The Wired Classroom

While I wasn’t able to make it to NECC, many of my Cooperating School District colleagues were able to, as well as my v/c community friends. Roxanne Glaser and Janine Lim are in San Antonio, Texas, and they are updating their respective blogs with all the stuff that is taking place! To check in on what’s going on, visit VC Rox and Videoconferencing Out on a Lim. Janine has several interviews linked on her blog with content providers, including Tonya Muro and Lisa Inks from Global Nomads Group. Roxanne & Janine, thanks for being so thorough and timely with your NECC blog posts!

 Janine Lim and Sue Porter talk about Read Around the Planet

(Don’t be confused by my screen shot (I liked the picture)!
Please click on “talk” above to see the clip).

To read up on NECC, visit http://www.necc2008.org/.

Did you miss CSD’s Movie-Making in the Classroom class in June? Don’t worry! You still have a chance to work with one of the applications covered in that course- iMovie.

Here’s the scoop: Using iMovie ’08  in the Classroom 
Tues., July 22 | 1-4 pm | $63 CSD member; $89 non-member  

iMovie ’08 makes viewing & working with video as intuitive as enjoying your photos! A built-in library automatically organizes your video, so clips you’ve captured and movies you’ve created are just a click away. With its revolutionary interface, iMovie makes it quick and very easy to browse your library and create movies. You can add movies to your website, publish them on YouTube, and create versions for iPod, iPhone, & Apple TV. 

Apple’s Morrie Reece teaches this class step by step, allowing for plenty of time for you work with the application. By the end of the afternoon, you will feel confident in creating a film using iMovie!

To sign up, go to www.csd.org/tele. 

Editing Digital Images Using Photoshop Elements 4.0
Wednesday, July 9 @ 9 am-4pm | $125 CSD member

In this one day tele workshop, learn from METC 2008 presenter Mike Butler the easy steps to enhance your digital images. Mike more than 10 years experience helping schools successfully integrate technology into their classrooms. You’ll take away your fear of editing using Photoshop Elements 4.0 during the course of this fun and informative class!

Techniques that Mike will cover include: 

• Resize & crop image areas
• Select appropriate resolutions for different image & output types
• Select images areas using the Lasso, Marquee, and Magic Wand Tool
• Optimize image resolution for email and web pages
• Modify, retouch and prepare images for the web
• Remove unwanted subjects from photos, add someone to a photo

Interested? Sign up today at www.csd.org/tele. Spaces are limited!

Today was the final of three days in Movie-Making in the Classroom: Creating Digital Stories and Photo Essays (June 23, 24 & 26 in the tele). Martha & Stacey taught the class, and Karen Montgomery was on hand. Participants had their choice of using Windows MovieMaker (PC), iMovie (Mac), or PhotoStory 3 (PC) to create their movie.

Here is the rest of Carolyn Lesser’s 2008-09 interactive videoconference offerings through New Links to New Learning. For pricing on programs, contact Rebecca Morrison at CSD.

Custom-designed writing videoconference for educators and/or students… This program is offered to give the most flexibility to planners and educators.  Embedded in this program is total control over the content, the number of presentations, the issues and concerns most important to your district or schools, making your enrichment dollars pinpoint accurate at addressing your needs.  Collaborative planning is one of the riches of this custom planning as it brings the element of support and professional development for the efforts of educators concerning writing.  It is a real collaboration between educators and an author.  To view some of the possibilities, visit Carolyn’s website for presentation options.  

Writing Nonfiction Prose or Poetry…#1
Session #1…30 minute conference call from teachers to plan for students
Session #2…45 minute interactive presentation to students…assignment
Session #3…45 minute interactive reading/positive feedback to student work

• Carolyn will choose writing topics appropriate for grade level
• Students will participate in a professional nonfiction writing process
• Teacher input is important…come to conference call with ideas
• Carolyn engages students with enthusiasm for the nonfiction process

Writing Nonfiction Prose or Poetry…#2
Session #1…45 minute conference/call from teachers to plan for students
Session #2…60 minute interactive presentation to students…assignment
Session #3…60 minute interactive reading/positive feedback to student work

• Specific writing topics chosen by teachers/students
• Professional nonfiction writing process tailored & relevant to curriculum, teacher requests, goals
• Teacher input/requests/goals discussed in the conference call
• Added time for student questions following our work together
• Carolyn brings inspiration & enthusiasm to each session

Custom add-ons to any series bring depth and relevance to students & staff~

Now that the school year is over, I think people are starting to this about next school year-  and for high school students and their parents-  about college prep. Cooperating School Districts’ New Links to New Learning offers both an ACT Prep Class and now a PSAT Prep Class, both over videoconference. Trained instructors from The Princeton Review conduct the course and CSD gets you connected to the course. For more info, contact Rebecca Morrison.

