Transparent Learning

QR Code Scavenger Hunt

2011-07-14T13:46:00.000-04:00

Student scanning a QR Code

This time of year one of my favorite activities occurs, New Student Orientation (NSO). Our incoming Freshman are so excited to be here; they are excited and eager - all in all the best audience you could ask for. Every summer I do a little introduction to technology at the college along with others on a panel, but this year I wanted to do something different. You see, we pride ourselves on being "Not your Momma's college of education," but how can we say that if we lecture to them for an hour or me? So went back and thought about what the goals from the session were, and really it came down to three things:

Introduce them to people in the college
Introduce them to the facilities available to them in the college
Introduce them to the ideals and mission of the college

We started to brainstorm about the ways students could get that information, and we had an epiphany. What about a QR Code Scavenger Hunt! I've used QR codes for about a year, and based on my last post you can probably tell that I am a fan, but how can we put these QR codes to work in a scavenger hunt context? We came up with a list of stops in the building and what type of information we wanted/needed at each stop. We decided on having QR Codes link to videos (have to use youtube to play on iOS). Each stop had a video (30 sec or less - well we tried for 30 sec or less) by a diffirent staff/faculty member related to the topic. This way students got to see and "meet" various staff people, with the addded benefit of actually seeing the facilties, or departments they were talking about.

So where does the "scavenger hunt" part come in? Well we gave a clue at the end of each video about what their task would be. Since they all would be using iPod Touch devices from the Media Center, we knew they would have the ability to take reqular pictures as well. So each task included them taking a picture of a particular obvject. The first group to get back to the main auditorium, with all the correct pictures would win our scavenger hunt.

I was amazed at how well it went over. Students were running around the building, getting to know their group members and seeing parts of our building (like the media center) that they may never have discovered. Now I know that some students cheated and fast forwarded to the end of the video, and were only in it to win. But I feel that we would have lost them in a long lecture anyways.

In the end it was a resounding success, and really only possible with technology. I am so thankful that the NSO group was open to try something like this and I think we might keep the QR Codes up so that our students can find out more information about the college!

Square Pegs - an outsiders conference journey

2011-07-05T10:58:00.000-04:00

I've always been a Square Peg (see the TV show Square Pegs if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it was along time ago - so long that Sarah Jessica Parker had brown hair), and am OK with that. I don't exactly fit in a category, which I actually enjoy about myself, but can be a difficult thing when trying to go to conferences. See I remember when I first came to college and I felt like I was surrounded by people that actually understood me. They had passions and quirks and I loved them all. I felt like this the first time I ever attended an ISTE conference (then NECC). I've been very lucky this year and have attended and presented at four conferences. But I haven't felt that "first-conference" moment in awhile. Sure it could be because the "newness" has rubbed off, or that the conferences haven't changed with the times, or it could be I'm going to wrong conferences.

You see, I don't teach in a K-12 school, and I'm not a professor in higher education, I'm an Instructional Technologist for a College of Education, there is no conference for me. I tried going to Educause in October and that was much more technical than I ever want to be. There were very few sessions on teaching with technology, but I did enjoy the ones I went to. It was relaxing to be in an environment that discussed my issues in higher education, but it didn't really fit my needs in teaching pre-service teachers. It felt more like a vendor showcase than a conference. Plus it was the most expensive conference I have ever been to.

Then I went to SITE, this I had high hopes for, and almost lived up to my expectations. SITE is for teacher educators that teach with technology - should be the perfect conference for me. But SITE focuses more on the research side of the house than the practical side of the house. Plus, since I'm not a faculty member, nor a researcher, but a staff member - I didn't meet anyone that did what I did. And maybe that is the crux at my issue - I haven't met someone that does what I do at at college of education. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like I'm unique or special, I just haven't found a way to really connect with others in my field.

The next two conferences I attended were NCTIES and ISTE, both of them have a K-12 technology education focus and are great conferences. I am continually impressed by how NCTIES continues to grow and showcase such incredible sessions. And while NCTIES is my 10k, ISTE is my marathon of learning, where I just try to keep up with it all. I've been reading some critiques of the ISTE conference lately, from issues with the Keynote (not techie enough) and Spotlight Speakers (not fresh enough) to those that had issues with the cliques at the Blogger's Cafe to those that want to dispel the in-crowd myth of the Blogger's Cafe. To be honest I understand both sides of the coin. I don't really fit in at ISTE, and in the past I've been OK with that. I've (in the famous words of Tim Gunn) "made it work," and done my best to fit ISTE into what I do. I've made some great friends at ISTE, but I'm still an outsider to most in that world. I count on my PLN a good deal, I feel that I contribute, but I can only contribute so much from my perspective.

So next year I will have the big decision of what conferences do I go to, and what do I get out of that experience? In the end I need to balance my budget with my needs, and maybe I'll find another square-peg just like me.

