Bringing experts to the classroom through Skype

Last week my Computer Science and Game Programming classes had the honor of having a Skype conversation with Bob Pappas.  In the early 1980s, Bob wrote the games Frogger, Bounceoids and Crazy Painter for the TRS-80. During our conversation Bob showed my classes the original advertising for these games.  Born near the Iron Range of Minnesota, Bob did not have distractions like teens of today.  He had only three TV stations and most of them were fuzzy.  Bob spent his days reading Byte Magazine so he could discover new programming languages.  It was from a contest in this magazine that he decided to write his first game. He won the contest and his passion for computers, programming and games had begun!

The students were captivated by the struggles he encountered in the very early days of the industry.  Since BASIC (one of the first and easiest languages) was not fast enough, he used assembly language (which is similar to machine language).  He saved his materials to tape.  (He had to explain to the students what a cassette tape was.)  He only had 16K of memory, 128 pixel screen and two colors – black and white.  In order to add sound to the game, he had to slow the program down and write a second program for sound.  He also had to be his own salesperson and place calls to try and sell his games.



Bob started college at the University of Minnesota.  While working on an internship at Honeywell on a 3D graphics flight simulator, Bob dropped out to pursue his computer interests.  In 1985 Bob saw his first Mac, fell in love and purchased this new machine.  He spent the next nine months, 12 hours a day, learning the software language so he could write programs for this new machine.  He then wrote Mac Golf a five-year top selling Apple game.

The students then asked Bob about a new product he worked on for the iPad – CodeA.  This new programming language, written in Lua, allows students to easily create, share, or sell interactive games for the iPad.  This software is definitely on my list of ideas for new curriculum for my next programming class.

We learned that Bob worked for Microsoft for 3.5 years on Silverlight – a product similar to Flash.  Since most of my students are PC (rather than Apple) oriented, they couldn’t understand why he would leave Microsoft to go work for – of all companies – Apple!  He explained that he left Microsoft because the iPhone and other related products had come out and he realized that Microsoft was not going to keep up with Apple.  Bob is currently the engineering manager for Apple iPhoto in California.

Finally, I love the fact that Bob talked extensively about 21st century skills.  He explained how to break down problems into smaller manageable pieces.  He talked about teamwork and collaborating with others.  He explained that they should use the many free resources (http://www.codecademy.com/ and http://www.udacity.com/) available to them to continue their programming and problem solving experiences.  However, what I loved the most about his conversation with my students was that he took his valuable time to share his life experiences with us!  Thanks so much Bob!  (Below is a 21st century thank you from my students to Bob)

Moodle

On AllWords.com there were three definitions for Moodle or Moodling -- 1) to dawdle aimlessly, to idle time away, 2) the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs, and 3) an enjoyable tinkering that may lead to insight and creativity.  This past week I experienced the third with the learning management system called Moodle!  The acronym Moodle stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.  Moodle is a learning management system or virtual learning environment that provides a flexible setting for many different learning communities.

Earlier in the year I took a course with a colleague entitled Moodle – Becoming an Online Educator.  This colleague will be writing her chemistry textbook this summer using iBook Author.  She will also be using Moodle as a platform to maintain all the different components of the course.  I took the Moodle course to support her and to be able to maintain the Moodle system for my school district.

I knew that I needed to work with Moodle this summer if I was going to be the admin supporting it for my district.  I decided to set up one of my courses – Computer Science – since I will be using a new online text for next fall.  I really like the versatility of the Moodle platform.  The options and activities that can be used with Moodle are almost limitless.  I really like the fact that all our Google Apps for Education products work seamlessly with Moodle.  Over the past week I have created an online syllabus and weekly assignment log, quizzes, videos, reading assignments, Google Apps assignments, programming problems, etc.  All of this while utilizing a flexible online format that students will be drawn to.

Moodle is in its 10th year.  With over 58 million users, 1 million teachers and 6 million courses – it is a tool that has found its niche.  I am excited to expose more teachers in my district to this multipurpose learning and teaching tool!

Westonka Technology Academy -- #WTA2012

On my technology integration journey this year, one of my three roles was to create a summer technology camp for the teachers of our district. The goal was to have an environment that was fun, educational and full of ways to use technology in the classroom. I had been thinking about and planning for this event for over a year. (I obviously put my blogging on the back burner!) The day finally arrived and there I was – standing in front of 100 teachers in my district saying, “Welcome to the 1st Annual Westonka Tech Academy!” My colleagues cheered, and I was overwhelmed with energy and excitement!

