I’m back home, and with the kids safely tucked in, I have time to reflect on a busy, yet meaningful day at MACUL. I continue to be amazed at the magnitude of teachers and school leaders who are interested in how technology can positively impact instruction. As you can see in this picture submitted to the MACUL blog by Michael Porter, this is no small conference (click on the picture for a larger view). And if school budgets were not so strained, I have no doubt we would see more participants.

I enjoyed blogging from the conference today. There was a price to pay, carrying a laptop with an extra battery for added weight (and time), but well worth the effort. There is so much more I would love to share, but after a few years of experience, I know it is not wise to dump everything on everyone in one load. We simply can’t absorb it all. I’m still trying to absorb it all. In the coming days, I hope to share more ways to utilize technology in our quest to engage students.

I appreciated the posts that Diane also added to the blog today, and I find it amazing she found the time with all of her duties associated with being one of the conference organizers. I have full confidence that next year, with Diane serving as the MACUL president, it will be another great year for the state’s elite educational technology organization.

I will not be blogging from MACUL on Friday as I have responsibilities in the local district to complete. Nonetheless, I look forward to hearing more positive reports on the impact of technology.

Digital Storytelling has been popular for a few years now, but I appreciated how Ladd Skelly emphasized the importance of preparation. It’s not about the technology – its the content, the collaboration, the mental processing (higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy) that is necessary to create an effective digital story.

This last session was actually a substitution for me. The session I had originally planned to attend somehow didn’t seem so appealing, and because I had seen Ladd present before, I knew I was guaranteed some quality ideas. I’m not going to try to regurgitate everything he said because you can get the big idea from his online handout (http://twi.classrooms.com/workshops/lskelly).

A couple thoughts: Ladd promoted using Microsoft Photo Story 3 for producing digital stories. For years, I had used and suggested Windows Movie Maker, but I can really see the value of using Photo Story 3. While I’m not sold entirely, I want to explore it further. Another option is VoiceThread (and Diane Zoellmer does a great job of demonstrating how to use that).  I was also struck with the role of emotion in a digital story. As Ladd played some examples of the Civil War, the combination of the pictures of slain soldiers and stirring music got to me. We don’t forget things that impact us emotionally. The multimedia in a digital story opens the door for emotional impact.

A couple of great online resources for digital storytelling: Ken Burns (www.pbs.org/kenburns/) and Adobe (www.adobe.com/education/digkids/storytelling).

One final thought shared by Ladd regarding copyright: if the website doesn’t say anything about copyright, it likely means the images (or media) are copyrighted.  The people who are not going to come after you for copyright violation are the ones who specifically state on their site the copyright policies.

Pam Shoemaker from Walled Lake Schools presented a session on “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works”. Some, but not all, of her content was based on this book. She has found many online resources that would engage students, and these resources can be found on her wiki at http://pamshoemaker.wikispaces.com. A lot of great resources. Please take the time to check it out.

I have a confession to make. I have spent a ton of time thinking about how technology ties in with the nine instructional strategies that Robert Marzano and friends presented in Classroom Instruction That Works, so I can’t say I learned a ton in this session. Again, that is not a knock on the presenter. When Mona Shores was developing the Smart Classroom initiative, we used Marzano’s book in some initial training with our pilot teachers and the overview training with all district teachers. So, in short, I have lived and breathed this stuff for quite some time.

I am also developing – on my own time – an online workshop focusing on how technology can be used to enhance Marzano’s strategies. In future posts on this blog, I will share some ideas on how technology can help you deliver instruction. I will likely include some of the ideas Pam shared, but again, if you want a sneak preview, go to her wiki.

A federal grant has allowed Michigan Virtual University to create a web site called Michigan LearnPort (http://learnport.org). There are numerous resources available to teachers on this site, but the three primary benefits are: free SB-CEU courses, ability to track all of your provisional and professional license requirements, and netTrekker d.i. Oh, that’s right – the fourth benefit may be the best… all of the resources are FREE!!! Even the SB-CEU courses.

It would be difficult to review everything there is about the courses (both self-paced and instructor-led) and the management system in a post like this. I hope to share more information in the future, including how to create an account. However, netTrekker is something you will want to use immediately. It is basically a search engine (or more technically, a directory) designed especially for educators. 

