AzTEA’s Way Out West (WOW)
Saturday, May 5th the Westside AzTEA chapter of Arizona’s ISTE is hosting a free virtual Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) conference that will be free and held in Blackboard Collaborate. My friend and fellow Classroom 2.0 LIVE co-host, Peggy George, is one of the virtual technology conference organizers. As usual, there will be a STEAM smackdown at 1PDT o sign up to share a web tool and join the fun. Check out the announcement below and consider attending – you won’t be disappointed!
The Conference theme is: “Steaming Ahead with Common Core!” and our day starts at 8 am PDT with opening and our keynote speaker, Sarah Galetti, presenting “Seismic Shifts in the Educational Landscape”. Sarah is the Director of the PARCC Implementation of Common Core Standards at AZ Dept. of Ed. The day includes inspirational speakers and practical technology tools for classroom use. (see www.aztea.org for a quick preview)
- Browse the speakers and topics, be inspired by the featured presenters, introduce yourself and communicate with other participants in the virtual forums, and contribute to your own personal/professional learning.
- A really fun “Smackdown” will take place at 1:00 and we’re looking for people to share favorite Web 2.0 STEAM resources. A Smackdown is a fast and furious presentation that can be shared in a web tour in Blackboard Collaborate. You will have 2-3 minutes to show and tell about your resource. More details on the Moodle site FAQ page and also on the sign-up form. Sign up here for Smackdown: http://hnyctt.me/
WOWVTC-STEAMSmackdownSignup
Emil Pluhar, Conference Chair
Peggy George, Blackboard Collaborate and Moodle Volunteer GURU for the WOW Conference
First DEN STAR Teacher Appreciation Gifts
The first Discovery Education Network (DEN) pre-teacher appreciation week gifts for those that are DEN STAR educators received notification of a whopper of a gift today! If you are not familiar with the DEN, the DEN is a global community of educators around the world that use Discovery Education resources and are committed to the use of digital media with students.
Our first pre-teacher 
appreciation week gift was a free copy of Animation-ish by Fablevision! If you want great software for students to animate their stories or writing compositions, this is the software to use and the cost per student is nominal when you purchase for a lab or school site. Be sure to download the 15 day trial version to give it a try!
A STAR Discovery educator lets other educators know about the DEN via events, presentations, conversations, blog posts, newsletters, etc. twice a year and in return you receive all kinds of learning opportunities, support, perks in return. I love being a STAR educator, not just for the perks but for the community and networking that happens among STAR educators. The sharing and learning that occurs within my personal learning network is invaluable and priceless to me. DEN STARS are not the only participants in my personal learning network but they are a huge part of it.
I encourage every educator that uses Discovery Education resources on their campus to become a STAR educator. I am often been asked how to become a STAR educator and I love to share the simple requirements and application process. Head on over to the DEN and view the video to become a STAR educator and join the ranks with the rest of us that are DEN STARs!
Thanks DEN and Fablevision!
National March into Literacy Month
I recently received an email stating that March is designated as ‘National March into Literacy Month’ and included a great infographic that I wanted to share with everyone.
The purpose of this initiative is to,
The month of March is considered National “March into Literacy” Month, and was created to promote reading among children. Literacy Month and its sponsor, Toys for Tots Literacy Program, work to increase opportunities for our nation’s most economically disadvantaged children by providing them with access to resources that can improve their ability to both read and communicate effectively. Since 2008, the literacy program has delivered more than 1 million books to hundreds of thousands of less fortunate children.
The infographic was created as a way to celebrate to children’s literature over the years and help students develop a lifelong desire for reading. What a fantastic way to share and foster the love for reading!
The embed code is listed below so please share with others and post around your campus or classroom:
<a href=”http://mat.usc.edu/wp-
Support the effort to “March into Literacy” and share this infographic with other classroom teachers and your campus librarian or media specialist!
Come Join us at the TX DEN #Appy Hour iCafe
Come Join the TX DEN for our first Tweet Chat Appy Hour on Twitter ~ Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 at 6pm CST with hashtag #appyhour. During this fun hour of learning, the TX DEN will lead discussions on using Apps effectively throughout the content areas in k-12 education.
While its important to know the best apps out there for a content area, it is certainly more important to know how to effectively embed it into your lesson plan for student learning and success. For this hour, we will discuss ways to embed content and share some of our favorite ways that we have embedded apps into the different content areas as well. You will have the opportunity to share your ideas and lessons with apps in our developing website tinyurl.com/appyhour . We welcome you to jump in and help edit and build our site as we go. With so many brilliant minds in the DEN and in school districts around the world, we can certainly give other teachers a great place to get started. It’s all about the students and our ability to engage them in learning in a meaningful way.
