I.M.C. Guy

New Post

2009-07-08T16:47:00.002-05:00

I've written a new blog post - but you won't find it here. You'll have to head over to my new blog home - www.chadlehman.com

Please add my new site to your RSS reader.

Big Change

2009-07-07T13:23:00.002-05:00

There's going to be a big change coming in the near future. I'm going to be moving my blog to my own domain. I will link to it from this page for a while, but imcguy.blogspot.com will not be around for more than another month or two.

Once things are up and running at the new site, I'll let you know.

My NECC Reflection

2009-07-05T10:04:00.004-05:00

I'm finally getting around to putting my NECC reflections down on paper, so to speak. Ever since I left the house on my way to the airport, NECC has been on my mind. This post is going to focus on the people. I think we all agree that the people are essential to a great conference. I was hoping to have already posted this, but I ended up spending a lot of Friday refining the original NECC Animoto video. Yesterday was a holiday, so tried to limit my online time. I've received a lot of positive feedback on the video when I first posted it, so maybe pictures do say more than words. I only shared the original version of this video on Twitter, but as I watched it and reflected back on the people of the conference, I had to do a lot of remixing because I left too many people out, needed to change the order of the pics, or because I found other pictures I liked, resulting in the final version, shown above. I wanted the video to really show my experience, connections, and conversations. I didn't take my camera because I knew there would be plenty of others taking pictures. Search Flickr for NECC09 and you'll find thousands of pictures from the show - most taken by Kevin Jarrett. Anyway, I chose the pictures for my video carefully. Rather than go through an extensive list of the people who made NECC memorable (Ben Grey did a wonderful job on this), I wanted to show the people that helped make my conference special. The people shown in the video were people I had a conversation with, the friends I met last year and said hi to again this year, the people who participated in my state project who wanted to connect f2f and the new friends I met. I know I missed some people, and I'm sorry for that. I'd like to think of the video has a sort of thank you for helping make my second NECC a great experience. Smeech, you were right - here's a remix.

This year was the second year I attended NECC and I certainly had a different experience this time around. Last year, I was so overwhelmed, not to mention nervous. I went by myself, knowing only a few Twitter friends. This year was a different story. After spending the last year tweeting more, blogging more, and simply communicating and conversing more with my PLN, it almost felt like a family reunion. It was nice to recognize faces from last year or to be recognized and catch up. One of the comments I received on my video, by Karen Janowski, mentioned that it my video was all about the people. Ya know what? She's right, my video and the conference were about the people. But NECC is also about the content, which be the topic of my next reflection post.

Day 1 Reflections

2009-06-29T17:31:00.005-05:00

Day 1 of NECC. It's just about dinner time and I'm taking a break in the Blogger's Cafe. We just wrapped up a fun little meetup with the owners of Common Craft. I'm sure most of you have seen their videos at one point or another, but it was really nice to chat briefly with the couple behind the creativity. I got to the convention center a little after 8:00 today, just in time for my first session, which began at 8:30. I was going on a lot less sleep than I had hoped, but was ready for the chaos of the convention.

My first session was dealt with reading and 21st Century Skills. The presenters talked about how they were using iPods and other digital audio devices with students. I came away with a few new ideas, which was good. I was a little unhappy that the session seemed to turn into a sales pitch for a website they use at the school. Due to this feeling, I walked out a little early.

I also attended the Library Tools Smackdown. This was pretty fun and I had a seat in the front row. The CoverItLive can be found here. I was uStreaming the event and trying to follow along with that and the CoverItLive, so I had a trouble actually paying attention to the tools being discussed. I certainly will be heading back to the wiki and taking a peek at the text from the session.

Hall Davidson presented some new ways to use video. He showed some pretty interesting possibilities, some of which I hope to use at some point down the road. If you've never heard Hall give a presentation, I'd recommend it, it's pretty entertaining.

Always in Amazement

2009-06-28T09:48:00.004-05:00

For me, attending conferences is always a lot of fun. The sessions are usually very good, the venue is often a beautiful building, and the location is usually in a big city. Whether it's WEMTA in Madison, NECC in San Antonio last year, the DEN LC Institute in Silver Spring, or NECC this year, the thing that amazes me most is the people.

The DEN LC this year was set up to discuss ways to improve our Leadership Councils. There was lots of great discussion, but some interesting tools were shared as well. While the tools will be helpful, I was amazed at the people who know so much about so many new tools. I thought I am fairly knowledgeable about a lot of the tools and sites that are out there - both tools that can benefit my students and myself, but boy, was I wrong. One person from the DEN LC in particular, Steve Dembo, amazes me every time I listen to him. He always has great stuff to share. What I really think is important, is his ability to share how the sites can be used effectively with students and teachers. That's the important part.

This week at NECC, I know I'm going witness more greatness. I can't wait.

1 DP

2009-06-25T07:58:00.002-05:00

Today marks the first day of the DEN Leadership Council Symposium where Rachel Yurk and I will be representing Wisconsin. We will be discussing ways to improve the each state’s DEN, learn more about roles various people can play within the DEN, and how to get more people involved. It’s going to be a long day, but should be a pretty interesting one here at 1 Discovery Place.

Pre-Conference Plan

2009-06-23T09:13:00.004-05:00

With NECC right around the corner, getting ready for this massive conference is certainly not an easy task. Besides packing and figuring out your conference planner, there's the endless task of participating in the nightly functions. There's so much to do during the day and night that it could make your head spin. Most of these are already filled up, but the choices for evening collaboration are plenty. There's a Twitter Meetup, the NetTrekker Tour, the EduBloggerCon post party, the NECC golf outing, and probably plenty of others I'm not aware of or either forgot about. Regardless, preparing for a conferences can be a little stressful.

Here's a great link to a post written back in March. Chris Brogan writes about 27 things to do before a conference.

Take a peek at this article. Have you already completed some of the items listed? I have. Do you think there are more that should be added?

MySpace, Facebook, & 5th Graders - PART 3

2009-06-19T15:11:00.004-05:00

Finally, part 3 of my recent chat with 5th graders about Facebook and MySpace. If you want, you can read Part 1 and Part 2.

It's always interesting to find out how much parents know about what their kids are doing online. My children are young enough that they aren't really into social networking yet. However, in the next couple of years, however, that will probably change for my daughter. I'm prepared to help my son and daughter navigate through these networks as they grow, but I don't think a lot of parents are in the same boat as me.

Below is the transcript of a conversation I had with my 5th graders.

ME:
Do your parents know you have a MySpace or Facebook page?
JOHNNY:
yes
KAILEY:
yes
SHAWN:
yes
HMN Generic Grade K:
no
ZOE:
yes
HAYDEN:
yes
DANIELLE:
yes so do my aunts and uncles
HMN Generic Grade K:
yes
DAMIAN:
yes
LYRIC:
NO
KENNETH:
deffenetly
BRIAN:
yes until i forgot the username
MARC:
yes yes they do
KOBY:
yes but she dose not go on

ME:
Have your parents ever seen your page?
JOHNNY:
yes
KAILEY:
no
SERENA:
no
HAYDEN:
no
LYRIC:
NO
KOBY:
yes
SHAWN:
yes
HMN Generic Grade K:
yep
ZOE:
no
DAMIAN:
yes
BRIAN:
no but its not bad
KENNETH:
NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DANIELLE:
yep they wont let me have 1 if they dont
KOBY:
all the time
MARIA:
no
SERENA:
no
MARC:
yes yes they have i think

There ya go, some insight into some of the 5th graders I work with and their thoughts on Facebook and MySpace.

MySpace, Facebook, & 5th Graders - PART 2

2009-06-18T09:31:00.003-05:00

This is Part 2 of my discussion with 5th graders about MySpace and Facebook. Part 3, coming soon, will focus on questions related to what their parents know about their online networking. Here's Part 1. In this part of the discussion, I get into asking students about their online friends.

Here's the transcript from a chat I had with the studnets - I do think the answers are rather interesting.

ME:
Do you have "friends" on MySpace or Facebook that you've NEVER met in person?
CASSIDY:
no!
HAYDEN:
yes
ZOE:
yes
JOSHUA:
no
HMN Generic Grade K:
yes
KAILEY:
yes
DANIEL:
no
CASSIDY:
NO
CHACE:
no
MARC:
yes
LYRIC:
yes
DANIELLE:
no i only put people on if i know them
KOBY:
yes
BRIAN:
only 1 person
KENNETH:
No way!

The answers here surprised me a little. I didn't really have to time to ask deep questions about these friends, but I did follow up with a couple of questions and I was pretty surprised at the answers.

ME:
Okay, for those of you who just answered yes - how do you know who they are?
BRIAN:
thare pictures
MARC:
i dont
DANIELLE:
from school
KAILEY:
idk
KOBY:
there my family and friends
HMN Generic Grade K:
because of there pic
SHAWN:
i know them

ME:
So you believe the pictures they have posted are real?
BRIAN:
idk
DANIELLE:
idk
DAMIAN:
yes
ME:
That those pictures are really them?
ZOE:
idk
HAYDEN:
no
HMN Generic Grade K:
yes
KOBY:
yes
LYRIC:
idk
KAILEY:
idk
HMN Generic Grade K:
no
DANIELLE:
no
DANIELLE:
idk
MARC:
yes
CHACE:
yyeeess

I'm not sure they were ready for my follow up questions about the pictures. I have a feeling it make them think about it more than they had in the past. I did notice that none of the students mentioned anything other pictures. I don't think it's bad to start with pictures, but certainly it shouldn't be the only thing. When I started connecting with people online, pictures played an important part, but more importantly, I checked out their blog, or the other people they were connected to. I'm not sure that's something 12 years old are thinking about, but perhaps it should be.

Here's the last questions - and I'm happy to say that most of the students answered this question with the answer I was hoping for. I should have followed this up by asking how they could gain someone's trust online. I'd be curious to see what they would say.

ME:
Do you trust people you meet online?
HAYDEN:
no
JOHNNY:
yes
ALEXANDRA:
some time
DANIEL:
no
KAILEY:
no
DANIELLE:
no
CASSIDY:
maybe maybe not
MELISSA:
sometimes it depends
ZOE:
sometimes
LYRIC:
NO!!!!
MARIA:
NO
SHAWN:
some times
CHACE:
nooo
CASSIDY:
kinda /yes but no.
JOSHUA:
no
KOBY:
yes and no
BRIAN:
sometimes
HMN Generic Grade K:
hell no
KENNETH:
NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HMN Generic Grade K:
yes
SERENA:
not really

So, tell me what you think about this conversation?

MySpace, Facebook, & 5th Graders - PART 1

2009-06-16T09:09:00.004-05:00

I haven't really talked to the students I work with about Social Networking, even though I knew many of them were well on their way to a networked life. Without realizing it, the students I work with are beginning to learn about being connected and how it can impact their lives. With that in mind, I wanted to do a little fact finding. We have a program on the computers in our lab, Vision, that allows me to monitor their screens, block the internet, launch programs or websites, and even chat with each computer or the entire group. I really like this program, when it works, because I can sit in one space and see what everyone's doing, take control of a computer to help the students if needed, and simply watch them without them really knowing I'm watching. I can also communicate with a student or group of students to get them back on task, or perhaps something more severe, without embarrassing them in front of the entire class. Okay, back to the main point - I decided to use the group chat feature to invite the students to share some information about their MySpace and Facebook use. I told them this was simply for my information and that I wouldn't be sharing the information with anyone. Since we've never talked significantly about social networking, I was curious about what they knew and what they were doing. Below, is the chat transcript for question #1.

ME:
Do you have a MySpace or Facebook page?
CASSIDY:
no
HMN Generic Grade K:
yes
MELISSA:
no
LYRIC:
yes
KOBY:
yes
ZOE:
yes
CASSIDY:
no.
SHAWN:
yes
KAILEY:
yes
MARIA:
no
DANIEL:
no
ALEXANDRA:
myspace and facbook
SERENA:
no
DANIELLE:
yes
JARED:
I USE TO
HAYDEN:
i did
MARC:
yes
BRIAN:
used to
SERENA:
no
BRIAN:
i forgot username
SERENA:
no
CHACE:
no

I wasn't that surprised when the responses were mixed, with more than half of the students having accounts. I didn't go into anything about the age requirements for the sites or anything like that, I simply wanted to know if they had accounts or not. More telling, however, were the answers to the next question I asked.

ME:
Why?
ALEXANDRA:
talk game
SERENA:
i dont know
ALEXANDRA:
chat
HAYDEN:
because it is cool
ZOE:
so i can talk to my friends
DANIELLE:
i dont know
CASSIDY:
my mom siad its not good for me
LYRIC:
ill think it is coll
BRIAN:
alot of oter pepole have 1
MARC:
cause its awsome
KOBY:
so i can talk
SHAWN:
so i can keep in tuch
HMN Generic Grade K:
so you can talk to your fiends
DANIEL:
i don' t no

(I'm copying and pasting the transcripts - please forgive their crummy writing)

It seems to me, that many of my students have accounts because they think it's cool (or coll) or simply because their friends have an account and they want to talk to them. Interesting. Are they using these sites simply for the IM feature? I thought it was rather interesting that some of the students had accounts, but didn't know why they had them.

I'm going to post more of the chat in another post in a day or two. I'm curious if you've done anything like this with your students. Have you asked any similar questions? Did you get similar responses?

Below are the other questions I asked. I'll be sharing the responses soon.
Do you have "friends" on MySpace or Facebook that you've NEVER met in person?
Okay, for those of you who just answered yes - how do you know who they are?
So you believe the pictures they have posted are real?
Do you trust people you meet online?
Do your parents know you have a MySpace or Facebook page?
Have your parents ever seen your page?

Promoting Reading Programs

2009-06-08T21:09:00.005-05:00

Promoting reading and reading programs at my school seems not to be a one man job - thankfully! Most of the reading incentive programs (how I feel about those is a topic for another day) are organized by several of our reading teachers - and boy, do they do a great job! From organizing an author visit to planning Read Across America, they are fantastic. Sure, I get involved in the discussions and help out when I can, but for the most part, they take the lead. This might be a good thing because they are far more organized than me!

This leads to me write about an event I attended at the school my children attend. Tonight was the second year of Camp Read-A-Lot. This outdoor event, put on by the media specialist and the reader teacher, is a variety of things, but mostly an event to promote reading. During the hour-long event, families brought their chairs or blankets and hung out on the lawn in front of the school - some of the children even wore their pajamas. We listened to a couple of stories read by the event organizers, sang a few campfire songs, and then had some time to read with our children. Oh, did I mention there were smores? In addition, children were encouraged to bring books from home that they no longer needed and then could add them to the Book Swap table. If you brought put a book on the table, you could take another back home with you.

It's a cool event, short, productive, and positive. I saw at least four classroom teachers at the event, with their own children, not "working" - which I thought was great.

I wonder if an event like this would be successful at my school?? I guess there's only one way to find out - tell the reading teachers to do it!

I'm Thinking about My Position

2009-06-03T22:26:00.004-05:00

There has been a pretty interesting discussion about the role of the Library Media Specialist, thanks to this post by Darren Draper. The comments to the post are pretty interesting, with many library media specialists tossing about their ideas. Please, read it.

There's no doubt the library of today isn't what it was in the past. The technology has changed the way the library functions and librarians have had to move with the changes. Some have moved along quickly, like the hare, while others are trudging along the like tortoise. The good news, is that most are moving in the right direction. Those of us in the library field understand what's needed to keep our libraries successful, important parts of our schools. We need to get students thinking globally, communicating with others outside of the school walls, and to become better problem solvers. We need to collaborate with the classroom teachers, stay current in trends related to our position, and continuously learn.

To me, much of what's discussed regarding the students seems to be easier to implement at the high school level, not the elementary. It's a different ballgame in a K-5 building barely meeting AYP. While I'd like to completely overhaul how my services are delivered and how I interact with the students and teachers, many of the restrictions are beyond my control. Here's what I can't control:

1. A fixed schedule (Contractually, I provide prep time for teachers)
2. Certain attitudes about what I do on a daily basis (from teachers)
3. The physical layout of my space - lack of $$$ prevents me from changing a lot
4. Lack of technology - one computer lab for almost 400 students.
5. Time - I see each class for "technology" no more than 45 minutes a week.

I understand that with the exception of #1, secondary libraries struggle with the same problems. Perhaps the fixed schedule is the largest of my issues. However, since teachers have prep time when their students are with me, it's going to be very hard to change that. In addition, there are many in my department who don't want that change made because it provides us with job stability. I agree, but if a flexible schedule was implemented correctly, teachers might feel a greater need for the library and the media specialist. In my district, that's not going to happen anytime soon. In addition, it seems there's so much to cover in a little bit of time. Since we really don't have a technology curriculum broken down by grade level, I'm having a hard time figuring out what to teach when. I know I need to talk about internet safety, proper web searching techniques, etc. But when? At what grade? With a limited time frame, and students struggling with basic skills, I see our students spending a lot of their time working on basic skills in the lab - phonics activities, basic math facts practice, keyboarding for 4th grade. These are all important, but there's so much more that could be done if....

I need some guidance getting from point A to point B. I'm not at the starting line anymore and I can see where point B is, I'm just struggling with how to get there.

Global Project Tips

2009-05-27T19:27:00.003-05:00

If you have read any recent posts, you've noticed I'm working on a pretty good size project with classrooms from around the country. The project isn't over yet, but we should have things wrapped up by the end of next week.

I wrote a more detailed post about what I've learned while doing this project and you can read about it here. This post can be found on the Discovery Education Network Wisconsin blog, which I'm currently in charge of.

Please, visit the site, read the post, and comment here or there. Tell me what you think.

Some New Tool Advice

2009-05-22T22:16:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, I introduced blogging to some of the librarians in my department. Along with another teacher-librarian, we showed some of the tools we use to find and keep track of the blogs we follow. I use Google Reader, as does my coworker. For us, it works. It was not always this way for me, however. When I first started using an RSS Reader, I used Bloglines. I thought I wrote a post about why I changed, but I looked back through my archives and couldn't find it. In a nutshell, I liked a few features of Google Reader that weren't available in Bloglines - features that made my experience better. Anyway, Google Reader is my RSS of choice. This leads me to a little advice I'd like to share - whether you're relatively new to the World of Web 2.0 or not.

If you find a tool that works for you, stick with it.

Believe me, you will have plenty of choices to make. RSS readers - Google Reader or Bloglines? Social Bookmarking - Delicious or Diigo? Online photo storage/sharing - Flickr or Picasso or iPhoto, etc.? Blog platform - WordPress or Blogger? And these are the ones that are out now! There will most certainly be new ones that pop up down the road, but my advice is this, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Now, I'm not saying ignore the new stuff that pops up, especially if it's recommended by people you trust. I'm simply saying that if your current tool of choice is working for you, you probably don't need to change. I use Delicious for my social bookmarking. It meets my needs. It does what I need it to do. Should I consider Diigo? Perhaps. Are there features that I might find valuable? Perhaps. Is it worth at least exploring? Perhaps. But why? I've had several people tell me they like Diigo better. I've read quite a few posts and tweets comparing the two. But, the way I look at is this - if I have something that serves the purpose I need it do, why switch? I understand that there may be features of Diigo that are better than those in Delicious, maybe even one's I'd use. However, in my case, Delicious is providing what I need. With that being said, I did export my Delicious bookmarks, created a Diigo account, and imported the list, but haven't looked at Diigo since. I'm not sure I want to take the time, much less have the time, to learn another Web 2.0 application.