Scratch Poster at ISTE 2011

2011-07-01T11:08:00.000-04:00

It has been a long time since I have given a poster presentation, and I have never given one at ISTE before. I wasn't really sure what to expect, especially first thing - 8 AM - on the first full day of the conference. What I really didn't expect was to be ambushed at 7:45 and not get a chance to even eat breakfast until it was over! I really enjoyed this format. I was able to give a quick 10 minute spiel, and then answer questions or discuss how they could use Scratch in their classrooms.
I had two goals when I created my poster:

Use text sparingly
Use QR Codes instead of handouts

I'm really proud of how my poster looks. As a former Graphic Art teacher, I love having the opportunity to play with Adobe InDesign. I tried to play off the colors in the program itself and use the same font as Scratch.

I thought QR Codes would be a great idea, and I had several on my poster. I linked to the following web pages:
http://scratch.mit.edu/
http://scratched.media.mit.edu/

This worked for about 60% of the people that stopped by. Either they didn't have a device to read QR codes, didn't know what they were or both. I had about 100 business cards that were gone in like 10 minutes. My goal at ISTE is to come home with the least amount of paper as possible - but that didn't seem to be the standard operating procedure.

All in all I had a great experience presenting a poster at ISTE, and I highly recommend presenting one!

The Girl with the QR Code Tattoo

2011-06-30T16:57:00.000-04:00

QR Code for my Twitter Feed

I've been on a bit of a QR Code binge lately. I've added them to business cards, put them on my ISTE poster and created a scavenger hunt for orientation (all of which I hope to blog about soon). But to top it all off I decided to make a QR Code Tattoo. Now I love to create funky things (You can see my so not edtech Flickr feed) and I like them even more if they are a tad but geeky (heck my other blog is called craftygeeks!) So I knew I wanted to make something with QR codes, but what? One day on Twitter I noticed Allanah King's Twitter avatar and asked her about it. She had earrings custom made with her QR code how cool is that?!??! I thought of making my own earrings or necklace, but I wasn't sure I would have time to make something before ISTE

So I started looking at Etsy for QR code items - and I hit the jackpot - I found someone making QR Code Tattoos. They looked good and were reasonably priced, but then my friend Jonathan (@jelkimantis )stopped by in my office and said,

"You know you can buy your own Tattoo paper and make your own."

Well I just HAD to make my own now! On Tattoofun.com I found 5 sheets of tattoo paper for laser printers. It is some pretty cool stuff. So here are my steps for making a QR code tattoo:

Get a QR code for your website! I used http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ but plan on using http://goo.gl/ in the future. It will shorten your URL (which makes a cleaner looking QR) as well as giving you a hit count. Plus I had some issues with getting my QR code read by non-iOS devices - not sure if it was a code or device issue.
Save the image to your computer and place it in a document program. Personally I use Adobe InDesign, but I believe word would work just as well.
Duplicate this image as many times as will fit onto an 8x11 sheet of paper. I added my twitter name under my QR code as well.
FLIP your image horizontally so that it is backwards. The way the Tattoo paper transfers the image - it is important it is reversed.
Print a test page and test your qr code. If you hold the paper up to the light you can test the qr code through the back. (Or print before you flip your image and test)
Follow the directions in your package - basically print on the special paper and then apply adhesive.
I then cut out all of my tattoos to apply when in Philly. They lasted a good 3 days!

I got some weird looks for my QR Tattoos, but more often than not I got the geek high-five and it worked as a great ice-breaker to meet people.

I read...for fun

2011-06-01T09:51:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make, I read a lot. For as long as I can remember I've been an avid reader. I still have fond memories of my local librarian in Winston-Salem (Ms. Orange) whom we would visit on a weekly basis. I met my husband because he was reading a book I didn't like (and subsequently told him so). I have read through the night, just to finish a good book. But my confession is this, I don't read academic books, or non-fiction books, I read fiction! The horror! Ever since I graduated with My Masters in 2009 I just haven't been able to get back into academic reading. I want to read The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch and Disrupting Class by Clay Christensen or even Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell . These are books I should be reading. But instead I get sucked into the Hunger Games Trilogy or the Sookie Stackhouse Books, or Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I enjoy these books and would rather do nothing more than spend an afternoon reading some new found story. But the books I should be reading, I just can't bring myself to. I don't know if I got burned out in grad school, need a break from the constant depression of what is wrong with education in America, or a little of both. So while most people are reading so-called "Beach Reads" - I pledge to read one "academic, non-fiction" book, but which one? Any ideas?

Re-designing Learning Spaces for a Laptop Environment

2011-05-24T16:04:00.000-04:00

One of the things that I love about my job is that I never really know what my next project will be. This past year I became involved with furniture design. Not in the "lets start with wood and glue" kind of way, but in the "how do we make our open spaces more accommodating to students with laptops" way. We needed to rethink what defined a "learning space" and how we could make the open spaces of our building collaborative areas for students to work. We also wanted to re-think our Media Center space and how that could be made more collaborative.

