhone baseband to a version which disables certain functionality, like GPS. Weigh this carefully.
4. If something goes wrong during your jailbreaking and unlocking process, it IS possible that you might “brick” your iPhone. This means it could be unusable and essentially become an expensive paperweight. That’s why I recommend you work with someone with prior successful experiences jailbreaking and unlocking an iPhone if you try this.
5. There are a lot of iPhone jailbreaking and unlocking websites which are mainly seeking ad revenue. Some may have malware (bad stuff) they could install on your computer and/or your iPhone. Malware DOES exist for the iPhone, I have a friend who got some over a year ago via a jailbroken app he downloaded and tried. Be sure to use reliable, trustworthy websites to obtain jailbreak and unlock software.
6. According to a T-Mobile employee I interviewed, T-Mobile does NOT provide 3G or 4G connectivity speeds to any iPhone users on their network. T-Mobile limits all iPhone users to 2G or “edge” connectivity speeds as of this writing. This is a major disadvantage and bummer… It could change down the road, but at this point it might be a reason to stick with AT&T or another official iPhone carrier.
7. T-Mobile is NOT going to merge with AT&T at this point and go away as an alternative network to AT&T in the USA, thanks (apparently) to a confluence of circumstances. Read more about this from December 2011 articles in TechCrunch and Engadget. I think this is really good news for consumers. AT&T acts like a bully monopoly already, and that behavior would have surely gotten only worse if they’d been allowed to get bigger via this merger.
8. Pay-as-you-go plans with T-Mobile can’t roam outside T-Mobile’s network. That means if my child is in a rural area or out of town away from T-Mobile’s coverage area, it might not be possible to text or call.

To get an iPhone on T-Mobile from AT&T, you will need to several things for sure and possibly some others. For sure, you’ll need to:

• Jailbreak your iPhone so you can install programs not authorized by Apple on it, using Cydia
• Unlock your iPhone by installing a program which lets other carrier SIM cards work

In some cases, you also may need to install new “baseband” software on your iPhone. As previously mentioned, in some cases this could disable iPhone functions like GPS.

There are several excellent sources of information about jailbreaking and unlocking which I recommend. Beware of Google searches for “jailbreak” and “unlock iPhone.” You’ll find tons of ad-supported websites with those searches, and in all likelihood some malware sites too. Here are the jailbreak and unlock information websites I use and recommend:

• Official blog of the iPhone Jailbreak Dev-Team: blog.iphone-dev.org
• The iPhone Wiki: theiphonewiki.com
• JailbreakQA: jailbreakqa.com

In my specific case, I inherited (from a relative who had upgraded) an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1. The iPhoneWiki has a direct link to the IPSW (iPhone iOS installer package) which I needed to use to jailbreak, along with instructions that I had to update my baseband to 06.15.00. Those instructions are clear that the process will disable GPS on this iPhone permanently. In my situation that’s not a big deal, because my child who will be using this iPhone won’t really need to use Google Maps or GPS features of other apps. It would be a big deal for my wife or for me, however, and it’s definitely important to know about in advance.

JailbreakQA has a good list of jailbreaking tools which are available for different iPhone models running different versions of iOS. I ended up using two versions of redsn0w to jailbreak and update the baseband on the iPhone 3G. I initially tried using the latest version to jailbreak (posted by the Dev Team at the end of December 2011) but it kept crashing. I used the older redsn0w 0.9.6rc19 to jailbreak but disabled the option to also install something to show battery usage. redsn0w is one of several tools available to jailbreak your iPhone. Again the one you can use depends on the hardware model as well as the iOS version installed on your iPhone. In the past I’ve jailbroken my iPhone with the PwnageTool, the jailbreak.me website, and greenpois0n.

When you jailbreak, it’s vital you do NOT update to the latest iOS version when it comes out. Recently I waited to update my iPhone4 to iOS 5, because the “untethered” jailbreak for it didn’t come out until last month. A tethered jailbreak means you have to restart your iPhone by physically plugging it into your computer and using jailbreak software to start it again. Untethered jailbreaks don’t require this, you can restart your phone when it is disconnected from your computer.

While I had jailbroken iPhones before, until this recent iPhone 3G jailbreak I hadn’t updated iPhone baseband software or unlocked an iPhone. Both processes proved to be very straightforward once I learned what to do. Upgrading the baseband is an option in redsn0w, which I learned how to do watching this YouTube tutorial. (The accent of the speaker makes his English a little hard to understand, but it’s thorough and helpful.) You can opt to jailbreak and update baseband at the same time, but I did them separately. I jailbroke first with the older version of redsn0w linked above, and then used the most recent redsn0w to update the baseband. It’s a little confusing because in this case, the check box is to install ‘iPad baseband’ and I wasn’t using an iPad. The video linked above confirmed this is the right step, however, and the process worked for me.

After updating the baseband, it was time to actually unlock the phone. I did this by installing the application “ultrasn0w” in Cydia. I had to run Cydia twice, however, and run the available updates before ultrasn0w became available in the search interface.

I should mention also that all this software is available FREE and without charge. There is no charge for redsn0w or ultrasn0w. I have never paid for any jailbreaking software in the past few years, and I have jailbroken (at different times) an original iPhone, an iPhone 3GS, an iPhone4, and an iPad1.

