Young Educators Rock Denver

Probably the number one question I was asked during ISTE 2010 was how do we get more young educators involved in the ISTE organization.  As I look through flickr photos, blogs and tweets again tonight I see a lot of strong activity in the young educator network and truly feel that the group of young educators rocking the ISTE scene this year will bring added members in full force in 2011!

Just found this blog by Crystal Grandison on some of the best tweets of ISTE 2010.  If you scroll through that list, a ton of them are from the young educator community!  So, not only does ISTE have a good following of those of us under the age of 35, but we are involved and not to mention quite intelligent!  Amongst the young educator network we have award winning bloggers, conference/camp coordinators, internationally recognized emerging leaders and top-notch innovative educators.  I'm watching my twitter stream as I write this post and most of the comments still continuing from ISTE10 are from those under the age of 35. We are excited about what ISTE has to offer and will continue to spread the word!

This group of young educators on the scene right now includes some of the best people I've ever met and they continue to amaze me every single day.  I do think, however, that we are reached in a different way.  Our home base is twitter, no doubt about it.  We are making very strong connections online to the point that we are the best of friends by the time the ISTE conference rolls around each year.  Those connections quickly become one of the reasons we want to attend the conference.  This fact is evident in how much time we spend with each other when we get there including during sessions, meals, late night events and even trips and tours taken together during the conference.

All this being said, I was a bit surprised at how few people attended the bowling event for the Young Educators network this year.  After I thought about it, though, I realized it is because we are staying quite busy.  I peeked into a few schedules and, much like mine, they had several events planned and most all of them overlapped.  We're out there, we're just moving so much that sometimes you don't see us! I'll also add to that and say that lots of those that didn't make it bowling that night ended up at the lanes on another night because word spread quickly how much fun it was!

So, the answer to the question of how do we get more young educators involved?  I say keep it up kiddos!  Bring your friends and keep making those connections!  I think those of us in the under 35 category truly understand that a large part of attending the conference is about meeting new people and building the community.  Give it time, this is NOT a quiet group for sure and I expect big things over the next year!

Here are a few people to follow in the young educator community if you want to get more involved:

Mary Beth Hertz
Steven Anderson
Nick Provenzano
Mike Trump
Tim Gwynn
Adam Bellow
Lisa Sjogren
Beth Still
Jason Schrage
Amanda Dykes
Steve Johnson
Chris Craft
Kyle Pace

Yeah, I know I forgot some people.  I got most of these from my twitter stream as I was typing this blog. Go ahead! Share your recommendations in a comment!  I'd also love to hear from you if you have ideas on keeping the Young Educator's Network fresh and exciting!  Thanks in advance!!

You Make it Real For Me

Sitting in the Denver airport reflecting on the past week and catching up on all the tweets and blogs I've not had a chance to read.  James Morrison's "You Make It Real For Me" came on the iPod.  I thought about all of the connections I made this week at the ISTE 2010 conference and how important each of them are to me.  It really does make it real to talk to fantastic leaders in your field and share new ideas, thoughts and opinions.
I hope everyone had an awesome time and I can't wait to see you all again next year!

My crazy last few hours...

Although I haven't attended an official ISTE session yet, I'm still learning a lot and very very tired!  Monday was an action packed day of interviews, photoshoots and meetings.  I have never done a video interview before so it was a bit of a learning experience for me and I had to get over some nervousness in the first one I did.  Pretty fun though once I got through one!  This morning was more or less all about the award so I didn't get to do much other than chat with people along the way.

I was able to go to lunch with a great group of kids from Alabama.  They're doing a poster session and are truly awesome!  I was able to talk to Julie Ramsay, their teacher about the plans she put in place to get the kids to ISTE.  She not only got them here but has taught them some great lessons along the way including amounts to tip, how to pack, how to speak properly to adults, etc.  If you are considering taking kids on any kind of field trip, specifically to ISTE, you should talk to Julie!

On Monday afternoon I did a volunteer session in the Virtual Environments playground.  I got to hold the title of Grand Poobah which meant I got to wear a cool hat and answer everyone's questions for two hours.  It was quite fun.  If you haven't visited the VE playground yet, try to stop in.  It's in Lobby B by the bus shuttles.  There are sessions running in the playground all day long that showcase what people are doing in various virtual environments.  The Birds of a Feather Session yesterday was also fun and a great opportunity to meet with others that share a common interest in virtual worlds.