One of the easiest and biggest changes we made was adding additional power. You could see students all huddled around the power outlets to charge their many devices. We added 16 outlets to each of our atriums - the large gathering spaces in the foyers (i.e. atriums) of our building. This was probably the biggest investment we could have made. We immediately saw students using these areas more.

We then had to think about furniture in those spaces. It needed to be multi-functional (we have "social" events there) and movable, but not so movable students would walk away with it and furnish their dorm rooms with it. In the end we decided on a large collaborative table (seats 6) at cafe height (see how I use those designer terms - I tell you I have a new calling) that had lamps that could be removed and be transformed into a serving buffet. Then we set-up one Atrium to be more comfortable, with lounge chairs and the other atrium with more tables and chairs. On the two-top tables we added plug extenders and lamps that I used zip-ties to attach the cables to the table pedestal. This allowed for cord management, but provided just a bit more of a deterrent for would be thieves. The four-top tables are movable and can be reconfigured to fit our needs. Overall for the past few months we have seen students using the area in all the ways we have intended and nothing has gone missing!

The Media Center I was less involved with, but just as proud of. They did an excellent job of creating collaborative spaces for students to work together on projects as well as keep places for individuals to do homework or study. My favorite spots are the meeting areas that allow for six laptops to be connected and then switch between users. It truly demonstrates what a 21st century learning space can be!

U-Streaming Tech Tuesdays

2011-05-18T16:43:00.000-04:00

I have been conducting Tech Tuesdays (or it's previous carnation Wired Wednesday) for the past few years. Slowly, bit by bit I have had lower and lower attendance. I wasn't completely discouraged, faculty would ask if sessions would be taped and available later, so I felt that the content was worthwhile. I just could never get the timing right. Last year I started Ustreaming my classes. This did several things for me.

I was able to record my class easily - you can stream and record. Not only that it automatically posts. I didn't have to go through the extra hassle of getting my video internet ready.
I was able to stream my class that may be of interest to faculty that can't be on campus, or others in education that are interested.
It created an automatic back-channel through the Ustream chat (once we got passed the do not watch the video as you sit in class - created sound)

My graduate student would stream and record my sessions as well as man the chat to see if there were any questions. By the end of the Fall semester my number of participants dropped to one maybe two people and they were always the same people. I decided to be more economical with my time and this year decided to only Ustream. One of the downfalls of Ustreaming a live class is that it can be difficult to capture the teacher's screen. Another issue was that most of my classes are centered around discussion or activties - not really stream or recording friendly activties. I really wanted these videos to serve as a resource for my faculty. So I decided to focus on the quality of my Ustreams and to stream out of my office in a controlled evnironment.
I used the video camera I traditionally stream with (Sony Handycam - it is a miniDV cam, but has a Firewire port that I can connect to my laptop), and shared my screen as well. In effect creating a streaming screencast. It took me awhile to finally get my settings down, but by the third Ustream we were working well.
At first I was having screen resolution issues. My audience could not read the words on my screen, especially when I was demoing an application. I have an excellent Internet connection so I decided to transmit with "Best SD Quality 16:9" I also had to lower my screen resolution on my own machine to 800x600. I recommend you change your screen resolution and close all un-needed applications before starting a UStream. I found that the application Backdrop on a Mac is perfect for hiding your messy desktop!
Then I set-up a few input scenarios. I wanted to be able to change form a talking head to a talking head with a screencast (PiP - Picture-in-Picture) to a screencast only - all while keeping the same audio input from my camera. Luckily, Ustream Producer will allow you to create these presets and save them. However I did run into audio issues (especially in my first Ustream). I found that I needed to test these pre-sets every time. I also needed to mute the audio on my computer so I wouldn't get re-verb issues. Once you start a stream, in order to change your settings or add more inputs you have to stop the stream, fix your issues and then re-start.
Eventually, my graduate student Preference and I had a good groove going. Fifteen minutes before we started we would get everything set-up, I would practice streaming with all of my inputs and she would sit next to me with a laptop tuned in wearing headphones. She also ran the chat for me while I talked. I could only do so many things at once, plus it messed with my screencast.
Overall my attendance was better we had up to 16 attendees for one session and as low as 2 for another. However, now I also have some great resource videos that I can use at a later date.
First Ustream Screencast (audio issues)

Latest Ustream Screencast - much better :)

If you have any suggestions to make my Ustreams better or topics that would endear themselves to a Tech Tuesday - please let me know. Check out my Ustream channel at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tech-tuesdays Who knows what I will do next year!

