10 Days and Counting

There are just 10 school days until the winter break and lots of activities with a holiday theme are taking place--some by plan and some by accident. Last week I went to a 2nd grade class to work with students using Easy Tech (an on-line technology skills program). The Internet at the school went down, so we had to do "Plan B" instead.

I learned early in my career that it's wise to always have a "Plan B". Instead of going on-line, I introduced the children to SMART Notebook (a software program that we use with our SMART Boards). Below, you'll see the students and some of the great holiday drawings they created. It took about 10 minutes to teach them enough about the program that they could create these masterpieces.

ABC 15 Anchor Visits Dunbar

Andrea Shores 6th grade class enjoyed a visit from ABC 15 Morning Anchor Jen Burgess. The students were treated to a news cast created just for them and viewed on the SMART Board in their classroom. The news producer, Tricia Captain, is a regular visitor to the class. She helps the students with their school newsletter. To see more about the visit, check out the video below.

It's Great to be a Sixth Grade Student at Dunbar

Andrea Shore's sixth grade class is working on several really cool projects.

Ms. Tricia Captain, a producer at ABC 15 News works with the students to create the school/community newsletter.






John Kain works with the students to finish a video project.




Andrea Shores works with groups of students on an integrated social studies project.










What makes this unique is that all of these activities are happening at the same time.

Web Resources for PESD Teachers Using SMART Boards

Important links:

http://phoenixelem.az.schoolwebpages.com/education/district/district.php?sectionid=1
From the district web site, click on “Technology and Learning” > “Online Learning” > blue tab on the top of the page “Instructional Technology.”

On this page you will find links to a variety of resources including:

• Information from the Instructional team (Tom, Linda, John, Noreen, and Irene)
• Acceptable use information and documents
• Documents associated with the Social Studies Committee (Social Studies Backward Design Documents)
• Linda’s blog: http://pesdinstructionaltech.blogspot.com/
• John’s blog: http://pesdtechnology.blogspot.com/
• Noreen’s blog: http://pesdtechnostuff.blogspot.com/
• John’s wiki: http://pesdtech.wikispaces.com/Smartboard+FAQs (Here you will find a variety of resources including a troubleshooting guide for your classroom technology. Check out the links on the yellow menu bar. Here you will find additional material from the Social Studies Committee.)

Here are other helpful Internet resources

SMART Notebook Lessons:
http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+activities/Notebook+activities/
http://technology.usd259.org/resources/whiteboards/smartlessons.htm
http://teach.fcps.net/trt27/smart_board_lessons.htm
http://www.wsd1.org/southd/SMART_Board/
http://www.waukesha.k12.wi.us/WIT/SmartBoard/specificapps.htm
http://www.laramie1.k12.wy.us/smartboard/lessons.htm
http://www.elko.k12.nv.us/ecsdtc/SMART%20Boards.htm
http://owensville.k12.mo.us/~SMART_Lessons/Index.htm
http://www.albany.k12.or.us/departments/instruction/smartboardresourcepage.php

Social Studies:
http://www.socialstudiesclassroom.com/?gclid=CJvO_7e9uY8CFRFSagod2hagcw

Making Videos:
http://kidsvid.altec.org/

Project Based Learning:
http://pblchecklist.4teachers.org/

Fun Online Academic Skill Builders:
http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/
http://www.4kids.org/

Creating a Blog:
www.google.com (You must create a gmail account first. I don't recommend using your district e-mail account. Then you will be able to use all of the Google resources including blogspot and the video upload site.)

Academic Skill Builders
http://www.4teachers.org/

Social Studies Curriculum Writing Project

PESD teachers are working during intersession to:

• Develop big ideas for 5 Social Studies strands
• Develop essential questions for each strand
• Develop conceptual focus for each of three units for K-6 and 6 units for 7-8.

Along with the Social Studies work, teachers are exploring ways to integrate technology into instruction. One of the on-line tools they are exploring is Learning.com's Easy Tech program.

They will spend the next three days working on this project. The district has chosen to use the research-based framework "Understanding by Design" in partnership with http://www.afre.org/.

Tech Projects at Dunbar

Third and sixth grade students at Dunbar are learning with technology. In Mrs. Shores 6th grade class, students are working on the "Dunbar Dragon News" newsletter. The students gather the news, interview staff and students, and take photos. They use MS Publisher to format their newsletter. This is the 4th year that Dunbar students have published the "Dunbar Dragon News."

Some of the sixth grade students are creating an instructional video on how to do algebra problems.

