Sandra Hines' Blog

Robotics Camp

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 02:37:00 GMT

I just spent the week splitting my time between middle school students in robotics camp and teachers in our iPod touch Academy. I wanted to be in both places all the time, there was so much excitement and learning going on. Students were introduced to the Lego Mindstorm NXT robot and NXT software through a great program called Terraformers.

Tags: iPod touch,technology

Note Taking on and iPad

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:58:00 GMT

Since the 1990's I have loved to take notes by creating mindmaps. When I taught 5th graders, I even taught them to use mindmapping to take notes and construct relationships, meaning and gain understanding by making mindmaps.

Schlechty Webinar

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:02:00 GMT

Just participated in a free webinar with Phillip Schlechty on his new book Leading for Learning. Steve Hargadon interviewed him. http://www.learncentral.org/ is doing an incredible job of providing interesting, educational and free webinars. Thank you Learn Central!

Vision for the Classroom

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:31:00 GMT

On a recent visit to an elementary school and with a library/media specialist she asked questions about their document cameras and new mounted projectors. After showing her how to hook up the document camera so that the accompanying software can be used to capture lessons and create presentations by students and teachers, she informed me that many of the teachers did not want to attach their computers. They just wanted to use the document camera to project their paper content in a similar way that they used the old overhead projector and transparency. My heart sank. These are good teachers who have gone through extra training on ways to use technology for creativity. It reminds me of the kids I used to teach who would say, “My teacher didn’t teach that last year,” when I knew the teacher had, but is there teaching going on if the students are not learning? So even if we did teach the teachers, did we really teach, if they didn’t start changing their use of technology?

Last week, I was leading a group of educators, community members and school district stakeholders to develop a 3-year technology plan. Working in small groups, they looked at requirements for the plan. After reading a description of technology integration, one participant who just graduated from one of the district high schools commented that in her 13 years in the district, she had one teacher who integrated technology like the description. Again, my heart sank.

I’m reading Curriculum 21 edited by Heidi Hayes Jacobs. In chapter 7, Tim Tyson writes, “If digital technology is used in low-level ways – to do the same things we have always been doing in schools, just doing them now with computers—then we have failed to grasp the metamorphosis this technological ecosystem offers. In so doing, we perpetuate an emphasis on student passivity, on students’ “receiving” school as if learning were given to them by teachers and as if computers served only for such low-level tasks as grading, reporting, and word processing.” Tyson was principal of Mabry Middle School known as one of the first schools to embrace student blogging and students as creators of content.

I can envision a school where students provide learning content for their peers. I can hope to be part of a school learning process reversal, where the homework is watching a video lesson on a topic (created by another student) and the class work is where the student applies the learning under the supervision of the teacher. In this environment, students are content creators and contributors to the learning process, taking ownership of their learning while providing learning tools for others and participating in a collaborative process. This would be a place where teachers do not have the only access to computers and technology and where teachers are not the dispensers of knowledge, rather they are lead learners. Technology is in the students’ hands with access to Web 2.0 tools and they have the background training to use it wisely and safely.

Some tools that make this type of environment possible are laptops, digital cameras, camcorders, webcams, iPods, and microphones. Students and teachers need blogs, wikis, mindmapping resources and online storage. Web 2.0 tools would include many of the following:

Jing at http://www.techsmith.com/jing/ for screencasts and screencapture

Animoto http://animoto.com/ for making great video presentations from images.

History pin http://www.historypin.com/ for looking back in time from any location.

Twitter http://twitter.com for summarizing and research and much, much more

Evernote http://evernote.com for taking and organizing notes in a variety of formats

This is just a small sampling of resources to be used in my vision of the perfect learning environment. What would you add to this list? Please post your suggestions. What would a district do to make this vision a reality?

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Free Staff Development Courtesy of Twitter

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 03:06:00 GMT

As my husband watched the Cowboys play in a pre-season game and I lay on the couch resting from cleaning house and yard work waiting for the dryer, a tweet caught my attention.

"I'm broadcasting the #elh2010 conference LIVE now. KEYNOTE speaker @ewanmcintosh on in a few minutes: http://bit.ly/x5gKE"

I clicked on the link and watched Ewan McIntosh's Keynote address for ELH 2010 Technology Conference near Melborne, Australia. While it would have been much nicer to be there in person, it was still great, participating from my couch. Here are some comments and websites from Ewan's Keynote.

