TCEA+2010

= Useful information discovered at TCEA 2010. =

From Maryjo Humphreys:
At TCEA my primary goal was to learn more about Moodle so that I could administer a district-wide middle school End of Course Algebra 1 Exam. Thanks to Robert Alford, Leslie Lopez, and Donna Owen, the middle school Algebra 1 End of Course Exam practice is now available for testing this spring at the middle schools. I learned about metagroups, but unfortunately this did not help with the Alg. 1 course. Alford shared the Aiken upload method which we used to upload the exam items from a Word document. Also learned that math equations have to be converted into images in this current version of Moodle. Not part of TCEA but on the ISTE SIG Innovative Learning Technology wikispace [] I found a very neat, uncluttered alphabetical list of top Web 2.0 tools and how they are used in classrooms. [] This group has a big Digital Citizenship and Innovation initiative which will be used to help collect "what is already being used and working" from schools on a national and international level. I'm very interested in watching the policy section to see what shows up. []
 * Moodle:**
 * Web 2.0:**
 * Digital Citizenship:**

From Melanie Boecking:
Free Web 2.0 Resources

These ITS from Arlington ISD specialize in finding fabulous and FREE Web 2.0 resources for educators and learners to use, including slide show makers, photo editors, blogs, and more: []

More Web 2.0 resources from Jim Holland: http://webapplications.wikispaces.com/ Tammy Worcester is an author, teacher, speaker and consultant. Her books are very well known and loved by educators. They are full of simple, ready-to-use activities for learners. What did I like most of about Tammy’s presentation? The simplicity of her activities; I left with several technology integration activities that easily filled away in my brain. I can pull them out of my memory at a moment’s notice and do them with a variety of age groups, subject areas and skill levels. If you have a chance to see Tammy in action, don't miss her! []

Chris Gardner’s opening session at TCEA is still ringing in my memory. He was an excellent speaker who captivated the audience as he shared his journey of rags to riches. The movie, The Pursuit of Happyness was inspired by Gardner’s life, but listening to him share his story first hand cleared the Hollywood romanticism from the brutal reality of his struggle to achieve his dreams. What did I take way? A reminder that nothing is impossible! Work hard to achieve your dreams and you can’t lose. []

When I present to an audience, big or small- my goal is to provide something that will inspire people to enjoy doing something new or different that will make their learning environment better. Eric Wahl challenges people to “think and see things differently.” His suggestion stood out to the audience: we spend too much time thinking with our orderly and efficient left brain, and not enough time with our creative and abstract right brain. Eric asserts- unleash your right brain to bring creative energy to everyday tasks to make life more interesting, meaningful, dynamic and successful.

Like Gardner, Wahl challenges his audience to let go of their conceived fears and strive for their dreams in a creative way. Here is his fear acronym.

False

Evidence

Appearing

Real

See him in action on his website: []

RRHS is planning to begin Video Announcements! I took the opportunity to find out as much as I could about video technology and video announcements at TCEA. I examined what Miller High School is doing with Video Technology in Corpus Christi. What makes this program unique? The teacher is a volunteer from the community. He has helped several of his students secure jobs at the local television station after graduation. This is a title one schools with high engagement and graduation levels. The exciting video technology program played a role in helping students stay involve in their education and preparing them for their future careers. Below is an example of a Fear Factor show the students created for their Buc Vision Videos.I'm looking forward to helping RRHS get rolling in their video announcements! []

From Vickie Bradford:
I attended the Tammy Worcester's session Tammy's Favorite Free Web Tools. I learned about TodaysMeet which in essence is a chat room that doesn't require a login or an account "it //helps you embrace the backchannel and connect with your audience in realtime. Encourages the room to use the live stream to make comments, ask questions, and use that feedback to tailor your presentation, sharpen your points, and address audience needs."// In the classroom setting everyone can be involved in the class room discussion. []

