Don't+Miss+This!


 * New and Notable**
 * Share with your fellow Westside AZTEA members items of interest concerning technology and tech integration. Articles, blogs, funny and yet still educationally appropriate TeacherTube videos, whatever - this is the place to put share them! Add a brief description of the item if you please....**

Strategies for Successful Bond Campaigns for Technology Infrastructuretoc
If you are an ISTE member, there are many special interest groups you can join for free to obtain resources and support for your roles in technology implementation. Currently, the SIGAdmin group is seeking and sharing information about bond campaigns. Here's the first post. Lots of helpful information from Miguel Guhlin. If you'd like to explore the SIG groups and join one or more of them, you can view them on the [|ISTE wikispace].

I posted the notes for a meeting I attended regarding Successful Bond Campaigns for Technology Infrastructure here: http://tinyurl.com/62hqkn

Here is the link to the podcast (audio) of the session: http://www.mguhlin.net/archives/2008/07/entry_7373.htm

Best wishes, Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net http://mguhlin.net

Director, Instructional Technology Services, San Antonio, Texas http://itls.saisd.net

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 1:29 PM, Dorothy Bialke  wrote: Dear SigAdmin Members,

One of the goals of SigAdmin is to share our knowledge and support our colleagues.

Many school districts around the country are in the process of asking voters to commit additional tax dollars for technology infrastructure, equipment upgrades and program development. Leaders in these districts would like to hear about the methods used that brought successful results.

If you have any information to share on this topic please email the list serve.

Sincerely, Dorothy Bialke SIGAdmin Communications Officer

= = =Start Your Search Engines Part 2= When image is everything, here are some great ways to find one By Anna Adam and Helen Mowers -- School Library Journal, 5/1/2008 http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6555562 An excellent article with analysis and recommendations for a number of different image search engines appropriate for schools/students. Some of the image search sites mentioned include Picsearch, Pics4Learning, and Wikimedia Commons. Well worth reading and exploring the recommended sites. Also includes some good links and advice related to copyright and fair use with images.

Cool Tool Duel from David Jakes and John Pederson
Fantastic compilation of great Web 2.0 tools from David Jakes in a "duel" with JohnPederson-each taking a turn demonstrating in a few minutes their latest/greatest tools. It was a really fun way to introduce these during the WEMTA 2008 Conference. Tools shared by John Pederson: http://www.shiftedlearning.org/wiki/Cool_Tools Conference presentation description: **Really Cool New Tool Trio Face-Off** In 50 minutes, get caught up with all the really cool new tools that you can start using as soon as you leave the session. Join David Jakes, John Pederson, and Jennifer Wagner as they face-off and try to one-up each other. Time will be given for the audience to participate and suggest their favorite tools. Last man/women standing wins!

Awesome TeacherTube Presentation by Alvin Trusty at the Ed Tech Ohio 2008 Conference!
The topics of the presentation are copyright law and how to create a great PowerPoint presentation. (45 min.) This is an outstanding presentation that blends creating a PowerPoint with copyright information. Very thought-provoking and lots of tips and resources provided. If you go to his del.icio.us bookmarks you can access all of the links he provides in the presentation. http://del.icio.us/atrusty/eTechOhio08

Alvin's Educational Technology Blog http://www.trustyetc.com/trustyblog/2008/03/12/etech-copyright-law-presentation/ media type="custom" key="599719"
 * How to Create a Great PowerPoint Presentation without Breaking the Law**

**Animoto-Great web 2.0 video tool**
Look what you can create in about 10 minutes for free on Animoto if you already have a set of photos uploaded on Flickr. :-) Turn your volume down--background music is "Reach" by Sharaye White --"take me to a higher place"--great goal for our Web 2.0 advocacy. :-)
 * http://animoto.com**

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Animoto video created by Peggy George following our VoiceThread workshop with Dave Beard and Sunshine Darby. Music: Brainstorming by Imagination Movers. media type="custom" key="725647"

Learning is Change (excellent video and downloadable resources)
I learned about these resources through Twitter and it has some great resources for authentic learning and technology. http://learningischange.com/ The video is good and could generate some good discussion about "what is learning." The two downloads (101 Tools and Resources-awesome handout and Six Strings of Authentic Learning) are fantastic.

Technology Integration Observation Protocol
This is an excellent web site from NETC (Northwest Educational Technology Consortium) that include some great assessment tools to help principals evaluate technology integration in classrooms. I'll attach the page that has a description of the observation protocol, user guide and the rubric. http://www.netc.org/assessing/home/integration.php



PoducateMe--fantastic online resource for learning all about how to do podcasting. :-) You can download the entire PoducateMe guide as a PDF (for a charge) or view the entire thing online for free.

