Technology in Education Conference, TIE 2009

By Paul Silli

It was beautiful weather on Tuesday with warm, clear blue skies and snow capped summer mountains.

The conference started with an upbeat, inspirational speech from the keynote speaker - Tim Tyson. Dr. Tyson reviewed using his families life-experiences the importance of using technology to enhance learning. He shared student-video samples that were created by his high school teachers, and outlined the importance – and privilege of teaching.

Witihin my first session I learned about the program Photo Story (iPhoto) which is an image manipulator — presented by Charlene Baker. This Web 2.0 program is open source, meaning it is free to use online. The program is similar to Adobe Photo Manager – in that it offers you the ability to edit, crop, resize and change the content of images which you can then send multiple pictures to a compile list where your photographs or clipart can be stored to create collages,and digital stories. You can edit graphics and upload them into any internet site, wiki, or other media rich projects. Students can use this program for many purposes from adding graphics to a formal report, to making family photo albums or digital timeline sequences.

The second session to mention was also presented by Dr. Tim Tyson called: “Film Festival Bootcamp.” During this class he showed participants many student movie samples from his high school students which were created for their science classes. He suggested using student movie-productions applications such as MS Movie-Maker to create Digital Reports, and group presentations. He said it is important for students to make an emotional connection with their audience by using zoom-in (panning) features. He also mentioned adding appropriate sound tracks and other sound effects and color schemes to enhance production work. He recommended that if teachers want to use movie productions in their course lessons that they make sure they do not make any money from the movies. Dr. Tyson emphasized the need to uphold copyright laws; and only to distribute the films content for educational purposes. It also was recommended teachers strictly monitor the movie content to make sure it is appropriate for student and adult viewing (PG rating).

I also enjoyed a session about “Podcasting” for students which was presented by Jonathan Bergmann. He explained by using Podcasts’ you can save time by avoiding formal class lectures which can give instructors more time to offer one-on-one assistance to students. He suggested using video-pictures with audio presentations (VodPods or Video Casts) as warm-up sessions, to break-up long units, editing pics, and open lessons to help get students interested and involved (students seem to enjoy Podcasts). One of the greatest elements of using Podcast is students can go back to the video and rewind/play the movie to repeat content. This is especially great for special ability students who often need content repeated for clarity. Podcasts’ offer teachers the opportunity to give more hands-on projects to kids. It just will take some time to create them for your curriculum…

Additionally I liked learning about the Digital Story Telling application called: “Frames-4, by Tech4Learning.” This program offers you the opportunity to teach your students how to use flash media, make animated movies with clipart and movie images and songs, edit and make movie pictures and format your work into .gifs which is universal viewable formats. The program was given to each participant “free” to use for education purposes. If you want to use the program at home for personal use you can purchase a license for about $38. Receiving the program free was terrific! I will be using this program with my kids next school year.

PDF XChange Reader & Writer Open Source

By Paul Silli

Have you ever wanted to edit or write on a pdf (Portable Document Format)? With the XChange PDF Viewer you can now write directly onto pdf files just like you could on an Omni form. It is a great, free open source program to download to your desktop or notebook.

Those of you who wish to view PDF files on their Windows PC’s now have a choice when it comes to Viewing PDF files — the PDF-XChange Viewer is smaller, faster and more feature rich than the ole’ Adobe Reader. This program allows you to read pdf’s, add graphics, edit spelling, type directly onto a pdf form, color highlight text, mark stamps, and does much more. It totally rocks!

Instead of printing out a pdf file, and then hand writing to a form, you now can professional type directly to a pdf file. 

If you want an excellent free program to edit your pdf’s you should give PDF XChange Viewer a try.

Filezilla for FTP Host Editing

By Paul Silli

Hey, to all you FTP’ers out there! I am somewhat new to using FTP site editing for uploading & downloading files such as: .docs /.ppts /.pdfs and jpegs. My main domain and website host is at fatcow.com.  It was recommended that I use Filezilla (client version) to install onto my pc so I could easily upload files to my host site, and then create direct URL links to the files so people could access my work on the Internet.

The Filezilla program is Open Source, meaning it is free for private use. It is easy and fun to use. However, it will take some time to learn (For example, dragging and dropping your files into the proper folders through its multiple layered windows); but the program works well.

For all of your FTP solutions, both a client and server-based version are available. There is Filezilla help support through its forums and wiki trackers. If you are new to FTP, you may want to give it a try. Let me know what you think.