The world lost an incredible photograper, and we lost a friend

2011-04-23T20:56:00.000-04:00

(This is an incredibly personal post)
I met my husband in college at the Agromeck (our yearbook at NC State), working on the third floor of Witherspoon Student Center with the rest of Student Media. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was joining a fraternity, not a real one, but one that just happens because you all share the same passion and dreams. I became part of a group of friends that I have known and loved for over 15 years. We've been to each others weddings, been there for the births of our children, and supported each other when no one else could. We may not always be as close as we once were, but are always there for each other when we need to be.

Source: Getty Images

This week we lost one of our own. Chris Hondros died in Libya this week. He was a war photographer, and one of my husband's best friends. Chris always had adventures wherever he went, from New York City or Athens GA, and if you were lucky you could go along with him. His adventures took him all over the world. He reported on war in a way I didn't think was possible, without judgment. He wanted to show the horrors of conflict, but never blamed the military, or the troops he was stationed with. He told their stories honestly and openly. He knew what he was getting into, but that doesn't make this any easier. I didn't know him as well as some, and even less than others, but Chris had a huge impact on my life and my group of friends. I was proud to know him and call him my friend.

Show your students his pictures and discuss what happens in war. That it is never neat or easy. That just because a war doesn't happen in your backyard doesn't mean it doesn't effect you. That a picture can say a thousand more words than I ever could. Thank you for the indulgence of this post.

So have a vodka martini, listen to some Mahler and think of Chris Hondros for me.

iPads vs. Laptops - NCTIES presentation

2011-03-04T18:27:00.000-05:00

This week I had the honor of presenting at NCTIES about iPads in education. One of the questions I always get when talking to educators about iPads (and disclaimer - I love mine) is if they will replace laptops in a 1:1 environment. I wanted my presentation to not be about how awesome the iPad is, but a critical assessment of the pros and cons of implementing iPads in a school environment. My goal was to not give a definitive answer about which was better, because every school has different needs, but more to highlight what IT needs to look at in implementing iPads and how they are different from a laptop environment. I felt the presentation went well overall, although I did feel that some people in the audience really wanted me to just say one way or another which one is better.

Will iPads Replace Laptops?

View more presentations from Bethany Smith.

Will iPads Replace Laptops?

2011-02-23T13:57:00.000-05:00

I'm giving a presentation next week at NCTIES on "Will iPads Replace Laptops?" What do you think?

Tech Tuesdays

2011-01-28T10:20:00.000-05:00

I love conducting workshops and in the past I have had great attendance from our faculty. I typically do a few workshops throughout the year and also conduct a bi-weekly brownbag tech session called either Tech Tuesday or Wired Wednesday. We try to stream and record those sessions using Ustream. However, over the past year we've had a significant decrease in attendance. I've been brainstorming with my colleagues about why this could be happening; are the topics not interesting? is the time bad? do my faculty just not have time to come? is it a combination of them all? I don't want to give up on my sessions, but I can't devote time and effort to something that no one shows up for.

So this semester I will be trying something different. All of our Tech Tuesday sessions will be streamed live from my office. Instead of having a hybrid model of in person and online we will be completely online. I hope this will allow me to give the online participants more attention as well as create a better product to be viewed later. I'm worried how some of my session topics will lend themselves to this online format, but I'm sure we will find a way. I also hope that this will give others outside the college the opportunity to join us on a regular basis. Here is our Tech Tuesday schedule:

February 1st Web 2.0 Tools and how they fit within the Digital Blooms Taxonomy
February 15th Creating Screencasts to share with your students
March 1st Keeping up to date with news and information using RSS and Google Reader
March 15th Using Smartboards in the classroom
March 29th Integrating Turning Point Clickers in your classroom
April 12th iPads for Teaching & Learning

Our Ustream channel is at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tech-tuesdays

View one of our older sessions to ensure you can see the video and hear the audio. In order to watch the live stream you will not need a Ustream account. However, if you would like to participate in the chat you will need to sign-in. You can sign-in with a Facebook account, a Google account, a Yahoo account, an OpenID account, OR you can create a Ustream account. If you would like to create a UStream account, please do so before the session.

I hope to see you all on Tuesday!

Finding my Purpose

2011-01-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

I have found myself wondering aimlessly in the past few months. So much of last semester was wrapped up in my trip to China, that everything else has been reactionary. I have found myself barely trying to keep above water and my life a series of questions and answers. I haven't blogged, I haven't tweeted and I have barely facebooked. I have cut myself off from the one community that could have supported me, and I'm not really sure why. One of the blogs that I read recommended everyone chose a word for the year, and have that word as a theme direct your plans and vision for the year. So my word for the year is purposeful. I will be purposeful with how I use and organize my time. I will find the time to do the things that matter to me and I will work on continually finding my purpose in life.

Closed Captioning

2010-12-17T15:34:00.000-05:00

One of the aspects of online learning that I struggle with is ADA compliance. Not the concept of ADA compliance, I completely agree that universal web design is better for everyone, but how do I implement ADA compliant web resources. In the past this has been done by checking my website periodically to make sure that my websites are compliant by tools such as SortSite or designing with standards from W3C in mind. But in my mind, those are the easy things. Basic website design is easy to make compliant, what I have found more and more difficult is multimedia.