Monday night was a lot of fun with a kickoff at Lucky Strike for the Young Educator's Social.  This was a great opportunity to meet other young educators across the globe, share ideas, eat some awesome food and have a lot of fun!  I had a great time meeting everyone there, then headed over to a Gaggle Event.  Our district is purchasing Gaggle for use in our schools this year so all of those that came to Denver from my district were there.  We had a great time.  Be sure to check out some of the events held by vendors/sponsors.  They're usually a lot of fun and a great way to meet new people.  I actually got lucky enough to meet a few other people from my home state!

Today is Tuesday and I am very tired!  This week is really catching up to me so if you see me sleeping in a corner somewhere, nudge me!  I met with the Awards and Recognitions committee  this morning which is a new obligation of mine this year.  I am learning that there is a lot more that goes into the planning of the ISTE conference than I ever imagined.  These people really work hard all year long to make the conference a success, so when you see those staff members, board members, SIG members, etc., give them a pat on the back.

I am now off to prepare for the presentation I'm doing today with Gerald Aungst.  He runs the allaboutexplorers.com website and the presentation, a model lesson, is on information literacy.  I'm glad to be helping Gerald with this one and it should be a lot of fun!

ISTE 2010: The first two days

My feet are up, a little sore, I have the air conditioner cranked high and a bottle of water next to me as I sit down and finally get a chance to reflect on the past two days.  Going to try to give you the quick run down of some of the things I've picked up during my first two days in Denver.  Hang on tight kiddos.....

Lesson #1:  Drink plenty of water in Denver and carry chapstick with you at all times.  This is important for dehydration as well as medical relief for those of us that have damaged our lips and tongues on cold popsicles. :)

Lesson #2:  I figured this out quick last year, but just confirmed it this time around, Edubloggercon is an awesome event to attend on Saturday. A few things I learned and/or tidbits that stuck in my head:

• Branding Session led by Lisa Greathouse:
• Blogs are like mini businesses, they help us get jobs, encourage others to get involved and help people find their own space (comment by Scott McLeod)
• It is important to consider online personal versus online professional but it is ok to pepper some personal in the professional to create a true view of yourself to others (just don't get carried away)
• Benefits of branding:  Meeting people that have the same interests, a great way to share information, another networking option.  Downside:  Time-You get out of it what you put into it.  (comments by David Ligon)
• What are your goals in taking your ideas online?  Consider these goals when you start.  They may change over time, but take the time to reevaluate often.
• When setting up your brand, you can use namechk.com to see if your name is available.
• Online Learning Session by Daniel Rezac
• There is no longer a specific place where you learn online.  We are able to pick and choose from many resources and find those that are best for the learner.  (comment by David Jakes)
• Be platform indepedent; don't develop your lessons to fit your classroom management system, be flexible because tools are always changing.  The system "does not need to confine what you do"  (comments by Bethany Smith)
• Creating the learning community is invaluable.  Giving a space to your learners where they can communicate is a great way to foster learning at all times.  A great way to network as well as a way for students to share their work.  
• Although there are many great tools out there, we still need to keep in mind that there are state and federal laws that may interfere with using some tools.  Be aware of those laws and work within them to protect you and the students.  
• My favorite links from the smackdown
• storybird.com
• goofram.com
• mashpedia.com
• sweetsearch.com
• edmodo.com
• Networking/web3.0 by Angela Meiers and Jeff Utecht
• I had to step out midway thorugh this one but there were two things that stuck in the first few minutes:  
• You don't have to know everything as the teacher, but be aware of the options and be willing to let the students teach you!  I tell my teachers this all the time and they are always pleasantly surprised when they try it and it WORKS!
• Jeff is using Facebook with students.  they create groups to share information about the class.  Two students per class are selected as admins on the group and they post out the main information for the class.  This has been very successful and now the kids are begging for this in all the classes at his school!  Awesome!

Lesson #3:  Networking Rocks!  