I'm curious. Do you think this is good advice or do you think people should check out the new sites that pop up? Should they check them out even if what they're using is meeting their needs? Please give me your input.

State Project Interviews

2009-05-18T07:31:00.005-05:00

Here's a little update on our State Project. As you may or may not know, our 4th graders are studying the United States. Each student has a state to research and will put together a final project at the end of the project. We are trying to conduct interviews with other students to learn more about each state. For example, instead of just learning about North Carolina from a book or website, our students are going to interview someone who lives there. That way, they are getting information from a different perspective. Last year, we used Skype for the video interviews, but could also use Google Talk if needed this year. Our students interviewed entire classes as well as small groups of students. It doesn't matter to us, whatever works best for those involved is fine. We found that taking advantage of the technology available not only is exciting, but also a great way for our students to connect with other students and classes around the country.

The interviews will last about ten minutes with our students asking the questions listed below. We'd love to hear answers from most or all of the questions.

What do you like best about living in your state?
What are a few things your state is most famous for?
Are there any famous people from your state? (What are they famous for?)
What are some things to do in your state that can't be done in most other states?
What is the biggest city in your state and how far away is your school from that city?
If we came to visit your state, where should we go and what should we do?
Are there any other interesting facts you'd like to tell us about your state?

Last year, the students on both ends of the conversation had a blast. I hope that continues this year.

Am I a Rock Star or an Expert?

2009-05-12T09:15:00.004-05:00

Steve Dembo believes that every teacher is a rock star. I'm not sure I agree 100%, but understand where he's coming from. I just think some people want to be background singers, not on lead vocals or guitars. With that being said, they are all important to ultimately creating beautiful music.

A few weeks ago, I presented a session on Building Your PLN (here's the wiki) with a friend and colleague, Rachel Yurk. We did this presentation as part of the Discovery Education Virtual Conference. Her district hosted a local event for the VC and we decided to give a live presentation to those who were interested. This was the first time I've done a presentation to people outside of my school and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Rachel and I get along very well, have a similar sense of humor and presentation style (I think) so it was very enjoyable. I hope the educators in attendance learned something and will use the information we showed to benefit themselves and their students. One thing I realized while we were presenting is that many of us have been using some great tools for a while, there are still many, many people just beginning the adventure.

If the attendees were anything like me, they probably figured Rachel and I knew a lot about what we were talking about - might have even considered us "experts." I think most conference session attendees consider the speakers to be pretty knowledgable about the topic they're presenting on. If they weren't, I guess they wouldn't be presenting, right? This leads me to another post Dembo recently wrote. Steve wonders when the average person becomes an expert at something. Does it take a large number of Twitter followers? Does it take many comments on a blog post? Does it have anything to do with giving presentations or speaking at conferences? I think it might be a combination of all of these. Steve lists the wikipedia definition of expert and makes a note that for someone to be an expert, they have to have the DESIRE to be an expert. I completely agree. There are a ton of top notch educators working with children everyday, but some don't want to considered experts or put themselves out there. They simply want to do their job. To some extent, I think this is a shame, because I think we should all be sharing the successes we have with students and learning from each other.

Back to the title of this post. I hardly think I'm a rock star or an expert in the ed tech world - I'm just trying to learn a lot as I enjoy the ride. I've been flattered when a few colleagues or members of my PLN have told me they read my blog (which has totally been on the back burner lately) or follow me on Twitter. It's very encouraging when someone mentions that they recommended me as someone to follow. I'm happy about that. I hope to continue sharing my knowledge (or lack thereof) with others. Rock Star? I doubt it. Expert? Probably not, but maybe I'm on headed in that direction, depending on your definition.

It's State Project Time!

2009-04-30T08:29:00.006-05:00

Okay everyone, I need your help again. Our fourth graders are looking for information about each state and they would like to find a class of students or a small group of students to interview for their project. Ideally, we'd like to video conference - we used Skype last year. Interested? Go to our project wiki and add your information to the list. The wiki currently lists those who participated last year. Even if there is already someone from your state listed, please add your information. The more the merrier! The wiki is private, but join it and I'll give you permission promptly and you can fill out the info.

Here's my post about this project from last year. The project was great. We ended up with a bout video conferences from about 33 schools. This year, I'd like to top that list.

I hope you join us!

Opportunity Might Be Knocking

2009-04-20T22:20:00.004-05:00

I recently saw this and wondered if I should give it a try. I've already floated the idea out to a couple of people in my PLN and they said I should do it. It certainly sounds like a great experience. There's a huge part of me who wants to fill out the application and see if I'm chosen. There's also a part of me that wants to take it easy this summer and relax. If I would be lucky enough to be chosen, I'd have to make a big decision about spending two weeks of my summer working my tail off, yet learning a ton. A decision about spending a lot of money to fly half way around the world. A decision about being away from my kids even more than just the week I'll be in DC for NECC.

Decisions, decisions......

Did You Even Notice?

2009-04-07T21:26:00.002-05:00

Last week, a new post appeared on my blog, on April 1st to be exact. If you read it, you may have wondered if I was the author, well, I wasn't. That post was actually written by Mr D., author of I Want to Teach Forever. The idea of a little blog switch on April 1st came from the creative author of Learn Me Good, one of the first blogs I began to follow. Go ahead and read his post explaining the idea.

My original post can be found here.

Stress & Motivation

2009-03-31T22:34:00.001-05:00

In school, your standardized tests are probably looming and you're struggling to keep your students motivated. Outside of school, you're probably planning for next year--whether you're sticking around or moving on to life after TFA. You might have to move or transition to new roommates even if you're staying at the same school. This is of course on top of all of the unique challenges we all face each day.

Where do we find the strength to keep going? One source, not surprisingly, should be your students. I'm a big proponent of asking them for frequent, honest feedback about the job you're doing. If you're down on yourself, you'll likely feel reassured by the positive comments you get, especially if you've never given your students the opportunity to tell you what they really think. Even if you find out there's some things that are really not working for your students, it's your opportunity to fix them and make the rest of the year work better. Ask simple questions, along the lines of:

1. What do you think of how class is going this year?
2. What should [teacher's name] change to make class better?

This is also a good time to start asking yourself the same questions. In other words, take stock of the good, the bad and everything in between while there's still time to make things better. I recently carried this out myself, making a detailed list of my five greatest failures and five greatest successes this year. I had to be brutally honest with myself, because that's the only way you'll ever make any professional growth. You don't have to do this in a public forum, but you should write it down. It's a cathartic process, even if you don't can't or don't act on what you learn.

Next, take steps to reduce your stress at school by working more efficiently. Two years ago I outlined a three-part plan based on ideas from the book The 4-Hour Workweek to make my life much easier. I wasn't a rookie when I took that advice, either--it was actually my fourth year in the classroom when I realized what had to be done.

Finally, look for (or create) a light at the end of the tunnel. What are you doing this summer? Have you planned an escape, even if for a short time? Are you moving on to some exciting new adventure next year? Either way, getting excited about what's just around the corner is easy:

* Create a countdown
* Make a summer fun "to do" list
* Think about and plan out your already-booked adventures
* Call friends and family and share exciting plans
* Focus your energy on what have to do before summer comes to make all your great plans come to fruition

Have an idea of your own? Leave a comment!

WEMTA 2009 Recap

2009-03-25T19:17:00.005-05:00

WEMTA was a good time. Meeting up with some members of my PLN again was great. Meeting some new faces is always interesting. Having dinner with some people I've never met f2f with and others I've only briefly met was nice. I guess it helps that I felt I knew them more due to plenty of communication over the last year. The sessions I went to were beneficial and I'm looking forward to changing how I do a few things for the better. I hope to go back next year and learn more in The Dells.

With all of that being said, here are some thoughts....please share your thoughts as well!

I spent the last couple of days in Madison, WI as WEMTA, our state library and technology conference. At first, I was planning on driving back to Milwaukee (about 75 miles) each night, but decided on staying over to enjoy the nightly networking opportunities, if you know what I mean. It was a good choice. I think this is my fourth or fifth time attending this conference. The first few times I attended, I was a classroom teacher. In fact, I think the first time I attended we were still living in the 1900's! The conference obviously has changed since then with the boom in educational technology - both hardware and software. There weren't flip video cameras, nearly as much wireless technology, and of course, no web 2.0.

Last year and this year, I attended the conference coming from a different perspective. Not only has my job changed from a classroom teacher to a library media specialist, but I don't consider myself a ed tech newbie anymore. I've immersed my self in more learning about educational technology the past couple of years more than ever. I attended NECC last year and am going again this year. I feel I have a decent grasp on PLN's, video conferencing, Twitter, blogging, etc and how I can use these tools to help myself and my students. By no means am I an expert, but I do think my level of knowledge might be a little more than the average conference attendee these last few days. I love the fact that the tech knowledge at the conference varied widely. I attended some sessions where the presenters where sharing different web 2.0 sites that they are using with their students and several people were experiencing VoiceThread and others for the first time. People are still dipping their toes into 21st century teaching and learning and that's great. I feel I'm already in up past my knees. In fact, on some days, I'm in over my head, but that's another story. I was chatting with a colleague who has much more tech knowledge and experience than me. I can't remember the exact wording, but she commented that she's been at other conferences where the learning went much deeper and the session options offered more advanced stuff. I don't know if she's right or wrong or whether I agree or not, but I think I understand where she's coming from.

I've learned quite a bit over the last several years so I feel my expectations for a conference like this have changed. In the past, I'd be satisfied walking away with one or two things I can use with students right away. Not anymore. There are always going to be great minds sharing new things, and I still want that, but my expectations are a little more now. I want to learn how to bring people along with me on this ride. I want them to see how fun/exciting/scary/rewarding the ed tech adventure can be. Since I'm not in my own little classroom anymore, I want to find ways to collaborate with teachers and improve what they are doing. I want to build my library program to a point where it's not seen as a separate learning space. I want it to be an extension of EVERY classroom and I want the students to view me as another one of their teachers. The technology can help me and the knowledge I've gained and will continue to gain can assist me in building better relationships with my colleagues. I think the people I work with view me as a leader in the field of educational technology in our building. I feel they value my knowledge, but for some reason, aren't buying into the "Let's work together" piece. Some are, but not enough. Attending WEMTA and networking with my friends and colleagues can help me work towards my goals. If I walk away with a cool new website or tool, great - but at this point, I'm going for more.

Standardized Test Results from a Parent Point of View

2009-03-17T21:10:00.003-05:00

The school my children attend, which is different from the one I work in, operates on trimesters. Today marked the day report cards from the second trimester came home. As a former classroom teacher, it seemed as though report card time was a fairly stressful time. Filling out the report cards, trying to make sure parents had a relatively clear picture of their child's progress, and still making the comments seem positive was not always a fun time of the year. When I met with parents during conferences, they were not often surprised at the report card. It was usually pretty close to what they had been seeing on daily work, tests, etc. As my children work their way through elementary school, I'm seeing things through a different lense. This year, my daughter, along with all other 3rd graders in public schools in Wisconsin, set out on her first adventure with high stakes testing. Here, it's the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE). As educators, we all have our opinions on these tests. Will our students/classes/schools do well so we have enough students Proficient and Advanced therefore meeting AYP? Are we doing enough with the students? Are we drilling them with enough test prep? The list goes on and on.

As a parent getting results for the first time, I felt different. I work in a school that probably won't meet AYP this year. There are a lot of factors, but most of those factors don't exist in the school my children attend. I didn't realize the scores were coming home today, but when I saw the score sheet, I knew things would turn out just fine. (By the way, the tests were taken in October/November). Knowing the ability of my children, I'm usually not surprised at how well they do academically, they are pretty smart kids. But to be honest, I was hoping for Advanced in both reading and math. I guess I have high expectations, which might be setting myself up for problems down the road, but I wanted her to be one of the best. Needless to say, I was slightly bummed. She missed Advanced in reading my 1 point and math by 4. I know this is probably only a question or two, but she was so close. Obviously, I'm very proud of her. She doesn't know what these results mean quite like I do, but I just wished she would have gotten one more right.

In her case, that one point or question didn't really make a difference in the results for her class, school, and district. As long as a student is Advanced or Proficient, things are all good. BUT, what if that one point would have been the different between Basic and Proficient? I've seen that on test results and I know the impact it can have - and that's a whole different story. Could a student guessing correctly on one question make a difference - absolutely! It's unfortunate, but it is what it is. Until something is changed in how schools report progress related to NCLB, we have to deal with the system as it is.

Here's the bottom line - she did good and I'm proud of how well she did. However, next year, she better be Advanced....... or else!!!

By the way, I'd love to hear any thoughts on your experiences as your children moved through the gauntlet of standardized testing. Were your experiences similar or am I just crazy?

Instant Connectedness

2009-03-12T18:52:00.004-05:00

Okay, I don't really think connectedness is a word, but read on and hear me out. I think you'll understand what I mean.

In the age of iPhones and Blackberries, Twitter, texting and email, we've become more connected and accessible than ever. At just about anytime, I can be reached - or reach someone else. Whether it's through a regular phone call, a text message, tweet, or email, I've grown to accept (for good or bad) the ability to connect almost instantly with friends, family, and followers. The problem I'm discovering, is that most other people either aren't as available or simply aren't as ~~smart~~ dumb as me.

I feel I'm pretty quick to respond to emails, text messages, Tweets, and voicemails. Sure, there are times when I don't for a variety of reasons, but it's usually NOT because I didn't get the message right away. The problem I'm running into, is I'm starting to expect the same timely response I usually give. I know this is a problem that I've got to get over, but here's what I mean - and tell me if these doesn't sound familiar.

1. I send an email and expect a response rather quickly. (I guess people don't sit around there computer as much as me checking their email at least a few times an hour.)

2. I send a text message or call someone's cell phone and they don't answer. Don't people carry cell phones with them at all times? Why aren't they getting back to me? Should I take the hint that they just might be ignoring me? :)

I wonder if the whole SmartPhone thing is causing me to feel this way. If I didn't have a iPhone that allows me to check my email at any time, or text message, or use Twitter, would I be just as productive and happy? Do I really need to be available in a variety of ways at any waking moment? Do I really need to check my email or Twitter at halftime of my daughter's soccer game? Do I need to check it when I'm out with friends? Probably not, but I am - mostly because I can. If you have an iPhone or Blackberry, do you find yourself checking email and messages on a much more frequent basis compared to when you had a regular old cellphone - perhaps at times when you really don't need to? I bet you do. Are you better off now? I'm not so sure I am.

What do you think? I'd like to hear.

Claiming an Online Identity

2009-02-23T21:34:00.003-06:00

A while back, I wrote about claiming my online identity. I purchased www.chadlehman.com For now, it simply links to this blog, but over the summer, I hope to expand it a little more.

Recently, a fellow (non-tech) blogger, John Pearson, did the same. If you haven't checked out Mister Teacher's site, I think you should - it's usually good for a nice laugh. In addition, to his blog, John writes a column for Education.com.

Quick side note - when I first started my blog, John was the first person to leave a comment and welcome me to the world of blogging.

Web 2 Many

2009-02-22T10:29:00.004-06:00

I was going use Web 2.Ohhh No for the title of this post, but decided not to. No particular reason, but both seem to express my thought on the thousands of Web 2.0 tools that are out there.

The bottom line? There are simply too many to discover, too many to keep track of, and too many to learn. There are lot of tools that probably (maybe) can do some pretty neat things, some with great educational potential, but I'm not sure how we can all keep up.

In the past, I've heard about a few new tools that others suggested and used, with success. I signed up for a bunch, took a peek, and then forgot about them. Does that sound familiar to you? There are definitely some tools that intrigue me, more for personal use than professional. Jott and Don't Forget the Milk are two that I think I might actually use, but simply haven't taken the time to set things up properly and take advantage of what these tools might do. Today, I canceled my Jott account. There are probably several others that I signed up for but don't even remember.

This brings me to Plurk. I like Plurk - the threaded discussions are great, but have realized over the last several weeks, that I don't miss it. I haven't been using Plurk nearly as much as I used to and haven't felt the need to check. Twitter, which I've been using longer, is meeting my PLN needs. Twitter seems to be growing as well - I think there's more buzz about it and I'm often checking my email to find new followers. Sure, some of it is spam, but for the most part, more educators are on board. Twitter is not only keeping me connected with several hundred educators, but it's keeping my updated with non-educational news as well. I like how some of my local news stations and sports teams are using Twitter. I like how I can follow some national sites and even some of my favorite tv shows. Twitter is keeping me more connected than Plurk was. I've also recently discovered TweetDeck, which I really, really like. We all have to find what works for our needs, and as much as I enjoyed my time using Plurk, I'm sort of sad to say, that I'm done with it.......for now.

My New (or Other) Gig

2009-02-15T21:34:00.003-06:00

I'm a new member of the Wisconsin Discovery Education Network Leadership Council (WI DEN LC) as a blogger. While my blogging skills aren't nearly as good as the blogs I read, my hope with this new adventure is that I grow as a writer and can share some of the great things going on in the world of educational technology, whether it's related to Discovery or not. I don't plan on cross posting very often, but I may share something once in a while. There are a lot of great things going on in the world of education - with and without technology. I hope to continue using this blog to share, learn, and question.

If you have a few minutes, take a quick peek at the WI DEN LC blog. My first post is a little get-to-know-me. If you don't know me, read it. The second post is about a little project on of our fourth graders is working on.

Twitter Fun

2009-02-15T15:38:00.003-06:00

There are a bunch of pretty interested Twitter applications available. I've recently started using TweetDeck, which I really love. Thanks to Beth Knittle, I came across Twitter Mosaic. As you can see below, this site creates a mosaic of your Twitter friends. Here's mine.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

A Facelift

2009-02-14T23:12:00.007-06:00

I saw this post the other day from Steve Dembo about the redesign of his blog. Steve's a very knowledgeable guy in the world of educational technology and one I've learned quite a bit through with my involvement with Discovery Education. I like it. I like the tech influence all over. It's cool. It also started me down the road to picking a new template for my blog. I didn't want to use one of the existing templates offered by Blogger, so I did a little search for free blogger templates and found BTemplates. There were plenty to choose from and simple directions for uploading so I figured what the heck - time for a change.

I followed the directions, uploaded the new site, and now have a new look. I think it's an improvement over the old one, but I did notice one thing - the widgets I had on my old blog were gone! Oops. I didn't realize I was going to have to set all of those up again. Oh well. I did add back most of the stuff I had taking up space on my blog, but still have a few more widgets to go.

