Once Upon A Teacher

We have been asking to be able to use skype as a tool in our classrooms for many years. If you're not familiar with skype, it's a free software application that allows it's users to make audio and or video calls online. Our district has not had the bandwidth or security features they needed to feel comfortable to release this to us. With all of the budget cuts in education, it has complicated the problem even more. So we were thrilled to learn recently that we could begin testing skype on our system.

Our first opportunity to skype came with an administrative leadership team meeting. One of our team members had to stay home with a sick child and we were able to skype her into the meeting so that we were still able to complete her portion of our agenda. What a simple solution! In the past, we would have had to have an additional meeting or add more items to the next agenda.

To get started on skyping in the classroom, I read Sylvia Tolisano's post about skyping Around the World with 80 schools. I signed up immediately to make my contact information available to other schools looking to participate in this project. Before I had time to even think about what we wanted to do first, I received an email from a teacher in PA. Her class was participating in the project and wanted to set up a time to meet with a third grade class at our school. I videotaped our meeting so that the class could share it on their blog with their parents:

Skype with PA from Melanie Holtsman on Vimeo.

The kids loved this virtual meeting and I learned a lot of things I never even considered when using skype personally. Here are the things I need to fix before skyping with a class again:

     * Get an external mic. I never thought about the fact that the kids couldn't all get close enough to the computer for the other class to hear them. I should have had an external mic ready.
     * Bring in my webcam that is not attached to the computer to use. The other teacher had her webcam placed up high so we could see a large portion of the class. I'm not sure how much of us she could see with the limitations of the webcam on our laptop.
     * Have a place ready for the laptop that reaches all the cords and locations it needs to be. This hadn't occured to me when I went into the 3rd grade class and I ended up using books to prop it up. Which worked, but...

The kids on our side were adorable to watch. They waited for each word the other class said and ooohed and ahhhed at their answers. It surprised me when they got so tickled to hear students' names from the other class that were the same in their class. They thought that was so cool that kids in other places had their name. They were very interested to hear that we didn't have the same exact subjects and resources in school.

If you watch the video, you'll know that with just this one exposure, the kids were able to see the possibilities for how skype connects us to the world. They are ready to skype other classes and scientists that can answer their questions! The possibilities are endless. I can't wait...

A little over a year ago, my 6 year old twins got Nintendo DS games. I never really knew much about videogames, so what they could do with them surprised me.

I think my husband is reliving his childhood through the twins because he is constantly buying them new games before they even ask! Recently, he decided they needed to trade up for the latest version Nintendos (which I must say, they knew nothing about...). So he took them up to Game Stop, our favorite used videogame store, and traded the Nintendo DS machines in for Nintendo DSIs.

My son and daughter were immediately able to figure out how to work the camera in the DSIs. They've watched mommy taking a lot of photos lately and couldn't wait to have command of their own picture taking. They cracked me up taking pictures of their toys:

A special blankie:

Things in stores that they want to buy:

And using the camera edit features in the game:

It wasn't 24 hours before I had to tell my son not to surprise people in the bathroom and take their picture. He was so proud of himself for the capture that only promise of consequences got that rule to sink in.

Of course, all of the games that they use and love from their old Nintendos still work with DSI, but I really need some help with what I should be showing them to do. I put parent controls on downloads and wifi. I have no idea what to download and can't really find any good ideas online. I can absolutely think of what to let my kids do on a computer, but the screen is so small on the game that most of the websites they love won't work properly on a DSI. Can you help me? Any suggestions?

When I first started blogging, I think one of the most exciting things for me was having the ability to share all the photos I took in my classroom. I knew that my students' parents would enjoy seeing them as much as I had enjoyed capturing those moments. I was a slideshow master, embedding them in blog posts whenever I could. Parents would sometimes ask me for a copy of one of the photos and I would have to get their email and remember to send it to them when I had a moment. Not a huge chore, until you have a big class event and everyone wants you to email them a photo.

There have also been several times over the years where a parent forgot their camera at a special event, or missed the shot they wanted. I always pointed them to the other parents standing around taking photos, but I'm sure they felt unsure approaching others parents they didn't know.

Over the last few years many teachers have asked me, "Isn't there a place online where my parents and I can upload all of our class photos together so everyone can share?" My answer was no for a few reasons. First, in order to use photos from a class everyone in the photo has to have a digital release (per our district). Second, in the interest of proactive safety, I encourage teachers not to post photos of students posed standing alone (which is a very popular shot among teachers) and instead have them use candid shots or group shots of class activities. Third, if you have a "pool" of photos for your class you won't be able to control if the other parents follow the first and second reasons...

This year, a few teachers have tried creating accounts with stores like Walgreens and giving all of the parents the username and password to upload and download from the account without publishing them online. This is a good way around our problems, but not very efficient. Parents would have to know to keep checking the account and some parents may not want to use Walgreens for their photo needs.

