Technology through Time

Many of you are wrapping up your ITLP’s and thinking about what’s next. In fact, many of you have thought about grants and other possibilities for funding. So I thought this week’s blog post would be about how to plan for technology needs and how to get funding.My best experience as a technology planner has been to pull together a group of teachers and put together a needs assessment. We surveyed the school, teachers staff and students and asked them what technology they used this year that was good, what technology was not so good and why. We also asked them what they needed to be more successful at their jobs. Now this may seem like a silly thing to ask since it does not have anything to do with technology, but remember we want technology to be a seamless part of our teaching and learning. This can only happen if we see the technology as a tool to reach our goal. Therefore, knowing what our goals are first will help us to identify the best fitting technology. There ar

Catching up on my Ted Talks, led me to this excellent Ted Talks worth watching and thinking about in terms of being an Ed Tech teacher: Kathyrn Schulz: On Being Wrong I remember having a math teacher who would express to me, over and over, that it is ok to come up with a different way to do a math problem to get to the same answer. This is the beauty of learning and education. Learning different perspectives or ways of learning is what makes us human. Kathryn Shulz, states “The miracle of our mind is seeing the world as it isn’t.” In educational technology, we should open our minds to the concept that “maybe I am wrong” as we approach teaching our students with technology. Allowing students to be as equal willing learners when using technology creates a classroom of cohesion, or a learning community. One in which we can endeavor to share ideas and understanding despite cultural or societal differences. So why not ask our selves, what wrong perspective do we have about our

This lesson will walk you through on editing a page for the site you set-up using Google Sites. Google Sites makes it very easy to edit a page, place media on a page and add some Google Gadgets. To begin with you will want to start by heading over to your site. You can access your site by logging into your gmail account and clicking on sites in the navigation menu. Next you will need to create a new page. Click on create new page in the right upper corner. Select the Layout button to add containers to your content area. This will help to break your content into 1-3 columns to keep the content or Google Gadgets separate. Add text to your content containers. Do not forget that Google allows you to copy and paste text from word or text documents. You can edit format by changing font size, color, alignment or adding a link. To make titles or heading titles use format and use those heading tags instead of enlarging and bolding font. Once you have add

suttonhoo.blogspot.com This came from a request from the cohort on how to add an mp3 file and player to your Google Sites so you can play podcasts or other audio files on your Google Sites page. ( Note an alternative to this method is to use Google Blogger to post podcasts in a post. ) To begin with these steps are slightly more advanced then what we have been doing, but use the videos to help you. Go to your Google Site. Go to Manage Site and choose attachments on the left side navigation menu. Select the upload button at the bottom left, and upload your audio file to your site. Copy the address (Right click windows, control click mac) of the link that says Download for the Audio file you just uploaded Go to your page where you want to add the audio file and edit the page. Click on the html in the edit menu for the container where you want to put the mp3 player and audio file link. Paste in the link from the audio file and delete the junk on the end, until the last par

Understanding copyright is a critical basic skill every teacher should be aware of, especially when using the Internet or working with students to publish their work on the Internet. There are a wealth of resources on the Internet to understand more about copyright and how to teach the issues to your students, these include: Standford's Copyright and Fair Use Sit e Tammy Morris also shares a wealth of resources and tools for better understanding Copyright, as well as helping your students to understand copyright. (Click on Copyright) Here are the basics: Use google's Advanced Search to locate Copyright Free images, videos, and documents Use Creative common s to located audio, text, and video under a variety of licenses. Also publish your own work with a license. If you need to use another persons work, contact them to see if it is ok if you are at all unsure. Always cite where a resource came from if it was not your own original work. Wesley Fryer shares a great S

Did you know? This comes from State School Healthy Policy ( State of Alaska Policy on Bullying and Harassment: Last Updated: 1/5/2011 Bullying/Harassment : Statute  14.33.200 (2006) requires the Department of Education to provide a model policy for harassment, intimidation and bullying to school districts.  Based on this, districts are required to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation and bullying of any student and share the policy with parents or guardians, students, volunteers and school employees.  Statute  14.33.210 (2006) requires each school district to report all incidences involving harassment, intimidation or bullying to the Department of Education, which will then report it to the state legislature.  Statute  14.33.220 states that a school employee, student or volunteer may not engage in reprisal, retaliation, or false accusation against a victim or a witness.  It also encourages reporting of any harassment incidences to the appropriate school offici

Perform a basic search, review the results and identify validity and safety of a site. ISTE NETS Standards (Model Digital-Age Work and Learning): model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning. Once you have begun troubleshooting, it is time to learn how to perform basic searches on the Internet. You will quickly find that the Internet is a large repository of information, with often several different ways to solve 1 issue or problem. So knowing how to sort through the wealth of information is crucial from a teachers perspective, especially since it can be a time saving skill when done properly. The process looks something like this: What do you want to learn about or know how to do? Choose key words or phrases from above. These are your search words: Place these in the search engine such as, http://www.google.com Perform the Search Use parameters to narrow yo

