Do you hear what I hear?

When I first sat through the sales pitch on "sound distribution systems" I thought I was on an infomercial.  It seemed ridiculous that schools would spend money on this -  I have my teacher voice, after all.  I pride myself in that voice, that voice that I worked so hard to get after a childhood full of "Speak up!  I can't hear you!" and "Don't mumble!" and "Repeat it again so the back row can hear you!"  I fought for years for that voice.  And then I heard it.

In the demo, the teacher turned his back to me to write on the board and I heard no difference in sound quality.  And then he walked to the back of the room, still giving directions, to practice the age old technique of proximity with a student who needed a reminder to get back on task.  I heard no difference in sound quality.  This isn't a speaker system that blows out the kids sitting close to the speaker and is quieter for those sitting farther away.  It distributes sound evenly throughout the space.  

My favorite anecdote features a very active 7th grader I'll call Colby.  He liked to move, so I let him pace inside a rectangle outline I'd taped to the floor in the back of the class.  After a few days of his new space he said, "I don't like it back there!  I can always hear you, no matter where I go.  It's like you're always sitting right on my shoulder talking right to me."  Thank you, sound dispersement system, for letting me be that little voice on Colby's shoulder no matter where he roamed.

Neighboring districts are starting to purchase these systems as well.  West St. Paul, Minnetonka, Bloomington, Anoka Hennepin and others have significant numbers of these units in classrooms.  In an article in the Star Tribune on September 1, a teacher from Anoka Hennepin talked about the difference it had made in classrooms.

"Monroe Elementary School teacher Nathan Elliott began using a similar system in his second-grade classroom last year.

"I had 29 kids in my class," Elliott said. "The room is really small and when we're all crammed in here trying to do several different things at the same time, the noise just gets louder and louder and louder. It escalates because the kids need to be heard, too."

When he started using the system, he found "it almost instantly makes the whole environment calm."

Amplification isn't the point, he said.

"It's less about amplification and more about even distribution," he said. "I can lower the volume of my voice and kind of slow it down, and it doesn't have to feel so intense. ...

"There's just a sense of focus; they don't have to strain so hard to hear, to understand what I'm saying. I end up sounding clearer to them without necessarily sounding louder."

The student microphone also has focused classroom discussions and helped shy and soft-voiced children participate."  - Excerpt from Technology levies pay for tools to help kids learn from Star Tribune

Some buildings in St. Paul are choosing to spend their dollars on sound dispersement systems as well, including Obama Elementary and the Farnsworth Campuses.  Principal Hamilton Bell of Farnsworth has seen the difference it makes himself.  He calls this simple, low learning curve technology "a game-changer."     

For more information about the benefits and research on sound distribution, click here.      

Just What I Needed

It's hard keeping up with all the reading I want to keep up with.  I have a couple of inspiring blogs I really like to read.....and I never really remember to check them to see if there is something new.  But I'd sure like to know if there was.

When there is a new Real Simple it arrives in my mailbox and makes me smile.  When there is a news about SPPS, it arrives in my inbox and makes me aware.  But blogs?  I have to check the blog or my RSS feed reader for new content, fingers crossed that today there will be something new.  

Or do I?  (Picture a superhero whooshing in with a cape here...)

Enter www.feedmyinbox.com.  Enter the URL of the blog, your inbox.  Verify your email by checking your email.  Now every time there is something new on the blog there is something new in your inbox. No more checking, hoping, sighing when there's nothing new.  

Hip hip hooray for simple technical solutions to annoying everyday problems!

(And now you could get each new Giga Squad blog post in your inbox instantly!)

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to a new year!  It's an exciting time of year in the cycle of schools.  It's like New Year's Eve; the promise of a fresh start is inspiring and energizing.  The hope that year will be even better than the last - what can feel better than that?

Indeed, this year will be even better than the last.  You'll notice some changes around St. Paul Public Schools in terms of the integrated learning environment.  Technology moves fast and St. Paul is moving fast too.  

image from Apple

The presence of iPads is increasing in St. Paul Public schools.  Some buildings are working towards saturation of certain grade levels to ensure that each child has the opportunity to work in a fully integrated environment as they go through their education in St. Paul.  Other buildings are planning for carts for teachers to use on an as needed basis.

Nooks are will be used at several sites as access points for Achieve3000, research, and increased variety in classroom reading material.

