Archive for the Category » Tech Integration «

Sep
09

I’m REALLY uncomfortable! I must be learning….something.

Brenda Muench

Every year there’s something that just floors me and is SOOOOO huge that I just want to take a nap and hope it goes away. During my first few years of teaching it was getting an elementary Christmas Concert together. Then a few years later it was pulling the high school musical together. Then a few years after that it was starting up my classroom website.  This year it’s getting our district technology plan together.  All of these things are so overwhelmingly large!!!! There are so many different directions they could go. So many ideas to consider. So many people to organize. It all makes my head spin. 

You see, I’m a detail girl and large projects often have more details than I can wrap my head around. So I pick an area and start to focus. Often in the first year of tackling a project I end up going back and re-doing something I thought I completed early on because I didn’t quite have a strong grasp of all the variables. When I began the  elementary Christmas concert I didn’t realize how much time it would take to get 1st graders to sing a song with 4 verses nicely.  I moved on to the 2nd verse too quickly and had to go back a re-teach the first verse after the 3rd verse. When I did the high school musical I didn’t plan for costumes early enough and had to spend quite a few afternoons (before rehearsal) driving around the countryside looking for dresses from the local theater companies. This year with the tech plan I’m so new that I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong YET but I sure I’ll find something shortly.

I need to learn to accept that I can’t do everything right the first time every time. I find myself thinking, “I’ve been an educator for 14 years now. I should know how to do all this stuff – even if it’s brand new to me.” Just like I remember thinking, “I should know how to plan a Christmas Concert! I’ve been learning this for the last 4 years of college!” during my first year of teaching. Maybe the underlying thought here for me is more along the lines of: “I’m pretty smart, I can figure most things out. Why isn’t this easier!?!”

So this feeling right here, this feeling of frustration, unpreparedness, anger, and confusion, this feeling is one I need to remember. I feel like I’m doing this all by myself and there’s no one to help. Even though there are lots of people I can ask questions, I don’t even know which questions to ask them! I need help but I don’t know what help I need. So I just need to get busy so I can find the questions to ask.  But I’m still really angry that this is the best way to go about this for right now – it’s messy and non-linear and seems like it might possibly be a total waste of my time.

That feeling right there is how my students students feel when I ask them to research a composer or try to find their singing voice.  That’s how my fellow teachers feel when they get a new tool like a Smartboard or a projector. That’s how my administration feels they learn about a new tool like a blog or a wiki.

So folk,s when I say I know how you feel…..I really mean it. I understand that anger and frustration but we have to push through it to get to the other side. I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other in the areas I’m struggling with and I’ll do my best to support you as you do the same.  And when it’s all said and done we’ll both be better educators and learners because of it.

Category: IW, Tech Integration, Uncategorized, learning  Tags: , ,  One Comment
May
31

End of the year student reflections

Brenda Muench

This year I tried something new during my last few days of music classes.  I had each grade level review the most exciting things we had done in music that year.  Then each section of a class got to look at the list, vote on the 2 most exciting and write a paragraph as a class describing the event or project.  I managed to get the whole project done in one class period of 25 minutes. 

We wrote our ideas on the Smartboard and edited as a class.  I could tell the 3rd graders have been working on writing a good paragraph in language class.  They made sure they had things like topic sentences!  The second and first graders just basically went with whatever order the sentences came out of their mouths.  I did go back and so some basic editing to make things a little more understandable after class was over but for the most part all I did was cut from Word and paste into WordPress. 

I was really amazed at how willing the kids were to recall very specific things about our learning this year for this short project. You’ll see that especially in the 2nd and 3rd grade posts. The 2nd graders had a very good recollection of specific instruments and their families, which was a main focus of our classes this year.  The 3rd graders even went so far as to try and remember all the names of the songs from their Christmas Musical this year!

The hurdle to doing this as a class is that inevitably there are a few kids who just try to “zone out” and not participate actively in the discussion and writing.  I think that my last class of 3rd graders may have provided me with a way to avoid that however. 

Category: Elementary, Tech Integration, blogging, music  2 Comments
Mar
03

Reflections on ICE

Brenda Muench

Over the weekend I tried really, really hard to come up with some new ideas that I had been exposed to while at the ICE conference.  I remember coming back last year (which was also my first year of attendance) thinking, “Holy Cow!!! There’s so many cool things I didn’t even know about that are FREE!  Is there any way I can work all this into my teaching?”

This year I can’t think of any one new idea that really hit me as earth shattering.  Why is that I wonder?  Well first of all I’ve really started to work diligently to create a PLN using tools like this blog and Plurk.  By connecting myself this way I essentially get all those new and fantastic ideas as they become available in real time.  I don’t really need to go to a conference each year to find out those new ideas and products.  I already know about Wordles and Podcasting and Voicethreads.   I did occasionally find a new way of using these tools but I did not come back home feeling overwhelmed with new ideas.

