I always try to title each of these episodes with something that captures the majority of the conversation between Pete and myself. It doesn’t always work, as well tend to bounce around a number of topics. And it means that often I have to provide provocative titles that often don’t deliver (although I did deliver on stuffed animals in the previous episode). It’s always interesting trying to talk about pedagogy when using technology, personally because I see so many teachers disengaged with the topic. Sure, everyone loves to use technology, and the engagement factor is off the charts, blah, blah, blah…but rarely do we every talk about the pedagogy behind the technology. Why are your students writing collaboratively? How are you ensuring that students are participating in an equitable collaborative effort? Honestly, I feel as if many educators would be more than willing to have these conversations, but there just isn’t time in many teachers’ busy schedules to have these discussions. I’m stuck on what I originally pondered in this episode; Is it better to stay current on pedagogy or technology? How do we distinguish pedagogy from trendy ideology, and should we allow the onward march of technological process to dictate what "is best" for students? Click here to listen to this week’s Tech Director Chat (or listen below) Click here to subscribe via iTunes (Mac and iOS) Click here to subscribe via Stitcher (Android and iOS) Timestamps for this week’s questions: 1:15 How awesome is Pete’s day so far? 2:50 Will teachers be able to easily connect document cameras to the new technology workstations for the high school and middle school next year? 5:40 Todd from Twitter wants to know, how do you keep current with the ever changing nature of technology? 8:53 Ben admits that he doesn’t keep current with all technology. 11:30 Ben ponders if keeping current on pedagogy is better than keeping current on technology. 12:19 Is there any news on the busses with wifi? 13:43 We ran across some issues with internet miscreants bringing the school’s internet to its knees, unintentionally. 15:42 Future plans for bus purchases with wifi. 18:22 Stump Pete! 19:24 JW wants to know, what is Pete’s home improvement project for the new home?   Tech Director Chat - Pedagogy Vs Technology

Just a quick post, to share a small "a-ha" moment that I hope means I’ve successfully solidified my understanding of the Next Generation Science Standard’s "3D" learning. As a Science minor, and former middle school science teacher, I’ve always believed in the power of providing students with discrepant events (p.s. we’re supposed to call them phenomena now); the idea that you present some sort of demonstration or model of a real world occurrence that challenges students’ pre-conceived notions. The idea of providing an engaging piece of phenomena isn’t a new theory (think about how "anticipatory set" was drilled into you during pre-service days), but the ways in which we can present them to students has drastically changed from my pre-service (and even science teaching) days. Consider the following, the sun emits UV radiation in a form of "invisible light." Human beings can’t see it, but we do have technology that allows us to observe what it might be like if we could see it. The phenomena here is the startlingly realization that our bodies react to naturally occurring processes which we cannot see in equally opaque ways. It’s actually quite fascinating! Sure, kids can understand using microscopes and telescopes to observe things too small for us to see, or too far away. But actually seeing something that’s invisible to our senses, that’s pretty cool. It turns out that TJ McKenna has been stockpiling interesting visual phenomena for NGSS purposes over at NGSSphenomena.com. It’s an incredibly more mature, curated, and supported resource than the video story problems I was creating for the same purpose, and I’m happy that thinkers much bigger than myself (of which there are exhaustingly many) are doing the hard work to help organize digital tool kits like this to support teachers; not behind a paywall, or a text-book subscription. Just wide open out on the internet for others to use.

This coming Tuesday, May 31st, I’ll be working with some English 11 students about turning written memoirs into digital stories. The teacher has given me carte blanche to introduce students to a wide range of media and forms for turning a written work into a 3-5 minute digital narrative. Needless to say, it will likely involve still imagery, video, and audio to varying degrees, but beyond a suggested final form, the only hard requirements are making sure to include all forms of media listed above. Hopefully, you see my predicament; it’s a wide open assignment to produce a digital story using more traditional digital storytelling elements, but focused around one particular memory. Think StoryCorps and This American Life mashed up with the typical YouTube vlogger. I wanted to provide the students with a few examples that we could discuss, much like a critique in an art studio, and figure out how to help them elicit certain emotions within the digital stories. I have a couple of examples to share with the students. The Book Mobile by StoryCorps, and I Should Have through the Story Center are two prototypical stories that students will likely be able to relate to, and don’t stray too far from the traditional digital storytelling narrative. I wanted to talk about how each piece made them feel, and the elements used within them. Again, nothing terribly out of the ordinary. Which got me thinking. I bet my #DS106 friends could help me with this. Do you have examples of digital memoirs and narratives that stretch beyond the traditional "Photostory-esque" type of digital stories? The StoryCorps animated stories are a great first step, but students aren’t going to be able to animate anything like that in the time they have. So I’m curious; if you were in a room with thirty 11th-graders, looking to give them a taste of the wider realm of digital storytelling, what would you share with them?

An interesting article, and certainly not without other opinions. Annotations: "The achievement gap between the U.S. and the world's top-performing countries can be said to be causing the equivalent of a permanent recession," Mr. Hanushek wrote for Education Next. Today we lead the world only in how much we spend per pupil. Far and away the most important factor in student learning is the quality of teachers. If we got rid of just the bottom 5 percent to 7 percent of teachers, that alone would lift our kids to Canadian levels, Mr. Hanushek calculates. Our teachers "do not know anything," according to Terrence Moore, who teaches history at Hillsdale College. That's largely because most have degrees in education rather than in the subjects they teach. "Future teachers are better served by getting good grounding in academic subject matter." Ed schools seem to think knowing stuff isn't important. "If you confront [teachers] with the fact that they, just as their students, can tell you nothing about the first 10 presidents or the use of the gerund, they will blithely respond that it is not so important for them to know things as to know 'how to know things,' " said Mr. Moore. The reform needed is to remove state "certification" requirements. The reason for them, we're told, is to guarantee that only the qualified teach. Their real purpose is to keep the knowledgeable out of the classroom. "Yet these education schools," Mr. Moore points out, "not only do not impart real knowledge of academic subjects; they are actively hostile to it." If instead of being forced to hire the certified, schools were free to hire the qualified, colleges of education would wither away -- and learning would blossom.     Tags: education

Looks like a fun pinterest for qrcode ideas Tags: QRcode

"Students will be submitting a variety of files to their teachers throughout the year depending on the classroom and the assignments students must complete.  Below are links to specific pages that will outline the best ways to receive different types of assignments. " Tags: ipads

Elementary site (FREE!) where kids can practice reading and math from common core standards-matched work. Looks VERY interesting. Tags: commoncore

Beirut: Israel conducted a rare airstrike on a military target inside Syria, foreign officials and Syrian state TV said on Wednesday, amid fears President Bashar Assad's regime is providing weapons to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah. Tags: Syria

"TimelineJS is a web based timeline creator, that in my opinion is the best timeline creation tool on the web.  What I like most about this platform is that the creation process takes place in a google form.  There is a template that can be downloaded from the TimelineJS site that is automatically pulled into a users Google Drive account.  With the recent update to the Google Drive app for the iPad, this document can now be edited collaboratively. " Tags: timelines

A great way to take collaborative notes Tags: notes