Like I said, to me, it's a better look. Is it perfect? Not a chance, for several reasons. Due to the way this template displays the blog title and header, I had to make a few changes to get it to look half way decent. Because of these changes, I think the official title of my blog is no longer IMC Guy. The posts themselves seem to be okay, but the layout of the time, labels, and comments isn't great. Maybe it's the template I've chosen, but even if I go into the layout section of Blogger and edit how the posts should look, they are still locked into a certain format. It's kind of annoying, but I'll deal. Also, I'd like to get rid of the "Edit" link near the top, but I have no idea how. It came with the template and when I'm in the edit mode on Blogger, it doesn't let me get rid of the link. The sidebar items are a work in progress and I'll be updating those soon, but I wish I could center some of the information.

So, what do you think? Good, bad, indifferent?

UPDATE: I changed the title/header. I like it better now.

UPDATE #2: I figured out how to edit the code and remove the "Edit" tab.

Full Speed Ahead or Not?

2009-02-11T08:15:00.006-06:00

I've been on this educational technology adventure for years now and I've realized that there are some pretty amazing schools and districts out there, not to mention amazing educators. It seems to me, some schools and districts are moving forward much more quickly than others. Some are quick to adapt to new technologies and some are much slower. Are leadership and funding the critical factors in determining the direction schools and districts take with how fast they move with technology? Are there others?

Is your school/district one who has a "Let's go for it and see what happens" mentality? I think it would be very fun to be working in an environment where new ideas were given the green light. I realize we're teaching in a world of No Child Left Behind where schools are judged by test scores, where funding levels aren't where we'd like them to be, where professional development may not always be up to us, but why aren't teachers given the opportunity to try something new? Why can't we experiment a little?

Or, is your school or district taking a very cautious approach? If they are, why? Is the time we have with students too valuable to "waste" on something that isn't research based? Are we risking valuable book time with students on topics directly related to "the test?" Is there simply fear with what could go wrong? How will this mentality change in a school or district? Can it happen quickly or do you think it must happen slowly? I'm not sure I have the answers.

Photo Credits: http://flickr.com/photos/alexajaye/2256556628 and http://flickr.com/photos/iirraa/93216696/

Technology Curriculum

2009-02-03T20:46:00.002-06:00

Before you continue reading, I must admit that my thoughts are running all over the place and it probably shows in this post. Getting everything in order so that it makes sense is somewhat challenging right now. I apologize if this seems scattered.

Does your school or district have a Technology Curriculum? Is it well defined or fairly broad? Is it broken down by grade level? (By the way, if you have an electronic copy, please share). I was thinking the other day about the skills and programs I'm supposed to be teaching my students related to technology. From kindergarten through fifth grade, we have a short list of skills our students need to know by the end of each school year. Many of the final "projects" include the using some of our district purchased software, such as Kidspiration, Inspiration, and KidPix. With technology changing as rapidly as it is, I wonder if these projects need to be reevaluated and perhaps linked with some of the new tools that are out there. Are we preparing kids by having them create some sort of web using one of these products? I don't know. Are we really looking at thinking and problem solving?

Beyond the basics of opening and saving files, launching programs, proper use of web browsers, etc., what do kids really need to know? It seems to me, a big part is communication. Regardless of the tool involved, students need to communicate their thoughts and what they've learned.

I'm sometimes stuck because there are so many exciting tools available that weren't available several years ago. I'm sure the same will be said 5 years from now, but I wonder if we should just focus on skills, and use whatever software we want. I want to use some of these, VoiceThread for example, but am not sure the best way to go about it. What do you think?

A Work In Progress

2009-01-26T21:32:00.003-06:00

As I try to continue to manage my PLN to meet my needs, I still struggle with the idea that quality is much better than quantity. I know Jen Wagner wrote about this before and I probably did as well (I'm not going to look back for the post), but I was thinking about the blogs I'm following in particular. I'm living in an elementary world. A world where the technology needs of my students vary greatly from those in a high school setting.

I really like my Twitter friends (and my Plurk friends as well). It's a very diverse group of people with a wide range of experiences. Some are elementary classroom teachers, some work with secondary students. Some are tech coaches, coordinators, integration specialists, and whatever else you want to call these do-everything people. Some work in my district and others work on the other side of the world. I'm thrilled with this wide range of teachers and learners.

On the blogging side, however, I'm not so sure I want such a variety. I don't have a ton of time (or maybe I don't want to spend a ton of time) reading blogs that have a focus that's very different from my elementary world. I wonder if I should be focusing on learning more about what's going on in elementary schools and classrooms and less on what's happening in secondary schools. Or, is teaching and learning teaching and learning - no matter what the level?

I'd be curious to know what you're RSS Reader looks like. Is there more emphasis on blogs related to your field or grade level? Is there a pretty good balance between elementary and secondary? Should there be?

A Look Back and A Look Ahead

2009-01-15T22:36:00.005-06:00

Over the past few weeks, I've read several "Year in Review" posts. These have come in a variety of formats that I've enjoyed. John Pearson (Mister Teacher) wrote about his 2008 month by month. Colette Cassinelli wrote a nice summary of her 2008 and a look ahead to 2009. Jeff Utecht shared his thoughts about 2008 as well. I also enjoyed how Kim Cofino shared her accomplishments from the past year. For my look back, I'm going to take some ideas from the outstanding people above and share my 2008.

For me, 2008 was a pretty exciting year. In addition to pretty good family time, a trip to Disney and NYC, baseball games at Miller Park, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium and a Packer game at Lambeau Field, a new puppy, etc., I really dove into the deep end with educational technology. I spent a lot of time on Twitter, building my PLN, and quite of bit of time attending professional conferences. I joined a few Nings, which I didn't visit nearly enough, and tried to blog more. In April, I attended WEMTA, which is Wisconsin's Educational Technology Conference. There, I got a chance to meet a few new friends face to face - John Pederson and Jen Wagner. Great educators who I'm hoping to see again at the conference this year. Over the summer, I was fortunate enough to attend NECC for the first time! San Antonio was a blast. Not only did I see my cousin, who I stayed with, but I met even more great teachers and learners during my visit to this conference. I met several DEN members who helped make the evening activities even more enjoyable. Several people (Laura D., Howard M., and Teryl M., among others) who collaborated with my students in a project in spring were there and I was able to thank them for participating. I met a ton of great people who I've learned from, too many to name. I can't begin to explain the impact NECC had on me. I've always loved using technology with students, but this conference opened my eyes to not only some amazing people, but amazing ideas for using technology with students. In the fall, I continued my learning by attending the Discovery Education Midwest Regional Conference in Illinois. Oh yeah, www.chadlehman.com was launched over the summer - I took the suggestions of Dean Shareski and Ewan McIntosh and claimed my online identity.

The year wasn't all roses, however, as our teacher contract negotiations took a pretty stressful toll on me. I was the Head Negotiator for our Union's last contract negotitaion and for the first time in a very long time, if ever, the Tentative Agreement we brought forward to members in late May, was voted down. Our team took a lot of heat from a few people, but we managed to go back to the table this past fall and come to a new agreement that the membership passed. I'm very glad that is behind me.

Once the school year started in fall, I wanted to share some of my learning with the staff at my school. I've held several after school learning sessions that teachers have attended. Once was on Discovery Education and the tools they have available. Another was on Personal Learning Networks, and the third was on another topic I can't think of at the moment. In addition, about 10 teachers stayed with me at school on a Friday night as we participated in the K12 Online Conference. I'm glad teachers are showing the interest in learning some of the tools that are available and how they can have an impact on learning. I feel fortunate that they are willing to spend out of school time with me, trying to expand their thinking. I also was awarded my first grant this year, which was used to purchase more technology for our school, and I have my fingers crossed after also applying for the Best Buy grant a few months ago.

What's in store for 2009? I don't have a crystal ball, or a Magic 8-Ball so I can't really predict what's going to happen, but I'm fairly certain of a few things. One thing that will happen is more learning. New tech tools and ideas will need to be examined and hopefully incorporated into my teaching. I'm hoping I can continue to share my learning with the staff at my school and get them more interested in the use of educational technology. I'm hoping to attend WEMTA and NECC again, but you never know what will happen. Perhaps there will be a professional change for me, but we'll see how that goes. I'm happy where I'm at, but sometimes new challenges are out there. I hope my family stays healthy and that my kids do well in school and on the sports fields. I know we're already a few weeks into 2009, but so far, so good (other than the extremely cold weather that's canceled school two days in a row).

Do you have anything else to share about your 2008? Comments on mine?

I Hope College Is In The Future

2009-01-06T21:25:00.005-06:00

Over the vacation, I spent quite a bit of time reading the many blogs waiting for me in my reader. I came across many great ones that I hope to write about down the road. Here are my thoughts on two posts in particular.

I think I'm agreeing more with Darren Draper's post. We both basically disagree with Will Richardson's post about the future of his children and how college fits in, or doesn't. Both gentlemen have interesting thoughts regarding the future for today's students and the role college might play, much of which I agree with. But I believe, like Darren, that to be successful in the future, at least the future that I don't see drastically changing for a while, you most likely need a college degree.

There are certainly going to be jobs and positions that will exist in a few years that we have no idea about now. There are certainly going to be careers in ten years that don't exist now. However, today's students, and hopefully mine, will need to be able to make adjustments in their learning to adapt to any future situations they might find. Today's students need to have the skills to learn in any environment and work with a variety of people. Sure, these skills have been mentioned quite a bit in numerous posts about 21st Century Learning, but I doubt a large percentage of the teachers my students will have will help get them ready for this world during their K-12 schooling. I believe much of that readiness is going to be my responsibility. College, or some other post-secondary schooling, will also have to play a big role in this development.

In addition, college life is much more than just the "in class" education. It's about going on out your own, meeting a ton of new people, being more (or less) responsible than you've ever been. You've seen college kids on YouTube, right? Yet, you're not completely on your own. Whether it's your family or the university, there are people who can support you when needed. You do have at least four years to grow as a person, learn how to live, learn how to make mistakes and adapt. These experiences can also shape students into future leaders. College life is a great transition from high school to the "real world." I'm not sure it's a good idea to take these opportunities way.

Time for Plan B

2009-01-04T09:01:00.003-06:00

I saw this post by Collette Cassinelli and was a little disappointed. There are some changes being made at VoiceThread that will no longer allow me to do what worked for others, but didn't work for me. I know that may sound confusing, but one of my goals this year is to learn more about VoiceThread and use it with students. I contacted Kevin Jarrett, who knows quite a bit about VT and asked for advice. Kevin and I chatted via Skype on a Sunday morning and he gave me some tips on how he's using VT with his students and how they comment on the work of their classmates. One of his suggestions included creating multiple identities within one account - my EdVoiceThread account. He noted this has worked well for him, so I gave it a whirl. For whatever reason, this didn't work for me. We could get everyone logged in, but they couldn't view any of the pictures in the VT. All slides showed up at black screens. Hmmm. Since that time, the project hasn't gone anywhere (I'm very good at starting projects and not finishing them). While the VT was as add-on to the main project, I felt okay leaving it alone. However, I'm still a little frustrated that what worked for others, didn't work for me. With the news in Collette's post, it seems like everyone who was using this strategy is going to have to find a Plan B - most likely involving the purchase of additional VT accounts.

Help me find a new Plan B. How are you handling this change? I'd like to know.

Netbooks in Elementary Schools

2008-12-17T10:37:00.010-06:00

There seems to be some excitement over netbooks - mini laptops people are using as an alternative to their main desktop or laptop while they are on the go. I first saw these in person at NECC this past summer in San Antonio, but noticed more and more on little trip to New York City where they were displayed like crazy in the windows of corner electronic stores. In the last couple of months, I've noticed more and more available through many retailers. Black Friday seemed to bring these even more to the forefront for me as I saw ads, both in print and online, for netbooks running around $300. I particularily remember Steve Dembo discussing his Black Friday purchase of one of these little machines on Twitter.

The excitement certainly seems to be growing around these computers, but why hasn't there been a huge push for these to be used more in elementary schools? Netbooks would be perfect for younger students!

Think about the size, it's perfect for young students. The keyboards are small, which would fit the small hand size of primary grade students very well. Proper keyboarding skills could be taught at an earlier age. This could help prevent poor habits from getting started. In our district, we start teaching keyboarding in fourth grade, and even that is tough for some of the students - they have a hard time making some of the reaches to certain keys. If this isn't the route to follow, why are we not at least using kid-sized keyboards? I'm sure there are some on the market, but districts are not choosing to buy them. Are we doing the children a disservice by not using equipment that is their size?

Netbooks are cheap (inexpensive)! Schools are looking for inexpensive technology and this could be a solution. While I've never used one, from what I've read, their functionality would be perfectly fine for elementary kids. I've worked with AlphaSmarts at a few schools and those were purchased with the idea of an inexpensive, portable alternative to laptops. Netbooks would offer much, much more.

I haven't read about a huge push for Netbooks in schools. The discussion is occurring, which I guess is a start. Doug Johnson wrote this post sharing his thoughts. This and this, however, do talk about some uses of Netbooks in schools. Thanks Doug Belshaw, for sharing your post.

What do you think?

Finding a Blogging Balance

2008-12-15T21:33:00.004-06:00

Maybe it's the time of year, but I'm finding the time to do the things I want to do is pretty limited these days. We all know there are things we need to do with our families and jobs that take up a lot, if not most, of our daily time, but I'm sure I'm not alone when I feel like I could use another hour or two in the day. I'm not blogging as much as I'd like, even though I have a lot I'd like to get out. The number of posts I need to read in Google Reader is certainly not getting any smaller either. There's a lot I'd like to do, but I have to continue to prioritize my list. With the number of posts I need to read inching close to 400, I'm finding that I'm missing conversations and events. Some of the posts are time sensitive and it's not in my best interest to miss out on some learning opportunities. One thing that I've done to help my problem (this one at least) is narrow down the list of blogs I subscribe to. Over the last week or so, I've probably removed at least six blogs. While this might not seem like a big reduction, to me, it's a start. I know I'll continue shrinking my list until I find the right number of subscriptions that I can handle. What's the number? I don't know, but think I'll know it when it pops up. For now, the list must get smaller.

What are you doing to find a balance? How many blogs do you subscribe to? How many posts are in your reader unread? I'm very interested in knowing what you do?

How Young is Too Young?

2008-12-10T19:24:00.007-06:00

This little 5 year-old wonder wants his own email address so he can email grandma and grandpa. My initial thought was no, he's too young. However, the more I thought about it, I don't see it as a problem......IF.

Earlier today, I posted this same question to my PLN on Plurk and below are the responses.

I was a little surprised at the responses. I would have assumed the responses would have been more "favorable." Perhaps some assumptions I had in mind were not taken into consideration by others. When setting up his account, I was planning on doing the following:

1. Using my local provider for his account - not Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
2. His user account on our Mac already is restricted using Parental Controls, so those would still be in place for this email account.
3. He would only be allowed to read and write emails with supervision.
4. He would only be allowed to send email to approved addresses, something that can be set up using Parental Controls.
5. A discussion would take place with him regarding entering his email anywhere or even giving it out to people.
6. Obviously, if any of these "rules" are broken, the account could be deleted.

With all of this in place, I can't think of a reason I should NOT go ahead with this. He's interested in this, which would certainly improve not only his reading and writing skills, but also his knowledge of a communication tool that is as common these days as the phone is. Am I missing something?

Why Didn't I Do This Earlier?

2008-12-02T21:33:00.005-06:00

While every school year presents itself with a series of "Firsts" - this school year marked my first attempt at writing a grant proposal. In fact, I've written two. One was the Best Buy grant, which is a pretty big grant - potentially thousands of dollars in tech for my school. Winners of this grant aren't announced for a couple of months yet, but the excitement is still there. The other grant I completed for the first time was a smaller grant, under $500, from our school district education foundation. I wrote a grant, with the help of my co-advisor, for technology for our newspaper club.

A couple of weeks ago, we found out that we were one of many programs awarded with the district grant. We received funding for new technology in the amount of $315. As soon as we found out we won, I immediately went online to find the best deals on a digital camera and digital voice recorders. These were the two items we submitted the proposal for, knowing we would not only use them for the newspaper club, but would not have any problems finding great uses for these tools in other classrooms. After making the purchases prior to Thanksgiving break, I arrived at school this past Monday to find a box from Amazon.com waiting for me. Needless to say, I was like a little kid on Christmas morning! I immediately ripped open the box to check out our new "toys."

This got me thinking. Why did it take me 13 years of teaching before I went after "free money?" Not that writing a grant is easy and can be done quickly, but why don't other teachers write grant proposals more often? Sure, some are more involved than others, but many groups are looking to give money away to worthy causes in education. Why aren't more teachers taking advantage of the opportunity? Is it because they are too busy? Is it because they are not aware of the grants that exist? Is it because they don't know what they'd do with the money? I'm sure it's a combination of these and more, but after succeeding with one grant proposal, I certainly see myself looking into more opportunities down the road. I'm super excited about the stuff we already added to our technology toolbox, but am just as eager to see what could happen if the Best Buy grant comes through. I'm certainly not getting my hopes up for that one, but figure if I submit two grant proposals a year, winning one isn't too bad!

Trying to "One Up"

2008-11-27T23:05:00.005-06:00

Each month at School Board Meetings, a principal from one of the 16 schools in my district, makes a presentation to the Board about their school. They usually go over some of the programs that are unique to the school as well as information on what is being done to improve test scores. Our principal, who happens to be new to our school this year, is presenting on December 8th. He attended a previous meeting to see what other schools were doing for their presentations and to get some ideas on what he needed to do. What he saw was both good and bad. He saw a presentation by a principal who is pretty tech savvy, works at a pretty tech savvy school, and is pretty tech savvy (yes, I said that again.) This was good because he saw multimedia tools he was unfamiliar with. He saw a good presentation. Well, needless to say, we wants to create a presentation at least that good, he wants our school to stand out. Here's the problem, he's not that tech savvy. Luckily, he does know someone who is.....me, and he came calling.

We had some discussions on what we could do to make his PowerPoint stand out a little bit and really show some of the neat things we do at our school. At the least, we could make our basic things seem cool by simply changing the way we present them. It was time to infuse some easy "cool stuff" into the presentation. I put together a couple, okay 10, Animoto videos with pictures of our students and our school and asked if he thought we should include one. He really liked the videos, so we added this one. I used GarageBand to create an audio file of some of our students reciting our school pledge in Spanish and added that to one of the slides. We had a teacher interview students using a Flip video camera about what they liked about our school. I edited those and we added that presentation as well. By the way, thank you Zamzar for helping with some of the the file conversion! I think he really likes the final presentation with the things I helped add. I know he really appreciates my help because he's said so many times.

