NECC 2009 Highlights Andy Mann - Ed Tech Consultant, Calhoun ISD

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Conference Name Change To be sure that the NECC Conference is seen as an international conference, the conference will be known as the ISTE Conference starting in 2010. The name NECC will be retired. A name change provides brand recognition for ISTE. http://iste.org/necc ISTE 2010 will be in Denver on June 27 – 30, 2010. NECC 2009 Handouts Without attending the conference you can still benefit from the wealth of information shared. Visit: http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/program/presenter_handouts.php for the presenter handouts and links to their websites. Elmo I talked with the Elmo document camera representative and shared that their document camera software was not as good as the competitor’s desktop image capture software (Avervision to be particular.) I learned that Elmo would be releasing an updated version of their software called “Image Mate.” It has an improved GUI and now allows the recording of audio using a microphone plugged into the computer as well as the document camera’s video (the current software records only video.) The two different capture programs they currently use will be rolled into a single application. This software works with the Elmo TT-02u and TT-02s document cameras as well as the new TT-02rx model which is soon to be announced. The new RX model provides a remote control, thumbnail view of SD card images, and a higher resolution sensor. The price for the new model should be similar to the current TT-02s model. The RX model looks a little funny as it has an IR receiver built into the top of the document camera which looks like a small flying saucer. The Image Mate software can be downloaded at no charge from the Elmo USA support site in August: http://www.elmousa.com/download-archive.php Google Apps for Education Big news from Google! Starting in July, the fee based Google Messenger security suite which provides spam, virus, keyword, and attachment filtering will be provided to K12 accounts for free. School districts such as Jenison schools outside of Grand Rapids, MI and colleges and universities including Hope College in Holland have already transitioned to Google Apps for Education their staff and student email, for Google Docs and more. For K12 districts, there has always been a hope that the email application would provide filtered email. It now is now available at no charge. The Google Apps for education may be the best solution for district email. A district may use a district domain (you don’t have to use @gmail.com.) The site can have a district graphic for district identification, and Google provides lots of storage space, backups, etc. For more information visit: www.google.com/a/edu Note: Google Apps for education includes more than just email. From the Apps for Ed FAQ page it says the program includes:

Gmail: Email storage and search tools that help your students find information fast and instant messaging from right inside their accounts.

Google Calendar: Students can organize their schedules and share events and calendars with others.

Google Talk: Students can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free anytime, anywhere in the world.

NECC 2009 Highlights Andy Mann - Ed Tech Consultant, Calhoun ISD

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Google Docs: Share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Collaborate in real-time with your team or with your whole school. You can publish final documents to the entire world, too.

Google Sites: Work together to keep related documents, web content and other information in one place, on one site.

Google Video for education: A video hosting and sharing solution that enables schools and other organizations to use video as an effective medium for internal communication and collaboration.

Free from the Exhibit Floor Professor Garfield, www.professorgarfield.org, the free site for K-8 supported by the Garfield creator, Jim Davis, has a new site: www.sparktop.org and now has a comic creator on the Professor Garfield site called Comics Lab Extreme. The price is right and it looks good. Learn Central, www.learncentral.org is a social networking site for educators being supported by Steve Hargadon, a popular open source promoter and social networking advocate. It’s sponsored by Elluminate, the web conference application. If you join Learn Central you get a free three user room through Elluminate which never needs to be renewed. Of course they hope you love the program so much you opt for an upgrade and add more users (prices start at $400 annually.) Elluminate works well with Blackboard, Angel, and Moodle, allowing an instructor to present synchronously to multiple students, provides an abundance of built-in interactive tools, and provides an option to save a presentation for easy retrieval and sharing. The free Secret Builders website www.secretbuilders.com is jammed with interactive content for teaching writing, reading, art and more. It’s worth exploring. Battle Creek’s teachers, John and Mary Phillips, were both working the booth. They contacted the creator a few months back, suggesting a few items for improvement (which they are very open to hearing) and ended up being asked to come to NECC and help. John is an elementary technology teacher for Battle Creek Public Schools and a Discovery STAR Educator/DEN Leadership.

Hands on with Google Earth I attended a few wonderful sessions on using Google Earth for instruction and walked away with some fantastic ideas for integration. The presenters (Jim Holland and Susan Anderson) have written six books including three on Google Earth and GPS which are available from Visions or at http://www.creativeedgeresources.com/books/ Many ideas can be found at their websites: http://googleearthlessons.wetpaint.com and a Web 2.0 integration tip site: http://web20tools.wetpaint.com/ and http://digitalgoonies.com/ Sites which they showed or talked about embedding into Google Earth placemarks included:

www.onetruemedia.com – digital storytelling; can embed others’ projects www.timetoast.com – nice timeline application; can embed other’s timelines www.mixbook.com – can create printed or online galleries; online is wonderful www.leafletter.com – create interactive media players www.photopeach.com – embed digital stories www.scrapblog.com – embed digital stories – very popular www.vocaroo.com – record audio with no login required.

NECC 2009 Highlights Andy Mann - Ed Tech Consultant, Calhoun ISD

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http://www.mystudiyo.com – embed a quiz in Google Earth www.random.org – select a random number (used to draw a prize winner).