This leads me to wonder further then if I can do all this learning online is going to a conference like ICE really all that important?  The answer for me is a resounding YES!  This was only the second year I have attended ICE and because of my PLN I traveled 2 hours north knowing that people from all over the US were looking forward to meeting me at the conference.  I felt like someone who had been coming to this conference for years – all due to my contributions in my PLN during the year.  It was a fantastic feeling.

I remember going to IMEA music conference my first year of teaching and feeling a little depressed that perhaps I would get there and I wouldn’t have anyone to eat supper with at night, no one to talk to after the conference sessions were over.  And yep, that is exactly what happened.  I didn’t have any connections at that conference yet.  It took me about 7 years of going before I really felt like I had comrades there.  So it is even more amazing to me then that in only my 2nd year of ICE attendance I have “peeps”.  Wouldn’t it be the most fantastic thing if this same experience could be replicated for other new attendees each year?  This year I was looking forward to hearing exactly how Jen’s move was going, how Kymberli’s kid was feeling, and how Jennifer enjoyed her trip to her favorite state of IL.  I was excited to see them in person for the first time to put a 3D face with their 2D avatar in my brain.  I was looking forward to hearing more about their struggles with tech and in life in general.

These connections are what the conference is becoming about for me.  I know that these people love kids and can be trusted to answer my questions with out judgement.  I know that no matter what topic I need to address one or more of them will have experience with it.  I know those strange things like hosting my own blog or starting up Google Apps for Education that scare me just a little can be best addressed at a face to face meeting during a conference.  So I find myself coming to these events with a list of things that I want to get one on one help with.  I also find these face to face meetings are a great place to discuss those high and lofty ideas.   At a face to face meeting I get to hear the vocal inflections and see the facial expressions that let me know where the areas which each of my PLN colleges are truly invested.   And amazingly in discussing these big ideas I can begin to have a better understanding of where I am truly invested.

During this conference I came to a firm realization that I am concerned that no one appears to be teaching our students how to produce a POSITIVE digital foot print.  I realized this in the middle of a conversation with Kevin H. Where are the teachers in my area that are showing students how to create and post things that they can be proud of later on?  Where is the person who is saying not just, “Don’t put pictures of yourself drinking on your MySpace page!”  but also “Have you thought about how your MySpace page could be something that is more than clean?  It COULD be a huge bulletin board of what makes you the coolest thing since sliced bread!”  Where is that teacher?  Why aren’t there more of them?  THIS is the kind of teachers our students need to have to succeed in a digital world, our world, today, now!  Scare tactics don’t work.  Most kids (and adults) don’t really ever think that a silly thing like a picture of you could have horrible repercussions.  We need to be giving students alternative information to post, because they are going to post something.  They need guidance and ideas and a positive role model who is already using their digital footprint responsibly.

I am ready to be that teacher and ICE has reminded me of this.

Category: Tech Integration, Uncategorized, learning  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment
Jan
15

Impressions of the Flip camera

Brenda Muench

Over Christmas I purchased a 30 minute Flip Video camera.  I  can record 30 minutes of video on the camera before I must download it to my computer.  So far I have used the camera at family gatherings, in my buddy Laurie Rodriguez’s kindergarten classroom and in my music classroom.

Use of the camera couldn’t be any easier.  There’s one large red button you push to begin and end your recording sessions.  There is a red light that glows on the front when you are recording so my kindergarten kids knew when to settle down and focus.  The mic picks up reasonably well.  I often find myself narrating the video as I shoot it.  I found when I use my "teacher voice" to do this the sound quality is poor due to the loudness of my voice as heard in this video.  It’s not horrible but it is something I need to think about.

I will have to work with the kids on speaking up though.  In this video I interviewed 3 of my first grade boys about a rhythm activity we were doing and parts of their speech are too soft to be heard nicely.

I was impressed with how well the camera shows faces in my room with the lights off.  Even with going back and forth between the basically white computer screen to the kids’ faces the camera still captured a decent movie.

Moving the videos from the Flip to my computer was easy on my Dell XPS M1330.  No trouble at all.  I plugged it in and the Flip drivers self installed.  The use interface was easy to figure out and I quickly saved the videos I selected to my computer.  On my computer at school (which by the way was purchased only about 2 years ago) it was a different story.  Upon plugging the Flip in to the USB drive the computer slowed to a crawl and then froze up.  Now let it be known that I have had other issues with this particular machine running programming but I think I would hesitate a bit before expected the Flip programming to work on an older computer.

The Flip Share programming will let you add title and credits slides to your movie and you can do some basic editing from the beginning or end of your movie.  If you want to really do some serious editing then use Windows MovieMaker, the Flip files will pull quite nicely into this program.  I also liked that you can choose to have the Flip Share prepare a set of videos to be posted on the internet.  I know this is basically a repackaged "save as" function but I think it would be really handy for folks who are new to this kind of technology.

What I’d like to try next is to put the camera into the hands of my student to observe how easy or hard it is for them to create a video using the camera.  We’ll see how it goes!

 

 

I find the video to be of decent quality.  I am not bothered by it being too grainy or blurry. 

