Over the summer, we continued the process of creating a standard classroom technology setup in our 4th-8th grade classrooms. Almost every classroom now contains a permanent mounted LCD projector, DVD/VHS player, stereo tuner, speakers and lectern. In a growing number of classrooms, we have also installed interactive whiteboards and document projectors. Teachers’ feelings about this new equiment ranged from ambivalent to trepidatious to thrilled. We did a brief training in late-August, showcased how some of our early adopters are using their new tools at a meeting in mid-September and have been doing plenty of one-on-one handholding, troubleshooting and training. A few weeks ago, I decided to wander between our Upper School classrooms to see whether I could capture teachers in the act of using their new tools. I was overjoyed to find technology being used in a range of ways, across curricular and grade-level areas.

Below is a slideshow of the Upper School teachers (Grades 6-8) using their new classroom technology on a random Friday morning in late September. (This slideshow was my first attempt at using RockYou and the jury’s still out for me about whether I like this tool.)

[rockyou 87732222]

Blogs We’re Reading, Podcasts We’re Listening To and Tools We’re Playing With:
As an informal mixer/warm-up to the topic, I asked everyone at the beginning of the meeting to introduce themselves, the schools they were from, and if appropriate, a favorite Web 2.0 resource they are currently using. This is the list of resources mentioned (be sure to add others as a comment below!):

1. Jon Udell’s Weblog
2. Knitting Blog
3. Moodle
4. Plone
5. Home Brewing podcasts
6. Daily Kos
7. Flickr
8. del.icio.us
9. Psychology podcasts
10. NY Times podcasts
11. eHub
12. Mozilla Sunbird
13. SF Chronicle Tech Talk Podcast
14. Poker podcasts
15. Blue Frontier
16. boingboing.net
17. Edublogs
18. Learnerblogs
19. ESLBlogs
20. Class Blogmeister
21. How to set up a student centered classroom blog

Visual Search Engines:
Our first presenter was Angela Neff, Director of Technology at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Day School in San Mateo, who gave us a brief overview of what Web 2.0 is, with comparisons to various Web 1.0 tools and websites. She then presented a host of visual search engines and challenged us to break (or at least examine) the Google habit by experimenting with some of the cool tools listed below:

1. KarTOO
2. Mooter
3. Clusty
4. Grokker
5. Ujiko
6. Ditto.com

Podcasting:
The next presenter was Jason Stone, Director of Technology at San Francisco Day School, who spoke about how his 5th grade Spanish teachers and students have been experimenting with podcasting as a wonderful extension of the Spanish curriculum. While SFDS have been able to post MP3s to the website for years, they are excited about how podcasting lets users subscribe through aggregator (most students use iTunes). By using a stand-alone MP3 recorder, recording becomes really easy and not dependent on having a laptop handy. With the newest version of iLife, GarageBand makes podcasting really simple and Apple has a really good tutorial on creating and posting a podcast.

Plone Content Management Software for School Websites:
Next up was Preston Tucker from The College Preparatory School in Oakland. He took us through the stages of growth and development their school’s website has gone through over the years. As their original website grew, it slowly became un-navigable and untenable with over 600 separate pages, until finally his school asked him to move the website from a Web 1.0 to a Web 2.0 structure. After studying and analyzing many other school websites, they decided to use Plone, an open-source CMS, to develop their new site. Some of the key advantages to their new site include:

1. Calendars, pictures, and news are now easily brought to the front of the site
2. If the school changes it’s branding, logo, colors, etc. it is easy to change
3. Searching and using the site mirrors an analogy of the simplicity of Google, rather than the drilling down through the links like Yahoo
4. Non-technical users put their information, documents, photos, etc. into forms that are controlled centrally and viewable by any browser
5. Students now beginning to be webmasters
6. Plone has a number of out-of-the-box import/export features for various document types

Using Moodle Course Management for a School Website:
Richard Kassissieh from San Francsico University High School was up next to talk about how UHS has moved from using WebCT to Moodle for many of their course listings and teacher interactions with students. He has made it easy for us to review his presentation by posting an outline of it here. I also mentioned the Moodle that is being built by the New York Consortium of Independent School Technologists (NY’s equivalent of BAISNET) and how it might be an interesting model for us to consider as well. Richard also spoke eloquently about the importance of teacher blogging, how it changes writing, how we ought to visit and support each other’s blogs, and how the voices of those of us who work directly in schools need to be added to the edublogosphere (which is already well represented by ed tech consultants.) Visit (and leave a comment on) Richard’s blog when you have a minute! If you have a blog of your own, please leave the URL in a comment below or email the info to BAISNet.

Talking to Students About MySpace:
We ended the BAISNet portion of the meeting with a presentation by Brad Lakritz from Marin Academy. He recreated a presentation he recently delivered to 9th and 10th graders at his school as part of a larger panel (including older MA students) on the topic of MySpace. One especially salient point was that he equated Web 2.0 technologies as being the “reality internet” outcropping of the reality TV shows, including many very real dangers and pitfalls. His school consciously made the decision to arm students with information and statistics about web usage and the public nature of MySpace, rather than using scare tactics. He gave the example of how his 16-year old daughter felt that giving him access to her MySpace account felt as though he was listening in on her private phone calls, yet she failed to understand just how very public her online communication was indeed.