PoducateMe-Practical solutions for podcasting in education http://poducateme.com/guide/

Podcasting resources and tutorials
Great wiki compiled by Wes Fryer (Moving at the Speed of Creativity). It's really good and has a lot of great resources for learning how to do podcasting. Nothing fancy but a lot of content. He also has a link to his workshop on Intermediate and Advanced Podcasting topics as well as digital music. http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/podcasting

Great podcasting idea--StudyCasts
This 5th grade teacher is using podcasts as "StudyCasts" to help students prepare for quizzes. It's really good! This would be an easy way for teachers to begin using podcasting with their students. :-) His website is also loaded with resources! (Mr. Coley, Tovashal Elementary,Murrieta, CA) It's a great model for home-school communication on a website. http://www2.murrieta.k12.ca.us/tovashal/bcoley/studycast/index.htm StudyCast is a podcast created to help the students of Room 34 review for their Social Studies and Science tests. Basically, a StudyCast is an audio review session recorded by Mr. Coley for his students. These broadcasts are not intended to replace traditional studying, but rather to provide an additional study aid. You can listen to broadcasts on mrcoley.com or download them to your computer. If you're looking for a way to study on the go, download a broadcast, then burn it to a CD or transfer it to your iPod.

An excellent **tutorial/article on locating and using video in your PowerPoint presentations** by Russell Sabella on SchoolCounselors.com. http://www.schoolcounselor.com/resources/videos-ppt.htm He recommends this site which was new to me--film clips for character education. [|Film Clips]. Film Clips Spirit of America is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing short film clips from major motion pictures to America's teachers for use as teaching resources.

=**Teacher technology grant opportunity**-- **Digital Wish**= This might be a great way to get some of the technology you would like for your classroom. :-) It's called Digital Wish and it's very similar to Donors Choose. You register as a teacher and promote your "wishes" to anyone you like. Interested donors can go to the site to make a donation to support your wishes. This is the page that tells you about the program. http://www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/about Teachers can create a "wish list" of needed technology products for their classrooms. Educators describe how each resource will be utilized, write project plans, and tell the story of their classroom. Their classroom stories are then posted online, for review by any donor.

Donors Contribute Visiting donors can elect to buy items directly from the teacher's wish lists, or donate money directly to a school so that wish list items can be purchased.

If you click on the link for lesson plans you'll see lots of examples of projects that have been submitted. Many of the projects include digital cameras for photo-based learning. It doesn't look like it would take a lot of time to write something up.

Digital Storytelling Resources
I have recently discovered several really great websites/blogs with many resources for digital storytelling. You might want to explore these sites.

Crafting Digital Tales and More with Web-based Tools by Miguel Guhlin (includes tips for both Macs and PCs and information about VoiceThread which is a very popular, new tool for storytelling) http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/share/index.php?n=Anthology.Dstorywebbasedtools

Teach Digital: Curriculum by Wes Fryer for digital storytelling (many great links, tutorials and examples) http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/digitalstorytelling

This site has a lot of very good lesson plans for writing that include options for creating movies, videos or slideshows of stories. http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/author_detail.asp?authorid=143&lessonid=946

50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story by Alan Levine (click on the link for 50 Stories about Dominoe) http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+Ways

Using Technology to Tell Stories by Kevin Hodgson http://techstories.edublogs.org/ Another site by Kevin from the Western Massachusetts Writing Project Digital Storytelling--tutorial, examples, rubrics, lessons and resources http://www.umass.edu/wmwp/DigitalStorytelling/Digital%20Storytelling%20Main%20Page.htm

Integrating Digital Storytelling in your Classroom (lots of resources, tutorials and examples) http://its.ksbe.edu/dst/

Have you discovered **Splashr**?
It's an online tool for sharing your photos or photosets from Flickr via email or embedded on your website or blog. http://splashr.com Here's an example. You can set your slideshow settings by click on the "?" and you can also email the link for the slideshow to yourself or others. It only works with public photos, not photos set to private. Peggy

Westside AzTEA Photos media type="custom" key="487888"

At our Westside meeting on 2/4/08 we discussed lesson plan templates for creating **lesson plans that incorporate technology**. Jan Irvin shared these great resources developed for a middle school math/science lesson plan template along with a scoring rubric and scoring sheet. Thanks, Jan!

