MACUL 2008 Conference Highllights

Location: Academy of the Sacred Heart

Snacks: Jane and Sue C.

Introductions and what's new (no conference stuff yet!)

Present:

 Laura Cummings--e-instruction student response systems found to be complicated. Turning Point which works right within Powerpoint is a lot more user-friendly. You can look up grade level and content standards to then access possible question ideas. Sign up through MicroCenter and you get free gifts now and then like a 2GB thumb drive.

Angie Saylor--Working with a teacher to incorporate daily podcasts. In the recording phase with Audacity but needs to work on how to put it on the internet via the Religion teacher's website. Links will ideally be emailed to parents, faculty, etc. A microphone is plugged into the computer and students are doing recording directly with Angie. Kudos to Jim Winslow at MACUL for the idea. A big thing with podcasts is doing something that has "episodes" that people will want to tune into. With 31 students, the end goal is to have each girl do the podcast 3 or 4 times. The PR implications are huge.

Dayna Lang--currently using e-instruction (CPS system) within the classroom and learning the valuable research based function for checking student data in both pre and post-testing modes. 

Carol Isakson--An online program through Wayne RESA was recently set up called "23 Things Teachers Need to Know about Web 2.0". It is a great online course but it got filled right away. It will run again in the future. It was set up by Jacki Campbell and Carol Mayer. The Wayne State Instructional Technology people have been receiving "Let's Talk" emails from Carol. As a result, a professor requested Carol to speak on networking outside of the school district and we may end up with more visitors to "Let's Talk".

Jane-- Jan. 8, we launched our first course for MI-LIFE. Organizing the set-up, handouts, registration, etc. has been crazy, much like starting a school from scratch. Each team member (only 3 currently) is a connection person at three or four locations. Jane covers Oakland, Wayne, Washtenaw, and Kalamazoo. They've been getting rave reviews. 97.5% of the attendees have found it valuable and think they can put it to use the next day or so. Example: One of the things they did the first day was demonstrate flash drives. For someone who hasn't used it, it is a huge deal. They are still setting up the Blackboard for it. The idea is to help school principals become technology knowledgeable and possibly technology leaders. First cohort ends in February and the second begins in the fall. The private schools are a huge market. NASDC asked them to present at their convention in Washington, D.C. They also provided a Zoomerang survey through their grant. At www.zoomerang.com a survey is provided for us. If we're using it, we need to always log out and respect everyone else's survey. Login with japerzyk@gmail.com.  Vovici.com has a fabulous free version but only for 30 days. The Zoomerang free version is only for 10 days.  FYI--Jane is now in a picture with Tyra Banks from being in New York a couple weeks ago. It was interesting to watch the shoot and get involved. In addition, Jessica Hagy has a book of index cards that look like they are "Crappy Graphs".  It's very creative. You create the graphs yourselves and they can be humorous. Jessica puts up new drawings on her blog. She has a twitter presence as does Governor Granholm. Also, if you snitter (a small version of twitter), it runs on the side in small format without having to refresh it.

Julie Darling-- has a personal podcast available through i-tunes called Teacher Librarians. She is up to 4,000 subscribers. Recently presented at the "Questioning Authority" conference with "Teaching Middle Schoolers to Question Authority". Dr. Marsha Mardis, Wayne State, presented with her and ended up doing a podcast with Julie. She also did one with Annette Lamb. Julie uses a hand-held digital recorder that she takes to conferences and tries to rope people into submitting to a podcast recording. It's an Olympus DM10 digital voice recorder purchased on Amazon. It comes with a microphone. It allows you to switch between conference and dictation mode for improved noise cancellation. You can also plug a microphone into the top. Cost about $100. Not as user friendly as some of the others but there are little channels indicating how loud you are so you can glance down to check the levels. Julie utilizes Feedburner to upload the podcasts prior to putting it into itunes. This allows you to track your podcast. It pulls all the tags and details from your blog and link it to other things. Feedburner makes life easier. Another thing, world bridges have a podcast called "Women of Web 2.0". You Skype in or chat to people all over the world who are into Web 2.0 then there are podcasts of it. Some men go on there sometimes.

Sue C--Still fighting the technology battle with lack of money and servers always down. Her daughter is getting married. :-). She is also working on a website. Currently thinks she'll go with ProtoPage because it's easier. A teacher from the school received a BestBuy grant and was able to get a laptop.

Camille--Arizona hiatus was enjoyable! MEAPs up 10 points. At the beginning of the school year, they worked closely with students at utilizing the MEAP reading and writing strategies. It was especially helpful to utilize the terminology used in the MEAPs for the students to make the connections. Restating and thinking are key. Reading Apprenticeship and other strategy practice is key to making these strategies explicit to the students. They utilize the 6-point rubric from the MEAP in every class at the school with monthly writing assignments.

