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!

Selection & Integration Final

It is mid December and to most people that means the hustle and bustle of holiday preparations. Last minute shopping, wrapping presents, holiday baking, and planning family get-togethers. Those things will not even make my radar until after Thursday of this week. That is when I will be done with another semester of classes as I work towards my master's degree. Our final for Selection and integration is a culmination of all the work we have done this semester. We looked at 21st Century Skills, UDL, GRR, TIM, and some other TLAs (Three Letter Acronym). Our project is to create a unit lesson that incorporates all of these strategies. This is a little hard for me to think in terms of units and lessons as I have been removed from the classroom for so long. While I plan teacher inservices and do some lessons with students, it is not the same as when I did that every day. I am amazed at how fast I have gotten out of that mode. Linked to this post is the Google Doc that I have created for this assignment. I felt that this was the best way to complete this task, as it required quite a bit of writing and that would be a bit much to post on my blog.

As of 2:15 pm on this fine day of December 15, 2011, I have completed my final assignment for Selection and Integration. It feels good to get it done, but I am now ready for a nap. Oh yeah ... one more semester to go.

UDL Helping Learners Learn

The first time I heard of UDL was in the Spring of 2011. At first I thought they were talking about UL (Underwriters Laboratories) This is the group that safety tests many items in the US. That is why you often so the label that I have on the right side of my introduction. Boy was I wrong. While UL is a very worthwhile group providing a very beneficial service, it is not the topic of this blog post. This post is discussing Universal Design for Learners.

You have probably heard of things being ADA compliant, or compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is why there are cutouts at curbs, handicapped parking, requirements for elevators in buildings, closed caption, and many more requirements to make things accessible for the handicapped. UDL is very similar to the ADA. Although it is not a requirement, it is growing in popularity as education continues to educate all students, regardless of their physical or mental differences.

As UDL grows in use throughout the country, so does the ease of integrating it into your classroom instruction. Living in these technologically booming times, there are a number of resources available to instructors to assist in creating a UDL classroom. One such device is the iPad. In this post, I will look at a number of apps that can be used to help teachers be more UDL compliant.

App	Price	Description
AudioNote Lite	Free	AudioNote Lite is an app that can support a broad range of students who need to record audio of what is spoken in the classroom but who also need to create visuals to understand and interpret what is being said. So this app has the ability to take notes, record audio, draw and highlight important information in the notes.
DAF Assistant	$12.99	DAF Assistant can be used by people who stutter to control their speech fluency, slow down speech rate, increase confidence level, and develop good speaking habits. It is known fact that people with stuttering problem usually speak better when do it together with another speaker. This, so called "chorus effect", causes significant increase in speech fluency. Delayed auditory feedback and Frequency-shifting Auditory Feedback simulate chorus effect by changing your own voice.
Decible	$0.99	Decible is an app that can measure the volume in your classroom. If you have students who are sensitive to noise, use this tool to measure the room sounds and as a reminder to other students just how loud things are getting. Very useful for students with Asperger's Syndrome or Autism.
Expressive	$25.99	Expressive is an entry to mid level, easy to use, and powerful app that allows children and adults with a speech impairment or a communication disorder to express their wants and needs through the use of pictures. It does not matter if an individual is having difficulty communicating due to autism, apraxia, stroke or any other communication disorder, Expressive will give that person the ability to express themselves through the use of pictured images and corresponding audio..
Grace	$37.99	Grace is a non-speaking, simple picture exchange system developed for people with Autism to communicate their needs independently. Users can select pictures to form a semantic sentence which they can then share, by tilting the iPhone or iPod touch to create a full screen view, and pointing at each card to hear the listener read each word. The cards are large enough on iPad not to need the full screen view. With practice, the user learns to attempt their own vocalisations with the pictures serving as a back-up or prompt. The goal of the Grace App is to encourage independent social interaction with the user taking control of what they want to say.
iCommunicate	$49.99	iCommunicate lets you design visual schedules, storyboards, communication boards, routines, flash cards, choice boards, speech cards, and more. It is customizable to your needs. For use with nonverbal students to aid in their communication.
iMean	$4.99	iMean is an app that is dedicated to text and the subtleties of expression and immense developmental potential that using text and formulating thoughts offers many people on the autistic spectrum.
iSign	$4.99	iSign is an ANIMATED phrase book of 800 American Sign Language (ASL) gestures. Each of the gestures is modeled with a 3D character and completely animated. The vantage point for each sign was chosen so that the user can see the details of the hand positions. These are the ASL signs, not finger spellings.
iSpeak Spanish	$1.99	iSpeak Spanish is an app that helps teachers work with the non English speakers in their classroom. In Iowa we have a growing number of Hispanic students. This app does not make a teacher a fluent speaker of Spanish, but it helps those who do not speak any.
iSpeech	Free	iSpeech is an app that allows the user to type in text and listen. iSpeech converts text to speech with the best sounding voices anywhere. Simply enter any text and iSpeech will instantly read the words.
iTranslate	Free	iTranslate is the first real Universal Translator. Have students who do not speak English or are not fluent in the language. iTranslate can assist a teacher in communicating with these students. Although not all languages are available, more are being added all the time.
Prologuo2go	$189.99	Proloquo2Go provides a full-featured augmentative and alternative communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking. It provides natural sounding text-to-speech voices (CURRENTLY AMERICAN, BRITISH and INDIAN ENGLISH ONLY), high resolution up-to-date symbols, powerful automatic conjugations, a default vocabulary of over 7000 items, advanced word prediction, full expandability and extreme ease of use.
UDLinks	Free	UDLinks is an app is for teachers and parents to search for content specific online teaching resources aligned with Universal Design for Learning. Users can complete a "Class Profile" narrowing the resources by content, grade level and topic. When prompted, questions in the profile tool narrow the search further by asking questions aligned with UDL. In the resources section of the app, teachers can search for lesson plans, multimedia, practice, games, tutorials or by topic and unique search terms. As users navigate the resources, they can save as favorites, share and view on their mobile device. The app also has a section for Universal Design for Learning linking teachers and parents with resources shared directly on the CAST website.
YesNo HD	$3.99	YesNo HD was designed with one purpose in mind - To provide an easy to use, affordable way for a nonverbal student with autism and motor planning issues to communicate with those around them. The App includes customizable buttons with text and pictures.