Creating a Good Website Layout

Here are a few suggestions you can use to create a well balanced, legible, user friendly website layout design. You should ask yourself or a client some key questions such as:

• Is the product design theme: (light, friendly & fun), (sleek & professional), (innovative & techie), or (scientific & savvy)? Please describe the “feel” you want from the design. The feel of a site is essential!
• What colors do you want in the product? (Primary, pastel, or mixed-fresh). Visit this site for some great info and HTML Colors: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colors.asp
• What graphics, logos, images might help deliver the product message? Do you have any on-file images you want in the design?
• What kind of layout do you prefer? For example, do you want a lot of white space and text block design, white-text on dark backgrounds (text blocks), three columns or two column designs, or maybe a simple one textbox content area?
• Do you want a custom Header /Banner with your institution name and/or logo? What colors do you prefer?
• Is there any text content messages you want highlighted in the layout (maybe important titles or communication tools emphasized – near top of site or center zone)?
• Is there anything important you want to see in the site or product? (You could have them draw a sketch or explain)
• Is there something I did not ask that you want included within the design or content of the site? (Please be specific)

Three Fundamental Layout Designs (Without getting too busy)

1. Text block with center navigation bar (Basic)
2. Two Column with side bar navigation left or right (Traditional)
3. Three Column with side bar navigations (This site uses three column design)

The more your know about what you or your client wants the better the output. Please let me know your thoughts about layout design.

Educating Students using Twitter

By Paul Silli

Your students have already gone home for the day, and you forgot to remind them that homework is due tomorrow. A state of frustration runs through your mind knowing this assignment is key for them to turn in because it’s a major component of their final project. What can you do? Twitter them! Twitter has become one of the most popular micro-blogging applications. It is a free Web 2.0 service with near one million users called “twitterers” who can send and receive text messages via the web, short message service (SMS), and by instant messaging through cell phone communications.

 

For example, if you did forget to inform your students about an assignment, all you would have to do is login to your twitter account, type the message in the text box (you are allowed 140 characters per message), and then send the message directly to your students via cell phone text messaging. As you may know cell phones are a great educational tool – and just about every student has one. Using them as activity reminders is a wonderful, innovative method.

 

For students to get your messages they would need to subscribe to your twitter “feed” which is a free application where students are only charged by their text messaging service which in most cases, they already have… I’m sure you’ve seen them texting messages to their friends all over campus.  

 

What exactly is Twitter?

According to Wikipedia online, twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets while on the internet or by use of a mobile phone service. Tweets are text-based posts which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

 

For the past year many educators as well as popular newspapers, and TV shows have been using Twitter to connect with one another to share ideas and resources.

 

How to Sign Up for Twitter?

To get an account simply create an ID, password, and have a valid email address. Once logged in you can add pictures to your profile, and customize your color background. Then you can get online to find friends within the twitter network. To broaden your network tell your friends, co-workers and students to create a twitter account, and then they can subscribe to your feed so you can communicate with each other.

 

→ How else can Twitter be used in Education? Please add your comments.

 

School Violence Parent Survey

By Paul Silli

Improving the Quality of our School

Your opinion matters! It would be very helpful if you would take a brief survey (10 questions) to help us make our middle school a safer, more productive learning environment. The answers you provide will be analyzed by our School Safety Committee to learn how parents would like campus administrators to deal with violent student offenders.

Please follow the link to take survey:
http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=69cxva3g4dmml7j565467

Why is School Violence Increasing?

By Paul Silli

Inquiry Proposal

I am a Nationally Board Certified Social Studies Teacher who works at a middle school with 6th to 8th grade levels, ages 10 to 14, in Urban County, Colorado. Within my schedule I teach a very diverse population of students who range cognitively as well as culturally. For the past two-years because of broadened district boundaries our student body has changed. We have a lot of students who come from different socio-economic situations — and there appears to be a gap in their skills both educationally and in the spoken language (many are Spanish). Through a rigorous effort, I will be researching the causes, trends, and hopefully find solutions to my school’s violence issues. Violence is rising and our current approaches do not seem to be changing matters. Our staff and administration would welcome new methods to decrease violence on campus while maintaining a high quality of education for our students. In the past our school implemented programs to teach our students how to handle themselves as a “deterrent” to violence; it appears the programs were successful, but because of recent budget constraints, we can no longer afford programs such as YES (Youth Empowerment Strategies, video=link) and others…

As I am sure you know school violence is a serious problem. Students often group themselves according to their culture or socio-economic status. Improving the quality of education is difficult without also addressing school violence, since regardless of how good the teachers or curriculum are, violence makes it difficult for students to learn and teachers to teach. For most anti-violence interventions, evidence of effectiveness is either sparse or mixed. Many programs have been imperfectly monitored or evaluated, so few data actually exists. I would like to research the causes – effects, trends, and outcomes of school violence on my campus and attempt to hopefully create a new program to combat the issues (it will need to be helpful & cost efficient). I will be using online surveys (Likert & Shadow) for our student body and staff, interviewing colleagues/administrators, performing Internet research to learn best practices to reduce violence, and other methods to improve our situation.