Once these three steps were complete on the iPhone 3G for my child (jailbreaking and installing Cydia, updating the baseband, and unlocking by installing ultrasn0w) I was ready to head to the T-Mobile store. I had visited a few weeks ago with some employees to get information about the process and available pricing, so there were no surprises for us at this stage.

It is possible to keep an existing phone number you have with AT&T and “port” it over to T-Mobile even with a “pay-as-you-go” plan. When we activated the iPhone 3G on T-Mobile, we paid $10.45 for a SIM card and the activation. I had to provide my AT&T wireless account number to the T-Mobile rep, who had to visit with customer service on the phone to make it happen. It can take up to 24 hours for a phone number with another carrier to “port” over, and during that time a temporary number with T-Mobile is available for use. Once the number “port” is complete we’ll need to purchase some voice minutes for the phone, and we’ll be able to recharge those minutes in the future either online, by using a SMS code, or purchasing a T-Mobile minutes card. We’ll be paying just $15 per month for this line (instead of $30 to AT&T) and mainly using it to text. The iPhone 3G works great on wifi for Internet access, but it won’t have any cellular data access.

Assuming this T-Mobile iPhone experiment continues to work well, I plan to switch another of my kids who already has an iPhone with $30/month in AT&T add-on account charges over to T-Mobile. I’m not sure if at some point I’ll switch my own account with AT&T over, but I’ve thought about doing that. I might use the same $15 per month pay-as-you-go plan, but also activate a MiFi card which I could use for true 3G and 4G network connectivity not only for my iPhone but also iPad and laptop. I’d just need to make sure I had enough monthly bandwidth to meet my needs. Currently MiWi is my favorite and most important iPhone app because it lets my phone become a mobile hotspot for laptops, iPads, and other devices. This is an important function I want to maintain, but a MiFi card could do that as well.

I hope the information I have provided in this post is helpful to you. Again, please work with someone who has had prior successful experiences jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones if you want to try this yourself. Also be aware of the risks and don’t take them lightly. I understand carriers like AT&T want to keep us all “locked in” to excruciatingly expensive contracts, but am thrilled consumers have options like those described here to go with an alternative carrier like T-Mobile. I’m definitely holding off on a new iPhone 4S for now, and when I do purchase a new iPhone I’ll seriously consider just buying an unlocked version.

Have you had experiences, good or bad, with jailbreaking and/or unlocking an iPhone? If so, what are some of your lessons learned?

Avoiding AT&T’s Ridiculous iPhone Data Fees by Switching to T-Mobile originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 17, 2012.

More photos are available in this Flickr set. Also check out the ten minute video I posted from the weekend, “7th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, Bushwhackers, and Jayhawkers (Kansas in 1861 – 1865)“.

What fun!

Technorati Tags: kansas, trapper, trappers, rendezvous, scout, scouting, campout, iphone, documentary, newton, troop

Trapper’s Rendezvous 2012: An iPhone documentary originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 15, 2012.

This evening I uploaded two large, high definition videos to YouTube from this past weekend’s Trapper’s Rendezvous campout in southcentral Kansas. The first was a 788 MB, 10 minute “no-edit” video about Kansas during the Civil War years of 1861 – 1865. The second was a 1 GB, 13.5 minute edited video (an “iPhone documentary”) I created with iMovie ’11. During the upload of both videos, my high speed cable modem Internet connection went down for awhile and came back up. I’m guessing the upload stress of my continuing CrashPlan backup (260+ GB worth, running for more than a week) along with Netflix streaming by other members of my family caused the interruptions. Whatever the case, the fact that uploads to YouTube using the latest Chrome browser now RESUME when you cancel an interrupted download and choose to upload the same file is GREAT. But-for this YouTube feature, I don’t think I could have successfully uploaded and shared these videos online tonight.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to ditch Internet Explorer, whether you use a Windows or Apple computer. IE is slower, has poorer support for web standards, and frankly… just isn’t cool to run on your computer anymore.

Added to these persuasive reasons, now you know IE doesn’t support recoverable and resumable YouTube uploads. Remember, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Use IE!”

Technorati Tags: youtube, upload, firefox, chrome, resume, recover, recoverable

Recoverable and Resumable YouTube Uploads with Chrome and FireFox originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 15, 2012.

More photos from the 2012 Trapper’s Rendezvous are available in this Flickr set.

Technorati Tags: kansas, history, civil, war, civilwar, jayhawker, bushwhacker, jayhawkers, bushwhackers, quantrill

7th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, Bushwhackers, and Jayhawkers (Kansas in 1861 – 1865) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 15, 2012.

It is possible to create a custom Google Gadget also, which can be embedded in multiple pages. In this seven minute screencast, I describe how to create a simple Google Gadget which can serve as another navigational menu on a series of webpages. One of the biggest benefits of using a Google Gadget for this purpose is that instead of updating separate pages which use the Gadget, you only need to update the Gadget ONCE and all the pages which use it will be updated. This link, “Hosting through the Google Gadgets Editor,” is referenced in the screencast. I also mention Mars Edit, my favorite blog post editor.

Give a custom Google Gadget a try!

See my post from last week, “Optimize a Google Site for Mobile Accessibility and Metrics,” for more tips about creating websites using Google Sites.

Technorati Tags: google, tutorial, gadget, webpage, howto

Create a Custom Google Gadget for Blogger or Google Sites originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 13, 2012.