Accept our Facebook invitation to show your support and to be part of the TX DEN’s first Tweet Chat. After you accept the invitation, take a moment to share it with all of your Facebook teacher friends! You can also join the TX DEN Facebook page to keep track of all the exciting activities we continue to do to support teachers around the world.
Stay tuned to the Blogs for more information about this exciting event and join us to help make it a wonderful success!
Note: Cross posted at the TX DEN Blog.
Paychecks of the Heart
As an educator for the past 20 plus years, I am definitely not in this career for the money. Yes, I need money to pay bills and would love to be frequently requested speaker or published author that makes a living where money is not a concern for my family members.
But some times I receive a higher reward than a monetary paycheck – a 
‘paycheck of the heart’. You can’t put a price tag on a paycheck of the heart. Those types paychecks are priceless. The reward has no monetary value but it lasts much longer than the feeling I would receive from buying a tangible item.
Tonight I was checking Twitter and saw this really sweet tweet from Paula White and started to reminisce about the many paychecks of the heart that I have received over my many years in education. I still carry some of the cards in my laptop briefcase bag and read them occasionally.
I believe every student can be successful and has a talent. If every kid had an adult that believed in them, more students would make it to graduation in my opinion. Paula, thank you for sharing your paycheck of the heart with me today. Treasure it and treat it like the priceless gem that it is – irreplaceable and invaluable.
Fun Cell Phone Activities at TCEA 2012
If you attended TCEA in Austin recently, you may have noticed the abundance of mobile devices people were using to participate in sessions, workshops or just walking around the convention center and at social events.
I presented a session on using cell phones in the classroom that had over 20
0 participants join me in the web 2.0 lounge coordinated by Scott Floyd from White Oak ISD in Longview, Texas (the web 2.0 lounge was phenomenal!). I was honored and excited that so many people were interested in my topic! If you missed out on receiving a handout postcard, the QR code/URL to the right will take you to the resources shared during the session as well as additional ones for follow up at a later time. You can also use the URL if you don’t have a QR reader app to scan the QR code.
One of the activities that we did during the presentation was to create a slideshow hosted at Cellblock.com. If you attended TCEA and would like to share your photos taken during TCEA that you would like to share with everyone please email your photos to: tceacells@cellblock.com. We had some difficulty with the wireless internet during the session so some of the mobile devices with cameras may have had difficulty uploading pictures to the slideshow. Everyone that attended TCEA is invited to submit photos to the slideshow. I embedded the slideshow of the photos that were submitted during the presentation. It was great to see people submitting photos with iPads even though the wireless connection was up and down throughout the the session. It’s not too late to join the fun!
QR Codes Presentation on Classroom 2.0 LIVE
I am sure you have heard the old joke, “What is black and white and red/read all over?” Answer: a newspaper!
Well, the same joke/riddle can apply to QR codes as well. A QR code is a bar code as shown in the 
black and white bar code to the right. It is considered a two-dimensional bar code because the data is read horizontally and vertically compared to just horizontally like a regular bar code. When you go the grocery store, each item is scanned using the bar code on the item and the item info and price is stored in the lines of the bar code. Similar with QR codes.
QR Codes can come in all colors now including logos and images within the QR code itself like the one to the left. To read a QR code, a QR code reader, like I-nigma or QR Droid is needed on a smartphone. The reader decodes the information contained in the QR code and processes what the QR code requests. The two codes in this post will take you to a website but you can direct a QR code to link to many different things on the internet.
I presented on QR codes at TCEA in Austin on Wednesday, February 8th to an intimate, small crowd. Considering I was presenting directly across from Hall Davidson from @DiscoveryEd and it was 5:00pm after a long day full of tons of other sessions and workshops, I was pleased to have the 20 or so people stay to view my presentation. The resources I shared can be found on the Google doc after scanning the QR code to the right.
QR codes are a great technology to use to engage students, motivate and excite them about learning using a tool to interact with academic content. Join us Saturday and if you are already using QR codes in the classroom or library with students please also come and share your experiences. Even if students are not able to use cell phones in the classroom there are ways that you can set up QR scanning stations using desktop software and I will be sharing information about that on Classroom 2.0 LIVE.
If you were unable to attend at TCEA, I will be presenting on innovative ways to use QR codes in the classroom this Saturday, February 18th at 11am CST at http://live.classroom20.com. I hope that the resources and ideas shared will be new to you as I have scoured the internet far and wide to research strategies, best practices and unique ways to use QR codes that go beyond merely scanning a code for the sake of using a new technology tool without a meaningful, relevant academic purpose. In the meantime stay tuned to my blog as I continue to write posts about using technology tools in the classroom!
