1. help teachers overcome their fears about using multimedia with students to develop literacy skills
2. encourage teachers to SHARE more

As I prepared for the two presentations I shared on Tuesday this week at our statewide educational technology and library conference in Oklahoma, I searched for compelling images which convey ideas about sharing. These ideals will hopefully be manifested in the new website project, Oklahoma EduSHARE. Some of these images are funny, some are poignant. All of them say, with pictures, “I’m sharing.” I love visual media which communicates in compelling ways.

All of the above images are licensed on Flickr under a Creative Commons Atribution-Only license. I found them using this search page.

Do you have a favorite image of SHARING? Consider taking that on as a professional development activity challenge in upcoming months: Working with a partner, take a photo which communicates some aspect of SHARING. Alternatively, find an image which visually represents SHARING. When you take or find a photo, post the image to Flickr and/or share it on Twitter using the tag/hashtag edushare / #edushare.

Dean Shareski is right, sharing is a moral imperative for educators!

Technorati Tags: education, share, sharing, edushare, flickr

Visualizing Sharing #edushare originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 9, 2012.

Last Sunday in our 6th grade class, students recorded an 81 second audio podcast about the theme, “Our Words are Powerful.” Since free accounts on AudioBoo.fm permit users to not only record audio using a web browser or smartphone, but also UPLOAD audio, I used it today to upload the audio from our 6th grade class. AudioBoo does not provide (as Cinch.fm does) a direct download link to the mp3 audio file for a specific Boo, however. To view and copy this link, I copied the RSS feed for my AudioBoo channel.

I pasted that link into my Safari web browser, which does a nice job handling RSS feeds and displaying them in a readable format. I then copied the direct mp3 audio file link.

I then created a new post on our 6th Grade Sunday School WordPress blog, and used special “short code” for embedding mp3 audio files in the HTML view of the post.

It would be nice if WordPress.com allowed the default AudioBoo embed code to work, as shown below, but for security reasons they don’t. On a self-hosted WordPress blog (like the one you’re reading right now) it’s possible to use this embed code, but not on WordPress.com. The WordPress.com site administrators have disabled some embed codes to “protect us” from malicious code, I think. Fortunately, this “short code” technique is pretty straightforward to use ONCE you have the direct URL to the mp3 audio file you’d like to use. There are other ways to do this too, but I like the short code method.

What other techniques do you use to embed audio on your blog?

Technorati Tags: audio, blog, wordpress, embed, mp3

Embed a MP3 Audio File in a WordPress.com Blog Post originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2012.

This session explores the uses of social media by schools and school employees. The session will address the need for digital citizenship as well as the professional uses of social media and the unintended consequences for its use.

this and filtering are two of the most discussed topics in our schools today
- how many of you have a district that have Facebook open for staff? for students?

the purpose of this isn’t to make pronouncements about everyone and every school
- it’s to share what I found as I researched what was best for my district
- what you’ll see today may make you uncomfortable

Social media: a means of communication/social interaction featuring user-generated content (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Webshots, LinkedIn, etc)

Facts and stats:
- MySpace 19.7 M per day
- Twitter – 200 M users, 110 M tweets per day
- Flickr 5 billion images
- LinkedIn: 50 M users

MY COMMENT: NO CITATION FOR THESE STATS

Social Media facts and stats on Facebook:
- 350 M users in 2010, 640 M in 2011
- half login daily
- 65 M people login on mobile devices
- 700 M business accounts
- Users 55-64 increase 88% in 2010
- most users are 18-35
- 30 Billion pieces of content uploaded monthly
- Average person spent 20 min per day on Facebook in 2010, 1.5 M posts, 2.7 M pics uploaded
- 1 in 5 couples met online, 1 in 5 divorces are blamed at least in part on Facebook
- more than 70% of Internet users today are on Facebook
- would be the 3rd largest country in the world

Constructive Uses of social media
- communication
- friendship
- relationship building
- pictures, grandkids

Destructive Uses
- identity theft (friend in Edmond shared too much)
- invasion of privacy
- bullying
- professional liability
- professional consequence

I want to share info for you to consider and prepare

We tend to oversimplify that of which we don’t understand
- we want and need teachers, parents, kids and others to be protected

Social Media in the News
- article from Cohasset, Massachusetts, April 2010: “Teacher Loses Job After Commenting About Students, Parents on Facebook”
- I’m not saying the district was right to fire this teacher for this FB wall post, but it IS reality

“Jerry Buell, Florida High School Teacher, Suspended For Anti-Gay Facebook Posts” (Aug 2011)
- teacher was reinstated

“Court rules against Ashley Payne in Facebook case. But more to come.”
- this case still in court: teacher posted picture of herself of vacation in Europe at the Guiness Brewery, and district officials fired her

There can be unintended consequences to sharing Facebook images as a teacher…

Fox News Oct 2010: “Teachers Fired For Flirting on Facebook With Students”

Missouri passed law that teachers couldn’t friend students (“Missouri Law: Teachers and Students Can’t Be Facebook Friends“)
- this law was overturned on appeal

Case law is all over the place on these issues

if you are a friend with a student on Facebook and they post things about problems, you can be held liable for that
- if victim can prove “school environment had been altered for them, staff should have been aware, more…)

MY THOUGHT: THE MAIN THING THAT HAS BEEN COMMUNICATED SO FAR IS THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE AS WELL AS SCHOOLS HAVE ACTED CAPRICIOUSLY WHEN IT COMES TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Cyberbullying Research Center: www.cyberbullying.us
- Sameer Hunduja and Justin Patchin (2010)
- over 50% of kids are using Facebook

Cyberbullying Victimization statistics, cyberbullying by gender (girls are more likely to be victims than boys)

“Another ingredient in the stew we are cooking”
- depression and sexual activity: sexual active boys are much more likely to be depressed than girls
- stats for attempted suicide

What does this mean: Take sexually active, depressed kids….

Cyberbullying victims are twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to youth who had not experienced cyberbullying
- there is a lot of hurting going on out there that many adults are naive about

The cost
- Phoebe Prince, killed herself
- Jessica Logan forwarded a nude photo of herself to her boyfriend, she went on a crusade to try and stop others from repeating (hung herself at school)
- Ryan Halligan story (2003) become friends with a bully and spread photos around school that he was gay, he committed suicide

Of almost all the research I did on these issues, almost every case had a sexual aspect to it

Phoebe Prince’s lawsuite was settled for $225,000
- in Cincinnati the board and many others were

These parents and grandparents have holes in their heart which won’t heal
- lives changed forever
- photo of six kids charged with felonies from the yearbook, and then in court

“One wonders if these kids were taught anything about digital citizenship and how to be good people”

I want to play some video clips to lighten the mood now
- example of car fire video and story

Now story of “Social Media and Forever Consequences”
- showing photos of inappropriate photos posted on Facebook

MY COMMENT: I REALLY DON’T THINK IT IS APPROPRIATE OR NECESSARY TO SHOW THESE KINDS OF PHOTOS AT A PUBLIC CONFERENCE.

You want to see why I don’t release YouTube in my district, this is why:
- I searched on YouTube for “girlfriend dancing” and it’s the 2nd clip
- this is why I don’t let anyone (teachers or students) access YouTube in my school district

[Colin showed strip tease video from YouTube]

I know where you live and now I know if you’re home…. (geo-tagged photos)
- people can go rob your house when they see you’re not there

Now showing examples of business liability
- if you see people write “Ford lied” you could make a name for yourself suing that person for Ford

Digital citizenship is a must’
- we need to teach it and practice it ourselves
- this is the tip of the iceberg, I’ve looked at thousands of Facebook pages, I’m so tired of looking at Facebook pages

We need to teach this in such a way that we don’t give kids access to Facebook at school
- it’s not about where to point and click, it’s about decorum and teaching kids about right and wrong

poor decision making and naiveté are the biggest problems we have with kids when it comes to social media
- don’t take or let others take embarrassing photos
- don’t argue online

I didn’t coin “Social media access at school is like sponsoring a dance but not chaperoning”
- if you say it’s about supervising: try supervising kids who have access to labs everywhere… I don’t have the staff for that
- I can’t afford to pay someone to watch where kids go online and what they do all day long

We need to teach kids about images
(showed disrespectful photo about the U.S. President)

We need to teach kids to be careful about what they put online
- this is your digital footprint

1:1 and BYOD advice:
- control Internet access (we already have enough problems with kids being on Facebook on lab computers, in my wife’s school the superintendent had to issue an edict to tell teachers not to post to Facebook during school hours, because patrons)
- violations of acceptable use policy (district can be held liable, if you have Facebook open for kids you have huge liability)
- social media is not designed for instruction

We have a digital locker system at our school, our kids can get to their work from any computer on or off campus

Policy is what drives the bus
- do not ‘friend’ current students until they have graduated except family and church members
- consider unfriending students you’ve friended
- don’t establish academic Facebook pages
- established academic Facebook pages: set all security settings at maximum, provide login credentials to building administration

Some issues parents are upset about could be addressed when administrators can login and see what is happening
- if a parent chooses to come against you for an alleged offense

Do not associate your Academic Pages with the district
- don’t use your work email account to setup a Facebook page

Don’t lure the lines between teacher and student
Be cautious
Don’t post during work hours
Develop digital citizenship initiatives for students

“The intent of this is not to put the thumb on anyone”
- my superintendent asked me to do this, since sharing this presentation all teachers have stopped asking for access to Facebook

I told my staff I’m doing this to protect you, and encourage you to separate personal and professional pursuits

Be careful and watch out for the kids
- we want to protect you

Make decisions based on information from multiple perspectives

“I cannot have something on my network which I cannot control, because I have responsibility for this network”
- be careful using these free things in the cloud, don’t rely upon them as you main conduit for information and communication

Story about a nearby district: Parent called about their child who has created an adult personna online and must have done it at school… tech director produced a report of that child’s Internet activity for the past month and could prove she hadn’t created those pages at school
- “if that district had Facebook open, they wouldn’t be able to control that”

Email: cwebb [at] nobleps [dot] com

Comment from Jeff Herbel, Enid Public Schools
- Enid encourages teachers to use academic Facebook pages and set them up with their district email
- Enid uses a lot of curriculum materials from Common Sense Media for digital citizenship lessons

Technorati Tags: encyclomedia, otaem12, schools, facebook, safety, colin, webb, noble

Face the Facebook: Implications and Consequences for Educators Using Social Media by Colin Webb originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2012.

Never before have the walls of our classrooms been so transparent. The Internet- digital cameras- audio recorders- editing software- and an emerging global conversation are combining to redefine the classroom. This presentation will expose participants to a range of wizardry for capturing and cooking digital content for teaching and learning. (a longer description is available here: http://goo.gl/YABIK)

Arithmetic plays a central part in our digital landscape

This presentation is different from my normal ‘linear’

We live in an information environment of sharing

One of the best things you can walk away from this conference is a group of people you can keep asking questions from

going to start with video
- starting with a video clip of a bird flying away after being perched on a ledge
- can turn on AV controls to make it play at half speed
- so this can make some things which were INVISIBLE now VISIBLE
- we can even (in some cases) make things that didn’t exist, exist!

There’s no problem with you seeing me struggle up here / relearn and learn how to do something
- your students will be fine seeing you struggle with things, and helping in that process

My expectation today isn’t that you’ll walk out of here knowing how to do all these things
- I want you to better understand that because information is made of 1′s and 0′s, it’s something you and I can manipulate and transform!

Basic skill now: look for tutorials on YouTube about different topics

example video David’s son made reversing a clip of tearing up a cup

Images:
- many of us are now walking around with cameras in our pockets

showing examples of images of things in motion/flight that are captured in amazing ways

now showing examples of HDR images in Flickr from his set “Post Processed”

iPhone app recc from David to transfer photos from an iPhone over to your computer: Wifi Photo Transfer

Pixelmator (I used to use PhotoShop Elements, but it takes a long time to load)
- using a similar pixels selection tool and varying the tolerance to remove the background

Intellectual property owners may be less likely to plagiarize the works of others

now using Audacity and showing how to do some basic audio editing
- recorded some sample audio
- using findsounds.com to import some audio files

American Memories project has all the past issues of “Stars and Stripes” from WWII

Many Eyes is a data visualization tool from IBM
- showing the “phrase net” tool
- shows relationships between words

Tag clouds are an example of tools that let us learn about ourselves NOT Through the media and publishing industry, but rather through tools we can manage and manipulate

TwitScoop is the coolest thing on the net! (alternate Twitter client that

iPad Music app reccs from David:

Music Studio (for music making – $15)
miniSynth ($2)
Virtuoso Piano Pro Classic (99¢)
NLog MIDI Synth ($5)
PocketGuitar (99¢)
MiniPiano (free)
Drum Meister Grand ($2)
Sylo Synthesiser (free)
iSequence ($5)
Rockmate (great for making music together! $3)
Pocket Organ C3B3 ($3)

Technorati Tags: creativity, david, education, ipad, otaem12, warlick, dwarlick

Harnessing the Digital Landscape by David Warlick originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2012.

Is it hard to get your teachers excited about attending training? Do they dread PD Day in your district? Join this session to hear how Yukon Public Schools changed the face of their PD model by implementing some foundational strategies and introducing an ‘Un?Conference’ Conference Model.

I AUDIO RECORDED THIS SESSION WITH PERMISSION USING THE FREE IPAD APP CINCH, IT’S EMBEDDED BELOW:

Today we will try and communicate our evolving model of professional development

we call it the ‘un-conferenced-conference model’

the problems:
- teachers are unmotivated to attend PD
- teachers didn’t see the relevance to sessions
- negative feedback

The needs of the district and teachers need to converge
- we want to change the face of PD in Yukon (change perceptions / opinions / and offerings)
- build a relevant PD program

This is hard because the district always has new initiatives: New hardware, Baldrige training, etc…

Does Your Professional Event Suffer from Boring Conference Syndrome?

We had lots of past experience with large-group, motivational speakers
- those “touchy-feely presentations” don’t appeal to everyone
- everyone’s needs are different

Someone said: “we need to go back to site-based PD”
- team building / true colors / etc.
- we have been stuck in this rut for about 2 years

From participants:

OKCPS elementary schools are implementing a new core curriculum program, all teachers have to be trained in the next two years
- 12 trainers, training after school for 35 schools
- after school, teachers getting stipends
- many teachers are resistant
- trainers are not getting together and collaborating much since the start of term

Crescent Public Schools is continuing its ‘de-regulation model’ of PD where students get out at 2 pm on Wednesdays, and teachers stay from 2-4 for PD

Some districts having problem providing ‘just in time’ PD which is needed on Friday PD days because the schedule for the year is defined/determined at the start of the year

Self-Determination Theory by Deci and Ryan: To make something intrinsic from a motivational standpoint, we need:
- autonomy
- competence
- relatedness

This theory has driven our PD model for Yukon PS

“Have you noticed Accelerated Reader doesn’t follow this model?”

The Program… Now!
- goals: encourage ongoing learning

we had a money crunch in our district which prohibited teacher travel, so all our PD was site-based

now this semester we’ve brought in Wes Fryer as an instructional coach, working 1 on 1 and in small groups with teachers on their planning times focusing on common core integration

our individual and campus goals can’t sit outside the overall goals of the district (these goals need to be in alignment)

‘CHOICE is the main thing our teachers want when it comes to professional development’

Providing choices is a mindset change for teachers
- this changes who is responsible for PD
- we are not taking responsibility for other people’s learning in the way we’ve traditionally done it
- we encourage students to take ownership and responsibility for their own learning, we need to do the same thing with teachers and teacher PD

When we mandate training for teachers, we turn off the learning for many teachers
- by offering choice, it’s up to teachers to to build their own learning

Results: 83% (426 of 512 employees) are opting out of the PD day coming up in February because they already got training through different ways
- teachers can go work in their room that day instead of going to PD that day

We are not paying teachers for PD choice, but it is

It makes us sad when teachers don’t want to go to PD
- We know everyone doesn’t feel that way
- so we have to get our message out, and the ‘carrot’ was important for this

Another key: we don’t keep track of teachers’ points
- teachers are professionals
- “I am a professional, treat me like one”
- we are working on modeling this

We now encourage our principals to make faculty meets into PD, several are doing book studies
- they are not reading announcements anymore
- this also means PD for the administration
- we highly encourage our administrators to participate in PD

Next: we are working on focusing on pedagogy, practice and process
- what are the qualities and processes of good educational process

We need to move away, as much as we can as schools, from the model of ‘we bought a new product, now lets to get trained on it’
- teachers need training on how these different things ‘fit’ into our teaching and learning

We are already collaborating with other districts, and want to explore other possibilities for collaboration

Technorati Tags: development, oklahoma, otaem12, pd, professional, yukon, yukonps

Look at Me Now! Changing the Face of Professional Development originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2012.

Our next meet-up will be Tuesday, March 6th from 6-7 pm at The Div. (Register for free via Eventbrite) Last night we were NOT able to webstream live because of hardware reconfigurations at The Div, but we will be able to for March. If your schedule permits, come for our iPad App chat in person next month and plan to stay for the “Social About Social” at the Div which starts afterward at 7.

Technorati Tags: app, edmond, ipad, okc, oklahoma, meetup

Learning About Notetaking on the iPad at @thedivorg via @ipadwithwes originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2012.

Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing
resources: wfryer.me/improve
description: Interested in helping students become better readers, writers, and critical thinkers? We need to “play with media” to become more effective communicators and improve our media literacy skills as both learners and citizens. As you learn to play with digital text, images, audio and video, you will communicate more creatively and flexibly with a wider variety of options. Author and educator Wesley Fryer will inspire and empower you, as a creative person, to expand your personal senses of digital literacy and digital agency as a multimedia communicator!
Session audio:

(The slides I used today for this session were the same as those I shared in Yukon PS last month)

Creating MultiMedia eBooks
resources: wfryer.me/ebooks
description: Learn how to create enhanced/multimedia eBooks including digital text, hyperlinks, images, and embedded videos. In addition to using Apple Pages software (part of iWork) participants will learn how to use Calibre software (free and cross-platform) to convert multimedia documents into a variety of eBook formats.
Session Audio:

All my session resources are available in a single PDF which I handed out today, these are linked on this post from last week. Here’s the PDF link on Google Docs. The one link I wrote on the back of my handout is okedushare.org.

Technorati Tags: education, oklahoma, otaem12, technology

Recorded Audio & Resources from my #otaem12 Presentations Today originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 7, 2012.

Discover how easy it is to Standards Map the Common Core State Standards to lesson plans- curriculum- instruction- and learning. Why Standards Map? It documents not only WHAT standard is aligned to a specific lesson- test item- or instructional strategy- but also the specific content (nouns)- skills (verbs)- level of rigor (Bloom Level)- I?Can statement- Big Idea- and Essential Question. It’s alignment with rigor!

teachers will have to use the library in different ways under Common Core State Standards
- requires collaboration between teachers to require different kinds of collaboration

www.alcaweb.org
- curriculum threads standards

We have created a 14 foot long wall poster that is the reading common core (MY COMMENT: WHEN I ASKED GARY FOR THE LINK TO THIS MAP, HE SAID ONLY PAYING CUSTOMERS WITH REGISTRATION CODES AND LOGIN ACCOUNTS CAN ACCESS ANY OF THE RESOURCES HE’S SHARING TODAY.

Wouldn’t it be nice if students in older grade levels could create curriculum and materials for use by younger students
- wouldn’t it be nice for students to create and save artifacts of their learning which can be maintained year-to-year?

If you don’t do these things, it is going to be a LOT harder to implement the CCSS

Need to be able to assess how students can use a skill in ‘unpredictable ways’
- for the past 16 years we have been dumbing down students, because we have been focusing mostly on lower level skills

We (ALCA) have been doing research for years, we are driven purely by research, not whether we make money or create a product that sells
- “we are like Steve Jobs who built a computer in his own garage, we are doing it our own way”
- we’ve been doing this since 1997
- the problem up to this point is the system wasn’t in place for school districts, with carrots and sticks

“I can tell you this for sure, the Common Core isn’t ever going to go away”

How many reading standards in CCSS K-12?

This is the ‘traditional’ CCSS curriculum map for Algebra I in the U.S. developed by www.alcaweb.org. (MY COMMENT: I’M WONDERING WHY IT IS HELPFUL TO VIEW THIS, IN THIS ZOOMED OUT FORMAT?)