Tomorrow my wife is teaching a preschool Bible lesson at our church, and wants to show the students a YouTube video she found. She does not have reliable wifi access in the classroom where she’ll share this video, however, nor does she have an AppleTV and a HDMI-capable computer which can mirror her iPad2′s screen. She does, however, have an iOS Apple Composite AV cable which will plug into the classroom television. To make an iOS-friendly, offline copy of the YouTube video on her iPad2 tonight in preparation for tomorrow’s lesson, these are the steps I followed.

1. Use saveyoutube.com to download a mp4 YouTube video version

There are many different video formats, and not all of them “play nice” on an iPad. Generally mp4 videos will play on an iPad, however. I used the website saveyoutube.com to download an mp4 version of the desired video tonight. I did this by simply adding the word SAVE in the website address after “www.” and before “youtube…”

Then I right clicked (or control-clicked on a Mac) the link and chose to save it to my computer’s desktop.

2. Use PhotoSync Software to Transfer the Video

PhotoSync is a fantastic $2 app in the iTunes app store which lets you directly transfer photos and videos between iOS devices and desktop/laptop computers. After installing PhotoSync on your iPad you also need to install “PhotoSync Companion” software (free) on your Windows or Apple computer.

Launch PhotoSync on both your iPad and your laptop/desktop computer. On an Apple computer, simply drag the downloaded mp4 video to the PhotoSync dock icon to transfer it to another device.

A prompt should open on your computer asking you want device you want to select as your transfer TARGET.

If you use this app on a school or other organizational network, it’s possible routers in use and/or the network configuration may prevent these apps from working. On a home network, however, ports should be open and work fine. This PhotoSync support article indicates the apps use the “Apple Bonjour Protocol” and specifically its “Multicast DNS implementation (mDNS)”. Ask your network administrator for assistance if you don’t see a device you want to transfer media to, and direct him/her to the PhotoSync connectivity support FAQs.

This evening I used the PhotoSync feature to create a new album directly on the iPad from my laptop, so the transferred video would have its own category.

The complete transfer of the 17 MB YouTube video took less than 30 seconds to finish on my home network. I love PhotoSync!

Today in the elementary principals’ meeting I attended, the assistant superintendent showed several YouTube videos directly on his iPad using the mirroring functions to an AppleTV. If you have an AppleTV but need a conversion solution from HDMI to VGA for your projector, definitely check out the recommended setup and purchase links from Tim Kamps listed on the iear.org post from October, “Apple TV may revolutionize the use of a teacher iPad in the classroom!” I just ordered those items last week and they arrived today, and I’m eager to try them out later this week in a lesson I’ll be teaching to middle school students using Puppet Pals Director’s Pass for iPad. If you have an iPad2 and are using it with students, I’d say an AppleTV is now mandatory classroom equipment thanks to its mirroring capabilities. Remember you can (and should probably consider) adding a passcode to your AppleTV for mirroring mode when you use it in class. If you don’t, anyone in wifi range with an iPhone4S or iPad2 (and on your wifi network) can ‘take over’ your AppleTV and play any video they want.

Do you have other favorite ways to download YouTube videos and transfer them to an iPad for later sharing with students? If so please share those links and ideas.

Technorati Tags: youtube, download, ipad, copy, appletv

Temporarily Copy Offline YouTube Videos to Your iPad originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 10, 2012.

One effective way to do this is to add website links for sites where you regularly (or periodically) post using the Google+ Authorship program. (It’s free.) Some reasons to do this include:

• Customizing posts from this site in Google search results so people can identify YOU as the author
• Increasing the likelihood that when people search/Google for YOUR name, some of your ‘claimed’ web content on these sites will have high Google page rank and show up on the first page of search results

In this post I’ll explain how to do this.

If you have not already, create a free account on Google Plus.

Click on your name in Google Plus to show your profile and click EDIT PROFILE in the upper right corner. Then click on the right sidebar area titled, CONTRIBUTOR TO.

Type the title and paste the web links/URLs for websites you want to “virtually claim” on your Google+ profile.

According to Google’s Webmaster Tools help:

Google is piloting the display of author information in search results to help users discover great content.

While there is no guarantee this pilot initiative will eventually be fully embraced, I’d put my money on this program expanding. “Claiming your content” online using websites like about.me (about.me/wfryer) and ClaimID (claimid.com/wfryer) is an important part of crafting your digital footprint, and the Google+ Authorship program is a site which should be added to that list. If you’re publishing content on the open web, you likely want more people to find it. Google+ Authorship settings can help. Google Analytics Labs is also supporting metrics for content you claim which is indexed.

Technorati Tags: google, digital, footprint, search, author, authorship, claim, blog, site

Claim Your Online Content With Google+ Authorship Settings originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 10, 2012.

The lottery law stipulates that the money is not supposed to supplant current education funding but is supposed to be in addition to education funding.

Megan does NOT, however, highlight the fact that lottery funds HAVE been used to supplant education funds. From what I understand, since the lottery was enacted (all ‘in the name of education’ and ‘for the kids,’ don’t know you know) education funding in Oklahoma has been flat. I’d like to see these specific numbers in an auditor’s report or research journal. Certainly our education funds have not increased statewide by $400 million in six years. The way lawmakers have done this has been to intentionally obfuscate the funding process for lottery dollars.