I think he also realized that the things I did weren't really that difficult. On some occasions, he said, "That's it? That's all you have to do?" I think you can guess what my one word answer was. This is what most people don't realize about some of the new tools that are out there. They are not difficult to learn, but in many cases, people just don't know what can be done or don't know where to find some of the fun applications that exist. He asked me how I learned all "this stuff." I told him through classes, trial and error with programs, and through my PLN. I was telling my wife that story and she told me I should have told him I knew how to do all of it because it was my job. Why didn't I think of that?

Generation We

2008-11-18T16:49:00.002-06:00

I first saw this on the blog of Angela Maiers. It made me think. It might make you think, too.

Generation WE: The Movement Begins... from Generation We on Vimeo.

I Just Don't Know

2008-11-17T21:21:00.003-06:00

I've been generally pleased with the willingness of the teachers at my school to learn more about technology and to take advantage of the computer lab we have. Now, is our staff leading the way with technology integration? No, they're not, but they are also not dragging way behind. While just about every second through fifth grade class comes into the computer lab once a week, in addition to their scheduled time with me, I really think we could be doing even more.

For the most part, I see students working on websites to reinforce ideas taught in the classroom. Many of these sites are "drill and kill" type websites. I have to admit, that in many cases, I'm doing the same. These are the types of activities chosen for a variety of reasons, including limited availability of the one coomputer lab in our building of almost 400 students. Our district has purchased math software to go along with our math series and some of our teachers take their students in the lab to work with this software, which I don't think is a bad thing. However, this is usually the only thing the students do during their time in the lab. In other cases, students are word processing some type of assignment or working on keyboarding skills. Our school is going to have a difficult time meeting the NCLB benchmarks this year, which is putting a lot of pressure on our school and district to meet AYP. I believe this is one of the reasons teachers are using the lab to reinforce skills our students need for the tests. We have a lot of low performing students and they simply need the basics.

On one hand, I don't really think there is anything wrong with this. On the other hand, I know there is so much more we can be doing with our students. I see the possibilities that many of our teachers do not. I see the creativity our students could show. I also see the pressure NCLB is putting on our staff and students and wonder if that is contributing to our technology use (or lack of).

More on our LAN Party

2008-11-12T22:21:00.003-06:00

I wrote earlier about our LAN Party and how I thought it went. I decided to survey the participants to get their feedback on the event and to find out whether or not they thought it was as good as I did. Their responses supported my thoughts on the conference, but a few stuck out.

I asked teachers how the information will impact their instruction, here are some answers:

1. I want to try out some ideas with kids at my school. Some ideas will be instantly motivating. Some ideas will take more planning.

2. The suggested websites and different online tools alone were fantastic! I think I'll use most of the ones that we talked about in some form or another.

3. I'll take one step at a time and try to make my learning more engaging to kids.

4. I am more willing to take the risk to explore sights on the computer. I look forward to using chat rooms or ???? spaces that I can ask other educators questions/ideas for working with a particular group of students.

I think these answers are pretty good and show the willingness of these teachers to step out of their comfort zone and try to enhance their teaching with the use of technology. It's encouraging to me that they are interested in learning and want to take the next step.

I also asked teachers to describe the evening in one word. Here's what they said:

Informative, Stimulating, Worthwhile, Engaging, Eye-Opening

When I think about professional development opportunities, I'd consider the session successful if I left feeling informed, stimulating, and engaged. Needless to say, I'm pleased everyone felt their time was not wasted. I'm looking forward to providing more opportunities like this in the future.

Oh What a Night!

2008-11-09T09:54:00.005-06:00

Friday night marked the first LAN Party at my school. Our Learning At Night get together was centered around the K12Online Conference. A number of teachers from my school were willing to stick around on a Friday night, including several classroom teachers, a reading specialist, and LD teacher, a district physical therapist, our building substitute and one library media specialist from another school. We were to take part in something new to everyone. We planned on spending 2.5 hours viewing presentations from the K12 Online Conference, both as a large group and also individually. We certainly planned on having discussions as well about what we learned.

Preparing for the event was fun, but a little stressful. I wanted to use laptops so teachers could move around the library and not be confined to our computer lab. Since about half of the teachers attending didn't have their own laptop and we don't have laptops at our school, I needed to find laptops from another school that weren't being used and have them sent to my building. I thought this would be easy, but it turned out to be more of a challenge than I thought. Regardless, the day prior to the event, we found a cart at one of our intermediate schools and it was shipped over. I also wanted to provide our teachers with the opportunity to participate in a backchannel discussion while we were viewing a presentation together. I was hoping to use uStream, but due to firewall issues at school, we couldn't access the chat feature, which is what we needed most. I was hoping to work with our network technician on Friday to get everything set up, but I found out he was out of the district that day and couldn't help me out. I guess this serves me right for waiting until the last moment. I had to find a Plan B, and that's where Twitter and Plurk came in handy. The district wouldn't allow me to download Skype or any other program to the laptops, but Anne Thorp suggested DimDim, which was completely new to me. DimDim worked extremely well. We were able to provide a live video feed of the presentations, take part in a group chat, and the only person who had to sign up was me, the host. DimDim simply sent a link to the meeting to people I set up and they received an email with a link to the meeting - no sign up or anything for them. It was a very nice site that worked great for us. We could have recorded the presentations and I wanted to save the backchannel discussion, but I forgot.

Our planned agenda didn't exactly go as scheduled, but that was okay. We had planned on watching one presentation together, several individually, and then plenty of discussion. I tossed the offer to join us out to my PLN on Twitter and Plurk and Stacy Kasse, a teacher from New Jersey, joined us for much of the evening. Her comments were excellent and the teachers were very pleased we had someone else joining us from "the outside." Thank you, Stacy. After watching the Getting Started Keynote together and discussing the session, we decided to take a look at some of the Web 2.0 tools mentioned. I demonstrated Twitter, Plurk, VoiceThread, and others. We had some great conversations about how these can be beneficial, all of which were new to most of the other teachers. We then decided to watch another session together, rather than move on to individual viewing. This was fine with me because we were able to continue our discussions. Finally, we broke out to view a session on our own. A few people watched sessions as pairs or small groups, but we were able to learn more. At the conclusion, we touched base again on the evening, discussed the next step, and headed out. Some of us ended up getting some dinner and drinks together, which of course led to more discussion about the event.

Overall, I thought the night was a success. There was a lot of learning, a lot of good discussion, and a good time. Most of the people said they would participate in something like this again, maybe not on a Friday night for 2.5 hours, but perhaps after school for an hour or so - just enough time to view a session or 2 and talk. I'm open to this and hope to set up something down the road because what we did this past Friday was the beginning for many of our teachers. Integrating technology into the curriculum and your teaching is not an easy task, but these teachers were willing to take the first step. I hope we all continue moving forward and learning, it's the best thing we can do for our students.

I hope to provide a follow up with specific comments and plans from the attendees over the next few days.

Professional Development on My Time

2008-11-06T19:31:00.005-06:00

Tomorrow marks a Friday evening of professional development that the staff at my school has probably never been a part of. Taking an idea written about by Jeff Utecht and Dean Shareski, we will be having our own little LAN party centered around the K12 Online Conference. I put together some information about the conference and emailed the staff at my school about staying after school to participate in a unique learning opportunity. I think there will be ten people from my school participating. To me, it really shows the willingness of these people to stick around for about 2.5 hours on a Friday night to learn something new. Sure, I've encourage them with food and refreshments to make the evening a little more fun, but I think they realize the true value will be in the conference itself. We may try to uStream parts of what we're doing, but we've had some trouble with the chat feature due to district firewalls. I would love to have a backchannel chat going on as we view one of the keynotes together. If we can't do it via uStream, perhaps we can load Skype on the computers and give that a try. I don't know if this will work out or not, but if we do get it up and running, I'll post the link on Twitter and Plurk. I really hope people get something out of the time they will be putting in. I hope the teachers involved will see an example of how they can guide their own learning in ways typically not thought of. I hope they share the info with a friend or colleague who didn't attend.

I wonder if this type of learning will be the future of professional development for educators. Basically, it's On Demand learning. Teachers find the time to figure out what they want to learn, find the resources and connections to make it happen, and then learn. This is very different from what professional development has looked like in the past. Typically, teachers attend some type of conference, usually on their own time and out of their own pocket. However, these types of conferences obviously have time and location limits. School districts will also bring in speakers, probably at a high cost, and make teachers sit and get. But offering teachers opportunities to choose the topic of their choice, and learn at a time that is convenient for them, could be more beneficial. Districts can still make sure the topics are related to initiatives and standards. Is the fear that teachers will waste their time? Not take part? I would argue the opposite because the learning could be more meaningful. As hard as it is, districts need to let go of the control and give the reigns to the teachers when it comes to professional development.

I'm looking forward to our event. I hope teachers not only walk away with something they've learned, but also discover a new way to grow as an educator. Perhaps it can lead to more time viewing K12 Online presentations down the road - maybe another LAN party later in the year. The more the merrier, right?

What's My Focus

2008-10-27T21:07:00.009-05:00

We all blog for a variety of reasons, but the central theme to most of our writing revolves around technology and education. I tried Wordle out for the first time just to see what words were popping up in my posts. I think I must have done something wrong because my focus seems a little out of whack. If the focus of my blog is on teaching, technology, and the library, why does my word could look like this?

UPDATE: I found out the Wordle only looks at the most recent page, not previous posts. I feel better.

Today I Felt Like a Teacher

2008-10-23T22:19:00.003-05:00

Today was an interesting day for me. Last week, I asked two classroom teachers if I could come in their room on a daily basis and read to their class. I told them how I missed reading good chapter books to students and since I only saw their classes once a week in the library, reading a chapter book to them was very difficult. Both teachers were very open to the idea, which excited me. In the fifth grade classroom, I'm reading Among the Hidden. It's great - the kids are loving it, I'm enjoying it, and the classroom teacher is as well. The fourth grade class is enjoying The Boys Start the War. Today, I was unable to read to the fourth graders at the normal time because I had another scheduled class. I happened to be walking past the fourth grade room this afternoon and popped in to say hi to the teacher. She asked, "Want to read right now? The kids are driving me nuts." I didn't have any classes scheduled so I grabbed the book and read the next chapter. I finished a few minutes prior to the class heading down to the computer lab. When I asked the teacher what the kids were going to be working on, she gave me a look that pretty much said, "I don't know." I suggested the students bring their spelling words to the lab so they could practice using Spelling City. They came down, I quickly showed how the students should get started and off they went. It was awesome.

I'm not sure why I felt so different today. When I was reading to the fourth grade class, and then transitioned to the computer lab, I really felt like I was back in charge of the students. I don't know why I felt any different. Standing in front of the class and giving directions, with 50 eyes watching and listening to me, I felt like a teacher. I felt like I was guiding this group of students. This was a feeling I have not experienced in some time, perhaps as far back as several years when I taught third grade. It was a good feeling, one I hope to have again soon.

After reflecting on it, however, this feeling brings me mixed thoughts. There have been many occasions that make me wonder if I made the correct choice leaving the classroom a few years ago. On some days, I'm glad I made the change. On others, like today, the feeling I had was one that's been absent. Afternoons like the one I had today made me really miss being a classroom teacher. There are days when I think about what's in my plans for the next few years and I'm confused. Part of me wants to go back to the classroom. Part of me wants to stay right where I am because I'm comfortable, like what I'm doing and who I'm doing it with, am doing a good job (I think), and the position works well for my family right now. There are other days when I think about what else I'd like to do and positions I'd like to hold (all related to technology) some day. I'm sure a decision will be made at some point soon. No matter what that decision is, I won't know if it's the right or wrong one until I make it. Regardless of that decision, today was fun.

I Hope I'm Not Reading This Wrong

2008-10-22T20:30:00.006-05:00

In the past couple of days, I've been messaging a lot of my friends, through email, Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk, about a Facebook Photo Contest. Here's the main part of the email I received about the contest:

We can all agree that this season did not turn out to be everything we had hoped for, but we can still show the world that we are the biggest fans. Go vote for your favorite photo in FanSection's "Biggest Fan" contest at Milwaukee Brewers Fans. Hurry and tell your friends, because the last day to vote is this Sunday, October 26th! The photo that our fellow Brewers fans pick as their favorite will represent us in the final round and will have a chance to win one of the following MLB.com gift cards:

- $75 Grand Prize
- $50 2nd Place Prize
- $25 3rd Place Prize

Many people who are Facebook members, have logged in and voted for the picture I submitted for the contest. I thought this was a great picture, one of my son and me at a Brewer game this summer. As I write this post, I'm in second place and began thinking about what I might buy with the MLB.com gift card if we stay in the top 3 through Sunday, when the contest ends. Then it hit me.

I read the email again and started to wonder about that last sentence, which I may have glanced over the first time. Does the winner of this contest merely qualify for the final round with a chance at the gift cards? Did I read that right? What do you think? If that's the case, then I think this might be one of the cheapest contests around and I feel bad I've literally spent hours trying to get people to vote for us. Could it be that the winner of every team's contest will battle for the gift cards in another round of voting? I don't know about you, but that seems like a lot of work for a relatively small gift card. One more thing I'm not happy with is the fact that the leading vote getting picture is of Ryan Braun, Brewer superstar - not a photo of any Brewers fans. Many have commented wondering why this photo is even being allowed in the contest, as am I. Isn't this supposed to be a Fan Photo Contest? If so, why is a player photo leading the votes by more than 40 over fan pictures. Something's not right.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope we finish in the top 3 and we are rewarded with an MLB.com gift card, which my son will be more than willing to spend. If I am right, I'm apologizing now to all of you who supported us in the contest.

BTW, if you are a Facebook member, vote for us here by finding the picture that matches the one above and clicking on Vote! (Just in case....!)

PLN - You Gotta Get One

2008-10-14T10:17:00.003-05:00

Do you have a PLN? If not, you should get one. Having a group of educators willing to share their knowledge and expertise can be very valuable. My Personal Learning Network is an important part of my learning and has been a huge help to me recently. I have to share two instances where I’ve been so impressed with the people I’m connected with.

Two of my colleagues and I were planning on sharing information about Discovery Education Streaming, the Discovery Education website, and the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) to other library media specialists in our district. We are lucky to have a rather large department (16) compared to many other districts in SE Wisconsin. Our district has put a premium on keeping as many full-time, certified, library media specialists in our schools as possible. A stand many other districts are not taking. Anyway, my part of the presentation included talking about the DEN and how it has benefited me and the advantages it can provide. To me, the DEN is kind of PLN in itself, but my network extends beyond the Discovery walls. Via Twitter and Plurk, I sent out a question asking DEN members what they felt was beneficial and what aspects they liked the best, as well as things I needed to make sure I covered. While my network often meets my needs, one of the best parts is that my network also consists of the network of the people in my network, make sense? In this case, I reached out to Steve Dembo on Skype, one of the Discovery gurus in my mind, for some assistance. Steve also sent out a question looking for more responses to help me and within a reasonably short period of time, I had a number of great reasons why educators love the DEN. I was able to share those reasons with the people I was talking to later that day. To me, having this information to share was much more powerful than me just standing up there and talking about what I like. Through my PLN, I was able to gather a lot of information, from a variety of educators, and share their knowledge as well.

Another example of how grateful I am for those I’m connected with deals with my first attempt applying for the Best Buy Teach Award. I’ve never applied for a grant in my life and don’t consider myself the greatest of writers. The hardest part is often getting what’s in my head down on paper (or a computer screen). The application required me to answer a few questions about the project I was a part of and the impact technology has on student learning. This time, I just sent a message on Twitter and Plurk, and simply noted that I was working on the application. Responses came with offers to proofread. Suggestions where made to me about a blog with tips for this grant by someone who has received the grant numerous times. Another person suggested I contact someone they knew who also has been awarded the grant multiple times in the past. Wow! I put my answers in a Google Doc and shared it with those who were willing to help. They popped in, made suggestions and offered tips, and really helped me out. I reworked a few things, checked back with a few people, they made suggestions again, and the next thing I knew, I had a much better application. Am I going to get the grant? Who knows, but I certainly feel that my chances have greatly improved because of my PLN. I certainly hope I can return the favor down the road.

Complete Fun

2008-10-12T14:40:00.002-05:00

Okay, this isn't an education post at all. It's not really a tech post either, the only tech involved in this was the camera used for recording. A few neighborhood friends and I build soap box derby cars and raced them down a street near my house today. It was a blast! Here's one of the videos from my camera mounted on my derby car.

K12 Online Conference

2008-10-07T21:10:00.004-05:00

I started the laying the groundwork today for an event at my school centered around K12 Online. I'm hoping I can get 8 to 12 teachers/administrators to stick around on a Friday night in November to view some of the presentations. I first heard about this idea from Jeff Utecht, who hosted a LAN party like this with some of his colleagues last year.

Here's the rough outline.

30 min - View one of the keynotes as a group - discuss.
1 hour - View 2 sessions on your own or in a small group - whole group sharing/break
1 hour - View 2 more sessions with a whole group sharing/reflection

Then, further discussion takes place at a local watering hole after the event.

Sounds like a good time, doesn't it? I sent the info out to my staff today and do have some interested people. I'm excited.

Do you have any tips for this event? Things I should or shouldn't do? Let me know.

Valuable Time

2008-09-23T22:11:00.003-05:00

This post may sound like a huge plug for Discovery Education. It's not meant to be. It's meant to share with you some information I feel is going to enhance my teaching and hopefully enhance the learning of all of the students I work with.

This past weekend (yes, Saturday and Sunday), I participated in the Discovery Education Regional Conference. I thought it was a lot of fun, but most importantly, was a positive learning experience for me. I recently purchased DE Streaming for my school and am looking forward to not only using it myself to liven up lessons, but I really want my teachers to take advantage of what I think is a great resource. My principal will allow me to use some faculty meeting time next month to show our teachers what this is all about. I've ordered my training materials and am anxious to get things rolling.

As teachers, we often don't get opportunities to be wined and dined. This weekend, however, was a little different. Although I had to get to the conference, which was about a 90 minute drive, and a hotel, the rest of the conference was taken care of by Discovery Education. Breakfast and lunch both days of the 2 day conference were catered for us. In addition, dinner and beverages were also included Saturday night. This was a nice change to what I've previously experienced. Usually, it's up to me to take care of all costs associated with a conference, but not this time. Sure, I have a connection with Discovery Education because of my subscription to their service, but that wasn't a requirement of this. It was open to anyone who wanted to learn more about integrating technology into classroom instruction. We learned about Discovery products, but there were also plenty of non-Discovery products shown to us as well. One that I thought was pretty cool was Blabberize. While this web 2.0 tool is still not perfect, it certainly is fun and could have a place in the classroom. Also, if you haven't seen Spell with Flickr, check it out. There was quite a bit of discussion about Web 2.0 tools, including this information from Brad Fountain, one of the presenters.