Standards mapping is two things:
1- unwrapping or unpacking: breaking standard apart so you can get all the information out of it, so kids / parents / teachers can relate to it
2- ‘wrapping it back’ around test items, a lesson plan, a website you found

MY COMMENT: THIS STEP 2 IS CONNECTING THE ‘UNWRAPPED STANDARDS’ TO LEARNING TASKS FOR STUDENTS

Whatever you do, you have to be able to unpack the standards as a teacher

MY COMMENT AND IDEA: I ASKED GARY HOW MUCH IT COSTS FOR A SCHOOL DISTRICT TO GET ACCESS TO ALL ITS ‘UNPACKED CCSS STANDARDS.’ HE SAID HE DIDN’T WANT TO GET INTO PRICING TODAY. I’M THINKING THIS IS A CRITICAL QUESTION. IT’S ALSO AN IDEA FOR A COLLABORATION AMONG OKLAHOMA DISTRICTS. AS WE HAVE TEACHERS UNPACK STANDARDS, WHY DON’T WE HAEV THOSE DOCUMENTS SHARED OPENLY AS PUBLIC GOOGLE DOCS? THEN ANYONE COULD UTILIZE AND BUILD ON THOSE PRODUCTS? I’M SEEING AN AMAZING AMOUNT OF WORK THAT ALCA HAS DONE UNPACKING THESE STANDARDS, BUT I’M THINKING THERE ARE GREAT OPPORTUNITIES HERE FOR SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO OPENLY LICENSE (WITH CREATIVE COMMONS) THEIR OWN ‘UNPACKED STANDARDS’ FOR ANYONE TO USE.

Larry Ainsworth is the ‘father of unpacking’
- no one of the planet has done this… what I am about to show you
- it takes a lot of time and work to unpack standards

Where does the vocabulary list for this come from?

Columns for the ALAWEB unwrapping:
1 Content
- relevant information
- paraphrased information
- List
2 Skills
- recall
- gather
- summarize / paraphrase
- provide
3 Learning Targets
- I can…. statements
4 Big Ideas
5 Essential Questions

You never want to show a student “the big ideas”

Teachers on the east coast particularly will put the ‘big ideas’ and ‘essential questions’ on the wall, so at the end of the day the teacher can point to them and ask students to describe/discuss how those were addressed in our activities of the day

Wiggins and others have done the research and found: If you don’t tie learning students are doing to a ‘global concept’ that a student can relate to forever, s/he is NOT going to remember it
- must tie to a global set of knowledge

Students must use all four: reading, writing, speaking, listening
- kids are using four different parts of their brain, so they have a greater opportunity to burn it to long term memory

“Measurement and Data standard goes away in CCSS math standards after grade 5″

There are about 200 school districts in OKlahoma who are members and now actively contributing to these databases of resources
- schools retain ownership over materials created from a legal standpoint
- we hope schools share their products

I’M WONDERING IF ALCA PERMITS SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO SPECIFICALLY LICENSE THEIR UNPACKED STANDARDS UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS AND SHARE THEM ON THE OPEN, VERSUS THE CLOSED WEB?

My brother is the science coordinator in Enid, now I’m going to copy a benchmark test they created
- I am using a ‘room key’ as a password to access this
“sdMev”
- use that room code to import that ‘virtual room’ in our ‘learning community management system’ (more than Moodle, you can document TLE in an assessment way, not an evaluation way – teachers can self-assess, create smart goals. Also teams can do action research on specific competencies or skills)

I’m going to show you know how you can wrap an unpacked standard around a test item
- teachers are going to have to document how they are teaching
- this process allows for documentation of teacher instruction, as well as student learning
- using rubrics for formative assessment, tests, also other strategies

Story of an Ag teacher who is using iPads with students to assess how they showed sheep at a stock show
- students can do similar things with water quality data
- in lower grades, students have to participate in research
- need to engage students up and down grade levels

Most important takeaway today was shared by
- every system there will let you connect it to a standard, and then it’s ‘magically aligned’
- the level of rigor in terms of alignments with other tools (not ours) is too shallow
- systems that just let you attach a standard create too much grey area for a principal to talk to a teacher, or teachers to talk to a teacher
- those systems are always open to interpretation when we ask, “how is this aligned?”
- “most systems just link”

With the CCSS you need to assess two or more standards in every question

Right now we are doing leadership retreats and workshops with school administrators
- working with superintendents as well as principals
- all of them have to work with TLE

We created this for Oklahoma Career Tech, we call it Professional Development
- we don’t know yet if we
- it will be a personal learning network for students

Schools start with ePASS, Dibbles, anything, our system can ingest anything
- “our system never requires help from your IT department, we do it all”
- “we prefer to do the [student test score result] importing, because Pearson isn’t known for providing ‘clean’ data”

We are going to have science institutes, and have science teachers create content
- ‘we are going to Missouri next’
- we want Oklahoma to be a national model for this

“We paid 5 or 6 people to unpack all the CCSS standards last summer. We think individual teachers should only unpack 1 or 2 standards, it’s very time consuming.”

MY CLOSING COMMENT: I ASKED GARY IF THEY LICENSE ACCESS TO THEIR SYSTEM ON A PER SEAT BASIS, AND HE SAID YES. IT LOOKS LIKE HE WANTS SCHOOLS TO EMBRACE THEIR PROPRIETARY SYSTEM AS A COMPREHENSIVE LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (LMS) WHICH WOULD REPLACE MOODLE, BLACKBOARD, ETC. I AM VERY GLAD TO HEAR GARY SHARE THIS INFO, I WANT TO LEARN MORE. I’M CONCERNED THAT OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS ARE NOT BEING CURRENTLY ENCOURAGED BY ANYONE (APPARENTLY) TO OPENLY SHARE AND LICENSE UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS UNPACKED CCSS AS WELL AS LESSONS.

Sign up for the ALCA sacking [at] alcaweb [dot] org

Standards Mapping the Common Core to Everyday Instruction and Teaching originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 7, 2012.

First from hearing from Colin Webb:

today we’ll address policy, copyright, email/IM, voicemail, cell phones, Internet, social networking

There are lots of legal ramifications to these digital devices in our schools
- we want to give you some important things to consider

Importance of Policy: who’s got your back?
- we tend to not get very excited about policy

3 lessons today:
1- policy = protection
- some people view policy as stifling to creativity
- it allows protection for us to do our job, we look for things which we need protection for
- once you have policy in place, please follow it (you’ll make everyone happier)
- it will eliminate some of your liability
- if we have a policy but ignore it in certain cases, that is worst-case for a lawsuit

Copyright
- All’s Fair in Educational Copying? Really?
- fair use was crafted long before electronic media
- citing section 107 of copyright law
- “lifting part of works for a limited context”

“the crux of copyright law application: deprivation of profit and loss of control”

examples: pirated movies, audio, software
- public performance
- commercial use

example: high school talent show when you’ve charged admission
- if you commit that to DVD and sell them for $15 each, then you’ve publicly performed my song without my permission for that royalty

loss of control examples
- cartoons used for advocacy (people who are re-purposing something that the original author disagrees with)
- substantial alteration of content (fine line for definition of ‘parody’)
- you don’t know where that fine line often

2002 TEACH Act was an improvement on fair use
- specifically focused on distance learning

2005: DMCA prohibits circumvention of electronic copy protection

You can play a movie relevant to your curriculum, you can’t play a movie for entertainment
- you can make an archival copy, you can’t distribute copies

“Disney is notorious for defending their copyrights and they will sue your district.”

Copyright: Transformative Argument
- “as long as the work is transformed, it is fair use”
- determined on a case-by-case basis, no clear-cut rule
- this argument has been made and both successfully and unsuccessfully

‘At the ISTE conference several years ago, I heard a presenter say this means educators and students can do whatever you want, it will be sorted out in court if it is challenged’
- that is bad advice

MY COMMENT: I ASKED COLIN WHO THE PRESENTER AT ISTE WAS WHO SAID THIS. HE SAID IT WAS SOMEONE FROM ANOTHER SCHOOL DISTRICT. I WANT TO FOLLOW UP ON WHO THAT PERSON WAS SPECIFICALLY. THESE ARE THE KIND OF ‘STORIES’ ABOUT COPYRIGHT WHICH NEED TO BE VALIDATED AND CITED SPECIFICALLY.

“I call taking someone else’s work and transforming it plagiarism”
- err on the side of caution

This just in!
- 18 Jan 2012: Supreme Court ruled (6-2) on Material in public domain is not in “territory that works may never exit”

Case: International Copyright. Congress has power to move works in PD back to protected (1994)
- HG Wells, Igor Stravinsky

Now hearing from Glen Hammonds:

Records: Nothing lasts forever? Don’t bet on it!
- Freedom of Information Act
- Oklahoma Open Records Act

Governmental tort claim act protects people when they are doing things in the scope of their employment, this applies for school teachers

1 Definition of a record, for Open Records Act
- 51 O.S. 2011, 24A.3

‘Record’ means all documents, including, but not limited to, any book, paper, photograph, microfilm, data files created by or used with computer software, computer tape, disk, record, second recording, film recording, video record or other material regardless of physical form…

First point: don’t be afraid of an open records request you receive as a school employee, these are common and will continue

Every document in a school is not a public record, but we need to look at this definition

MY COMMENT: THE LONG URL ON THIS SCREEN IS A PERFECT PLACE TO SHARE/USE A URL SHORTENER AS WELL… URL IS FAR TOO LONG TO TYPE…

The problem with emails, corporate America finds it very easy to archive everything (all that goes out or comes in)
- in schools, we don’t have to do that

Search fees: when are they allowable?
- “if the reuest is solely for commercial purpose, or would clearly cause excessive disruption of the essential functions of the public body”
- this doesn’t mean you can’t charge for the document, it means there can’t be a ‘search fee’ to go find something

law says you get reasonable time to respond to requests, good idea is to talk directly to requesters and find out exactly what they want / are looking for (their request may be broader than they need)

If you have a superintendent who conducts much of his business with board members with his personal email account, then his email records are definitionally open records
- this is not a question of access, it is a question of whether someone files an open records request

Citing law on “school-business electronic communications on privately owned electronic devices”

Penalties for Open Record Act violation
- violation is misdemeanor, up to 1 year in jail, visiting days are usually on Thursdays
- I don’t encourage you to take the ‘asking forgiveness’ path as people sometimes encourage in education

Question from the audience: What is my responsibility as a district tech director if someone seeking an open record request for a teacher’s personal email account if they conduct business with it
- indivdiuals can

Question from an audience participant who says “We’ve chosen not to archive email in our district. Is that OK?”
- answer: There is an attorney general opinion that says schools should follow state law, you need to follow law and your policy
- there can be policies for keeping emails for 30 days, you need to determine what policy you’ll have in place
- there are requirements for keeping financial records for a long time
- there is not an exact answer about how long you must keep a document (depends on what the document is, plus your local policy)

Email privacy / IM privacy

There is no right to privacy on school district on email systems
- school district owns the system, the employee does not

For me (Colin Webb) as a tech director, for me to retrieve an email from an employee’s account the superintendent must sign off on that request (campus principals can’t, our policy specifies it must be escalated to the level of the superintendent)

multiple subjects: try to separate them because of discovery
- an open records investigation can bring up unrelated issues

Acceptable Use Policy

Ramifications

I tell my teachers NOT to vent with email: “speaking into the air” does not create a public record

Say it with me: “Protect Your Password”
- don’t give others your password

I FOUND THESE ARTICLES AFTER GLEN REFERENCED SOME RECENT NEWS IN OKLAHOMA REGARDING SCHOOL PASSWORD ISSUES:

“Tulsa Public Schools starts search for new athletic director” (27 Jan 2011)

During an interview with a school district attorney, Spring and assistant athletic directors Latricia Pruitt and Jon Wheeler reportedly disclosed that they had accessed Murphy’s e-mails – not her business account – “using a password they had located within Ms. Murphy’s vacated office.” Pruitt was suspended but has since been reinstated. After termination proceedings had started against Wheeler, he agreed last week to resign in exchange for being paid the remainder of his annual salary and benefits. Murphy was initially reinstated, but was terminated in December after she failed to report to new assignments she was given in August and September.

“Tulsa Schools, suspended assistant AD Wheeler make resignation agreement” (18 Jan 2012)

During an interview with a school district attorney, Spring, Pruitt and Wheeler reportedly disclosed that they had accessed Murphy’s personal emails – not her business account – “using a password they had located within Ms. Murphy’s vacated office.”

Always and Forever (email can be forever)

Private Accounts
- can be a problem when people forward their Facebook to district email

Voice Mail
- it creates a record
- you need a policy about this

Recording law in Oklahoma: as long as 1 party knows things are being recorded, you can legally record
- had a recent example where a parent recorded an administrator “unloading” on them, that made News0 later

Cell Phones: who pays? who owns?
- IRS no longer requires individuals to pay a percentage of cell phone costs if you use a cell phone partly for personal use
- regardless of who owns the account and who pays, it is still subject to open records if you create a text, IM, anything else
- you are creating a digital track’

Be aware of geo-tagging of images, those include information about where you were when you took the photo

Filtering policy
- tell your friends not to email you inappropriate messages and images (NSF = not safe for work)
- beware of political emails during election cycle

Social networking sites
- we’ll take more about this tomorrow

There is some consequence for having social media interactions between students and schools

Layshock V Hermitage School District 2007-2012
- student create fake MySpace page of principal, Court rules school could not discipline student. (SC declined)

Doniger V Niehoff 2008-2011:
- Student Avery …

2 cases of teachers
- Mount Dora, Florida: Teacher of the year suspended for anti-gay marriage posts on personal Facebook page, re-instated 4 days later
- Barrow County, GA: Ashley Payne fired for posting picture of herself holding a beer on Facebook when she was vacationing in Germany (school fired her for setting a bad example by drinking)

Can You Do That? Legal Issues in Tech Administration #otaem12 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 7, 2012.

Master learners today and master teachers must model lifelong learning
- that is one of the best ways to develop students who are lifelong learners

Handouts / backchannel archive from David’s presentations: (these are the same site, the first points to the second)
colearners.idave.us
http://davidwarlick.com/colearners

Links from today’s session: http://davidwarlick.com/colearners/?p=426

David is using his own Twitter site that also lets people share resources: http://knitterchat.com
- I will archive this conversation, and add comments/feedback
- this models how our conversations should extend beyond this F2F moment

20th century education was defined by its limits
21st century education must be defined by its lack of limits

Calculators were introduced when I started teaching, it was going to be ‘the gift to last a lifetime

I taught in an information scarce learning environment
- the pedagogues I learned college were based on that model
- over 2.5 million images uploaded PER DAY to Flickr alone

Interesting question: what are the pedagogies of information abundant learning environments
- when you have access to this world, what are the best learning strategies?

We have access to a billion people, almost 300 billion pieces of new information
- this access is part of the culture of young people

We could not have predicted this in the early 1970s when I started teaching as a history teacher

I’m going to jump ahead to my conclusion: I think we should stop integrating technology and start integrating literacy
- what should kids learn today is how to teach themselves

Literacy: reading what someone you trust hands to you?
- now we have WikiPedia

Stories about WikiPedia
- highlighting warnings on different WikiPedia about accuracy, bias, etc.

Basic literacy skills today are discerning

We must expand our notions of what it means to be literate today
- can you expose what is true in the information

My kids can Google, but can they find information with Google that is appropriate to the learning task
- being able to find it, decode it, evaluate it, conceptualize, and organize

Today online we’re not working with a few numbers, we can be working with thousands of numbers

Sources of raw data from David’s Landmark project website
- specifically looking at ANSS to get earthquakes since 2004 with magnitude over 4
- this renders a data set with time, lat, long, magnitude, etc
- copy all those numbers
- in this example there are about 10,000 numbers
- now I can copy these into a free spreadsheet from OpenOffice.org

Paste Data in
- pastes into first column
- select first column
- select TEXT TO COLUMNS
- choose fixed width
- now I can define each column, hid those I don’t need
- now I get a spreadsheet
- latitude needs to be on the right with open office
- make an XY scatterplot

What you are looking at here is history
- I used skills to make those numbers tell their story
- isn’t that what math is all about?

but now we have invisible numbers
- when I grew up we just learned about abstract numbers in math class
- now text, images, sound, video, animation, are all made out of numbers

Now we’ll go to Words of Humankind from the Landmark Project
- US Presidential Addresses
- use TagCrowd to make a tag cloud, this can empower that text to better tell its story

I used carry an Oxygen* keyboard, it’s not a musical instrument, it’s designed to generate numbers and my computer
- David sharing a song he made with Intuem software

We all have a story to tell, we all have something to teach

New record for information transfer: 186 gigabits per second (Dec 2011)
- what can you and your students do with that quantity of information?!

MY THOUGHT: WE’RE OVERWHELMED WITH TMI ALREADY, AS DAVID POINTS OUT THE KEY IS FILTERING AND USING

information competes for our attention, just like products on the school shelf competed for our attention historically in our classrooms
- our kids need to
- not just the ability to write a coherent paragraphs, our goal should be expressing ideas compellingly to a real audience

Shared a video from SFETT 2011 which has been seen in at least 23 different countries, and the girl who made the video has been contacted by the CEOs
- music communicates powerfully

Much of what I’m talking about today are things I believe
- Any school today that thinks it can teach children to be literacy

Now discussing SPAM: Spam cost the world $50 billion in 2005, cost doubled in 2007
- yet the Copenhagen group estimates we could solve HIV/AIDS worldwide for $27 billion

Learning and Literacy today is exposing what is true, employing information, expressing ideas compellingly, ethically, generously

Conclusion: Redefine literacy so it reflects today’s prevailing information environment
- digital tools are the paper and pencil of our time

How do we do this? It starts with us!
- it can be scary but you can do it

Now telling story about my senior English teacher from 1969

Today the world is the curriculum
- our information landscape has changed, and our kids are different

We will have obtained a transformation of education when we no longer have teachers who believe they can teach the same thing, the same way, each day / month / year
- anything less than that is just

It is having access to today’s prevailing information landscape
- become information artisans and master learners

Now sharing blog setup after London bombings: We’re Not Afraid.com

When in history have people like you and I been able to whisper to the world something as powerful as, “We are not afraid?”

Technorati Tags: association, edtech, okc, oklahoma, otaem12, technology, learning, david, warlick

Visioning New Schools with David Warlick originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 7, 2012.

I want to talk to you about anywhere, anytime learning

Fundamental question: What is the value of a book?
- the glue binding and paper
- books have remained unchanged for about half a millennia
- the book is a medieval business model
- I have a soft spot for books, but I”m not afraid to embrace eBooks and their power to bring positive change to education

I can bring an entire library around in an eBook reader
- our kids are being exposed to this technology every day outside of the classroom, it’s time for it to make it into the classroom

We are moving into “The Great Tech War of 2012″ (per
- Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple
- fighting for marketshare for eBook
- Facebook going public
- Apple now offering iBooks platform
- this is good news
- disruptive technology is going exponential
- what used to take years now takes months

Smartphones and tablets are now ubiquitous
- broadband is expanding
- free content is exploding
- digital natives in our classrooms have never known anything else

Tom VanderArk was our summer conference
- his new book is “Getting Smart”
- he said 10 years ago we passed a threshold in human history, now anyone can learn anything for free or cheap
- our calcified school system is giving way to a new digital world

new SDE summer conference will be Vision2020: June 12-15, 2012

Kahn Academy has had 80 million YouTube views with over 2000 free videos
- Sal Kahn is working with a California classroom on a flipped model
- Kahn Academy has sophisticated data and tracking tools
- Sal says we’re at an inflection point, it’s crazy that every other field is being revolutionized except education

MY COMMENT: I’M TIRED OF GENERALIZATIONS LIKE THAT, WE DEFINITELY HAVE SCHOOLS AND EDUCATORS IN OKLAHOMA DOING AN EXEMPLARY JOB EMBRACING THE DIGITAL LEARNING REVOLUTION, AND WE NEED TO BOTH CELEBRATE AND AMPLIFY THESE SCHOOLS AT EVENTS JUST LIKE THIS. FAILING TO DO SO PAINTS OUR STATE AS A FAILURE FOR DIGITAL LEARNING. THAT IS INACCURATE, NOT FAIR AND MISLEADING. CERTAINLY WE HAVE LOTS OF CHANGES TO MAKE, BUT WE ALSO HAVE MANY EDUCATORS, STUDENTS, AND SCHOOLS RIGHT HERE IN OKLAHOMA THAT WE NEED TO CELEBRATE. JUST AS SHE DID IN NOVEMBER 2011 AT ODLA, SUPERINTENDENT BARRESI SQUANDARED THAT OPPORTUNITY TODAY TO RECOGNIZE THE CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EDUCATORS AMONG US.

Last week we (Oklahoma SDE) announced a partnership with SASS Curriculum Pathways to offer thousands of free lesson plans to Oklahoma students
- also with Pangea Learning Inc. to provide supplemental tutoring services to 10,000 students statewide who are struggling to learn Algebra I skills
- also offering over 1400 digital files contributed from National Archives, LOC, NPR, NASA, National Institutes for Help
- web-based resources in ELA, Math, Science, Spanish, more for grades 6-12
- audio tutorials mapped to meet OKlahoma standards
- now this SASS Curriculum is going to be available free to Oklahoma learners

Pilot project with 16 high schools and 23 middle schools with Pangea Learning Inc.
- includes free teacher training to schools
- teachers will use this program as a supplement for Algebra I

In April we will convene a digital learning summit to write a document together
- we will use Digital Learning Council’s
- 3 organization: customization/success for all students, robust offering of high quality offers, robust infrastructure

MY COMMENT: IT IS SIGNIFICANT AND REGRETTABLE THAT “TEACHERS” ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THIS ORGANIZING FRAMEWORK

[end of notes]

Technorati Tags: library, media, oklahoma, otaem12, sde, technology, janet, barresi, association

Anywhere, Anytime Learning by Janet Barresi originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 7, 2012.

