Well, although today is the last day of CUE 2008, it’s already over for me. I’m back home skipping the last day. I’m relieved to have a day to rest because it was exhausting, but I’m sorry to miss some great stuff. I’m looking forward to the CUE*FETC conference in October already. Here is an overview with links to my posts on this at the bottom…

The good parts:

As you can see from the photo at the top, and the ones above, it was nicer than having a conference in Michigan, or Illinois (other recent conference spots). I went with fellow Sacramentan, Gail Desler (it was her fifth time) and she felt it was some of the nicest weather for this event that she had experienced. It was gorgeous, and I took advantage of the swimming pool to refresh during lunch on the Thursday and Friday.

I took in four sessions on the first day, and three on the second (I wanted to do four, but could not even get into the GoogleEarth preso). Overall, they were great. The focus for the sessions I attended were less on how-to click the buttons on the technology, and more on how to structure the learning using the technology. Matt Needleman’s session, the AFI presentation, Mrs. Spang’s session on games, and Podcasting History were standouts on that issue.

Because I was blogging and posting pretty quickly, I sometimes didn’t have an overview, precis, or takeaway from the session in my blog posts. I will have one – three quick sentences below by the links for each of my blog posts.

The things that need improvement:

Well, this isn’t the only conference where there are complaints about connectivity, here is David Warlick in England, and Wes Fryer on BYOB – Bring Your Own Bandwidth

CUE delivered more wifi than promised. Originally, only the presenters were going to get connections in the presentation rooms (which is better than poor Wes got in Oklahoma), instead, wifi could be picked up in most of the meeting rooms, but it was wonky, prone to low levels, dropping, and not letting you on. It wasn’t stable where originally promised at Blogger’s Cafe, and the Networking area at the convention entrance (although a beautiful spot as you can see from the pictures at the top). It was obviously over-stretched, and not ubiquitous.

I managed to get off a number of blog posts by the end of each day, but what could be done with a good, steady connection? Take a look at this from Jose Rodriguez (one of my partners at It’s Elementary, and CUE-LA Teacher of the Year). He used a live blog application called Cover It Live that has some chat features, so you can follow as the person types in their notes, viewers can send comments, and the blogger has moderation control. Another highlight was the live Skype conversation with Doug Symington on EdTechBrainstorm that was carried on EdTechTalk as a Webcast from the Bloggers Cafe. I set up speakers to share the conversation, and many joined in as they were walking by.

I hope that there will be better connectivity at CUE*FETC conference in October.

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » CUE 2008, Here I come

Miz Mercer’s Microblog – This is how I know I’m in Southern California

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » Notes from Technology to Bring the Past Alive

What can you say about a presentation on technology, where the presenter is dressed up as Sam Adams? But, it was more than that, he discussed his entire process (and it was a really well thought out one) that led his students to create history podcasts, and how it supported standards based instruction in a really creative and creating way. BRAVO!

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » Notes from Blogs and Wikis: Writing Across the Curriculum

Great presentation, but not the best for me since I knew most of it. If you are looking for a speaker to do a fantastic overview on the tools, Brian Bridges would be fantastic.

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » Who Said Games Don’t Teach?

Basically, who needs pay tools like Orchard when you have the Spang Gang? Similar to Larry Ferlazzo, these are series of activities to work on skills, but she also discussed how to orient students to expectations and how to manage the process of using the site.

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » Integrating the Internet into the Primary Classroom

Great primary links, which I will soon need more of as I add more first graders into my schedule. The management, planning was not explored in as much depth.

Miz Mercer’s Microblog – The end of day one at CUE

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » 50 Ways to Use Discovery Education Streaming (and Beyond)

Explained some hidden treasures on Discovery Education Streaming. Danielle has a great speaking personality, but it was more about small tools, not big ideas.

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » Digital CPR: Bring Your Reading Series to Life with Video Podcasting

Okay, for everyone who is (stuck) with a scripted reading program, and wants (NEEDS) to add engagement, and higher order thinking, this broke it all down and showed some awesome work done by kids. BRAVO!

