NCTIES: The Experience

I know that I may be a little bit behind on this post but I was lucky enough to get to attend the NCTIES Conference at the beginning of the month of March. While there I got to see a number of people that I have not seen since last years conference. I also got to showcase a couple of years of work on my part into concurrent and technology fair sessions. For the better part of the past three years I have had a little side project within our school district separate from my normal everyday activities. This side project has been on Document Cameras(doc cams).

How it all came about was that one day while at a school I was teaching a workshop at one of the teachers came to me and said that her doc cams was not working and would I be willing to take a look at it to see what might be wrong. Well with it being me I said sure why not I will take a look at it, I know a few things about doc cams. When I went into her classroom I immediately realized that I was not as smart as I thought. The reason was that the doc cam that she had was not one that I knew about. You see our district has normally used Lumens doc cams, but this was one by AverMedia. I knew nothing about AverMedia products so I spent some time in there working on the issue she was having all along making mental notes about what I was doing along with saying how many other types of doc cams are in out there in our school system.

It turns out there are many different types of them in our schools. If you want to get really technical we have doc cams from four different companies and almost 15 different model types. It took me a while but over the three years I have learned as much as I can about these products and what makes them tick. I have contacted companies and technical departments regarding issues that I have come across. I have researched many different ways that you can use doc cams in Education and for instructional use. Well armed with that knowledge, a comprehensive Livebinder and another member of our Instructional Technology Staff I came to NCTIES2011 to present "The Three C's of Document Cameras." This was a culmination of three years of collaboration, getting dirty, tweeting, blogging and talking with as many technicians and people that I could.

Now I have to admit this was the second conference I have ever presented at. The first one was about two weeks earlier. Although both made me nervous the NCTIES one was more nerve racking than the first. I kept wondering if I had everything, if the preso would be enough, if I was going to be able to get the points across to the attendees and most of all I was worried that when I turned around in the room to present there would only be a handful of people made up mostly of my co-workers showing their support. To my surprise there was close or maybe more than 50 people in the room. I immediately started sweating and all the fears of what might happen flooded into my mind. So it was time for the session to start and it was time to put up or shut up. Well in my normal ADD fashion I started off with asking the audience what types of doc cams they had by asking what the colors were of the units they had in their schools. Of course I got responses for all of the colors I asked about and even a few colors that I did not ask for which made me kind of laugh a little bit. That was enough to break the ice and make me feel just like I was back in one of my schools teaching our in district teachers. Then I began to think, hey this isn't so bad, oh and what made it even funnier was that my boss was snapping pictures from the back of the room while we were teaching and I kept wondering if I was moving around to much. So all in all my experience at NCTIES was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be an of course I also know that it could have been far far worse.

So will I do it again and take that plunge into the conference presenting realm? Sure, now that I have gotten to see what it is like to be a presenter I no longer feel of it as something that I have to do but rather something that I look forward to doing.

A Gaggle of Gadgets

I had another great opportunity this year at NCTIES to attend a session with Leslie Fisher on tech gadgets. For me it seems to make a great start to my conference happenings when I get to have the ADD-Geek moment and get it out of the way first thing.

As usual we had a packed house in the session room and there were people sitting in the aisles, standing along the walls and sitting on the credenzas in the back of the room. I don't know but I think that Leslie seems to be a big draw at the NCTIES conferences, "I'm Just Sayin."

Since I am unfortunately not on the Mac bandwagon I usually tune out when talk turns in that direction. Maybe someday I will be there it just has not happened yet, so I will review some of the PC related items shared in the session.

Rock Melt seemed to be a great tool for the Social Media conscious person. It allows you to round up all of your frequently visited sites, whether Facebook, Twitter, etc. and bring into one location. Almost like you would have in an RSS feed.

We talked about Google Voice in that it allows you to create one telephone number that will route all of your other ones to. So if you have a cell phone, house phone, fax number, another cell phone, a business number you can route them all to that one number. You also have lots of additional features similar to your home telephone but without the hassle of the phone company.

EventBrite allows you to Publish, Promote, Manage events. You can find events in your area or where you are going to be.

Primary Pad which is what use to be called Etherpad, so for those of you that are familiar with the product will easily be able to use this new website.

Don't forget about Twitter and the fact that you can create Widgets that you can embed onto your website. Whether it is your personal page, blog, wiki or even your school so that you can event.