When the projects are complete, they will be published to Mrs. Shores' class blog at this URL: http://msshores.blogspot.com/

The third grade students are learning technology skills using "EasyTech." The students work through the instruction and practice and get an on-line certificate when they complete each lesson. These students will continue to work on their academic and technology skills using "EasyTech."

SMART Notebook Geography Projects

For the past month, Mr. Acedo's class at Garfield School has been working on a geography project using the SMART Notebook software from SMART Technologies. The students selected a state and spent time in the library doing research. After seeing a demonstration of how to put the project together on the SMART Board, the students used laptop computers and SMART Notebook to create their presentations. Mr. Acedo will display the color printed projects in his classroom. As you can see from the photos, the students worked hard to complete their projects.

Blog Showcase

We've introduced blogging to our collegues and to PESD students. Blogspot (the Google blogging tool) seems to be a popular tool--probably because it's easy to use and fairly powerful. Here is a showcase of some of the blogs created by PESD staff and students:

http://pesdtechnostuff.blogspot.com/
http://pesdtechnology.blogspot.com/
http://mracedosclass.blogspot.com/
http://msshores.blogspot.com/
http://www.mrquicksclass.blogspot.com/
http://msfranksclass.blogspot.com/
http://whatsupmrroper.blogspot.com/
http://bethunenews.blogspot.com/
http://bethunemediacenter.blogspot.com/

If you are interested in creating your own blog, contact a member of the Instructional Technology team.

Here's a Great Science Resource

The current issue of "edutopia," the magazine published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (www.edutopia.org), has a great article about a science resource called "Little Shop of Physics." Housed at the University of Colorado in Fort Collins, Colorado, the crew travels to schools to "help them do science." The complete article can be found at http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-science-little-shop-physics.

The Little Shop web site can be found at http://littleshop.physics.colostate.edu/.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation is a good source of information and resources relating to educational issues. Check it out at www.glef.org.

Keyboarding Instruction with EasyTech

Second grade students at Emerson Elementary School are learning to keyboard using Easy Tech from Learning.com. Each student has their own log in and password. Their teachers, Mrs. Eckhardt and Mrs. Gillis, assign each lesson and go over the basics of starting up the computers and logging on to the web site with the students. Students listen to the instructions and practice the skills with their teachers monitoring their activities. At the end of the lesson, they get to race the Kangaroo. When they successfully complete the lesson, they get an on-line certificate and their score is recorded in the teacher's gradebook.

The movie above shows the students as they begin their keyboarding activity. Notice how many of them are keeping their fingers in place on home row.

Third Grade Students at Herrera Elementary School Try Learning.com

Don Hudson's third grade students learn how to do their lessons in Learning.com.

Emerson Elementary Children Begin Their Computer Lessons

Second grade students at Emerson have their first computer lesson. The children learned how to get the laptops out of the cart and how to log in and open Internet Explorer. At the end of the lesson, they learn how to shut down and put the computers back into the cart.

Next they will learn how to log in to Learning.com so that they can begin to learn keyboarding skills.

Let's Explore Easy Tech

Today we begin our professional development for the Easy Tech online program from http://www.learning.com/. This is a technology program that extends into the core curriculum. Today teachers from PESD schools are getting their first look at the program and they will get started creating lesson plans for their classrooms. This is a technology program that extends into the core curriculum.

Professional trainers from Oregon are enduring the Phoenix heat to help us for the next two days. Then teachers will begin to implement the lessons in classrooms around the district. The district has 2500 licenses for use by district teachers. About 1500 are currently assigned. If you are interested in using this tool in your classroom, contact a member of the Instructional Technology Team.

Check Out Some PESD Technology Projects

It's the second week of school and already PESD teachers and students are doing great technology activities. Here are some samples:

Emerson Third Grade: http://www.mrquicksclass.blogspot.com/
Whittier Sixth Grade: http://www.schoolrack.com/mrsramirez/
Whittier Sixth Grade: http://www.gcast.com/u/MrsRamirez/main
Bethune Video Announcements: http://bethunenews.blogspot.com/
Dunbar Sixth Grade: http://msshores.blogspot.com/

If you're ready to try a project, call the Instructional Technology Staff for help.

Help Learning The Cool Software on Your Computer

My colleague John Kain passed along a good place for learning about Picasa, Photostory, Movie Maker, and Audacity all in one place at this URL: http://ilife4windows.wikispaces.com/. Check it out!

SMART Board Issues Resolved

Three days into the school year we have discovered an issue with the SMART Board Software installation on the new computer image that has just been deployed by the PESD MIS Department. If you are trying to use the pen feature with any software other than SMART Notebook, you may have noticed that it doesn't work. We have asked the MIS Dept. to send out a fix. Since we don't know how long that will take, here is a short term solution:

Click on Start>All Programs>SMART Board Software>SMART Board Tools. This puts the SMART Board Tools icon in the taskbar and the SMART Board works correctly. However, you have to repeat this process every time you log in.

