21st Century Skills institute at Union College
Posted by: bulljohn on: November 18, 2009
- In: Conference
- 1 Comment
These are stream of consciousness notes and will need to be edited extensively after the conference, so if you are viewing them in the meantime cut me some slack.
Introduction by Dr. Charles Detrick Questar Boces – Currently the passive model where a teacher conveys information to students sitting in neat rows will not allow us to meet state standards especially of our sub-groups that the state will be looking at.
Keynote – David Gibson (President of Vhooresville BOE and President and CEO of X-ray optical systems – Goal to give us insights into the workplace that our students will face. Description of what his company does and how it grew, changed and evolved. Alot of the companies out there won’t exist 3-5 years from now as the technological landscape changes so quickly. He has “learned how to learn”so he isn’t worried about having to get a new job in the future. Salaries based on your degrees. All his employees that make more than $100,000 have multiple degrees. 21st Century Skills definition -Skills to be able to operate in an environment that is permeated with technology and is constantly changing. There really aren’t any low tech jobs anymore, all require some level of multitasking. Engineering is about problem solving, a lot of the people who graduate with engineering degrees no longer work as engineers. Although he hasn’t said it there will not be very many 30 year careers, it will be a series of different jobs. It’s a global business world now.
Teacher externship program – Have teachers work 6-8 weeks in a job so that they can see the skills necessary to work in these high tech companies. Problem solving, Cooperation and interpersonal skills, teamwork skills.
When do I use a particular method of attacking a problem? Giving the students a skill set that they can choose and select from when working on a problem.
Breakout session -21st Century technology in the classroom – Denise Graminski, Hilary Delaware and Mike Sylofski
Polled us using text messaging and poll everywhere on whether we use facebokk/myspace? 90% said yes.
Second poll do you tweet? 81% never done it.
3rd Poll have you ever used a Wiki? Didn’t conduct this one electronically
Their whole presentation was presented using a wiki at http://fallinstitute.wikispaces.com/
Check out the connected learning video under item 3 of the way down on the page. It includes a nice piece on what the role of a teacher is in this process.
Small group discussion of technology rich and successful lessons.
Short discussion of the NETS-S and their history.
Breakout session #2 – 21st Century Skills Rubrics - Kathy Schadewald
Tech Valley High has school wide grading rubrics for things like Collaboration. New Tech Network provides infrastructure. Peer to Peer and self assessment are part of the grading process.
I thought this session would center more on program evaluation and instead it centered more on student evaluation.
Google Forms!
Posted by: bulljohn on: November 12, 2009
For the last time, NO I don’t own stock in Google and NO they don’t pay me a salary, they just make great products. If you ever have need to conduct an online survey, forget Survey Monkey, forget setting up a FrontPage Database form, use your Google account to create an online form. This requires that you have a google or gmail account before proceeding.
To setup a google account go to https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount if you would like a gmail and google account goto http://mail.google.com
You are now ready to setup your online form. Go to http://docs.google.com
Click the create new button and select form. You can now add questions to your form by clicking add new. Make sure to click on the theme button to add a little color and flair to your online form. You can then email a link to the form to anyone you’d like to fill it out and their results go into a Google spreadsheet.
Google forms also allows you the ability to share the results of the survey with everyone that particiaptes or to only allow them to complete the survey. Under more actions you can edit the confirmation they receive when completing it and if the results can be viewed.
Here is an example of a Google form
by bulljohn
Google Squared
Posted by: bulljohn on: June 4, 2009
This is a new google Labs product. It is basically a table based search product. You run a search and it compiles data by categories and fills in a chart with your info. Yo9u can add columns or rows of data to what Google finds to start with. You can also start from a blank table and add your search categories and develop your data as you go.
I did a search for “American Presidents”. It returned 6 entries based I believe on # of web pages. (George Washington, John F Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George W Bush, Jimmy Carter and Frnaklin Roosevelt) for those presidents it returned the following pieces of info Religion, IMage, Description, D.O.B, and Political Party. A subsequent search for “United States Presidents” produced a completely different set of presidents and data points.
Google squared is an interesting tool that they need to put a little work into. It is best used to organize basic data about a subject in an easy to use chart. I would suggest skipping the search(after trying a sample one of two to see how it lays out data) and building your chart from scratch. Google will make suggestion on what data to add in either rows or columns after the initial column is filled in.
Story Creator 2
Posted by: bulljohn on: May 15, 2009
This free website is great for making student created animated comic strips online with voice narration and sound effects.