Web 2.0 – what’s new A new web 2.0 site for digital storytelling worth exploring is: http://www.magtoo.com/ I learned about another site to stay up with all the new in Web 2.0 sites: http://cloudtrip.com This goes along with the popular: http://www.go2web20.net/ I attended a wonderful workshop on using VoiceThread in the classroom. The session’s material is all available at: http://edtechvision.wikispaces.com/voicethread Want to get started with creating a Personal Learning Network – look no further than Sue Water’s site: http://suewaters.wikispaces.com/ Other sites to explore: http://prezi.com for online presentations – the cell phone presenter/session I attended used it – very nice graphical user interface. BigHugeLabs One of the sites I learned about in the Cell Phones workshop was a site called Big Huge Labs. www.bighugelabs.com This site allows a user to upload an image and do a lot of very creative things with the image. The instructor collected used badge holders at a conference and then provided each student with a badge holder. Students create official looking name badges with their photos – when they’re wearing this they have permission to use their cell phone. This site has a lot of cool possibilities. New from the Library of Congress I attended a hands-on session from the Library of Congress www.loc.gov and learned about some new tools from this rich site. Teachers have a new starting point on the LOC site: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/ and the LOC created a new section called Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Direct, where educators can find a PD Plan Builder and Self Directed Modules. http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/tpsdirect/ Topics include: Leaving Evidence of Our Lives, Lincoln's Pockets, Analyzing Photographs, Analyzing Sheet Music, Analyzing Maps, Connecting with Primary Sources, Understanding Copyright and more. Idea from this session included photo editing an iPod into Lincoln’s hand and asking if this photo was real or not real. This can lead to a discussion of how images can be manipulated and primary source documents. Cell Phones in Education At the 2008 NECC Conference there were two sessions on cell phones in education. At the 2009 NECC Conference there were eleven sessions on cell phones in education. So this is a growing area of interest. In the session I attended we uploaded images from our cell phones to a site called PhotoBucket www.photobucket.com We also used Poll Anywhere www.pollanywhere.com which I’ve used before. We also upload items to http://dropio.com iPodTouch and iPhone Everywhere attendees were using Netbook computers and talking on their iPhone. Virgina DOE sponsored a contest to encourage iPod Touch software development as part of their Learning without Boundaries project: http://www.lwbva.org/index.cfm. I downloaded a few of the best – including a nice little program called Number Line. A few required a software update to iPod Touch OS 3.0. Other educational application for the iPod Touch included Math Stacker, Freddy Fraction, Energy Footprint, iCatch Squares, and Fraction Fractory.

NECC 2009 Highlights Andy Mann - Ed Tech Consultant, Calhoun ISD

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Free sound files and images I attended a session on open source which included a lengthy discussion on the value of Creative Commons. It was taught by Karen Fasimpaur who did a lot with Palm handheld computers in past years. She stressed that we should require students to include the author’s names and the URL on all photos we get off the Internet. We should also be modeling it in our projects. We can easily find photos which have been identified with the Creative Commons identifer. She said that her #1 place to go for free images is www.flickr.com On Flickr, a user can seach for only images which have been indentified as being available through a Creative Commons license – and there are over 100 million available. Search engines have been developed which search Flickr for only CC images such as: http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm and http://compfight.com For music some favorites for creative commons licensed music include http://ccmixter.org. We learned to quickly find songs of a style you’re looking to use by using the Find Music tool and the Tag cloud option. She also mentioned http://www.musopen.com for copyright free music which tends to be more classical. For sound effects try http://www.freesound.org – though you must be registered to download. Her wiki with links: http://www.k12opened.com/wiki/index.php/Necc2009B. TuxPaint I also attended a nice hands-on session on using TuxPaint where we had a chance to add our own image to our image library (must be in .png format.) This site includes a link to a well done YouTube overview video. I now understand how thei stamps are organized in the stamp menu. http://nets4students.wetpaint.com/page/Tux+Paint Safari Montage Discovery Education has a few competitors. I took some time to learn more about one of the competitors which uses a different delivery model. Videos for this company are stored on a server you purchase and keep at the district. The collection is updated by the district from discs provided once or twice a year. It has some videos different from Discovery/United Streaming – more math and science if I recall correctly. It is more expensive to get started as a server must be purchased. It’s priced per building. This product evolved from the video delivery system schools use to put into place which used a rack of VCRs called Dynacom. I was surprised to learn this company has one of their major tech support/development offices just outside of Kalamazoo. Holland Public Schools recently purchased the server/software delivery solution. http://safarimontage.com/ Grade Cam Once again I saw on the exhibitor floor a program called GradeCam www.gradecam.com Students place a bubble sheet under an inexpensive webcam type camera and it sees the shaded in bubbles and scores the paper. The owners are former teachers and parents of the inventor. The product is interesting that it does what it does so easily and it’s a reasonable cost. Inexpensive Student Response System Beyond Question was the winner for best bargain for a clicker system. They offer an IR classroom student response system which costs only $399 after a one page grant application for the other portion of the cost (the price is $1,399 and the grant covers $1,000 of the cost.) Is it as good as the others which cost $1,200 - $1,500 per classroom?…you’d have to decide. But at the price it may be worth learning about. http://www.beyondquestionlearning.com