Cool Web Sites

Now that everyone is back to school and many of our students have access to laptop computers and wireless internet, I thought our PESD teachers might like to have a list of internet possibilities. That is my focus for today.

Let's start with some web sites for our younger students. Two of my favorites are Funbrain and Starfall. Funbrain, http://www.funbrain.com/, has a searchable database of educational games as well as other activities for K - 8 children. StarFall (http://www.starfall.com/) is a reading site. Primarily designed for first grade, Starfall.com is also useful for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade.

Math Web Resources: The PESD web site has a great math resources web page at this URL: http://www.phxelem.k12.az.us/technology_and_learning/on-line_learning/Math/math_resources.htm

Science Resources: Here are some science resources that I recently discovered.

• http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_plastics/hop_jr/activities/index.html
• http://www.internet4classrooms.com/science_elem.htm
• http://www.teacher-access.com/elementaryscience.htm
• http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/curric/elem/Escience.html
• http://www.science-lessons.ca/games/index.html
• http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/general.html?DOC=education\wande\index.html
• http://eo.ucar.edu/educators/links_elem.html
• http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/teachers_resources/lesson_plans.html

As I find other resources, I'll list them here so check back often.

Professional Development Follow-up

Wow, thanks to the 3rd and 5th grade teachers for their great questions yesterday at our professional development session--and thanks also to Helen Rentz for sharing her classroom activities with the group.



Here are the URLs for the technology integration resources that we talked about during our session:

Typing Pals Keyboarding Software, http://school.typingpal.com/index_ecole.asp

Easy Tech: http://www.learning.com/

SMART Notebook: http://www.smarttech.com/

I look forward to other opportunities to work with you all. If you are looking for other on-line resources, check out the list in the "Helpful Links" area on the right side of the screen.

Getting Ready for School to Begin

It's back to work after a vacation in Europe for me. It's also back to school for PESD teachers. This time next week we'll be welcoming students back into our classrooms. Today, I'll share just one of the photos I took while on vacation and offer some online resources that can be helpful to our teachers.

First, here is a photo I took while visiting Athens, Greece. Note the restoration efforts that are being taken to save this wonderful site.

We had a wonderful time traveling in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. I'll be happy to share my photos and experiences with any PESD teachers who would like.

Now, here are a couple of new resources that I have discovered that might be of interest to PESD teachers. First, is the TeacherTube online community. The goal of TeacherTube is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. To check it out go to http://www.teachertube.com/.

Another interesting resource is an online community site for educators provided by the Oracle Foundation called think.com. To check it out, go to http://www.think.com/.

PESD teachers, if you need assistance integrating technology into your instruction, be sure to give Linda, John, Noreen or Tom a call.

Productivity Tools to Get the Job Done

Do you need software tools to use at home? The problem with many of the tools we all use at school is that they are very expensive. Most of us can't afford to buy them all for our use at home—and we know that teachers do a lot of school related work at home. Here's a simple and cost effective way for you to get the productivity tools that you need: “Open Source” software tools. The simple definition of "Open Source" is that the product is free to download, use, and distribute. For a more complete definition, visit the Open Source web site at this URL: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php.

Open source applications include:

• 7-Zip: a file archiver and compressor utility
• Audacity: a sound/music editor
• ClamWin: a virus checker
• Firefox: a web browser
• Gaim: a chat tool
• Gimp: a photo and image editor
• Nvu & KompoZer: a web page editor
• OpenOffice Base: a database program
• OpenOffice Calc: a spreadsheet program
• OpenOffice Draw: a drawing program
• OpenOffice Impress: a presentation program
• OpenOffice Math: an equation editor
• OpenOffice Writer: a word processor
• Sudoku
• Sumatra: a PDF reader
• Sunbird: a calendar
• Thunderbird: an e-mail client
• Tux Paint: a drawing program for children
• VLC Media Player

This is only a partial list of the available applications. You will see some of them on your computers at school, including Audacity, Gimp, 7-Zip, and Tux Paint. Where can you get these tools and how do you use them? Here's what I do. I like to have my files and programs easily available, but I don't like lugging around a laptop. I found an easy way to have my files and programs. I carry around a flash drive with all of my favorite applications and files. I can actually run the applications directly from the flash drive so I can get to everything I need from a USB port on any computer.

Here's how it works.