I called AT&T and after discussing this, they added a feature to our phone package called “Purchase Manager.” Sometimes this feature is called “Purchase Blocker,” in either event it’s FREE to add. I think it should be a default account feature. Classactionconnect.com has instructions about adding it via AT&T’s Wireless customer website. We’re not sure how this recurring $10 monthly charge was added to her bill, but it could have been an online recipe site which my wife visited or something else. Buried in the “terms of use” could have been verbiage saying “by clicking download” (or “agree”) you agree to pay $9.99 this month and every successive month for a confusing “Mobile Purchase” which will be buried on your phone bill and will be extremely difficult to find or decipher. One of the lessons learned here is: Don’t give out your cell phone number on ANY website. You never know what the website owner might choose to do with your information.

By adding “Purchase Manager” or “Purchase Blocker” to our AT&T wireless account, no third party entity will be able to add a purchase or subscription to our phone bill unless we, as cellular customers, log into our account and provide a four digit PIN to authorize that billing addition. This is similar to the feature some cable TV or satellite TV customers can add to “pay per view” programs, requiring a PIN to be entered so children don’t accidentally or intentionally make program purchases with the family’s remote control.

If you’re not with AT&T in the United States for your cellular service, check with your provider and see what they call this “feature.” This seems like something everyone should have by default on cell phone accounts.

Today the AT&T representative was very helpful and in addition to adding this free “Purchase Blocker” service, also entered refunds for the $9.99 charged to our account in January and in February by this scammer. A web search resulted in several pages (here and here) where other people reported this same scamming problem with “BULLROARE.” Hopefully you haven’t run into this in the past. In any event, try and add a free “Purchase Blocker” feature to your mobile account to hopefully prevent situations like this from cropping up in the future.

Technorati Tags: cell, phone, att, bullroare, sms, subscription, charge, fee, scam

Avoid Cellphone Text Messaging Scams with free Purchase Blocker Feature originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 6, 2012.

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A 1 page PDF flyer for iPad App Coffee Chats is available via Scribd.

FREE iPad App Coffee Chats

Technorati Tags: app, edmond, ipad, oklahoma

FREE iPad App Coffee Chats start Tuesday, February 7 in Edmond, Oklahoma originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 5, 2012.

A Ponca City mother is outraged. She says her son has been accessing pornography….on a laptop that was issued by the school….and she says school officials are partly to blame. “I was angry, I was really angry at first,” Judy Ferguson said. Judy found her teenage son watching pornography on his school laptop. “When I caught it I took the computer and turned it back in to the school,” Ferguson said.

Life is about choices, and students face a multitude of digital choices when they get online or connected with any device including a laptop, a phone, or other communication tool. This is one reason Oklahoma schools sending laptops home with students not only have parents sign an acceptable use agreement (AUP) addressing SHARED responsibility between parents, students and school officials for student use of technology equipment, they also hold parent training / information sessions when this specific issue is addressed. I’m not sure if Ponca City mother Judy Ferguson signed a form like that and attended an informational session about shared responsibility for student behavior on laptops, but she should have.

In the initial years of the Texas Immersion Pilot Project (TxTIP), I heard multiple stories from school officials about issues and incidents involving student access of pornography and inappropriate material. Any school employee involved in a 1:1 program knows this is an issue which must be addressed. The strange twist to this Ponca City Schools story was that school officials reportedly issued a laptop to the same student who previously got in trouble for accessing pornography right after Christmas break. Again according to the News4 article:

The Tech Director [of Ponca City Schools] said the software the school uses tracks every key stroke and they could see the student attempting to get into x-rated areas but their records show he was never able to access it. Ferguson became even more upset when the school gave her 9th grader another laptop after she requested he complete his assignments another way. School administrators admit that was a mistake. “When they came back from Christmas break inadvertently he was issued another laptop when that was discovered that second laptop was taken away,” Dr. David Pennington, Superintendent of Schools.

I’m wondering how school officials “inadvertently issued a laptop?” (I’m also wondering if they run key loggers on all school computers…) It would be great to see a school response with more information, background, and quotations on this than La’tasha Givins (the KFOR-TV reporter) provided for this article. It is reasonable to conclude the mother of the student saw her child accessing pornography at home: It is highly doubtful she would raise these embarrassing charges regarding her own son otherwise. Understanding this, the technology director’s response which denies inappropriate content was EVER accessed by the student on a school laptop seems unreasonable. Perhaps this was a misquote?

Responsibility for teen behavior when it comes to life online as well as offline lies primarily with the STUDENT. Yes, parents as well as educators share responsibility for guiding and supervising student actions. Ultimately, however, in our society we hold individuals responsible for their behavior rather than institutions. It would have been helpful (from a community education perspective) if reporter La’tasha Givins had provided some of this context. I’m not sure if school officials provided this or not.

When a high student chooses to have sex and gets pregnant, does the local TV affiliate run a segment blaming school officials? Hopefully not.

One takeaway from this article (and others like it which paint 1:1 laptop programs as evil / not worthwhile) is the importance of school officials “telling the story” of positive 1:1 learning impacts early, consistently, and through multiple media channels. In most school districts today, we have barely started to leverage the power of social media to ‘tell our story’ and communicate with parents as well as others in the community about the great things happening in our buildings each day. An example of why this is important is the result for a Google keyword search for “Ponca City laptop” today. Guess what link is the “non-promoted” search result #1?

A second takeaway is the importance of school officials using consistent language with students, parents, members of the community, and media when it comes to laptop learning. We must emphasize “digital citizenship” and the responsibilities which we share to help students learn to make good choices.

Should Ponca City School officials have been more careful to not issue Judy Ferguson’ son another laptop computer after the Christmas holiday, since his mom had specifically asked that he NOT work on a laptop to complete his assignments? Probably. (I say that conditionally since I’m sure there is ‘more to this story.’)

Should KOFR reporter La’tasha Givins have ignored the fact that Judy Ferguson’ son CHOSE to find and look at pornography on a laptop of any kind? Absolutely not. Too many people in our society want to ‘pass the buck’ when it comes to responsibility, and the primary people responsible for these “inappropriate content access actions” were the STUDENT and the PARENT.

Yes, teachers and school officials share responsibility for helping students learn and learn to make good choices. We don’t “pass the buck” entirely to parents and students for everything which happens during school and in some cases, even for things which happen after school. Schools DO bear some responsibility for helping inform and support “good choices with laptops” when they send them home with students. Ultimately, however, “the buck should stop” with the student and the parent when it comes to inappropriate website access at home.

I hope La’tasha Givins will investigate these issues further and write a follow-up article which provides more context for this situation and the people as well as organizations who are involved.

Technorati Tags: city, laptop, ponca, ethics, responsibility, parent

Don’t Blame School Officials if Your Child Chooses to Look at Porn on His Laptop originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 4, 2012.

Changing the cell formatting to wrap and fit was a little different from what I’ve done previously in Excel. There, as I recall I just right-clicked / control-clicked on a cell and then turned on “wrap.” For Numbers, it’s necessary to use the inspector panel and click the button “fit” next to row height.

If you use either of these CX debate flow templates and find them helpful, please let me know with a tweet or comment. Also, if you prefer a different format for flowing CX rounds using a digital spreadsheet please let me know about it. I definitely like transitioning to digital/green debate round flowing, but I’m also open to any suggestions for better ways to do it.

I used the Apple Support article “Displaying Content Too Large for Its Cell” to figure out the wrap/fit steps.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, debate, flow, excel, numbers, iwork, template, classen, classensas

Cross Examination Debate Flow Template for Numbers in iWork ’09 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 3, 2012.

The past three weeks I’ve facilitated lessons with about twelve different 6th, 7th and 8th grade students about storytelling and puppet movies. The first two weeks we used Puppet Pals on the iPad, and last week we used real finger puppets to make some short skit videos. We published some of our work from both weeks to the multimediasandbox YouTube channel. This has been a worthwhile but challenging series of lessons. See my January 19th post, “Lessons Learned Using Puppet Pals on iPads in an After School Program,” for more background. We haven’t created any masterpieces, but we have had fun discussing the story arc and making short videos which (generally) attempt to present a coherent message. 50 minutes isn’t a lot of time to have to create and share stories, but we’ve done the best we could with the time and resources available.

One of the primary things I’ve wrestled with as I’ve considered what to teach these students in “Life Skills” lessons involving the iPad is this: None of these students own iPads or have access to iPads at home. What kinds of things should I teach them which can have immediate relevance in their lives, as well as potential long term relevance? Sure we’ve had fun making some short videos with digital and actual puppets, but these activities aren’t things they can repeat on their own when I leave with the three iPads I’ve brought to class each day. I have had the privilege of being with Kevin Honeycutt in the past when he taught incarcerated, Kansas youth short lessons (on behalf of ESSDACK) and used art as a way to both “reach” them and have important discussions about life as well as learning. I’m no Kevin Honeycutt, I have very limited drawing skills, and the kids I’m teaching in “Tiger Club” definitely aren’t incarcerated youth… but a talk with him on the phone earlier this week motivated me to share a lesson with my students on the possibilities for becoming a digital artist.

I started the lesson today asking who liked to draw, who considered themselves artists, and who thought they were creative. I explained we ALL are artists and have creative skills, but not all of us think about ourselves that way. I asked about how long people have been creating drawings and telling stories, and we discussed how that goes back to “the cave.” As humans, some of us have always been driven to draw and share stories through art. It’s in our DNA.

I shared a story with the students about our Storychasers logo, which we outsourced via crowdSPRING. 99Designs is a similar web community for graphic artists and folks needing design work.

I explained how our Storychasers group received 147 design concepts (low resolution digital art drawings) of logo ideas from 43 different designers from around the world.

Eventually, we selected one we liked which turned out to be the work of a graphic designer in eastern Europe who lives in Zagreb, Croatia. One of the designers we initially considered was coincidentally based in Oklahoma, but we had problems with them providing higher resolution versions of the logo draft they’d made. It’s pretty amazing we paid someone $500 to make a logo for us who we never met and lives all the way across the Atlantic Ocean in another country! This is a real story of outsourcing and digital creativity, and I wanted to share it so my students would at least be exposed to the idea that digital artists can now access a world of work possibilities via the Internet. It doesn’t matter where you live: Creative skills are needed and marketable.

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I showed students on our printed as well as digital handout where they could access links to FREE digital art programs like the Gimp, that have similar features as Adobe PhotoShop that costs $700 to buy. Hopefully some of them will check it out and pursue some digital art creative possibilities on their own following our “Life Skills” class series.

I next introduced my students to the iPad app Brushes, and showed them several recent creations by my 8 year old daughter, Rachel.

I showed students how the iPad Brushes app lets us “replay” a video of how Rachel made these drawings, and I showed them some other amazing YouTube examples of iPad drawings using Brushes as well. We watched these and discussed the techniques the artists used.

At this point I need to give a hat tip to Marco Torres, who was the first person to share the Brushes app with me several years ago in Maine. Although I haven’t become an acknowledged digital artist with Brushes since I learned about it, I have both played with it and shared it with many people. This is a specific example of how the opportunity to meet and hang out with creative people (which Apple specifically facilitated in my life via various means) has been life changing. “But for” my very brief chances to hang with Marco and learn from him, I probably wouldn’t have been teaching my students about Brushes on the iPad today. “But for” my opportunities to hang out with Bob Sprankle, I would know far less about podcasting, webcasting, and iPhoneography. I tried to communicate this idea to my students today: If we want to learn how to do something, we need to hang out with other people who know how to do it well. That’s how a lot of learning happens. It’s a big reason we need to choose our friends carefully.

In addition to viewing these examples of digital art with Brushes today, I also showed students this video of art created with Autodesk SketchBook Pro for iPad.

Before handing out the iPads to students, I demonstrated the basics of drawing with Brushes using an AppleTV which mirrored my iPad2 screen. Next, I introduced students to the free “Art Snacks” online community facilitated by Kevin Honeycutt and explained they would be drawing a Great White Shark today. We had paper and pencils available, and students took turns drawing on the available iPads (3) as well as my iPhone which had the Brushes app loaded. I had one stylus which students used, but unfortunately broke (the tip came off) during the lesson. Together we watched Kevin’s “Artsnacks Great White Shark” video on YouTube. I paused it several times for students to compare drawings and add to their drawings. As Kevin had suggested to me, some of the kids were really into it and were loving the chance to learn some new art techniques. Others were less engaged, but since everyone could at least draw with paper and pencil this was a lesson that was “doable” by everyone.

Here are some examples of drawings we made in class. The last one is my own. It is risky and takes some courage to share your own art with others, especially when (like me) you’re not very confident in your own art skills. I think this is a good way to model both creativity and instructional risk taking with students, however. We learn the most when we are “stretched” out of our personal comfort zones, and these are times when we try new things that we’re not entirely comfortable doing.

This lesson provided some good opportunities to talk about “important stuff” with students in addition to digital art and drawing skills. When I asked the students what they thought of my drawing partway through Kevin’s video, one of them said, “That looks horrible!” We talked about how those words might make me feel, even though the student quickly said, “I was just kidding.” We talked about bullying, and how important and powerful the words we choose are. I talked about how there are far TOO MANY people in this world who “use their words” to hurt and inflict pain on others. I told the students I sometimes mess this up, but I try to use my words as much as I can to build others up and give them POWER instead of tearing them down.

I don’t know what lessons from today’s “digital art discussions” my students will remember, but we never do when we teach… do we? I felt better about today’s “Life Skills” lesson than I have all year, and I know a big reason the lesson was a success was I used resources provided by Kevin Honeycutt and Art Snacks. If you haven’t shown Art Snacks to your own students, DO IT soon. Not all the kids in any classroom love art and will want to learn more about making art, but chances are high SOME WILL.

Teach your students how to be digital artists, even if (like me) you don’t consider yourself to have very developed drawing skills. We are all creative, and we can all be artists. To be an artist, we have to CREATE things. We need to MAKE stuff. Today, we have lots of opportunities to play with media and not only share digital art, but also sell it on sites like crowdSPRING and 99designs. Share these possibilities with your students too. Making and sharing art certainly has intrinsic value and isn’t all about monetization. Some kids may not have considered these possibilities, however. Your students could not only be outsourced digital designers for someone else, down the road they might also use digital outsourcing for their own projects like we did with Storychasers last year.

Who knows where that shared knowledge may take them and us? The possibilities are exciting.

Hat tip to Cody Birsner for sharing 99designs with me a few months ago.

Technorati Tags: creativity, edmond, ipad, oklahoma, art, brushes, create, kevin, honeycutt, artsnacks, essdack, fpce, tiger, club

Teach Your Students to be Digital Artists (and learn from Kevin Honeycutt) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 3, 2012.

The technology tools in this case, digital voice recorders, ARE important for the learning which took place in Renee’s classroom. They are NOT, however, the factor which makes the biggest difference. As I noted in last month’s post, “Remember TEACHERS Make the Biggest Difference, Not Devices,” the WAYS teachers choose to invite students to use technology tools are most important when it comes to learning and achievement. Yes, having access to digital tools IS important. We must remember to focus on the PEDAGOGY more than the tools, however, as we discuss and highlight effective uses of educational technology. Renee’s video is a beautiful example of this.

I found this video today when I was researching links to add to a new page on the Storychasers’ website: Storychaser School Clubs.

Technorati Tags: digital, reading, technology, writing, voice, audio, recorder, nwp, edtech

Use Digital Voice Recorders to Hear Student Voices originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 2, 2012.

Creating MultiMedia eBooks
wfryer.me/ebooks

Snowflake Gets Lost: a FREE enhanced eBook by Rachel Fryer
meetsnowflake.com

Improving Reading, Writing and Critical Thinking Skills with Media
wfryer.me/improve

Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing (eBook)
wfryer.me/pwm

Software I run on my Mac
wfryer.me/apps

Crafting Your Professional Digital Footprint
wfryer.me/footprint

19 April 2011: iPad Training for Business Productivty
www.ipadwithwes.com

Student Media Examples
share.playingwithmedia.com

99¢ Podcasts for Playing with Media
learn.playingwithmedia.com

Mapping Media to Common Core
maps.playingwithmedia.com

iPad App Coffee Chats
1st Tuesday of each month in Edmond, OK at The DIV
wfryer.me/appchat

YouTube
www.youtube.com/wfryer

K-12 Online Conference: 250+ FREE PD videos about tech integration
k12onlineconference.org

Social Media:
twitter.com/wfryer
facebook.com/wfryer

Contact Wesley Fryer
www.wesfryer.com/contact

Moving at the Speed of Creativity (my primary blog)
www.speedofcreativity.org

iPad Quick-Edit Videography
wfryer.me/ipadvideo

Tell a Story in 5 Photos
wfryer.me/5photos

Celebrate Oklahoma Voices: 940+ videos
lc.celebrateoklahoma.us

Celebrate Kansas Voices: 220+ Digital Stories
celebratekansas.ning.com

Celebrate Texas Voices: Digital Stories
celebratetexas.ning.com

Oklahoma CCSS Diigo Group
http://groups.diigo.com/group/oklahoma-ccss

Storychasers: Empowering Digital Witnesses on the Global Stage
storychasers.org

Stuff I Want to Share at OTA – Encyclo-Media 2012 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 2, 2012.

This semester, students taught by Debbie Callison at the Yukon Middle School 6th Grade Academy have been writing and sharing their poetry online using free, interactive websites hosted by Kidblog.org. All the posts written by students, as well as comments submitted by others to each website, are MODERATED by Mrs. Callison. Students have not only been working on the quality and content of their own poetry, but also discussing “What makes a good comment?” Students are identifying specific elements of poems to highlight and providing constructive feedback to each other. Online, student publishing and interactive commenting moderated by a classroom teacher is one specific element of the new “Common Core” standards for Oklahoma students which Yukon Public Schools is currently working to implement at the direction of the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

One of the best things about students sharing their writing online using an open site like KidBlog is the opportunity it provides for parents to provide feedback, as well as teachers and students. Here is a specific example from Mrs. Callison’s 2nd hour, sixth grade English class this week.

This is a post written by Cooper last week, titled, “What is a Champion?”

Later in the day after Cooper wrote that post, Mrs. Callison shared some positive feedback as a comment on that post to accompany comments already moderated/approved. In addition, yesterday (January 31st) Cooper’s Dad logged on to the class website. He also wrote a comment, providing feedback and encouragement to his son.

It takes practice to get better at anything, and Yukon middle school students are improving their writing skills with digitally-saavy learning opportunities provided by Mrs. Callison. Kudos to Cooper for sharing his poem, and kudos to his classmates, Mrs. Callison, and Cooper’s dad for providing constructive feedback! We’re living in times of change, and it’s great to see this example of how Yukon Public School teachers are providing ways to extend learning experiences digitally beyond the “four walls of the classroom” and involve parents as partners in developing literacy skills.

Technorati Tags: kidblog, writing, blogging, poetry

Yukon 6th Grade Parents and Teachers Provide Students Feedback on Writing originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 1, 2012.

