Maine Digital Festival - Project Login

Project Login set up the first Digital Festival to coincide with robotics competitions held at the Augusta Civic Center. I volunteered as part of the networking I do with others in the state. I worked with children of a range of ages who were exploring the Hour of Code activities on computers and tablets. For photos and more information, this is the link:
http://projectlogin.com/news/over-200-attended-first-maine-digital-festival

Summer-Fall Yarmouth Technology Course 2013

In the week after students finished classes in Yarmouth 32 teachers and 9 student assistants spent three days focusing on using technology to support personalized learning. The course site is posted at https://sites.google.com/a/yarmouthschools.org/summer-2013-tech. Proposed projects include ways to involve students in curation using various tools and sharing work through blogs and specialized Google sites. The summer component of the course requires that teachers spend time online viewing suggested materials and reflecting in blog posts. There will be a work day in September and a final Saturday in October to share projects with everyone enrolled in the class for credit.

4th Graders Present to Yarmouth School Committee - Nexus 7 Pilot

The Yarmouth School Committee opens the monthly meeting with a presentation about a learning setting or offering in our schools. On March 28th we shared a ten minute explanation of the Nexus 7 1:1 Pilot Project that has been part of Kate Parkin's 4th grade classroom. Since we started the project in early December, Kate and I have been exploring ways to use the Nexus 7s in her classroom for learning. In talking with the students, the biggest uses of the tablets are for researching questions and creating written work that is then saved to Google Drive for further editing on laptops. Certainly there are Math apps and some utilities that the students are finding engaging and useful. In addition to the apps we put on initially we have added VidTrim for editing videos, Comic Strip It for creating comics and a Poetry app in honor of April being Poetry Month. While we weren't able to record the student voices that added a powerful element to the slides, this is the presentation we created for the meeting:

Burlington 1:1 Summit - March 10, 2012

This summit was an "unconference" in the sense that presentations were by participants, not paid presenters. The Burlington, MA school system has been moving into mobile technology with 1:1 iPads in the high school this year, sets of iPads in the elementary schools and a review of options for the future for middle schools. Alice, Mike and I attended with Ben McNaboe (YHS class of 2011) to share our experience of 1:1 in our grades 7-12 for over ten years. Ben also presented his own session on how useful he finds an iPad to be in his freshman year of college. I attended a session with other elementary educators who are using iPads and we had a rousing lunchtime "smackdown" of app ideas.

This post from the BHS principal Patrick Larkin is a good synopsis of the philosophy and information that were shared at the summit. Burlington has many of the needed elements for moving forward with powerful learning through the use of iPads: strong administrative support and involvement, robust support for infrastructure, involved teachers developing online materials, interest in moving to a facilitated learning environment, student IT team to support teachers, supports and play a role in the new implementation.

Awards for Blogs, Wikis, etc.

Edublog runs an annual "Best of" for several categories each year. There are some very interesting blogs, wikis and tools listed here that might be of interest.

http://edublogawards.com/announcing-the-2011-winners-congrats-to-all

ACTEM MaineEd Conference October 2011

One of the opportunities I look forward to each year is the MaineEd ACTEM conference each fall. This year I chose not to present, but attended sessions on Global Learning with Lucy Gray, iPads in first grade and the implementation of iPads in the Auburn Kindergartens. My focus was on attending sessions with the many teachers from Yarmouth who attended. In a conversation with Tara Maker from Apple I became interested in attending the three day workshop that Apple was coordinating with Auburn on the literacy research being launched in Auburn. I was able to register for the conference and to gain a spot for a representative from the new Yarmouth Education Foundation. I also learned from Peter Robinson (Auburn) and Lars (Apple Engineer) about some of the particulars of setting up iPads for classroom use.

Deepening Learning through Storytelling - Wes Fryer in Yarmouth

One thing I would like to get better at is sharing professional learning when I go to a workshop, etc. This morning we were fortunate to have Wes Fryer at the YHS faculty meeting. This is a link to the site he used: http://wiki.wesfryer.com/Home/handouts/deepening to talk with us about "Deepening our Learning Through Storytelling: creativity, STEM and stories." Hopefully I'll have a chance to share more with faculty groups at a future time as I think his message is applicable to all levels.

What do I do?

