Send a Letter FROM Santa and Help Children

I am on the board of a terrific Child Development Center in Austin, TX. Trinity CDC has been around for about 40 years and is now serving many needy families. I am convinced that preschool is where we need to start to help families and am excited to be involved. At Christmas each year we write letters FROM Santa as a fundraiser and send them to children all over.

This year it can be done all online (except for the actual letter which is snail mail). You can fill out the form below and when you submit go to a place online where you can donate $6 (or more ;-) to this fantastic cause. The results of the form will appear in a spreadsheet which is used to create customized letters that are sent to kids before Christmas. I hope you will participate.

Reflecting on Resistance to Technology Use

A recent blog post from Barbara Bray touched something inside me that I think is important to write and to think about. Barbara talked about the CBAM stages of concern. This was research that explained how innovations are adopted. It applied really directly to the innovation of technology in schools. She basically expressed surprise that the same percentages of teachers seem to still be resistant to the use of technology even though it is not an innovation any more. It has been around for 20 years or so. Why is this?

I think I have discovered one possible reason. I recently started working as a Technology Insructional Partner at an elementary school. In my district EVERY school has a TIP who supports teachers and students as they use technology. Not only that, but we have laptops, digital cameras, digital recorders, color printers and even itouches! In our situation technology can actually become transparent. Teachers have actually begun to risk trying new things. Even some teachers that were reluctant to use any technology have talked about knowing that they need to use more technology. I am beginning to have conversations with teachers about the importance of evaluating websites and the difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0.

Even with all of that I find that sometimes I feel overwhelmed and frustrated. Technology seems to change faster all of the time. There are constantly new things to learn. It often doesn’t work when you most need it to. My main job in the school is to support Educational Technology, so if I am frustrated just think what classroom teachers must feel.

This reminded me of some action research that I did for the ISTE NETS course I took probably in 2001 (?) One thing that I learned was that there were essential conditions for successful use of technology in schools. The NETS spell out what all of these condtions are.

http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2000Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2000.htm.

I think that our school has most of the essential conditions that are needed for successful technology use and that is why we are beginning to see success. However, I think our school is in the minority.

ITouches at Tech Forum in Austin

Today I will be attending the Tech Forum in Austin, TX. Part of what I will be doing is participating in a discussion on iTouches in the classroom with one of the Tech Chicks! (Helen) I am so excited. I want to share some URLs, but it doesn't make sense to me to type out URLs on paper so that other people can type them into a browser. So, I am putting them here. Later I will put up some notes about the day.

Cable to project iTouch through the projector:
http://www.bizrate.com/mp3-player-accessories/ipod-touch-composite-video-cable/

Apple iPod Learning Lab(heavy duty)
http://www.apple.com/education/it-professionals/mac-labs.html

Tribeam Cart
http://www.tribeam.com/product.html

Create an iTunes account without a credit card
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534

Wiki with LOTS of ideas, apps and suggestions
http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/ipod-touch-schoolwide

Parent Education

Reading blogs is SO helpful. Thanks Kim Cofino for sharing so much great stuff!!

One idea in Kim's blog was to have a parent coffee once a month. That made sense to me and so I decided to do something like it this year. Mine is a Brown Bag Lunch.

Today I had a talk with the Booster Club (PTA in most schools I have been in) and I think it went really well. My main point was that their kids will have (and probably do have) a digital footprint and so it is extremely important that they are aware of that and make it a good one. I showed them how a student in our school makes movies and posts to YouTube and compared it to the article in the newspaper this morning about a criminal who was caught because of his Facebook Page!

The movie was also pointed out by Kim Cofino. You should definitely read her blog!

Problem with Images

I am really hoping that those of you who read this blog will break your silence and answer this post with your thoughts and ideas. I am wrestling with an issue and I would really like to come to a good solution. I KNOW there must be a solution out there and so this is a plea to you to point me in the right direction.

The issue is the use of images in the classroom. I have read and reread rules of copyright and fair use and even created my own web page to help teachers called Copyright for Educators. The problem is that I don't know how to make it happen in school.

There are more and more copyright free images for students to use for projects. For most things it is not hard to find a picture that fits into Fair Use. However, most of them do request that you include a link to where you got the image in your work. What I am at a loss about is how to efficiently keep track of that information. How do you keep image information with the images?

This didn't matter too much when kids were mostly using pictures for PowerPoints or Word Processing. It does matter when they are creating Wikis and Blogs. When images they are using are online it seems really important to teach them to cite the images.

I feel like I should have been doing better with this myself all these years. It is one thing to keep track of it for myself though and another thing to help kids and teachers in school keep track of this information. Any ideas are appreciated!

Teacher Burnout

This article in today's Austin American Statesman by Nancy Schnog touhed a chord in me. I thought it was worth sharing.


The Cure for Teacher Burnout

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/ / CC BY 2.0

The Mediocre Multitasker

In today's NY Times there is an article about a recent study on multitasking. The researchers were seeking to find what made people so good at multitasking and what they found to their dismay was that the people who were good at multitasking did poorly on most of their tests. People who in general did not multitask, but focused on one thing at a time actually even did better at multitasking!

See for yourself

The Mediocre Multitasker

What do you think?