The Discovery Education team who put on this event did a very nice job. One thing I didn't know about these guys until the weekend, was that they were teachers prior to joining Discovery. To me, that adds a lot of credibility to what they are saying. They bring an educational background to what they are talking about. I've been to other conference where companies have people trying to get you to use their products, but those people haven't been in the classroom. I don't know about you, but I think someone with a clue about what teachers do can relate to us much better than someone who has never stepped foot in a classroom. If you haven't checked out Discovery Education, I recommend you do, especially, the DEN (Discovery Educators Network) - it's a great online community of teachers who are willing to share great information about teaching and learning. Even if you're not interested in any of the products Discovery Education sells, there are a lot of free resources for teachers that I've used for years - long before my recent involvement. I've met a lot of great people and learned quite a bit through my short time with the DEN, I bet you would too.

A Lot of Learning

2008-09-20T14:17:00.003-05:00

I'm in the middle of a weekend in Illinois at the Midwest Discovery Education Regional Conference. Wow, what a ton of learning going on. As someone who recently purchased a subscription to DE Streaming, I am thrilled to have a lot of time learning about this product (and a ton of other stuff) from experts who are using the tool I've just purchased. I've learned a ton so far, and the weekend has only just begun. I really am looking forward to learning more AND using what I've learned with the kids. While this weekend is certainly a huge learning opportunity for me, the end result will be more learning and more fun for the students.

Google Forms - Wow, I Like it!

2008-09-14T21:11:00.003-05:00

As educators, we're always looking for new tools to use. Whether we are looking for new tools to use in our personal lives, our professional lives, or with our students, I feel we always have our eyes and ears open to something new. Last week, I saw a tweet refer to Google Forms. Maybe it's not even called Google Forms - maybe it's the Forms section of Google Docs. For now, I'm calling it Google Forms. I had heard a little about this and thought I'd take a peek at it. After discussing it a little on Twitter, I figured out I could make up a quick survey for my staff and let Google take care of the rest. Even though Google didn't accept me to the Google Teacher Academy coming up in Chicago, I wasn't going to hold a grudge. I like a lot of Google products and I use many of them on a daily basis. I wondered what I'd think of this new tool. What I didn't realize right away, was that it was part of Google Docs. I thought it was a separate program, like mail and calendar. Once I figured that out, I went to work creating a technology survey for my staff.

I'm planning on holding after school technology learning sessions for the staff in my building on a monthly basis, roughly. I thought I could use the survey as a way to find out what my staff knew, what hindered them from doing more with technology, and what they might want to learn. After getting some help with ideas for questions from several people in my PLN, I came up with a brief survey and created it using this new tool. Once I had the survey they way I wanted it, I sent it to myself to see how it would look and how the results would be tallied. Wow, was I impressed. With the exception of a few snags in formatting and rearranging questions, I really liked what I saw. I proceeded to send the link out to our staff and wait for the answers to roll in.

I had no idea how or if I would be notified when people completed the survey, which disappointed me a little bit. I had to check the document to see the responses. Perhaps there's a setting where a notification can be sent, but then again, if you're sending a survey out to a lot of people, do you really want an email every time a person completes it? That might drive someone a little crazy! Anyway, as I was checking responses, I noticed how easily the information was displayed and how it could be sorted. This was pretty impressive. I'd use this again anytime I needed a survey. I'm sure there are people out there who have more experience with this than me, but after my first attempt, I'm really pleased. If you have any insight to share about Google Forms, please leave a comment.

I do want to share some of the information I've gained from my little survey. I did make a mistake when creating the survey and didn't realize it until it was too late - I forgot to have people put their names on. Now, maybe people will be more honest on an anonymous survey, but I guess I wanted to put data with bodies so I could tailor the classes more appropriately. Oh well. As of this post, 15 people have taken the survey. This number is a little disappointing because it's less than 50% of our staff. The survey took about 2 minutes to complete, but I'll make another push in the next few days to see if more people will respond. Of the 15 people who responded, only 4 have heard of the term "Web 2.0" - this surprised me, even though it probably shouldn't. When I listed a few Web 2.0 tools, the one that most have heard of and some even used, was YouTube. Others that people were aware of were blogging and FaceBook. No one mentioned Twitter or Plurk. All but one showed interest in attending the sessions, which I'm sure depends on the topic, but the initial interest is very encouraging. There was a wide variety of things people were looking to learn - from creating spreadsheet in Excel and newsletter in Word to learning about SmartBoards (we have none) to digtial video production. We'll have our hands full, but I think it's going to be a blast. I think my first session, which will probably take place the week after next, will be delicious! (and I'm not talking about the snacks I'll be providing!)

Do You Feel Like This?

2008-09-04T22:08:00.004-05:00

This post is basically going to be me rambling about the beginning of the school year. I've got a lot on my mind and I'm just going to throw some of it out there.

It's the beginning of the school year again and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Perhaps it's just the idea of getting back into a routine - which includes getting up earlier and getting my own kids ready for school, but for whatever reason, I feel a little stressed right now. The beginning of the year is a little crazy at school for everyone. For me, part of it deals with the fact that I'm working on getting user ID's and password information ready for our second through sixth graders and getting other technology stuff set up and ready to go for the year. Once this is done, which should hopefully be by the end of next week, things might calm down. Oh yeh, NWEA MAPS testing begins next week so I'll be in the lab helping administer the test to all of our kids. I guess I'll be waiting a few more weeks for things to settle down.

This year we have more new staff members than usual. I feel like I haven't done a very good job touching base with them regarding the technology in our building. I haven't discussed our network drives and where things are on the server or simply checked in with them to see what they need. I'm sure they are working hard getting adjusted, so it may not be a priority right now for them.

New students. There are plenty. Beyond the kindergarten students, we always have quite a few kids who move into our school area and join us. Today alone we had 8 new students enroll. It's the 3rd day of school and it's the 4th of the month. Where were they until now? Did mom/dad/guardian forget about school until now? I don't get it.

My class schedule this year is awesome. I have huge chunks of time without formal classes to complete library work or to collaborate with teachers and students more. I really hope to do more fun stuff with the kids that will lead to more excitement and more learning. Once everyone gets settled I hope to meet with teachers to plan some collaborative lessons.

That's it for now. It's late and my battery is running out on my laptop. Have a good week.

I'm Grateful

2008-08-31T21:11:00.005-05:00

When I first started blogging, I did it to learn what it was about. I've written before that I felt it was important for me to know what I was talking about if I had any plans on blogging with students. Like most new bloggers, finding an audience is tough. Whatever your reasons for blogging, you at least want someone to read your writing. My first comment came from Mister Teacher, who writes a rather entertaining blog, Learn Me Good. I've read his blog for a while and I'm pretty sure he subscribes to mine. He teachers third grade, the grade I used to teach, so I can relate to some of the stuff he writes about.

Anyway, he was given a blogging award recently and as part of the award, was supposed to pass it along to seven of his favorites. I was very surprised to find out that he felt my blog was worthy of this award.

I'm glad someone enjoys my blog enough to feel I'm deserving of this award. I don't want that point to be lost, but I do wonder what this award is for.

I tried to find out the origin of this award or see what it really means. I searched back several people to find some information on it, but couldn't. I checked the person who gave the award to Mister Teacher and the person before and the person before. I went back about 5 or 6 people, but couldn't find what this award meant. I believe the people who have been passing it on are doing so because they feel some of the blogs they read are good. I'm not saying I'm skeptical by any means of this award, but I just wonder who started it. It certainly isn't an award like EduBlogs Best Of...., but I don't think people write blogs to get awards. It's certainly not my goal. Whether many people "vote" for an award like EduBlog Awards, or just one, like the award I got, it's a bonus. Needless to say, it's cool that at least one person thinks my blog isn't too shabby!

I'm not going to pass this award on to anyone else. There are a lot of great blogs I read - check my Blogroll if you're looking for good ones. As far as I'm concerned, they're all worthy.

UPDATE: Just found out this information about this award. Like I thought, not a real award, but it doesn't change my thoughts that any award given to a blog/blogger by someone else does have some importance.

Here Comes Everybody

2008-08-26T22:04:00.003-05:00

It's been some time since I've written a post, but I've got a few things on my mind that I want to share and get some feedback from. Prior to my trip to New York a couple of weeks ago, I sent out a tweet and Plurk about what I should do on the plane. Should I:

a) read Here Comes Everybody, a book many are suggesting to read
b) read some magazines - I have a huge stack laying around
c) just sit back and listen to my iPod (music, not ed. related)

The majority of the responses suggested I read the book. I'm not a huge book reader, but decided I'd give it a shot. While I'm not quite done with it, I did take a few notes about things that raised an eyebrow or two. I plan on blogging about more of those thoughts in the coming weeks, but for now, here's the first.

The topic of collaboration has come up quite a bit in my school district lately and we are trying to find time to work collaboration into our daily schedule. In addition, I've been trying to find time to communicate with those in my PLN, whether it's through blogging, Skype, Twitter, or Plurk. While we never seem to have enough time for the things we need to do, we now have some tools in place to help us get over this obstacle. Prior to NECC, there was some frustration with Twitter, a collaboration/social networking tool of many. Some were moving to Plurk because of technical difficulties, but realized that their networks were not as big as they were on Twitter. I started to wonder how valuable Plurk would be to me compared to Twitter if not as many people were using it.

This issue hit home when I read in Shirkey's book, "The invention of a tool doesn't create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it." I thought about the tools I was using to work with and learn from and realized that no matter how good the tool was, if no one (or at the least, very little people) were using it, it would not be very valuable. Email, text messaging, and instant messaging are great ways to communicate, but have only become more useful because they are part of the norm for many people.

There will always be new tools that pop up that will allow people to communicate with others - some of these will be better than others, but the real success will be which ones a large number of people use. This idea brought me back to NECC and a quote I heard from Chris Lehmann, "The best collaborative tool is the one we all agree to use together."

The tool doesn't matter, it's the people who make the difference, well stated Chris.

Parents, Parents, Parents

2008-08-14T09:02:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was the day letters were mailed from the school my children attend regarding the upcoming year. The information contained what teacher they would have. Class lists are going to be posted at the school tomorrow. One would think that children would find out who their classmates are on Friday - no, no, no!

Good ol' technology!

Within minutes of someone getting their snail mail, emails (and I'm sure phone calls) were starting to fly from parent to parent wondering who was in what class. Why pick up the phone and make a call to one person when you can send an email out to twenty? Gotta love email, right? We were on the list and started to see what friends were in what classes for both of our children. While we generally didn't care (okay, maybe a little) about who our children had for teachers, there were other parents not feeling the same way. In some of the email responses, parents would say who their child's teacher was and then write something like (Yeh! or Thankfully! or Whew!) for everyone else to see. I know parents have reasons for wanting their children with a certain teacher, but don't you think that should be kept a little more private? I simply replied to the emails with who my children have because I was asked. I didn't go into the "I'm really happy" or "I'm glad they aren't with so & so" because it was pointless. We have a pretty good idea of who is in our daughter's class from the emails and the one phone call from one of her friends asking who she had. She'll see the list tomorrow and find out the rest. In the meantime, I guess we'll have to see if more emails fly around today with more news about classes.

Here are my questions:

Do you think this type of communication about classes and teachers among parents is good?

Do you think what I posted above occurs at schools everywhere? To what degree?

Do you think the teachers know about it? Do they care?

Do the kids care as much as the parents?

How are parents informed about class lists/teacher names at your school?

What do you think? Please share.

Recharged

2008-08-12T23:09:00.002-05:00

There are many people outside of education who says teachers have it easy. Summers off, great benefits, etc. There are even people within our field who agree with those same topics. I think there is another aspect of our jobs that makes it awesome - the start of the school year. How many professions get to "start over" each year? How many have that renewed excitement each year? How many have sales just for them? You don't hear about "Back to the Doctor" sales, do you? Nope, this is an exciting time for a lot of people.

Off the top of my head, here's a list of what makes our profession wonderful related to starting a new school year each fall.

1. Fresh faces to give you fresh smiles.
2. New faces to give you new headaches.
3. A chance to try out new things you've learned over the summer.
4. An excuse to go shopping for school clothes.
5. Coming up with new back to school/get to know you activities.
6. Reconnecting with students and colleagues you haven't spoken to in months.
7. Figuring out what new paperwork your administrator is going to have you complete this time.
8. Watching students color with brand new crayons.
9. Seeing half your class very eager to see you at the beginning of the year.
10. Seeing the other half wishing they were still on summer break.

I'd love to hear what you would add to this list. Let's see it grow!

I'm a DEN Member.....Sort of!

2008-08-08T14:12:00.003-05:00

This is cross posted at my new DEN Blog site.

I have no idea whether or not I'm going to continue with 2 blogs, but for now, I'll probably cross post because it will be the easiest. I'm going to try and keep the DEN blog related to Discovery stuff and new things I've learned from the site or other DEN members, but for now, there won't be much there. Perhaps it will lead to more learning for me and others.

For now, here's the post.

Well, I filled out the necessary forms and am now a member of the Discovery Educator Network. I’ve even completed the requirements and became a STAR Educator. I even received my welcome pack consisting of a very cool messenger bag, DEN Star Educator note, and pin. However, I really don’t feel like a DEN member yet because I’m only one in name. Here’s what I mean. While the name is there, until I contribute to the DEN and become an ACTIVE member, I can’t full count myself as part of the DEN. I’ve already met some fantastic people who are DEN members and can’t wait to learn from them. Writing this post is a start of my involvement and my goal in the next couple of weeks is to really dig into the lesson plans that are online and the DEN site itself. I really don’t know if I’ll post too much to the DEN site since this blog is more of a priority for me.

Additional note: I must thank Teryl Magee, Tom Turner, Tim Childers, and Lee Kolbert for sharing the DEN with with me at NECC this past June.

21st Century Jobs

2008-08-04T15:46:00.003-05:00

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of talk about preparing students for the 21st Century. There's also been a lot of discussion about 21st Century Skills and how we need to make sure our students have those skills when they graduate. I don't disagree for one second that there are new skills needed by students that didn't exist 5 or 10 years ago, but I also think we need to keep in mind that there are skills students will need that we don't even know about yet. I remember being at a conference a few years ago and listening to Ian Jukes present the keynote. He was talking about a future that doesn't exist. Jobs that would be there for our students that don't even exist yet. How do we prepare kids for these? The jobs now that didn't exist years ago are being filled by eager, hard working, and smart people. Don't you think the same will occur in the next 10 years? I think so.

What got me thinking about this was something I saw on the side of the road on a drive to visit my parents a few weeks ago. As I was driving through a construction zone on the freeway (who hasn't this summer), I saw the construction guys on the side of the road and wondered who will be filling these jobs in the future? Are they going to be the kids in the middle of their class with no desire/money/opportunity to attend college? Certainly there will be many high tech jobs in the future where 21st Century Skills will be needed, but what about the other jobs? What about the worker fixing our highways, the electricians/plumbers, the manager at Burger King? In some of these cases, the skills they need are taught by the unions or corporations at various training centers. Do we need to prepare these future professionals with the same 21st Century Skills as the teachers, lawyers, doctors, and business professionals? What about the person checking you out at the grocery store, the person who works at Wal-Mart? Will these workers be the basic and minimal kids of today? There is now and always will be a wide variety of jobs for our students. Some will excel and others will not. Some will drive to be the best and others will be happy working elsewhere in a low end job.

My question is, how can we meet the needs of all of these students? Do we prepare them for a job or do we prepare them for a career? Can we prepare them for a career or job that doesn't exist yet? What skills are needed? Hmmmmm.

Teacher Technology Use

2008-07-30T21:42:00.003-05:00

One of my goals this coming year is to continue working with the teachers in my building to improve their use of technology in the classroom. I want them to learn more themselves and learn to integrate technology into their lessons more. Collaboration is being stressed quite a bit in our building and our district and I think I'm going move forward with our staff in a couple of directions.

First, I'm going to have everyone create a Google Account. I may not jump into the many resources Google has to offer educators, but then again, I might. I'm not going to have a lot of time for formal technology instruction/play time so I may have to hold after school sessions for those who are interested. This way, those who want to learn can, and those who don't, won't. However, I hope those who do not/cannot show up find out from others what they're missing and join in down the road.

My other plan is to have teachers create an account for wikispaces. I like wikispaces and feel this could be a great way for teachers to keep unit plans, project ideas, and professional development organized is an easy way. They can build their own pages and also join other pages that are out there that they find valuable. I need to go back and visit the pages I've joined because I know there are good resources out there. I sure hope the teachers realize the benefit they could get from doing this, but one key is to find the time to learn the process and also find time to continue using it.

If you have any favorite wikispaces pages that you find valuable, please leave a comment. It would be great to start teachers off with a list of sites they should add from the start, rather than having them search blindly on their own.

Browser Problems

2008-07-23T22:27:00.001-05:00

I've been using Firefox for a while and really like it. While I haven't upgraded to FF3 because of many bugs mentioned on Twitter and Plurk, I'm sure I'll upgrade in the next month or so. I love the add-ons, I like using Google Browser sync since I use several different computers depending on where I am, and I like the feel of it. One of the add-ons that I've been using for some time now, involves del.icio.us. I like delicious and use it both for myself and to keep the links for our students organized on our school website.

However, I know I'm not good at keeping my sites as organized as a I should. I'm doing okay with keeping sites organized for our school site, but not at home. For me, it all comes down to taggin and I'm horrible at it. This leads me to a current problem with Firefox. With the way I have things set up now, I can bookmark sites to my computer and del.icio.us 2 ways. One way involves two steps - the first is to simply add a bookmark like normal and then to add it to del.icio.us by clicking on the Tag button in the toolbar. Here, I can add tags for the site and any other information I need. The other way I can do it is all in one step, but I can't add any tags to the site. When I bookmark a site, I get a message that asks if I want to add the site to del.icio.us and when I click Yes, it just adds it - doesn't ask for tags or anything. The result is a bunch of sites in del.icio.us that are untagged. I'm not digging this.

I guess my last sentence could lead me to diigo. I've heard a lot of good things about this social bookmarking site, but haven't taken one minute of my time to check it out. Perhaps I should. For now, I think I'm going to have to go the 2 step route to bookmarking my sites using FireFox because the tagless sites really doesn't do me that much good.

Since my tagging abilities need serious help, I'm looking for suggestions and tips to be more consistent. Drop me a comment with how you tag sites and what some common tags are that you use.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Happily Optimistic

2008-07-21T20:22:00.003-05:00

I'll be starting my fourth year at my current school, 13th overall, in a little over a month. Other than my first year of teaching and my first year at new schools, this year provides me with the most optimism and excitement. Why? I thought you'd never ask.

We have a new principal this year, and I feel pretty good about that. Now, I didn't dislike my former principal. In fact, we got along very well and she was supportive of what I was doing in the library. She was provided with an opportunity in another district, a move I would have made if I was her, and jumped at it. As far as our new principal is concerned, what I've heard has been positive. The staff at the middle school he was AP at apparently are going to miss him. That's bad news for them, good news for us. He seems to be excited about coming to our school and has been there quite a bit over the summer meeting with teachers and getting settled. Today, we sat down and talked a little about the upcoming year, which he is doing with all teachers who are willing to come in and have a chat. I like this approach. I'm usually not excited about an upcoming school year in July, but this time, I am.