Here’s some info to think about:

• Public Missouri high school students who completed The Princeton Review PSAT Clinic averaged of 12.1 pts higher on the PSAT, and the top 50% of student scoring 21.6  points higher, which is equivalent to an SAT scaled score increase of 216 points.
• According to The Princeton Review, when students attend all of the sessions, take all of the practice tests, and complete all assigned homework, average ACT score improvement is three points. 

Today was the Boundless Learning in Videoconferencing tele class. Districts represented were Hazelwood, Ritenour, Francis Howell, Normandy, and Parkway. During the day, participants learned about videoconferencing- everything from the equipment to programs to funding. We connected the class to three content providers- across town, across state, and across the country! Saint Louis University (AIMS), The Discovery Center in Springfield, and the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY all provided v/c demos, sharing what they bring into classrooms. In addition to learning about different kinds of content offered, participants learned where to find programs and the best ways to schedule them. 

We told participants where to find free videoconferences (government agencies like Library of Congress and NASA). Multipoint versus point-to-point were covered, as was “upon request” and set times- common buzzwords. Participating teachers happened to be in New Links to New Learning districts, so we also shared what membership means. Of course, we gave them time ask questions, to click around the Moodle, to check various v/c content provider databases, and to skim all those v/c blogs out there!

Last year’s videoconferences on forgiveness & empathy were so popular that we’ve decided to do a series on forgiveness this upcoming school year! We’re working with Lynne Lang of BJC School Outreach & Youth Development to put together five or six professional development sessions together. These sessions will be part of New Links to New Learning’s Mental Health videoconference series. Our target audience is high school staff for the forgiveness series. We’re still working on dates, fees, etc., but once those are set, we’ll post them.

We are also doing three of our traditional one hour videoconferences. Those will start in January and run through March. The interactive videoconferences always run 4 to 5 o’clock central.  2009 topics include: dealing with the death of a classmate on January 8; media literacy and teen behavior on February 12; and peer versus sibling bullying on March 12. 

If you have questions about the Mental Health series or if you want to sign up for any of the videoconferences, contact me, Rebecca Morrison, at rmorrison@csd.org. 

K12 Online Conference is a free, collaborative, world-wide program- created by educators, for educators. If you click on the orange box above, you’ll go directly to the website where you will find a lot of information! 2008 is the third year for the October conference and presentations are still needed, according to the site: “this is our second call for proposals for the third annual “K12 Online Conference” for educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice.” The deadline for submissions as been extended to July 11.

A little history: in 2006 and 2007, David Warlick was the keynote, presenting “Derailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning” and “Inventing the New Boundaries”. On the website, you can click around and learn how to get professional development and graduate credit for participating in the K12 Online Conference. There’s a section for “first timers” and a link to the Ning set up by participants. Sounds interesting! All presentations will be archived online, and the conference has a Twitter account to update interested parties. You might want to take a few minutes and click around the website and see what they’ve done, and what they plan to do, and what you can do with Web 2.0.

Midwest Education Technology Conference
Call for Presenters!
Strands, Levels of Presentations & Tags

METC 2009 invites you to apply as a presenter for a breakout session or hands-on workshop. More than 1,500 attendees from across the nation are expected to participate including technology specialists, teachers, library media specialists, staff developers, administrators, instructional technology teachers, counselors, and information technology/network specialists. Preference of presenters will be given to those submitting proposals related to the program theme, Technology Tools of Engagement: R U There? or one of the program strands. While presentations may address several of these strands, please indicate the primary strand that best describes your proposal. Strands include:

For complete details on submitting a proposal to METC, visit this link: http://www2.csd.org/csdrpdc/metc2009/presenter.htm. METC is a program of Cooperating School Districts: www.csd.org.