Friday, April 29, 2011

Ben and Ben the last show?

There's a rumor that Ben and Ben were going to have their last show... Listen to the podcast to find out what happened. Ben and Ben catch the audience up with their latest news as they prepare for graduation on June 5th.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Links of interest 04/26/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Links of interest 04/22/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Links of interest 04/19/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Seedlings Season 3 Show #22

 Rebecca Petersen, Director of eLearning Resources and Professional Development at Lesley University was out guest this week.

Rebecca at Educause
Rebecca's Blog
Geek of the Week Links
Chat and Podcast

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Visioning for Technology in School

I recently worked with the Sunapee, NH school district to look at a process for how they might incorporate technology in with their long range plans for their district.


I started with an overview of how technology is helping teaching and learning.  I then facilitated a discussion on some of the areas they might want to work in such as:
  • Infrastructure
  • Policy
  • Devices
  • School Culture
  • Classroom Culture
We then went through some ideas on what administration, teachers, and students might need to think about. From there we had a question and answer time for clarification and generating thoughts and ideas. Next was dinner where I encouraged people to continue the conversation. (What a lovely dinner, prime rib and salmon!) After dessert, we got together in small groups. Each group had three pieces of chart paper. with the headers:
  • How does the vision improve teaching and learning?
  • What equipment and resources will you need?
  • How will you ensure an effective implementation?
We decided under each heading we would use KEEP and CHANGE. The small groups had about 30 minutes to come up with ideas. The ground rules were:
  • Everyone has a voice
  • No idea is too crazy
  • Don't think about specific devices
When the small group time was up, we took all the chart paper and grouped them by heading. We did a gallery walk. Each person has sticky notes. They make comments and ask questions about the items on the chart paper. After the gallery walk, everyone gets back in to their amll groups and looks at what the others have written. They can then tweak their lists. I also recommended they add items such as needs and further ideas for implementation. Each small group also was to pick their top 3 items that they felt needed to go forward in their work. We came back together as a large group and generated a document based on each of the three topics.

How does the vision improve teaching and learning?
  • (keep) Hardware and network that’s reliable and well maintained
  • (change) Instill global sharing to expand diversity and global awareness of others.
  • (change)  increase teacher comfort level and ability to release control to students
  • (change)  increase student investment in their own learning
  • (change) increasing access to documents from home, school or anywhere
  • (change) to improve accessibility to all types of resources
  • (change) try to find a way to “always be on”
What equipment and resources will you need?
  • (change) increase access to our devices (wifi)
  • (change)  full time integrator to work side by side with teachers
  • (change) increase access to our devices (wifi)
  • (change)  increase teacher access to tech integrator
  • (change) embed responsible use into the curriculum
  • (change) to expand full accessibility to various devices (ipod, itouch, ipad)
  • (change) increasing access to web based textbooks and digital textbooks and the support necessary to use.
  • (change) increase access to assistive technology at a moment’s notice
How will you ensure an effective implementation?
  • (change) establish technology guidelines throughout all grade levels
  • (change) train teachers and students to act as mentors and require follow up
  • (change) get kids involved in making the choices what why when surrounding devices, software, etc
  • (change) define minimum proficiencies for teachers and leveling professional development appropriately.
  • (change) professional development for teachers involving students as learners and or instructors
  • (change) increase time and ability for teacher collaboration

They have a great start to some next steps on changes to made. Thank you to Brendan and John for inviting me to come. I really enjoyed working with this enthusiastic group of committed teachers and administrators. I look forward to following the work that you do on this project.

Links of interest 04/16/2011

  • tags: DanPink motivation

  • To teach in a web-based environment, what should the new instructor know about online interaction? This paper first reviews four instruments that examined the processes and outcomes of interaction (the foci are more on the interaction behaviors) and three instruments that examined interaction from a structural view (the foci are more on the interaction patterns). This paper then continues with the discussion on how to involve interaction theories in web-based learning. The author intends to explore the questions: What tools are currently available to facilitate the design and delivery of interaction in online learning? What factors have shown salient influences on group interaction? And how can the educators, instructional designers, and researchers utilize those research results? The purpose of the paper is to present the variety of options and the basic principles for designing and implementing interaction for new online instructors.

    tags: onlinelearning onlinecourse distancelearning course

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Links of interest 04/14/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Teachers Teaching Teachers