Schools will have more money in site budgets than last year; we expect this trend toward mobile devices to continue to increase, furthering the pervasiveness of the integrated environment here in SPPS.   

image from Stevee at userlogos.org

The Moodle system was upgraded over the summer.  Moodle, now found at elearn.spps.org,  has even more potential to individualize education for our students.  Some of the new features include:

• Conditional Release:  You can't do this activity until you complete this other one, or maybe complete it with at least an 80%.  Or if you get less than 70% on this, then a remediation activity becomes part of your course work.  You can create learning paths.
• Mobile Themes:  This version of Moodle is designed to work with iPad, phones, and more. Think learning anywhere, anytime.
• Rubric Assignment Grading
• Activity Roles:  Make a student a teacher for a particular activity or let the Principal act as the rater in a brainstorming forum.
• Integration with Google Doc: The file picker allows you to submit a Google Doc as an assignment submission or link to a Google Doc easily.

You may also remember that YouTube was opened for staff last Spring. SPPS Apps (Google Apps for Education) is being enhanced to make account creation and use more streamlined. St. Paul Public Schools is opening the environment to create barrier free access to learning tools and we know the students can't wait!

Blocked Sites...Blocked No More! (for adults...)

Did you hear the good news?  The Bridge announced this week that high level filter access has been granted for staff.  Any staff member can now access most filtered sites, including YouTube.

Now what?  To whom much is given much is expected, that's what.  This new development raises two new expectations.  One is to continue to use the tools available to meet the needs of students.  If a student learns through a multimedia option, help them do so.  If students need repetition, let them watch the video again and again.  The second expectation is to monitor student activity on the internet.  The best filter is a two fold human filter: educating students around internet expectations and monitoring their activity.  While the filter is still in place for students, staff need to be aware of where they are using their credentials, where they are logging in, and who is on that computer next.

See the full Bridge announcement below:

Information for staff

The Information Technology (IT) Department announces access to blocked websites

The IT Department has enabled a technology measure that will allow SPPS staff to use instructional websites, such as YouTube, which are currently blocked by the district's content filter. When staff encounter a blocked website, log-in with your complete SPPS email address and web mail password to initiate a 90-minute session. All access will be tracked through the filter appliance, and staff use must comply with the district's Technology Use Policy 520 and Guidelines for Acceptable Use. Misuse or abuse of high-level filter access will result in termination of access for the individual. Network performance will be monitored, and on occasion, high-level filter access may be suspended for all users during periods of high network demand, such as online testing.

Click here to see the Guidelines for Acceptable Use.

Three cheers for safely removing barriers to resources!  Hip hip hooray!

The Times, They Are a Changing.

Or maybe better said, times have already changed.

At the start of the 2011-2012 school year there were 85 iPads in St. Paul Public Schools.  This fall there will be 550 iPads with another 550 possible through EdMN grants.  This former math teacher is ready to declare exponential growth!!!  There will be close to 13x as many iPads next fall.  If we keep this up there could be 14,300 iPads by the fall of 2013!!!  Before I make any grand predictions,  I would be remiss if I didn't step back and ask why these devices are here and how will they impact learning?


Increased presence of devices in our schools is exciting.  It shows that the 21st Century is busting down the doors to our classrooms.  The excitement will wear off though, and these shiny machines will get lots of tiny fingerprints on them (we hope!).  And then what?  What will the students be doing with these new tools?  How will they impact learning?


The answer is not simple.  I can't just tell you "Download that app.  Give it to a kid.  Now they'll learn better."  What I can tell you is that the iPad has a myriad of uses, because after all, there is an app for that.  No matter what "that" is.  Our task as educators is to figure out what learning do we want to impact?  Are our students struggling with decoding words?  Perhaps there's an app for that.  Is Donald struggling with the concept of measurement?  Perhaps there is an app for that.  Is Lee struggling with following multi-step directions?  Perhaps there's an app for that.

As with all technology the learning needs to drive use.  It is nice to have this extremely flexible tool, the iPad, in the educational arsenal.  Now it is time to figure out when to use it and how.  Match the tool to the task.  Need a nail pounded in?  Grab the hammer, not the screwdriver, or worse, the chain saw.  You'll have a mess on your hands before you can say "App".

Watch for upcoming news about user groups, planning sessions, and good apps lists.  The welcome side effect of hitting this critical point of saturation is the potential for collaboration, and there's no app that will take the place of that.

Free & Accessible Educational PBS Video

TPT (Twin Cities Public Television) is the local  PBS station in the Minneapolis St. Paul. Like with many of large media outlets they have made much of their content available online.

Check out tpt.pbslearningmedia.org for an vast selection of PBS video and interactive content.  Everything from pre-K early literacy clips (like SuperWhy and WordGirl), primary documents from the National Archives, and ever expanding collections of PBS and partner video.  All resources are free and educational.  

You will create an account to browse and save your content.  All this content is available for a low low price - free!  

Use this content to reach visual and auditory learners, to evaluate media bias, to encourage kids to research.  Video is a "digital native's" medium.  This asset is a perfect educational storm: a trusted source, varied media, searchable, archive-able, and free!

