September 16 Professional Development

I am very happy to be presenting at the Regional PD day in Webster City. This is the third year of a regional professional development and the second of this layout. Though the players have changed, South Hamilton has left and Saint Edmond has joined, the opportunities remain great.  Webster City has done the vast majority of the work getting this day set up. Elizabeth Hubbell from McRel will be keynoting the event and having had the opportunity to attend one of her seminars before I can state that she is a fantastic presenter.

Mark Murphy the Director of Technology at Webster City has done a fantastic job setting up the SCHED. For those of you who have not used this web based program, it is a great way to set up conferences and have people sign up. I truly like these type of professional development days because there are so many opportunities to learn and you are able to attend those sessions that are of interest to you. It is not just a "sit and git" day. And it is not all conducted by one person.  Of course this means that there had to be a large number of volunteers willing to present.

At the regional PD day, I am will be providing five sessions on three different topics. I am going to use the remainder of this post to be a place holder for the presentation info and forms that I want people to fill out.  If you are not attending the PD day, feel free to look over the information and even fill in a form. As they are all for demonstration purposes, the more the merrier.

Session I:  Google Docs: Above and Beyond Sharing.

This session covers some of the lesser known features of Google Docs. Beyond sharing, there are different tools provided by Google and third party creators to make the product much more powerful. We will discuss a few of them in this session.

Here is the Google Presentation followed by the survey I am asking attendees to take.



Please fill out this survey for the Pivot Table Report Demo.

Session II:  Forms & Autocrat & Flubaroo ... Oh My!

In this session  we will look at some scripts that can be added to forms and docs to make them a little more useful. Ever use mail merge in Microsoft Office? Autocrat does that for Google Docs. Ever want to create an online quiz that can correct itself? Flubaroo is the tool for you. This is the Link to the Flubaroo instructions.

Please Fill out this form to for the Flubaroo demo.



Now submit this survey for the Autocrat Demo

Session III:  Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

 

This session will look at what some research says about the role of leadership in technology adoption and use and then look at tools to help make technology integration a reality in your district.

I am Flubaroo and You Can Too

It's TICL time again. Being an educator words like that could get me into some serious trouble. But this is a GOOD TICL. It is the annual Northwest Iowa and Prairie Lakes AEA's summer technology conference.  TICL stands for Technology Integration and Instruction for the Twenty First Century Learner. This year I am presenting two different sessions. That makes me the Iowa equivalent of the doublemint twins. Except I am not a twin and probably should never be on a television commercial. My two sessions are both on products related to Google Apps for Education.  This seems pretty fitting since I (warning ... shameless self promotion here) just qualified as a Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer.

Session number one is on Flubaroo, a script that allows you to create Google Forms and make self grading quizzes and tests out of them. Here is the link to my demonstration quiz LINK.
I have also created a Google Doc with instructions on how to use Flubaroo here.

You can also find the form embedded at the bottom of this post

The second session is how to use the GAFE control panel and some best practices.  I had planned on showing Flash Panel because when I submitted the session, it was free to education. This is no longer the case, and while I feel it is worth the cost of admission, I hate showing for pay tools to people that are not already thinking about them.  It feels to much like a sales pitch and that is not how I roll.

The rest of my summer is jam packed with such fun things as fork lifting 90% of my network switches and getting our new student information system up and going. The job of a tech director is never done.

Iowa 1:1 Conference

April 4, 2013 has come and gone and so has another Iowa 1:1 conference. This conference was originally established to foster connections between schools in Iowa that had established a 1:1 computing program. It has now grown into a statewide technology conference where 1:1 schools get the opportunity to show the rest of the state the wonderful things that they have done.  For me this conference is a chance to network.  Being a Technology Director means that there is only one of me in the district. That means that there is no one else to bounce ideas off of, or to ask questions of. This makes conferences like these very important to develop connections with other people in the state that do the same type of work.

Sessions are great. It is a wonderful chance to get a lot of information from someone who has hopefully gone through the growing pains of putting a plan into action. But that is a sit and get mentality and not always the best option for someone like me who has adult onset ADHD. I prefer standing out in the hall and talking to people to pick their brains or allow them the slim pickings of mine.

The main floor of the old "Vet's Auditorium" now the Iowa Events Center was filled with approximately 1,200 people with the common goal of increasing and / or improving the use of technology in education. To have that many like minded individuals gathered in the same place is energizing to say the least. I attempted to gleen as much info as I could in the given amount of time that I had. It was a herculean task at best to reach out to all the people that I wanted to, but I feel very good about the info I was able to gain and give. Here is a small list of topics that were addressed in the hall rather than in the sessions.

• How to get a Cisco wireless system to pass Bonjour packets
• Conversion from JMC to Infinite Campus
• "Best" bags for a ChromeBook deployment
• What vendor is best at generating SQL queries
• What Deli has the best sandwich (Palmer Deli for those interested)
• Quality Chrome Apps for Video Editing (if there even is one)
• Google Apps for administrators
• Suggestions for enterprise wireless solutions
• LMS / CMS solutions
• University of South Florida Technology Integration Matrix
• TPAC (Always a favorite topic)

 Until I get the opportunity to attend another conference like this, I will return to my virtual world of twitter to keep up with my colleagues throughout the state.

R.I.P. Google Reader

I have a Google Reader account, but to be honest I rarely check it. I barely have time to check my e-mail, check my Twitter feed, keep up with Facebook, do my job, and spend some QT with my family. That being said, Reader made great sense in aggregating info for me rather than me spending hours checking all the blogs and feeds that I wanted to look at.