WTA was a highlight in my educational career! I am truly proud of what we’ve created. As I’ve blogged about earlier, I have an amazing technology team (TILT). We had two full release days in additional to our regular monthly meetings where we planned out the details of our academy. During this process we truly bonded as a team. We energized and encouraged one another. We generated ideas and solved problems in a creative and productive environment.

The goal of the academy was to have a variety of offerings for teachers during our two-day event. We hoped to make a shift in the culture of our district where teachers realized that through the correct use of technology we could accomplish our goals of personalizing learning and embedding 21st century skills into our curriculum. We tried to make sure that we focused on ideas and topics for all grade levels. Another big goal of TILT was to create an atmosphere at the academy where teachers didn’t feel like they were going into another “faculty meeting”. We had music, lunch, t-shirts, a QR scavenger hunt, a small stipend and lots of prizes!

We opened the academy with Mark Garrison, Instructional Technology Coordinator from White Bear Lake Schools. Mark has been a featured speaker at the last four Minnesota TIES conferences. His presentation gave teachers ideas of ways to use unique websites in their classrooms. TILT taught classes on Prezi, Google Apps, iMovie, Flipped Classroom, iBook, SMART Board, Twitter, Podcasting, iPads, Blogging, Productivity Tools (Evernote, iGoogle, Google Reader, etc.), Chrome, ePortfolios, Online Assessments and Ideas & Inspirations (Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Diigo, TED talks, etc.).

The favorite class that I taught was Twitter. For me, twitter has been the single best source of my professional development as a teacher and 21st century learner. It was so fun to show my excitement and love for this incredible tool to my colleagues and administrators! My principals have actually entered the twitter world!

The anonymous feedback we received from academy attendees has inspired me for next year. Some of the comments were: “Thank you so much for your hard work and ability to be patient with us”, “Very well organized and good use of time”, “I liked seeing staff from different grade levels working together. The institute broke down some of those walls of isolation.”, “Thanks for keeping things simple. Thank you so much for helping to keep the students and staff on the cutting edge of technology.”, “Awesome job TILT! Thanks for treating us as professionals and being so patient and helpful with my many questions.”, “Thanks for being professional and well prepared.”, “Very organized! Super helpful!”, “AMAZING job! It was fun, worthwhile and informative. Best workshop I have ever been to.”

I love this journey that I have been on! WTA was certainly a highlight! I couldn’t have accomplished this academy without my amazing TILT team! They continually inspire, energize and push me to grow as a technology integrationist. I am excited for year two in the journey!

[caption id="attachment_158" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Westonka TILT"][/caption]

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

We embarked on a journey this week to develop a policy that allows students to bring their own device into the classroom.  We are fact finding and researching in hopes of having this available for students next year.  Because of limited funds our high school will never be able to support a 1:1 initiative.  We have four computers labs for a building of 900 students.  Two of the labs are used almost every hour of every day for technology classes.  When state testing occurs, there are no labs available for classroom use.  By creating a policy such as this, our students could have technology in their hands to use whenever it could enhance the learning.

Our district had an operating levy pass this fall that will allow us to update our technology infrastructure.  Without this update our current wireless network couldn’t handle this increased number of devices.  We also hope to eventually bring more teachers and students on board with Google Apps.  This will also help more teachers to go paperless and/or reduce the amount of paper used in our district.

We learned in our summer “kick off” with Will Richardson that using technology is how our students are wired.  It’s how they learn, it’s how they grow, and it’s who they are.  Not allowing them to have technology in the classroom is robbing them of how they problem solve, critically think and connect to the rest of the world.  A BYOD environment (when implemented properly) promotes healthy and appropriate technology use.

What I love about my PLN is that I reached out to total strangers this week – people I have never met, people I will never meet – and they helped me.  They answered my questions, they shared their resources and they offered encouragement.  They told me about obstacles and they shared their successes.  This 21st century journey has been more than informative it has changed the way I feel about my colleagues.  People that share the same passion and mission are connected.  They are connected in a way that only they understand.  They are connected because they want to change the way students in the 21st century learn and grow.  They are connected for our future.
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Twitter

I admit it.  I’m addicted…I’m addicted to Twitter!  I joined Twitter 1000 days ago on April 20, 2009 --  http://www.whendidyoujointwitter.com.  My addiction makes me feel guilty if I don’t go on Twitter every day.  I feel that I might miss something of value tweeted by respected professionals that I follow.  My students think that I am on Twitter to find out which marriage ended after 72 days.  I choose to use Twitter.  I choose to use Twitter for my own professional development – the only problem is I don't get credit for my hours.