Technically, every time we post information to a website for our students to use in a class it should be compliant. This means that audio files have transcripts, video files are captioned, PDFs are accessible etc. Most of my faculty don't even think about making their content accessible until they have a student they have to make accommodations for and redo their entire class.

For my part I have tried to support faculty in these endeavors as much as possible and be an example of compliance with our college website. Yet, I have found that even I have forgotten to be compliant. So this semester I have been working with my graduate student to close caption our official college videos. This may come as a shock, but I have never captioned a video before. My GA worked on it for about a month and could not get it to work. This week I was able to spend a couple hours tackling it. Finally after a few updates, the right versions of the right software, and a bit of luck I was able to add captions to a 2 minute video. Now, this was the first time I tried, and I'm sure after this it will be much easier for me, but I was surprised at how much work it took to make these videos compliant. To add insult to injury, I couldn't actually host this video on our Clipshare video server and had to directly upload it to our website. What I was not aware of is that the close captioning process actually creates a text file linked to specific time codes in the video. These two files are linked, but seperate. As long as they can find one another, everything works fine.

So there is a happy ending, I have my captioned video and I have played by the rules, but would a teacher or professor have the amount of time to make this effort? What gives me hope is how easy Youtube has made it to add captions to their videos. I can only hope that it gets easier for all of us to make our multimedia accessible, and for us all to value the effort it takes.

Privacy and Social Media

2010-12-04T18:41:00.000-05:00

I am honored to be asked by Phil Tietjen of Penn State University to answer a question for his class on Social Media. The question is: How do you see the role of privacy in relation to Web 2.0 or social media? Does it deserve more attention among educators?

I believe that privacy, or the lack thereof, is one of the larger issues surrounding education technology. How do we protect our students in an online environment and at the same time take advantage of all of the benefits that Web 2.0 tools have to offer? It is a difficult question to answer. I am torn between my role as a teacher to "protect" my students and my role to promote them and the work that they do everyday. There is such a balance to be struck between those that are afraid to try any Web 2.0 tool because of privacy concerns, and those that post pictures of their students online with full names.

But I think the rubber meets the road when we think about how would you actually implement a Web 2.0 product in your classroom and what concerns would you take into account. Now that varies by product and by grade level in my mind. There are tools such as Voicethread and PB Works that allow for controlled user creation as well as for student use under the age of 13. Students don't need e-mail addresses to have accounts and their full name is not displayed. They make it easy for me to feel comfortable inside the constraints of COPA and CIPA and are well suited to elementary and middle school students. I encourage the use of "Avatars" by younger students, this way they can display their work on the internet for their fellow classmates and parents to see can still be met, but in a way that strangers cannot identify them.

However, once students reach high school and are over the age of 13, how does our use of social media change or should it? Seth Godin says it best with “Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with good stuff and to always act as if you’re on candid camera, because you are!” The Wall Street Journal reported back in 2008 that College Admissions officers are using the Internet to research prospective applicants. Why not help our students create a positive Digital Footprint of their work and emphasize how important it is to their future.

In the end it comes down to what it best for your class and your students. Parents and students have the right to be informed about the privacy implications of Web 2.0 tools as well as the great learning opportunities that these tools can provide.

MIA - but I have a good excuse....

2010-11-28T15:09:00.000-05:00

I've been Missing In Action for over a month now - but I have a great excuse. I have been in CHINA!!! Between preparing for China, actually traveling, and then coming back I have had little time to blog. However, I did come back with some inspiration and will post more soon!

Scratch

2010-10-25T10:06:00.000-04:00

I am at heart a wannabe computer programmer. I dabble in programing, especially in HTML and PHP code, but I really just know enough to do damage rather than create anything. But programming logic just makes sense to me. One of my favorite things to teach and work with is Lego Robotics, and I specifically worked a good deal with the Robotics Invention System (RIS) 1.0 & 2.0. When I heard that the MIT Media lab (who had collaborate with Lego on the RIS) had created a programming language targeting k-12 students that had the same type of drag and drop blocks that RIS has, I was dying to work with it. But as with most things, it was pushed to the side and I didn't get a chance to really dive in. This summer I made it a priority at ISTE to take advantage of the workshops on Scratch. Mitch Resnick, the creator of Scratch at MIT, held a BYOL session at ISTE that was one of the best sessions I attended. We did some pretty basic programming in Scratch, but I could see the potential. Now, I just needed to find a faculty member who would be interested in trying out Scratch in their classroom. Luckily, I didn't have to wait too long. Dr. Micha Jefferies came to me asking how we could take an existing project she used with her elementary education students, creating a board game, and using technology to create the game. This was the perfect opportunity for students to use Scratch to create content-based games. The purpose of our technology integration was not to learn how to program, but how to use this technology to teach a specific content. I plan on posting a series about our project and how it is developing this semester.