Design thinking | immersion | synthesis | ideation | prototyping

First Day of school, use a Google form to find out what types of technology your students have so you can take advantage of what they have.

"Even web/cloud based services can be safe learning environments. Still many schools building replicas & spending unnecessarily."

During this conference, "take some ideas forward & build prototypes for learning" He talked about creating a safe environment where things can be tried and tested and where it is okay to fail. I think high stakes testings make it very hard to create those types of learning environments.

He also mentioned schools without bells. I know elementary schools go without bells, but I don't know of any secondary schools that are removing the bell schedule. It would be nice to be able to allow students the time to work on projects without having to move to the next thing, before they are ready.

Ewan has set the 100 hour challenge for educators - follow your desires/aspirations for 1 hour every day for 3 months and see what happens.

Websites from the Keynote

Project based learning with contextualisation for the hometown of your students.

http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/

http://www.historypin.com/ shows students how much things have (sometimes) changed.

http://edubuzz.org/blogs/

http://mapumental.channel4.com - not open to the public, yet.

Thank you Steve Collis! @Steve_Collis

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Epic Tech Fail Day

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:48:00 GMT

Here's my entry into the Epic Tech Fail Day stories.

I am responsible for the technology staff development of teachers in a middle to large school district in Texas and during our recent week long staff development event I taught a class on Twitter, Polls and Surveys. We usually have this staff development event at one of the high schools, but due to construction it was held at a middle school. Everyone brought their laptop so they could load TweetDeck and use their Mac or PC instead of the student computers in the room. They also were required to bring their cell phone. After we started we discovered that the wireless in the room was very poor and things moved so slowly, that they either used the ethernet cord from the student desktop or changed over to the student computer. Then when we got out the cell phones, no one had reception inside the room. They had to move around in the hall to get reception so they could respond to www.polleverywhere.com poll example or participate from their computer. Since I was trying to show them how to use their cell phones in the classroom, it was very disappointing! It is hard to anticipate all the things that can go wrong when using technology, but checking that a URL is accessible for students before introducing it is a good practice.

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1:1 Ratio

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 02:32:00 GMT

The Long Range Plan for Technology in Texas includes the recommendation that all Texas school districts,

"Strive to achieve and maintain a personal computing device ratio of 1:1 for both students and professional educators."

This sounds like the right thing to do, if we strive to equip our students to be competitive in this global society preparing them for the work place of their future.

Some districts have taken the charge to heart and have delivered, like Irving ISD who sold $47 million in bonds to provide laptops and other technology for their 31,000 students, many of whom are economically disadvantaged. Other districts are selling bonds to build much needed buildings and struggling to staff them or failing to staff them and are forced to leave the new schools empty. For those Texas schools who are operating with a deficit budget and struggling to make budget cuts without letting go staff members, a 1:1 ratio for student personal computing devices seems completely out of reach. However, there may be a solution. What if the district did not purchase the personal devices for all students, but instead, began to support students as they are allowed to bring their own devices? How many students in Texas schools have their own Internet enabled cell phone, laptop, iPad, iPod Touch or other computing device? While the number of students with computing devices is probably not 100%, for secondary students it might exceed 80% and is perhaps a bit lower for elementary students. If most districts in Texas are going to have a 1:1 ratio of computing device to student they will have to think outside the box and develop policy allowing students to bring their own.

Districts allowing students to bring their own computing devices will need to provide a beefed up network prepared to accommodate the needed bandwidth and Internet filtering software. They will need to consider how to provide technical support on getting online and how to handle abuse and possible theft. Teachers will need support and training on how to manage the classroom and how to develop lessons to utilize multiple types of device. Our district has made the first step toward allowing students to bring their own devices by changing board policy to allow each campus to develop policy about personal computing devices.

I look forward to seeing teachers develop lessons that might include a "Power-Up Hour." This could be an hour when students are given a problem to solve and asked to develop possible solutions using any tool at their disposal, including their cell phones. With all the new Web 2.0 tools being introduced daily, the possibilities are endless.

What will your district do to prepare students for their future in the ever-shrinking global society?

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2010 Reform Symposium

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:43:00 GMT

I just attended the 2010 Reform Symposium World Wide eConference while reclining on my own couch. What an incredible opportunity. I found out about it Friday evening while looking through some tweets from those I follow. I managed to get in to two sessions plus the closing remarks and it left me wanting more. Since it was all archived, I can go back and view all the sessions. It won't be quite the same as participating live, but it will be educational, non the less. The presenters were invited to present because they are active Tweeters and Bloggers on education and technology. They were not high dollar presenters. Looking at their profiles, they were teachers, professors and principals with something to share. It was all FREE. WOW... online, from home....great... free, what an awesome combination!