Note: School violence on my campus wears many faces: It includes gang activity, bullying, intimidation, and assault – just about anything that produces a victim. Violence is mainly perpetrated against students, but sometimes at teachers/staff.

→Any research help or suggestions would be appreciated. Please feel free to comment.

Top 10 Research Topics for Education

By Paul Silli

Below is a list of broad research topics. These subjects affect many parties within a school setting.

 

1. Learning new research tools/methods, Student Access, Internet & Public Libraries: It would be interesting to research the variety of possible solutions, including filtering, online-search, restricted access, blocking software for student’s in class or at the media center, training, parental permission procedures etc… to learn what teachers can do to improve research skills for students and staff.

 

2. Improved Integration of Technology into Lesson Plans: Learning new ways to incorporate technology into learning across the board for teachers (all school subject areas /grade levels) would be beneficial to education.

 

3. School Crime: What can your school do to reduce theft, vandalism, assault, verbal harassment, physical harassment, abuse, fighting and other issues that hinder learning for students? Researching the causes, effects and outcomes of this topic — and hopefully finding new ways to reduce crime in your school would be a worthy task.

 

4. School Safety Improvements: How can your school create new safety methods to better protect your kids & faculty? From running in the hallways – to how your school dismisses students at the end of the day could be reviewed to find new ways to improve safety. 

 

5. Class Tardiness: Why are students late to class? How are teachers and learning affected by student-tardiness? How can this issue be reduced? What can you do as a staff to deal with tardiness? Learning how to create a “unified tardy policy” for your school would be a tremendous effort.

 

6. Truancy (Overboard absences): Often teachers have different policies, punishment/consequence, and develop a different overall outlook when dealing with students who are excessively absent from class and/or school. What is the underlying cause of this issue? How can you collectively work toward improved student-attendance?

 

7. Enhancing Methods to address the Needs of  Diverse Learners: From gifted to non-English speaking students — there are often extreme diverse populations on school campuses. What methods, policies and strategies are in place — and could be created or improved to aid in the learning of your diverse learners? How can using technology shorten this gap and improve learning? 

 

8. Incorporating More School Community Service Programs & Promoting Parent Volunteering: What can your school do to improve community service programs? How can you attract more parental-volunteer-involvement? What have you been doing… or what can you be doing to enhance the learning for students by showing them the value & need of community service activities?

 

9. Improved Integration of Web 2.0 Technologies into Curriculum: How can your staff utilize more programs such as implementing Web 2.0 tools within your curriculum to improve learning? Is your school doing “enough” to engage-learners by using a rich variety of methods to teach students?

 

10. Your School /District /State often has to deal with Censorship Related Issues: It  would interesting to learn the boundaries of Censorship as it pertains to a collection of documents, position papers, research reports etc… It would be beneficial to review how the Privacy Act and the “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act” affect learning for students. Are these laws in anyway infringing on certain civil rights to better educate students? You also could broaden your scope by researching  how Censorship comes — as a guide for teachers, librarians, booksellers and others who disseminate the printed word…

 

Technology In Education Conference 2009

By Paul Silli

Hello to all you fellow teachers and techies out there. It’s that time of year again to “plan ahead” for the premier technology conference in the state of Colorado.  Please mark these important dates: June 23-26, 2009 - at Copper Mountain, Colorado.

What is the TIE Conference?

Technology in Education (TIE), is a Colorado-based organization founded in 1986 by a group of teachers with a vision to host a conference focusing primarily on the role technology plays in education (TIE, Online). It is a fun, four-day conference where attendees learn many new,  innovative methods using  technology in the classroom or corporate training setting.

The cost is $315 which includes: Exhibit Hall admission, Keynote & Featured speakers, 200+ interactive sessions, Conference orientation,
Free onsite wireless network for attendees, use in convention center meeting rooms, Complimentary Internet/e-mail stations in the CyberCafe,
TIE Conference t-shirt, Lunch every day of the conference (except Friday) and breakfast on Thursday, and a formal TIE dinner party on Thursday night.
 
Today, TIE has become the leading statewide conference helping teachers integrate technology tools, technology competencies, and information literacy skills into a standards-based curriculum. TIE is organized and managed by a governing board of nine volunteers. Its major objective is to host the four-day, hands-on technology conference in a beautiful mountain community during early summer that models the use of technology integration in the classroom…  For more info about TIE or to register visit: http://www.tiecolorado.org/Welcome_312.htm. I hope to see you there!

Happy Holidays

By Paul Silli

Wishing you a Fantastic Holiday Season & Happy New Year! I want to thank you for visiting my educational tech-blog, and sure do appreciate all of your support, comments and interest.