In netTrekker d.i., we can pull up a grade level content expectation and find educator-safe web sites that support a given GLCE. Each web site includes a readability level, a rating of teachers who visited the site previously, and more. It also includes symbols that will tell you if the site includes audio, quizzes, video, maps or charts, lesson plans and so forth.  All web sites have been reviewed by classroom teachers for appropriateness. And if you find something relevant for your class, the license agreements with netTrekker allow you to display anything you find for the entire class.

Incredible resource – watch for more messages on this blog.

WOW! Standing Room Only for Steve Dembo’s Session!!

Steve Dembo, Discovery Education, is currently presenting on the top ten web 2.0 sites for education. If you’ve every heard Steve before, you know that right now he’s talking at about 100 mph. I should have brought my mic for my ipod so that I could be sure that I didn’t miss anything.

His list is at http://top10freesites.pbwiki.com.

Think for a moment about the Mona Lisa painting. When I mention the name, a mental image immediately comes to find. But imagine how difficult it would be to imagine what she looked like if I could only use words to describe her. That’s the power of visual literacy.

Lynell Burmark of the Thornburg Center shared some great insights on research that has been conducted about the impact of images. For example, there are 1,000,000 fibers from each eye to the brain, but only 30,000 fibers from the ear. She likened it to 1,000,000 highway lanes compared to only 30,000 lanes. Yet, it is a common practice to rely more on “hearing” than “seeing” when we teach. We process images 60,000 times faster than we process words. What could happen if we display a picture on the screen and use it to open a class session with discussion?

I also found it interesting that, according to one estimate, there are approximately 30,000 PowerPoint presentations shown daily. However, if most of those presentations are dominated by text and the text is read by the presenter, studies show that retention decreases (we tend to mentally turn off either the slide or the speaker).

The greatest challenge for me personally, based on additional research conducted by Richard Mayer, is to develop PowerPoint slides with full-size pictures. Then, I should use either words displayed after the initial picture is already seen or a voice-over embedded after the initial display. The research indicates an 89% likelihood that the content in the slide will be retained aand applied using this strategy.

One last thought before lunch – there are now projectors that can simultaneously display two different pictures. Set up two screens and let them slides work together. The advantage here is that a student can still linger on the previous slide if they need more time to process a thought. I know the costs of projectors are high, but that certainly makes sense.

Greetings from Grand Rapids!

Wow! What a start to MACUL! Mary Cullinane of Microsoft challenged us to think differently. It was one of those sessions where you walk out thinking “let’s do it” but at the same time, creating conflict within because it is a process that takes time and lots of difficult (yet fulfulling) thinking. One of the most challenging thoughts she shared is actually a quote by David Warlick, who in paraphrased terms said that we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, for using technology that has not yet been invented in order to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet. Isn’t that a challenging thought.

I wondered if the focus would be a rah-rah session on what Microsoft did with its School of the Future in West Philadelphia, PA, but that was not the case. All throughout the session, Mary downplayed the role of Microsoft and stressed the process of people in West Philadelphia making the decisions. It wasn’t about the technology, but the learner and the needs they bring to the classroom. Do we really understand our students? Do we really understand the world they live in?

Mary shared this quote and while it rings true, what challenges me is how we solve this dilemma: “There is a prevailing culture of fear in education today, and because of it, we hesitate to innovate. When people are afraid of failure, they retreat back to the norm. We have to remove the culture of fear, or we will continue in the culture of the status quo.”

This morning I had the opportunity to attend the Administrators’ Breakfast at the MACUL Conference. Marion Ginopolis spoke to the group about Four Simple Truths – it’s NOT about the Technology (see her presentation on the MACUL blog at http://macul.edublogs.org/archives/167.

Marion is the Director of the MI-LIFE Project (Michigan Leadership Improvement Framework Endorsement). Muskegon ISD is hosting the second series of this program for Cohort 2 Administrators which will begin in September. Applications will be open March 17 on their web site at http://www.mi-life.org .

Need a PowerPoint presentation for your class? Don’t have time to create one? Check out Pete’s PowerPoint Station at http://www.pppst.com for free education focused presentations.