Late this fall, I was excited to come across a solution to our problem on my favorite photo website, Shutterfly. They have a service for photo sharing called shared sites.

Shutterfly shared sites allows you to upload your photos in the privacy of your account, create albums to organize your photos by event or however you like and then share the photos or albums you choose to share. To try shared sites, I created a site at Christmas time for my family. I picked which photos I wanted to be accessible when pulling up the site and used that unique url to send out with my Christmas cards. Shared sites can be made public or private. For this purpose, the site was public so that my family members didn't have to log in to view my photos. Not only were my relatives able to see which photos I put on the card, but they could peruse my summer vacation photos and whatever else they wanted to flip through!

After the holidays, I approached my child's teachers and shared that I thought this would be a great way to share classroom photos with the parents and for parents to share with each other. One of the teachers immediately got excited because she already used shutterfly for her photos. She went back to her classroom and created a private share site that day! It can be done in less than 10 minutes, by clicking "create a site" under share and it will walk you though the steps to make your site using your photos in shutterfly.

Our class site is private. That way parents can upload whatever photos they wish to share. When the site is created, parents can be emailed an invitation to join the site and members can either order prints on shutterfly or just as easily download photos to a flash drive. I really like that feature, because I don't print all of my photos. Everytime there is an update to the site, members receive an email to view the new photos there.

It really is as easy as it sounds and we haven't really found any downsides! Do you have a favorite way to share photos in your classroom privately?

The first year we focused on technology in our professional development of our faculty, we highlighted web 2.o tools. This year, we've tried to design more opportunities for teachers to build a PLN and learn what will help them grow personally with technology use. Recently, I sent out a Google form survey to my staff to try to determine what they would like to be offered as small sessions after school. I had several teachers say they wanted to know more about twitter.

I started the session showing this video. My favorite line from it is "real life happens between blog posts and emails." That really is what twitter is to me. Take a look:

Many of the teachers I met with had concerns about privacy. Recently, there have been news articles about supposed crimes committed against people that have posted they are leaving home, thereby notifying criminals it would be a good time to rob their home. Personally, I think that is a stretch. The fact is that if someone knew my name they would be able to Google me and find out where I work. Obviously, I would be at that place of work Monday through Friday all day because I am a teacher. I share my thoughts with folks when they ask, but really it's all about personal comfort level. I would rather be transparent and informed than hidden and in the dark. I think everyone has to make a personal choice. I find it a valuable tool in my professional and personal learning journey!

If you choose to venture into the land of twitter, here's how I think it's best to get started:

* Set up your account by chosing a name that is a username that is easy for others to remember. Many people use their first name and last initial, or last name and first initial, just last name or nickname. Try not to use lots of numbers or a really long name, if you can.

* Make sure you set up your bio profile right away or people may not follow you block or may even block you thinking you are an anonymous spammer. Look at bios of others to summarize yourself the best you can.

* Find a twitter mentor, someone who is already embedded in the twitter process who can help include you in discussions and will be able to answer questions if they come up. I didn't have someone like this when I started but I spent a good bit of time stalking (yes, stalking!) on twitter before I joined. Just watching how the interactions were done and the tone of conversations.

* Find like-minded educators to follow. Twitter 4 Teachers is a great resource that has grouped teachers by subject or specialty area. Click on the persons name and that will take you to their twitter page. If you are logged in, all you have to do is click the follow button.

Once you have an account, set up your profile, tweeted a little yourself and have added some tweeps to follow, I've noticed that some people don't go any farther because they think they have nothing to say. What I would say to you is... give it time. The value grows with the time invested and the relationships you develop there. You begin to notice what others are sharing and it shows you what types of things you could be sharing. Spend time responding to others' posts by replying to them. Place the @ symbol plus their twitter name immediately after it and they will be able to see it later if they aren't online at that time by clicking the replies button on their home page. You should do the same everytime you login to see if someone had replied to you.

One of the ladies in my session asked me, "How do you keep up with this?" My simple answer is that I don't. I follow a lot of people and when I check in I don't go back and read every thing that has happened since I was on last. I check my replies and scan through the recent postings and dive in! :) Twitter is the #1 tool that I use for personal and professional development and it is well worth a try. Do you have any twitter tips to share?

A few years ago, I started hearing about the 365 photo project on twitter. I googled it to find out it was a simple project with the challenge of taking one photo every day for a year. The people who had completed the project the year before talked about how much it taught them about taking pictures.

I thought joining the project would be a great way for me to tell the story of a year in the life of this educator and mother of 4 with a crazy, hectic life. I also thought it would help me stay disciplined about taking regular photographs instead of binging on holidays,

so I dove in and gave it a try. I did pretty well for about half of the year and then I let circumstances in life get in the way for a few weeks and I found it too hard to catch up. I should have just picked up from there, but I gave up in frustration.

