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MACUL Debrief...

OK, so after a great conference, we are back to reality. In order to keep the excitement going and help each other, I created this wiki for teachers, techs, and school board members who went to MACUL. Sometime this week, please participate in the following first wiki post.

Please write your name and what 3 things you plan to try with your classes before the year is out.

Melissa - I definitely want to try using Jaycut with students. My goal is to get as many cloud resources as possible. The more cloud computing our students can do, the better. This site, if it works, will allow our students to do video editing in the cloud. Secondly, I would like to get more teachers to utilize Twitter as a PLC (Professional Learning Community). The power of that tool became more evident to me during MACUL. Lastly, I would like try to set up a YouTube channel for Lake Orion.

Mari - I'm with you on using Twitter more. I've had an account for awhile, but after attending a session on PLNs I am feeling more confident about joining in more conversations. I also really liked the [|Google Body Browser]. This seems like a great tool for health and science teachers. Lastly, I loved Kevin Honeycutt's recommendation about giving students 10 minutes to search the web and become an expert on a topic. After finding their information, students add their information to a class Google Doc and cite their information. I especially loved that Kevin tells his students he will delete their work if they don't use proper citations. : )

Brenda - I would like to find out more about the 21thingsforteachers program. I am going to organize the resources and write a brief description so hopefully the teachers will start to take advantage of some of the free resources. I think Voice Thread and Photopeach would be good tools for digital storytelling in a classroom.

Jason - Brenda, I have all three handouts for the 21 things if you are interested. There were some new google tools that might be useful such as Google body browser that Mari Mentioned. Body browser is a 3D model of the human body that changes layers as you zoom in and every part is labeled. For people with an Android or IPhone there is an app called Google Goggleswhere you can take a picture of a word and it will tell you the definition of information on the word, or take a picture of a landmark and it will tell you what it is. You can also take a picture of a sentence in a foreign language and it will translate it for you. There is so much more Google Goggles can do and I recommend checking it out. From the tech side, Google analytics is great for tracking website traffic to find out what parts are the most visited and also showing you areas you can improve to increase website traffic. There were also some other cool programs to use from the 21 things such as Bookbuilder (creating an online book), Vozme (text to speech), ZoomIt (kind of transforms a non interactive board into a partial interactive board). More for the tech side would be an incredible presentation from Ruckus wireless. Ruckus showed how we can get a great wireless signal while using less equipment than the other competitors. We could even "beam" a signal from the high school to the football field and make the entire football field wireless as well, which could help with Lake Orion hosting State Final events.

Carolyn- I was really fired up about using Google Forms to do quick surveys. It literally took about 30 seconds to create the form with a multiple choice question. I pulled up the question on my (Android) phone and had my students select one of the choices prior to entering the classroom. After everyone had answered, we looked at the results in a pie graph form from the demonstration computer/projector in my room. It was a really quick and easy survey. In the future, I may go around the room and have them make selections while working, as it takes a second to submit and go back to the form. Also- an Oakview sidenote... our cell service is sloooooow or non-existent in certain spots, so this type of survey could just as easily be set up on a classroom computer. (Ooh... that connects with what Jason just wrote about Ruckus!) I also set up a school Twitter account (@OMSAdler), which I definitely would like to use more!

LeAnn - Great conference this year with a lot to digest and spark excitement! I was really interested in the Google Forms as well. I'm looking forward to trying them this week in collaboration with another teacher in my building. I did not attend the session that Brenda mentioned on 21 Things, but would like to find out more in regards to how teachers at all levels can use it for professional development. I can see how readily Delicious and Livebinder could be used as organizational tools for classroom purposes and am looking forward to trying them both. I attended a session on Wikis in which a teacher used it much like we use Moodle for course management. He gave great suggestions for collaborative projects that could be applied at various levels for all subject areas. Finally, I left with some wonderful quotes from Honeycutt stuck in my head. My favorite was about digital dumpster diving.

Jeannine-I tried to focus on early elementary, as this is a new area for me to be teaching this year. I heard a first grade teacher present about her class creating blogs and posting their work at kidblog.org. I am excited to explore that, I'm thinking that second grade would be a good place to start. I also used Wordle this week with fourth graders. They had to summarize/retell a book using story elements and key words. I had a guide sheet to help them plan which also told them how many times to type each entry. They LOVED it! I've been playing around a bit with Prezi to create presentations. I'll be showing my staff how to use it once I get to know it a little better. Lastly, I found a great resource at cooltoolsfor schools.wikispaces.com which lists lots of web 2.0 tools for various purposes. Can't wait for next year's MACUL!

Scott - Well...I am just going to give a list of some of the awesome websites that I envision using and a little blurb about what they are. Ujam.com - have your kids create raps, songs, poems, etc. They record them onto the computer in a rhythmic fashion and Ujam will allow the students to put music to their song/rap/poem. __[|http://www.tagxedo.com]__  - just click...pretty cool. you can have the kids create a list of words or have them find a website...

__[]__ another way of digital story telling Livebinders.com - online organization. The students are able to create online binders for their classes.