Interface in Your Hands

The buzz about the SPPS Interface has been around for a while now.  The RFP went out, 7 vendors responded, a committee vetted the 7 vendors down to 3, and has since narrowed it further to 2 vendors:  Dell and Desire 2 Learn.

Finally the time to see it, touch it, click it, question it is here!  Please join your colleagues...

May 18th (Dell)  @ The Center 

&

May 31st (Desire2Learn) @ 360 Colbourne, Room A .  

There will be four 90 minute sessions each day that include a little explanation, a lot of exploration, and of course, Q & A on each interface proposal.

Four Sessions—90 minutes for purposeful and participatory demonstrations

            Proposed Times                                                                        Specific Groups

8:30-10:00	Session I	Students—Middle & High School
10:30-12:00	Session II	*District-wide Staff and Leaders
1:00-2:30	Session III	*Teachers—All Levels
3:00-4:30	Session IV	*Building Administrators—All Levels

*These sessions are not restricted to the focus group defined. They can be mixed, but the general message for the group will be oriented to identified group on the chart

This Interface is designed to bring all of a teacher's tools to their fingertips, one-click away, to facilitate data-driven decision making, aligned learning, differentiation and more.  This is an important point in the learning timeline at St. Paul Public Schools - come click around and give us your perspective.

Hope to see you there!

A Bring Your Own Pencil Initiative???? That's crazy talk!!!!  

creattor.com

Several articles have popped up about tech integration using the pencil allegory.  The idea?  Substitute the word pencil for tech integration and see how the comment sounds.   

At some point pencils didn't exist; they were a "new technology" too.  And I'm sure some educators saw the potential of pencils to be used as a tool in the classroom.  And I'm sure they carefully tested the waters... the teacher tried the pencil for a year or two to get used to it, and when the were comfortable, got one pencil for the classroom to share.  If one pencil made a significant impact, they increased it to 2 pencils the next year.  Next came a whole lab of pencils the teachers could sign up for!  Or maybe not.

So as we consider tech integration and you hear comments or make statements yourself, substitute tech or tech integration with "pencil."  See how it sounds.  Will we laugh at this one day?...soon?

For example . . .

• "Kids can't take those iPads pencils home!  Other people at home will USE them!"
• "Our students use technology pencils really well. They have a technology pencil class 30 minutes a week."
• "There's no time to teach kids to use computers pencils.  They need to learn the content!"
• "We have a couple of teachers who use technology pencils with their classes regularly."
• "I hate that the students use technology pencils so much better than me."

Want more?  Check out Steve Wheeler's blog post, the #pencilchat hashtag on Twitter, or this You Tube video.

Do you Chrome?

You've probably seen the commercials about the amazing things people do with Chrome.  This is another one except I don't do anything amazing with Chrome; I'm just generally less frustrated and more productive.  If you know me maybe you think that IS amazing.

Why Chrome?  Chrome is one of the most customizable browsers I've ever met...and it syncs seamlessly between computers when linked with an Apps Account.  So my home computer and my work computer have the same extensions and bookmarks all the time.  Plus it makes Google Docs....I mean SPPS Apps...work like a charm.

The customization works thru little add-ons called extensions.  They do everything from make your browser pretty to send webpages to your kindle; translate webpages to shorten URL's (Twitter here I come!).  Browse the store for hundreds of options.  Here are some of my favorites:

1. Kindle: Push web articles to my Kindle (or Kindle app on my laptop) for reading later
2. Announcify:  Reads the content to you in a relatively pleasant voice
3. Google Translate:  Translates content with one click
4. dotEPub:  Cleans up webpages and converts the text to an ePub file for reading on a Kindle, Nook, or iPad all in one click
5. goo.gl URL Shortener:  One click to make that long Google Form address 11 characters long!

How to get it?  If it isn't on your SPPS computer already you can get it through the self-service application on your computer.  If you're trying to get it on your personal computer, go to www.google.com/chrome.

What do Starbucks and Classrooms have in common?

When you walk into a Starbucks they customize your experience in a myriad of ways..... which makes sense, right?  Some people need a double shot of caffeine and others are really there to get their daily dose of calcium from a latte, no caffeine needed.  Skinny?  2 pumps hazelnut flavor?  No sleeve - I'm going green and can handle the heat! Room for cream, please.     

The miracle here isn't "getting it your way"  - Burger King has been allowing us to "have it your way" for years.  The miracle is getting the exact drink you want in a short amount of time and at a similar cost to the standard version.

This idea of mass customization is pervasive everywhere....except in our schools.  Our school system was designed in the age of the assembly line not in the age of Starbucks.  While we've recognized the need to differentiate the learning experience for years it is hard to pull off within a one-size-fits all system.  This need and the technologies available to us have collided at just the right moment - just in time to help educators pull off mass customization.