I'm also looking forward to this year because of some major changes in our school. In addition to the new principal, our teaching staff is going to look a little different. Our sixth grade teachers are gone, along with all sixth grade students. Our district has done a little realigning and our elementary schools are now K-5. In addition to this, we had a few teachers move out of our building and few different ones move in. The dynamics of our building should be very different than in the past, and I hope it's a good change.

I have learned quite a bit in the past 6 months since I've jumped into Web 2.0. I'm learning how to use technology better with students and also to improve my learning. I can't wait to begin implementing more projects with teachers and collaborating more to show how important the library and technology can be to our students. I've got some personal things I'm working on for the future and hopefully some of those will start to take shape as well. Regardless, I'm excited about the 08-09 school year.

Now, back to summer vacation!

Professional Reading

2008-07-15T12:57:00.005-05:00

I've never been a big book reader. This is a tough thing to say because of my job (Elementary Library Media Specialist), but it's true. I'm not saying I don't like to read, because I do. However, most of my reading time is spent reading magazines (Sports Illustrated, MacWorld), newspapers, websites, and blogs. I'm surrounded by book readers - my wife reads daily and my children like to read. A large majority of my reading, however, is online. I don't have a problem with that, unless I go on vacation - then the stack of magazines next to my bed shrinks a little.

Over the last year, since I've been blogging and reading blogs, the amount of time I'm spending reading "Professional" material has increased greatly. While I've read a few titles here and there over the years, I've never really jumped on the book bandwagon. I feel I'm reading more than ever, but often wonder if I should be reading more books. There are a lot of teachers in my building that read a number of professional books throughout the school year and summer and I think this is great. Whenever I'm asked to purchase professional books for our school library, I do not hesitate. I've even ordered some for myself over the years, but haven't read them yet. This leads to the reason for this post.

Should I be reading more professional books?

In the past month, Chris Lehmann and Will Richardson have both published their summer reading lists. I don't have a list, but wonder if I should - or at least grab a title or 2 from their lists. Am I missing great material? I'm sure I am, just like I'm missing great material in blogs I'm not following. Would reading more professional books improve my teaching? Would it improve my thinking?

I've taken a step in the right direction, I think, and reserved Here Comes Everybody from my local library. It seems as though this book has been read quite a bit - I hope I enjoy it.

Are you reading professional books? I'm curious what you think.

I'm Claiming My Identity

2008-07-12T22:52:00.003-05:00

I've claimed my name - online that is. Over the past several weeks, I've read quite a few blog posts, but two in particular, struck a chord with me. Is Your Identity Worth $10 a Year, by Dean Shareski and Buy Your Domain by Ewan McIntosh got me thinking about claiming my own identity online. Years ago, I heard about a relative who purchased the domain names for her children. At the time, I thought it didn't make a lot of sense. But now, I have a different attitude towards this. I'd consider doing the same for my children, but I know my wife would think it was a stupid idea and a waste of money. Perhaps I need to get her to read the posts above and Will's. Who knows - maybe she'll change her mind. As I continue to learn and use technology with my students and in my daily life, it seemed appropriate to think about having my own domain and to leave my own digital footprint, as Will suggests. Like Dean mentions, it's not expensive and the payoffs can be huge. When I decided to move forward with the purchase of a domain name, I had a decision to make.

imcguy or chadlehman ???

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

When I first jumped into Blogger, I had to choose a user name. At first, I didn't want to use my real name because I wasn't sure what direction I was going to go with my blog. Was I going to write about colleagues or my administration? Surely, I didn't want any negative posts to come back and bite me, but as time progressed, I realized that I wasn't going to go in that direction. I chose imcguy mainly because I'm the "guy in the IMC" at my school. In my school district, the library is referred to as the IMC - Instructional Media Center. Early in the school year, I walked into one of our kindergarten classrooms and a student, who didn't have my name memorized yet, blurted out, "Hey, there's the IMC Guy!" The kindergarten teacher laughed at this one, and so did I. For a while, it was a running joke between the two of us, but the nickname kind of stuck. I must have been thinking about this story when I also chose my Twitter name. What I didn't realize, however, is that not many people had a clue what IMC stood for. After explaining the whole Instructional Media Center thing, they understood it, but there are probably others who still don't know what it means, but maybe they'll read this and understand.

On Twitter, I had some conversations with a few people, Jennifer Jones, for example, about this topic. She was one who didn't know what IMC Guy meant. After we went back and forth for a bit, she mentioned "branding." She asked me if I was going to brand myself as IMC Guy or not. I never thought about this for a second, but after she asked, I really had to think about that. Since using IMC Guy for my blog and Twitter, I've used that user name for just about every new Web 2.0 tool I've signed up for. I thought that if I did this, interested people would be able to find me just about anywhere. While I don't think this is a bad idea, I want to also make sure people who the real person behind IMC Guy.

This leads me back to the domain name decision I had to make. I will not be the "Guy in the IMC" for the rest of my career. I may head back to the classroom some point and build on my 8 years as a classroom teacher. I may move districts where the library isn't called the IMC. I may do something else. After taking all of this into consideration, I settled on www.chadlehman.com because I'll always be Chad Lehman.

NECC Quotes 2008

2008-07-07T13:19:00.004-05:00

I wish I would have thought of this prior to the last day of NECC, but here is a list of 2 outstanding quotes from NECC. I'm pretty sure I have the name of the person who said these correct, but if I don't, please correct me.

Please feel free to add others.

Wes Fryer - "Sustained conversations over time change us."

I really like this quote because it reinforces the idea that we can't just say/write/read something once and have it stick. If we feel strongly about something, we have to keep pushing for the change to occur.

Bud the Teacher - "K12online is made of people. Of people!"

That's what our learning community is about. If the people involved were not interesting in learning, sharing, and growing together, the group wouldn't be successful.

Chris Lehmann - "The best collaborative tool is the one we all agree to use together."

The tool doesn't matter, it's the people who make the difference, well stated Chris.

Please add more to my list.

Reflective Thoughts - My first NECC

2008-07-04T22:35:00.003-05:00

This is the first of what I hope to be several posts following NECC.

NECC 2008 - Convene, Connect, Transform. I headed to this conference by myself, hoping to meet some of the people I've worked with, learned from, talked with, read about, and shared with over past six months or so. Some I felt I knew a little better than others due to more interaction via a project we collaborated on, or through Twitter, Skype, or Blogging. Overall, however, my prior interaction with most was very minimal. I wish I would have attended EduBloggerCon to see what it was all about and after looking back, I probably could have made it for the afternoon. My flight arrived around 11:00 on Saturday and rather than head straight to a relative's house where I was staying, I could have stopped by for the experience. Hopefully it will work out next year if I attend NECC 2009 in D.C.

I wrote earlier about my thoughts sitting in the Bloggers' Cafe for the first time and how it compared to a classroom, but wanted to add that this was a very important place for me during NECC. I think I would have spent a lot of time wandering around if this place didn't exist. The Bloggers' Cafe was a place where people like me could take a break, have a conversation, or simply catch up. I didn't really blog that much although I did do quite a bit of reading (or deleting). This was also a place I met some people who collaborated on a project with me earlier this year. While I did have some email and Skype contact already, it was really nice to meet Laura Deisley, Robin Ellis, Howard Martin, and Teryl Magee face to face. These were great people and I ended up hanging with Teryl and Howard a little more as the conference went on. As the conference progressed, I met Martha Thornsburgh when I unknowingly sat next to her at a session. We chatted about the project we worked on together briefly and I'm happy to say they would participate again in the future.

I'm not usually the type of person who will go up to someone and introduce myself out of the blude so doing this wasn't easy for me, especially the first day. However, as the conference when on, I figured, what the heck. I was able to meet and have a few conversations with some of the people I follow, which was nice. Some people, like Scott Meech, came up to me, which was exciting. I had an interesting conversation with Laurie V. about walking up to the "big names" and whether or not that was appropriate or even if they cared. I mentioned a blog I had read about Elite-ism (by Darren Draper I think), which I feel is very much related to this topic. Are there "big names" and then the rest of us? This seems to have been a much discussed topic over the last week or so. The more I think about this, however, I think maybe it comes down to the role each of us has in education. Everyone I talked to was very nice, some more talkative than others, but I may have caught them at a bad time. What I mean by role, is simply their job. I'm a K-5 library media specialist. Others were teachers, tech integration specialists, district technology directors and so on. Perhaps people have an easier time talking to others who have similar interests/experiences/problems. When I look back, some the people I think are "big names" are people with educational technology positions I hope to have some day. They have been doing this much longer than I have and have more experience and knowledge in the field. Maybe that's why I think I'm not quite up to their level. Laurie and I both weren't sure what was the best way to handle these introductions, but we both did end up meeting great people. There were some tweets during NECC about this topic, some even mentioning that telling someone you "follow them on Twitter" was a faux pas. I don't agree with this at all. There's nothing wrong with walking up to someone and telling them you follow them. Like she mentioned, if you don't want this, don't put yourself out there. If they don't care, they will give you a brief response and the conversation will be over. When I introduced myself, I tried to say something like "I've enjoyed learning from you" or "I've enjoyed reading some of your stuff." I'm sure I mentioned Twitter at some point as well. Perhaps wording it like that reduces the stalker effect.

As far as meeting people, I was really shocked when the same thing happened in similar situations. One took place on an escalator and one took place in a session. I was positioned next to someone else and when they looked at my name tag, said, "Your Chad Lehman, Jen Wagner (who I met in Spring at WEMTA) told me I should say hi if I saw you" (or something similar). Wow, the power of Jen! Of the hundreds of people Jen knew at NECC, it was humbling to have her mention my name to some of her friends and have them try and meet me. In fact, in one of the situations, the other person and I were in the back channel of the session and Jen was participating as well.

I have more thoughts about NECC that I'll eventually get to. Please feel free to share your thoughts about about Connecting.

NECC Day 3

2008-07-02T22:47:00.003-05:00

NECC wrapped up today and I must say I'm a little relieved. Tuesday was a pretty powerful day for me and I'm not sure I could have handled as long of a day. I hit a couple great sessions and hit the exhibit floor a little bit before wrapping up the day with an adult beverage at a little restaurant on the RiverWalk with some new friends. My flight out of SA is Thursday at 11:30 and I'm hoping everything goes smoothly and I can see my family at the airport when they pick me up around 3:15 in the afternoon.

Two sessions really stood out to me today. The first, one pretty much set up for librarians was more of a panel discussion with each librarian talking about how the library is changing and what we need to do to keep up with the changes. Great points discussed and good conversation going on in the back channel of the uStream, which did include a participant on the panel. I follow some of the wonderful teacher-librians on the panel (Joyce V., Cathy N., Diane C., and Caryolyn F.) and it was great to listen to them share information.

I also attended another session that dealt with online collaboration. This session, led by Wes Fryer and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach talked a lot about the K12 Online Conference. I got pretty excited about the possibilities of this and after listening to some of the success of last year, decided to throw my hat in the ring as a possible volunteer. I will certainly be participating as a learner and am hoping to bring some of my colleagues along for the ride. A couple things in this session blew me away - not content wise, but technology wise. At this point in the game, new "discoveries" with technology shouldn't surprise me, but they do. One of the "presenters" was live via video Skype. I think it's rather amazing that I could learn from a wide range of people both in the room and in another country. In addition, in the back channel discussion on uStream, there was a follower participating in the discussion IN THEIR CAR driving home from NECC. A simple Verizon wireless card in the laptop allowed this to happen. Wow. It makes me think that a wireless world isn't too far away.

Near the end of the day, on my way to my last session, I walked by a room with a session being led by Steve Dembo. I met Steve a few days before and heard him talking about Acceptable Use Policies. I immediately went to this session. Sure, it saved me a few more steps, but I was interested in the topic and wanted to hear what Steve had to say. It was fast, but I got something out of it.

My time at the end of convention was spent at the Bloggers' Cafe with Lee K. and others watching the closing keynote and following Twitter and the many not so positive comments about it. After it was over, I said a few good byes and met a few new friends for a drink before heading out.

Overall, good day.

Look for more rambling about the conference other new discoveries in the next few days.

NECC Day 2

2008-07-02T11:58:00.005-05:00

Connections - it's about connections. The second day of NECC for me was a big improvement over the first. I met more people I've been learning from and with, I attended some great sessions, had some good discussions, and generally felt pretty good. Although the night activities weren't as good as the previous, I enjoyed myself.

I did miss a session that I really wanted to attend dealing with NETS and AASL Standards for 21st Century Learners. I'm not sure what happened, but I simply forgot about it until it was too late. Oh well. I do remember people telling me prior to the conference that I would miss things and that I should focus on what I did attend and not what I missed. Fortunately, some of the sessions I missed were uStreamed by someone and I can hopefully go back and watch them - like Stephanie Sandifer's session.

Yesterday I learned a little about VoiceThread from a table presentation held by Wes Fryer. I am really looking forward to showing my teachers this and using it with kids to create some really neat projects.

I also visited the Student Showcase session and talked with a teacher and students who worked on a very cool state project. I worked on a state project kids from my school and we exchanged ideas and certainly picked up tips on how to improve what we are doing with kids!

Hall Davidson did a presentation on cell phones in education and I saw a couple of really cool tools that are just unbelievable. He demonstrated a website that allows users to text in answers to questions or even text in comments and the messages show up in real time on the site. Great stuff!

Yesterday was a great learning day and I certainly have to thank Teryl Magee, Tim Childers, and Tom Turner for hooking me up with Discovery Education. I'm really looking forward to using it quite a bit next year.

NECC Day 1 Reflections

2008-07-01T09:02:00.003-05:00

As a newbie to NECC and this complete information overload, I thought I'd share a few things about what I thought about the first day.

1. Unlike the previous day, I did meet a lot more people that I read or follow. The Twitter/EduBlogger dinner played a big role in that as well as some of the DEN people I've gotten to know. It was nice this morning to walk into the Bloggers' Cafe and say hi to some friendly faces. There are still more people I'd like to meet, but I have a couple more days.

2. As far as the sessions - I attended a few, actually leaving early from all of them. One didn't seem like the right fit and the others appeared to be following a wiki or some other online guide that I bookmarked and will take a peek at later. I hope the sessions I attend today and tomorrow will be better.

3. There seems to be more Macs around than PC's, but due to much of Web 2.0 being online and more and more applications online (Google Docs, etc) it doesn't matter as much as it did in the past.

4. I'm cold - inside the center. It's nice outside, but chilly inside.

5. I'm having fun. I wish I was staying closer to the conference center, but the price is right when you're staying with relatives and my district isn't paying for transportation or lodging.

These aren't anything really deep or thought provoking, but they are mine. I'm sure after the conference I'll be able to sit down and reflect more than I can right now.

Bloggers Cafe - Initial Thoughts

2008-06-29T13:42:00.002-05:00

I just arrived at the Bloggers' Cafe. It's a cool place, people sitting around talking, reading, and writing - and most likely learning. Sounds like a classroom, doesn't it? It's super informal and I bet people are getting something valuable out of it.

While I think about that, I think about the different personalities here. Like the classroom, there's a wide variety of people. There are popular "kids" who are leading the conversations and having people search them out, there are the shy ones who are sitting by themselves, and there are people in the middle. There are people a lot more outgoing in these types of situations and are able to just walk up to people and say hi. Here, I'm not sure if people are working or not and I'm not sure I want to interrupt them. There certainly are some familiar faces and I may have to introduce myself soon before I continue sitting here like a loser.

Do our students feel the same way in our classrooms? Are there students sitting quietly in the back with a lot of good stuff to share? I bet there are. The question is, how do we get them to step up and join the conversations?

Just a thought.

NECC....Almost

2008-06-27T21:30:00.003-05:00

Okay, I leave in the morning for San Antonio which will certainly be one of the more exciting parts of the summer. Obviously, I hope to learn a ton, but I also hope to have a great time and meet some fantastic people.

Packing is basically complete and the appropriate chargers/plugs/headphones/cords are all set (I hope).

I'll be arriving in SA around 11:00 and then will be driving to a relative's house where I'll be staying. My cousin and I will be heading to the RiverWalk Saturday evening. If you're down there, send a DM via Twitter (or email me: chadlehman@gmail.com) and maybe things will work out so I can meet you.

I would have love to attend EduBloggerCon on Saturday, but timing won't allow that to happen - oh well! I do know there will be other things I'll miss out on as well.

The rest of the week is pretty open other than a short stint helping Scholastic and earning a quick $100 on Monday morning.

Here's my conference planner. Are you attending any of these sessions? I've got quite a bit of overlap (I wish I was cloned) so I'll be missing out on a lot. However, maybe some of you will be attending sessions I won't be and you can share the info. If you will be attending with me, let me know.

It's Been One Week...

2008-06-22T22:39:00.003-05:00

The title of this post is not only a line from a great BNL song, but it's the beginning of a phrase I've been saying a lot lately.

It's been one week since school has let out.
It's been one week of hauling the kids everywhere.
It's been one week of more time at school, even though everyone else wasn't.
It's been one week of eager anticipation of NECC (with one more week to go!)
It's been one week of crazy weather - from hot to stormy to cool to sunny.
It's been one week of very little tech, which has really surprised me.
It's been one week of many where my kids are going to drive me nuts - in good and bad ways.
It's been one week of many accidents in the house by Gabby.
It's been one week with a lot of bike riding - I'm glad we live close to many activities.
It's been one week too many without a new blog post.

End of the Year Reflection

2008-06-08T17:40:00.003-05:00

It's been several weeks since I've written a post, but a friendly reminder from Mister Teacher about an upcoming Carnival of Education prompted a little blogging. I can't quite focus on summer fun yet (NECC and a trip to NYC) because we have one week of school left. Things should be rather interesting/hectic/crazy during the next 5 days. It's the time of the year when students are getting excited about summer vacation, teachers are trying to wrap up last minute grading, and everyone is looking forward to great weather (at least those of us in Wisconsin). This is often a time when teachers are giving end of the year assessments to find out what their students have learned throughout the year. In many cases, teachers are really happy with the progress students are made, but they rarely think about the progress they have made themselves. I've thought about my learning recently and have put together this list of my end of the school year reflections. Feel free to comment on my reflections and feel free to add your own.

1. Whether or I like it or not, I still like to learn new things.
2. Web 2.0 tools have been a fantastic addition to my life, both personally and professionally.
3. I like del.icio.us personally, and del.icio.us has made adding links to my school web page much easier. I do know that I'm not using it as effectively as I could.
4. Twitter is fun! (If you Twitter, follow me!)
5. My excitement about technology has continued and hopefully will always continue.
6. Many people I work with truly are in it for the kids.
7. Unfortunately, not all of them are.
8. I already knew this, but recent events have confirmed -- people do not like change.
9. I've made a lot of new friends online this year and am really looking forward to meeting some of them at NECC this year.
10. I'm still bad at jumping into projects and not finishing them. I have to work on this.
11. Classes and teachers all over the country want to collaborate and learn, this was very evident during my State Project.
12. There are more educators willing to share their knowledge than you'd think. The web is an ideal place to meet these fantastic people.
13. My comfort level at my current school is going to change quite a bit next year with a new principal on board and several different teachers on our staff. Hopefully, things will still be good.
14. In general, life isn't too bad!