Techs (April/Sean)- We had some long discussions with the wireless vendors. One in particular was interesting, they claim wide coverage for low number of access pts. and other hardware. It's good to have a couple more vendors to compare products/prices with, along with one we already used in Waldon. There were many vendors promoting interactive white boards and/or interactive projectors. We watched some demos, more info to keep in mind along w/ our Waldon samples. We found another technology products vendor to try out & compare with some we already use like CDW. City Animation had a nice mobile teaching furniture setup, with laptop, projector, doc cam, dvd/vcr. We've tried another vendor's mobile teaching station, this one might be worth looking at.

__**Zac's MACUL Notes:**__

Hi Everyone,

I hope you were able to see some great stuff. Here are some links and general ideas that I came across. Feel free to contact me if you want further information. I will be presenting some of it to Waldon's staff on March 28th.


 * 1) Global Lit Circles**

This presentation showed a really cool multi-age project. Students from a 3rd grade class in one district read the same book as 4th graders in another districts. Students from both classes were placed into wiki groups and were given a month or so to discuss the book, ask questions, and respond to each other.

Students were told told to generate questions that they would like to know more about. These questions were then researched by the group and the information was presented on a web 2.0 application (think prezi, etc...).

During the work periods students only met face to face once. Instead they used Skype and wiki's to divide up work and reach their goal.

This was a really neat project. I would like to do something like it with my 7th graders working with both an elementary class and a high school class. I think there is a bit of work up front, but then it could be a really neat project.


 * 2) The "Lesson" Activity on Moodle**

I had always wanted to know how to use this activity. Getting started always seemed impossible. Now, it is not that bad. Essentially the "lesson" area can become an adaptive learning environment. Teachers can take curriculum and start out with a series of questions. Based upon how students answer (correct or incorrect) they are given more questions or content that will help students learn what they do not know.

This is kind of like "choose your own adventure" but based upon what students know and do not know. Content for learning is only brought up when students demonstrate that they do not know something. A teacher can place a combination of text, pictures, movies, sound files, etc... in the content areas for students to learn from.

These adaptive lesson can be used as graded assignments or just for streamlining information to students.

There is quite a bit of upfront work involved in creating a lesson. Educators are encouraged to write out a plan before creating content slides. But if done correctly, adaptive Moodle lessons could be very powerful in giving each student their own individual lesson that moves at their own pace.


 * 3) Project Based Learning**

This was a session dedicated to alternative assessments. There were a lot of good ideas shared. Mostly these ideas were shared through various websites that can help to students create projects and stay organized. Here are some websites that were shared:

www.rubistar.com

Allows teachers to collaboratively create rubrics.

www.glogster.com

A way for students to make interactive digital posters. An alternative site is called" www.webdoc.com

www.carbonmade.com

Allows students to upload pictures and hold as a portfolio. An alternative site is called: www.dropmocks.com

www.livebinders.com

Allows students to upload notes and store information they need for class. An alternative: www.museumbox.com

www.goanimate.com

Allows student to put their voices over live action cartoons.

www.gliffy.com

Allows students to create diagrams and graphs. Alternative site: www.mind42.com

www.timetoast.com

Allows students to create timelines. Alternative site: www.tickitoki.com

www.ujam.com

Allows students to create their own soundtracks.

www.paperrater.com

Allows students to get automated editing help with their essays

www.jing.com

Allows students to capture their computer screen into a movie format

www.thinktank.com

Helps students with organizing their thinking into essential questions.

www.easybib.com

Allows students to automatically create works cited pages.

www.sporestory.com

Allows students to create their own "choose your own adventure" story.


 * 4) Assessment Tools for IPAD & More**

This was an amazing presentation. The presenter gave out a few ideas of software that could help teachers make instant assessments of students work and behavior in class.

1) Use www.dropbox.com

Have students sign up for account and teacher. Each party can share a folder with each other. The teacher can then open up student work online. If they have an IPAD that they use an APP like Noteability to physically write on and mark up the document using a stylus. Then they can send the work right back to student.

2) Use Google Forms

Teachers could create their own forms to assess whatever they want to in a class room. They could theoretically choose the student, then mark what they have observed (based upon the form they have created) and move to the next one quickly. The forms can then be exported to Excel sheets.

I think there is a lot of potential with this if an educator wanted to move to standards based grading.

3) Confer App

This IPAD App works a lot like Google Forms. Basically a teacher can quickly punch through a series of observed performances or behaviors in a classroom for each student. All data can be searched by dates, tags, etc... The data can be exported to Excel files.

This would be another great tool for an educator wanting to move into standards based grading.

4) Go Observe App

This is another IPAD App that is for mostly for teacher evaluation. It can be set up for an administrator to do formal evaluations or walk through. Once the forms are set an administrator can just click through what they are observing. The app is quite expensive (over $100) but it is set up to constantly update to the clouds for record keeping purposes.


 * 5) Google Earth**

Teachers are using Google Earth to create field trips.

Some of these trips include showing where historical events took place. Other trips include following the path of characters from books.

Teachers can create these trips by setting place marks and adding content (text, sounds, videos) which student follow.

Students could also create their own field trips as a way to demonstrate knowledge that they are learning about.

To see examples do a Google Search for "google lit trips"