In these days of budget cut backs and travel restrictions, we are so blessed to have people who will step up and organize such first class opportunities for teachers. I want to thank the organizers, presenters and volunteers who made it possible. I'll be suggesting to the teachers I know that they view the recorded sessions.

I attended:

Playing to Learn by Maria Anderson. Her prezi is here http://prezi.com/rj_b-gw3u8xl/playing-to-learn/ I recommend watching the recorded session.

She had several revelations. Here are the ones I really connected with:

Technology is making content irrelevant. It is what you can do with the content that is important.
Students who can't learn Algebra are able to learn to play complex video games that require memorization, logic, teamwork and complex strategies.
Even after years of being away from a video game, one can pick it up again and be just as good or better.

Entrancing Absorption is a term she used for students engaged in a game.

Maria introduced me to Babylonian numbers. Fascinating. I thought I had the pattern all figured out until she showed 61. You must Google it!

I recorded several links from the presentation and participant remarks. I will be exploring them this evening.

http://wolframalpha.com

http://xkcd.com/657

Raph Koster Author A Theory of Fun

http://www.theoryoffun.com/

Blooms Taxonomy according the Pirates of the Caribbean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjhKmhKjzsQ

http://bit.ly/PlayLearn

http://www.mangahigh.com/en_us/games/flowerpower

http://www.cengagesites.com/academic/?site=4594

http://teachingcollegemath.com/presentations/slides/

On Sunday I made it to the Closing Keynote by Steven Anderson and the Closing Ceremony

Steven's presentation was on Education: Timeless and Priceless.

Steve began with an overview of the history of education and how, throughout history, people have bemoaned the changing technology and complained that the new technology of the day was bad for students.

He talked about how we have the ability to build our own PLN now like in no time before.

This summary does not give the presentation justice. I recommend watching the archive and may watch it again myself.

In the closing ceremony, I learned of the plans to do all this again next year and I'll be looking forward to it. I will put it on my calendar and hope to participate in more sessions.

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TCEC CTAT Conference 2010

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:14:00 GMT

I’m attending the TCEC Conference in Dallas, this week on Career and Technical Education. I would love to be at BLC10 in Boston and missed ISTE2010 in Denver this year. Budget cuts really hurt! It is very interesting to observe the difference in attitude and access to technology at conference geared toward technology and those that are based on curriculum, like TxASCD and TCEC. When I attend a non-tech conference, I sometimes want to scream, “Come into the 21^st Century with me, folks!” After two years of suggesting that CTAT provide wireless for conference attendees, they are providing this year. THANK YOU CTAT!

My notes for available on Twitter at www.twitter.com/k20 with the hashtag #TCEC2010 and in MyWebspiration through www.mywebspiration.com at the following links.

Kim Green’s general session presentation at

http://mywebspiration.com/view/482991a1276c

Depth and Breadth of CTE Curriculum Integration

http://mywebspiration.com/view/481987a10c10

CTE Policy and Procedures Forum

http://mywebspiration.com/view/482013a12d72

Okay. CTE Policy and Procedures does not sound exciting, but it is so important that CTE district leaders begin to create policy and procedures to put all those “unwritten” rules for clarification and to create equity among programs. CTE programs are so varied that one program will not know what the other program does and many of them follow a different set of rules for funding and participation in student organizations or travel. The different programs in a district should all play by the same rules, but if those rules are not written and shared, how can they?

If you would like to join me in creating a document that district CTE leaders can use as a guide for creating district policy and procedures, go to http://cteguidelines.wikispaces.com/ and request to join the wiki. I welcome your collaborative efforts and expertise. Come on… you know you want to!

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TCEC CTAT Conference 2010

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:14:00 GMT

My notes for available on Twitter at www.twitter.com/k20 with the hashtag #TCEC2010 and in MyWebspiration through www.mywebspiration.com at the following links.

Kim Green’s general session presentation at

http://mywebspiration.com/view/482991a1276c

Depth and Breadth of CTE Curriculum Integration

http://mywebspiration.com/view/481987a10c10

CTE Policy and Procedures Forum

http://mywebspiration.com/view/482013a12d72

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