Evernote allows you capture everything, all of your notes, sites, information and puts it into one area so that you can find it fast.

Dropbox allows you to utilize cloud storage for your resource materials and provides you with access to them anywhere you have an Internet connection.

uStream allows you to broadcast yourself over the Internet with the need of very little equipment. All you need is a webcam and a microphone and you are ready to go.

Weebly allows you to create websites on the fly, with or without the need of a domain. They offer premade design templates. Drag and drop capabilities. Auto creates your CSS. Can setup multiple pages on the fly, has an education version that offers security.

Mozy is a cloud based storage site. You get 2GB free then $5 for more. Amazon is also offering their own version as well.

Pogoplug is a piece of hardware that is cloud based, best description is a cloud storage. Load it to the pogoplug and then upload to the Cloud, works similar to dropbox.

It was a great session and I always enjoy the opportunity to hear her speak and she has many more resources that she shares for both PC and Mac and if you have the chance to check out her sight here is the link to her sight http://www.lesliefisher.com/

All the parts are important ...

When I attended NCTIES 2010 in March, I attended many informative sessions, and I took lots of notes. Recently I looked at these notes to find some ideas. "Going Global with Elementary Students" by Kelly Hines was one of the workshops I attended. She had many great ideas and projects to share (you really need to go look at this presentation for lots of project links).

One of the things that really stood out to me as I looked at my notes several months later was this list:

Tips for Creating Your Own Project:
P - Prioritize your curricular goals
L - Locate resources
A - Align yourself with other educators
N - Notify administration, parents & students

I - Integrate the learning opportunity cross-curricularly
T- Take time to celebrate your accomplishment & reflect for the future

These tips can be used to guide any project, lesson, or activity whether it involves technology or not (and hopefully if technology is used, it is for a purpose). Think about all the things you could accomplish by following those steps. I was going to elaborate more on the one or two I thought were the most important, but now that I think more about it, all these parts are important.

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/17642817@N00/2939048319/

"Books are not dead . . . "

Gail Lovely led a session at NCTIES 2010 called "Books Are Not Dead . . . Using Technology to Enliven Your Literacy Program" that I was unable to attend. However through the power of twitter, I learned about some of the ideas and resources she shared in her session. The snippets of information that "leaked out" made me want to go find out more, so I checked out both her website and her NCTIES Site. All kinds of great reading resources can be found at her site, which made this "Reading Teacher" smile! Her presentation from NCTIES also brought a smile to my face since it showed so many ways that technology and reading can be combined seamlessly. Key to reading comprehension for students is the interaction that takes with books before, during, and after reading. Really reading something involves more than just being able to just call the words correctly. Being able to use what you have gained to create something else is a better measure of learning. Gail Lovely shows how various technology tools can be used to make all of these things possible.

This presentation ends with a statement that I think summarizes it very well: "Reading is STILL a cornerstone. Books are NOT dead . . .don't make reading deadly!"

Books Are Not Dead By Gail Lovely

View more presentations from glovely.

Notes from the NCTIES 2010 Raleigh Conference

About Writing
After working with AP for over a year I was finally able to attend one of here workshops. During her workshop she provided information on how to use technology as a part of the writing process. For informative resources about the writing process be sure to visit her website: http://writingacrossthecurriculum.pbworks.com/

About Reading
Another interesting workshop was presented by Gail Lovely who assured us that books continue to be a vital part of our learning experience. Reading remains a fundamental element of the learning experience and may be enhanced by the use of technology. To find out more about the resources visit her website at
http://lovelyatncties.yolasite.com/

Favorite website (from the conference): www.tinychat.com

Volunteerism:
I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Special Interest Group table for one hour. Here conference attendees were able to sign up to participate in a special interest group of their choice after the conference ends.

In order to learn more the conference visit the conference website: http://2010ncties.pbworks.com/

New Adventures

The NCTIES conference theme was discoverying new adventures. They provided speakers, sessions, and vendors that shared many ways and ideas to help teachers and students develop and extend their 21st century skills.

As part of my experience, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the North Carolina Special Interest Groups (NCSIGS) booth where people with similar educational interests and issues could Get Connected! to share resources, best practices, and collaborate on new technologies. There are 17 groups available on the Ning with more to come as the interests unfold. You can join as many of the groups as you have an interest in and join throughout the year. I look forward to being a part of this initiative and sharing the resources.