In the article Rolland quoted Oklahoma City Public Schools superintendent Karl Springer. She wrote:

But the money was never tracked properly, Springer said. The lottery law stipulates that the money is not supposed to supplant current education funding but is supposed to be in addition to education funding. The contribution is split with 45 percent going to prekindergarten through 12th-grade education, 45 percent going to support capitol projects for higher education, 5 percent going to the state’s school consolidation fund and the final 5 percent going to the teacher retirement system. For higher education, the money is easily tracked and there is a list of capitol improvement projects that the lottery has funded at colleges and universities across the state. But for common education the money goes directly into the state formula that distributes funding equally between school districts based on a student enrollment equation.

These statements by Springer ARE accurate. What’s confusing, however, is the quotation Rolland attributed to Springer just prior to that paragraph. Her quotation of Springer was:

It [the Oklahoma lottery] has generated $400 million that this state otherwise wouldn’t have had for schools.

This is a confusing quotation because it’s inaccurate. I wonder if it was a mis-quote. It would be true to say, “The Oklahoma lottery has generated additional revenue which would not have been otherwise brought into state coffers.” It is NOT accurate to say, “Our schools would have been $400 million poorer the past six years without the lottery.” By law state officials were supposed to use lottery funds to INCREASE (the technical word is “supplement”) education funding rather than keep it flat. Again, however, my understanding is that state officials have kept funding flat. They have used lottery funds to replace general revenue funds in direct violation of the letter of the lottery law, which prohibits supplanting education dollars with gambling profits.

If my understanding of this situation is inaccurate please enlighten and correct me. Again, I’d like to see the total amount of Oklahoma legislature allocated dollars for education for the past six years in absolute dollars, and also see those numbers adjusted for inflation. My understanding and expectation is you will NOT see in either set of statistics an increase of $400 million over the past six years. Yet if Oklahoma legislators had followed the law which was passed, that’s exactly what we SHOULD see.

According to numbers reported by sunshinereview.org, our state education budget in 2011 was $3.6 billion. It is not clear what that total number was in past years, however. According to the Oklahoma Policy Institute’s October 2011 report, “The Oklahoma Education Lottery,” lottery funds have been put into the general fund rather than put directly toward education.

[OKLAHOMA] Lottery net proceeds are divided between several education agencies as set out by the statutes. For the most part, lottery revenues have been blended with other revenues to support general operating expenses, rather than being dedicated to any distinct, ongoing, and identifiable purpose. Current year (FY ’12) appropriations includes $63.1 million of lottery revenues out of total state appropriations of $6.5 billion, or 1.0 percent

This is certainly NOT the message communicated by the official Oklahoma state lottery page for education, which paints a misleading picture that education funding in our state has increased because of the lottery. This is FALSE and misleading.

We do need accountability in Oklahoma education and politics, and this situation with lottery funds supplanting public education dollars is a perfect place to demand it as citizens. I’m confused by the way these issues of lottery funds “supplanting” rather than “supplementing” were addressed in this NewsOK article today. That is frustrating, but it’s also frustrating to see the unnecessarily complicated way our state legislators have created a funding formula which makes it impossible to “track the dollars” for K12 spending. This is a clear example of intentional, legislative, budgetary obfuscation. That’s a complex way to say, “our elected officials are cooking the books to hide illegal actions.”

If I’m wrong here, please explain why and let’s analyze the real state education budget dollar totals together. I think I’m on track, however, and it’s extremely disappointing to see how voters in Oklahoma were misled and CONTINUE to be misled when it comes to the lottery.

The Oklahoma lottery has NOT been a “win” or a “financial boon” to K12 schools. Instead, it’s been yet another case of politicians acting in ways which LOSE rather than win public trust. The lottery should have brought $400 million MORE dollars to our public schools in Oklahoma in the past six years. It hasn’t, and we should demand our legislators remedy this situation rather than continue a funding process which makes the financial details surrounding the lottery and schools murky and confusing.

When I posted the following image to my Photo 365 blog last year, I titled it, “A Legislative Obfuscation.”

This was a billboard in Oklahoma City just outside Will Rodgers airport. Reading today’s article about the lottery, we can see this billboard presents a misleading message to an all-too-often naive public. Rather than saying “more than $400 million has been contributed to Oklahoma education through the lottery,” the sign should truthfully read:

More than $400 million of funding to Oklahoma schools has been illegally supplanted by the state lottery, in violation of the promises made by lawmakers to the public and in direct violation of the letter of the law.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, lottery, funding, misleading, newsok, politics

Misleading Article About Oklahoma Lottery Funds Supplanting Education Funds originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 10, 2012.

Common Core state standards initiative
- state-led and developed common core standards for K12 in ELA and math
- initiative led by Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and National Governors Association (NGA)

What are educational standards and why do they matter?
- standards define what the outcomes will be for our students?
- the create shared understanding for our student of what they need to know and be able to do at each grade level when they leave our schools

States were in the driver’s seat
- federal government did not develop the standards or require adoption

Why do we need common standards?
- disparate standards across states
- today’s jobs require different skills
- global competition
- for many young people, a high school degree isn’t preparing them for college or a good job

Why is this important for all students, teachers and parents?
- prepares students with knowledge and skills they need to succeed in college and work
- ensures consistent expectations regardless of student zip codes
- provide clear, focused guideposts
- offers economies of scale (will drive down costs for testing, we have several consortiums, we are in the Park Consortium, all states in that consortium will be using the same bank of questions to measure the outcomes)