• I had a seat in a place with an outlet, said "Hi, I'm Julie" and met a wonderful woman, Nancy Gilloon in the Virtual Environments Playground this morning. We discussed my upcoming move into the elementary level and she gave me a few tips on things she's doing in her school:
• Kindergarteners use the home row keys as their password for logins.  We discussed how some districts make kindergarteners use the regular logins like every other student does while others have very simplistic logins.  I love how Nancy is doing this because it teaches them a very important skill in keyboarding at the same time.  
• She uses resources on computer lab behaviors at learning.com to prepare her students for working in the computer labs.
• She also recommends a peek at Wells Fargo Stage Coach Island (a virtual world).  This company just happens to also have a booth here at ISTE 2010 (Booth #2445)
• Instead of using pictures of students, Nancy takes her kids to buildyourwildself.com to create avatars!  Very cute site!

• Be sure to stop by the playgrounds (any of them)!  It's a great opportunity to meet and talk to people.  Pull up a chair and just say hi!  You never know what you might learn.  All of the playgrounds have large markers indicating their location. They also have different themes, but the idea is the same.  Start a conversation and learn something new!  They're a great place to explore and make new friends.
• Tweetups, meetups, parties and vendor events rock!  Be sure to make some time in your schedule for these.  Great opportunity to meet new people, have some great conversations and usually share some laughs! If you need some suggestions of where to go, just ask!  Usually everyone is willing to bring a few people along with them to meals/events.  I'm always dragging someone new to the things I attend.  It's all part of the fun!

Collaboration with Online Tools

Collaboration is a key word in the 21st Century Skills framework and serves as a skill that is necessary in the classroom, the workforce and life in general.  There are many tools available to help students, employees and families work together on projects or assignments.  You are not limited to the tools outlined below, but they are ones I have used extensively and would recommend anyone to take a look.

Google Documents
The sharing feature in Google documents makes it a fantastic tool for all walks of life.  Not only is it great for a family to collaborate on a budget, but it is also wonderful for a student to collaborate with a partner on a presentation.  I have worked to plan baby showers, technology conferences, presentations and more using Google Documents.  It's a great way to stay organized and share your thoughts easily with others.

Shared Drawing Tools
There are multiple tools for shared drawing available right now.  I prefer Flockdraw, webspiration or Google Draw (in Documents).  These tools are great for collaborative bubble maps or vision sharing.  Not only can you give a rough drawing of something in your mind, but the person you are working with can manipulate it with their own ideas in real time.

Video/Voice/Text Chat
We've been using chat programs for years but with an increase in distance collaboration, these methods have become an important piece to the puzzle.  I'd rank them from worst to best as text, voice then video.  I've used all three methods while working on various projects.  I know many don't like to do video chats for whatever reason but the simple fact that you can see the non verbal communication of your work partner(s) is worth it.  Many times meaning gets lost in voice and text chat.  Video conferencing takes a lot of the guesswork out of it.  My preferred chatting method is Google with Skype coming in 2nd.

Bringing Art to Life!

This year our school was lucky enough to get a 3D printer.  I've never seen a 3D printer before so I wanted to share with you as much as I could!  I've been waiting to see a neat project to come out of it and today was the day!  It's graduation project time so we're seeing a lot of neat projects around the school, but this one happened to be pointed out to me today.  Our career development coordinator, with wide eyes grabbed me in the hall this morning and said "you have to see this!"  (I love when this happens!)  Anyway, he showed me this:

Ok, so, ummmm what is it?  :)  Turns out it is an engine block that a student drew in Inventor and then printed on the 3D printer. Here are a few more pictures to help you see exactly what it looked like:

I was pretty impressed by this.  It seems very detailed to me and I know it must have taken the student some time to get everything set up right.  The mini engine block is similar to very hard plastic.  

Next, he showed me the original (because I don't really have any idea what a real engine block looks like).   Here are the photos of the original:

Wow!  It's pretty exact! And now it was time to go to the printer.  Here's what it looks like:  

Note the regular printers to the left so you can get a feel for how large the 3d printer is.  We peeked inside the window on the left of the printer and saw this:

This is a second piece to this project that has been printed and is now waiting for final cleanup.  Notice that it looks like a big pile of dust.  This is the material (some sort of secret resin) that is used to make these pieces.  This printer builds them from the ground up so depending on how tall the piece is, print time will be longer.  When they're finished printing,  they're covered in this material.  The next step is to take them to the right side of the printer and blow all of the material off to clean it up.  That process is shown here:

There is a hose with a very small end that blows air out onto the piece.  The item has to be held very carefully as the pieces are not set yet. 