Here is what I learned during that time:
* Always keep your camera with you at all times. Everywhere. No excuses. (You never know when that perfect moment will happen.)
* Get that "film" frame of mind out of your head and don't be afraid to take tons of pictures. You can delete all you want later.
* Take a picture, then change your angle or position on the same subject to take the next picture.
* Find a close up shot to try out on the big picture you are taking.
* Looking at other people's photos on flickr will teach you about how to take better pictures yourself.
* It's ok to take the posed shots, but look for the image with the story (the surprised at having your name called for an award instead of posing holding the award).

Here are the results of my 200 + photos in my first attempt at a 365 set:

Even though I gave up on the project a little over mid-way through, I didn't give up on photography. I continued to follow my flickr contacts. learning from them by what they were doing. I purchased my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D60....which I have since sold and traded up to a D5000. I began to get brave enough to ask other educators questions about photography. Thanks to Ben and Ken I started turning off the "auto" setting and began learning about shutter speed and aperture. Photography is definitely a passion now.

Everyone doesn't have the same experience with this project. But the one thing I notice throughout other group members photos is that they learn to look for the image that tells the story. It doesn't have to be a fancy camera to capture it. Many group members use their iphone camera to take their photos. But if you watch their images over time, they change from staged photos to photos of moments in time. The photos that catch everyone's eye. The photos that tell a story. Aren't we all suckers for a good story?

My friend Dean tells his story well. He put his 365 photos together in video form. Even though I have never met his family, or been with him at his job or house, I feel like I really have peeked into what 2009 was like for him. Grab a soda and snack, click here and be inspired.

Join me on this 365/2010 journey!

I have heard Georgia Heard speak about her passion for teaching poetry to children and it inspired me to write some poetry of my own. When I heard she had written a new book with Jennifer McDonough, I was intrigued. I began reading it the day I received it in the mail.

A Place for Wonder, Reading and Writing Nonfiction in the Primary Grades, explores the importance of classrooms that encourage curiosity and discovery. What seems like such a simple thing can be easily overlooked if teachers don't consciously provide a place for exploration and wonder as well as integrating habitudes of curiosity into their curriculum.

What I liked about this book, was that it wasn't simply a "how-to" recipe for teaching nonfiction. Don't get me wrong, the lessons, directions and artifact photos are there for you to use and implement in your own classroom, but there is also a lot of thoughts between Georgia and Jennifer about how they came to their ideas and decisions. Reading their after-lesson reflections was what made their work even more powerful. It really helped me understand and visualize their classroom work.

Curiosity and wonder seems like a natural fit for science lessons, but I really would like to see more of it infused in lessons across the curriculum and through the grades. Georgia and Jennifer aren't the only ones talking about teaching curiosity. A recent blog post by Angela Maiers shows her conversation with literacy coaches about looking for evidence of curiosity in classrooms.

Do you have a classroom environment that supports curiosity? What kinds of things do you do?

Last year, we taught teachers at our elementary school how to use blogs, wikis and other web 2.0 tools to work and teach. We gave teachers choices about when to adopt their use and how they would use them. This school year, we felt like it was important to embed technology use in everything that we could, where technology was the best tool to use. Putting our money where our mouth is, so to speak. So when summer planning began, we considered our tools...

In years past, teachers were given binders containing the faculty handbook and essential schedules and forms they would need at the start and throughout the year. As the year went on, updates were placed in mailboxes or emailed to teachers.

Last year, we purchased a flash drive for each teacher with all of this information pre-loaded, but then still had to email out updates and hope that the most recent file was the one saved.

This year, we decided to keep all pertinent forms, schedules and information on a faculty & staff wiki. We kept the wiki private because it has teacher addresses and phone numbers as well as other sensitive information, but everyone was invited to join so they could upload when needed.
I even managed to convince my principal to film a little welcome message to everyone. I used Pinnacle to put it together. It is embedded on the home page of our wiki. Our school theme this year is prominently featured. I'll let you watch to find out more about it:

The wiki has had many additional benefits we never considered. Here are some examples:

* Instead of turning in meeting agendas, teachers can upload a copy to the wiki for documentation.
* The master calendar that normally is kept in the principal's office is now an embedded google calendar.
* Faculty members that may have not tried to actually use a wiki last year when they learned about them are now having to weekly use and get comfortable with this wiki.
* Our district has limited the size of our email boxes, making it difficult sometimes, to receive powerpoints or other large files. The wiki is a perfect place to store these items for future use.

It seems like the more we use wikis, the more ideas we come up with to use them. We would love to learn how other schools are using them. Please share!

Hi everyone! I just got back from the National Educational Computing Conference in Washington, D.C. and I am on learning hangover! What an amazing experience. My colleague, Suzanne Shall, and I blogged all we learned on LIVE from the Creek (our school's professional development blog) and we're not finished yet! So please hop on over there and check out what we learned. We'd love to hear from you.

Plan on ISTE 2010 in Denver, CO this time next year. We hope to see you there!