Technorati Tags: okc, oklahoma, coco, coworking, collaborative

Help the Oklahoma City CoWorking Collaborative Reboot! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 1, 2012.

http://yesdancan.com is the website Dan Lovejoy built by hand (not with WordPress) to get a job – and he got a job!
- build websites with iThemesBuilder and focused a lot on SEO issues

Other web links for other attendees tonight:
http://www.northideas.com
http://extremevirtualsupport.com
http://www.tandswebdesign.com
http://www.edmondbootcamp.com
http://jfdoes.com
http://social-ism.biz
http://thereproject.com
http://thomasperezphotography.com
http://ignitedmediadesign.com
http://www.alertinternational.com
http://newlookmedia.com
http://www.gfellerstudio.com
http://www.heliumscraper.com (.net webpage screenscraper)

(if I missed your link and you attended please share it via a comment or Twitter)

“It’s tough to be a professional photographer today, because everyone is a photographer”

I shared a presentation on “Go Mobile with WordPress.” My links are on wfryer.me/wp

I also recorded my audio from this presentation using Cinch on my iPad

Now hearing from Dan Lovejoy on SEO and WordPress

Lots of important things to remember when writing for the web
- also important to write SEO (search engine optimized) content
- CRO = conversion rate optimization

Writing SEO copy is hard
- writing natural copy is hard
- writing conversation optimized copy is hard

SEO is optimizing your page or site for specific keywords
- standard line from web masters: if you just build it and write a lot of content on it, you’ll attract the traffic
- “being a content thought leader is a higher calling than SEO”
- there is a scientific process of optimizing specific pages for specific keywords

Avoid using a period in your phrase, but you can use a semicolon, comma, and m-dash or n-dash
- when you define SEO targets you generally want to use phrases rather than keywords
- “the longer the tail” you have using the Google Adwords tool, you can try to find keywords people aren’t ranking for but there is traffic
- you want to look for keywords in the 3 – 7% density (as of now) otherwise you can get ‘thumped’ by Google (Googe either puts a penalty on your page rank or de-indexes you)
- SEO has changed a lot even since November 2011 when I stopped doing this professionally

If you are already in the top six of Google search pages, you’re good
- people are drilling down in Google searches more now (we used to say you need to be on the top 3 pages)
- it is better to be 11 rather than 9…

David Christopher was Google SEO-guru at OPUBCO who taught Dan a LOT

My question about Bing: It looks like optimizing for Google does the same thing for Bing search

WordPress is a GREAT tool for SEO
- all the tools are available
- we use All-In-One SEO WordPress plugin

Post tips:
- make sure post titles contain keywords
- make sure post title propagates to your page title
- write a click-optimized custom page description for each (human readable URLs are very important to Google)
- the META KEYWORDS field doesn’t matter

Watch out for duplicate content, it won’t ‘kill you’ like it used to, but it can dilute the power of your inbound links

Key: cross-posting is bad for SEO, it can dilute the power of your inbound links
- if using Posterous site, set it up to be NO INDEX (change robots tags to tell Google not to look at the site)

Post titles should use an H1 tag on the title
- don’t use multiple H1 tags!
- if your theme doesn’t do this, you need to get a new theme or change it
- make sure you use semantic markup (H2, H3, etc) for internal headings
- use only absolutely necessary plug-ins (page speed matters)

Google indexes keywords that are higher on a page

Good SEO Blogs:
- http://www.seomoz.org
- http://www.stompernet.com

Google tracks how good your inbound links, Google knows what your PPC (pay per clicks) are, your keyword density, your interlinking….
- that is how Google knows about how long people stay on your site
- human reviewers also go to sites for Google (mainly checking for spam and garbage on your site)

Comment from attendee: Google doesn’t put a real person on a site unless it has more than 100,000 inbound links, they don’t care about sites with 10K or 20K links

Any time you have a person creating a real link, that is ‘white hat SEO’
- there is a sea of garbage that people create, that stuff is way down on Google results…

JC Pennys got ‘slapped’ really hard by using ‘black hat SEO’ methods

I HAD TO GO PICK UP MY SON FROM SCOUTS AT THIS POINT, SO I COULDN’T STAY FOR MORE… GREAT STUFF FROM DAN!

Technorati Tags: blog, mobile, wordpress, seo, plugin, plugins

Going Mobile with WordPress and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 30, 2012.

Rachel brought the handwritten draft of the book along with the illustrations home this past Friday. She was missing one illustration (for part 3) so Madison drew that yesterday and delivered it to our house (with her dad) this afternoon.

Rachel was on “cloud 9″ yesterday as we compiled the book together and she recorded the audio for each part. We ended up using RecordPad Sound Recorder to make the audio recordings. In all, for seven “final” recordings Rachel made 35 “takes.” She was very pleased with the final result which she’s shown to all our family on an iPad.

The download page of MeetSnowflake.com currently includes links to download the eBook from ePubBud as well as DropBox. More distribution channels are pending, and we’re going to also create a print version. Rachel and Madison have dedicated the book to their 2nd grade teacher (Mrs. Zahn) and hope to give her a print version for Valentine’s Day on February 14th as a surprise! It’s fantastic ePubBud automatically created a browser-based version of the eBook, which includes the audio recordings of each part. VERY cool!

If you have comments or feedback for Rachel and Madison, please post them on the About page of MeetSnowflake.com.

Rachel asked me this afternoon if publishing this eBook means she might be able to go on more trips with me to teach teachers about technology. I said, “I bet so!”

Few things rival the excitement of working with your own child when they are “on fire” for writing, reading, creating, and sharing. Long live “the writing workshop” in the classrooms of the world! Mrs. Zahn is a GREAT 2nd grade teacher in Oklahoma City Public Schools, and here’s a published eBook to prove it!

Technorati Tags: download, ebook, publish, snowflake, meetsnowflake

FREE Enhanced eBook for Kids: “Snowflake Gets Lost” by Rachel Fryer originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 29, 2012.

I’m sharing a couple sessions at OTA/Encyclomedia in two weeks in OKC and several at Heartland eLearning at UCO in Edmond in early March. These are all listed on wiki.wesfryer.com. My upcoming OKC-area workshops/presentations are:

OTA/Encyclo-Media (Oklahoma City, OK):

• 02-07 Creating Multimedia eBooks – Room 6 from 2:45 – 3:45
• 02-07 Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing – Room 6 from 1:00 – 2:00

(Remember a Google Spreadsheet version of breakout sessions is available via wfryer.me/ota12)

Heartland eLearning (Edmond, OK):

• 03-05 Workshop: Playing with Media: No-Edit Audio Recording
• 03-05 Workshop: Playing with Media: Quick-Edit Videography
• 03-06 Bridges to Musical and Artistic Creativity

Also I’m doing a full day iPad Productivity Apps workshop on April 19th in OKC, information and registration details are on iPadwithWes.com.

It’s short notice, but tomorrow evening I’ll be speaking about designing websites with WordPress for mobile platforms like iOS (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) as well as Android – basically using free mobile themes. This is free at the monthly OKC WordPress meetup, held at “The Div” in Edmond. More info is on the Oklahoma City WordPress User Group’s MeetUp website. I’m not positive but there’s a good chance this session may be live-streamed free via Ustream. If it is I’ll tweet it out.

If you’re in or around the Oklahoma City area, I hope to see you at one of these upcoming learning events!

If you’re interested in checking my availability for a presentation in your district or for your organization, please contact me via the inquiry form on my Speaking page.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, otaem12, wes, wesley, fryer, city, okc, edmond, presentations, heartland12

Upcoming Wes Fryer Presentations in Oklahoma City (Feb – Mar 2012) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 29, 2012.

In the morning and for part of the afternoon, Rachel and I created an ePUB eBook with a fiction book she’s been writing all school year by hand with a classmate. (Literally since the first week of August!) She recorded each of the seven book parts with RecordPad, and I compiled the book with typed text, scanned pictures drawn by her classmate, mp3 files I converted with Switch, and Pages software. We’re getting the last illustration (hopefully) from her classmate to tomorrow to scan, and will most likely publish it on ePubBud, Amazon, B&N Nook Books, and a new website domain I registered for her and am configuring tonight. She created the main website graphic today using Brushes on an iPad. She’s going to give the book away as a free download, but offer it for purchase as a hardback! It’s precious!

This afternoon, my 11 year old daughter worked with two classmates on a science project about the Ejyafjallajokull volcano in Iceland.

Using two laptops, they continued research they had started earlier in the week and created a narrated slideshow video as their “final product,” following the instructions in their teacher provided rubric. They created a presentation using Keynote software, and wrote a project script using Pages. They found photos to use from multiple sources, including Flickr Creative Commons, and included attribution on each slide for the websites where they found the images. I encouraged them to use a minimum of text on each slide, and instead use large images to make their points. (Presentation Zen style.) They recorded their final video on an iPad using “Explain Everything.” To get the Keynote slides from the laptop to the iPad, they used PhotoSync software to transfer the images. The $3 “Explain Everything” app allowed them to create their narrated slideshow directly from the images transferred with PhotoSync. They used my iRig microphone for the recording, and they sound great!

They recorded their script twice, reading it from the screen of a laptop in Pages instead of printing it out. They did a super job, and are justifiably proud of their afternoon of work! I’ll feature this narrated slideshow soon on “Student Media Examples.”

Technorati Tags: ebook, ipad, playingwithmedia, book, volcano, Ejyafjallajokull, iceland, narrated, slideshow

A Saturday Filled with Media Creation and #playingwithmedia originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 28, 2012.

The definition of sexual abuse is broader than many people realize, it’s not just physical touching/abuse. The definition used in this series is: “Any tricked, forced, manipulated, or coerced sexual activity for the pleasure of the abuser. This can be physical, verbal or visual.”

Conservative studies show sexual abuse is at epidemic levels today
- there are 60 million sexual abuse survivors in the U.S. today
- we have 300 million people in the U.S. so that means 1 in 5 people alive today in our country are sexual abuse survivors
- 1 in 3 females are predicted to be sexual abuse victims before the age of 18
- 1 in 6 males are predicted to be sexual abuse victims before the age of 18
- 66% of sexual abuse victims won’t talk about it until they are adults
- this cuts across all economic, ethic, and racial lines

Less than 10% of sexual abusers will ever enter the criminal justice system
- so 90% of those who want to harm our children are not in the justice system for us to find them with a background check (we still do background checks in our organizations, but background checks alone are insufficient protection)

MY COMMENT: THIS REMINDS ME OF THE ‘DEFENSE IN DEPTH’ STRATEGY WHICH IS EMPLOYED FOR COMPUTER NETWORK SECURITY

Almost 90% of children are victimized by someone the child knows and is taught is “safe”
- “stranger danger” has its value, but is not sufficient awareness

It’s a myth that sexual abusers have a clear, identifiable visual profile
- many are educated, married, have jobs, look like productive members of society
- it’s also a myth that all sexual abusers are men: some are also females
- 85% of convicted sexual abusers are men, 15% are women (some point out cases against women are more difficult to prosecute, so that may contribute to these skewed numbers)
- there is NO VISUAL PROFILE to rely on

Children are not just victimized by adults, peer to peer sexual abuse is high and rising
- children are not only learning about sexual behaviors from adults, they are also learning from it through the Internet

The “abuser triangle” is used by counselors to treat sexual offenders, and it has 3 elements:
1- deviant sexual desire (adults who prefer children as sexual partners)
2- faulty thinking (ability to justify and rationalize deviant desire)
3- access (the offender having access to children)

Molesters intentionally groom both children and “gatekeepers”
- gatekeepers are the people who stand in the way of molesters to gain access to the child
- “molesters are looking for trusted time alone with a child they are grooming”

“edge of the herd” concept: the children most at risk for grooming by a molester / sexual predator / abuser:
- are often on the fringe, in need
- looking for someone to follow or trust
- from a broken family
- from a single parent home
- involved in alcohol or drugs
- interested in pornography

Every case the MinistrySafe law practice has handled involving boys and male sexual predators has involved the use of pornography during the grooming process
- predators use nudity and sexual touch for “barrier testing and erosion” with children
- often use sexual discussions and joking, playful touch and ‘accidental nudity”
- magazines and movies depicting nudity and sex

Keeping victims silent through secrecy, shame & embarrassment, and threats (subtle or direct) are also a critical part of the grooming process

Many people who have been sexually abused or assaulted report feeling some sense of guilt or responsibility for what happened to them, molesters use this psychology against victims

#1 reason kids don’t tell: No one will believe you
- often this is true, because of the way molesters groom the gatekeepers

Common grooming behaviors
- gift giving: single adult to single child
- kid-magnet activities (things children are attracted to)
- repeated time alone with the same child (unsupervised or not easily overseen)
- touchy with children, pushing physical boundaries
- sometimes using playful but inappropriate touch
- breaking the rules: providing alcohol, tobacco and/or pornography (can be other rules you have setup for your organization)

Peer abusers tend to be more opportunistic (they don’t create their own schedule and drive their own cars)
- this should be distinguished from natural sexual curiosity, and we do this by looking at power relationships between the peers involved
- power can be due to age, size, economic resources, social connections (popularity), or differing abilities

Children with different kids of disabilities are particularly at risk for peer abuse

risks are highest any place where clothes come off (swimming/bathing) and any place that is less easily seen

To reduce risks, we should always report any grooming behaviors we observe
- adequate supervisors for all activities are key (use programmatic ratios)
- avoid unmonitored, 1 on 1 interaction

MY COMMENT: THIS IS THE ‘TWO DEEP LEADERSHIP’ CONCEPT FROM SCOUTING / YOUTH PROTECTION PROGRAM

avoid individual gift giving, always better for the gift to come from a group rather than a single individual adult giving to a single individual child

Short term impacts of sexual abuse on children:
- poor self esteem
- shame/guilt
- anxiety / nervousness
- fears / phobias
- loss of trust
- disinterested in person or activity previously enjoyed (we need to ask questions to find out what has changed)
- anger
- self-mutilation
- bedwetting
- nightmares
- rebellion
- running away

Long term impacts:
- depression
- suicidal thoughts or acts
- substance abuse including self-medicating behaviors
- molesting other children (not a 1 to 1 scenario, some victims- especially boys who do not receive any kind of treatment
- drop in grades
- promiscuity / seductive behavior
- STDs
- excessive modesty or affection seeing behaviors
- prostitution (95% of prostitutes on the street were sexually abused as children)

If a child reports abuse:
- listen and respond calmly (don’t respond emotionally)
- be sensitive to vague and partial disclosures (children often test you with part of the story to see if you respond with anger or disbelief)
- it is ok to ask for more questions that simply ask for more information: “Do you to tell me more?”
- don’t ask shaming questions: What were you wearing? What were you doing in that location? These questions can make the child feel they were responsible for the abuse rather than the adult and clam up.
- report this to a supervisor immediately
- NO SECRETS

If the child asks you if you will keep it a secret, you need to respond with something like: “There are some things I can’t keep a secret: if someone is being abused, being hurt, etc.)

statutes by law vary, but generally all states not only require reporting of physical abuse but also emotional abuse and neglect. Many require reporting of “suspicion” of abuse and neglect. Entities we report to, how long we have to report, and what information we have to report varies. Generally we don’t have to investigate, but we do have to report.

Google “Child abuse reporting” for your state (example: Oklahoma Department of Human Services, Child Protective Services)

www.childwelfare.gov also has resources

We need to always create cultures of communication in our programs
- we need to open up lines of communication for policy violations that cause us discomfort also… not to create a witchhunt, but to create a culture where a supervisor can identify “red flag” information when grooming and barrier testing is taking place.

MY CLOSING THOUGHT: THIS IS OUTSTANDING TRAINING, IT’S EXCELLENT IT’S AVAILABLE ONLINE AND THERE’S A QUIZ FOR PEOPLE TO TAKE BEFORE RECEIVING A COMPLETION CERTIFICATE.

http://ministrysafe.com

Technorati Tags: online, training, video, ministry, safe, ministrysafe, youth, protection, sexual, predator, abuser, pedophile, suspicion, neglect, physical, emotion, emotional

MinistrySafe Online Video Training for Youth Protection from Sexual Abuse originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

While the built-in calculator features of Google Search are extremely powerful, the syntax required to use the “Google calculator” requires some study. That process is valuable and good, but I like how Mateusz’ Percentage Calculator does not require any special syntax formatting. The layout is simple and straightforward. He has also included some helpful information about percentages on the homepage of his site.

Mateusz has also created the website Blood Pressure Chart, which provides a cloud-based / web-based way for people to save their blood pressure information so it can be shared with doctors or others the individual selects. I really like the clean look of the ‘forums’ section of his Blood Pressure Chart website, where updates are available about the project as well as other information. I’m going to try and learn what tool he used to create these, it would be great if they are powered with a WordPress Plug-in.

Technorati Tags: math, calculator, percent, percentage, web, tool

Calculate and Learn about Percentages with Percentage Calculator originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

This semester I’m working on a contract basis (thanks to federal grant dollars) as an “innovative instructional coach” in Yukon Public Schools. This morning I helped one of our sixth grade teachers facilitate her first lessons using free, ad-free class blogs hosted by KidBlog.org. In this post, I’ll share some of the configuration specifics for these class blogs and a nine minute screencast in which I demonstrate each step. The teacher has six sections of students (136 in all) so the techniques described here for importing student userIDs and passwords from the district’s student information system can be HUGE time savers!

I am a big fan of free Posterous blogs for publishing student work, including media products. You’ll see multiple examples of student work shared on Posterous blogs on share.playingwithmedia.com, which I created to complement my eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” KidBlog is a great platform too, but it has different advantages. Posterous makes the posting and sharing of rich-media files including images, audio and video very straightforward. KidBlog lends itself best to sharing text, but it can handle most kinds of embedded media. For the teacher I worked with today, as an English teacher it’s important her students have their own directory of posts they can readily view along with their parents. KidBlog automatically creates “student pages” of all posts an individual has published. (Usually in the right sidebar, but this can vary with the selected blog theme.) Other features of KidBlog I really like are:

1. It makes moderation of both posts and comments to a blog very easy / fast
2. It shows how many comments different posts have received on the homepage, so students as well as parents/other visitors can identify posts which “need some attention” and a helpful comment.
3. KidBlog is built on WordPress, so it supports the free WordPress iOS app. One of the 6th graders this morning asked, in fact, “Is there an app for this site?” I was pleased to tell her: Yes there is!
4. KidBlog supports “broadcast” posts, so a teacher can write a single post but have it automatically cross-post (“broadcast”) to all his/her blogs. This is HUGE for teachers using KidBlog with multiple sections.
5. It supports the importing of student userIDs and passwords as comma separated (CSV) files.
6. It supports nested commenting.
7. Students can change their own display name. This is important in our district, since student’s initial network userID is a series of numbers. For the teacher’s purposes, it’s important to identify students by first name. This is also critical for peer and parent commenting, and great the students can change these display names directly.

Today in two of the classes, students submitted over 100 different comments for their peers. Even though we coached students to “be thoughtful” in their comments and not just write things like “Good” or “Awesome,” of course we had some comments like that. About half the students in the first class today had used LightSpeed Systems’ free learning management system, “My Big Campus,” in other classes. Unlike My Big Campus, however, the KidBlog sites used today and I configured for the teacher are OPENLY visible to anyone online (without a login) but all posts as well as comments are moderated.

I recorded a nine minute screencast earlier in the week when I was configuring these student blogs, which shows all the steps I performed to each KidBlog site so it was ready for teacher-moderated posting and commenting today. I encourage you to check out KidBlog. More digital text / blogging platform options are linked on the “Text” page of playingwithmedia.com.

Technorati Tags: blog, kidblog, writing, configure, configuration

Configure KidBlog for Safe, Moderated, Interactive Student Blogging & Commenting originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2012.

On January 26, 2012, we attended a full-day workshop about “Common Core Transition” led by Jan Hough with Marzano Research Lab. These are some of our takeaways from the day. Handouts from Jan’s session are available on the OSSBA website.

Writing Across the Curriculum
One of the most important changes emphasized in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is writing across the curriculum. This means students in all grades, in all content areas, need to be doing more writing about what they are learning. Writing is not just just something students need to do in English class, students need to be writing in ALL their subject areas.

4 Key Steps to Implementation
Jan used a four part framework to explain how school districts are and should transition to CCSS. These four parts are:
Awareness
Proficiency Scales
Instructional Practices
Assessment Practices

These are explained in greater detail on this two page handout from Jan.

Unpacking the Standards
Jan emphasized the importance of “unpacking the standards” for teachers to learn the differences and similarities between what classroom practices they HAVE been doing and the new classroom practices which are expected under the CCSS. Jan provided a template document for teachers to use to “unpack the standards.” Unpacking the standards means taking a CCSS standard and identifying skills a teacher must explicitly teach for the student to successfully master that standard. It was not clear “how many” different standards individual teachers should unpack to adequately understand the CCSS. It seems reasonable for teachers to unpack some, but NOT reasonable for each teacher to individually or even collectively unpack ALL the CCSS which apply to them. Districts which have “unpacked the standards” with their curriculum have created new curriculum maps. This is a process we may include in our transition plan for the current (2011-2012) academic year.

Proficiency Scales / Rubrics
The cornerstone of CCSS implementation from the “Marzano Laboratory” is the creation and use of “proficiency scales” to specify student expectations. These are rubrics which have four levels of student expectations. Jan provided a template document for teachers to use when creating proficiency scales. The Marzano Research Lab provides a free, online “bank” of proficiency scales anyone can access after creating a free account on their website. Quality varies widely for the scales currently “in the bank.”

Written Response Tips
As teachers create assignments and assessments, Jan emphasized the importance of using informational texts. She also emphasized the importance of students citing evidence and writing across the curriculum. Teachers need to work collaboratively with team members on writing across the curriculum.

Ideas for Curriculum Maps
These are ideas we’ve discussed, not ones which were specifically suggested by Jan in the workshop. One of the things we may want to build (or have built) as an action script for Google Documents is a tool to insert different standards into our curriculum maps. We need to make it easy for our teachers to look up and insert CCSS standards as well as PASS objectives for non ELA or math teachers.

Our curriculum maps for each course and each grade level must be “living documents” which are continually open for editing / revision / additions. We will not be well served, going forward into the future, to select a commercial / proprietary tool for curriculum mapping which will require us to pay an annual licensing fee. What makes the most sense, at this point, seems to be using Google Docs as spaces for creating, sharing and updating Curriculum Maps.

The best example of completed curriculum maps we’ve seen are secondary maps from Stillwater PS. North Carolina has excellent resources on ELA and Math “unpacking the standards.”

We’ve created an open group on the social bookmarking site Diigo, called “Oklahoma CCSS,” where we have started to share links to resources. Anyone is welcome to join.