The Blog of Ms. Mercer » AFI Screen Education Center: Digital Filmmaking in the Core Curriculum

I have ALWAYS gotten great feedback about these AFI trainings, and I was not disappointed, PLUS they show how it relates to reading/writing instruction. YES!

Miz Mercer’s Microblog – Getting lost on the way home

Description: AFI Screen Education–empowering educators with the tools of digital filmmaking to engage students in mastering core curriculum and key 21st Century skills.

Students make sense of things by turning them into stories, and narrative.

They were doing trainings of adults for the film business, and began to wonder if they could take how they taught film makers, and use it to help teachers teaching children the core curriculum.

They took the way they taught film making to how to teach the story writing process.

Shot vs. Scene: Shot is between cuts, and scene is a sequence of story in one location.

Sentence = Shot

Paragraph = Scene

Chapter = Sequence

Novel = Movie

We went through a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and had to pick out each individual shot (the Mayan temple scene), which has frequent shot/cuts.

How to go from script to film -> storyboard

This maps out the camera motion, the actor’s movement

Did reverse storyboarding: Take 30 seconds of film and sketch what you see. Did it with Monsters, Inc. news report.

They are doing “Lights, Camera, Education!” with Discovery Education/Streaming. All the materials are there. They are for teachers to use WITH students to instruct them on film making.

AFI will have a video sharing service for student created video 13-18 year olds, with more short videos on techniques.

You can use it if you have video contest for submissions.

There will be an institute in Hollywood this summer run through LACOE, BUT all California educators can apply. The Website would not come up, so I’m going to try to talk to the folks at LACOE about it.

AFI Screen Education

• The blog of AFI Screen education project

AFI Screen Education Center

• AFI Sceen education site.

California K-12 High Speed Network

• edzone will be opening up here and will allow for posting of videos by teachers from younger students

AFI Screen Nation

• AFI will have a video sharing site to upload student video.

I did a five minute demo/discussion on Diigo, but since I didn’t have a computer ready to go running through the door, so it was mostly talk, but folks asked some good questions and were engaged.

edubloggercon » Palm Springs 2008 Agenda

This is the agenda page for Edubloggerconwest 08 which I “highlighted” in Diigo as part of my demonstration.

edubloggercon » SocialBookmarking is my stuff for a presentation on Diigo. Since I had to move to the second venue, down the hall, only a few participants followed, in addition, I had been testing a new USB Webcam with mic the night before, and it had taken over my audio system in one of those nasty ways that did not let me play audio from a YouTube video on Diigo. I show examples of what I did with it, and those who saw it, got a great feeling for the possibilities. I also showed off some capabilities to others more informally.

I participated in and took notes on the next session:

edubloggercon » ProjectBasedLearning

which included Sylvia Martinez (Generation Yes) and Jane Krauss (recently published “Reinventing Project Based Learning”) There is a blog post here from Gail:

» Technology and Project-based Learning BlogWalker

Over lunch, I discovered two other folks there who were experts in areas related to my next presentation on Language Development

Bruce Gale is a clinical psychologist who works on social skills with ADHD/ADD/ASD/ODD children, and is using animation is fascinating ways with his L.U.N.C.H. School Year Program.

A coworker of my friend Jose Rodriguez, John Rivera works in LAUSD on doing trainings on Universal Design in teaching. He shared how he is trying to transform teaching so that differentiation is not added after a lesson is planned, but is built in as a lesson is being developed. He shared these resources:

CAST: Center for Applied Special Technology

Tools & Activities: Teaching Every Student

And, Gail has some of the UStream sessions on her blog, thanks Gail!

» Streaming from Edubloggercon BlogWalker

On a more frivolous note, I share I’ll have an aria with that Angel Hair pasta…
about our dinner at Cafe Italia.

Description: Bring your students into the 21st Century with six fun and easy standards-based video podcasts to motivate even those reluctant learners.Starts out with a DARLING movie (with lots of great demonstration of knowledge) about Camouflage by second graders.