Google has decided to end of life Reader. There seems to be quite a bit of buzz about it in the twitterverse, but I have yet to see anyone explain why they "need" reader.  There are other aggregators out there. Is it as convenient in this Google Apps world? probably not, but there are choices.  I will provide a few here for you.

First of all, Google + will supposedly absorb Reader and take over what reader does. This seems to make sense as Google is trying to "put more wood behind fewer arrows". (their words, wish they were mine) Will Google + aggregate? I am not sure, but I would think it will.

Here are some web based tools

Netvibes
Feedly (NOTE:  feedly uses reader on the back end, so be aware)
Newsblur

Or be very daring and leave the web based world and select an application

FeedDemon (PC)
RSS Bandit (PC)
NewsNetWire (Mac and iOS)

I am sure there are other choices out there and now that reader is condemned, more will probably be developed. One could even hope that Delicious Monster or Panic could create an application.

In the end, the death of Reader teaches us to be careful about putting all our eggs into one big Google basket.

EdCamp Iowa

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend EdCamp Iowa in Storm Lake.  I am not sure what the total attendance was, but it was far fewer than it should have been.  If you have never been to an "unconference" then you should definitely attend one.  The premise is that the attendees choose the topics of the sessions. It is not a sit and "git" type conference but rather a full scale participation conference.  Session leaders are facilitators, not presenters, and attendees are participants rather than receivers of information.  The first session is all about setting up the schedule for the day. People volunteer to facilitate sessions based on topics they either feel learned in or that they want to pick the brains of others about.  The rest of the day is about choosing sessions, participating, sharing, and learning.  There is also a rule that if the session is not what you need, feel free to leave.

An idea that kept being mentioned was how wonderful it would be if professional development for teachers would be set up in this manner.  All too often, PD is a sit and "git" endeavor rather than a participatory activity.  My school district is currently looking at the possibility of maybe going 1:1 (is that non comital enough?). One of my caveats to a 1:1 is the need for PD that is beneficial to the staff on how to best use the technology that they will have access to.  Hosting our own "unconference" would be a great way to accomplish that. Teachers would work with each other in learning how to use technology. Those that are "experts" or more accomplished in one area could assist those who were less knowledgeable. All too often we fail to recognize the skill sets that are already available in our districts.  It used to be there was a need to bring in an expert who would dole out wisdom from on high. Of course all too often an expert was someone who traveled over 60 miles and had a PowerPoint. More recently we have begun to realize that we have staff with expertise in many areas and we need to draw upon that experience and allow them to help train our staff. The best part of this idea is that the expertise is readily available as it is most likely just down the hallway.

The idea of using this concept for PD is so encouraging to me, that I am actually going to suggest we do it at our next admin meeting. I will let you know how things go.

Great Plains GAFE Summit

It has been a while since I posted and as I am sitting at a Google Summit, I thought it might be a good time to post.  The district that I work for is moving to Google Apps for Education this summer. That means some pretty significant changes are in the works. Not the least of these is our e-mail. We will be switching over from hosting our own e-mail to using Google's hosted service. (By we, I mean me. I will be doing this work). Some people worry about not having all the servers in their room, I do not. The less I have to manage, the happier I am.

I will be attending all of the Technical sessions that I can along with administrative strands. I wish I could have brought along some staff to go to the integration sessions, perhaps some will go to the Midwest Summit in the Wisconsin Dells in November.

Tribute to Jerry Garcia

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been. 2 Years ago (June 2010) I started working on my masters degree at UNI. This Friday (May 4, 2012) I will graduate. As I did not participate in my graduation ceremony as an undergrad, I will be walking this time. I have my cap and gown. I have my hood. I am ready to finish this journey.  I know Jerry was discussing a much different type of trip, but the song fits and I am going to go with it.

Along the way, I have had the opportunity to work with wonderful people from all across the state. They will have an influence on my life for years to come. I hope that I was able to offer to them as much as they did to me.

There were some strange classes along the way. I am still not 100% sure why we had to take a literacy class, but it worked out and I enjoyed the freedom involved in creating our final projects. Then there were others that were spot on. Tech in Ed, Coordinating Tech, and Distance Ed to name a few. Covering topics like TPaCK, GRR, UDL, and other three and four letter acronyms helped make me a better Technology Director. And of course the projects, So much group work and collaboration. I think I have about 10 times the number of Google Docs than the average user.

Speaking of the  projects, one person that I seemed to have been paired up with quite a bit throughout this trek was Bill Lammers. I can honestly say that he is one of the most unique and creative people that I have ever met, and I have met many a person. As a theater instructor, he has embraced technology in a way that I could never have imagined. He epitomizes what I want my teachers to be. Fearless, creative, constructive, and fun. Thanks for your support and friendship. As for the others in my cohort, I am truly a better educator for having met all of you. I have appreciated your support, friendship, and camaraderie more than you will know. Our time together in class, at the OP, and at El Bait Shop at ITEC will bring a smile to my face for years to come. I am sure that I will be sitting in my room at the nursing home laughing about comments made "back in the day" and the poor aid will think I have gone senile. (not that I am not already).

While the conferring of degrees this Friday (and actual mailing of degrees in June) will mark the end of this section of the trip, it is just another step in this educational journey.

To friends, cohorts, and lifelong learners!