Uncovering some real gems

I was cleaning out my old room during Operation Transformation this past weekend and discovered some real gems. I really enjoyed sorting through some of my old stuff. I discovered some old high school and college stuff and some really embarrassing photos of me "back in the day".

Here are some pics of some of the vintage tems that I found. Circa late 70's- early 80's. Unfortunately the only games that function are PacMan and PowerPigskin.


Circa 80's Micheal Jackson-Thriller Capacitance Electronic Disc.
Unfortunately our CED player was junk, so I have no way of playing this disc.
Not shown in the photo(too embarrassing to post)....but I also have "On Golden Pond", and "Jane Fonda's Workout".


Micheal Jackson is now at work with me.



A years worth of 1984 Sports Illustrated. The year of the 84 Olympics!!

Although, the most valuable of the SI issues is this one. October 15, 1984, Walter Payton breaks Jim Brown's rushing record!


Three years worth of 1985-88 Family Computing magazine. It's fun to look back at some of the cover stories and the pics of the computers at the time. I didn't realize how much a geek I was even back then. Wow, how times have changed.


And of course....my small collection of 45's.


I have to admit, I did check out the "current selling values" of all of the items on eBay. Unfortunately, none of the items will allow me to retire early. But, I do intend on storing the majority of these items. I can only imagine the laughs that we will have when I uncover these items 30 yrs from now.

Other items not pictured....
My Cabbage Patch kid in the original box.
My mid80's baseball card collection.

Interactive Whiteboard - Wii Remote/IR Pen @ our school

We were first exposed to this Wiimote modification at a recent institute day. During his presentation, David Thornoburg showed us some really cool technologies. One of the videos he showed us was of Johnny Chung Lee and how he created a low-cost multi-point whiteboard using the Wiimote and an IR pen.

In this video, Johnny shows you how to create this simple IR pen.

It wasn't long before our brainiac students created an IR pen that turns a standard LCD projector into an interactive whiteboard. Here's a couple of pics of the Wii pen that was created by one of our students.

What a great inexpensive(less than $50) way to create an interactive whiteboard for your classroom!

iTech April 2008

Here' s a sampling of some of the things that I showed our itech participants today.

Animoto- is a web application that creates MTV-style videos with the click of a button. Users simply choose a song and upload their images and Animoto does the rest. Animoto automatically generates a unique video for them. No two videos are ever the same! As an educator we get the full access! The teachers in our iTech session raved about how easy it was to create a full length MTV-ish video!

Mystudiyo- allows you to create a professional looking quiz for your website or blog. Simply add your own content to the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) quiz templates and create a customized quiz for your audience. After you’ve created your quiz, copy and paste a few lines of HTML into your website and you’re ready to go!

Yakitome- allows you to upload any pdf, word, txt, rss feed, website, and e-mail and convert it to speech. The service currently supports English, French and Spanish and you can select from a number of different voices supplied by AT&T. You can choose between MP3 or WAV file formats to suit your needs. Teachers in essence could upload their class notes from the day and convert it to a voice podcast that could be accessed on the teachers website.

I'm looking for some other creative ways in which to use these three resources in the classroom. Any thoughts?

To be known.....

I had an interesting experience last Thursday during our third annual Ripple Effect(see post dated April 4th 2008). We (student leaders, adult staff and participants) were able to create a safe container/place for life change to happen in the lives of the participants who attended. Within hours upon the participants arriving, they were engaged with one another, listening to each others stories and sharing their own story. As I hopped around from small group to small group, I noticed their authenticity reaching a level that I've never seen before with high school students. Something magical happens when a teen becomes fully "known". In other words, when they share the good, bad and ugly of their lives..... they are accepted and loved regardless.

So, I'm left wondering.....how can we create this safe container/place/community at our schools daily? To put another layer on top of that....how can we create this type of experience digitally. We've seen hints of this via, My Space, Facebook and other social networking .....but venues but my judgement is that what is posted on their personal page may not represent who they "really" are. It's my belief that teens are craving this type of deep emotional connection with other teens. It's this type of connection that offers support and healing.

Is there such a thing as a "digital safe place" for teens to be known, heard, and loved for who there really are? Just wondering....

25 Tools for Online Professional Development

Compiled by Jane Hart @ www.janehart.com

"These are the 25 current must-have free tools. Each Tool activity comprises a number of short, simple tasks to help you find out more about the technology behind each tool, the tool itself and why it is so popular, how to try out the tool and reflect on its use for your own teaching and learning and for productivity and performance support. Many of the tool activities are inter-related, so you will also be using other tools for different tasks."

