Monthly Archives: August 2011

Aug 17 2011

OTR Links for 08/17/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Aug 16 2011

Differently and Different

iPad has huge potential for the classroom.  Look all over the internet and you’ll find lists of people’s favourite iPad applications.  In fact, I have my own on my PD Wiki here.  The frustrating thing can be, at times, when you meet another user and they indicate that they’ve found a better app than what you’re using!  After all, with the thousands and thousands that are available, it should come as no surprise that you’ve stumbled upon an application or two that others haven’t used or found.

When all is said and done, I think that applications can be divided into two big categories.  One category includes applications that let you do things differently.

Doing things differently.  This big category includes enablers that let you slide something that you might normally do with pen and paper or traditional computer to the tablet platform.  I hate to use the word “simply” but it’s the one that comes to mind immediately.  You simply take a task that you would do in other ways and simply use it on iPad.

Mindmapping – Popplet – online brainstorming or note creation

Mathematical Manipulation and Exploration – Sketch Explorer – The Geometer’s Sketchpad goes mobile!

Blogging – WordPress application – update your blog or stay in touch with comments on your iPad

Graphic Novel Creation – Strip Design – a motivating way to publish your own comic strip or graphic novel

ScreenCasting – Screenchomp – creating your own story based upon images that you might have on your iPad

News Reading – Pulse News – news reading, RSS feeds, and online feed content

Wonderful applications, to be sure.  However, there are some applications that I believe belong in another class.  These applications let you do different things.  This has always been the promise of technology – not just a transfer of an activity but the ability to do things that were previously either too difficult or just plain impossible.  In some cases, iPad may well just be the final place of a project.

News Reading – Zite – Read news resources from places that you might never look and have it get smarter the more you use it.

QR Codes – SmallQR – Access large amounts of information with just the scan of an image with your iPad, iPod Touch or Phone camera.

Create your own application – I use iwebkit to create “web applications”.  I like the concept of creating something from nothing and making it your own.  Even with the thousands that are on the app store, you can still find your own niche.

The second category is considerably tougher to come by.  It requires thinking about brand new uses for your technology.  What’s your favourite application and are you doing things differently with it or are you doing different things?

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Aug 16 2011

OTR Links for 08/16/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Aug 15 2011

Vision

If I give you a name, would you know who it is?

William Hamilton Merritt

Still nothing?

The name didn’t mean anything to me until today.  My wife and I were driving back from Niagara Falls on the Lake and I took the local road into St. Catharines.  We crossed the Welland Canal and were noticing and amazed at the mechanism that would raise the road.  Normally, our drive in the area bypasses St. Catharines all together as we take the Queen Elizabeth Way but the local route inspired me to turn left to drive along side the Canal and we ended up at Lock 3.

Lock 3 is also the location for the St. Catharine’s Museum and we had some time so decided to tour the Museum.  When we exited, we were in for a real treat.  A ship had entered the lock on its way from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie.  We watch the whole process of the lock filling, doors opening, and the ship gliding away.  We then hopped in the car to trace out the rest of the route that would be taken and ended up at Lock 7 in Thorold.  The majesty and mechanics of what we were seeing was quite something.  Heck, on the way, we even saw a bridge that raised train tracks for ships to pass.

It made our trip the Museum even more powerful.  It was there that we learned that William Hamilton Merritt is attributed with the idea that a canal with locks like this would allow ships to traverse all of the Great Lakes.  In the museum, there was an interesting comparison of the Welland, Suez, and Panama Canals with Welland being constructed well before the other two.  What sticks out to me in all of this is the vision that Merritt had to fund the construction of the Canal.  I kept thinking that much of our thinking pales in comparison to this.  Here was a person with a vision who clearly made results happen.  It makes the question “Could my students blog?” miniscule by comparison.  But the key is perseverance and we have the success today.

Or do we?

Part of my learning today included the fact that the Welland Canal is actually the fourth Canal joining Lakes Ontario and Erie.  Now, it gets really important.  If we don’t get it right the first time, redoing things until you achieve success is crucial.  How powerful are these lessons.