In part this was a response to criticism that schools (not necessarily Yukon PS, however) were not preparing students adequately/well for college/work

Features of standards
- aligned with college and work expectations
- forced and coherent
- include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills
- build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards
- based on evidence and research
- internationally benchmarked
- should be read to allow the widest possible range of students to participate fully

Aligned with college and work expectations

Standards development process
- college and career readiness standards for ELA and Math developed in summer of 2009
- based on college and career readiness standards, K12 standards for each grade were developed
- continual input throughout process from states, educators, business and higher education leaders
- public commit period received almost 10,000 comments
- final standards were released in June 2010

Map of Common Core State Standards Adoption

Applications for English language learners
- learn academic content WHILE learning English

Design and organization
- intro have description of capacities of a literate student (e.g. demonstrate independence, come to understand other perspectives and cultures)

3 main sections
- K-5 cross-disciplinary
- 6-12 ELA
- 6-12 literacy

ELA Key advances

Reading
- balance of literature and informational texts
- text complexity

Writing
- emphasis on argument and informative/explanatory writing
- writing about sources

Standards for reading and writing in history / social studies, science and technical subjects
- will complement rather than replace existing content standards

Standards for mathematical practice
- carry across all grade levels to address ‘gaps’
- describe habits of mind of a mathematically expert studetn

Standards for math content
- K-8 standards presented by grade level
- high school standard presented by conceptual theme (some states call math courses math 1, math 2, math 3, etc)

Math key advances
- focus in early grades on numbers (arithmetic and operations) to build a solid foundation in math (good change, we’ve been teaching too many objectives to young children, too early)
- evened out pace across the grades
- focus on USING math and solving complex problems, similar to what we should see in the real world in high school
- emphasis on problem solving and communication

Yukon’s Plan
- implementation plan developed in 2010-2011
- building knowledge
- side by sides to current standards (PASS skills)
- deconstructing the standards
- ongoing PD for faculty and staff

CCSS should be fully implemented in our classrooms no later than 2013-2014

State department of education has developed the REACH Network
- Deer Creek is our lead, we’ve had 1 meeting so far
- they shared information from the SDE in the ‘toolkit’ they received

(no questions from the board)

Introduction to the Common Core State Standards by Karen Robertson originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 9, 2012.

The disk is full trying to write to Macintosh HD. Free some space on this drive, or save the document on another disk.

Some troubleshooting revealed this was problem with Microsoft Word, NOT a full hard drive. The teacher had over 200 GB of free space on her laptop’s drive, and could save files fine to the hard drive using other applications like Keynote. We ran “Fix Disk Permissions” using the Disk Utility application, and it found a lot of errors, but that did not fix the problem. It turns out a corrupted Microsoft preference file was the problem.

Initially when Googling for an answer to this problem, Google was returning old results from 2006 on the first page of hits, which were about Word 2004. To show more recent results, I clicked the PAST YEAR link under the “ANY TIME” left sidebar choice. This limited search results to more current items.

From those search results, I found this article from Yahoo Answers posted a year ago, which suggested deleting several preference files. Unlike those instructions, in our case today we did NOT have to delete a “.plist” file in Preferences. The file we deleted was:
- in USERS’s home folder
– in LIBRARY
— in PREFERENCES

The folder we deleted was named “Microsoft.” We quit all MS Office programs, and then dragged that folder out of PREFERENCES to the desktop. When we launched MS Word again, it rebuilt that preference file and the program saved documents fine / without an error message to the local hard drive. We then deleted the old/corrupt “Microsoft” folder on the desktop. It’s possible the teacher will have lost some preference settings she’d saved in MS Word and other Office programs, if she changed program defaults. She will need to re-select those, but at least this got the immediate problem fixed quickly of not being able to save files to her local hard drive.

Situations like this one highlight why it is extremely helpful and important to develop good Google search skills. If you have a technical problem with your computer, chances are extremely high someone else has had that problem and someone has posted a solution to it. FINDING a solution amidst millions of documents indexed by Google can sometimes be easy, but like today it can sometimes require some “interative” search strategies.

“Iterative” Google searching and effectively using the “additional search tools” in the left sidebar of Google is one of the most important things I learned from Lucy Gray in 2009 when I attended the Google Teacher Academy in Boulder, Colorado. If you’re interested in even more strategies along these links, see my notes in the post, “GTA Boulder Notes: Afternoon Part 3.”

An Iterative Google Search (with advanced options) solves a MS Word File Saving Problem originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 9, 2012.

This afternoon my kids and I spent a few hours playing with the iOS application Collabracam, which permits multiple cameras to be used simultaneously in a video shoot. We found the application buggy and in need of an update, but the idea of the app is GREAT and we ended up creating a reasonably cool 3.5 minute video for “The Zebra Print.” In this post I’ll share some of our lessons learned using Collabracam.

Collabracam allows you to use up to five iOS devices at the same time to make a video. One iOS device is used as the base station, in ‘director’ mode. The other devices (up to four) can be remote cameras, connecting to your director base station device via wifi. We used two remote cameras and a base station for our video.

Initially we tried using an iPad2 as the base station, and another iPad2 and an iPhone4 as the remote cameras. The Collabracam base station / director app gave us errors, however, so we read some of the app documentation and learned it’s best to use the SAME MODEL of iOS device. We didn’t have 3 of the same device, so we changed to use the iPhone4 in director mode, and both the iPad2′s as remote cameras. Once you have the app installed a device can take either role (director / base station or remote camera.) While we got our setup to work, I want to test the app and see if the errors we ran into are eliminated if all devices are the same iOS model.