When technology works....

2010-10-18T15:10:00.000-04:00

I have a few blog posts in my mind trying to get out and while I am at EDUCAUSE (see previous post) I will be trying to finally post them. Yesterday, I needed to be in two places at the same time, and I was able to pull it off. While I was here on the West Coast I needed to present at the Friday Institute in Raleigh on social networking and yes, I was able to pull it off. How was I able to do it, you guessed it video conferencing, and it worked :)
This week the Friday Inst is hosting the Teacher Leadership Institute with a focus on teaching in 1:1 schools. It is one of my favorite workshops to be apart of and brings a great group of people together. Unfortunately, this Fall it occurred at the same time as my trip to EDUCAUSE. I was able to be part of the planning team, led by the wonderful Joselyn Todd and Sherry Booth, but I wouldn't be able to do - what I think i do best - teach and facilitate. Once again technology not only came to the rescue, it allowed for us to demonstrate what we have been encouraging our teachers to do, innovate and use technology to transform the classroom experience. So instead of having to be in Raleigh in person, I was able to video conference with Skype and give my presentation as well as ask questions.

So here is my foolproof guide for Video Conferencing on the fly:

1) Nothing is fool proof :) Have a back-up plan. In my case I created a screencast of my presentation that could be used if we had technical issues. I provided a high quality video to the team leaders, and also placed a version online to be embedded in the institute wiki.

2) Test and test often. One of the downsides of VC on the fly is that I couldn't accurately test the ability to Skype until the day of the seminar. So we did the best we could by testing the quality of Skype in the room that would be displaying the VC and then I tested in the conference center the first opportunity I could.

3) Don't announce the VC until you are sure you can pull it off. We never promised a Skype session, so if it didn't work, we wouldn't have to backpedal. The Skype session was a bonus. Now this isn't always possible, but in this case it was better to underpromise and exceed expectaions than over-promise and disaapont everyone.

All in all I feel that we really did get to showcase the best of both worlds and I got to be apart of both!

EDUCAUSE 2010

2010-10-14T11:32:00.000-04:00

After my ISTE experience this summer I was a bit disenchanted about conferences and how much I"get out" of attending. I was hoping that attending a different type of conference would be more rewarding and inspiring. I am currently attending EDUCAUSE a higher education tech conference. For the first time in a long time I am traveling with colleagues. Instead of traveling alone and looking forward to meeting old friends, I am traveling with a group and no one I know (either in person or online) is planning to be here. From a traveling experience it is much more enjoyable and I am having a good time in the evenings. However, I have yet to attend a session that has inspired me or showed me something new. I had been hoping that a different perspective on education would reveal something new and innovative. I made the mistake the first day of going to not only sessions that interested me, but topics that I knew something about. This may seem backward, but I don't want to hear the rehashing of topics I already have heard and seen before, I made a rookie mistake. So today I will be going tosessions I know nothing about, but have a vague interest in. I have high hopes for today and will see what comes......

The Twitter Experiment FAIL

2010-09-20T16:43:00.001-04:00

I am a huge fan of Twitter. I have found it instrumental to my growth as a education professional and have made more connections and ultimately friends through using it than I ever thought possible. However, I have never really gotten my faculty to get on board with the idea of using it in their classrooms. This summer the perfect situation dropped in my lap. A professor wanted to actively use Twitter is his class. It was a large class (over 140 - one of the few large seminars we have in the college) and he had used classroom response systems in the past (i.e. clickers), but wanted to have more open ended questions in class and to give his students options to have a back channel. This was exactly what I had always talked about Twitter being great for, and I had an instructor that was willing and anxious to use it. He also had two Teaching Assistant that would be able to man the Twitter stream while he was teaching. I couldn't ask for a better set-up.

The first thing I did was help him and his TAs set-up Twitter accounts so they could get used to using Twitter, and I recommended they use a product like TweetDeck to help keep up with all the various Twitter streams and searches. Then, I went into their second day of class for the semester, explain what we would be using Twitter for, give some examples, and help everyone create Twitter accounts. We also introduced a #hashtag for the class so that they could tag their posts for class. The #hashtag would be used so that students could not only differentiate the posts they write as being class related, but also so students could search for the class #hashtag to see what their fellow students were tweeting.
There were a few students in the class that already had Twitter and were excited and started Tweeting with the class #hastag right way. I pulled up Tweetdeck on my computer to show the #hastag search and tweets slowly popped in, but only 3 or 4 people were showing up. I started to get questions from the class asking why their tweets weren't showing up. I assumed the issue was confirmation e-mails or maybe it just took the system awhile to get them in. I left the class feeling OK, we had accomplished what I set-out to do and I felt everything would be working by the next class. I could not have been more wrong. After the next class session I received several e-mails from the professor and the TAs that tweets were not appearing in the search. So I did what any good tech support person would do - I googled it, and much to my dismay found:

According to Twitter:

You are missing because of current resource constraints: Right now, some users may not be seeing their Tweets because of resource constraints. This is more likely affecting you if you're a new user (with an account less than a couple of weeks old). Our search engineers are working on this known issue, and your Tweets should start showing up in search soon!