Below, you’ll find the pictures that I took of the Dutch boat as it went through the lock.  It’s a big deal for everyone.  While we’re taking pictures of them, crew members are up on the deck taking pictures of us!

By the way, the irony of the name of the equipment on board did not escape me!

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Aug 15 2011

OTR Links for 08/15/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Aug 14 2011

Day 3 at CATCCamp

If I was looking for a movie title to help describe what Day 3 looked like, it would have to include the word zombies in the title.  Camp days are absolutely full and you just felt the toll towards the end.  After breakfast at 7:30, the last mouse click happens at 9:00 – unless you go back to your room to blog or to continue your learning.  But, the collegiality doesn’t end there.  A reception occurs each night in another building and then, deluding ourselves that we might be scientists, we head down to the beach and a campfire and claim that we’re there to see the Perseid meteor showers.  Of course, that didn’t happen for me anyway … the moon was still full when I checked out and so have to rely on the goodness of others to share imagery of the incredible event.  One such collection is here.

But, back to camp.

Like all multi-day professional learning events, this was get-away day.  Things close up early – at 3pm so that we could head off home or wherever the next destination lies.  Today’s my birthday and so we’re treating ourselves to a night in Niagara Falls.  But, even with the shortened day, the learning continued.  As I stuck my head in the doors of the various rooms to lend a hand, there was an almost frenzied effort to finish off or at least make more headway on personal projects.  In so many cases, you could see incredible growth in computer skills in some of the campers as a result of the three days.  As I chatted with various folks, I did ask the question about how this was going to change their professional practice.  After all, that’s the real goal of professional learning.

On my front, Mark and I went back to the eBeam product to see if a night’s sleep could solve some of the issues that we were unable to resolve previously.  This time, we connected the unit to and installed the software on a Windows computer.  It made all of the difference in the world.  This version was indeed ready for prime time.  Even as we were testing the various features, our own conversations kept focussing on what he would use it for in his world and what it might look like, with implications, in classrooms.  The whole experience reminded me of a great conversation that I had had earlier with Becky about prophets and false prophets in education.  We need to continually peel back the skin of the onion to reveal what’s inside and ask the hard questions.

I had a great extended chance to drop into the two web development sessions to see what the results of three days of work looked like.  In particular, I was interested in seeing what the WordPress campers had developed and what they intended to do with it when school opened.  I think they’re on the right track.  It just takes stick-to-it-iveness. 

On another personal note, I got a block of time to work with the Livescribe pen, learning more about its functionality and connection to Evernote and other online services.  The mechanical part of its use seems easy to master – I need a real life situation to put it to the test.

I had a couple of interesting questions put to me.  One was "When do you find time to learn this stuff?"   For me, that’s always an interesting question because I always get the impression that I’m somehow different.  I don’t see it that way – as a computer science, mathematics or business teacher, I was always preparing for the next school day.  Nothing sits still.  Another question was "Why do you blog?"  That’s a tougher question.  Because I enjoy it?  I’m not about to change the world with my words, but I just feel that I’m documenting my own learning and am just happy to share it with whoever cares to read it.  Finally, and this question came came from my wonderful wife – "doesn’t anyone read a book anymore?"  The answer to that is a little more hidden in this environment.  I let her know that we often have some books on our iPads or other devices and read them there.  If you listen to parts of the conversation, people are talking about their reads – it even came up in the Twitter stream from the event.  These are really good questions.

By themselves, they seem to imply that those of us in attendance are less that social?  I don’t necessarily think so – we’re just social in a different and expanding way.  I thoroughly enjoyed the discussions, particularly at the social to realize that there were many connections to other campers that we just hadn’t found yet.  It’s certainly a small world when you get the question "I know you’re from Essex County, what are the chances you know so and so."  I’m constantly amazed when I can say yes and we make a connection.