From Nicole Ellenson:
Monday afternoon, I attended a class called "Taking the Photoshop Plunge." It was an introduction to Adobe Photoshop CS4. Although the first part of the class was a review of things I already know and have taught myself, the second half was all new information. The thing I liked best about this course was that the instructor taught many shortcuts, and methods of doing things that were much faster than what I have already been doing. Later in the week, I attended a concurrent session which gave many ways for using Photoshop as a Technology Specialist and in the classroom. An idea that I liked was taking photos from the athletics department, photoshopping them by adding neat special effects and then selling them to earn money to buy more technology. All of the resources from the class can be found at [|www.technology.esc2.net/tcea/photoshop] My favorite class of the week, however, was a class that I took on Wednesday called "Web Apps, Widgets and other Web 2.0 Wonders." The class was basically a three hour lesson into all of the great web 2.0 tools that are available for free on the web. The presenter was Jim Holland, one of the featured presenters and he was fantastic. Some of the catergories of Web Apps that they discussed included annotation tools, desktop publishing, image sources, slideshow alternatives and timeline generators. All resources can be found at his website [|http:\digitalgoonies.com]. For everything that he talked about, I could think of numerous ways to use in the classroom and with teachers. One resource that I thought was different from anything I had seen before was an image generator called Concert Ticket Maker ([]) I've added a ticket that I created for my school. It would be fun to make special tickets for holiday programs, PTA events, etc. Both classes were really informative and I came away with a ton of great resources that I can't wait to show to my teachers.

From Daniel Evans:
Web Tools 2.0 by Mark Brumley Click [|here] to begin!!! Click [|here] to view an example of an Avatar. This was a concurrent session and I feel that I got the most out of. In the one hour Mark Brumley showed us how to record sound, make avatars, and place free music to our Blogs, Websites, and Wikis. The free websites that he used are listed below. He also provided step-by-step instructions. [|Mixbook] – used to upload photos online [|Voki] – used to create Avatars and record sound [|Aviary] – this is like Audacity, but has built in tracks that you can use. [|Animoto] – Used to add videos and sounds to enhance pictures, slideshows [|Tinyurl.com/tcea2010] – Mark Brumley also provided tutorials to use the sites listed above. Audacity: Beyond the Basics by Jamey Osborne Jamey Osborne showed the basics of Audacity and how you can fix audio. Most of the audio can be fixed through the Effects tab of Audacity. He also mentioned that USB are better microphones. To purchase better sound equipment, he mentioned the sites below: [|BSWUS] [|Sweetwater] Google Mania by Monica Martinez This workshop went over the basics of Google and the tools. Monica Martinez showed many different Google tools including: EBlogger, iGoogle, Google Docs, Google SMS, and Google Squared. She showed the basics of each program and how they worked. [|Google] Blogging basics and Beyond by Tammy Worcester This workshop was also a very good one. Tammy Worcester used EBlogger from Google to start a new Blog. In the hour workshop she showed how to import information and place it on the internet for others to view and she added her personal Avatar. Tammy provided [|Tutorials] on how to use her tools and make your Blog more attractive. Click on the link below to begin. [|EBlogger] Closing Session by Erik Wahl Erik Wahl was a very powerful and motivational speaker. It was amazing to see him create paintings in a matter of minutes as the message from the inspirational people played in the background through music and a Power Point presentation. His overall message was to keep creativity in the classroom. To view more information on videos or Erik’s workshops, click below. [|The Art of Vision]

From Manuel Herrera:
There were a couple of things that I saw at TCEA that I really enjoyed. The first was at the SMART booth. SMART is developing a SMART document camera that interacts with their board using 3D images. It's still being worked on but they had a demo up. The presenter would hold an index card, with a generic black and white image (square, triangle, grid, etc.), under the document camera and and then a three dimensional image would appear on the board. For example, there would be an image of an landmark, an organism or a machine. The presenter would then rotate the card and the image on the board would rotate as well. If he shook the card, the image changed into something different. He did the same thing with a cube that had similar black and white images on all six sides. For example, it would show a human skeleton. Now, he could rotate the cube and the board would show the skeleton from different perspectives. He was also able to zoom in/out.