How to align multimedia and technology to the reading program we have (are stuck with). So he used filmmaking.

GOALS for preso you will have 9 ideas for integrating video into curriculum and language arts standards. He uses Open Court, but this is not just for that program, it’s about making it meaningful.

1. Public Service Announcement/Commercial (commercial for sugray cereal, commerical to go west, with that unit in fifth grade)

2. Music videos (need we discuss why this would be interesting (the creation of film helps them better understand and retain material)

3. Move away from retell of the story, do pre-quel, sequel. This will also help with copyright issues if you are posting on the internet.

4. Use it for research and inquiry

5. Personal narratives They need to be able to choose their topics.

6. Illustrate a process

7. Genre pictures (star wars, detective fiction, the unit genre)

8. Clay animation (I would include any stop action, whatever the item being manipulated), Pixie is an animation program to use. Comic Life is a nice cross-platform program.

9. Student Choice…

Why?

• Meets all learners (multiple intelligences)
  Higher level thinking. Vocabulary is high, but the questions in publishers assessments are generally at recall level.
  Student engagement; they can’t learn if they aren’t paying attention (Jonathan hated to write, but would write a movie script).
• Media literacy, more depth of understanding the elements of media than in slide shows.
• Economically disadvantaged students have computers in school, but it’s for rote activites, while richer students create content. This exacerbates the differences in student knowledge/intelligence that occur between

Management is a big consideration. You need a plan. You will not get higher order thinking without allowing some independence. Giving ODD kids responsibility is a great intervention before they become a big problem.

Show how it ties into the Unite theme, the standard, and have a good objective. When you have that it all fits. Choose the tool that fits for you and the project/objective. What’s the assessment. Don’t necessarily clean up the script, etc. because it’s an assessment.

The end was discussion about more technical aspects. Copyright is a consideration when you are posting, so be aware.

Further resources are at:

Video in the Classroom.com — Integrating Video Production in the Elementary Classroom and Beyond

• Matthew’s Website on video in the classroom, with examples and resources. He has a video in the classroom blog carnival.

Presenter: Gayle Berthiaume

Preview: Engage students in reading and writing with online literacy activities. Learn how to integrate the Internet into the primary classroom. Taught by a Scholastic.com Teacher Mentor and Apple Distinguished Educator.

I arrived late, so I missed picking up her main links page, which is on del.icio.us. She showed a number of different sites, some of which I knew, some of which I didn’t know. Check out the del.icio.us account. She featured some sites that did story reading, and then Scholastic (who she works for or with?). My favorite was the computer lab favorites picker. A quick note for upper grade, some articles from Scholastic News are online.

I brought up the fact that I had requested RSS feeds from Scholastic, and had no response. She said she would share that because they are doing some discussion about the site in the near future. If anyone at Scholastic is reading this, PLEASE add an RSS feed. Thanks!

Sesame Street site is great. From PBS/Sesame Street comes Panwapa.com a social site with avatars for kids. Geography, vocabulary, and interactive, WOW!

She suggested Apple Learning Exchange to getting lessons and unit ideas. 

How to manage it? She used whole group (large screen/projector), small group (older students, buddies), centers (sign up list). “I don’t do anything different, I just do it.”

Assessment was based on: Observation, photos and video, portfolios, rubrics (rubistar.4teachers.org), online surveys (survey monkey). Student interviews.

Gayle Berthiaume’s Primary links

Computer Lab Favorites | Scholastic.com

• Do your students want to visit the same activity on an eduiste, over and over? This is a great resource for getting kids to change up their activities in the computer lab.
  

Integrating the Internet into the Primary Classroom (Berthiaume, Gayle) – The CUE Community

www.panwapa.com

Presenter: Arlene Anderson, Desiree Spang

Preview: The Spang Gang website is a compilation of grade level, standards based, curriculum area links to some of the best games on the Internet. No more time consuming searches!

Has a long name, so look up her page by google search.