And then we’re saying our goodbyes!  Ron had confirmed with the group that this was the 20th CATCCamp.  From a vision of what might be, it’s turned into a regular event that people wait for its announcement to just on registration process and avoid the dreaded waiting list.  It was my personal second camp and I found it more powerful this time now that I’m aware of the mechanics and know more of the Waterloo folks.

On the drive out, we passed a number of school buildings.  Some were the epic turn of the century castles, some look like they were build in the 60s or 70s, and some were brand spanking new.  The easiest way to survive in any of these locations would be to grab a class set of books and start at page 1 on the first of September.  I hope that the campers from CATCCamp avoid this temptation and jump in with their newly refined skills and connections to make this a memorable school year.

I’ve got to end with one final picture of the Bay.

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Aug 14 2011

OTR Links for 08/14/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Aug 13 2011

Day 2 at CATCCamp

It was a day of powerful learning and discovery for me yesterday at CATC Camp with my friends from Waterloo.  At the end of the day when the facilitators went around the circle sharing how the day went, I responded with “Gave an informal presentation, Took in an informal presentation, and did a lot of R&D”.  That pretty much summed up my day.

At the previous day, with the full group of campers debriefing and winning prizes, @Gill_Ville wanted to know how I created the web app that I had demonstrated earlier.  The web app was a directory to WRDSB schools and she was interested to learn if it would be a fit for her.  Interestingly, she wasn’t alone so about a dozen of us grabbed a data projector and set about an hour of learning.  I didn’t think that there would have been interest so really didn’t have anything formally prepared.  After all, the sessions at the camp included RWD and websites wtih WordPress and I didn’t see anything devoted to using an editor like Dreamweaver.  Instead of something formal, I went through my thought processes as I opted for this approach rather than develop something in Objective C and going through the formal App Store process.  It was interesting hearing myself talk about it and reliving the learning.  As a consequence of our talk, there are about 6 of them who are planning to get together once back home to further learn and possibly develop something of their own.  Very cool!  I wish them all the success in the world with iWebKit.

I sneaked across the compound to the other buiidng to see what was happening in the room devoted to Apple presentations.  @mebemrpo had just finished up with one of his introductory iPad sessions and had moved on to some work with the iMovie for iPad application.  I hung out as long as I could watching how he introduced the audience to creating their first YouTube video with the application.  It really is a powerful tool and he had them creating within an hour or two.

Later, I reciprocated learning with Kim.  Earlier in the year, I had spend a day at the beautiful new Ryerson Public School and shared my thoughts about it here.  From the campers, there was a desire to learn more about the Livescribe pen and how she had used it with her students.  I hadn’t seen anything except sales pitches before so I joined the group out on the patio for another impromptu session.  At the time, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was beating down hard on us.  I think I may have been the only one without sunglasses but listened carefully and somewhat comfortably once I found an umbrella.  One of the things that is always so impressive to me about good special education teachers is the passion that they have with the students in their charge.  Kim showed us how she maintains running records, have students analyze their reading abilities, and I really enjoyed the story about the talking tree.

The afternoon shifted gears to the R&D component.  @markwcarbone had purchased a couple of eBeam units recently and @rebrouse joined us for the unpacking and setup.  Of course, it would be a sign of weakness to actually read the manuals but we did sneak a peak at the installation diagram and pretty much had the who setup ready for testing in half an hour or so.  We experimented with the features of the Capture and Scrapbook applications.  There were a number of frustrations that we had with some elements of the setup but we persevered and I think got a pretty good sense of what it was all about.  I admit to having a great deal of baggage with my experience of working with SMART technologies and tried to think of everything in that context.  But, we did nicely, I think and @euenoconnor and @jpkitchener joined us to learn and joke and point out the painfully obvious!  After supper, we returned to the setup and introduced the setup to a few others.  By now, we were fairly comfortable with what we knew and things went better.  There were still some questions but time should provide answers.  I think that it’s cool that @euenoconnor and @aliringbull have agreed to give units a shakedown in their classrooms in the fall.  It’s great to have your own volunteer R&D folks.