QR Codes and Cell Phones as Instructional Tools at TCEA
Next week, Feb. 6-10th is the Texas Computer Education Association’s Convention in Austin, Texas. I will be presenting two presentations. The first is on Wed., 2/8, in Room 19 B at 5pm titled, “Check this Out!” on QR Codes. I chose the title because cashiers have to scan bar codes on items to ‘check out’ customers at stores and a QR code is similar to a 2d bar code of sorts. This session will be interactive so you will want to have your cell phone with you to scan the QR codes shown in the presentation and displayed in the walls.
In hindsight, I realize the title does not indicate what the presentation is about but hopefully the description will entice people to take time to view my presentation. My presentation is late in the day but it will definitely be worth your while with innovative ideas that go beyond the normal activities related to QR codes in the classroom. Be sure to bring your mobile device with a QR code reader installed. If not, we can install one during the session.
The second presentation, “Cell Phones as Instructional Tools”, will focus on ways to use cell phones in the classroom. The session will take place in the Web 2.0 Lounge on 2/9 at 10:30am. This session will also be interactive and be more meaningful if you have a mobile device so you can fully participate in the activities planned during the presentation as well.
A
dditionally, I will be sharing information for the Discovery Education Network (DEN) on their Twitter and Facebook accounts so watch for tweets and pictures sharing the many events going on at TCEA. I plan to share whenever DEN members present, including those in the DEN corporate room and those presenting a concurrent session at the main convention center. If you would like me to tweet your session send me a tweet to @kcaise or email at kcaise@gmail.com with your details and I will share your info with all of TCEA and the DEN. See you next week!
Note: Both QR codes in this blog post go to follow up/supplementary resource documents for each presentation.
No ‘Shame on Me’ Twice
State of the Union Address
This past week when President Obama delivered the State of the Union address, I didn’t bother to listen to a speech filled with more unfulfilled promises just to get re-elected that would fall by the wayside in IMHO. I believed him once and had no intention of doing so again and fulfilling that typical adage about, “…. me twice shame on me.” While there have been a few positive things that have occurred in his Presidency, President Obama promised in his Inaugural speech that no more teachers would lose their jobs and this has been the furthest from the truth. I was somewhat surprised when education was such a large focus of the state of the union address and a hot topic of discussion the next day.
After Obama’s inaugural speech, I was initially thrilled! I had several colleagues and friends that were told their jobs were in jeopardy for the following school year and was caught up in the moment that finally everyone could relax that somehow budgets would be adjusted or reallocated and educational jobs would now be a priority. Instead the opposite happened. More and more public education jobs were cuts and it wasn’t limited to one locale like up north or California like it had been in the past.
Link to Infamous Video
This past summer Texas seemed to get the worst of it with Rick Perry. He wanted to make a run for Presidency but didn’t want any ‘blood on his hands’ to tarnish his run. Fortunately, he did that himself with the debates and his poor performance (karma is a real **tch, huh Gov. Perry!). Numerous teachers and educators lost their jobs in all capacities in public education this summer. School budgets were cut back so badly things were pushed back to a bare minimum. Why? Because Texas didn’t have the money? Nope, not at all. Texas did have the money in in a ‘Rainy Day Fund’ that they could have been released and prevented all of this from happening. When the Senate committees, Texas Education Agency, and Gov. Rick Perry was to meet to discuss the finances of Texas regarding the Rainy Day Fund guess who cowardly refused to show? You got it! I wrote a blog post about it back then.
Rick Perry did such a disservice to education and then to want to cut one of the three things that he actually could remember in one of the Presidential Debates, the Department of Education, it is no surprise that now over half of the Texas no longer wants him to even run for another term as governor after what he has done to public education and his performance while making his run for the presidency. What a complete embarrassment to Texas and detriment to Texas public schools!
Last Day to Nominate for the ’20 to Watch’ Recognition Program
Today is the last day to nominate an emerging ed tech leader as one of the ’20 to Watch’ recognition program honoring educators that use technology to improve K12 instruction.
Do you know educators who are passionate about using technology to transform teaching and learning; who can inspire their colleagues to embrace new tools; and who are curious by nature and always looking for how the next innovation can be applied to education? If so, please submit their names by January 12th for consideration as part of the National School Boards Association’s “20 to Watch” recognition program.
The National School Board Association developed the recognition program to identify leaders within the education technology community who have the potential to significantly impact the educational industry over the next 20 years. K12 teachers, administrators and school board members are eligible to be nominated as well as any stakeholder in the educational community including those from higher education, policy, association and industry organizations and institutions. The selected ’20′ will be honored at the CoSN’s Annual Conference, March 5-7, and recognized during the Technology Leadership Network Luncheon at the NSBA Annual Conference in Boston, April 22, 2012.
Click here to nominate your educator: http://secure.nsba.org/register/20/20_submit.cfm
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