In other words these students are not appearing in the #hashtag search and may NEVER appear in the #hashtag search. I tired to set up a Twibe and a Hootcourse, but the momentum had died, my professor was no longer interested, and my grand Twitter experiment just circled the drain. I'm not sure what I'll do next semester, but until this gets fixed, I doubt I will be recommending Twitter.

Are teachers born or made?

2010-08-24T09:31:00.000-04:00

Are teachers born or made? I live in the realm of licensing, of pre-service teachers, certification and MATs. Yet, I have yet to come to terms with not only what makes a good teacher, but how does one become one? I am reminded of my colleagues that have no teaching certification what so ever, yet are some of the best teachers I know. I remember some of my fellow teachers that had all the right papers, but could never command a classroom. Why is that? I have tried to make sense of it all, and as proud as I am of my institution and the strives the we make, I have to recognize that some people are just born teachers. Maybe teaching is more like an art than a science. Artists can still be artists without all the fancy degrees, but yet people still go to school to hone their craft, to learn more why they do what they do. Does that make it a waste of time? Do they become better artists? How can we grow to respect teaching as a talent as much as or even more than a piece of paper can prove?

Edubloggercon 2010

2010-08-06T09:12:00.000-04:00

Edubloggercon Group 2 - I'm walking in at the top of the stairs, didn't quite make the picture.

This was my 3rd Edubloggercon and one of the main reasons I enjoy attending ISTE. The unconference format really allows for flexibility and collaborative learning than a typical conference session. I get much more out of discussions rather than lectures and I wish roundtables were more common at ISTE. I attended about four sessions and overall I enjoyed the experience. Steve Hargadon does a great job organizing it every year and I was surprised and delighted to see so many new people. However, there was something missing. I'm not sure if it was the size that EBC has grown to, the sessions I attended or what, but it just wasn't the "earth shattering" experience I have had in the past. Maybe it was the sessions I attended, but more than likely the novelty of EBC, combined with the people that were there that first year made such a big impression it is just hard to top. Not that I'm giving up on EBC or that it isn't a great experience, but this year EBC and ISTE just left me a bit, well depressed. Then again EBC was and is like any conference, it is what you make of it and if I don't like something, I need to be the catalyst for change. Now I just need to think about what I would do differently.......

ISTE & Edubloggercon 2010

2010-08-04T10:04:00.000-04:00

I am woefully behind in my blog posting about ISTE & Edubloggercon from last month. I had no idea how fast August would get here! My overall impressions of ISTE & EBC are pretty mixed. Here is my Pro/Con list from this year (or should I call it + / Delta ?)

Pros:

Getting to Meet People
Shuttle to convention center from hotel
Traveling by yourself - setting your own schedule
Enjoyed EBC and the Edubloggers Cafe

Cons:

Having to Meet People
Hotel 20 minutes away from anybody, anywhere
No rental car
Traveling by yourself - lonely
Didn't get a lot out of formal sessions
Edubloggercon tacked about 2 extra days to the conf experience. Making 6 days total away from home

So what does this mean? Well, I'll be traveling to Educause this October, a higher ed tech conference. It will be interesting to see the differences between the two. Part of the issue is that I seem to live in this in-between world. I'm not quite K-12, but not quite Higher Ed either. What I do know is that a conference is all about what you put into it, and maybe I just didn't put enough into ISTE this year.

Video as Refelective Practice

2010-07-21T10:01:00.003-04:00

One of the things that I enjoy about the summer is the number of campers that visit our campus, and specifically our college. I try and make time with at least one group each summer. Last year I had the opportunity to work with middle school students and we built played around with physics and mousetrap cars. This summer I had the opportunity to work with a new group of students, they were high school students part of the GEAR-UP program. I brainstormed with the lead on the project and we discussed all the different activities I could help out with during their week long experience. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that using Flip Cameras to document their camp experience and to use this as a reflection for the week. I had about an hour and a half with them every day from Monday - Thursday.

This was one of the most difficult and rewarding experiences I have had teaching since I had my own classroom. These students challenged me in a way that caused me to pause and really think about what we were doing. The best part about this was that I was able to articulate the reasoning behind this to the students, and once they understood the "Why?" it was easy to move forward with the project. I had forgotten not only how powerful honesty can be in a classroom, but that empowering students to take charge of their own learning can be the best thing I could ever teach them.