Over 80 vendors and sponsors were available to discuss ways of integrating technology into the curriculum with their latest resources. I wasn’t lucky enough to win one of the document cameras, iPods, or periodical subscriptions, but it wasn’t because I didn’t try.

Ron Clark was our luncheon speaker – what adventures in life he has had and created. Started teaching in rural North Carolina, taught in Harlem, honored by the President for his accomplishments, wrote a best seller, and started The Ron Clark Academy just to mention a few. He is very inspirational and makes you want to hang onto every word to hear what he might say next. The hardest part is keeping up with him – there are no limits on his energy.

Notes from the sessions I attended are on our NCTIES 2010 wiki. Hope you enjoy and maybe discover an adventure or two for you and your classroom.

NCTIES 2010: Eliminating Writer's Block

NCTIES is always a much anticipated conference each year by North Carolinians who share a common thread and interest in education and instructional technology. This year, that excitement and anticipation was proven with a 40% increase in participant attendance!

There were several sessions I attended… The first being my own! My session stemmed from my true passion for writing coupled with educational technology in the classroom. “Writing Across the Curriculum: Utilizing Web 2.0 Tools to Increase Writing Skills in the K-12 Classroom” was designed with a specific goal in mind….. To Get Students Excited About Writing!

It is my personal belief that ALL students have an active imagination, are creative and CAN express themselves. But, just as some folks shy away from Math or History, we also have those students who quickly shy away from self expression through writing. My hope in presenting this session was to offer teachers new inspirational tools that would allow students the opportunity to write without simply being given a pencil and paper and hearing “go for it”!

My session structure was based on specific curriculum ideas and examples from the NCSCOS. To eliminate writer's block, a structured plan for beginning/completing the writing process should be given to the students. Check out some of these resources, which like all 21^st century tools can be great and highly successful with customization and creativity geared towards your specific area…

Instant and Engaging Discussion:

http://etherpad.com/

http://www.scrumy.com/

http://www.quicktopic.com/

Brainstorming:

http://www.text2mindmap.com/

http://bubbl.us/

http://www.gliffy.com/

Forming Content:

http://www.storyjumper.com/

http://storybird.com/

http://writeonwsfcs.pbworks.com/

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

Writing Prompts (quite a few….) Did I mention, writing prompts make my heart go pitter patter!!! Great way to get creativity and the brain going for students!!!!

http://writingacrossthecurriculum.pbworks.com/Writing-Prompts

Image Journaling

http://writingacrossthecurriculum.pbworks.com/Image-Journaling

http://writingacrossthecurriculum.pbworks.com/f/imagejournalquestions.pdf

Now… I did get a chance to visit some other sessions that were really great…. Check out the NCTIES wiki for resource posts from the various conference speakers.http://2010ncties.pbworks.com/ Want to go next year? Plans are already underway… stay tuned. Oh, and one other thing… I walked away from this year’s NCTIES conference with a brand new appreciation (all over again) for Twitter. Smile.

http://writingacrossthecurriculum.pbworks.com/ is a wiki created simply to house the links used within my NCTIES session discussion.

NCTIES 2010: Why Tweet?

This is the first blog of what I'm sure will be several posts inspired by my time at the 2010 NCTIES conference in Raleigh. As I've reflected and read some of the recent blog posts from the great educators and presenters who attended the conference, I echo many of their thoughts. The conference is a whirlwind of new ideas and a brief chance to meet some of the really important figures in Edtech.

And I was pleased to have the opportunity to present a session at this year's conference. My session "Why Tweet?" was designed to make the case for why educators should use Twitter as a tool for creating a personal learning network (a phrase I heard repeated several times at many different sessions). My session grew from my realization that the Twitter workshop I've led in the past didn't always result in teachers who continued to use Twitter after the workshop. I always got good feedback and people enjoyed seeing the tool and hearing me talk about it, but they stopped short of using it for very long themselves. Why? I think maybe too much of the workshop was about "the tool" and not enough about "why use the tool."

So I traveled to Raleigh with a new approach. Show the tool, share how I've used it, and explain the ways I've seen it utilized to share great ideas, resources and make connections. Thinking that if the presentation made sense, participants might spend the time to set up the account and get started.