Finally, the time to relax

2008-05-24T07:40:00.003-05:00

The last week or so has been pretty hectic/stressful/tiresome for me. I haven't been able to connect with my PLN as much as I'd like, but that will hopefully soon improve. I am part of the negotiations team for my Teachers' Association that bargains our teacher contract. This year, I'm the lead person, which while I help guide the team, basically means I take all the crap that goes with it. Anyway, this past week, we came to a tentative agreement - I'm not going to go into the details, but it won't pass unanimously, as no contract does. However, the vote is not until June 11th, during our last week of school, so until that time, I won't be completely comfortable with the situation. Nonetheless, this past week presented a couple of tense days for me because we had to present this TA to building representatives. There are always a handful of people who question everything and complain a lot. These are the ones that stress me out. I should know it's coming by now, but it still bothers me. I'd like everyone to be happy, but I'm beginning to realize that it's impossible.

My new puppy has been waking me up pretty early these days, but this morning I decided to grab my laptop and sit outside with the dog and enjoy the great weather. This is my view from the bench I was sitting on. It was quite peaceful sitting out there with the only sounds being the birds chirping and my keyboard clicking. I'm catching up on Google Reader and writing this blog. This weekend is going to be pretty busy, but hopefully stress free. We have a birthday party to attend at 9:00 this morning at Pump It Up - a great place for kids, my wife's work friends coming over this evening for a cookout, a get together tomorrow at another friend's house, and finally, a birthday party for my daughter on Monday. While it may seem a bit much, I'm looking forward to unplugging, forgetting about the teacher contract, and simply enjoying friends and family.

I'll wait until Tuesday to worry again.

To Be or Not To Be Anonymous

2008-05-19T21:22:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking about this post for quite some time. When I first think back to my original online adventures with AOL 2.0 on an old Mac, I came up with a screen name completely unrelated to my real name. I chose an AOL name that was longer than the required 10 characters so I had to remove a vowel to make it work. I still use that user name for some accounts. Most people also came up with crazy screen names as well, things like CandyKane, 2Hot4U, and other fun/crazy/unique names that kept their identity a secret. I believe, originally, people didn't want their real name out there because the whole online chat room idea was new and people weren't sure what could happen. It was also fun coming up with something creative. I believe the idea of internet safety was completely unheard of and really didn't cross anyone's mind. They were simply keeping their identity unknown.

Flash forward about 15 years.

Are people still trying to remain anonymous online? Not to the extent they used to. When I started my blog, I chose IMC Guy as a user name because it reflected what I did and didn't reveal my identity. When I started, I wasn't sure what I was going to write, but didn't want my identity known in case I wrote about my administrators or colleagues. Yes, I know that's kind of low, but it was my thinking. I'm happy to say, however, that my thinking has changed and I have no problem with people knowing who I am. My thinking is that I do have some good stuff to share and I'd like people to know who they are getting the information from.

I first started using Twitter with the same user name - IMC Guy. I had, what I thought, was a cool caricature picture of me and used that as the icon. Most people on Twitter had an actual picture. A few days ago, Jennifer Jones switched her picture multiple times in a day and that led to others changing their pictures as well. A small chain reaction started to occur. I also put up a real picture and heard a comment that I was now human! This comment was very interesting to me - it seemed, to me, that I was going to be taken more seriously because I was real. I also saw some Tweets that commented on other people who changed pictures and found that to be fun as well.

Getting back to being anonymous online. I honestly don't think I'm worrying about that anymore. I don't think I have anything to hide. If what I write and what I do starts a conversation, it's a good thing. Hopefully, it's not anything that will hurt anyone or cost me a job! I want to learn from others and I want others to learn from me. I think that's hard to do when you're anonymous. It frustrates me when I get a comment on my blog from "Anonymous." If you have something to add to a conversation, speak up, but tell me who you are so we can continue the conversation.

Relating this to teaching contradicts some of my thinking. We tell our students to not share any personal information online. We teach them about online safety and internet etiquette. With Web 2.0 and social networking growing rapidly, should we not be teaching the students differently? Teach them that that there are people behind the work the they create and to show it off? Is it simply a safety thing with children? Are we really afraid of what might happen? I heard a quote relating something similar - "We know there are real child predators out there, but we don't lock kids inside the house all day." Certainly age impacts this quite a bit, but why do we lock kids in and not let them explore? If we've taught properly, they'll learn what's appropriate and what's not and how to handle the situation. They will be smart enough, aware enough, to get adults involved if necessary.

What do you think? I'm curious.

Happiness is a Puppy

2008-05-14T20:06:00.004-05:00

Now I know why The Pigeon Wanted a Puppy! Pure happiness. Although the Pigeon changed his mind, we certainly won't be.

Now, I know our level of happiness is going to change a little at 2:00 in the morning when the puppy is whining, but that's okay. How can you get mad at this face?

Finally, Someone has Tagged Me!

2008-05-11T12:03:00.003-05:00

Don't get any ideas. Just because I'm happy I get to participate in one a meme, don't start tagging with all over the place, I'll go nuts!

Anyway, my grad school class is over, things are calming down a little at school - with just about a month left, and I'm starting to catch up on my reading. Now, it's time to write a little.

I've been blogging for about year or so and someone has finally tagged me to complete a meme. It's a not one of those where you list your favorite places to live or what kind of animal you'd be if could choose. GeekyMomma has asked me to think a little. I'm going to share what I believe. Maybe you believe some of it too, maybe not. Maybe some of the things I believe now I didn't believe 5 years ago and won't believe 5 years into the future. For now, here's what I believe:

I believe we need to keep working hard to integrate technology into the curriculum, but there will always be teachers and administrators holding us back.

I believe school district technology directors should have experience in the classroom. Too often they don't have experience in our world.

I believe that some students will always be below average. As an educator, we are told not to think that way, but it's true.

I believe teachers get too much of the blame when students fail. Things we accomplish with students in days and weeks can be trashed by parents in one evening.

I believe there are too many teachers not willing to learn new stuff.

I believe my own children will be very successful, despite the things I do.

I believe blogging and Twittering has done wonders for my learning. So many people have put ideas into my head and made my think about things I would not have done otherwise.

I believe I will go back to school for another degree or certification. I also believe I'll end up back in the classroom at some point.

I believe our educational system needs a major overhaul.

I'm supposed to tag a few people to see what they believe. I'd like to hear from:

Kate of Kate Says
Paul Bogush
John Pederson
Rookie Teacher

Do you believe any of the same stuff?

Some Great Reading

2008-05-05T22:17:00.002-05:00

I'm catching up a little on my reading and also delaying the final piece to my grad school paper. Here are few thoughts on some things I've read lately.

Kate Olson, who I've gotten to "know" on Twitter posted this a while ago. She writes about the changes we have to make when communication with people around the country or the world. It's something one never really thinks about. When we are talking to colleagues in our building or our district, much less our neighborhood friends, we are thinking locally, not globally. In contacting teachers for my state project to schedule video chats, I really got to thinking about what Kate says. She mentions adding F when talking about temperature and also noting the time zone when scheduling chats. Has this ever crossed your mind? Of course not, but I sure got myself a close up of the time changes when scheduling my chats. Is Arizona one our behind Wisconsin or two? What about Alaska? Wow, what an eye opener. Thanks Kate, for raising my awareness of this. Do you need to start preparing our students to think this way? I think so.

If you work with kids and are looking for great websites to use, you have to subscribe to iLearn Technology. I've already come across a few sites I was unaware of just by following along.

I love reading Learn Me Good (even though he's a Duke fan). The topic of this entry happens everyday. We tell students a lot to mind their own business, to stop tattling on others, and to ignore the crappy behavior others might have. Is this what we do as grownups? Just a thought.

I just don't know how I feel about this post. Joel seems to be trying to drum up readership for his blog, which I enjoy reading, but I'm not sure if I agree with the way he's doing it. I didn't realize Joel was an expert on blogging. I took from his post (and I may be alone) that he knows a lot about blogging and what makes a great blog. Hmmmm. In this entry, he talks about how his Blog Revolution and 6 ways I would benefit from joining the revolution. He says by joining, my blog will get more exposure, my blog will be better, my readers will enjoy it better, yadi yadi yada. Really? Just by joining the revolution? Maybe I'm missing something. I'll follow along, probably gaining some good information, but is a blog successful because it has a lot of followers? Is it better? I'm not sure.

If your teaching job and outlook improve when this happens, you won't be Pissed Off! You've got to read previous posts about life in the trailer. It's unbelievable these teaching conditions exist.

That's it for now, more thoughts on other great reads to come soon - probably after Thursday when my final paper is due for my last grad class! :)

Keeping Up

2008-05-04T20:22:00.003-05:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I've really immersed myself into making connections and learning. I have been on Twitter for several hours a day, worked to make contacts for my state project and set up video chats, and tried to keep up with Google Reader. This weekend was a rather busy one because my daughter had her first Eucharist today and we were preparing for the event yesterday and had the party after church today. I'm finally sitting down to write a blog entry. This is by no means the entry I've been planning on writing for a week or so now, but I really felt like I needed to put something in writing.

Due to the hectic weekend, I've gotten pretty far behind on Google Reader. I currently have 189 posts to go through. They are not all new. Among others, I've kept this (although I'm probably too late)-sorry Liz Davis and this (not sure what I really think of this yet) from So You Want to Teach and this (I'm already behind) and this from ElementaryTechTeacher because I want to go back and read them more carefully and comment. I also want to write my own blog entries about some of those. There is some great stuff that's been written lately, but I don't have the time right now to put decent effort in.

I also have a final exam for yet another grad class that is due on Thursday. I have about a third of it done, but should probably be working on it now, instead of writing this. Oh well!

I guess I've just written a bunch of excuses on why I'm not keeping up. However, whether I read the articles sitting in my reader today or in a week, they will still be there. I may miss some of the conversations, but that's the way it goes. Even though it's really bugging me that I'm behind, I'm learning to let it go and not get stressed out.

One Last Push

2008-04-30T11:26:00.003-05:00

HELP!!!

The State Project is off to a pretty good start. We had a huge initial surge of interest from people across the country. However, we are still in need of participants from about 20 states. We need to wrap up the project in the next couple of weeks. Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Check out the wiki for the project and see if the state you teach in still vacant. The wiki is private, but if you ask to join, I'll give you permission and you can join us. Otherwise, leave a comment hear with all of your contact info, including Skype name if you have one.

NECC, Here I Come

2008-04-27T22:22:00.003-05:00

Last week, I found out that I'm going to San Antonio to NECC '08. This was probably going to be the highlight of my summer, but my wife and I just booked an August trip to New York for a weekend to catch a show and a Yankee game before they tear down the house that Ruth built. I guess NECC now has competition for best summer trip. Anyway, as far as NECC is concerned, my flight is booked, accommodations set (at my cousin's house), all I need is a rental car - and tips from you.

Since this will be my first time attending, I'm looking for all the tips and advice I can get. If you've been to this conference before, what should I make sure I do? I'm not planning on attending any workshops, but are there any other "unofficial" things that need attention? I've heard of unconferences that will take place. How do I find out about those? I'll be adding my info the NECC wiki in the next day or two.

I read a recent blog about blog commenting and what kinds of posts get comments. There were several mentioned, but I'm hoping this entry gets plenty of action. The more advice the merrier. I certainly hoping to meet some of my fellow bloggers and twits (I think that's the correct term) during the conference. I met a few at WEMTA and it was very nice to be able to put a real person to the thoughts and ideas being shared.

If you've attended in the past, let me know your NECC experiences. If you're going for the first time like me, let me know that as well, perhaps we'll both experience something great.

Do You Have the Right Job?

2008-04-22T21:25:00.011-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about my current job. I'm a K-6 library media specialist at an urban (sort of) school in metro Milwaukee. I spend about half of my job with technology (which I love) and the other half with the library part of the job (which I like, but don't love). Our school has about 75% of our kids on free and reduced lunch. I do not have a problem with that at all - we have a bunch of great kids, but the technology in their homes is lacking which causes some problems when their only access to a computer is at school. In the past, I have written about my job and the fact that I like the people I work with. The physical space of my library is one of the best in the district.

I have great support from my building principal and our district has put a premium on our department. The district has put an emphasis on keeping a full time certified media specialist in all but our two smallest elementary schools. Our department has been involved in technology staff development, which for me, has been a lot of fun. We also work on fixed schedule which is sometimes good, but I'd take a flexible schedule in a heartbeat. While I miss the classroom after teaching third grade for eight years, I do like working with all of the students, even though seeing some for six or seven years is going to be six or seven years too long!

I've jumped into Twitter over the last month or so and have realized that there is a job out there that I'd really like to have - Technology Integration Specialist. A lot of people around the country have this job and it seems that it is their job to help teachers and students integrate technology into learning. This is what I'm doing as part of my job, but I'd like to be doing it all the time. I would be more than happy giving up the library part of my job. I like putting books in the hands of kids and I think I'm doing okay with the library part, but it's not my specialty. I want to be working and teaching with technology all the time! There is so much I'd like to do with teachers and technology, but for a variety of reasons, it's difficult where I am. The only problem is that the position of Technology Integration Specialist does not exist in my district.

I also wonder if I want to continue working with elementary students. It's the only world I've lived in, but sometimes I get tired of helping little ones log in because they don't know their alphabet. Watching third graders hunt and peck for letter because they don't know the keyboard is frustrating. Would these problems exist if I was working with older students? Of course not, but there would probably be other problems - like kids knowing more than me (but that might be great).

I've looked at local job openings around the area, but there aren't any T.I.S. positions. There are other elementary librarian jobs available, in better off communities where students most likely have experience with technology which would lead to me possibly doing cooler projects, but who knows? Does it pay to leave where I am if it's not the "dream job" I'm looking for? There's no way any other district would have better benefits than my current district. I've thought of going back to school to get my Director of Technology certification, but fear that a position like that would remove me from working with kids and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like that.

I signed my contract to come back next year.
Who knows what I'll do down the road.
I'm not 100% happy with my current position.
I like it, but don't love it.

Thanks for giving me some of your time.

Book Review #3

2008-04-20T21:46:00.003-05:00

If you're new to this blog, you are probably unfamiliar with this post. If you are familiar with the videos a couple of my third graders did, here's the third one.

One of Those Days

2008-04-17T20:22:00.003-05:00

Did you ever have one of those days when you felt tired or exhausted before the students even showed up? Today was one of those days for me. For some reason, I was somewhat irritable from the start. Talkative children didn't help the situation, especially the ones who like to have directions repeated several times before they even consider following them. When I'm tired, I take it out on some of the kids. I know, it's wrong, but in some ways, if they would have just listened in the first place, the small problem would have stayed a small problem. So I guess I'm blaming them.

Another thing that didn't go so well was a particular project I'm working on with second and third graders. It's called the Monster Project. For this project, which I heard about through Twitter (I think), students are to draw a monster. We're using KidPix, as are some of the other classes. After that, students are to write descriptive sentences about their monsters. Then, you swap writing with another class and each student tries to draw a monster based on the other student's writing. After the monsters are drawn, you compare pictures. If the student does a good job describing the monster, the pictures should be pretty close. This sounded like a cool project that was relatively simple. My second and third graders love to play with KidPix so I thought, what the heck, let's give it a whirl. I threw out an email to the second and third grade teachers to see if there was any interest and there was - great!

While we are still in the early stages of the project, drawing our monsters, I've come to the conclusion that I did a horrible job getting this project underway. Now, things can be fixed, but I made a couple of huge mistakes early on. Here's what I did:

1. Started the project with 3 of the 5 classes when I was gone. Yes, like an idiot, I left directions with a substitute. The kids did okay, projects were saved correctly but......

2. My directions/guidelines for drawing monsters sucked, leaving some pretty sucky monsters out there. Not anyone's fault but my own. One positive note about teaching is that if a lesson doesn't go well one day, you can always reteach it the next. Unfortunately for me, the next lesson doesn't occur until the next week. Today was the next week.

3. Assumed the KidPix skills of my students were actually decent. Hey, I've let them "play" with KidPix quite a bit. I severely overestimated their skills.

Today marked the day when we started to correct many of my early mistakes with this project. After redescribing (is that a word?) the project to the students and explaining better the directions for drawing the monsters, the kids started producing some pretty neat work. We are about 70% done with the monsters. Once they are done, I have to load all of those onto the wikispace for this project. That's going to take some time, but hey, it's all for the kids. The teachers are going to work on the writing part in their classrooms, so I can't really screw that up too much. This is a simple, yet neat project that our students will be doing for the first time. Unfortunately, things started off on the wrong foot. I just hope it ends on the right one!

State Project Wiki

2008-04-15T09:37:00.002-05:00

I've created my first wiki!

http://hmstateproject.wikispaces.com/

If you are interested in participating in my State Project, go to the wiki and fill in your information.

If you commented on the earlier post about the project, I think I have some of your information, but I may need more.

Thanks.

The Power of the Network, The Twitter Network

2008-04-13T15:50:00.003-05:00

There is a saying that goes something like this - "It's not what you know, it's who you know." I can honestly say that over the last few days, I have experienced the Power of the Twitter Network at a level I never imagined.

On Friday, I wrote a blog entry about a state project I will soon be working on with fourth graders at my school. To help me with the project, I turned to my PLN. My Personal Learning Network consists of several components - blogging, Classroom 2.0, Library 2.0, and Twitter. I didn't think my network was that strong until I asked for help.

After writing the post, I posted a tweet trying to spread the word about the project. I didn't know it at the time, but things were about to really take off. A couple of people I follow, and who follow me, decided to jump in and spread the word to their networks as well. Jen Wagner sent me a tweet "@imcguy -- Just blasted your project idea to my 3 mailing lists. :) Be prepared to fill your quota quickly!! :)" Sue Waters wrote "@imcguy I've got a considerably larger twitter network so have forwarded the twitter on for you..." WOW!

About 5 hours later, I had over 30 comments on the blog post. At about this time, I think I had about a dozen states all set up. I decided to retweet the message because if many people on Twitter are like me, they are not on all the time. After sending the message again, I continued to get more responses. At last check, there are over 40 comments on the blog. I have a few replies on the post at Classroom 2.0 as well.

I can only take a little of the credit for this. The reason this has taken off (I think I have about half of the states covered) is because of the our network, more specifically the Twitter network. I'm sure there are a lot of educators out there who don't understand Web 2.0, much less Twitter. They don't realize the impact it can have on them professionally and how it can impact their students. I'm not one of those people anymore. I enjoy Twitter, but after this experience, I'm sold. I will never underestimate the power of my PLN. This just goes to show that there are a bunch of great minds who are willing to help teachers and students learn. Thank you!

