ISTE Inspiration and Possibilities so Far- List 1

What I love about ISTE
I love interacting and sharing ideas with people at sessions and the playgrounds!!!! I could do that all day long!

I love the inspiration I receive, the renewing of faith in what we are all trying to do and that little push that takes me into my zpd once again.

I am fascinated by the sheer enormity of such and event. The number of choices in sessions that are available to participate in and attend.

Two days into the conference and what have I taken away? I have a long list of  todos at this point which I am sure to add to....


My List of Todos so Far
I Must:
-Use screen-o-matic.com instead of jing for student produced tutorials on small snapshot skills and make it a regular activity in and out of class. No account is needed, it is immediate and why not have their watermark on our vids...they provided the service and for free!

-Create student friendly rubrics for all units of study and instead of hitting them with the whole rubric, give them access to the whole thing and then take it in small steps, one row or so at a time depending on the week's learning objectives.

-Try a "get to know you" activity where kids share who they are with a mashup of video and photos. Note to self: think very carefully about the parking for this.

-Share Google Patents and Google Product searches with the Business and Economics teachers.

-Figure out how to make flubaroo work with Google forms and spreadsheets.

-Collect as much as possible on iPads in schools, App collections and follow the blogs of teachers implementing them. We should really be going down this road next school year once some of the bugs are fixed with Google Docs and I mean in both Primary and Secondary.

-Discuss using Amazon reviews with Languages to encourage student book review writing.

Things that Really Caught My Eye and have Added to Diigo( need further investigation)

From the Iste Google session by Howie DiBlasi

There was a lot more than this in the session, but those applications I was more familiar with. These are the ones that stood out for me:

Google transliteration:

Use google's transliteration instead of google translate,

set language preferences under Advanced Search

Wordlens of ripped and iphone, point at sign and it will translate it to your language. 

Google App Creator

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

Shapeways 

sell 3d models in sketchup online(bookmark this one)

factbites.com  encyclopedias and information

quintura generates a word cloud of results based on search criteria.

Clusty groups or clusters information that is related.

duck duck go

Flying through the crusades-google earth  wiki lessons.

http://kthorne.pbworks.com/w/page/6848602/Flying-Through-the-Crusades

5o things to do with google maps mashup

http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2006/12/50-things-to-do-with-google-maps.html

google patents

google products product comparisons

http://www.google.com/prdhp

ocarina App

play flute with ipod and iphone

Using the Collaborative Power of Google Calendars

I finally got my students to begin making use of their Google Calendars this month. We set up the lesson timetables, added interesting calendars, created birthday, friend and team calendars and of course made it all look pretty with cute backgrounds. Animated backgrounds soon became the rage once we discovered we could use GIFs.


All of this was pretty powerful in itself, but then we took things a step further. We created calendars in which to place the different cultural events happening around the country, during September, El Salvador's month of Independence celebrations. The kids invited their classmates to collaborate on their calendars with them and very quickly it became clear that they would be able to get the task done with little hassle, learn about the various events happening around the country and be able to share me into their calendars so I could then print them off  and post them all over the Learning Resources Centre. I was intending to post them all over the school, but dissuaded myself from it due to point number 2 below.


There are two things that would have made this an even more powerful experience:

1. The cool backgrounds don't transfer across, which I understand as they would overwrite the backgrounds of those who are shared in. There could however be an option to choose between backgrounds for different calendar views and printing.
2. It would be awesome if we could print off descriptions in month mode or week mode, brief as they may be, so that people would have a better idea of what the events entail. I couldn't find a way to do this, so ours are very basic print outs.

All in all, Google Calendar is a great tool and kids as well as teachers should be encouraged to make better use of it.

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Moving On

Image via WikipediaI have finally made the decision to move on.  I  am very thankful to Edublogs for having provided a home for my blog during these past 3 years, but mine remains a free account. As the options have been repeatedly reduced  from free accounts over the last year, so too has my patience with the situation waned. As our school  is a Google Apps institution, it makes better sense for me to move forward with Blogger, which will soon become a part of our Apps Accounts. It also links in nicely with other Google Apps that we use with our blogs at school. In fact I am now officially climbing down, not without pain, from my Edublogs soapbox. I will now be promoting Blogger at school for all new blogs.
Those who already oversee one of our many school Edublogs accounts may also find themselves switching over, unless their departments are on board with shelling out the cash to keep their Edublogs in top form.
If anybody knows of a way to migrate (as some might say backwards) from Edublogs to Blogger, I would really appreciate a brief explanation, or link to a tutorial.
If interested, this is the link to my new blog.

Ode to MacBook Pro with Web Apps on the Side

Several months ago I forced myself into a very abrupt change in which I abandoned the year old lap running Windows for a 4 year old mac Powerbook G4. I am not saying the transition was without pain and certain frustrations, but it was well worth it. A historically steadfast proponent of Windows platforms, my conversion is now complete and I need not look back!

Christmas has come early this year, and brought with it a new MacBook Pro which arrived today. Yes I must admit it, I feel like a kid in a candy shop. Thanks George and Fernando! And yes,  I know everyone else has had one for ages, but it will impact my work on many levels that I intend on savouring every minute of it!

The  MacBook will play a vital role in my new job by providing the flexibility and power needed to run with our intended project work, as well as serve as a portal to my expanding virtual office. I have only just begun to play with this silver wonder, but as the song goes- Love is in the Air.   iMovie and Garage Band are first on the agenda which will help us get started on  joint video projects this year in Secondary.

Upon reflection, it is interesting how google docs and web.2.0 apps have changed the way I work. As it stands I don't feel at all phazed about not having the Windows or Mac office suites installed at present. I can manage quite well without them, whereas in the past I would have considered any computer without one or the other fairly useless. I have to wonder if this sublime shift has occured for our students in the same way.  With our upcoming push towards igoogle and google apps, Google is about to become a very important part of their lives, if it is not already.