I also attending the Google Tools workshop on Wednesday. I enjoyed this because it gave me more information on how to use Google Maps. I learned how to add locations to a Shared Google Map that students can access and collaborate with. The students can create maps with points of interest that have descriptions written by them. Google maps also allows them a link to the map or the HTML code to embed in their class blog. This is great for many projects. Especially the Promethean Board. Kids can actually see the places on a virtual map instead of on a black and white map. It even allows them to view it in Google Earth.

I also liked the Mimio boards. Many of the booths were using them. I liked that I was a device that can be mounted anywhere and shared by multiple teachers in their own rooms. So if one teacher isn't using it, another teacher can easily mount it in their room to use.

From Mark Kania:
One of the great online resources I learned about at TCEA is **Big Huge Labs** ([]). I'm sure some other ITS/campuses have already discovered this site, but it was new to me and I can't wait to share it with my teachers. Here are just some of the things you can produce there:
 * Motivational Posters - great for character traits and vocabulary words
 * Magazine Covers, Movie Posters, and Trading Cards - great alternatives to PowerPoints for students to share their knowledge
 * Captioner - add captions to photos...make comic strips

From Leslie Long:
[] Getting Creative with Using Digital Images in the Classroom. Lots of free websites with tools used to creative enhance photos.

From Erin Lundie:
We Do Robotics I went to Introductio to **Lego We Do** rebotics. It is a new rebotics system designed for early elementary through 4th grade. We learned to use the software which has several parts: -activities with real world situations -building guides with a 360 viewing ability -programming guides -programming pallete The software is very userfriendly and a great introduction to robotics. Students can either follow the directions step by step, or create their own program. I liked that multile programs are able to be on the same screen- students just hit play and their robot can do a variety of different things. Here is a [|sample lesson]. More lessons just like this come in the teacher guide. I liked that the teacher doesn't need a lot of engineering experience or special robotics training to implement and run the We Do sysem.

Free and Simple Web 2.0 Hot Applications [|Digital Goonies] website Wiki with collection of apps This was a session about some usefull web 2.0 applications- nothing mind blowing, but the collection of tools is good and well organized. I'd seen many of these before, but I was most excited about implementing the use of vocaroo. I see this as a really valuable tool, expecially for K-2 and special needs classrooms. The super simple interface is what makes this such great site. One button clicks and records, and a link and emeedable code are automatically generated. No more uploading to a third party site- it is all in one place. And if you don't want to share, I think a teacher could turn a student on to the tool and then walk away- little support needed. [|Vocaroo] [|Sample]

From Sandy McDaniel:
Tuesday I attended a day long conference with Smart Technologies. The morning session was hosted by 3 teachers who demonstrated how they use their interactive board in class ( 7 Smart Habits of highly effective teachers).The afternoon included break out sessions that included collaboration, tips and tricks and Smart Exchange (exchange.smarttech.com) Wednesday: I attended a session on Effective Staff Development - learned a lot! They used the "TCEA" model very similar to one I've used before and is very effective. Teachers can choose the sessions they want to attend. Instead of only 1 campus, they had 3 campuses participating. I.T.S a Moodle World - this district is in the process of moving all of their technology staff development to Moodle, TEA Update (changes in hs grad. requirements and funding for textbooks, Proclamation 2010 and 2011). There are new guidelines for online books, professional develoment, upcoming Tech. Apps in 2011 and districts can now use textbook funds to purchase technology equipment to support electronic online sources. Thursday: I attended Cut Print and Fold - very cute, mainly an elementary focus, but had some great ideas for using Word and Powerpoint; Successful Solutions for Technology Integration - lots of 2.0 recourses (reminded me of Tammy Worcester's workshops), Google Apps - was blown away by all of the things Google has available; If Not Moodle - Then What? Left this workshop about half way through - not what I thought it would be. They were using a different online tool other than Moodle and the presenter was rather boring ):

From Linda Nichols:
I attended a Google Tools workshop with Tammy Worcester. One of the cool sites she showed us was : [] With this site, you can have students record audio and the teacher can upload to her Teacherweb site! It's much easier than using Audacity!!