The site is color coded by level (do the orange activities). Web portal to link to games, but it’s coded for subject/skill and level. It’s being used for intervention students.

It’s very similar to Larry Ferlazzo’s site but meant for kids to guide themselves through. The colors are quite lurid (reminds me of CoolMath4Kids) but I’m sure interesting for students. The clickability of the site is not fantastic, but the thought and effort and attention to making it engaging for students makes up for that.

Money quote: “I don’t know if you know this about kids, but kids don’t care what standard their working on.”

She set up survivor game to hit standards, but not hit kids over the head with the standard itself.

Set goals for the students (double your score), because that is the gaming world that they live in. They train the kids on the games and monitor their progress. They are tracked and rewarded for improvement. Set up expectation about not leaving assignment site.

spang gang – Google Search

Who Said Games Don’t Teach? (Anderson, Arlene with Desiree Spang) – The CUE Community

Mrs. Spang’s Class

Presented by: Brian Bridges

Preview: Discover a variety of online, collaborative writing tools, and see how teachers are using them to engage their students, participate in online writing projects, and publish to an authentic audience. We’ll review and demonstrate a variety of free resources including Edublogger, pbwiki, and Google Docs. Handouts include content standard connections, 100 ways to wiki and blog in the curriculum, and tutorials. Come early for a BONUS presentation.

The bonus presentation talked about: Jamendo.com cc licensed music, Piclens for viewing images (browser add-on).

Brian works for CLRN (California Learning Resources Network) (http://brianbridges.pbwiki.com)

Why blog? Easy, collaborative, give audience, and archive/realia of learning, and many FREE resources. They are also great for professional development. You can use it for your school/class website.

Have a kid assigned to take notes for class, and post it on blog. IT GIVES STUDENTS AUTHENTICITY. In subject matter, in assignment.

Moodle vs. Blog? Moodle is for class, blog is for outside consumption.

Translation of blogs (you can read blogs in other languages that way).

Wikis: for collaborative documents. Google Docs is nice, but is not great for multipage document since it’s all one page. You can break down a doc in wiki into pages, and link them in hierarchy.

Make the kids do the writing, and teach each other and teach the standards

This session covered a lot of territory I was already familiar with, but it was a well done overview, and the presenter was energetic, and enthusiastic. I would recommend his presentation for people who are at a complete newbie, or mid-range of knowledge.

Brian Bridges wiki

• Background materials for presentation
  

Blogs and Wikis: Writing Across the Curriculum (Bridges, Brian) – The CUE Community

• CUE Community page for presentation

Not how-to, but what it looks like session. Presenter impressed me because he was dressed up like Sam Adams. Discussed that if you’re teaching middle or high school and the kids say, “I didn’t learn that,” they aren’t lying, elementary is teaching only reading and math. He moved up to middle school from elementary, caught history bug and went to Colonial Williamsburg.

1. He had a project with 8th graders to create a version of Jefferson reading Declaration of Independence, but kids would read it. What is the script? What are you going to say?

2. Play podcasts for kids to hear example (10-15 minutes)

3. Write a synopsis of what they’ve heard. He broke the Declaration down into parts to make it manageable (primary source vocabulary, fluency, etc.).

4. He recommended Garageband.com for sound clips to add.

5. The class also does analysis of what speaker intent was.

6. It was done over 2 weeks, but part of a larger project. Moving from cell phone, to mic recording scaffolds it.

The transitions from one voice to the next were very nice because it happened naturally because there is a change in the section/paragraph. Next project was Moment in Time about a historic topic. Start with audio, then add still pictures. He is planning to return to Colonial Williamsburg, and will be live podcasting from there. By Civil War, they did Ken Burns type piece. Lots of materials in handouts, and links!

My take-away, this is the best way to approach and start learning about this stuff because it gives you a reason to use the tools, AND he emphasized how to structure teaching it NOT the tech part. Many people make the mistake of the thinking the tech issues, and knowledge it most important. It’s still about the classroom management and planning. My vote, two thumbs up for Mr. Adams, err, Mr. Lebsock.