Once the dust is all blown off, its time to clean up!  All of the resin is sucked back into the resin holder and reused!  The teacher told me that up to 80% of the resin is reused--how efficient!  

Now we have a very fragile piece and it is time to cure it.  This involves using a super glue type of substance that creates a chemical reaction and sets the resin and makes it hard.  As the student was handling the piece in the liquid, he said it was really hot and it was even steaming.  

What a fantastic opportunity!  Drafting classes across the district can print to this printer and while i was in the classroom, I saw a few other student graduation projects that were being printed.  I think this is such a great way to display the works that students have created in a way that is more meaningful to that student as well as students or teachers (like me) that really don't understand the programs they're using in that class.  It was a lot of fun watching the process and learning a little more about this type of technology.  

Tech Summit Amazes Teachers and Students

Over the last two days, I held a tech summit at my school which I felt was one of the best things I've ever had the opportunity to do. It took about a month of planning and was what I liked to call a technology art gallery.  We had displays of student work out for students and teachers to view.  

I've had the idea in my mind to do something like this for a couple of years now but just haven't had the opportunity to pull it off.  This year I mentioned it to a student and when I saw that bit of excitement in his face, it was all I needed to get to work.  He helped come up with the name and get other students excited about submitting works to be on display.   I planned the dates, got teachers to submit works that their students had done and named the featured teachers for the summit.  

We had originally intended to have lots of outside speakers come in to talk about careers in technology.  It was hard to get people willing to come in for even a short amount of time, but we did have John Lemmon from John Lemmon Films join us which was a huge hit.  He stayed almost all day on the first day and geared his talks to the class that was listening at the time.  For the marketing class for example, he showed animated commercials he had made for Dairy Queen and Bojangles then with each class, 15 minutes was dedicated to the students actually using the two READYAnimators on display.  This was probably the best thing that happened through the duration of the summit.  The students were so excited to use this equipment and the teachers were amazed and excited about how quickly the students picked it up and started creating projects.  We've had a READYAnimator for a year now and I've personally had a hard time getting teachers to want to use it.  I think we'll see an increase in its use after this.  

In total, we had 30 or more works submitted from movies to print based materials and we had 20-30 classes come through the media center to view the works.  The students with works on display were so excited to share what they had and the teachers were amazed to see the projects students had created in other classes.  My favorite moment of the day was when one student who sings in his own band came in and while talking to me noticed that someone was listening to his song.  He looked at me with wide eyes and said "People are listening to my song????"  I was so happy to tell him that not only were they listening to it but they loved it and it was actually stuck in my head for two days because I heard it so many times.  It was great to see how excited he was about it.  

In addition to  the works being displayed in the media center, I also asked all of the teachers to put an "orange nerd" on their doors with a techie recommendation.  I printed a picture of a nerd on orange paper (orange is our main school color)  and left a big blank for them to write in something they use in technology so students and teachers could see what they recommend.  So, we had orange nerds on all the classroom doors and lots of recommendations for teachers to try.  

The other thing I did for the teachers during the summit was to recognize all of those that had worked a lot with technology and might have a lot to share.  We picked 11 teachers to showcase, interviewed them, took their pictures and put their information on the website.  All 11 teachers were also asked to submit at least one work.  My intent in all of this was not only to let other teachers know who the technology leaders in the school are, but also to let the others see the projects that these leaders are doing.   I find that some of the best teachers in the school don't ever get a chance to share what they do that makes them great.  This was an opportunity for them to do that.  

At the end of day one, I had tired legs and another full day ahead of me but I had such an amazing feeling my heart.  I told several people that it was the best day of my career as a technology facilitator and I stand by that.  The excitement about technology in the students and the teachers was astounding and it made me feel like we really are doing something good for these kids.  I know there is a lot of debate about how much technology should be integrated and if it really helps student learning.  If I could have bottled up the energy in that library and shared it with any doubters, there would be no question what we need to do.