From Anita Oliver:
In Broadcast Announcements -. A site for sound was utilized, and can be obtained for nominal fee; [|www.soundzabound.com] was the site and a vast amount of music and sounds can be found, downloaded, and inserted very easily. My favorite was “Tammy’s Favorite FREE Web Tools!” (paid workshop) Session attended and used her blogging website. She would have us “refresh” as she added something to the blog so __that we all kept together at the same pace__. That would be a good idea to introduce things as you went along. Great way to introduce new material and keep the group together on task!!! There were so many tips and web tools - I purchased her book! //Tammy's Favorite Tech Tips, Tricks, & Tools// Here is the URL to her blog [] In addition to her introduction of websites, she had all the participants go in and add their favorites. We would then have a document that had a huge assortment of tools. That URL is here: h[|ttp://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc key=0AlaFSC7EEK8ddHFFcTVFNjFXZDVqUUNtSFdkcmwxUHc&hl=en] A very useful site was [|http://todaysmeet.com], that is so easy to use and no registration or login required. You can set up; a chat room and determine the length of time, which may be up to one year. Students may participate in a quiet “discussion” while listening to a story, post answers to questions, give their thoughts or opinions on topics, or collaborate with students in another classroom. ...And on top of some great sessions, my number was picked for a Smart board!**
 * One of my favorite things to create was making our own Avatar. (What a timely lesson!) If you create one and save as a png, you may insert into other pictures; for instance, you might have a trip around the world and your avatar image might be in and around the “wonders of the world”. This is a great solution to the hassle of using real pictures of people – use the avatar representation.[] This is a free website, too.

From Maury Rhynard:
Unfortunately I attended a workshop that endorsed the use of Fireworks for student productivity. It did not turn out well. I believe that the instructor was able to use the program on her campus, but it did not fit with what she was presenting. In her behalf, the computers in the room did not have the power to run the program adequately and she ended up saying the "Imagine that you do this . . . " instead of a good hands-on workshop. Several of her "tools" did not work and it ended up as a loss of 90 minutes. I cannot endorse the district picking up Fireworks for instructional purposes.

From TerryAnn Hill:
Migrating to Office 2007 workshop - **This workshop was demonstrating the similarities and differences on all the Microsoft 2007 ribbon. The professor is a credit trainer for Microsoft that provided several but few skills that I have learned on my own or trained by Round Rock ITSs. She was a good speaker but most of the stuff is already learned.** ITS Zip, Zero, Zitch workshop – **I learned several free options to select for projects for teachers to use. The ITSs from this school district showed samples on how they were used throughout their schools and even provided links to all the sites they used including their presentation. I really liked the Wiki in plain English video from Common Crafts [] [] [] - select I.T.S. Zip, Zero, Zitch to view presentation plus other sessions that were held at TCEA 2010 ** Podcasting using Audacity – I** learned a lot in this session since I have never used audacity before and really never been exposed to Podcasting. I found it to be a very useful tool and when I returned to Berkman, my music teacher asked me several things about recording and what and how she can use in her classroom. BINGO! I got the program for you. I am planning a future training for her and others to attending and learn how we can embed music, photos and edit our voices. The session also provided us with a cd that contained royalty free music that can be used in broadcasting or podcasting. Now, if I can find that CD ???

From Shannon Sieber: Favorite Class I attended: Other things I enjoyed: I do feel like I left this conference with some skills and ideas that I didn't have before.
 * Using iPods and iTunes in the classroom. I want to go buy a bunch of iTouches and get my teachers hooked. This was a great tool and I've already talked to some of my teachers about piloting a program using iTouches next year if I use some of my budget money to purchase them.
 * Google Earth for Math-having the kids place the NETS using shapes in a word document, I think really helps the kids analyze what the NET is going to look like. It also covers some of the TA application TEKS that my kids were not so strong on.
 * Tammy's Teacher Time Savers-I wish I had know all of Tammy's tricks when I was teaching. I <3 Tammy.
 * Animoto Across all Content Areas: I didn't know you could have student accounts with Animoto and I don't think my teacher's knew that either. The teachers had great examples of using animoto for writing prompts, projects etc. It made me think of a "picture sharing" site in a different way.

From Greg Smith:
I went to The Yacht of All Classrooms session. It was about using centers in the classroom that incorporated technology. This link [] provides a PowerPoint of their workshop and videos of their centers in action along with student testimonies. This is a very good resource if you have teachers asking about incorporating technology into their centers.