Collaboratively written by Kathy Davis and Wesley Fryer

Common Core Transition Ideas via Marzano originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 26, 2012.

Great job, Google geek and dad Daniel Lee.

Technorati Tags: chrome, video, youtube, media, kids, family, share

A Touching Example of Family Digital Documentation originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 26, 2012.

wfryer.me/ota12

I hope this mobile-friendly conference session format helps you find great sessions at the conference, if you’re attending. This is the first year EncycloMedia (which has historically been held in the fall) has merged with the OTA conference. David Warlick is our keynote this year and it should be great!

I’m playing with a test installation of MobileAP to possibly create an iOS-friendly mobile conference site for breakout session info, but I still need to figure out how to import session data into the mySQL database. Not sure if I’ll figure this out or not but I’ll keep playing with it. It’s a very sweet, free academic conference app I wrote about in September 2009, developed originally at the University of Cincinnati.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, otaem12, ota, encyclomedia, technology, library

Access OTA – EncycloMedia 2012 Session Info via a Google Spreadsheet originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 25, 2012.

Tyler’s description of GarageBand for iPad‘s ability to record songs and then make them available as transposable loops really intrigues me. I need to spend some time playing with it! Kudos to Tyler for sharing this fun project idea, and to the instructors and professors at UCO’s Academy of Contemporary Music!

I’m presenting a couple workshops at the Heartland eLearning Conference March 4-5, 2012, which will explore ways to use the iPad to record and share media. If you live in or near central Oklahoma, please plan to join us in Edmond for this great conference!

Technorati Tags: ipad, creativity, creative, music, garageband

Make a Song with Sounds from Your Kitchen on an iPad originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 24, 2012.

Currently, a transition to Common Core Standards is prevalent in the educational environment. This session will overview key steps in successful Common Core implementation. A focus of the presentation will be resources the Marzano Research Laboratory has developed to support teachers and administrators in this transition from state standards to Common Core Standards.

ONE OF THE PARTICPANTS NEXT TO US ASKED JAN ABOUT COMING TO THEIR DISTRICT FOR PD, SHE QUOTED $6K PER DAY AS HER PRICE

Handouts from today are linked on www.ossba.org/ocic

Effective pedagogy in “Classroom Strategies that Work” by Robert Marzano
- curriculum articulation
- instructional methodology
- encapsulating both within classroom management

The instructional methodology piece is the one we hold closest as teachers

Now lets think about the definition of college and career ready
- this should make us think about instructional practices in our classrooms

think about the term “deep understanding” carefully
- if we are to be effective in that orchestration of complex skills, deep understanding is key

Now we’re going to talk about young people growing up today

Reference April 2010 FastCompany article: “A Is for App: How Smartphones, Handheld Computers Sparked an Educational Revolution”
- name things kids today have no concept of because of their generation

We need to think about skills kids need now

Take a look at the research (Wells & Croxton, pg 1)

Schools may once have done an adequate job of equipping and sifting young people to take their various places in the prevailing society, but that world is gone.

Now showing a YouTube video listing short change facts “Did You Know” style

PISA assessment
- “US students scored lowest on the problem-solving items.”

Jobs for the Future (2005) “Fore every 10 students who enter eighth grade, only seven graduate high school on time, and only three complete a postsecondary degree by age 26″

MY THOUGHTS: IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER THESE QUOTATIONS AND STATISTICS IN CONTEXT, AND THAT CONTEXT IS NOT BEING PROVIDED HERE. THIS IS A TYPICAL PRESENTATION OF “NATION AT RISK” STYLE STATS: OUR SCHOOLS SUCK, WE’RE IN A CRISIS, SO WE BETTER CHANGE. NO DISCUSSION OF POVERTY, CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS, WHAT STUDENTS TAKE THE PISA IN OTHER COUNTRIES VERSUS US SCHOOLS, ETC. THE CITATION ON THE PROBLEM SOLVING PISA RESULTS IS DARLING-HAMMOND, 2010, P. 35, BUT THE MAIN FOCUS OF HER RESEACH (FROM WHAT I’VE READ) ABOUT TEACHER QUALITY IS NOT MENTIONED AT ALL. MORE DE-CONTEXTUALIZED CITATION OF “RESEARCH SAYS.”

Two resources to recommend to focus on cognitive skills and cognitive skills
- “The Highly Engaged Classroom”
- “Teaching and Assessming 21st Century Skills”
- surveyed 10,000 teachers, asked 3 questions: top 3 challenges you face as a classroom teacher
– #1 students reading below grade level
– #2 unsupportive home environment
– #3 student not being engaged in the learning process

Cognitive Skills
- mental abilities like logic, reasoning, thinking and attention to detail
- teaching of cognitive skills is not unique to the 21st century (VERY GOOD POINT, GLAD SHE POINTED THIS OUT)
- what is new to the 21st century is the idea that cognitive skills should take a dominant role in the curriculum
- analyzing and using information, addressing complex problems and issues, creating patterns and mental models

Conative skills
- the process of combining what one knows (cognitive) with how one feels (affective) and deciding what action to take in light of both
- understanding and controlling yourself, interacting with others

identifying “faulty logic” is a key element in CCSS

What of all this would we call “securely held content”
- what pieces of content are going to remain with my students forever
- the reality is nonoe of it will (so process skills are most important, not content)

Consider the students you are preparing for the 21st century
- discuss implications for educators and critical steps for successful implications of CCSS

OCIC part 2

How do we use proficiency scales to build higher quality assessments?

We don’t know what those assessments are going to look like?
- what assessment practices to support Common Core implementation?

Need specific items that support level 2, 3 and 4 scale outcomes
- most of your assessment items shouldn’t be level 4, ht need to be distributed

Research by Jorissen 2006: “Most Tachers say they develop their assessment knowledge and practices on the job”

These are about how we prepare teachers to craft assessments

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS DEFINITELY THE KEY TO WHAT WE NEED TO BE DOING IN PD

Rick Stiggins, 2008: “We have trusted those we believe… (trusted our textbooks)

Educators must gain deep understanding of how to develop high-quality classroom assessments that inform instructional assessments

He do we build quality classroom assessments

Recommend: “Classroom Assessment and Grading that Works” by Marzano 2006
- “Formative Assessment and Standards Based Grading” by Marzano 2010
- Teacher-Made Assessments: Gareis and Grant 2008

I believe in dual coding theory, we need both words/text and non-linguistic representations

Forms of assessment
- obtrusive
- non-obtrusive
- student generated

Obtrusive assessments interrupt the normal flow of activity in the classroom

Student-generated assessments are the most underutilized form, students generate ideas about how they can show they have mastered the content, students will create something and share it
- we can’t do this kind of assessment all the time

Classroom assessment = anything a teacher does to gather information about a student’s knowledge or skill regarding a specific topic

“Purpose of assessment is to enhance the experience”

MY THOUGHT: THIS MAY BE THE MOST THOUGHT PROVOKING AND CHALLENGING THING SHE HAS SHARED ALL DAY. THIS VIEW OF ASSESSMENT IS SUCH A FAR CRY FROM HIGH STAKES TESTING…

Why should we do it?
- research reported here shows conclusively that formative assessment does improve learning

A quality test is:
- valid: accurately and appropriately measuring what is relevant
- reliable: consistent and precise
- fair: does not put any group at a disadvantage

Tests/assessments must have these three elements
- we’ll spend the most time talking about validity today (“if you build your lessons on our scales, validity will be there”)

reliability
- refers to the degree to which a test is consistent and stable in measuring what it is intended to measure, mist simply put a test is reliable if it is consistent within itself and across time

Remember the PARCC website has some sample items for assessments, but we don’t really know if those will be representative of the eventual assessments which are developed

We know the following things WILL be in the CCSS assessments:
- assessments may be perforance-based and multiple choice
- assessments may require technology skills to respond to questions
- technology skills will be required to respond to questions (this means kids will take the tests online)
- assessments may require critical thinking, for example: claim-evidence-counter-claim approach, compare and contrast tasks, cause and effect relationships
- assessments may require writing in response to text
- assessments may be timed
- a different approach to instruction may be required

HIgh quality item types:
- true/false use those sparingly (strong statements include a single idea, not multiple ideas for T/F)
- true/false need to be black/white, not shades of grey

Matching assessments
- homogenous in content
- matching set no more than 7
- uneven number of items to be matched or items
- uneven number of items to be matched OR items may be used more than once
- ordered logically (such as alphabetically)
- longer reading on the left, matching items on the right

Multiple choice
- being with question-starter (who, what, where, how, why)
- a single task is articulated in the question
- emphasize qualifiers
- all response items are plausible (no-throw away)
- written in present tense if possible
- avoid negatives (e.g., which is NOT)
- may include context: more complex questions

emphasizing qualifiers
- kids will be required to come up with the BEST answer, so give students experience with that as you craft items

there will be “none of the above” and “all of the above”
- in Nebraska we didn’t allow this on our state test, we thought it was poor test item construction
- a good friend of mine is now a high level test item developer for PARCC and she says these items will be included

Quality Constructed Response Items
- require students to justify their reasoning
- fill in the blank, short answer, essay

tips for fill-in-the-blank
- position the blank at the end of the sentence as often as possible
- limit the number of blanks in an item
- blanks should be the same length
- be sure information prior to/surrounding the blank is adequate
- may use a word bank

Use logs of analogies: those are high level thinking required

Short answer and essay items
- make the nature of the response desired clear to the reader
- develop and communicate a scoring criteria for the question
- provide adequate space for responses

Practice makes perfect
- absolutely include these types of items on your assessments
- Common Core Will!

You do NOT need to build assessments for all of the scales you will use, but you (as a classroom teacher) definitely DO need to craft and use a variety of assessments

Video shown as an exemplar: “Assessment at the Utmost”

My Favorite No
Grade 8, Math, Warm Up Routine
Common Core Standards: Math.MP.6

When I work with district I encourage them to look at the scales and determine which ones could be combined
- you can do that, your design goes into the classroom assessment process

How many items do I need to be reliable?

MY THOUGHT: I THINK WE MAY BE PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE CONCEPT OF ‘TEST RELIABILITY’ HERE, ESP AS IT IS CONSIDERED IN ACADEMIC SETTINGS (HIGHER ED)

If an assessment is valid and reliable, inferences about learning are more appropriate

Fairness: assessment level is appropriate
- readability
- avoid types of bias: offensive content, stereotyping, unfair representation, more…

format: directions, enough space, visually appealing

MY THOUGHT: IF WE’RE ASKING ALL TEACHERS TO BECOME ASSESSMENT DESIGNERS AND EXPERTS (WHICH IS NOT AN ENTIRELY BAD IDEA) THEN WHERE ARE THE ONLINE CCSS WEBINARS (FREE BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN PAID FOR WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS) FOR TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS TO UTILIZE ON SPECIFIC TOPICS LIKE ASSESSMENT CREATION?!

assessment format issues: the format of the test can district students taking a test

around the country I’m seeing a little bit of everything with CCSS implementation
1- year to year model
2- key leader model
3- shared resources model
4- scheduling options: early dismissal, late start, PLC meetings, PD days, summer meeting time

Consider the development of an ‘explicit development model

First and foremost: everyone must be on the same page with respect to goals
- what are our desired outcomes
- identify your implementation process

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS: I REALLY THINK WE NEED (IN OKLAHOMA) TO STOP PUTTING OUR EDUCATIONAL FAITH IN STANDARDS AND HIGH STAKES / COMMERCIAL ASSESSMENTS, AND INSTEAD INVEST OUR RESOURCES AS WELL AS FAITH IN DEVELOPING HIGH QUALITY TEACHERS. TEACHERS ARE THE KEY. I AM THINKING WE SHOULD START AN ADVOCACY GROUP WHICH PUSHES FOR 2 MAIN THINGS:
1- STOPPING THE DRIVE TO LINK STUDENT TEST SCORES TO TEACHER EVALUATION
2- WITHDRAWING FROM OUR FORMAL PLEDGES TO SPEND MILLIONS ON CCSS ASSESSMENTS, STOP STATE-LEVEL MANDATED HIGH STAKES ASSESSMENTS AND INVEST ALL THOSE DOLLARS INSTEAD INTO TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, TEACHER MERIT PAY AS NATIONAL BOARD CERTIFICATION PAY, AND IN TEACHER PAY. GOOD TEACHERS ARE THE KEY. STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENTS ARE NOT SILVER BULLETS. THIS ISN’T 1983, WE DON’T NEED A ‘NATION AT RISK’ RE-RUN. WE NEED TO TURN THE SHIP OF POLITICALLY MANDATED EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE IN OUR STATE. OUR TEACHERS, PARENTS, AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED OVER THE PAST DECADE TO BELIEVE THAT EDUCATIONAL QUALITY AND WORTHY EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT CAN ONLY BE ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH EXPENSIVE, HIGH STAKES ASSESSMENTS WHICH WE PAY COMMERCIAL COMPANIES TO DEVELOP. THAT IS A FARCE AND A LIE. WE MUST CHANGE THIS MINDSET AND THIS REALITY. THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOL IS NOT TO TAKE TESTS WELL. THERE ARE FAR MORE THINGS THAN JUST ‘ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT’ WHICH MATTER IN SCHOOLS. WE MUST ALWAYS PRESENT TEST SCORES AND RESEARCH RESULTS IN CONTEXT. WE MUST TALK ABOUT POVERTY AND HELPING STUDENTS AS WELL AS FAMILIES MOVE UP AND OUT OF POVERTY. NEW ACADEMIC STANDARDS AND NEW, FANCY, ONLINE ASSESSMENTS ARE NOT THE ANSWER TO THOSE CHALLENGES. PASSIONATE, DEDICATED, HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS DEFINITELY ARE A KEY PART OF THAT SOLUTION. THERE ARE SOME GREAT ELEMENTS OF CCSS WHICH WE SHOULD EMBRACE AND IMPLEMENT. THERE ARE OTHER KEY PARTS OF OUR EDUCATIONAL POLITICAL LANDSCAPE, HOWEVER, WHICH WE MUST STAND UP TO OPPOSE AND CHANGE.

WE’VE GOT TO TURN THE SHIP. AFTER ALL, WE LIVE IN THE USA. IT’S TIME TO SHOW HOW WE CAN ADVOCATE FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE IN A RESPONSIVE REPUBLIC.

Technorati Tags: ccss, change, common, core, leadership, marzano, standards, transition, state, ocic, ossba, literacy

Transition to Common Core Standards by Jan Hoegh @marzanoresearch (2 of 2) #ocic12 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 24, 2012.

Currently, a transition to Common Core Standards is prevalent in the educational environment. This session will overview key steps in successful Common Core implementation. A focus of the presentation will be resources the Marzano Research Laboratory has developed to support teachers and administrators in this transition from state standards to Common Core Standards.

Handouts from today are linked on www.ossba.org/ocic

Jan is working on a book titled “Making Common Core Standards Useful” with Dr Robert Marzano

Thanks that seem little often times make a big difference
- story about her sister as a cardio-nurse about a charting error typo

Common Core implementation is monstrous, not little
- has come upon us on a quick manner
- today is pretty little in the grand scheme of things
- but today could make a significant difference in how we go about implementation

One of my favorite examples of brain research:

from Sousa, How the Brain Works, 2005

MY COMMENT: THIS ‘BRAIN RESEARCH’ IS AN URBAN LEGEND AND HAS BEEN DEBUNKED. I AM COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY THAT THIS WAS SHARED AS THE FIRST EXAMPLE OF ‘BRAIN RESEARCH’ AND ‘ACADEMIC RESEARCH’ IN TODAY’S SEMINAR. IN ADDITION, MY GOOGLE SEARCH SHOWS THIS BOOK WAS INACCURATELY CITED ON THE SLIDE, IT IS “HOW THE BRAIN LEARNS” FROM 2006. THANKS DR. JON BECKER FOR SHARING THE LINK TO HOW “The “Learning Pyramid” IS A MYTH AND NOT ACADEMICALLY SOUND RESEARCH. www.learningandteaching.info/learning/myths.htm

There is a lot to consider today with Common Core State Standards

Age = our attention span
- change of state needed
- tops out at 18-20 minutes
- adult learners need chagne also
- 3 ways we will group and regroup

Your table family (a.k.a. the people at your table)
- sorry, you don’t get to pick your family
- your are stuck with them, just like life!

Next: your close partners
- some people sitting near you but not at your table
- form groups of 2 or 3
- take 30 seconds to introduce yourselves and then return to your table…

Last one we’ll just use 1 time: an across the room partner
- agree on a place in the room where you’ll meet and work together
- intro yourself and return to your table

4 Modules for Successful Implementation of CCSS (by Marzano Research Laboratory)
1- What are the CCSS?
2- How do proficiency scales support CCSS implementation?
3- What instructional practices support CCSS implementation?
4- What assessment practices support CCSS?

We have developed scales for every CCSS standard, working with leaders around the country

CCSS require us to look at our instructional practices and determine if we’re getting to higher order thinking
- 21st century teaching and learning

Take a moment to think of a time of ‘adjustment’ or transition in your life, either professional or personal
- with your table family, list emotions you experienced

Our group’s answers: anxiety, frustration, apprehension, anger, fear, stress, uncertainty, relief, excitement, relief

“We are transitioning now as a country to CCSS”
- “although CCSS isn’t our new normal yet, it will be”

MY THOUGHT: MANY PEOPLE WOULD LIKE OUR NATION TO TRANSITION, BUT THIS ISN’T THE CASE IN TEXAS AND (I THINK) 15 OTHER STATES

We need to ‘be real’ in this transition time and express these frustrations / emotions
- we need to embrace the change and focus on improving the educational experience for our students
- that is a choice we can make
- look today for things you find exciting

#1 Educators must gain deep understanding of the purpose, organization, and content of the CCSS

“Verbatim note-taking is the least effective way to process and keep information”

Mission statement of CCSS: (focus on bold

consider the implications of these things for us as educators

You as a state [OKLAHOMA] have chosen to be part of the Park Consortium
- states could sign on to either one: PARCC has 24 states, 17 are governing board states (PARCC = Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers)
- Nebraska has opted OUT of CCSS: educators in Nebraska are wondering why they are opting out of CCSS, since it’s coming down the road for everyone

as a veering board state Oklahoma has agreed to
- pilot and field test assessment system components
- administrator new assessment system during 2014-2015
- use results from PARCC assessments in state accountability system

Our state has chosen to take a leadership role, and that is to be commended

MY COMMENT: I WONDER HOW MANY ACTUAL PEOPLE WERE IN THE ROOM AND DECIDED WE WOULD JOIN PARCC AS A GOVERNING MEMBER? THIS WAS NOT SUBJECT TO PUBLIC DEBATE AND DISCUSSION AS FAR AS I KNOW. INTERESTING HOW THIS IS BEING PRESENTED AS A ‘GREAT THING’ WE SHOULD CELEBRATE AND BE PROUD OF.

“the promise of the standards…”
- “These standards are not intended to be new names for old ways of doing business… They are a call to take the next step. It is time for states to work together to build on lessons learned from two decades of standards based reforms. It is time to recognize that standards are not just promises to our children, but promises we intend to keep.”

When we talk about ‘rigor’ in this context, we are talking about “application of content knowledge and skills”

‘teachable and learnable’ = guidance for the design of curricula and instructional materials

measurable: observable and verifiable
- we give students tasks to complete in relation to the standards

coherent: progression of learning
- there are blocks upon which other blocks are learning
- a continuum of learning, you will see this in the standards so you don’t see a lot of repetition in grade levels
- some of the content we were repeating in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade is no longer repeated

grade-by-grade standards

internationally benchmarked: success in our global economy
- our environment is much different now than from when I started in education in the 1980s

What you must do as you get involved with CCSS is get the document in front of you and others you are working with
- starting at the beginning
- our intuition is to ‘just get to the meat of it’
- I was in Ohio yesterday and the teachers there didn’t want to hear about all the steps needed for successful implementation
- like “The Sound of Music” we have to start with ABC… reading the actual document

what observations can you make reading the table of contents

MY COMMENT: IT IS PRETTY UNBELIEVABLE THAT ALL THE MATERIALS FOR THIS WORKSHOP ARE NOT PROVIDED UP-FRONT IN ELECTRONIC / DIGITAL FORMAT. I DID ASK IF THESE COULD BE SHARED AND JAN SAID SHE’D EMAIL THEM TO USE IF WE INDIVIDUALLY SEND HER AN EMAIL. THE PERSON WHO INTRODUCED HER SAID THEY WOULD BE POSTED/SHARED ON THE OSSBA WEBSITE. THIS IS AS MAINSTREAM A CURRICULUM CONFERENCE AS YOU CAN GET IN OKLAHOMA, AND THE STACK OF PAPERS DISTRIBUTED AS WE CAME IN THE ROOM MAKE IT CLEAR THIS IS ‘PAPER-BASED LECTURE LEARNING AS USUAL.” IF WE ARE SERIOUS ABOUT FACILITATING STUDENT USE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES APPROPRIATELY AND REGULARLY IN THE CLASSROOM, WE HAVE TO START WITH TEACHER-LEADERS. (US) WE’VE GOT TO MODEL BLENDED LEARNING, AND THAT’S NOT HAPPENING HERE TODAY.

design and organization: focus on results rather than means
- this means teachers get to do the designing
- teachers are not told how they have to teach something

integrated model of literacy means it’s an integrated approach

we have to focus on research and media skills, those are integrated throughout the document

Only 70% of high school students graduate on time with a regular diploma (Green and Winters, 2005)

MY COMMENT: THAT STATISTIC IS SEVEN YEARS OLD! WHY ARE WE USING RESEARCH FINDINGS THAT ARE SEVEN YEARS OLD WHEN WE ARE IN 2012?

