Twenty Ten

The first three weeks have gone by in a blur and I have not blogged or tweeted much.  It seems to go that way for me, either I can't write the blog posts fast enough to keep up with ideas or I have no time to sit and write and my mind is blank.

Our school is about to pilot an open wireless program and I have been working with a team to compile suggestions for teachers who are really not all that comfortable with the prospect.  We want to offer them some management solutions and ideas for harnessing the power of student mobile devices.  When I have the list organized I'll link to it here.  In the meantime, do you have any suggestions?

We're getting ready to celebrate the 2010 Olympics here in Vancouver, signing students up to take the Healthy Living Pledge and preparing banners to welcome the torch relay as it passes through our community.  For those of you in the area the Vancouver Sun will be publishing a series "Bound for 2010" starting Jan. 26.

Our district's Learning Innovation Leadership Team has been moving ahead offering a variety of ProD sessions to teachers and administrators.  In addition to our regular LAN parties (see our K12 Online Presentation) we have begun using Elluminate, free to B.C. Educators.  Bryan Hughes (@bryanhughes) hosted our first two sessions giving participants an introduction to Elluminate and its features.  A recording of this session is available here.  We welcome people from outside the district so if you'd like to participate check out the LAN calendar of events and follow LAN44 on Twitter for updates and links.  For more information have a look at the LAN44 blog.

December Pro D

I've been a bit quiet this past week.  No posts here.  I've been posting on our brand new NVSD teacher librarian blog.  That's what you do when budget cuts are in the air and libraries are once again under fire.  We wanted to take a pro-active approach that would showcase what it is we do.  In doing so we will also inspire each other by compiling a rich bank of ideas.  Please drop by and have a read or leave a comment.

I'm also in full swing with the rest of the team prepping for LAN parties.  That's Learning At Night, one of the ways we deliver Pro D opportunities to teachers in our district.  (I can't talk about LAN without a nod to Kim Cofino and Jeff Utecht at the Bangkok International School who came up with the idea.)  We submitted our own K12 Online presentation this year and it will be up for viewing on Tuesday Dec. 8 - LAN: Learning is Social.  We've constructed a supporting wiki that outlines how to launch your own K12 Online LAN party.

At our first event we will be viewing 3 presentations:
- Building a Web 2.0 Culture by Paul Curtis
- Probing the Possibilities of Paperless Pedagogy by Jason Neiffer
- Around the World with Skype by Silvia Tolisano

All three presenters have generously agreed to Skype in for some informal conversation after we have viewed their presentations.  As my friend @jansmith says, "The net is generous."

Why not join us?

Paul Curits from the New Tech Network (http://www.newtechnetwork.org/) will be joining us live from Napa, California to discuss his presentation "Building a Web 2.0 Culture."

You can watch the presentation and participate in the conversation via Elluminate, an online learning space. Elluminate is free and easy to use.

Join us at 5pm!

Elluminate link: http://bit.ly/LAN44Dec

For more information contact us on Twitter http://twitter.com/lan44 

Or visit our blog http://literacy44.ca/lan

SpeedGeeking and Mouse Wrangling

A number of IT teacher specialist's blog posts and tweets lately have expressed the frustration that comes from trying to pass on all the wonderful technology ideas we come across on a daily basis. We've all had that 'bursting brain' feeling and the consequent let down that comes when those we share with don't drop everything and immediately take on what ever it is we've been hooting about.

But, I believe in serendipity and on Friday a friend sent me this: Are you going to finish strong? It made me stop feeling sorry for myself and want to dive back in.

Then Kim Cofino blogged about Speed Geeking. This was the second catalyst I needed to get myself going.

Here, in my school district, I have been working with a group of inspired and inspiring educators to host Learning at Night gatherings for a thousand or so teachers. Now before you get too excited, while we invite everyone, our attendance at the 4 sessions we've hosted so far has ranged from 40 to 80 people. We've shown them presentations from the k12 online conference, skyped in the presenters and had great discussions. While this has been fantastic Pro D. for our teachers we have all been wondering if there has been any real effect on their classroom teaching methods.

This is where Kim's post about a great idea comes into play. I won't try to encapsulate it here as her post says it all. It got me thinking. These are a few ideas I'll bring to the team to mull over for future LAN gatherings.

* Try our own version of SpeedGeeking.
* Try out an idea we saw at Northern Voice called Moose Wrangling. We may call ours Mouse Wrangling. We know that some teachers have tried out Animoto, Edmodo, blogging etc. Maybe we can convince them to give a 30 second pitch to the group and then move to a separate corner to have a discussion with those teachers who want to hear more.
* Send all May LAN participants away with an RSS feed and the names of a few good blog/nings/feeds to follow over the summer. I've started a list here. If you can suggest any others please add them as comments.

How do you inspire teachers to try new things? Please leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.

The Paperless Classroom

http://flickr.com/photos/jdblundell/2961875066/sizes/m/
Uploaded on October 21, 2008
by Jonathan D. Blundell

We're always trying to think of new ways to nudge teachers in our district a little farther down the road towards making the use of digital tools common practice in their classrooms. It's a task I often find myself comparing to the building of the Alaska highway. The road takes numerous twists and turns, as the builders faced many challenges along the way. I've driven the stretch of road between Dawson Creek and Whitehorse in mid-December. We suffered a broken axel just north of 150 Mile but were rescued by the kindness of strangers. The temperature fell as we travelled and by the time we reached Whitehorse in the wee hours of the morning it was -58F. It was an arduous journey but the rewards at the end made it more than worthwhile.

The journey towards changing how we deliver education seems sometimes to be a no less daunting task. Our first efforts centered around Learning At Night or LAN parties. We selected presentations from the k12 Online Conference to show to teachers and then asked the presenters to Skype in and chat with us. It's been an amazing success with up to 80 teachers attending at a time and I will be writing a longer post after our last party in May.

Yet, I wonder. How many of these teachers have gone back to their classrooms and tried something new? I see a need to challenge them further so this morning I asked a fellow teacher to brainstorm with me using Google Docs to see if we can create a Paperless Classroom Challenge. We talked about having prizes for the school with the most innovative idea for using less paper. We'd also like to reward the school that does the least amount of photocopying over the period of the one week challenge.

I googled 'paperless classroom' and found blogs that talk about other classrooms where this experiment is going on. I found articles to support the idea:
The Paperless Classroom
The Paperless School of the Future is Here Now

We'll provide some guidelines to get them started and try to get administrators on board to promote our challenge. Has anyone out there tried a similar challenge? Do you have any suggestions to help us carry this off?
Your feedback would be much appreciated.