From Jeff Uselman:
The first workshop I attended was titled //A Very Google Classroom.// Most of what was covered was not new to me. The presenter, Tim Chase, uses Goolge for most everything in his classroom. He did not address the FERPA issues though. The second workshop I attended was more of a refresher course on integrating Audacity, Photo Album, and Photostory 3 in the classroom. A lot of review information, but one thing I learned that I thought was interesting and useful, was saving a PPT. as a .jpeg. When you save as a .jpeg, it creates a folder on your desktop and saves each slide as an individual .jpeg. Very useful for adding the slides to a photostory, movie maker project, or being able to view them without having to have PPt. __A couple of others things I noted:__ You need to have jodix to change a wmv to an mp4 with audacity-the file just needs to be on the computer so Audacity knows where to find it. Windows 7 does not come with Movie Maker- You can sign up for it on the MS website.

From Vernon Renegar:
One of the sessions I attended was Using Google Earth Tools Across Curriculum, presented by staff members from North East ISD in San Antonio. They had wonderful resources and how-to's that they shared with us via a Google Doc: [] The resource I particularly enjoyed was the Google LitTrips site which uses Goggle Earth in conjunction with a popular novel or story to enhance the reader's experience by showing locations from the story on Google Earth. []

From Erik Weiler:
TCEA to me is always exciting and disappointing. It is exciting because we get to see all of this new technology that is out there. It is disappointing because RRISD does not always make this technology available to us for purchasing. The workshops are cool. I enjoy going to them. A lot of the technology discussed in these workshops I have heard of, I just have not gotten a chance to play with them a lot. Case in point, I had not gotten to play with iGoogle very much and by the time I was finished with it I found that I enjoyed using this much more than having to go to my gmail, calendar, docs, etc. separarately. One thing that I learned about that was new to me at my workshops was a website called Vocaroo. This website allows users to record and embed their voice without having to even log-in. However, I have not been able to use it in RRISD because it will not connect allow me to record my voice. So I don't know if I will be sending out this link quite yet.

From Rosa York:
At TCEA this past February of 2010, I attended several classes that I thought was very interesting and valuable. One of them was a BYOL class, "Charting Beyond the Great Technology Divide to Creative Digital Projects." Although the class itself wasn't too interesting, the information/resource sheet that was provided is really good. This sheet has tons of online tools that will help with integrating technology into the curriculum. I've already shared this with several teachers at Chisholm Trail Middle School and I plan on sharing it with my Wells Branch teachers as well. Of the 18 links provided on this resource sheet, the 2 most favorite of mine are: [] - which lets you upload photo(s) and create different things like posters, magazine covers, calendars, etc. I think this would be a great thing to use in all 4 core curriculum areas for students. It's engaging, allows the students to be creative in their own way, and is very easy to use (for the tech-phobic teachers). [] - is an online video creator that allows you to pick scenes, voices, camera angles, etc. for your "movie." You can also use your own voice to record dialog and the characters lip sync automatically. This is another tool that students may use to display a digital project. The presenter also provided a link to a training video - [] for teachers to view and learn more about this program.

From Debby Acevedo
Fast forward to the very end of TCEA to the Cool Tools session with David Bynum from Texas State. While there were many cool, creative tools introduced (see link), the session's book recommendations made the greatest impact on me. As soon as I got home, I ordered Daniel Pink's __A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future__. This book touches on the idea that "Mere survival today depends on being able to do something that overseas knowledge workers can't do chepaer, that powerful computers can't do faster, and that satisfies one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abudant age. That is why high tech is no longer enough. We'll need to supplement our well-developed high-tech abilities with abilities that are high concept and high touch." This concept provided the foundation for using many of the tools introduced in the session. It seems that we're not only charged with guiding students to become more productive, technically literate thinkers, but also offering more right-directed thinking opportunities with the tools they have. It is these people who have ingenuity, personal rapport, and gut instinct that will inherit the earth.

Pink, D. H. (2006). //A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future//. Riverhead Trade, rep upd edition.