This is a short list of possible applications to help techers create UDL lessons and UDL classrooms. Each app has a number of different uses and non are perfect for every situation. UDLinks would be a great starting point as it is going to aid teachers in using tools they may not know exist.

Hopefully this post has given you a little insight into the world of UDL. If interested in learning more, please visit the Center for Applied Special Technology website for more information.

I have a Facebook account, I have Twitter, Diigo, Flickr, Blogspot, Edmodo, LinkedIn, and about any other social media site you can think of. The issue questions becomes, how do I make them work together. I know there are lots of neat ways to set one up to post to the other and to use RSS to get lots more done, but that can be a bit of a pain. Yesterday I was introduced to IFTTT (If This Then That). For those of you who remember what BASIC programming was, then an IF THEN statement should be familiar to you. It is also used in the study of logic. This however is a website that allows you to do some pretty cool things all from one site.

I set one up for the school that will (hopefully) feed our Activities calendar to our twitter account, and if we had a Facebook Fan Page, then I could send it there too. For personal use, I have it send a tweet from me when I create a new blog post (this will be the first one, so I hope it works), when the ITEC fan page on Facebook has a post, it goes to my twitter, and when itec_ia tweets, I retweet it.

What is really cool about the site is the recipe book. People are sharing their IF THENs so that you do not have to recreate the wheel. I know that I am not on the bleeding edge, but I like to think that I am a little ahead of the average bear when it comes to new technologies. By the number of recipes that are already on the site, I feel like I am out of the loop on this.

I hope that some of you find this site interesting and useful. If not, then I am sorry I wasted your time. But for me, the sky is the limit as I think of new ways to use ifttt.

Until next time, Happy Days!

I love Facebook. If for no other reason than it allows me to keep in contact with people from my past without really having to have a conversation with them. My daughter has been begging my wife and me for permission to open a Facebook account for two years now. We have been adamant about denying this request based on her age. As a fifth grader we feel it is important to fight for her childhood. As more and more of her friends are getting on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, it is getting harder and harder to maintain our position. It seems that today's children are more in touch with having online lives. They would just as soon e-mail or post on a friend's wall, then talk to them in school. Given this modern method of communication, it is important that students, parents, and teachers are all on the same page when it comes to understanding what that means and how they should best go about living their online lives.

Using the Common Sense Media curriculum, I am working to develop a plan that combines teacher training, student courses, and parent info packets to create a complete curriculum that best instructs our students about their online lives. Keeping them safe is the number one concern, but teaching them proper etiquette and cyber citizenry are also important in the lessons.

Teacher training can be viewed here.
Student curriculum can be viewed here.
Parent information can be viewed here.