The screenshot below shows Collabracam on the “director” device. You can see the live video from both iPad2s.

We ran into problems when we started, stopped, and started over with the app. The director / base station device in most cases didn’t “see” the remote cameras when we started over. To fix this, we found closing every instance of Collaboracam on all devices (double clicking the home button, holding down a finger on one of the apps so they started to ‘jiggle,’ and then clicking the red X in the upper left corner) fixed the problem.

We found the connections between cameras and the director / base station device work best when you:

• Open the iOS devices which will serve as remote cameras FIRST, and select the camera option on both.
• Secondly, open Collaboracam on the device you’re using in “director” mode as the base station, and then you should be able to immediately connect to the remote cameras.

We ended up doing thirteen different takes, at least in part, for this 3.5 minute webshow. The episode we finally took was number twelve, but I had to edit it together on my computer. That’s not how Collaboracam is supposed to be used. After you finish shooting a video, you should leave all the remote camera app devices open. The director / base station app will transfer the videos from each remote camera to itself, so they can be put together in a final video file. For some reason, however, in our “take 12″ our Collaboracam setup recorded and saved one scene on both cameras. As a result, the app didn’t know which one to insert into the final video so it was omitted. (That’s the one I had to insert on my laptop using QuickTime Pro 7.)

The most confusing and frustrating part of using Collaboracam was figuring out how to switch between our different cameras during the live show, and having the apps malfunction. According to the documentation, on the director / base station device to you start recording you should:

• Click on the desired camera and press the REC button. It should turn red.
• Click on the secondary / standby camera you want to use next. It should turn blue.

When you want to change to the standby camera, on the director / base station you should click the REC button, and then select the next standby camera.

Perhaps because we used two iPad2s and 1 iPhone4, and not all identical iOS devices, our remote cameras did NOT change status from “recording” to “standby” as they should have when cameras were changed on the director / base station device. The colors (red and blue) changed on the director app, but for some reason that communication didn’t reach the remote cameras to display properly. The remote cameras recorded fine, but the “remote / recording” status light didn’t change as it should have.

Overall this was a good experience and I REALLY love the concept of Collaboracam. If you have a classroom cart of fourth generation iPod Touches or iPad2s, this would be a super app to use with students to create a recorded webshow. We tried using a Glif iPhone4 tripod mount initially when we were using the iPhone as a camera, but ended up not being able to use it since the iPads were our remote cameras. In the future I’d like to find and use some kind of iPad2 tripod mount, but I haven’t seen anything like that yet. It’s challenging to hand-hold the iPad2 for long periods of time shooting video, but switching cameras makes that a little easier on your videographers.

Unlike a television studio’s cameras, there are NOT red lights which light up on an iOS device when its camera is “live” with a Collaboracam setup. We tried having the videographer wiggle a finger to show their camera was in use, but since our “status” signs in the app weren’t working correctly I ended up just pointing to our actresses to show which camera was “live.”

Collaboracam is a $5 app, but its iTunes Store page indicated it is currently half price. I’d recommend waiting till the the app is revised and some of these bugs are worked out to buy and use it. (It’s in version 1.2 now.) The idea is GREAT, however, and if you have access to enough similar iOS devices to use it it can add a whole new layer of complexity and possibilities to your web shows!

Stay updated on new Zebra Print web shows by following @thezebraprint on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: webshow, Collabracam, video, playingwithmedia

Playing with Collabracam for The Zebra Print Webshow originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 7, 2012.

More classroom teachers and other educators are using Google Sites to create websites these days. Google Sites is free, flexible, and well integrated with other “Google Tools” like Google Docs and YouTube. Certainly Google Sites has limitations, but its FREE price tag combined with flexibility (especially when a school is already using Google Apps) make it an outstanding choice for “virtual construction” in schools. I used Google Sites for my “Technology 4 Teachers” and “Computers in the Classroom” courses for pre-service teachers in Spring 2010, Fall 2010, and Spring 2011. Google Sites doesn’t give us the creative latitude of a web authoring tool like iWeb, but it offers many other features (like collaboration) that make it a better choice for many educational contexts.

In this post, I’ll describe some techniques for optimizing a Google Site for mobile accessibility as well as gathering metrics / statistics about site visitors utilizing Google Analytics. Finally, I’ll explain how a Google Site can be “mapped” to a shorter address using an existing domain you or your school already owns and manages.

Anyone using Google Sites should choose to automatically optimize their site for mobile devices like iPhones / iPads / iPod Touches (iOS devices) as well as Android-based smartphones. This support page from Google explains how. The owner of a site, after logging in, can enable this feature by choosing:
- More actions
– Manage site
— General
—- Under “Mobile” click the checkbox beside “Automatically adjust site to mobile phone”
—– Save changes

This is a screenshot of my workshop/presentation handouts wiki (wiki.wesfryer.com) on my iPhone BEFORE I enabled this option. You can see the text is small and not very easy to read on the iPhone’s small screen.

After enabling mobile optimization, this is the same page on my iPhone:

This process does NOT require you to select or change your existing site template or page templates. This is a quick process and should be enabled (IMHO) for every Google Site. More and more people (including students) are accessing Internet websites on mobile devices. Anyone publishing information should do everything possible to increase accessibility, and this is an easy way to do it.