Recently I had an inquiry from another school district asking what we do around technology to prepare our elementary students for 1-1 in grades 7-12. After I wrote the response I realized it might be a blog entry:

In the eighteen years that I have been in this position we have gone through many generations of equipment, but we have maintained a consistent philosophy of using technology as a tool for increased learning opportunities for all students. My own journey with technology started in the 1980s with first graders using Delta Drawing and in a staff development role with districts using the newly developed Bank Street College Voyage of the Mimi curriculum with middle school students.

In our district the budgetary focus for new equipment for the last 6 years has been on providing one to one in grades 9-12 (this follows the state provision of 1-1 in grades 7 & 8). Until this fall we had a lab of 24 desktop computers and 2 carts of laptops for the 2nd, 3rd & 4th graders at Yarmouth Elementary School. This year we were able to move equipment from the high school to our students in  grades 2-6 so now our 300+ students have a lab of MacBooks and 4 carts of 24 MacBooks that can be used in classrooms. All teachers have a MacBook, each classroom has a set of 2 iBooks and we have a projector for every 2 teachers. We have additional iBooks that can be borrowed from the Library for small group projects. Each classroom has a digital camera and microphone for recording, some have document projectors and tablets. We also have Flipcams, video cameras and digital cameras that can be borrowed from the Library. Learning Centers have additional computers for student use. Across the district we have wireless connectivity from all learning settings and networked printers.

Teachers plan the weekly lessons in the lab with me, either as a grade level team or individually, so that they mesh with classroom learning. We have overall guidelines based on the ISTE Student Standards focused on using technology primarily for communication, collaboration and creativity. I coteach the lessons in the lab with the teachers or I go into their classrooms when they are using the laptop carts. I maintain a set of resource pages that connect with the math, writing, reading, spelling, science and social studies topics taught at each grade level.

I support teachers creating classroom web pages and blogs as ways to give students an audience for their learning and accomplishments. These teacher/classroom pages are posted on the Teacher Pages on our school web site. I assist the Specialists in using technology during Library, Music and Art classes and I am available to anyone in the building who needs assistance with PowerSchool (our student information system), FirstClass (our school email system), curriculum planning and other times that technology is involved in our work.

I am at the Elementary School 3 days a week and work directly with all 15 classes. The other 2 days a week I am at our high school. We have 3 instructional technology integrators in our district. We often combine to support staff development for all teachers and administrators in the district. We teach a 3 credit graduate course in the district that meets for three days in June, continues into the fall and then finishes with individual presentations of lessons or units during an October class. Teachers receive credit which counts toward salary scale advancement and/or recertification.

The variety of my days and the opportunities to collaborate, learn and modify instruction for students are all reasons to continue my pursuit of this wonderful vocation.

Top 100 Tools for Learning Compiled by Jane Hart

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

View more documents from Jane Hart.

Fall 09 Update of "Did You Know?"

Scratch! (Creativity & Innovation)

This week I have been teaching 4th graders to use Scratch from the MIT Media Lab. It's GREAT! I can't remember when I've had this much fun teaching and the room has been full of kids who are empowered, active and creating. I used the videos from the Scratch site to introduce the concept of the program to the students and gave them a few starter commands from the Scratch Cards. Within twenty minutes the students were recording their own voices, "whirling" sprites, adding sound effects, creating speech clouds, and creating iinteractions between sprites. It has been fascinating to see some students focus on sounds, others on motion and others on looks and paint features. Doing this with several classes has given me the opportunity to see teachers who have supported creativity and innovation in their classroms and are cheerleaders as their students explore this entirely new realm. Where does this fit in the curriclum? To me it teaches thinking, problem-solving and feeds the "dessert brain" referenced in Edutopia magazine by Hugh Osborn.

Transforming Learning Environments with Technology

This is a wordle of the language used in the ISTE Standards for Teachers booklet describing what it will look like to transform learning environments through the use of technology:

Literacy 2.0 edition of Educational Leadership

The March edition of Ed. Leadership has a collection of articles that are great resources for learning about the new literacies that will be needed by our students. The article "Let's Talk 2.0" is a comprehensive introduction to teachers who want to find out more about web 2.0 in the classroom.

I used some of the material in this edition for faculty meeting conversations and we used this slideshow to frame the meeting:

Technology In Schools What Is Changing

View more presentations from cathywo.