Susan Ettenheim asked me to join Paul Allison and Donovan Hohn on Teacher Teaching Teachers to promote my summer professional development survey. I loved hearing about Moby Duck. Thanks for letting me join the show!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Links of interest 04/12/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Our SEEDlings friend Cherrie MacInnes has a new project to share. Students and teachers in the states of Me., NJ., SD., Az. and Ha. collaborate. Cherrie is a Third grade teacher in Brewer, Maine interesting in connecting her students with classrooms around the world. Please contact her if you're interested! @MacInnes3

Links of interest 04/11/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Links of interest 04/10/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Tech Forum 2011 in Boston

I had the privilege of being on the panel on The Evolving World of 1:1 at Tech Forum 2011 with Patrick Larkin, Andy Zitoli, Shelley Chamberlain and Bob Rainville

Description: From laptops to iPads and smart phones, the options for placing digital technology in students’ hands for 24-hour access have multiplied over the years. Who’s moving towards one-to-one and what implementation and hardware choices are they making as they try to balance the need for 21st century learning environments with network and security constraints and the realities of economic belt tightening?.

Here's my part of the slide show.


 It was a great day. I really enjoyed the size of the venue, and the quality of the presentations. You can go in to each presentation and look at the materials. Thanks to Tech Learning for a good day of learning. (#tltechforum)

Links of interest 04/09/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, April 08, 2011

Links of interest 04/08/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Links of interest 04/07/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

What are you learning this summer?

There are lots of learning opportunities coming up in the next few months. Will you help gather some of them? Please add what you'll be teaching or where you'll be learning. The list is viewable here.

Links of interest 04/06/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Links of interest 04/05/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, April 04, 2011

Links of interest 04/04/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Links of interest 04/03/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Career Exploration for Juniors and Sophomores

All of our juniors and sophomores go to a 3 day job shadow we call Career Exploration. The purpose of the program is to help students begin to see what kinds of job possibilities might be available to them in the future. They go through the process of writing a resume, contacting a person in the community, and then sending their resume, cover letter, and contract to the potential supervisor. Once the paper work is done we work on logistics and what to wear.

The students then go to their respective "jobs". We (the faculty) get to visit them at their sites and see them in action. This year my advisees (a group I have every morning for homeroom for 4 years) are:

  • at the NOAA (wonderful - as we had a Nor'Easter this morning)
  • two are at bakeries (including a gluten free bakery)
  • a physical therapist
  • the DEA
  • a vet 
  • daycare center
  • with an art teacher
  • with a Director at the theater ( a very interesting schedule)
  • at Maine Handicapped skiing
  • at a printmaking/silkscreen business
  • at marine biology aquarium
This diverse range of occupations represents the students' varied interests. Here's one example of what students are doing in the field. Students often are often asked to bring their laptops with them as they have to use them. One young man is at LLBean in the design department and was told that he would be creating a design for them. Last year we had some students put together a pitch for an advertisement.  The community is incredibly supportive of this program. We so appreciate them opening their business to our learners. 

Each students keeps a journal of what they did and interviews their supervisor. When they are done, we mail thank you notes. Later in the week, they will present to their parents and our advisor group. I can't wait to see their presentations! It's a great experience for everyone.

For information, here is the CEP website


Links of interest 04/02/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Students present Laptops and Learning

On Friday, March 25th 5 sophomores from Yarmouth High School were invited to present to Bonny Eagle High School faculty for their Staff Development Day. The day was primarily technology focused, so they asked our students to talk about how they learn with laptops. The 5 students did their presentation in Google Docs so they could work on it outside of school. I checked in on the work the last day with 1 student helping me edit and tweak. This was a great process because the students are so busy and it's hard to get them together.


They presented on a podium in front of about 250 people. It was quite an experience! After presenting they took questions from the audience. They then were available to work with teachers in Google Apps sessions led by Cathy Wolinsky and Mike Arsenault, tech integrators from our district. We ask students to help us as much as possible when working with teachers. Students can give valuable feedback and suggestions on classroom projects. The students also learn what goes in to planning a project for students.

Here is the video of the entire presentation:


Here is just the questions and answer section. If you watch any of this one, go from 9:16 to the end. 



Thanks to Alex, Mackenzie, Jake, Jackson and Drew!
For more of our student work you can go to Yarmouth's You Tube Channel

Links of interest 04/01/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.