Module I examines the basic skills needed to manage, use, and create information on the web. This includes a variety of skills from using basic computers, to managing bookmarks, to understanding ethics and state of Alaskas policies for students using the Internet. Below you will find a basic presentation generally reviewing all the elements for  Module 1 as well as a video tour of our Course. Click here For detailed lessons and videos for each component of Module I. By the end of Module I, you should be able to solve technology issues independently through searching online for support, or utilizing your personally identified support system. In addition, you should begin to be able to think about how you might do the following: 1. Identify processes and steps for learning new tools and technology. 2. Identify technology persons that share and teach about new tools on a regular basis. 3. Identify online communities that provide discussion boards, webinars or blogs about new technologi

I wanted to share this with you all, as you are working on your ITLP, and just to help build awareness of Internet Safety for your Students. Did you know: This comes from State School Healthy Policy: State of Alaska Policy on Bullying and Harassment: (http://nasbe.org/healthy_schools/hs/bytopics.php?topicid=3131&catExpand=acdnbtm_catC) Last Updated: 1/5/2011 Bullying/Harassment : Statute  14.33.200 (2006) requires the Department of Education to provide a model policy for harassment, intimidation and bullying to school districts.  Based on this, districts are required to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation and bullying of any student and share the policy with parents or guardians, students, volunteers and school employees.  Statute  14.33.210 (2006) requires each school district to report all incidences involving harassment, intimidation or bullying to the Department of Education, which will then report it to the state legislature.  Statute  14.33.220 st

Hopefully this sparks some good discussions.  Prior to two weeks ago I was pretty i-illiterate. No ipod, no itouch, no iphone.  ATT does not work well in Seward and have always preferred more open source products and love my HTC Hero Android phone but...............two weeks ago I got a loaner iPad to test out a new Algebra course that runs as an app and Wow, Wow, Wow is all I have to say.  I know this term is thrown around a lot but this is a "game changer" for education as far as I am concerned.  I will leave it at that for now and welcome discussions, especially from folks who are already using this technology in their classrooms.

K. Asks:   Just need some ideas as to finding a program to 'grade' papers submitted electronically.  For example, if I can place all the incoming answers on a spreadsheet, how do I get the computer to do the work and not me.  Not trying to be lazy, trying to get efficient...:)! Group Suggests: I thought iPad would do it for me, but no. I too am needing this capability. Possible Solutions: I love using Engrade. It allows for students to submit papers and then I enter their grade. Now that is mostly for tracking grades. BUT, it has some wonderful additional features such as:

Here is another example.  I was at the Juneau airport for a flight and took a moment to look around for a water fountain. I spotted what looked like one from across the room, and walked over. Upon closer inspection, it did not look like the regular fountain, but like a filling station with a drinking fountain. Now I started to fill my water bottle the old way, holding it at an angle while I attempting to capture the stream of water. While I was waiting for it to fill,  I inspected the entire device and saw the picture of  a water bottle in the back with a stream of water going into it. I ignored it, and attempted to finish filling my bottle which I could only get 1/4 full because the angle was all wrong for filling. I went and sat down and began to ponder the picture. It occurred to me that it was a way to fill my water bottle all the way. I went back over and attempted to use the picture to fill my bottle as directed. It took me several tries to figure out how to exactly use the devi

Standards: Participant will understand and use basic computer skills to research and use web-based tools to complete their ITLP. ISTE 3.D, Alaska 8.D Google Sites has so many possibilites, from building simple class or course web pages to maintaining a class "wiki." Not to mention the many tutorials, samples, lessons, templates, and support groups online to help you kick off your Google Site pages. This lesson will provide you with the basics to get started and a quick tour around the site. DESIGN YOUR SITE Before you head over to Google Sites, and you will hear this from every web designer, design your site. AKLN ITLP Cohort 1 has designed a series of lessons to walk you through designing your site and setting it up. This can be located here: Create an Online Lesson Using Google Sites . SETUP YOUR SITE STEP 1 Now that you have your design in place, we are ready to setup your site. To begin, you will need to login to your Gmail. To begin with  a site i

Using Google Form to Create Self Graded Quizes: http://dave.abouav.com/flubaroo-demo/ Branching Quizes and Self Graded Quizes: http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2009/11/15/branching-surveys-and-self-grading-quizzes-in-google-forms-google-docs/ http://planetoftheweb.com/components/promos.php?id=534

Section I: Overview of Web Computing [ ]Perform basic troubleshooting processes when either the computer or the Internet is not working. One of our most basic skills we can use is Technology Troubleshooting. What does that mean? Learning technology is two fold. On one side we learn about technology by investigating, exploring or using a new tool. On the other side we learn about technology by using a tool in depth through troubleshooting and deeper investigation. This means that we need to overcome fear, time, unknown purpose and access of tools to be able to begin to learn technology. This also means we need to have a few basic problem solving tools under our belt or in our toolbox for moving through the technology learning process smoothly. Wikipedia has a great general article about problem solving and highlights several tools for solving problems, including: abstraction, analogy, brainstorming, divide and conquer, hypothesis testing, lateral thinking, means-ends analysis, Method