I missed the last day to travel to ISTE, but a student sent me their speech at their luncheon on the last day:

I am honored to speak with you today about our instructors that have spoken with us throughout the week. I would like to start with Ms. Bethany Smith. Ms. Smith has taught us a lot of things we did not know about the MAC BOOK. It is very much different than the average laptop. She has been helping us on our reflection movies for the week on our flipcams. Unfortunately do to time CONSTRAINTS we can’t show you our finished products, but they are available online. She is a very intelligent, a fun person, and has a lot to share. We would like to say, Thank you!

They worked hard on their video projects, but it wasn't the end product I was the most proud of, it was the journey they took to get there.

The Art of Blogging

2010-06-11T10:08:00.002-04:00

Turns out Will Richardson has been blogging for 9 years. Will and David Warlick were the first education bloggers I ever read, before I even realized what blogging really was. Turns out I created my Blogger account back in November of 2004. I certainly haven't been as prolific, nor have I written as much as those two gentleman, but I have to say that I have enjoyed blogging. As I'm waxing philosophically about this, how apropos that Lee Kolbert is requesting some advice for new bloggers. So here is some of my advice:

Set aside time to blog and respond to other blog posts. Think of it as your reading e-mail time.
Go ahead and write your posts and save them as drafts. Get your ideas out and then refine
Please do not write meandering live blog posts that make no sense to anyone (except you). I find that if I take live blogging notes in Evernote or Word and then refine that into a blog post I get better results.
Post and post often. Just because no one comments doesn't mean no one is reading. Which reminds me, use a tool like Google Analytics or Sitemeter to display who comes to your blog. It is a great feeling to see "hits"

I have enjoyed my blogging experience. I didn't get any book deals, or movie rights, but I've loved it just the same :)

iPad vs. Netbook

2010-06-04T09:59:00.002-04:00

One of the things I dislike about tech conferences is the amount of stuff I lug around them. At ISTE for the past several years I have had my laptop and power brick with me at almost all times from dawn until way past dusk. I feel like I need physical therapy for my back when I get home! Last year I saw many more people carrying around a Netbook, and although I am a Mac girl at heart, I didn't let that get in the way of purchasing an Asus EeePC netbook.
My criteria for getting a netbook were/are the following:

1) Light weight machine for travel
2) Easy access to calendar and e-mail
3) Word processor of some type for note taking
4) Twitter platform

Basically, I wanted a machine that I could use at meetings and conferences to do the basics. I don't need to do video editing or complex web design. I just didn't want to lug around my main machine all over the building and across campus. I also wanted to see what the limitations/advantages of a netbook would be be for our students. I've been really happy with my netbook. I had worries about keyboard size and screen size, which have not been an issue for me. The weight and size are perfect (although finding the perfect bag has been hard), and it has been great to bring to meetings. The downsize has been I haven't found the perfect twitter app (I'm on Ubuntu - any recommendations?) and getting to my e-mail and calendar (I use Groupwise for work, Gmail & iCal for personal) has been sub-optimal.

Then the iPad came out, and I had just enough money in my budget to go for it, so I did. Of course as a Mac fangirl I was pre-disposed to like it. But as a supplemental device to my main machine, it has worked great. Easy access to e-mail that syncs seamlessly with my e-mail on my Macbook. Great Twitter Apps and access to iCal calendar (still going to web client for Groupwise calendar). But multi-tasking is sub-optimal, and would I really enjoy taking notes on it? So I set-up the perfect test - a conference. For the first day of Futureweb I used my iPad, for the second I used my netbook, and Day 3 would be the winner.

Day 1 - iPad
Evernote has been the perfect app for notetaking on the iPad for me. I can make my quick notes on the sessions and then use those to write blog posts later. I think I blogged more about this conference more than any other because of how easy it was for me to take notes. I was also not originally a fan of the Apple iPad cover, but am loving the wedge shape it creates to make it easier to type. Another bonus - no computer bag, the iPad fits in one of my larger purses. The battery was at 54% when I left for the day. I think I'm in love. However, it has been hard to multi-task between my Twitter client and note-taking. I'm used to a smoother transition and miss the ability to view tweets while I'm taking notes. This maybe a deal breaker.

Day 2 - Netbook
Evernote doesn't exist as an application for Ubuntu, so I'm using the web browser. Currently I'm using Firefox, but I need to start using Chrome to save on screen realestate. I'm using one of the default Ubuntu Twitter clients and it is just not up to par - I miss my Tweetdeck columns. Maybe my issues are Ubuntu related and I should try Windows 7 (I just shuttered a little). The netbook is definitely heavier than the iPad, but it still fits in my big purse. The battery lasted all day.

Both the Netbook and the iPad met my criteria for what I wanted out of a portable device, but the integration with my work machine makes the iPad a winner. There are still a few disadvantages of relying on only an iPad, and when I travel to ISTE I will have my laptop and my iPad, but the Netbook will stay in the office. I'll keep working on perfecting the netbook, and the tools I use with it, but Round 1 goes to the iPad.