Sue Mc--Was not approved to go to MACUL, unfortunately. It would be interesting to see statistics on what districts are being most-represented and how that ties into technology development efforts at the districts. At Sue's school, they just started "Study Island". The kids can go in and do a pre-test in math and language arts then continue on to play games in different areas to improve. Teachers can direct children to complete certain assignments prior to being able to access games. It is also aligned with state standards, MEAP vocabulary, etc.

Carol K--Went in and explored google.docs. It looks just like Word. You don't need the software because it is online based. The tool bar is on top that looks much like word. You can share the doc and edit it together. The tutorials are very nice. Google docs also came up with a much improved spreadsheet. Google docs doesn't support Word 2007 yet but you can save it as an earlier version. Google calendars can be linked together and you can pull in anyone in the computer who has posted a calendar. For example, Ann Arbor Film Festival's calendar can be linked and added to yours instantly.

Bob--Has been thinking about regional web site for a Christian service organization in which Carol is a leader. Will now be using a more "agile" approach using Web 2.0 technologies to promote a climate of collaboration with Carol:) Also researching health websites like Webline and

Senior sites like seniornet for needs like Web 2.0 . Forgot to mention, go to Internetadvisor.net to post technical queations about PCs and the Internet.

Based on the popular WJR Saturday radio show The Internet Advisor, the hosts and other many helpful geeks and others answer any level of question in the forums for FREE. Podcasts of old shows are also available.

Chris--Recently returned from a family visit to Portland, Oregon. Hulu.com was shared with her by her brother-in-law. It lists old TV shows online but includes  commercials. You can view things like "Twilight Zone", etc. Also, through work Chris has gotten authorization to utilize some funds. They will be getting Promethian in the media lab for inservicing and such. She has also been involved in doing lots of assistive technology evaluations in light of IEPs and such. 

Business:

Old business:

Never got around to having portfolios, pad holders, or buttons. Perhaps at the next meeting, have a drawing for a Circuit City gift card. There could be 3 levels. We could do this once a year. 

New Business:

  Conferences:

  Wayne State Poster Session - Saturday, April 26 10:00 to 12:00

  Educational Technology Coordinator Conference, Macomb, April 22--includes Liz Karen-Kolb's workshop on cell phones in the classroom.

  Power UP -- one day tech. conf.--this Friday (on MACUL website)

  May Meeting:  May 3 at Sacred Heart, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Program-  All who were able to attend the conference will "share the wealth" of what they learned 

• Speaker handouts are available at http://www.macul.org/page.php?pid=210
• Our members who presented at the conference:
  • Angie S.
  • Mary B.
  • Carol I. - Climb on the Moodle Bus (Protopage)
  • Chris S. MACUL SIG SpEd Preconference Workshop http://www.protopage.com/sigsped   "Print, Cut Fold"  great projects, links to hundreds of resources from local (Michigan) Special Ed support services
    • Jane mentioned that slideshare links can be embedded in a protopage HTML widget
  • Dayna Lang & Jeff Crockett

Glossary of Buzzwords:

• Hyphen criterion (Davidson, closing keynote) refers to the span of years, hyphen, between K - 12
• Social capital (Magerun-Leys, Cheating) refering to the need to be able to trust members in general to get along

Conference Highlights from attendees:

• SIGTele & SIG Web Pre-conference  Moodle afternoon with Ann Thorp and Toula Jacobson
  • MI Moodle Users Course at GlobalClassrooms http://globalclassroom.us/ 

    register as a student  and go to MI Moolde Users for all of Ann's great handouts, also get a free Portfolio area

  • can sign up for a free Moodle site too - maybe the next Let's Talk home?
  • Many ah-ah moments
• Engaging Students: Let the games begin Mike Kessler (vendor)
  • FTC Publishing http://ftcpublishing.com
  • games based on popular TV game shows - older ones use PPT now all are created with Flash for better compatability
• Technology Assisted Cheating    Jon Magerun-Leys
  • Powerpoint with lots of YouTube videos
  • learned many new tricks!
• Carol K
  • Carol got a $3000 grant to implement the Career Forward in her High school - see Michigan Virtual University  http://mymassp.com/careerforwardsupportgrant

• Laura
  • Jim Wenzloff PreConference see SIG Tele blog for description http://sigtelemacul.edublogs.org/
    • Google custom search engine flyer from November Learning limits the number of sites that are searched
    • Google notebook - more than bookmarks, adds a google document but
  • Frank Maricola   Free is Good, taking it to the web MACUL 08
  • Gary Stager http://www.stager.org/ 
    • writes for District Administration magazine http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse/
    • presents alternative viewpoints to technology in the schoo

• Many speakers are also listed at EdTechNot http://www.edtechnot.com/index.html

Phrases to make you think:

• What if Anne Frank had a blog? (Davidson, closing keynote)
• What if everybody cheated? (Magerun-Leys, Cheating)