Also: “Approximately 40% of high school graduates lack the literacy skills employers seek.” (Achieve, Inc. 2005)

“U.S. dropouts’ literacy skills are lower than those of dropouts in most industrialized nations.” (A Report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York)

MY COMMENT: WHERE IS THE DATE CITATION FOR THIS CARNEGIE CORP REPORT? WHERE IS THE LINK? HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FACT-CHECK AND CRITICALLY ANALYZE THE INFORMATION BEING PRESENTED TO US TODAY, WHEN QUOTATIONS LIKE THIS ARE NOT APPROPRIATELY CITED? WE NEED TO MODEL BEST PRACTICE WHEN IT COMES TO CITATIONS, AND THESE SLIDES MISS THAT BOAT.

“Our students literacy skills today are not what they need to be”

NAPE focuses on informational text use a lot, so CCSS follows suit…
- significant shift and implications

Reading Design and Organization
3 sections
1- literature
2- informational text
3- foundational skills (k-5)

Where do we go to find literary / informational text
- look at appendices A-C in the CCSS, and especially appendix B for examples of exemplary texts

What does “college and career ready” mean for students?

Content is just good, solid ELA and math content

four strands
- reading (including reading foundational skills)
- writing
- speaking and listening
- language

Numbering System of K-5 ELA Standards
- RL = reading literature
- RI = reading informational text
- W = writing
- RF –
- SL

Need to carve out time to help teachers understand the language / coding system

RST.6-8.3 = Reading, Science and Technology, grades 6-8, 3rd standard

Gaining understanding of the CCSS requires spending time with teachers ‘learning the lingo’ of abbreviations / acronyms in the CCSS

We already do a lot as teachers which is “orchestration”
- an arrangement of events to achieve a maximum effect
- the desired maximum effect is optimum levels of student achievement

MY THOUGHT: ACTUALLY THERE ARE MANY OTHER VERY IMPORTANT AND EQUALLY IMPORTANT OUTCOMES ON WHICH WE SHOULD/MUST BE FOCUSED AS PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS IN ADDITION TO STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Now we are shifting to module #2, looking at proficiency scales
- “Educators must gain keep understanding of how proficiency scales can be used to enhance CCSS processes”

Guiding Questions
- what is a proficiency scale and why is it necessary
- how does unpacking the standards support the development of scales?
- what resources does MRL have to support you regarding proficiency scales?

So what constitutes a clean refrigerator? (brainstorm)
- now discussing use of rubric to establish proficiency scales
- this creates documentation about the content of the standards and student performance

We are going to provide these scales as part of the appendix to the new book I’m writing with Dr Marzano

“the intent of CCSS was to create a national curriculum so students can move to different states and have the same learning”
- my fear is states are unpacking and unwrapping the standards so instead of having a national unpacking, we have 46 different unpackings
- so Marzano Research Labs has taken on the job of unpacking these standards as scales so these can be used as conversation pieces / starting places for conversations

On our proficiency scales, student expected performance is always at score 3 (score 3 is always explicitly taught in the classroom)
- application in real-world contexts

We want to get kids to college/career ready levels

MY THOUGHTS: I REALLY THINK WE NEED TO MORE CAREFULLY CONSIDER IF COLLEGE READY AND CAREER READY ARE THE SAME THING. THE CCSS ASSUME THEY ARE. OUR ELECTED STATE OFFICIALS ASSUME THEY ARE IN OKLAHOMA CURRENTLY (WHEN I’VE HEARD THEM TALK) BUT I’VE HEARD MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNOR’S WORKFORCE COUNCIL STRONGLY QUESTION THIS. THE CCSS ARE ASSUMING STUDENTS NEED A UNIFORM, CONSISTENT, STANDARDIZED SET OF EXPERIENCES TO PREPARE THEM FOR LIFE SUCCESS. I AM THINKING THIS IS ‘OLD WORLD’ THINKING IN MANY WAYS: 1 WAY, 1 SET OF STANDARDS, 1 PATH. THAT IS NOT DIFFERENTIATION. THAT IS FACTORY-THINKING.

Scale development
- now you’re going to create a scale for time and money
- start with level 3: what are all students expected to do? (learning goal / expectation)
- in level 2, include the vocabulary, foundational knowledge, simpler procedures, isolated details
- level 1: with help students can perform level 2 and 3
- level 0: even with help the student cannot perform expectations
- level 4: demonstrations of learning that go above and beyond what was explicitly taught

MY QUESTION: ARE WE REALLY JUST TALKING ABOUT RUBRIC DEVELOPMENT NOW?

Recommendation: Don’t have your teachers create all these scales
- have them go through the process to see what it takes
- scale captures content of the standard on the left side, the right hand shows example activities which pertain to content

Teachers get: “What does it look like in practice?”

We are in the process of posting our Scales as a bank
- access this from www.marzanoresearch.com/Free_Resources/itembank.aspx

MY COMMENT: NOTE A FREE ACCOUNT MUST BE REQUIRED TO ACCESS THE BANK

Now discussing implications: What does this mean for you in your district?

MY THOUGHTS ANSWERING THIS QUESTION:
- OUR TEACHERS NEED PD/OPPORTUNITIES TO DEVELOP CCSS-ALIGNED RUBRICS
- WE OUGHT TO DEFINE HOW MUCH OF THIS ‘UNPACKING’ OUR TEACHERS NEED TO DO, TO UNDERSTAND THE CCSS AND HOW THEY APPLY
- I’M WONDERING WHERE THE FOCUS ON LESSON PLANNING IS? WHAT ARE THE KEY ELEMENTS OF A CCSS-ALIGNED LESSON PLAN WHICH ARE DIFFERENT THAN A ‘TRADITIONAL’ MADELAINE-HUNTER STYLE LESSON PLAN? I ‘GET’ THAT THE MARZANO GROUP WANTS TEACHERS TO USE SCALES/RUBRICS TO DEFINE AND ASSESS STUDENT LEARNING TASKS.

Technorati Tags: ccss, common, core, oklahoma, school, marzano, research, jan, hough, academic, standards, transition

Transition to Common Core Standards by Jan Hoegh @marzanoresearch (1 of 2) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 24, 2012.

If you need to schedule a meeting with folks who are not all users of your organization’s calendar system, my favorite free tool to use is WhenIsGood.net.

Technorati Tags: google, howto, tutorial, calendar, appointment, slots, screencast

Use Appointment Slots on a Google Calendar originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 23, 2012.

One of my favorite lesson memories from middle school was in 7th grade math. My teacher, Mrs. Allen, gave students an opportunity to create math word problems for extra credit. We would work on these word problems the start of class each day as a bell ringer activity. I remember these would be put on the overhead projector. We could earn extra credit in her math class by submitting these problems, but we only got credit if she used them in class I think. I remember making different word problems that involved rock climbing and mountain climbing, because those were things I was interested in. The problems had to do with distances for rappelling, lengths of rope, distances between base camps, etc. I remember it was a good feeling on the days when she used one of my problems and my classmates would work on figuring out the answer. I really enjoyed these learning opportunities because they gave me an opportunity to be creative, use math, and connect math to a topic I was really interested in. I remember including drawings that accompanied some of the problems. I really loved creating these problems and having them used in class. This is one of my favorite memories of a lesson from middle school. Remembering this makes me wonder if someone has already created a website where students can create and submit their own “math word problems?” I think this would be great to do, encouraging students to creatively apply math and share their problems with others. I think it is great to find ways to help students “come up with the questions” for a lesson, especially math, rather than always just solving problems / answering questions that other people have created.

Technorati Tags: ccss, common, commoncore, core, favlesson, #favlesson, favorite, lesson

Creative Math Word Problems about Rock Climbing & Mountaineering #favlesson originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 23, 2012.

  by  paul (dex) 

The most glaring omission from the 1.0 version of iBooks Author is the ability to export ebooks in EPUB format. It’s not there.

The only export formats iBooks Author 1.0 supports are iBooks, PDF, and plain text documents.

This is by design by Apple, but in my opinion it’s a mistake. Hopefully Apple will remedy this in the 2.0 version. We (as educators) need to make our voices heard and insist (whether we’re K-12 or college/university educators) that it’s not acceptable for Apple to ignore and deliberately try to undermine the EPUB standard for eBooks. We all understand Apple is a corporation and wants to make lots of money, but far more is at stake when it comes to digital curriculum than just income for a global corporation. As educators, learners and students, we need the ability to create standards-based e-texts which are compatible on MULTIPLE devices, not just iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. I recommend Mathew Ingram‘s January 19th post for GigaOM, “Do we want textbooks to live in Apple’s walled garden?” for more background on these issues. My answer to Mathew’s rhetorical question is a resounding “No: Not exclusively.”

In the case of my new eBook project, I not only want to distribute this FREE eBook on Apple’s iBookstore, I also want to distribute it on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, and openly on the web. Dan Wineman is 100% correct in calling out the ridiculous, “over the top” restrictions Apple is trying to impose on curriculum authors in his post, “The Unprecedented Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA.”

Since I’m unwilling to restrict the intellectual property roaming potential of this new eBook to “just” Apple’s iBookstore, I chose to create it using Apple’s Pages software. I followed the same procedures I used in the summer of 2011 to write and publish, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” For more background and specific steps about how to create enhanced/multimedia eBooks with Apple’s Pages as well as distribute eBooks on Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s Nook eStore, please check out:

• Podcast380: The Summer of Podfading is OVER: Let’s Talk eBooks! (17 Sept 2011)
• 99¢ Podcast: Creating Multimedia eBooks (3 Dec 2011)

These and additional links are available on my conference breakout session curriculum for “Creating MultiMedia eBooks.” (I’d be delighted to share this session with educators at your conference or other professional development event, btw!)

As educators, we have moral obligations to share. Open Educational Resources (OER) are and will increasingly disrupt traditional publishing companies’ revenue streams by allowing learners around the world to collaborate and share digital curriculum. The 1.0 release of Apple’s iBooks Author software is configured to undermine rather than support OER and the learning revolution.

Apple education executives, I call on you to change this in iBooks Author 2.0. Change the EULA so publishers are not locked into ONLY publishing on the iBookstore, and add an EXPORT TO EPUB feature like Apple programmers include with Pages ’09. Until those changes are made, I’m going to remain UNDERWHELMED by iBooks Author.

(The first image in this post was formatted with Creative Commons attribution using ImageCodr.)

Technorati Tags: apple, author, ibooks, ipad, software, ebook, epub, etext

Underwhelmed by iBooks Author Software originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 23, 2012.

In this episode of “iPad with Wes,” author and digital learning consultant Wesley Fryer explains how to create a custom digital newspaper on your iPad using the free application Flipboard. The video is 9 minutes, 17 seconds long

Referenced links in this episode include:
http://flipboard.com
http://google.com/reader

Screenshot by Wesley Fryer, Flipboard photo from photography.nationalgeographic.com

Please follow @ipadwithwes on Twitter and “like” iPadWithWes on Facebook! Mark your calendar to attend monthly “iPad App Coffee Chats” the first Tuesday of each month either face-to-face in Oklahoma City or via a free webcast on Ustream. Please spread the word about my upcoming workshop “iPad Training for Productivity Training” in Oklahoma City on April 19, 2012, in Oklahoma City.

Technorati Tags: flipboard, google, ipad, training, newspaper, reader

Create a Custom Digital Newspaper on your iPad with Flipboard & Google Reader originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 21, 2012.

This video is a 73 second interview with Laquita Semmler, principal of Mustang Elementary in Mustang, Oklahoma. Mrs. Semmler won a $2000 technology grant from the Oklahoma Association of Elementary School Principals (OAESP) at the mid-winter conference on January 20, 2012, in Oklahoma City. She is planning to use the funds from the grant to purchase a new iMac computer and mobile cameras to provide students with tools to be videographers and journalists for their school website.

Instead of Flip cameras, which have been discontinued by Cisco and do not import video in a Mac-friendly format, Storychasers recommends student videography teams use iPod Touches or iPads for quick-edit videography. In addition, an external microphone is a MUST to improve audio quality. (A $60 iRig mic, available via the Apple Store, was used in the video above.)

Congrats to Mustang Elementary students and staff, and kudos to Mrs. Seemler for applying for and winning this student technology grant!

Technorati Tags: oaesp, videography, mustang, elementary, grant, student, win, winner

OAESP Grant for Student Videography at Mustang, Elementary (Oklahoma) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 21, 2012.

If you haven’t already, definitely check out Apple’s official 7 minute, 20 second video overview of iBooks Author. I think this was shared yesterday during the official event in NYC. As you’d expect from Apple, it’s highly polished and impressive. It even features an educational leader / rock star I know, Chris Lehmann: the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia! Chris is the co-author of “What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media” (2011) and the Co-Chair of the EduCon conference coming up next weekend.

Make no mistake: I love Apple’s products and have been transformed in my professional career as an educator not only through the use of those products, but even more through opportunities Apple has directly provided to me to be influenced by other passionate educators. I AM very excited and positive about this week’s announcement about iBooks Author.

However, as we see corporate advertising messages like the video I’ve linked above, let’s keep a critically important thing in mind: TEACHERS make the biggest difference.

Yes our students need access to digital devices.

But TEACHERS make the difference.

Yes our schools need robust, smart networks with great connectivity to a world of content and a world of connections.

But TEACHERS make the difference.

Yes, we need to shift from “adopt on a 5 year cycle,” heavy and unsearchable paper-based textbooks and embrace dynamic, searchable etexts.

But TEACHERS make the difference.

We’re in the midst of some huge changes in our society as well as our schools. There are lots of opportunities we have amidst many challenges. As we face these disruptive changes together, let’s keep one thing crystal clear in all our minds.

Good TEACHERS make the biggest difference.

Technorati Tags: leadership, apple, ibooks, ebooks, mac, macs, change, schools, mobile

Remember TEACHERS Make the Biggest Difference, Not Devices originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 20, 2012.

There are 2 parts of the proposed state evaluation model for teachers: quantitative and qualitative

Quantitative: holding teachers accountable for student test scores
- our state (Oklahoma) “has punted” and said we need more research before we can implement this
- no state in the United States has figured this out yet (tying student test scores to teacher evaluation)
- Florida is furthest along, but they are still in a pilot stage
- the original proposal was to have 50% of teacher evaluation quantitative (student test scores) and 50% to be qualitative (principal evaluations)

The 50% that is the qualitative piece will actually be 100% this year in 2011-2012 in Oklahoma
- it is what you’ve been doing for 100 years, going into the classroom and seeing how teachers are teaching
- identifying strengths and rewarding those, identifying weaknesses and working to remedy those

Every school district in Oklahoma has to pick 1 of these 3 models:
1- Tulsa Public Schools Model
2- Danielson MOdel
3- Marzano Model

Tulsa model was developed from the ground up with funding from the Gates foundation
- Danielson and Marzano are national models, the Tulsa model is local

No model will be successful if administrators and teachers can’t implement it
- if the principal doesn’t have time to implement this, it won’t be successful
- you need to pick a model which is user-friendly for principals and teachers

Now we have 20 different criteria
- Marzano model has 60 criteria
- Danielson has 76 criteria
- Tulsa model has 20 criteria (it had 37 originally)

In pilot phase, principals and teachers reduced the number of criteria from 37 to 20

These 20 dimensions of the Tulsa model are:
- preparation
- routine
- discipline
- learning environment
- establishes objectives
- stresses sequence
- relates objectives
- involves all learners
- explains content
- models
- monitors
- adjusts to monitoring
- guides practice
- independent practice
- establishes closure
- lesson plans
- student files
- grading patterns
- student mastery

TLA (Teacher and Leader Effectiveness Commission) is composed of about 20 people, OEA, AFT, POE, Legislators, PTA, Administrators, School Board Members
- they evaluated systems for 6 months and came out with the recommendation that we have 3 possible systems
- they said the Tulsa system should be the default system, but schools should have options to adopt Danielson or Marzano

State Board took that recommendation and made Tulsa Public Schools Model as the “Presumptive Default”
- also picked McREL’s Principal Evaluation System and Reeve’s Leadership Performance Matrix
- your district will have to pick between these two systems on principal evaluation systems (we won’t focus on this today, however)

For 2012-2013: you will pilot one of the system and money will be available: $1.5 to be spent, 100% to be distributed on ADA basis to help with training ad implementation of selected models

There is no guarantee of future money after 2012-2013

Implementation Flow Chart
1- SDE provides information on TLA Framework (webinars will start in start of February, Oklahoma City area has 25 slots and they are already full)
2- Vendors provide information on systems
3- Districts choose systems (Supt Barresi said by late March at COSA conference last week)
4- Districts receive training on chosen systems
5- Districts implement chosen systems
6- TLA commission Commission and State Board continually receive updates
7- TLA commission and state board select Default Qualitative System and Quantitative Measures for 2013-2014

Principals will be required to attend multi-day training for whatever system the district selects

Now hearing from Tulsa PS

Our seed grant was funded by Gates Foundation and matched with local foundation dollars
- this was a massive effort, lots of time as well as funds required
- no evaluation system is practical if you can’t implement it

MY QUESTION: HOW DO THESE EVALUATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATE COMMON CORE EXPECTATIONS?

Ours is unique because it is Oklahoma grown, it has been validated, we base it on research and best practices (we are undergoing a validation study now)

Driving gains in student achievement
- teacher and leader effectiveness
- student achievement

TLA evaluation system based on observations, evaluations, feedback/support, and conferences
- this is rubric-based

Rubric provides a support document defining professional proficiency for 5 rankings
- a minimum of 2 observations are required, which each must be at least 20 minutes long
- small pieces of evidence gathered over time are the key

“The principal’s intentional study and analysis of the teacher’s classroom performance, guided by the detailed descriptions of the rubric and recorded in the observation form, which simplifies the rubric.”

Evaluation form is a technology-enhanced tool that documents/logs patterns of effectiveness via the rubric

Conferences follow each observation and evaluation, provide teachers with “status check” and “road map” to improve effectiveness

5 tiered approach to feedback and support
- focuses on 1 (“ineffective”) and 2 (“needs improvement”) performance levels and increases in ALL effective areas

Now hearing from Linda Hendrix
- been with Tulsa Public Schools for 13 years, never envisioned my role changing so dramatically because of accountability

Good relationship between district, teachers, and the teacher’s association is critical
- I’ve been on assessment committee for TPS since day 1 when Gates started with us

TLE System Structure: dimensions for teachers and principals (number of indicators follow, and weights)

Teachers: (20)
- classroom management – 6 – 30%
- instructional effectiveness – 10 – 50%
- professional growth and continuous improvement – 2 – 10%
- interpersonal skills – 1 – 5%
- leadership – 1 – 5%

Principals: (19)
- organization and school management – 6 – 35%
- instructional leadership – 2 – 13%
- professional growth and responsibility – 13%
- interpersonal skills – 4 – 13%
- leadership – 5 – 13%
- stakeholder perceptions – 1 – 13%

We recognized we needed weights, so we assigned the rubric calculation to put more focus (80%) on classroom management and instructional effectiveness

SM 2033 was crafted after we started the Gates process
- five tiers of effectiveness
- domains mirror SB 2033 requirements
- evaluation time frames
- supports for improvement
- applies to ALL teachers and leaders

Teacher rubric in detail: “Like a dictionary, the rubric’s descriptions provide definitional clarity as to each level of effectiveness”
- we wanted everyone to perceive the rubric in the same way
- fairness and equity in the process was a big focus for our working group

5 columns going across the rubric
1- ineffective
2- needs improvement
3- effective
4- highly effective
5- superior

Most of our administrators spend far more than 20 minutes in each teacher’s classroom
- rubric provides spaces for principals to put +, -, or another symbol in each category

One example: “the teacher might not have used their smartboard in the lesson, and they need to use technology, so you would mark that on the rubric”

MY COMMENT: THIS HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF FOCUSING ON EFFECTIVE LEARNING AND EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES, RATHER THAN JUST TECHNOLOGY USE (REF LARRY CUBAN)

Foundational idea: you don’t fire teachers and help them improve

5 tier approach to supporting teachers instructionally and improving leaders
1- “Push Pin” (less formal, yet documented) approaches to remedy ineffectiveness

2- Professional Development Plans (PDP)
in Tulsa PS we call this a “Personal Development Plan” to use more positive words/terms than “improvement plan”

3- Quality Experiences Supporting Teachers (QUEST)

We have Quest: intensive 24 day program, a Quest facilitator works with teachers 3 days per week, half day each time
- they model, help create lessons, lesson plan, and more

MY THOUGHT: THIS SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT PROGRAM AND I’D LOVE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT IT

4- “9-week Cohort” focuses on application, reflection and critical thinking tools to support teachers to move to the next level of consistently impacting student learning”

5- “PDP Training Support Cycles” – 2 hour specific topic PD to address issues identified in PDPs, Oct through April

“our system is research based” and “we based this on reliable sources”

MY COMMENT: WHEN PEOPLE SAY THINGS LIKE THIS AND DON’T CITE AS WELL AS EXPLAIN THE ACTUAL RESEARCH BASIS, IT’S EQUIVALENT TO SOMEONE SAYING, “I HEARD THIS FROM JESUS.” THAT MAY BE TRUE, BUT IN THIS ACADEMIC SETTING WE NEED MORE ELABORATION THAN THAT: A FULL ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY PLEASE.