We look at Starbucks, Amazon, iTunes, and many of the other giants in the world of mass customizing and see that it is possible.  We just need to learn how to let their systems walk across the tracks to education's systems.

This is the idea behind the book Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning by Charles Schwahn & Beatrice McGarvey.  It is a reader friendly book worth a look; it's the direction St. Paul Public Schools is headed. Maybe you could buy it online from Amazon.  Or download an ebook to your Kindle, where you can change the size of the font (if you choose).  Or maybe you want to pick it up at your local book seller.  Perhaps you are an auditory learner so the audiobook is for you.  Whatever works best for you...

      

Wherever We Go....People Want to Know

Wherever we go people want to know.....Who we are? And so we tell them...

We are the GIGA Squad (aka Academic Innovation and Technology Integration).  We are your St. Paul Public Schools Game-Changing Innovations for Growth in Academics team.  We have been a team for a short while but have plenty of ideas brewing already.

Our role is to look on the horizon and see what's coming in the field of education.  Our job is to make sure St. Paul Public Schools has access to the richest learning opportunities available for its students.  One part of that vision involves technology integration.  Technology, when used well, has the capacity to transform learning.  We help administrators, teachers, and students do just that - transform student learning.

Meet the team:

Steve Hoffman, Assistant Director for Academic Innovation and Technology Integration

Katrina Mezera, Academic Innovation and Technology Integration Specialist

Chris Turnbull, Academic Innovation and Technology Integration Coach

Steve Asper, Academic Innovation and Technology Integration Specialist

Deb Kozak, Technology Integration Specialist, Department of Instructional Technology

What's out there?

As we continue to move toward a digital learning environment, we, in Academic Innovation and Technology Integration, want you all to start seeing some of the available resources and tools. So, we are inviting you to:

Digital Asset Review I
Monday, April 2
 8:30 - Noon. 

This is a small snapshot of a range of integrated learning technologies that can impact learning immediately.

Who:  Principals, Assistant Principals, Program Managers & District Coaches (representatives from each are certainly suitable)

Where:  The Center for Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Development, 345 Plato Blvd.

When:  Monday, April 2, 2012 from 8:30 - 12 (see attachment below for a more detailed schedule of presenters)

Why: We are moving toward this environment as a district--aligning our learning with effective digital assets to improve student achievement!

Please use the link to RSVP. This will help us gauge how many people to expect.

And, yes! there is a door prize or two!!

Rock the Doc

Google Apps for Education, branded SPPS Apps within St. Paul Public Schools offers a great deal of potential for student learning.  Once students start using Google Apps they don't stop; students are the original early adopters of this flexible technology.  Here's the basic idea:

Google Apps for Education (= SPPS Apps) is an online suite of tools, available for staff and student use, that includes:

• online collaborative documents
• presentations
• drawings
• spreadsheets
• forms (surveys)
• sites

To become an expert on this particular technological skill, Google offers online training and individual certification for Google Apps for Education (= SPPS Apps).  The certification course consists of six online training modules that can be taken at no cost and serves as a comprehensive look at the capabilities of Google Apps for Education.   To become individually certified in Google Apps for Education you need to complete six 90 minute qualification exams based on the training modules.  The cost of each qualification exam is $15.  Click here for more information.  If you are interested and have further questions, email katrina.mezera@spps.org

Have you "Rocked the Doc" today?

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's YouTube!

 

Video, and in particular short video clips, can be valuable learning resources.  Benefits of video include:

• Multi-modal learning - seeing and hearing
• The potential to rewatch the video until understood
• The ability to engage learners and 
• A potential to succinctly explain complex ideas

The largest collection of video on the Internet is on YouTube.  Of course not all that video is educationally appropriate, and another part isn't educationally relevant.  Because we as a school district are bound by ethical and legal responsibility to protect students we can not give open, unfiltered access to YouTube.  IT has been working to find a solution that would allow teachers and students access to the good educational stuff and leave out the junk we know is there.

 VuSafe is a solution that we are currently testing.  It starts by allowing access to a select group of staff that can then issue account invitations.  Once a teacher has an account, he/she can sign in to YouTube through their account to view videos.  They would also have the ability to make a playlist of videos to share with their students to give video access to learners.

This solution is the best of both words - it provides access to YouTube while eliminating the risk to our students.  

This product is new in the district and being tested on a small scale to make sure it works like it needs to.  As we learn more and expand availability, we'll keep you posted! 

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What is an RSS feed reader?

In St. Paul Public Schools your most accessible RSS reader is right in your email software - Lotus Notes.

To add this blog to Feeds in Lotus Notes:

1.  The default setting is to have the feed reader in the right panel.  If you don't see it on the right, you can get it back by going to the View Menu > Right Sidebar Panels > Feeds.  See graphic below.

2.  In the Feeds window, click on the Subscribe to feed button.. 
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