The group was delighted when @ron_mill showed up.  Gnome_Ron had been around for the entire time but it was great to renew friendships in person.  With someone who had made so much impact in his years as a formal educator, I really am thankful that I had the opportunity to wish him all the best in person.  He even joined us at the campfire which I understand is a rare occurence.

I was delighted to be able to get out a bit earlier to see the sunset.  My EyeFi set is available here.  I was even able to get this shot of the sunset over Kim’s shoulder as she took a picture of the sunset.

It was a long day of learning and there’s one more to go!

Aug 13 2011

OTR Links for 08/13/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Aug 12 2011

Day 1 at CATCCamp

It was a nice little walk home from one building to the other last night at the Kempenfelt Convention Centre.  I’m with friends, old and new and one missing but whose fingerprints are clearly visible at every turn, at the annual Waterloo Regional District School Board’s summer professional learning activity.  Depending upon who you talk to, this event is now in its 19th or 20th year.

The premise is fairly simple – get enough learners and facilitators together in one place with computers attached to the internet and use the concepts of Open Court to learn or consolidate your learning on various topics.  The logistics are anything but simple though.

Members of the IT Department have set up their own sandbox, as Mark Carbone calls it, so that we can do our activities attached to the Georgian College network.  At the outset yesterday, I took a few pictures to record a sense of what was happening and they’re available here.  The pictures don’t really do it justice though; you need to experience it.  As you wander through the convention centre, you’ll see small groups working on activities like:

  • create web pages with a district hosted instance of WordPress;
  • create web pages with a Rapid Web Development tool;
  • learning how to use a SMART Board and create Notebook files;
  • making music with iTunes, Finale;
  • making connections to the online world with a myriad of Web 2.0 activities;
  • learning how to use classroom response systems;
  • Google Documents;
  • working with assistive technology;
  • iPad 101, 201, 301, 401;
  • using probeware in the science classroom;
  • photo and image editing;
  • creating Comic Life and Bitstrips documents;
  • and professional discussions everwhere you turn.

Once the initial learning happens, the goal is to dig in and use that learning on projects to get ready for the new school year.  There is an incredible air of focus as you watch people who could be golfing or travelling but instead have opted for three days devoted to their own professional development.

There are glitches, to be sure.  As I write this post, the internet is down again so hopefully, things will be better soon and I can get it uploaded.  Unlike traditional conferences where outages and problems would be severe show stoppers, here you’re literally just a couple of seconds away from going outside for a walk by the lake or a quick game of basketball with your wife.  For all the high end technology that’s necessary to pull this off, you’re only steps from a mind clearing moment.  I hope that people who get to live near settings like this appreciate what they have.

My friend Ron Millar had asked me for years to join the group as a facilitator and for years, I had to pass.  This event had always conflicted with OSAPAC and I couldn’t make a commitment.  I left OSAPAC last year and so was able to enjoy the event for the first time and got invited back this year.  It didn’t take much more than a second to respond in the affirmative when the invitation came.

Sponsorship would be necessary to help absorb costs and the IT Department, IBM, and Apple Canada have all supported the event.  I’m constantly amazed at the power of being connected.  There was a Twitter hashtag that you could follow #CATC11 and the outside world was responding.  I gave a very quick demonstration of Zite, my go-to news source, and shared one of the links that it offered yesterday “100+ Google Tips for Teachers” and it was interesting to follow the retweets of that message by the rest of the world whose learning continues wherever they happened to be.  They didn’t know the setting I was in when I sent it.

Stop!

That was the order as we were working into the evening and we vacated the building to see the sun set over the bay.  There’s always something spectacular about seeing sunsets here.  As the picture shows, I missed the actual sinking by perhaps two minutes.  Oh well, there’s always tonight.

As I wrap this post, internet access is still unavailable but it really doesn’t matter.  I could just as happily go for a walk instead of fretting about it.  Maybe I’ll get around to uploading it tomorrow.

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