Currently we are waiting to get a school account so your students can save their work. (send me an email and I’ll let you know the details). In the meanwhile you can setup an account to save your work using the “other” school choice.
Currently the content preloaded into Story Creator 2 is Myth’s and Legends. All of the backgrounds, people and objects have a decidely medieval flair to them. You can upload your own clip art and sounds to use as part of your story. Once stories are completed you can save them and then download them for viewing offline or in class. You can also view stories created by other users from around the world, but primarily from England.
http://myths.e2bn.org/create/tool527-new–story-creator-2–beta.html
Google Chrome
Posted by: bulljohn on: May 14, 2009
Microsoft won the browser wars when they beat Netscape. Of course nature abhors a vaccum so Mozilla Firefox rose
from the ashes to offer Microsoft some competition and force them to make IE better. Now both IE and Firefox have a challenger to push them to innovate and its Google Chrome.
Chrome has quickly become my default browser. It has a few websites that are written in such a way as to not be 100% compatible, and then I load up IE and wait for the page to load.
Why Chrome over the others? Speed, Chrome loads pages much quicker then any of the other options. The interface is clean and simply while still allowing for most necessary features. The quick access to new tabs and the most commonly used websites feature also are big pluses. Typing a word/phrase into the address bar triggers a google search instead of a page not found, or having to type it in a different box.
You can also search websites from the address bar (by hitting tab after typing the address). What this does is executes a search of that website as if you used the search box that is on the website (ie: a book search on Amazon). In order for this tab search to work you have previoiusly had to use the search box on that website at least once.
Chrome includes a browse in incognito mode so that no cookies, or other traces of your viewing are saved locally.
Download chrome at http://www.google.com/chrome
Google Desktop is way too cool for words!
Posted by: bulljohn on: May 14, 2009
- In: Apps
- Leave a Comment
Yeah I know I said it was way too cool for words, but this is a blog after all words are what defines it. Google desktop is available for download from http://desktop.google.com/
Google desktop is two distinct products rolled/wrapped into one juicy morsel. First is the widgets sidebar. Sidebars are nothing new they eat up screen real estate so you can have a larger clock, weather forecast and other kitsch. Eventually the depth of widgets available for the Google sidebar will astound me and force me to re-evaluate losing and inch or two of screen but for now they are only an amusement/occasional diversion.
The power of Google desktop is in it’s desktop search. Properly configured this tool will index all of your local and network drives compiling a search database of all of your files and their contents. This desktop search uses Googles vary same search algorithms and is almost foolproof. By hitting the ctrl key twice quickly a search box pops up for you to enter you query. The search executes in no time flat and produces a short list of relevant matches. (You can click the more button to see a detailed web page of results which is further sortable by file type.) The best part is one of the file types it also searches are your Outlook emails.
You can click on any of the results to launch the files or right click the result to open the folder it resides in. I can do a Google desktop search, find my file and open it, quicker than I can click my computer and drill down through the folders to where I know the file is and open it.
I know others think Google will one day defeat Microsoft and become ruler of the world, I for one look forward to that day! Next up I’ll review Google Chrome. Chrome is Google version of a web browser.
Who needs expensive voting systems?
Posted by: adriengleason on: May 5, 2009
Another ace in the hole for supporters of allowing some (guided) cell phone use in the classroom, polleverywhere allows students to weigh in on issues, as well as communicate thoughts and concerns with the teacher in a medium that they know well – their cell phone. Students can text answers to teachers’ queries which will automatically be tallied and viewable in real-time on the web. Check it out at:
http://www.polleverywhere.com/
picnik
Posted by: adriengleason on: May 1, 2009
Hey Folks! Do you need to tweak your photos or create fun and interesting projects with them. Do you not want to pay for photoshop or photoshop light, or install picasa on your machine? Try picnik, a free and web-based application for photo editing.
Thank you Derek Dayton for the tip.
Openwith.org for files you can’t open.
Posted by: bulljohn on: March 11, 2009
“Have a file you don’t know how to open? Think you need an expensive piece of software to open it? Chances are there is a great free program that’s just as good as the expensive one, and you’ll find it here.”
This website as you can see from it’s own splash statement links you to software that is free on the internet to open files that you have received that you don’t currently have software on your machine to use. It does require a small install, which adds a link in your right click menu to their site.
You’ll right click on the file you can’t open and choose openwith… and then you are off and running.
Free Audio Books
Posted by: adriengleason on: February 10, 2009
Looking for some excerpts or complete audio books for your classes or car rides?
http://librivox.org/
provides free readings of books in the public domain.