Now hearing from last speaker

MY SUGGESTION: IT WOULD BE GREAT TO HAVE THE NAMES OF EACH PRESENTER INCLUDED ON THE PRESENTATION SLIDES

The impact:
- student achievement gains
- “great improvements in identifying and distinguishing levels of professional performance”
- teacher evaluation: rankings guided and defined by 265 performance descriptions in 2010-2011 9versus 09-10: zero)
- more support for “less than effective” teachers
- “alignment of professional development plans and evaluation findings”

We are working to have teachers evaluated consistently via our rubric
- we have grown as evaluators through collaboration and comparing notes
- leverage teacher and administrator input
- improve system based on real-world implementation
- simplicity is best
- train evaluators, and train them again
- ensure inter-rater reliability
– certification and re-certification process

teamwork, fortitude, engaging outside community was important

our vision is one thing: student achievement

MY COMMENT: OUR VISION MUST BE FAR WIDER AND DEEPER THAN MERELY STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT. BILL GATES AND NCLB-STYLE HIGH STAKES ACCOUNTABILITY LOVING POLITICIANS MAY WANT US TO SAY THINGS LIKE THIS, BUT WE SHOULD NOT. THERE ARE SO MANY IMPORTANT THINGS WE DO AS TEACHERS AND IN OUR SCHOOLS THAT ARE NOT MEASURED ON STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENTS. STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF OUR FOCUS IN OUR SCHOOLS, BUT IT SHOULD NOT AND MUST NOT BE OUR SINGULAR FOCUS. WE ARE FOCUSED ON STUDENTS, BUT WE ARE ALSO FOCUSED ON ALL ASPECTS OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT AS INDIVIDUALS AND CITIZENS: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, COLLABORATION, ETHICS, CITIZENSHIP, ETC.

From Michael Barlow:
- as this is rolled out statewide, it will be web-based so you can use an iPad or smartphone application
- Enid PS is doing this now

From : “I hate technology and will not use it, I will do this with my paper and pencil, and you can do this evaluation with paper too.”

MY COMMENT: WOW – THIS WAS QUITE AN ANTI-TECHNOLOGY STATEMENT. I WONDER IF SHE USES A CAN OPENER AT HOME?

From Michael Barlow: We are not going to use student test scores in this now, but it is coming
- merit pay is coming, but it’s not part of this bill now

MY QUESTION: SINCE STATE FUNDS AS WELL AS GRANT FUNDS ARE SUPPORTING THE CREATION OF THIS WEB-BASED TOOL, WILL IT BE MADE AVAILABLE FREE TO SCHOOLS AND EDUCATORS? IT SHOULD BE. THIS IS A MANDATORY EVALUATION SYSTEM FOR OUR SCHOOLS TO IMPLEMENT AND IT ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE FREE ONLINE.
- I ASKED MICHAEL BARLOW ABOUT THIS AFTER THE SESSION AND HE CONFIRMED THE WEB-BASED ELEMENTS OF THIS EVALUATION SYSTEM WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FREE.

MY THOUGHTS: THE WORK TPS AND OTHERS HAVE DONE ON THIS QUALITATIVE EVALUATION IS EXCELLENT. THERE IS MUCH GOING ON HERE WHICH IS NOT GOOD, HOWEVER. WHERE IS THE CONSTITUENCY IN OKLAHOMA WHICH IS OPPOSING THE TIE OF STUDENT TEST SCORES TO TEACHER ASSESSMENT / EVALUATION AND MERIT PAY. PEOPLE LIKE MICHAEL BARLOW ARE SAYING ‘MERIT PAY IS COMING’ AS AN INEVITABILITY. WE CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT ACCEPT THIS AS PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS. THERE IS NOT SOUND ACADEMIC RESEARCH TO SUPPORT THE VALUE OF THIS PATH, AND PEOPLE SEEM TO BE RUNNING LIKE LEMMINGS TOWARD THE CLIFF WITHOUT PROTEST. WHERE IS THE PROTEST? WHERE IS THE ORGANIZED OPPOSITION TO MERIT PAY TIED TO STUDENT TEST SCORES IN OKLAHOMA? THIS IS MADNESS AND WE MUST ACT TO STOP IT.

Technorati Tags: education, oaesp, oklahoma, principal, tle, evaluation, leadership, gates, ccosa

Teacher Leader Effectiveness (TLE) and the Tulsa Model #oaesp12 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 20, 2012.

It is absolutely fantastic to be able to teach students with an iPad2 using an AppleTV, an HDMI-ready flatscreen TV, and an open wifi network. The mirroring feature of the iPad2 to an AppleTV is hands-down, without question, the best way to teach a class using an iOS device. (The iPhone 4GS will also mirror to an AppleTV, but earlier iPhone versions won’t and the iPad 1 won’t either.) I LOVE being able to be “wireless” and untethered from the television/display and be anywhere in the room during our lessons.

Earlier today, I helped some elementary administrators setup for a presentation at the Oklahoma Association of Elementary School Principals (OAESP) mid-winter conference using an AppleTV, an iPad and a projector. In that case we used a $40 HDMI to VGA converter recommended in this iEAR.org post and everything worked great. The main lesson learned there was to bring and use our own wifi hotspot. We downloaded all the YouTube videos used in the presentation to a laptop in advance using saveyoutube.com, and transferred them directly to the iPad’s photo roll using the PhotoSync app and PhotoSync Companion software. We did this because when we tested the setup earlier, we found the wireless performance of video playback was slow and choppy at times. This could have been due to the way the conference hotel’s router was configured, and/or because of a lot of traffic on the router. Using a wifi hotspot we’d brought along worked well, even though it wasn’t connected to the Internet. All the videos and the Keynote slideshow were copied offline on the iPad2 used for the presentation, so no Internet connectivity was required.

Getting back to Puppet Pals and our lessons learned… I’m working with 12 students and we have 3 iPads, so they’ve been working in groups of four. Last week we discussed the basics of three act structure, which I’ve drawn and described as “the story arc.” This is the first time any of these students have worked with iPads or videography like this. While everyone has seen movies and has some movie literacy, their initial tendency is to want to have characters fight and zoom around the screen. Last week each group made an initial video (each about 60 seconds long) and today we started by watching and evaluating them. These first videos didn’t have much of a semblance of “story,” but we were learning the basics of the program including how to manipulate characters, how it’s helpful to move characters when they are speaking, how to pass the microphone and speak clearly into it, and how to pause recordings if needed to discuss a plan for the next scene. Different students served as scribes today as we discussed some strengths as well as ways the initial movies could be improved.

Here are some of our lessons learned.

DISCUSS APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE FOR THE CONTEXT
Both weeks we’ve had discussions about appropriate language, considering the fact we’re in a church for Tiger Club and that we’re hoping to share these videos with other people online. Even with these discussions in advance, it’s been important to facilitate both the planning and production of videos with students. Two other adults are available for our class to help the students, but their involvement has been minimal. We want to have fun and are having fun, but boundaries are important and this wasn’t a conversation I was initially planning on having with students before our first lesson started. It’s an important conversation. For one of our videos today I actually had to edit out about 4 seconds which had some profane words which ‘slipped out.’ Fortunately it’s easy to do that in iMovie. It’s valuable to discuss with students the importance of choosing their words carefully depending on their surroundings and context. Reminds me of Ruby Payne’s book.

AN iRIG MIC IS CRITICAL TO ELIMINATE BACKGROUND NOISE
Our first two meetings we’ve just had one iRig mic to share among three groups with three iPads. If you watch and listen to some of our videos from today which are embedded below, you won’t have any doubts about which group used the iRig and which didn’t. The iRig does a fantastic job filtering out background noise in a classroom. Since we have three groups of students working in a small classroom and many are laughing/having fun as they’re creating videos, the iRig is really a must.

REMEMBER YOUR APPLE TV REMOTE CONTROL
Last week I forgot to pack and bring my remote control for the AppleTV, and as a result I couldn’t configure it to access the local church’s wifi network. Don’t forget the remote. It is possible to configure an iOS device to use the Remote app to control an AppleTV, but the device and the AppleTV have to be connected to the same wifi network for this to work. That initially requires use of the remote control.

DOWNLOAD ALL CHARACTERS FROM PUPPET PALS DIRECTORS EDITION FIRST
Puppet Pals for iPad comes in two versions, one that is free (with only a few character and background sets) and the $3 “Directors Pass” version which comes with all the characters and backgrounds. Definitely spring for the $3 version, but download all the backgrounds and characters in advance so students won’t have to do that when they are in class.

PROVIDE SOME LIMITS FOR STUDENTS IN PUPPET PALS
Even if you just have a few character and background sets downloaded and available in Puppet Pals, the choices can be pretty overwhelming for students. It’s always instructive to see how often students will copy or mimic something you demonstrate initially for them in a whole group setting, rather than striking out on their own with novel ideas. (That dynamic is why some constructivist learning advocates discourage showing students examples, I think.) It’s good to model possibilities, but I think it’s also helpful to provide limits. I asked students both last week and today to choose no more than 3 or 4 characters, and no more than 3 different scenes. We have been working to build short, 1-2 minute videos, so this is plenty. In some cases students used more characters in their groups, but generally this limitation has been helpful and students have followed it.

LET STUDENTS DO ALL THE iPAD DRIVING
Even during the whole-group demonstrations of the Puppet Pals app, it’s worked well to have different students do all the clicking and swiping on the app: They’ve “done all the driving.” It’s very good to facilitate this with oral instructions, rather than simply “do it” for students yourself as the teacher. They learn more when they ‘drive’ and they are far more engaged. Most students want a chance to participate, and there are plenty of ways to do that in an iPad lesson with Puppet Pals.

REQUIRE STUDENTS TO DISCUSS AND CREATE A PAPER-BASED PLANNING DOCUMENT FIRST
With just about any multimedia project, getting students to plan, get organized, and in some cases WRITE is the hardest part of the entire experience. It’s also the most important, however, because it contributes the most to the eventual success and quality of the project. This week students did plan and write out more details about their planned videos and stories, so they each have more of a semblance of a narrative. Remember I’ve just worked with these students two times for 50 minutes each week, and it’s challenging to do that without any prior relationship or experiences together. I’m not claiming we’ve created any masterpieces here, but we ARE definitely having fun and I think the kids are picking up some things about telling digital stories. I’m learning a lot too!

I created a new, free YouTube channel tonight to share these videos. (multimediasandbox) Here are the student planning pages for today’s videos (very sketchy and simple, but more than we did last week) and the videos they created. I am particularly proud of this first group’s video, who came a LONG way because of the planning and storyboarding they did last week following our lesson time.

What does it say that two of my three student groups made videos which primarily focused on two groups fighting? We talked about the importance of conflict and tension which leads to an eventual climax/resolution for the characters in a story, but we didn’t insist it had to be about fighting. Next week I’m thinking I’ll have students draw some characters out of a hat that they’ll be required to include in their story, along with a sentence or sentence fragment they’ll have to use and build on for a novel plot. I’m thinking I’ll add an additional guideline that their characters can’t fight. Can you think of other or better guidelines to use next week?

LAND FIGHT

PRESIDENTIAL FIGHT

SHREK 4 REMIX

(no photo of the planning doc is available)

Technorati Tags: ipad, puppet, pals, lessons, learned, videography

Lessons Learned Using Puppet Pals on iPads in an After School Program originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

Areas the state department says we need to do:
- talk with our community stakeholders
- do professional development (do you have a plan)

MY THOUGHTS: WHERE ARE THE EXAMPLES OF COMMON CORE PD PLANS FOR OTHER OKLAHOMA SCHOOL DISTRICTS? WHERE IS THERE A SPACE TO SHARE LINKS TO DIFFERENT COMMON CORE TRANSITION PLANS IN OKLAHOMA? WHERE ARE CURRICULUM MAPS ONLINE?

How are you providing the big picture of who, what, when, where to everyone

The 6 areas are posted, we are going to do a ‘hosted carousel activity’
1- Professional Development
2- Assessment
3- Instruction
4- Curriculum
5- Stakeholders
6- Overview

What are you doing NOW to do these things?

HERE ARE THE PICTURES I TOOK OF OUR BRAINSTORMING IN THESE AREAS

Transition Timeline for Common Core

- June 2010: State Board adopts common core state standards

Transition: 2010 – 2014 teacher development, local curriculum revision, test development

Transition complete: 2014

New standards for math and language arts for Common Core
- there are literacy and other changes
- math and language arts are the only tests that will change

Very important that our students have informational texts to use

Resources
- See sde.state.ok.us
- click Common Core State Standards
- REAC3H Network

Common Core website: http://corestandards.org

CCOSA http://ccosa.org

K2 Center websites
- http://k20center.ou.edu
- http://k20alt.ou.edu

Presentations:
- K20 to the CORE

Park website (park.cc) will be in charge of questions, they are periodically publishing questions and asking for feedback

Very important that students are writing across the curriculum

Key lesson for teachers: good teaching practices and high expectations are the most important elements of Common Core

Strategies:
- Comintas (?)
- lots of focus on students discussing things and being able to communicate their ideas in both written and oral forms

Also K20 offers sessions on Core Tools and Core Design (lesson plan development)
- we are seeing teachers get really excited about these changes

MY COMMENTS: MOST OF THE IDEAS WHICH WERE SHARED TODAY, THAT I HEARD, WERE MORE AWARENESS-LEVEL THINGS. WE NEED BREAKOUT SESSIONS LIKE THIS WHICH ARE MORE FOCUSED ON IMPLEMENTATION SPECIFICS. HERE ARE QUESTIONS I HAD IN THIS SESSION WHICH WENT UNANSWERED:
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS LESSON PLAN TEMPLATES WHICH OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS ARE USING WITH TEACHERS FOR COMMON CORE ALIGNED LESSONS?
- HOW ARE TEACHERS WHO ARE TRANSITIONING TO COMMON CORE THIS YEAR (AND WE HAD ONE AT OUR TABLE) CHANGING THEIR LESSON PLANS FOR CCSS?
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS DISTRICT TRANSITION PLANS FOR CCSS IN OKLAHOMA?
- WHERE IS THE OKLAHOMA LESSON PLAN DATABASE FOR PUBLICLY SHARING (UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES) CCSS ALIGNED LESSONS?
- WHAT SHOULD WE TELL TEACHERS WHO ARE TEACHING A COURSE WITH AN EOI (END OF INSTRUCTION EXAM) WHEN IT COMES TO COMMON CORE? (IT SEEMS TO BE THE GAME HASN’T CHANGED AT ALL FOR THEM AT THIS POINT AS LONG AS EOI’S REMAIN.)
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS WALKTHROUGH RUBRICS FOR OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS WHICH ARE COMMON CORE ALIGNED?
- WHERE ARE VIDEO RESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR TEACHERS TO SEE ‘BEST PRACTICE’ LESSONS FOR COMMON CORE?
- WHERE ARE SCHOOL DISTRICTS SAFELY PUBLISHING STUDENT WORK ONLINE IN AN INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT?

LOTS OF QUESTIONS. NOT MANY ANSWERS. YET.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, ccss, common, core, commoncore, oaesp, oaesp12

What’s So Common About Common Core? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

Information about Mark is listed on the Education Speakers Group website and Nuts and Bolts Symposium website. This is a PDF of the same handout we were provided for today’s keynote by Mark.

I want you to be on fire for your job, which is one of the most important jobs in the world
There are a lot of adult educators who are struggling, who need your help

it’s a great day to be an encourager and not a discourager
- it’s a great day to become a better person

Let’s take this day and embrace it to the fullest

A great day to be a positive force is a negative society

#1 thing young kids are looking for: positive adult role models
- you

I’ve been doing this full time for 8 years now
Think of this activity:
- make a list on a piece of paper of the qualities you want from the kids and adults you work with which you want to see / encourage / support

What is the #1 quality you want from your students
- #1 quality isn’t smarts: it’s a positive attitude and good behavior in the classroom
- know what I wanted from my teachers as a principal
- It was always harder

educators around the world want students to treat me with unconditional respect, and to respect each other
- to get along with each

#3 reason: students motivated to learn
- we’ve got to make sure we are motivated
- when I hire teachers, I look for teachers who are MOTIVATED to be the best they can be

The only person I have a chance to control is myself

I am beneath everyone in this room, but I do have a passion
- if you’re going to be in the teaching profession for 30 years, you might as well be on fire
- we have got to have a super positive attitude
- I didn’t have that when I started teaching

It’s ok to be in school improvement mode, but don’t just stay there
- we must always ask: can I reach one more adult, can I reach one more student
- we have a chance to embrace the day and make the world a better place

Every day we need to look in the mirror and ask if we are treating everyone with unconditional respect
- whatever has become habit in your life is what you do
- that is why we have to have the best habits

“If the butt starts getting numb, the brain is going dumb” – Marsha Tate

Most important thing to me is that the learning sticks

You have got to be willing to take a risk as a successful educational leader

You don’t learn how to teach in college
- it is all on the job training

MY THOUGHT: HERE’S A LOUD INDICTMENT OF TYPICAL TEACHER EDUCATION / TEACHER PREPARATION PROGRAMS

Often we make things too complicated
- fear of embarrassment and fear of failure are the reasons many kids don’t participate in class, AND the reason many classroom teachers won’t try something new in the classroom

The environment for success is key
- what relationships have been developed in your school culture

if we can help create a risk-free environment where students will feel safe taking risks, they will participate far more

Best way to increase student achievement: Increase the quality of instruction
- discipline referrals will go down, test scores will go up

My handout is long, because I’d always rather give you MORE rather than less

Please write down these goals:
- help each person in this “relight your fire” (get the fire back)
- the passion to change the world, unconditional love for everyone

It’s so easy in education to lose your fire

“The Energy Bus” by Jon Jordon

No educator in the nation would tell you they started out wanting to become a screamer, be in survival mode, be an energy vampire

You can’t give away something you don’t have

Great teachers are always looking for opportunities to encourage others and build relationships (with students and other teachers)
- #1 goal is relight your fire

#2 goal: fill up an imaginary toolbox for success

In college you don’t have to have a bell activity, a bathroom plan, and more… but in public education you do
- we want you to fill up with toolbox strategies today to take back right away

bathroom procedure: Yes with a qualifier
- you can go to the restroom after you finish problems 1 through 5

#3 goal: I want educators to network and share

Some of the most effective teachers I’ve ever seen are 1st year teachers
- engagement in the classroom

#4 have fun at this conference

Most effective teachers create an environment where the students do the majority of the work

I have found the better I meet my needs in my personal life, the better I can meet my student needs: have patience

Willard Harley: “His Needs, and Her Needs”
- you have an emotional bank deposit with every person, and you’re either making deposits or withdrawals

What is your spouse’s love language?

support and appreciation = the main thing teachers want from their administrator

Do you know the #1 thing all students need? Unconditional LOVE

the key to relationships is loading up the emotional bank account deposits

with students
- go to their extracurricular activities
- recognize each student’s birthday
- give students jobs in the classroom
- positive parent contact
- verbal praise
- noticing them and commenting or questioning them about it in a supportive way
- calling them by name
- stickers

with adults:
- food
- being there
- ask about family

If you prove that you care for someone through your actions, they will be much more likely to be on board with you

Effective teachers have some signal when they want eyes-on attention from students
- a bell
- repeated claps
- time – out
- ring, ring – hello

If the kids say “oooo” because you have used disrespect or sarcasm, the kids are thinking “you’re just like us, that’s how we treat each other”
- don’t take the low road
- choose to meet disrespect with respect, anger with love… these are the decisions we must make

Learning will be on fire in your classrooms when teachers get the environment right for learning

students can make emotional bank account deposits
- often though that is not their habit

Get the “Cha Ching” going in your classroom
- I taught this to students, we brainstormed on butcher paper

If you think about it, making 100% on the state test is not as important as making deposits
- self-contained teachers particularly have this opportunity

going out of your way on purpose to make emotional deposits and build relationships with others

[THIS IS WHEN WE TOOK OUR MORNING BREAK]