When it comes to WordPress blogs/sites, I use and recommend two different free themes which “mobilize” sites. The first one, and main one I use (on this blog in fact) is WPtouch. A pro version is also available, but at this point I’ve just used the free version and really like it. The other one I use on a few sites is Carrington Mobile. I use it on Learning Signs and Eyes Right.

In addition to “mobilizing” your Google Site, it’s helpful to create and add a free Google Analytics site code to gather metrics/statistics about your site visitors. These statistics are more comprehensive and insightful than information you can glean from a tool like ClustrMaps. (Though I do love and use ClustrMaps too.) To add Google Analytics to your Google Site, you need to first create a free account on Google Analytics if you haven’t already. After you create your main account, you’ll be adding a new “property” to it. This will use the web address of your Google Site.

After creating your “property” in Google Analytics, click to view your “Property ID.” Copy this number and use it in your Google Site.

After you enable Google Analytics on your site (this Google support page explains how) you’ll be able to view extensive and interesting metrics about where people are accessing your website, what kind of web browser they’re using when they access it, how long they stay on your site, and more. There are GREAT statistics included in Google Analytics reports, and this would make a great project for your students to analyze, discuss and share.

You might have noticed in the screenshots above, the web address of my Google site for presentation handouts is very short (wiki.wesfryer.com) instead of a longer version preceded by “sites.google…” (http://sites.google.com/site/wesfryer/). The reason for this is I’ve “mapped” my Google Site, for free, to a subdomain of a domain I own using something called a CNAME record. Of the techniques discussed in this post, creating a CNAME record in DNS to map a Google Site to a custom domain is definitely the most complicated, but it’s free and can make a BIG difference in the ease of accessibility for your site.

As an example, I’m doing a lot of work in Yukon Public Schools in Oklahoma this semester. Today we used this CNAME record / domain mapping method to shorten the address of the district’s professional development site from sites.google.com/a/yukonps.com/professional-development to pd.yukonps.com. That’s a MUCH easier / shorter web address to write on a whiteboard, include on a business card, put in an email signature line, or just remember. Relatively few schools using Google Apps and Google Sites are taking advantage of this FREE feature, and many more should!

The Google Support page, “Mapping your site to your own URL,” explains the steps for doing this. You can map a Google Site or a Blogger site to a custom subdomain with a CNAME record. If your district uses CPANEL, you should be able to use the “Simple DNS Wizard” to add a CNAME record. Enter your desired web address (like “http”//pd.yukonps.com” in the first field) and the address “http://ghs.google.com” in the second field. Then create the record. That’s step 1.

Step 2 is adding the mapping address in your Google Site. Again, if your school is using Google Apps you’ll have to request that your site manager do this step, but if you’re using a Google Site with a “regular” Google account you can do it directly. I LOVE the ability to create and map subdomains! A few of the ones I use now are:

wiki.wesfryer.com
wiki.powerfulingredients.com
365.wesfryer.com
audio.speedofcreativity.org
faithstories.speedofcreativity.org
eyesright.speedofcreativity.org
learningsigns.speedofcreativity.org
share.playingwithmedia.com
learn.playingwithmedia.com

Of those examples, only the first two are a “mapped” CNAME record subdomain hosted by Google Sites. The third site is a CNAME mapped Tumblr blog, and the rest are WordPress “add-on slot” sites I have with my web host. It is HUGE that mapped subdomain sites on Google Sites are FREE, where other wiki providers like WikiSpaces and PBworks charge for this service.

If you use some of these suggestions and tweak your Google Site, please let me know with a comment or Twitter reply to @wfryer. Good luck! Encourage other educators you know to spend time in “digital construction” online using virtual spaces like Google Sites! Creating hyperlinked documents with digital text is an important part of Playing with Media!

Technorati Tags: google, sites, cname, custom, domain, map, tutorial, app, apps, school, education, wiki

Optimize a Google Site for Mobile Accessibility and Metrics originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 5, 2012.

Before our online cancellation request went through, Hulu tried one last time to keep us as subscribers.

Hulu also gave us a parting survey to explain why we cancelled.

After almost a year of NOT having cable TV at home and watching mainly Netflix programs, our family has become really sensitized to television commercials. The movie theater is about the only place we see ads anymore, before the feature film begins. Hulu and Hulu Plus may be cutting edge, Internet-based television… but it’s based in part on a “business-as-usual” model of force-feeding ads to customers. Having tasted ad-free movie and television program watching, however, it’s almost impossible to “go back” and accept so much forced advertising.

Bottom line: We reject Hulu and Hulu Plus because we dislike forced advertising. We’re sticking with Netflix!

Technorati Tags: hulu, tv, netflix, streaming, ad, advertising

Why We Cancelled Our Hulu Plus Subscription originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 1, 2012.

The clock is ticking and here in central Oklahoma we’re about to ring in the new year. This evening my wife and I watched Cameron Herold’s outstanding TEDtalk from June 2010, “Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs.” As we consider new year’s resolutions and goals for 2012, Cameron’s suggestions for traits and skills we should nurture in our children to help them become more entrepreneurial resonate strongly with me.

I’ll share screenshots of Cameron’s slides from his TED Talk, but also share his ideas as text in case you’re in a location or using a browser which makes reading the text on those images difficult.