At Least They Brought Yummy Food…
MCDS has been experimenting with inviting various vendors to school to deliver some of our professional development to teachers. Following the meeting we invited a vendor to present to BAISNet and some of our own faculty and…well…let’s just say that it was not a very effective presentation. Thanks for those of you who managed to sit there for what felt (to me) like an eternity. Personally, I vote for keeping BAISNet meetings BAISNet meetings. ‘Nuff said.

Conclusion:
Thanks to the wonderful presenters and to all of you who braved the rainy weather this afternoon! If you weren’t able to attend or are reading this entry from parts unknown, please feel free to add to our lists of resources, ask questions, leave comments, etc.

I always had a basic aversion to this concept, holding tight to the idea that teacher training is highly customized and personal, and is best performed by fellow teacher-types rather than by someone with a product to sell. Even though I have spent various parts of my career making a living as an educational technology consultant and as a technology speaker at a larger company, I still always saw myself as a teacher of teachers rather than as a vendor pushing a product.

At Macworld this year, I was struck by how many of the big vendor booths featured dynamic, engaging software trainers who did an excellent job of showcasing the various products and their features. While this type of training is obviously sales-oriented, perhaps there is a place for it in schools — especially if it is free-of-charge. My thinking is that once in a while it might be exciting for teachers to be dazzled by what’s out there, and to be given an opportunity to check out the latest and greatest stuff without attending a trade show.

Since Macworld, we invited our local Apple rep to host an “Introduction to Podcasting” workshop afterschool in our computer lab. This 2-hour presentation was not hands-on, however the presenter provided the teachers with an excellent overview of some of the terrific school and classroom podcasts out there, a list of rationales for podcasting and a very thorough step-by-step interactive presentation of how to use GarageBand in conjunction with Keynote, iTunes and a .mac account to easily publish podcasts. And Apple even provided the soda, pretzels and cookies! We invited colleagues from several neighboring schools, so the added benefit was the opportunity to build connections with other teachers in the area. Yes, it was a little bit “commercially” at times, but the good will created by the Apple folks, and the excitement they generated with the participants made it a real win-win situation.

On Friday, I attended another Apple-sponsored event at Del Mar School in Tiburon, CA, to hear about their 5-month old 1:1 laptop program for 6-8 graders. The focus was entirely on student learning, faculty innovation, parent excitement and the nuts and bolts of how to get a 1:1 program off the ground. Apple provided a beautiful lunch at an upscale Italian restaurant, the event provided a glimpse into a neighboring school demonstrating what’s possible, and attendees were given a fantasting networking and brainstorming forum free-of-charge. Teachers at Del Mar spoke glowingly of their participation in an every-other-year intensive Vanguard training program they can attend through Apple as well.

Next up, Gateway. Around 10 of our faculty members (including me) have been piloting the latest Gateway tablet pc laptops. We have invited all of the technology leaders from local independent schools and our neighboring public schools to come to an afternoon presentation from Gateway about teaching and learning with tablets on March 16th. I’ll report back after the presentation. The agenda looks great, and so far the only difference is that while the Gateway reps have offered to pay for the snacks, we have to go out and buy them!

How to set up the projector:

• What equipment you’ll need
• How to reserve a projector
• Step-by-step hookup demonstration
• Troubleshooting
• You may check a projector out for multiple days and can get a tech coordinator to come with the projector to help them teach a lesson

What to prepare ahead of time on your laptop:

• Shortcut to the website or Word/PPT document with links
• Writing or visual prompt
• Use a KWL or Venn diagram template in Inspiration, PPT template, etc.

Hints about presenting with an LCD projector:

• How to change the view size in Internet browsers
• Word: Play with zoom and font sizes for easier viewing
• Inspiration: Setting default “look,” using fit-to-page, arrange and rapid fire
• Mac OS X Tiger: Using the zoom feature (Apple-Option-8, then Apple-Option-+)

Using an LCD projector to:

• Present student work (PPT, movies, etc.)
• Introduce a unit
• Introduce/reinforce writing skills (how to write a letter)
• Review tech skills
• Look at pertinent websites (virtual Japanese house)
• Watch DVDs

Other examples:

• Online math explorations
• Library of Congress images
• Volcano videos
• Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia
• Google Earth

Show movies, movie clips and audio (don’t forget the speakers!)

• Listen to read-aloud audiobooks by the author in iTunes
• Play video/audio clips
• Poetry jukebox
• Prelinger film archives
• Listen to iTunes radio
• Listen to Talking History or foreign language podcasts
• Keep in mind “cognitive load” when using text, audio and graphics!

Using the LCD projector with a tablet:

• General
• If you write faster than you type, try inking a class discussion
• Pass tablet around the room to have different students fill things out
• Certain software and websites (KidPix, painting software, virtual manipulatives) lend themselves to using a stylus

• Microsoft Office
• Install the MS Office tablet feature, which lets you add ink annotations to Word, Excel and PowerPoint
• Create slideshow of pictures/photos to compare & contrast, then ink on them

• Journal and OneNote
• Go to Print menu and send any document or web page to Journal or OneNote.
• Once a file’s in OneNote you can write on top of diagrams, highlight text, circle sections of a map
• Send a copy of class notes to Outlook, OneNote or Journal
• OneNote allows you to add voice record feature to notes
• In OneNote, Windows-S does screen capture and adds to notes
• Notes can be shared, group edited, saved to server folder and/or Sharepoint