Giveaways Mark used:
- bell with stickers
- tshirts

Talk with students all the time about CHOICES
- everything is a choice, plus you choose the attitude you are going to have every day

sometimes bad things just happen, and we are in a situation when we say, “I did not deserve that.”
- so sometimes we have to force ourselves to have a positive attitude

Positive relationships and the emotional bank account: these are keys in our toolbox

variety and classroom management
- if you don’t have the classroom management right, you won’t want or be able to take your kids to the lab for experiments

24 days to form a habit
- Harry Wong: first weeks of school, procedures, procedures, procedures,
- something always becomes a habit/procedure in the classroom

MY COMMENT: THIS IS ABOUT NORMALIZATION, AND BUILDING A CULTURE

You can re-teach procedures at any time of the year, but the start of the year is the best time to do that

Environment for success: all about relationships and classroom management
- always better to be proactive instead of reactive

Add the words: Room setup
- can determine if your workshop or class is effective or ineffective
- if you don’t work the room, the room will work you
- I don’t prefer round tables, scattered rectangular tables are my favorite to prevent people from keeping their backs to you all day as as presenter

Working the classroom is like working a traffic light (Henry Wong again)
- if you stay at the front of the room, automatically you will have zones or layers created in the classroom
- the farther you are from a student, the more likely they are not going to be participating

College professors don’t have to ‘work the classroom’ like we do in PK-12 education

proximity and positive words are big motivators for student engagement

you have got to monitor as you teach
- assessments must be done in the classroom

As a principal I told teachers I was doing “specific skill observation”
- I was looking for a specific skill

1st one: Traffic Light, work the room

I would be in a teacher’s classroom at least 30 times during the semester
- If I only go in there twice a year,

Do you know teachers like to

#1 motivator after the relationship is SUCCESS with both kids and adults

sometimes teachers don’t get the right strategies in college
- specific skill observation was one of the best things we ever did at my school

Effective teaching is a lifestyle
- getting the correct habits in the toolbox is the most important thing

Here are the strategies that my teachers knew how to use with students for engagement:
- evil eye
- evil eye with signal
- proximity
- proximity with touch
- proximity with note
- whisper technique
- delayed referral
- send on referral
- role play
- bell activity

Comments from participants on most important elements
- building trust within your building

Instead of just asking students “Why?” kick up short answer questions with this kind of script: “I like your answer, tell me why you chose that answer”

#1 predictor of student achievement is the teacher (it’s not the smart board, the common core standards, etc)

you’ve got to fight all disrespect with respect every time

The Five Love languages by Gary Chapman is a great book, and there are other books specifically for adults with children and teen

Love language 1: Acts of Service

Love Language 2: Words of Affirmation
- most men speak this love language

Words have SO MUCH power
- we have got to be careful, say the right words, and do the right thing so we make deposits instead of withdrawals

Love Language 3: Gifts
- if your wife’s love language is gifts, you better get her a huge diamond

Love Language 4: Quality Time
- people that want you to be their BFF
- how do you identify these students: they get to your door early each morning, they are looking for adult role models they want to be with

This is where gang membership starts I think: people are looking for something

Our relationships with everyone is key

if I don’t spend quality time with my spouse, there is a snake somewhere who will
- often when we run into problems with relationships, we are speaking the wrong love language

Love Language 5: Physical Touch

Assignment: Identify your dominant love language (how can people make the biggest deposit for you)
- there is a profile that goes with the book
- when you do the profile with the book you get a pretty good idea

Technorati Tags: relationships, pd, professional, development, classroom, management, instruction, principal

Classroom Management, Effective Instruction, and Student Motivation by Mark Mcleod originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

“Kids will not always remember WHAT you teach them, but they will always remember HOW you treat them”

love affair politicians have with high stakes, standardized assessment

We advocate for:
- growth models for learning for students
- teacher and principal evaluation

pressure now is “a significant part” of teacher and principal evaluation will be based on standardized test scores
- worry is: who is going to want to teach the kids with the low test scores?

We are working on a framework document for what we think would be a fair and effective evaluation process for administrators

Doug Reeves talks about “deep evaluation”
- we think each educator should focus each year on 2 or 3 key things for improvement

Educators have to take the
- theories of change are different for schools than business

Common Core and Assessments
- Park organization is our consortium in Oklahoma
- get involved in that process of developing those assessments
- those assessments will rule your life if our educational politics continue as they have been tracking

National renewal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) for is an uncertain pathway right now
- all 3 proposals now scrap AYP but keep annual testing
- both House and Senate versions also scrap subgroup targets
- both let states decide evaluation processes for teachers and students, those without a framework will have to develop one based significantly on student test scores

NAESP’s Recommendations for ESEA Reauthorization

Low performing school models (4 of them) must be used in the waiver package: all include firing the principal first
- we continue to fight for a fair and objective evaluation for principals

There is no legislation which is perfect
- what we must do as a group across the nation is raise the volume our voices as principals in these discussions
- we need to tell our stories in different strategic ways

My advocacy team came up with 3 P’s
- protect: the critical role of principals (research tells us how important principals
- promote: our own vision for education reform (we are the professionals, we must remind ourselves
- preserve: preserve the principalship by prioritzing professional development

Last year President Obama used backdrop for education with a backdrop of 3 R’s
- responsibility, reform, results

“leading the learning” would be my backdrop
- competence, culture, and connections
- I believe accomplished principals must have competence
- provide meaningful PD, communicate effectively, differentiate support
- leader in the design of a strategic school plan
- here’s our map for where we are going…

Principals are creators of culture
- you empower your staff
- meeting diverse student needs
- setting alignment across grade levels
- may be creating a professional learning community
- formalizing expectations
- encouraging teachers to take a risk, and if they fail you will work with them

Michael Fullen: If principals are not in tune with the school culture, your culture will manage you

recruitment is key: not just among teachers but among all constituents

now is the time for us to be ruthlessly strategic about who we are and what we are about

I encourage you to always do what is right

Closing thank you: for beginning your day early, staying late, getting to that pile of reading, doing lunch duty more than you should, for early morning sub calls, for knowing when to let a parent vent, your ability to coach ineffective teachers out of the profession, for being brave enough to sometimes buck the system, remaining calm amidst many storms, knowing when to make a decision, for caring, striving for excellence (not necessarily perfection), raising the volume of the voice of our profession. and much more….

A Call to Increase the Volume of our Profession in Educational Politics originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

I haven’t decided who I’m voting for this year for President, I’m ideologically aligned with many Rootstrikers and I don’t think any of our current Presidential candidates are. Whatever your personal political leanings might be, it’s an important time to discuss the election with U.S. students in our classrooms as well as media literacy. How do you know what to believe when you see something in the media or online? What authority do you trust? Why? How can you check the facts and weigh bias? Why do these questions matter?

Go forth, fellow educator… and teach both young and old to ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. Some of them will be good ones. No one is serving hemlock today at your school, thankfully. Bring forth your best efforts to encourage critical thinking. The future of our nation hangs in the balance.

Technorati Tags: media, politics, video, youtube, pac, super, superpac, unitedstates

The Best Political Spin Money Can Buy originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

While the new draft rules are available on the SDE website, I can’t find a link to submit “public comments” on either the Oklahoma SDE News Blog site (ok.gov/sde/newsblogs), the old SDE homepage or the new one. If you know where information is posted about submitting public comments on these draft rules please let me know by leaving a comment. The document itself does not provide any guidance or contact info for people wanting to submit public comments.

I haven’t read through these in detail but will in upcoming days. I’ll probably submit “a public comment” if I can learn where and how to do so.

UPDATE: Eric Hileman let me know comments can be submitted via email to rules@ok.gov.

UPDATE2: The following link provides instructions about submitting public comments for this proposed rule change: www.sde.state.ok.us/Law/Rules. The published impact statement for this rule change is also worth reading.

photo credit: HikingArtist.com

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, online, course, courses, k12, sde

Supplemental Oklahoma Rules for K-12 Online Courses originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 17, 2012.

The cost of activating an iPhone with AT&T is absolutely ridiculous. Since I have several kids, and eventually want all of them to be able to use smartphones, this is a real concern for me. Our family wireless bill now exceeds a monthly car payment, and I am not “OK” with this situation being considered “normal.” Because of these concerns, I recently figured out how to jailbreak and “unlock” an older iPhone 3G for one of my kids to use and put it on the T-Mobile network on a “pay-as-you-go” plan for $15 per month. This plan provides unlimited texting, phone calls for 10 cents per minute, and no cellular data. Since my kids primarily text and rarely make voice calls, this plan is perfect. It’s half the price AT&T would charge me to add an iPhone line to our existing family plan ($10 per month) plus activate the cheapest, AT&T-mandatory data plan ($20). Here are some of the things I learned getting that iPhone switched over to T-Mobile.

AT&T currently makes anyone using an iPhone on their network activate a data plan, and the cheapest one is $20 per month. There is a setting on more recent iOS versions to turn off cellular data entirely, and it might be possible to turn that off so AT&T never finds out you’re using an iPhone with a SIM card you activated previously with another phone. When I gave one of my kids my older iPhone a year or so ago, we activated it by switching the SIM card from their older RAZR phone and putting it in the iPhone. A few weeks after using it, AT&T sent my child a text message announcing they had recognized their phone was an iPhone and therefore activated a mandatory $20 per month data plan. We didn’t ask for that data plan, we didn’t want that data plan, but AT&T didn’t and doesn’t care. One of their objectives as a corporation is to soak everyone who is a customer for as much per month as they possibly can. This makes me angry and frustrated as a customer, and is a big reason I chose to figure out how to switch at least some of our family phones over to T-Mobile.

Different cell phone carriers use different technologies. AT&T phones use SIM cards because they operate on the GSM network. That is the same network used by T-Mobile, which is the reason an “unlocked” phone (including an unlocked iPhone) can be used with either AT&T or T-Mobile in the USA. That’s not the case for Verizon phones, because they operate on the CDMA network. The English WikiPedia article, “Comparison of mobile phone standards,” provides some good background on the relative advantages and disadvantages of these phone types. If you travel internationally outside the USA, you definitely want to use a GSM phone since about 80-85% of the world’s cell phones use GSM. If you have an unlocked phone, you can purchase a local SIM card in many countries and use it in your phone. This can be a good way to avoid “international roaming fees” which some carriers (including AT&T, depending on your plan) can sock you with if you use your ‘normal’ SIM card out of the country.

It’s remarkable and ridiculous at some level to see how “locking phones” has become normal in the United States, along with absurdly expensive rates for cellular data access. Countries including Lebanon, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Singapore require (currently) all phones sold in their countries be sold UNLOCKED. This means customers are free to use those phones with any available wireless carrier, without going through the tedious hoops I’m about to describe to unlock an iPhone 3G.

If you’re interested in unlocking an iPhone and switching to T-Mobile, I recommend you find someone who has prior experience both jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones to help you. This is something you can figure out how to do successfully using trustworthy websites as well as YouTube video tutorials, but there ARE risks as well as drawbacks to carefully weigh. Understand the following:

1. Apple does not support jailbreaking or unlocking your iPhone and doing so can void your warranty. (If you “just” jailbreak and don’t “unlock” you should be able to re-install the iOS firmware and restore your iPhone’s software to it’s original / non-jailbroken condition, but depending on circumstances this may not always be possible. Unlocking almost always voids your warranty.)
2. Unlocking can require overwriting / changing the “baseband” for your iPhone which can be an irreversible action.
3. It may be necessary to update your iPhone baseband to a version which disables certain functionality, like GPS. Weigh this carefully.
4. If something goes wrong during your jailbreaking and unlocking process, it IS possible that you might “brick” your iPhone. This means it could be unusable and essentially become an expensive paperweight. That’s why I recommend you work with someone with prior successful experiences jailbreaking and unlocking an iPhone if you try this.
5. There are a lot of iPhone jailbreaking and unlocking websites which are mainly seeking ad revenue. Some may have malware (bad stuff) they could install on your computer and/or your iPhone. Malware DOES exist for the iPhone, I have a friend who got some over a year ago via a jailbroken app he downloaded and tried. Be sure to use reliable, trustworthy websites to obtain jailbreak and unlock software.
6. According to a T-Mobile employee I interviewed, T-Mobile does NOT provide 3G or 4G connectivity speeds to any iPhone users on their network. T-Mobile limits all iPhone users to 2G or “edge” connectivity speeds as of this writing. This is a major disadvantage and bummer… It could change down the road, but at this point it might be a reason to stick with AT&T or another official iPhone carrier.
7. T-Mobile is NOT going to merge with AT&T at this point and go away as an alternative network to AT&T in the USA, thanks (apparently) to a confluence of circumstances. Read more about this from December 2011 articles in TechCrunch and Engadget. I think this is really good news for consumers. AT&T acts like a bully monopoly already, and that behavior would have surely gotten only worse if they’d been allowed to get bigger via this merger.
8. Pay-as-you-go plans with T-Mobile can’t roam outside T-Mobile’s network. That means if my child is in a rural area or out of town away from T-Mobile’s coverage area, it might not be possible to text or call.

To get an iPhone on T-Mobile from AT&T, you will need to several things for sure and possibly some others. For sure, you’ll need to:

• Jailbreak your iPhone so you can install programs not authorized by Apple on it, using Cydia
• Unlock your iPhone by installing a program which lets other carrier SIM cards work

In some cases, you also may need to install new “baseband” software on your iPhone. As previously mentioned, in some cases this could disable iPhone functions like GPS.

There are several excellent sources of information about jailbreaking and unlocking which I recommend. Beware of Google searches for “jailbreak” and “unlock iPhone.” You’ll find tons of ad-supported websites with those searches, and in all likelihood some malware sites too. Here are the jailbreak and unlock information websites I use and recommend:

• Official blog of the iPhone Jailbreak Dev-Team: blog.iphone-dev.org
• The iPhone Wiki: theiphonewiki.com
• JailbreakQA: jailbreakqa.com

In my specific case, I inherited (from a relative who had upgraded) an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1. The iPhoneWiki has a direct link to the IPSW (iPhone iOS installer package) which I needed to use to jailbreak, along with instructions that I had to update my baseband to 06.15.00. Those instructions are clear that the process will disable GPS on this iPhone permanently. In my situation that’s not a big deal, because my child who will be using this iPhone won’t really need to use Google Maps or GPS features of other apps. It would be a big deal for my wife or for me, however, and it’s definitely important to know about in advance.

JailbreakQA has a good list of jailbreaking tools which are available for different iPhone models running different versions of iOS. I ended up using two versions of redsn0w to jailbreak and update the baseband on the iPhone 3G. I initially tried using the latest version to jailbreak (posted by the Dev Team at the end of December 2011) but it kept crashing. I used the older redsn0w 0.9.6rc19 to jailbreak but disabled the option to also install something to show battery usage. redsn0w is one of several tools available to jailbreak your iPhone. Again the one you can use depends on the hardware model as well as the iOS version installed on your iPhone. In the past I’ve jailbroken my iPhone with the PwnageTool, the jailbreak.me website, and greenpois0n.

When you jailbreak, it’s vital you do NOT update to the latest iOS version when it comes out. Recently I waited to update my iPhone4 to iOS 5, because the “untethered” jailbreak for it didn’t come out until last month. A tethered jailbreak means you have to restart your iPhone by physically plugging it into your computer and using jailbreak software to start it again. Untethered jailbreaks don’t require this, you can restart your phone when it is disconnected from your computer.

While I had jailbroken iPhones before, until this recent iPhone 3G jailbreak I hadn’t updated iPhone baseband software or unlocked an iPhone. Both processes proved to be very straightforward once I learned what to do. Upgrading the baseband is an option in redsn0w, which I learned how to do watching this YouTube tutorial. (The accent of the speaker makes his English a little hard to understand, but it’s thorough and helpful.) You can opt to jailbreak and update baseband at the same time, but I did them separately. I jailbroke first with the older version of redsn0w linked above, and then used the most recent redsn0w to update the baseband. It’s a little confusing because in this case, the check box is to install ‘iPad baseband’ and I wasn’t using an iPad. The video linked above confirmed this is the right step, however, and the process worked for me.

After updating the baseband, it was time to actually unlock the phone. I did this by installing the application “ultrasn0w” in Cydia. I had to run Cydia twice, however, and run the available updates before ultrasn0w became available in the search interface.

I should mention also that all this software is available FREE and without charge. There is no charge for redsn0w or ultrasn0w. I have never paid for any jailbreaking software in the past few years, and I have jailbroken (at different times) an original iPhone, an iPhone 3GS, an iPhone4, and an iPad1.

Once these three steps were complete on the iPhone 3G for my child (jailbreaking and installing Cydia, updating the baseband, and unlocking by installing ultrasn0w) I was ready to head to the T-Mobile store. I had visited a few weeks ago with some employees to get information about the process and available pricing, so there were no surprises for us at this stage.

It is possible to keep an existing phone number you have with AT&T and “port” it over to T-Mobile even with a “pay-as-you-go” plan. When we activated the iPhone 3G on T-Mobile, we paid $10.45 for a SIM card and the activation. I had to provide my AT&T wireless account number to the T-Mobile rep, who had to visit with customer service on the phone to make it happen. It can take up to 24 hours for a phone number with another carrier to “port” over, and during that time a temporary number with T-Mobile is available for use. Once the number “port” is complete we’ll need to purchase some voice minutes for the phone, and we’ll be able to recharge those minutes in the future either online, by using a SMS code, or purchasing a T-Mobile minutes card. We’ll be paying just $15 per month for this line (instead of $30 to AT&T) and mainly using it to text. The iPhone 3G works great on wifi for Internet access, but it won’t have any cellular data access.

Assuming this T-Mobile iPhone experiment continues to work well, I plan to switch another of my kids who already has an iPhone with $30/month in AT&T add-on account charges over to T-Mobile. I’m not sure if at some point I’ll switch my own account with AT&T over, but I’ve thought about doing that. I might use the same $15 per month pay-as-you-go plan, but also activate a MiFi card which I could use for true 3G and 4G network connectivity not only for my iPhone but also iPad and laptop. I’d just need to make sure I had enough monthly bandwidth to meet my needs. Currently MiWi is my favorite and most important iPhone app because it lets my phone become a mobile hotspot for laptops, iPads, and other devices. This is an important function I want to maintain, but a MiFi card could do that as well.

I hope the information I have provided in this post is helpful to you. Again, please work with someone who has had prior successful experiences jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones if you want to try this yourself. Also be aware of the risks and don’t take them lightly. I understand carriers like AT&T want to keep us all “locked in” to excruciatingly expensive contracts, but am thrilled consumers have options like those described here to go with an alternative carrier like T-Mobile. I’m definitely holding off on a new iPhone 4S for now, and when I do purchase a new iPhone I’ll seriously consider just buying an unlocked version.

Have you had experiences, good or bad, with jailbreaking and/or unlocking an iPhone? If so, what are some of your lessons learned?

Avoiding AT&T’s Ridiculous iPhone Data Fees by Switching to T-Mobile originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 17, 2012.

More photos are available in this Flickr set. Also check out the ten minute video I posted from the weekend, “7th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, Bushwhackers, and Jayhawkers (Kansas in 1861 – 1865)“.

What fun!

Technorati Tags: kansas, trapper, trappers, rendezvous, scout, scouting, campout, iphone, documentary, newton, troop

Trapper’s Rendezvous 2012: An iPhone documentary originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 15, 2012.

This evening I uploaded two large, high definition videos to YouTube from this past weekend’s Trapper’s Rendezvous campout in southcentral Kansas. The first was a 788 MB, 10 minute “no-edit” video about Kansas during the Civil War years of 1861 – 1865. The second was a 1 GB, 13.5 minute edited video (an “iPhone documentary”) I created with iMovie ’11. During the upload of both videos, my high speed cable modem Internet connection went down for awhile and came back up. I’m guessing the upload stress of my continuing CrashPlan backup (260+ GB worth, running for more than a week) along with Netflix streaming by other members of my family caused the interruptions. Whatever the case, the fact that uploads to YouTube using the latest Chrome browser now RESUME when you cancel an interrupted download and choose to upload the same file is GREAT. But-for this YouTube feature, I don’t think I could have successfully uploaded and shared these videos online tonight.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to ditch Internet Explorer, whether you use a Windows or Apple computer. IE is slower, has poorer support for web standards, and frankly… just isn’t cool to run on your computer anymore.

Added to these persuasive reasons, now you know IE doesn’t support recoverable and resumable YouTube uploads. Remember, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Use IE!”

Technorati Tags: youtube, upload, firefox, chrome, resume, recover, recoverable

Recoverable and Resumable YouTube Uploads with Chrome and FireFox originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 15, 2012.

More photos from the 2012 Trapper’s Rendezvous are available in this Flickr set.

Technorati Tags: kansas, history, civil, war, civilwar, jayhawker, bushwhacker, jayhawkers, bushwhackers, quantrill

7th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, Bushwhackers, and Jayhawkers (Kansas in 1861 – 1865) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 15, 2012.