I can't forget that we are only half way there. I still need your help gathering interested educators in more than 20 states. I may try my hand at setting up a Wiki with the contact info of the people involved. I have my own chart, but there are many blank spaces. Perhaps setting up the Wiki will allow interested people to fill in their information.

In the next few weeks, the fun will really begin when we start contacting these schools for interviews. I know the students are going to have a blast learning about other states using technology in ways they have never used it before.

Grand Project Idea Update

2008-04-11T23:09:00.002-05:00

Okay, here's the update after about 12 hours of airtime.

I think I've got about 23 states set up.

If you're going to comment and join us for this project, please make sure you provide me with a plenty of contact info. You can also head to my profile and send me an email that way.

In a few days, I'm going to post about the life this project has taken on, I'm completely amazed! Today was one of the most exciting days I've had teaching. I owe it all to the people I've made connections with over the past several months and the connections they've made. It's awesome!

Grand Project Plans

2008-04-11T09:15:00.004-05:00

A week ago, I purchased a webcam for our school, housed with me in the library, since I'm most likely the only one who knows how to use and will use it. After testing it out via Skype with Teryl_Magee and her students in Knoxville, Tennessee, I started thinking big.

In about 3 weeks, our fourth graders will begin a unit on the United States. For their big project, they will pick a state and research it. Last year, the 2 fourth grade teachers and I collaborated on this project. This year, I'd like to take it a step further and I need as much help as I can get. As one form of research, I'd like our students to interview a student or teacher from each state. In other words, the student who is researching New Mexico would actually "talk" to someone who lives there to get a prospective they couldn't get in a book. I would love this interview to be done through video conferencing. Our students have never done that before and I think it would be great. Now, I realize that finding people in all 50 states for a video chat will be difficult, but I would settle for at least an email interview. I have 3 or 4 states covered already, but am looking for contacts all over the place. I would even think that touching base with someone outside of a school system would be fine - perhaps a grandparent or business person, someone like that. While having the students interview another student would be great, interviewing an adult would work as well. I'm really hoping my Twitter network, which has over 100 followers representing at least 25 states can be a great resource for this. They should be able to help, right? Some of my fellow blog readers should be able to help, right?

I certainly cannot find all of these contacts myself. That's why I need your help - assist me spreading the word about this project. Are interested? Do you know someone who would be? If so, please leave me a comment with your info or send me an email. I think this could be really cool and more importantly, a great learning opportunity for everyone involved!

Here's my post on this project from Classroom 2.0 if you're a member.

Why I Blog

2008-04-09T10:29:00.003-05:00

Via a Tweet from TeachaKidd, I read this blog entry related to blogging and why educators blog. The original post is here. Participation is needed in an Open PD session this afternoon that I would love to take part in via UStream or Skype. I've used these technologies before and but may be unavailable at that time. If I can't make it, I'll be bummed. At least I can share my thoughts here and hope that someone finds them.

The discussion will center on the following questions:

1. Where you blog and how long you have been blogging for?

I wrote by first entry on January 16th, 2007. That year, I wrote 62 entries and have posted 18 so far this year. I pretty much write about teaching, educational technology, other ideas related to school libraries. Occassionally I write about something the students did, something my children did, or something that bothers me, but for the most part, it's all related to education.

2. Why you blog? How does it benefit you or your work?

I started blogging because I wanted to learn about blogging itself. I had thoughts about trying it with students and figured I better learn it first. I have "met" some amazing people through blogging and have learned quite a bit. I benefit from blogging because I can share my thoughts, concerns, and questions with other in hopes of getting feedback. In short, I think it makes me a better educator, and I'm not alone. In many cases, I get ideas on how to handle situations. In other cases, I am encouraged to think. I think blogging takes on two parts - the writing and the reading. To me, reading other blogs is where I learn the most. While it's great to produce something that can create a conversation and perhaps share an idea, reading what others have to say is important to me. I currently follow about 50 blogs through Google Reader. In addition, I am notified about other blogs and posts through Twitter. I have done more professional reading over the last year and a half (my time Blogging) than I did in the previous five years.

3. How blogging has helped your students and how long have you been blogging with students (if applicable)

We recently started student blogs with a sixth grade class, but have had some trouble getting it going. There are a number of reasons I won't get in to, but I hope it's more successful down the road.

4. Why you feel blogging is important.

To me, blogging is important because I have made connections with other educators and leaders around the world. My peronal learning network, the new buzzword flying around, has grown quite a bit. I'm able to bounce ideas off a wider audience that I ever have. I'm able to learn more from a wider audience. I'm able to share experiences I have with others and learn from them. In addition, blogging has kept me up to date with Web 2.0 tools and other new educational technology tools. Without blogging, this would not have happened so quickly. Educators need to keep up to date with current trends. Not only in reading and math instruction, but in technology as well. Blogging is keeping me connected and it's really helped. I fell much more up to date than I have in the past.

5. What are the 3 most important tips you would share with a new blogger?"

1. Realize that you cannot read everything.
2. Read blogs, read blogs, and read blogs.
3. Don't let it consume you.

There you go, thoughts and comments are certainly welcome! Remember, conversations lead to learning.

Thoughts and Questions about Twitter

2008-04-06T20:32:00.004-05:00

It's been a little over three weeks since I've joined Twitter. While I'm still learning, it has both hindered me in some ways and benefitted me in others. Below are some of my thoughts and questions about this new networking tool.

Twitter has:

1. Helped my personal network grow. I've "met" some great people through Twitter. Teryl_Magee and JLWagner have been especially welcoming. I can't wait to meet more! In fact, I'm meeting at least 3 people I follow F2F at a conference on April 7th.

2. Introduced me to more great new minds. I'm now reading The Power of Educational Technology and The Thinking Stick.

3. Helped me experience the Power of Twitter. The other night, Kate Olson sent out a Tweet helping me break the 50 follower barrier. Within about 10 minutes, 12 new people were following me. This was amazing.

4. Learned of other Twitter members who do the same thing as me - thanks to dmcordell for sharing some of her favorite Library Media Specialists who are on Twitter. I'm looking forward to learning from them.

5. Helped me make contact with a classroom in Tennessee so some of my students could video chat for the first time via Skype with Teryl_Magee's students. This was much easier to do thanks to Twitter.

6. Made me more aware of UStream. I watched my first broadcast hosted by Ryan Bretag. Ryan also sent me my first DM.

7. Decreased the amount of time I'm blogging. I'm finding myself checking Twitter too much, resulting in less time to blog and do other things.

8. Run up the total of text messages I got on my iPhone (yes, I went over my allotted amount). For a short time period one day, I set up Twitter to send the Tweets to my iPhone. Little did I know that I would have about 100 messages in less than a day. Needless to say, I had to turn off that feature. Good thing I can still get to Twitter via the web browser on my phone.

9. Made me wonder if there's any educational use for this for elementary students - probably not yet.

10. Allowed me to read great blog posts recommended by others. I really like the fact that someone can simply say - "Hey, read this" and then provide a quick link.

11. Helped spread the word about my blog. I don't have many subscribers to my blog, but I'm able to post a link to a new entry, like I will this one, and more people may visit. Perhaps conversations will lead to more learning.

12. Made my wife a little unhappy. She's always telling me - get off the computer, put the iPhone down! It's not as bad as it sounds, but sometimes I don't want to miss anything.

13. Made me wonder how long some people spend on Twitter. It seems that some people are on quite a bit. How do they manage this?

14. Made me realize that some people have over 1,000 followers and also follow hundreds of others. How in the world do they do it? Is there a number that is simply too many?

14. Increased my eagerness to learn more. Not only about Twitter and what others are doing, but more about Web 2.0 technologies.

By the way, if you're not already, follow me - you just might learn something.

There you go. I'm looking forward to continued learning. If you have other thoughts, experiences, questions, or comments about Twitter, I'd love to hear them. Perhaps you have some tips for me, I sure could use them.

Widgets Widgets Widgets

2008-04-01T13:10:00.003-05:00

How many widgets do you have on your blog? I have a couple, but think there are a lot out there that are cool, beneficial, and are liked by others. As I look around at the various blogs I read, I notice a lot of widgets serving different purposes. Some are a little more educational than others. Some are simply entertaining.

Here's my question - what's your favorite widget? Please leave a comment and a link to where the widget can be found. I'd like to see if we could put together a nice little list of recommended widgets!

Keeping Students Safe

2008-03-30T15:59:00.004-05:00

I am in the process of working with a sixth grade teacher to get her students blogging. We've set up blogs on LearnerBlogs, with a few hiccups, and have even written a couple of entries. To me, the real power of blogs, beyond the reading and writing benefits, come in the conversations that are created. When students produce quality work and it's shared with others, there's potential for a lot of learning. I used LearnerBlogs because it was one of the few blog sites what is not blocked by our district. I understand the need for filtering at the elementary school level, and Cool Cat Teacher wrote a great blog about filtering, but there does come a time when we need to open things up for our students.

When teachers log in to district computers, they are not blocked from blog sites, unlike the students. I've experienced a lot of learning from the contacts I've made and the conversations I've been a part of due to blogging. I want my students to experience this as well. I came across a few other student blogs and wanted to share those with my students. I want them to see examples of great writing and great thinking. I want them to compare how they are writing to good writing. Unfortunately, they can't get to these blog sites - they're blocked.

Our district does have a form that can be filled out to unblock sites. It involves listing the site and then stating the educational purpose. I've completed the form and submitted it to the proper administrators. No luck! Even after several conversations, the sites are still blocked. The worry is that something bad will happen. This project is going to be more structured than much of what goes on in my computer lab when other teachers bring their kids in. Some teachers let their kids run wild on Google, but apparently, that's not a problem for the powers that be. Anyway, I feel I've already clearly defined the project, including the safety parameters in place, but still feel frustrated that the district won't open up the 2 student blog sites I want my students to visit.

I really don't know what they are afraid of. We are not opening the project up to the world. I've been in contact with the teachers involved with the other student blogs. Sure, we can't protect the students from everything, but shouldn't we at least give them the chance to learn? If there is anything inappropriate that comes up, isn't that a great learning opportunity for us to talk about?

The district really wants to clamp down on things and mentioned Moodle, even thought they know nothing about it. They suggested I look into that and see if that would serve the purpose, which I guess is to put our kids in a bubble. I don't know much about Moodle, but it appears that it's much more involved than what I need for this project and would be much more time consuming to set up than simply unblocking a couple of sites.

I'm looking for suggestions here. Do you have any ideas on how to proceed? I need help!

Back to Reality

2008-03-28T20:30:00.004-05:00

Well, today marks the last day of Spring Break. I'm heading back home after 9 days in Florida. I sure don't want to go back. Who would want to leave warm weather and no work for cold weather and work? Vacation is too nice.

I've realized a couple of things over break as far as technology and staying connected is concerned. The fun things I can't live without and the necessary things I can live without.

As far as the necessary things - I'm taking an online course through my local university. For the course, we have to read a bunch of stuff, write papers, and participate in online discussions. I had a paper due last week and submitted it before heading to Disney with the family. Since the Spring Break of the university was LAST week, and my Spring Break was this week, things got a little out of whack. It wasn't until today that I remembered I had work to do for my class because I was in vacation mode. Luckily, I am able to "borrow" a wireless network from my in-laws' neighbor and do my work on the patio next to the pool. It's the same place I am right now as I write. In the dark. Listening to the crickets. Very peaceful. Anyway, earlier this morning, I listened to an audio assignment and followed along on a PowerPoint my professor put together. It took was rather lengthy, but I did what I needed to do, for now. I have more to do when I get home, but at least I didn't forget completely about it.

Now, as far as the "optional" technology - I couldn't stay away. I was constantly checking my email on my iPhone daily. At the mall, at Disney, at a bar, all over the place. I don't usually get too much "important" email, but none the less, I was checking it. I was texting friends, hoping to strike up a conversation once in a while. I was checking my NCAA brackets and scores to see how things were going with the tournament games. I was checking Bloglines to see what's been written. I must say, however, that I haven't kept up as much as I should have, resulting in too much skimming, very little commenting, and some deleting just to not get too far behind. I've checked Twitter a little to see what people are doing, even though I've yet to get a good grasp on this new tool.

Can I live without technology and the ability to stay connected? A little. Do I want to? Absolutely not.

Spring Break.....yeh, right!

2008-03-21T09:28:00.003-05:00

Spring Break began yesterday with a plane trip to Florida to enjoy some golf, take a short trip to Disney with the kids, and simply relax and get away from school for a while. I'm sure many educators look forward to the break to unwind, recharge, and simply remove themselves from the daily grind of school. For the first time in a while, I can't seem to get away. Thanks to the wonderful world of technology, I CAN"T get away. I'm finding myself checking Twitter messages several times a day. I'm reading blogs way too much - I know they'll still be there when I get back. I'm writing. I'm finishing up a grad paper that I have to turn in today. It's only the second day and I'm hoping this won't continue the rest of vacation.

Perhaps it can be looked at as a positive. Over the past several weeks, my professional learning environment has grown. I'm learning a few things- like how Twitter can be addictive. I've discovered a few new blogs. While I'm always interested in learning new things and sharing what I know with others, I'm wondering how much I should let it control my daily activity. Much of this is exciting and good, but only in moderation.

I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. Have you been able to get away? Do you even want to? Is your Spring Break really a break? I'd like to hear thoughts and suggestions!

Twitter Time Has Begun

2008-03-19T22:24:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I've jumped in to Twitter and have a few thoughts.

1. Thanks to those of you who have given me tips.
2. Ryan, thanks for my only direct message so far.
3. Jamie, thanks for the welcome!
4. I'm amazed that people have over 1,000 followers. Wow, that's amazing.
5. I'm amazed that some people follow hundreds other people. Why? Is that too much?
6. I did set Twitter up to send the tweets to my iPhone - it was kind of cool, but so many of the tweets were directed @someone I thought it was kind of a waste- but maybe some aren't.
7. I'm wondering who sees my tweets.
8. Do only my "followers" see my tweets?
9. How do others find me - word of mouth? Does "word of mouth" even make sense in today's world? Should it be word of fingers or word of keyboard?
10. I'm having a hard time following conversations - should I be worried about this at my beginning stage or will I figure it out?
11. I like the connections I'm making, I'm just not sure if I'll learn as much compared to blogging and reading the blogs of others.

I'm sure I'll have more as I use it, but for now, those are some initial thoughts.

Going Worldwide with a Project

2008-03-17T09:18:00.003-05:00

One of my jobs as the library media specialist at my school is to work with all students using technology. I see each grade for an hour a week, part of the time for typical library stuff - book checkout, story time, etc. and the rest of the time in the computer lab working on technology skills. In addition, I try to work with teachers on integrating technology into the curriculum. When possible, I try to share new technologies with teachers in hopes that they jump in. In some cases, teachers simply dip their toes into the pool. Some other teachers are in knee deep. I'm not sure anyone is in it up to their waste yet, but we're making progress.

I couple of weeks ago, I sent out an email to our primary teachers about an exciting online project for St. Patrick's Day. I was hoping this project would be one way teachers could participate in a fun, worldwide project. I offered any assistance teachers would need, hoping that we would work together on this project, put together by Technospud. After several days, I didn't receive any responses, which disappointed me. Oh well, I thought, I at least tried.

To my pleasant surprise, I ran into one of the teachers this morning carrying a box of Lucky Charms. She said, "Hey, remember that email you sent about that project? Well, we're doing it!" I had two reactions to this: 1-YEH!!! and 2-Why am I not involved in this project with the teacher? After reflecting on this for a little bit, I realized that one of my personal goals is to get my teachers to a point where they don't need me to help them with projects. I want them to feel comfortable integrating technology into the classrooom. I want them to jump into these kinds of projects on their own. After thinking about how I feel a little more, I'm excited. I can't wait to see how the project turns out. I am really excited about this teacher participating in this project, it's too bad she's retiring this year and won't be able to do it again next year.

I'm jumping in to Twitter

2008-03-13T09:03:00.003-05:00

Okay, I'm not sure how this is all going to play out, but if I have any intentions of figuring out a way to use this with students, I better learn it myself first.

I'm jumping on the Twitter bandwagon - user name "imcguy" If you tweet, please follow me. I have no idea where I might lead you, but if we're are lucky, it will be to a place where we can all learn something new. I currently have 6 people I'm following, Steve Denbo, Darren Draper, Bud the Teacher, Jen Wagner, David Jakes, and David Warlick. These are people who write great blogs (if you're not reading their blogs, you're missing out) and I noticed they discuss their use of Twitter quite a bit.

Through blogs I've read, people seem to learn quite a bit via Twitter. However, there's also been some discussion about the impact Twitter has on blogging.

I wonder how many people are using Twitter with their computers vs. cell phones. Talk about being connected! As a teacher, I'm not sure having messages sent to my iPhone is the way to go because I'm busy with students all day, but if I was at a conference or something like that, I can see a value. If you are using Twitter, are you receiving your messages on a mobile phone? I'm not going to go that route, at least not until I get a better hang of Twitter and if I'm find it valuable.

Until then, let me know if you're using Twitter so I can follow you - and please follow me. At this point, I'm the only person on my train and it's going to get a little boring unless my network grows. I'm in this to learn - please help me!

What is Educator Profiency?

2008-03-07T13:17:00.002-06:00

Over the past several weeks, we have been working on our school district technology plan, which is required by our state. Every district must put together a technology plan, which covers three years. We looked at the previous plan we had in place and took a look at the goals of the plan to see the progress we were making. We then worked on the next steps by writing new goals and coming up with action plans on how they were going to be met. I'm pretty sure having the plan is somehow related to some type of funding we get from the state, but I can't say for sure. Anyway, the group I was working with dealt with the topic of Educator Proficiency. We had to write, as part of the plan, how we were going to improve educator proficiency when it comes to technology and computer use.

What is educator proficiency as it relates to technology? We had a hard time defining this. Did it deal with simple management tasks like answering email and completing attendance and report cards online? Or, is there another component of this dealing with integrating technology into the curriculum effectively. If this is true, how do you measure educator proficiency? Is there a set of skills that you can simply check off? Do the skills needed for a first or second grade teacher vary from those of high school teachers? I think the answer to many of these questions is yes. If I judge this proficiency of the teachers I work with based simple management tasks related to technology, they are all proficient for the most part. If I start looking deeper at their technology use as it relates to instruction, many are not even close. These are many teachers who rarely integrate technology into their lessons. I'm not going to get into the "why not" part, but in some cases their reasons are understandable.

I do wonder about the educator proficiency levels of other teachers. What about the teachers at your school? Would you say they are proficient? Are you? What is proficient? I'd be interested in the tasks you feel teachers need to be able to do to be proficient. Comments welcome on this one.

It's a sad day in Wisconsin

2008-03-04T22:00:00.000-06:00

No more Brett.