	The bare essentials These are the basic tools you need to have
	FIREFOX	More than just a browser with 100s of extensions available to provide an enormous range of extra functionality not found with other browsers.
	GMAIL/GOOGLE MAIL	No more worrying about an email client on your desktop and dealing with spam and viruses - and tons of free storage space.
	SKYPE	An easy way of not only text messaging your contacts but also free voice calls - with low charges out to landlines.
	Keep yourself up-to-date These tools will help you keep up to date with what people are doing and what's happening in the e-learning world
	DELICIOUS	Store your bookmarks online, tag them and share them with others, students, colleagues and so on
	GOOGLE READER	Subscribe to website and blog feeds and the news is delivered automatically to you. Effortless!
	TWITTER	If you want to stay in touch with people no matter where you are or what you’re doing.
	Manage your own productivity Here are a variety of tools to help you with your day-to-day working and learning life
	GOOGLE CALENDAR	Don't keep your calendar to yourself, share it and make scheduling events an easier process.
	GOOGLE DOCS	An online suite of office tools for personal use or to collaborate with other. It can read in Microsoft Office documents too.
	FREEMIND	For organising your thoughts or just brainstorming.
	iGOOGLE	Aggregate all your resources, mail, RSS feeds, etc, in one place.
	Set up a blog, website and/or wiki You won't necessarily need all three; but here are the ways to get a web presence
	WORDPRESS	Blogging tool for both personal or professional use with many plugins available for it.
	NVU	A versatile web authoring to build web pages and web sites..
	PBWIKI	A wiki tool to create editable websites for collaborative writing and working.
	Share content with others Make use of existing engaging content by using these three tools. You can use them to host and share your own content too.
	SLIDESHARE	Upload presentations, tag them and share them with others. Synchronise them with an audio file to create a narrated presentation.
	FLICKR	Host your personal or professional picture collection, and share them with friends, colleagues and others.
	YOUTUBE	A large collection of shareable videos - host your own there tool
	Build content and share it with others These tools will help you create additional content and share it with others.
	VOICETHREAD	Create a slideshow around images and invite comments (audio or text) from others.
	AUDACITY	Record and edit audio and, with the extra encoder, convert your audio files into MP3 podcasts
	JING	An “always-ready” program that instantly captures and shares images and video.
	POLLDADDY	Want to get some quick feedback? Set up a poll, and track responses.
	Bring people together For live broadcasts or meetings or for socialising, these 3 tools are key
	YUGMA	For small meetings of up to 10 people, to whiteboard, annotate and share files. You can even use Skype.
	USTREAM	Live interactive video broadcasting to a global audience. All it takes is a camera and an internet connection.
	NING	Create and customise a private network/community for a group of like-minded people, large or small.
	Develop and manage courses If you want to create and manage formal learning content (courses, programmes etc), then these tools are important.
	EXE	Create SCORM-compliant learning content that doesn't require you to be proficient in HTML or XML markup.
	MOODLE	Host a complete course or program or simply provide the user authentication mechanism to other training materials.

What is the Ripple Effect?

This post has nothing to do with Technology Integrating but has everything to do with a passion of mine. The Ripple Effect born out of my desire to create a safe environment for students to grow and experience true community amongst their peers.

The Ripple Effect is an all day experience that has been created for teens at Maine West to engage with one another, learn about themselves, be challenged, and stretched in hopes of inspiring them to make a splash in the areas of their lives at school, at home and communities.

If you think about the times in which you’ve gone to the pool. Or if you’ve launch a rock in a pond…..something cool happens. When you jump into the water…..you usually make a big splash and the result is numerous ripples that spread outward and touch other the other people in the pool. Our desire for this day is for teens to be armed with self-awareness, knowledge, and skills to leave the Ripple Effect and make ripples. How powerful will it be for our teens to walk and make a splash that will ripple on for eternity? How powerful will it be if we as a student body and faculty were go back to Maine West and make a splash and watch as the ripples touch the other students and faculty? So, that’s what this day is all about…..making a splash.

At the end of the day, each participant was to create an action plan pertaining to themselves, the school and/or the community.

See the video below for a snapshot of what the event looks like.

Are we paying attention?

(Video posted by Darren Draper of the Jordan School Dist)

So, what's you're reaction/response?

How might you teach differently given the data from this video?