The first thing that I love about Twitter is that a person has to present their ideas in a concise manner (of 140 characters or less).  I think this makes us focus on our core thoughts and ideas and get to the point.  I don’t have a lot of time to read books and lengthy blogs.  But by watching my Twitter stream and focusing on what I want to learn, I can pick and choose the information and topics of people working in a similar position as me.

I also love the real-time customer support center offered to those that tweet.  It’s another part of my PLN.  Instead of using Google, I can use Twitter to find information.  I can ask a question and receive great feedback, suggestions and various answers from those that follow me and/or are interested in similar topics.  My followers can retweet to their followers and the topic and the audience increases exponentially.

Topics are called hashtags and are preceded by an “#”.  #edchat is a very popular hashtag used by educators on Twitter.  By watching our hashtags we can learn from others on a similar journey.  We can connect and share ideas between educators all around the world.  Instead of looking for information, hashtags allow the information to come to us.  In the past couple weeks, my students finally figured out the power of a hashtag.  They thought it was used to make a “clever” comment at the end of a tweet.  However, after a local student was paralyzed in a hockey injury, they all now follow a tag (#jabs) that supports this local student athlete on his journey to heal.

Instead of using the actual Twitter site, I actually use TweetDeck – a third party social media tool that allows me to organize all of my social networks in one location.  With TweetDeck I can watch a regular twitter stream, follow a hashtag, see my name “mentioned” in others tweets and watch my Facebook status updates.  There’s nothing wrong with Twitter; however, the TweetDeck user interface has so much more to offer.  After 1000 days on Twitter, I continue to learn and grow.  I’m excited for what the next 1000 days on Twitter will bring.  I’m excited for the new tools and interactive sites that I will learn about.  I excited to learn new dynamic ways to engage students.  I’m excited to tweet!

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Diigo

This week I was developing a small lesson on the benefits of Diigo for my technology team. I have been a long-time user of Delicious, a social bookmarking site. Social bookmarking sites save your bookmarks to the cloud and can be accessed from any computer connected to the web. The great thing about this is it allows you to access to your bookmarks no matter what computer or browser you are using! It is a true 21st Century Tool!

After following several tweets about the benefits of Diigo to educators, I made the shift to Diigo. Making the shift was easy since Diigo created an import of all my bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo. Losing three years worth of bookmarks would have been a deal breaker. By preparing this lesson, I learned a lot about Diigo! The tag line for Diigo is Research, Share, Collaborate ~ My Library, My Network, My Groups.

Research – Diigo is an excellent research tool to highlight, organize, bookmark, annotate, search and access information we find on the internet. What’s really cool is you can add sticky notes, highlight information and annotate with shapes, arrows and text and all this stays on the page when you revisit. You can obviously bookmark a page, but you can also choose to upload or capture a screen snapshot into your library. I believe that tags are the powerhouse of a good social bookmarking system. Of the 500+ bookmarks I have, I have them divided into over 70 different categories or tags. I can search by the tags (or multiple tags) when I’m trying to find an article of interest. For example, I teach web design once a year. I have an awesome site that shares the history of the internet that I use every year. I also learned I could create lists of information that can be organized, moved and sorted. From this list, a user can generate a report. This report can then be played like a slideshow in a tool Diigo created called Webslide…very cool!

Share – A goal for me this year was to continually look for ways to expand and enhance my Personal Learning Network. Diigo is another way to do this. I can share or not share…it’s up to me. All the information in My Library up to this point has been from the internet – so why not? Annotations and things I add would enhance my bookmarks. I could benefit and learn if others commented on them. I can share through email, groups, RSS feeds, twitter and cool widgets like the ones I added this week to the side of the blog. In My Network, I can build different groups that share varied interests consisting of different tags and bookmarks. We can communicate through Diigo and learn from one another. There is also a powerful feature where you create an “annotated link” that you can share with a friend or colleague that is not a current Diigo user.

Collaborate – Diigo groups are great for collaborative/group research. Each member can share their annotated findings with the group. All the information is together in one central repository. It is the Google Apps of web research and information sharing. Comments can be made on the pages or in a thread. Members can receive emails when new items are added to the group. Members can “Like” an item in a Facebook like fashion. As every group member contributes, the group grows and learns. I am currently setting up my WestonkaTILT group. I’m hoping Diigo will be a powerful central hub built around our groups’ mission of embedding 21st century skills and personalizing learning for our students!

[caption id="attachment_124" align="aligncenter" width="422" caption="My Diigo Bookmarks & Tags"][/caption]
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