Early Friday morning I presented "Why Tweet?" and was pleased and honored to see some folks roll out of bed to hear me talk about Twitter for an hour. I also appreciated the support of some who already use Twitter, are already a part of my PLN and really didn't need a rationale of why they should useTwitter but still were there; it's always nice to see a few familiar faces in the crowd.

So while I was satisfied with the session, I was even more pleased to connect with some from the session on Twitter. I'm a believer in the power of the personal learning network, and it's changed the way I learn and access information. So much good results when learners network.

I've included the presentation below if you'd like to check it out.

Thoughts on NCTIES 2010

Our Instructional Technology Department recently attended the NCTIES conference in Raleigh, NC.

For me this years conference was different from the previous years that I have attended. We had our usual vendor floor, concurrent sessions, poster sessions and featured speakers. I checked out some of the sessions and attended the luncheon with Ron Clark the special guest speaker. Which for me was eye opening because I had not attended any of his workshops or speeches before, and the amount of energy he displayed could make you tired in a few minutes.

Normally I try to attend as many sessions as I can to learn as much as I can about current uses of technology in the classroom and the such. I did attend a couple of sessions that I will share in another entry, but this year I seemed to be socializing more. Now what I mean by socializing is that I talked to more people this year than I have in the past. With volunteering at the North Carolina Special Interest Groups (NCSIGS) Table I talked with lots of different people from around the state. As well being on Twitter, Facebook, Ning and following other Blogs I got the opportunity to actually meet some of the people I have only known as an Icon on a computer screen. Making a connection with those other educators seemed to dominate my time during the conference and has added another level to my PLN, where I now have the faces to go with the icons on the screens that I am reading about.

NCTIES Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina: March 3-5, 2010

I attended the NCTIES (North Carolina Technology in Education Society) conference in Raleigh this past week. I enjoyed several of the sessions, met some great people and now I want to take time to go through my notes and learn more about several Web 2.0 tools that I previewed. In the coming weeks I want to blog about some of these tools and how they can benefit teaching and enhance learning for all students.

For now I have outlined the sessions I attended in my wiki workspace. Please look over my outline and check out the other wiki pages posted within NCTIES 2010.

Information Overload :)

After spending the last few days at the 2010 NCTIES (North Carolina Technology in Education Society) Conference, I am both tired from and excited about all the resources I discovered, people I met, and connections I made. I did attend this conference last year, and even though I went to every session, thoroughly explored the exhibit area, and met some people from my area, I feel like I was able to get sooooo much more from the conference this year based on the connections I have made as a result of the conference last year.
I did get a lot from the various sessions I attended this year (here are my rough notes that will probably result in several blog posts over the next few weeks). I feel like I was also able to get a lot from the sessions I was unable to attend. My "twitter and skype friends" did an excellent job of passing along the information they discovered. I am/was even able to get NCTIES information from the people I am not "friends" with on twitter due to the wide use of the #ncties hashtag on twitter. So many resources and great ideas were lined to tweets tagged with the NCTIES hashtag. There were also many ncties related #followfriday tweets.
I have recently become a member of the NC Ed Tech Skype Group that connects people with similar interests from all across the state of NC. Being able to actually meet the people I have been communicating with was a neat experience itself, but the resources and links shared in this skype group made it even better. We did have fun realizing that some of us were unknowingly in the same room!
Another group that I hope to contribute to and benefit from this coming year is NCSIGS (North Carolina Special Interest Groups). Within that Ning, there are at least 17 groups for people with similar interests to come together to share resources, collaborate, and learn.
So even though I think I may be suffering from some symptoms of Information Overload, my plan is to work my way through the twitter #ncties hashtags and the skype group to find resources and links to share. You can be assured that lots of blog posts will result from this search!
I am so thankful for the connections that I have made since they not only benefit knowledge for me (and others) but also benefit the education of students (that is the teacher in me coming out). :)

Call for Administrators at NCTIES 2010

It's less than two months until the NCTIES 2010 conference in Raleigh, and I'm already looking forward to the event. I've been fortunate to attend and present at this statewide technology conference in past years. And there are several educators from around the state and speakers from around the country that I look forward to seeing. I've always left the conference with excitement and ideas about how technology can help educators and students. It's always a great experience.
That's why I'd love to see administrators from our district attend this conference. I think they would also be energized by the ideas they'll hear and the kinds of technology they will see. Administrators play such a key role as the head of their schools. The schools I've seen that seem to have the best technology integration have great teachers and tech facilitators, but they also have leadership that has a vision for technology and how it will be used in their school.
So I'm calling on the administrators (many of whom were in the Nothing But NETs Conference last summer) to look at attending at least some of the NCTIES conference this March in Raleigh and seeing some of the ways technology can impact our classrooms, teachers and students.