Category: Elementary, IW, Tech Integration, learning, video  3 Comments
Oct
31

White Board Challenge 4

Brenda Muench

I have already used VoiceThread a few times last year so I was really looking forward to utilizing it again for this particular challenge.  I created a lesson using some photos of various Stringed instruments we had been studying in 2nd grade and discussed on the video why they were string instruments then I inserted some pictures I had taken of some world instruments at a museum and the students were going to defend in the VoiceThread comments whether the new instrument was in the String family.  I attempted multiple times to upload the video to Voicethread and just could not get it uploaded.  So I went to using pictures instead which means I’m really using the interactive parts of VoiceThread and not so much the tools of my white board.  But the end product still served it’s purpose and sometimes that’s how it goes when itegrating technology!

Category: SmartBoard, Tech Integration  Tags: , ,  Leave a Comment
Oct
16

Trying out Comiqs

Brenda Muench

Last week I was looking for some nice FREE sites that would work well with Discover Streaming.  I came across Comiqs.com and fell in love with it’s ease of use and the quality of product.  This would be a great whole class activity for sequencing at the elementary level.  It would also be a great place to turn Middle  and High School students loose to see what they could create!


P is for Pizza from bmuench on Comiqs

Category: Tech Integration, presentations  One Comment
Oct
15

IWB Challenge #3

Brenda Muench

This challenge posed some problems for me because I couldn’t really find anything I NEEDED to use it for.   So after thinking about it for a few weeks I just decided to use it to reveal a new rhythmic note that was under a colored rectangle on the board.  The kids were fascinated.  I wish there was a “slider type button” on the colored object so that I could adjust the transparency right there in the lessson instead of have to open the side menu.  This was not my best Challenge but I am heartily looking forward to challenge #4!

Category: SmartBoard, Tech Integration  Tags: ,  Leave a Comment
Sep
30

Really these are for schools?

Brenda Muench

I’ve been looking for a UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) for my new district purchased laptop.  I’d like to look into purchasing a class set for one of the buildings in our district but I’m a firm believer of trying something out on a small scale first.  So I thought I’d use one myself.  Since I travel between 5 different buildings I knew my shoulder would certainly appreciate the difference in weight.  So I started looking.

I began with Dell since they had just released their Mini 9.  I have 2 other Dells and have been very happy with them.  But the one criteria given to me by my district was that the computer must run at least Vista Business Edition so that it could easily connect to our network.  But on the Mini 9 only Vista Home was available!  So I called Dell to see if they might be willing to sell me a Mini 9 with Business installed.  The answer was, “No mamam that’s not possible”.  Really?  Because we’re looking into buying a lot of these things???  Nope!

Next I looked at Asus EEE.  Same problem.  Now really!  All the ads I’ve seen are pitching these things to SCHOOLS!  Is my district the only one that needs something besides the Home version of the Windows OS to get into the network?  If we are then I need to talk to my tech guy.  If we aren’t then why can’t I find a company who’s offering a UMPC that’s compatible with my network?  Come on guys!  I wanted one of these and no one’s willing to step up and make it work for me!

Category: IW, Tech Integration, to try  Tags:  Leave a Comment
Sep
12

Tech at IW

Brenda Muench

This week has been harder to meet with teachers.  The wonders of Stanford testing have descended on our district.  So teachers are tired and little fired mentally.  But a few bright spots did emerge:

  • 1st grade teachers have asked for templates to use for phonics lessons in their classrooms
  • A 2nd grade teacher is trying out animoto for her class pictures for her web page.
  • 8th grade team began constructing a basic web site in Google Sites and have embedded a Google Calendar to post homework assignments.
  • 6th grade science teacher is going to be sending me some SmartBoard NoteBook files to post on our wikispace iwtech.wikispaces.com
  • MS principal has started a blog to post news articles!
Category: IW, SmartBoard, Tech Integration  One Comment
Aug
30

Great beginnings at IW

Brenda Muench

This was my first full week working at my new 1/2 music 1/2 tech integration position.  I spent my afternoons observing teachers to see if I could readily come up with some ways to begin the integration process.  In most classrooms I was able to at least jot down one idea to discuss with the teacher later.  During this process I also discovered many pockets where technology is already blossoming.

Techno-growth I observed this week:

  • A 3rd grade teacher who was introduced to Delicious at the end of 2007-2008 school year who is now using her account regularly.
  • The same 3rd grade teacher is actively sharing website links with her team.  And her peers are even looking at the sites she’s sending them!
  • A HS English teacher who has started a blog to post homework for her classes.  She modeled the use of her site to her class and is now asking for a SmartBoard in her room!
  • A MS Science teacher who has created some WONDERFUL interactive Notebook files to go with her experiments.  She then uses print outs of the completed file for kids who are absent.
  • Kindergarten teachers who are working together to write a grant to get some “Flip-like” cameras.

It’s been a great week!

Category: IW, SmartBoard, Tech Integration  Leave a Comment