First, entrepreneurial traits we need to nurture in kids:

• attainment
• tenacity
• leadership
• sales
• introspection
• networking
• handling failure
• boot strapping
• customer service

Second, entrepreneurial skills we need to explicitly teach students and kids:

• problem solving
• to lead others
• to want to make money
• public speaking
• to ask questions
• to learn from mistakes
• how to sell
• to never give up
• to be creative
• how to save money
• to ask for help
• to see solutions

I agree 100% with Cameron that we need to encourage more people (not just “kids”) to become entrepreneurs. The death of Steve Jobs this year highlighted the importance of entrepreneurial attitudes and leadership styles. More than a few people have asked, “How can we encourage the traits we celebrate and recognize in Steve Jobs’ life work in the students in our schools?”

Cameron’s TED Talk is the first time I’ve heard someone identify Steve as having had bipolar disorder. Cameron is NOT encouraging people to ignore treatment recommendations for mental illnesses, but he IS encouraging people to move beyond traditional, “schooly” skills as the traits we celebrate and encourage in young people.

I definitely think many of the skills I encourage students and teachers to practice in my eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing,” fall into these categories of entrepreneurial traits and skills. When you and your students “play with media” and share your creations in digital sandboxes, you certainly can be learning:

• problem solving
• to ask questions
• to learn from mistakes
• to be creative
• to ask for help
• to see solutions

When students work in teams to create media projects, they can learn about leadership, networking, and tenacity. The best learning moments have relevant, memorable CONTEXTS. We’ve all sat through many, MANY lessons which were quickly forgotten later the same day. Lessons in which we CREATED things, SHARED things, and received sustained FEEDBACK about our ideas and work, on the other hand, are almost IMPOSSIBLE to forget.

As you make your resolutions and goals for 2012, I encourage you to PLAY WITH MEDIA, share your work, and share the work of your students on the global stage. We DO need to nurture these entrepreneurial traits and skills in our students and our children. As a classroom teacher, you have numerous opportunities to craft learning tasks which can operationalize these goals, transforming them from an ideal into a reality.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, school, ted, youtube, economics, leadership, creativity, talks

Entrepreneurial Traits and Skills To Nurture in 2012 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 1, 2012.

Dave highly recommends several books and audio/video resources in this presentation. One is “Trombone Player Wanted” by Marcus Buckingham. The first two of the six included films are available FREE on iTunes. Dave wrote on his blog about Buckingham:

“A better definition of a strength,” said Buckingham, “is an activity that makes you feel strong. And a weakness is an activity that makes you feel weak. Even if you’re good at it, if it drains you, that’s a weakness.”

I’ve added the Kindle version of Marcus Buckingham’s book, “Go Put Your Strengths to Work” to my Amazon wish list.

Dave also recommended “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. In the book Collins focuses on the importance in EVERY organization for leaders to “get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, and get the people on the bus ‘in the right seats.”‘ I’VE JUST PURCHASED THE AUDIO VERSION OF THIS BOOK WITH MY MONTHLY AUDIBLE SUBSCRIPTION AND AM GOING TO LISTEN TO IT IN 2012.

Dave says “Most of the best jobs don’t get listed: They are ‘friend of a friend’ connections.”
- only 15% of jobs are listed in the newspaper

I’VE CERTAINLY FOUND THIS TO BE TRUE THE PAST 3 YEARS AS AN INDEPENDENT, DIGITAL LEARNING CONSULTANT. FINDING WORK IS ALMOST ALL ABOUT NETWORKING AND PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS.

Unsolicited resumes have a 10% success rate, newspaper classified ads have a 15% success rate

Dave spends a lot of time in the lecture describing and extolling the DISC Personality Profile. The four elements of DISC are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. This is the basis for Gary Smalley’s Personality Types Inventory which uses animals for each “temperament:’ Lion, Otter, Golden Retriever, and Beaver. I SHOULD TAKE THIS AT SOME POINT, IT’S BEEN AWHILE SINCE I’VE DONE A MYERS-BRIGGS OR SIMILAR INVENTORY. I’M PRETTY SURE I’M MOSTLY LION, AND MY WIFE IS MOSTLY GOLDEN RETRIEVER.

Make a follow-up appointment after your job interview

Write a hand-written thank you note following every interview

Your career track is vital
- it’s not straight up, but it’s the key to your long term income plan

Dave recommends the book “48 Days to the Work You Love” by Dan Miller. The Kindle version of the book is available for just $3. Dave Ramsey wrote the forward. A revised version, “48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal” is $9.23 in paperback from Amazon but interestingly is not available yet for Kindle. THIS DEFINITELY IS WORTH CHECKING OUT, I ADDED IT TO MY AMAZON WISH LIST.

Dave closed with the following quotation about persistence from Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President in the United States.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

This was Dave’s final share, a poem by Dean Alfange, “I Do Not Choose to be a Common Man.”

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon— if I can. I seek opportunity not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, “This I have done.”

Great ideas in this lesson from Dave Ramsey. Find an opportunity to enroll in “Financial Peace University” in your community in 2012, or offer to lead a class. You won’t regret it.

Thanks Dad.

Technorati Tags: learning, university, dave, ramsey, financial, peace, strength, strengths, job, jobs, entrepreneurship, lifelong, money

Dave Ramsey on Strengths, Jobs, Entrepreneurship, Lifelong Learning & Persistence originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 30, 2011.