New Project Ideas from Flicker

Ready to move beyond PowerPoint projects? Have students summarize what they've learned by creating a trading card, motivational poster or jigsaw puzzle. Mark Samberg and Abbey Askew shared a site titled Big Huge Labs (http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/) during their NCTIES presentation. The site subtitle explaines these are Flickr Toys offering a variety of tools to something "cool" with your photos.

One feature allows students to summarize what they've learned using the Trading Card Maker (http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php). Begin by uploading a photo. Then add a title, subtitle and description. Clicking the Create button finalizes the card saving the image as a jpeg file.

Communicate, Collaborate, Connect

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the 2009 NCTIES conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. NCTIES is the acronym for North Carolina Technology in Education Society. “The mission of NCTIES is to provide leadership in educational communications and technology by linking all who hold a common interest in the use of educational technology and its application to the learning process.”

The tagline used by NCTIES gives pause for reflection… Communicate, Collaborate, Connect. In this, the 21st Century, those words are powerful. Let’s look at each one individually and then collectively. According to Webster, their definitions are as follows…

--
Communicate: to convey knowledge of or information about; make known

Collaborate: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor

Connect: to become joined; to place or establish in relationship
--

Collectively, those three words can easily be used to shape and define the skills that are developed through the use of 21st Century classroom initiatives! What comes into play?

· Telecommunications (Skype, Twitter, etc.)
· Global Communities (Quest Atlantis, ePals, etc.)
· Wikis (PBwiki)
· Blogs (Blogger)
· Shared Documents (Google Docs)
· RSS Readers (Google Reader)
· Social Bookmarking (Delicious)
· Moodle
· Video-Conferencing
· The list goes on and on….

How will you communicate? How will you collaborate? How will you connect? The tools are already in place – just add creativity. Your students will appreciate it.

Network Literacy at NCTIES

I first saw Will Richardson present a few years ago at another NCAECT conference, and it was one of my favorite sessions. He presented again this year at NCTIES and did not disappoint.

If you are interested in instructional technology, webtools or education you might want to start following his blog. I find his ideas to be really interesting and provocative. I like his sessions because even when he is presenting on a subject I think I already know about like RSS, he still manages to bring something new to the subject.

I attended three of his sessions, and the last on Network Literacy was perhaps my favorite. I think he described it as "a thinking session for personal learning networks." There were several ideas I'll take from the session, but here were a few of the best: the need for us to teach kids and model how to build networks in safe, effective and ethical ways; teaching kids to become "clickable"; and if you are in education, and you don't feel pushed, then you are not paying attention.

It was time well spent.

Preconference at NCTIES

The North Carolina Technology In Education Society Conference cranked up in Raleigh yesterday with the preconference sessions. Our historical adventure overcame a few obstacles-- a tornado drill? really? What were the chances? But in the end, the session really yielded some great results and interactions with educators around the state.

The session was held at the NC Museum of History and focused on integrating technology with NC History. Our group toured the museum, collecting ideas and pictures, then planned and created a product for the classroom using Activstudio. It was a great way to start what promises to be a great conference.

NCTIES 2009

I'm starting to get excited about attending the NCTIES (formerly NCAECT) Technology Conference next month in Raleigh. I've been fortunate to attend the conference many times, and last year I got to present there. Every year the sessions offer something new, and the nationally known speakers bring their knowledge and interesting perspectives in instructional technology.

This year I get the benefit of being part of what should be a great preconference session at the N.C. Museum of History. I was in Raleigh Monday for a planning meeting with copresenters Marlo Gaddis and Matt Barfield and really look forward to seeing how the whole day will come together with teachers from around the state. The session, sponsored by CSI, should be a good blend of technology and social studies and will be a subject for future blogging.