• Put a flash drive in an available USB port. I recommend at least a 1GB drive. (See more information below about flash drive compatibility with the district's computers.)
• Go to the PortableApps web site: http://portableapps.com/apps. You will find most of the downloads at this location.
• Download the PortableApps.com Menu directly to the flash drive. (Note: as long as you are installing directly to the flash drive, you will not be restricted from downloading and installing by the district's network restrictions.)
• Download the applications you want to the flash drive.
• Use the Menu tools to install the applications.

You now have a portable productivity tool. You can easily use your programs and files at home and at school. When you insert the flash drive into a USB port, a Window will open asking if you want to open PortableApps. Click OK and the PortableApps icon will show on the tool bar in the lower right portion of your display. To open any of the applications, just click on the icon and then on the application. The OpenOffice applications are compatible with the Microsoft Office Suite. I have had no problem opening or editing MS Office documents in OpenOffice.

Need Help? Call Linda or Noreen in Instructional Technology.

A word about flash drive compatibility. Not all flash drives are created equal. Some of the fancy new drives do not work very well with the PESD network restrictions. When you're shopping for a flash drive read the label carefully. If the drive has the U3 symbol on it, it probably will not work well in PESD computers. All PESD teachers will get a network compatible flash drive early in the 2007-08 school year.

Creating Your Own Blog

Do you want to have your own blog or do you want your students to blog? Here are some tips for you.

First, what blogging site will you use? There are plenty to choose from. Keep in mind that sites like Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites are blocked by the district. My blogging experince is limited. I just started blogging in June. Being fairly technology savvy, I just jumped in. Here's what I learned:

First, I created a blog in EduBlogs at http://edublogs.org/. It was fairly simple to set up and there are lots of templates to use. The site was really slow and three days into my blogging adventure, my blog was gone and my user name and password did not work. A day later, I tried again and everything was fine and continues to be fine. The Edublog people had been updating hardware and had some problems. It appears that the issues have been resolved now. This resource has been designed just for educators and has an area for student blogs. You can also find information on using this resource in the classroom. It's worth checking out.

While I was having trouble with Edublogs, I decided to try another resource. I use the Google desktop on my computer at home so I decided to use their "Blogger." If you're reading this post, you've found my Google blog. This resource also has nice templates and is fairly easy to use. I haven't used all of the features yet, but the ones I have used are working well. I especially like the ease of using the Google video tool and linking my videos to the blog.

Important: When you set up your blog in either resource, don't use your school district e-mail account. Each site will send you a verification e-mail that requires you to click on a verification link. The district SPAM filter will stop those e-mails and you will not be able to complete the final blog set-up. My suggestion is that you set up a Google e-mail account (or Yahoo or other web based e-mail) so that you can complete the registration process.

Also, remember when posting student work or student photos on your blog, use first names only.

Happy blogging!

Finding Help When You Need It

Since the Microsoft Office Suite is the primary productivity tool that is available to us on the PESD network, there are frequently questions about how to use the software. I confess, when someone calls me for help, I frequestly use the Microsoft "help" tab. It takes me directly to the Microsoft web site. I type in my question and most of the time I get the help I need. This is a good concept to teach to students so that they can be self-sufficient.

If you are a novice user and would like to work on some on-line tutorials, you can go to the "In & Out of the Classroom" on the Microsoft site to find help specifically designed to assist teachers.

Another resource that I frequently use is "templates." On the Microsoft web site, templates are sorted into categories for easy searching. You will find document templates that are appropriate for home use as well.

The Instructional Technology area of the Phoenix Elementary District web site also provides a number of helpful resources that are specific to PESD.

Links to these resources can be found in the links area on the right.

Beginning a New School Year

Preparations are underway for the 2007-08 school year at PESD. Our first task as a team will be to welcome a group of new teachers to the District. We'll do that on July 23 with a session on Marzano's "Classroom Instruction that Works."

Since I'll be on vacation in Europe on the 23rd, this is my way of participating in the in-service and introducing myself to the new teachers. Let's start by taking a look at our children in action.

Emerson Elementary School Tech Buddies -- Using laptop computers and a SMART Board, a sixth grade class and a second grade class work together to learn technology skills and to learn and practice their academic skills.

Dunbar Elementary School Writers -- A combination fifth/sixth grade class uses SMART Notebook to write "Dora the Explorer" stories that include the facts from their geography research. The stories are then presented to the students from other classrooms using a SMART Board.

Garfield Elementary School First Grade -- Watch the Garfield first graders learn to use the laptop computers for the first time. They learned how to get the computers from the cart, set them up, log in, open MS Word, type text, and change fonts including changing the colors--all in about an hour.

Check out these projects by clicking on the links on the right.