Some good **Moodle video tutorials** if you want to learn more about using Moodle.
http://www.moodletutorials.org/

Video Conversion websites
At our WOW planning meeting on 2/6/08 we were discussing sites for converting videos. I thought I'd share the ones I have saved and/or used. The one we talked about was: http://www.zamzar.com

This is another great online conversion site: (limit 150MB) http://media-convert.com/

Why use Media-Convert ? (also recently shared by Kathy Schrock on S.O.S.) Media-Convert advantages : computer, which can contain viruses, spywares, etc.
 * More secure because you do not have to install software on your

This site allows you to download online video FLV files (such as YouTube) directly to your desktop or iPod. http://vixy.net/

This service allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube's videos,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online. When you submit an url, it will download and convert to the video format. Then you can download the converted file.

This is not a video conversion site, but it's a great site to know about. It will convert a number of different formats into PDF documents. The impressive thing is that it will convert MS Publisher (PUB) docs to PDF. There is a maximum size of 2 MB. https://www.pdfonline.com/convert_pdf.asp

Just a few tidbits in case you're looking for something like this... the price is right--free. :-) Peggy

Excellent model for development of technology curriculum that is integrated with content areas of language arts, math, science and social studies for grades 6-8.
Indiana State Department of Education K-8 Technology Curriculum Guidelines (including performance expectations, instructional strategies, assessment strategies and supplemental resources) http://www.doe.state.in.us/olr/techlit/welcome.html (Click on the link for [|K-8 Curriculum Development Guidelines for Business and Information Technology] in the Technology Literacy Matrix section. It is a downloadable PDF of 233 pages that are all aligned with state standards. It includes lessons, student activities with related handouts, and rubrics/assessment tools that are performance/project based.

Great Web 2.0 Blog Posts:
I just discovered this blog entry by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (21st Century Collaborative) from a blog comment about it by Joyce Valenza (former keynote presenter at WOW). I think both blogs are excellent and provide some great information to help move teachers forward with web 2.0 tools. :-) Enjoy! Peggy

Sheryl's blog-Learning 2.0 http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/learning-20.html

Joyces's comments on Sheryl's blog in her School Library Journal blog (Never Ending Search) Learning 2.0: collaborating on definition and direction http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/1120012712.html "And more importantly, Sheryl Nussbaum Beach posted a brilliant essay that helps us define and share the potential for Learning 2.0. Definitely read it and consider how you might use it in discussion with your faculty in September."

I subscribe to both of their RSS feeds for their blogs and have benefited a lot from their perspectives and resources. Both of them are authors in the newly revised Coming of Age book (along with Shawn Wheeler and about 63 other contributors). The free eBook should be available sometime in September if all goes as planned. It's going to be awesome!


 * Joyce's blog:** http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/


 * Sheryl's blog**: http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/

Did You KNOW III?
Check out this remix of Did You Know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U Description of this latest version of this video (June, 2007) from the shifthappens.wikispaces.com site: As you will see, we received lots of feedback, both positive and negative, about the presentation. When [|XPLANE] offered to help with the redesign, we gratefully accepted its offer to make a "new and improved" version in order to try and help continue the conversation (and to ask more from viewers). We believe that it is only through conversation, and subsequent action, that we will achieve the best possible education for our children.

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Did You Know? There are MANY versions based on the original Did You Know presentation by Karl Fisch. You can access many of them through his blog created to continue the conversation of "Shift Happens." http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/Various+Versions+of+the+Presentation There is a wonderful resource on this wikispace provided by Scott McLeod in the handouts on the page called "Suggestions for Using the Presentation." The handout is called: "Thought Sparkers." It contains many very thought-provoking quotes and graphics that could be used in staff meetings. Well worth the download. :-) http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/Other+presentations I encourage you to consider joining this wikispace to follow the conversation and to contribute your own thoughts! Shared by Peggy G.

NECC 2007 Podcasts
NOTE: If you didn't get to attend NECC or if there were sessions you missed that you'd really like to see/hear, many of them can be downloaded from the Apple Learning Interchange (official NECC Conference Connections site for podcasts). http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/search.php?collectionID=1087 You'll find many of the keynotes and spotlight presentations in video format including the closing keynote with Dr. Tim Tyson. His presentation includes several excellent videos created by his middle school students. They are awesome! http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/item.php?itemID=11842 Shared by Peggy George

Here's another great video from [|Common Craft] that explains social bookmarking using del.icio.us. Excellent, short tutorial to share with your teachers! Common Craft is the creator of other great videos such as Wikis in Plain English and RSS in Plain English. He produces a new video each month.

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Glogster
Educational version [|edu.glogster.com] Poster yourself - Make your interactive poster easily and share it with friends. Mix Images, Text, Music and Video. It is fantastic!