Weekly Byte 2.25.09

Embedded Learning Courses
Tuesday was our third late start for the embedded coursework. Everyone seems to be moving along at an appropriate pace. We will have one more late start date on April 1st. This will be the last day we have time during the school day. Remember that all coursework must be completed by July 31st.
There were very few problems this time. I attribute that to the teachers trying the courses before the late start day. That way I was able to solve all of the problems but one, sorry Missy.

English Technology Day at Valley High School
On Tuesday Kristin, Sam and I attended the English Tech Day with teachers and tech coaches from around Westmoreland County. It was an awesome event where teachers were able to share some great lessons that integrate technology. The teachers then had the opportunity to work with other districts to create lessons that integrate technology based on PA English Standards. There were some great lessons shared.
All of the resources shared can be found at http://www.westcffenglish.ning.com
Check this site out it is awesome. Lots of lessons and feel free to post to a discussion board.
The other great resource that i thought was quality is http://www.readwritethink.org
This is a great source for students and teachers to learn about all types of writing.

There will be days like this around Westmoreland County for Social Studies, Math and Science. Check back to this blog regularly for future dates.

Tuesdays with Roger
I will be starting the Tuesdays with Roger trainings again beginning in March. March topics will be announced next week.

thanks and have a great day!
Coach Roger

Weekly Byte 2.19.09

Here are the websites that I demoed at the last faculty meeting.
www.toondoo.com
www.ed.voicethread.com
www.glogster.com/edu

Reminder
Tuesday Februray 24th we will have a late start. CFF teachers will be working on the embedded learning coursework. We will have one more last start on April 1st. Please log into your embedded learning account to make sure that your course is open and working. Please do this before Tuesday morning so that I can fix any problems before then.
Friday February 27th we will be holding a Flip the Switch event at the high school. Local politicians, school board members and central administration members have been invited to visit classrooms to witness first hand our us of technology. If you would like to have classroom visitors on this day please let me know asap and I will put you on the schedule.

I have been working with several teachers in the classroom with glogster, voicethread and toondoo. If you want help with these or any other tools in your classroom please just contact me to set up a time for me to help you.

New technology resources for your classroom
Google Docs is a powerful collaboration tool for you and your students. Google docs will allow you and your students to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. If you would like to see how you can use Google Docs to collaborate and improve student understanding and teamwork skills please let me know and we will set up a date and time to develop lessons for use in your classes.

Special Edition of the Weekly Byte 2.10.09

Hello again from lovely Hershey, PA!

Today's keynote speaker was Dan Pink. He is the author of several books most notably for educators would be A Whole New Mind. He gave an update of how society is changing and how we as educators should change how we teach and what we teach.
Notes from Dan Pink Session

I also attended a few sessions on Professional Development. I will be bringing many of the ideas back to FR to share in my Professional Development sessions.

New Tools to check out
Diigo, online bookmarking tool that allows you and your students to organize sites and share them.
Conference Notes and Discussions, this link will take you to the social network created for the conference. It provides tons of resources for all of the sessions this week. You only need to create a new account and you will have access to all the resources shared this week.
National Geographic Resources, this site provides quality videos and podcasts for your classroom.

Please take some time to check these resources out. Let me know if you need any help with any of them.
thanks and have a great day!

Special Edition of the Weekly Byte 2.7.09

Things are rolling right along here at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference in Hershey, PA.
My first session focused on digital media in the classroom. Jason Ohler shared his method of digital storytelling using voice, video and music. Quite impressive but a little involved for the novice techie. Jason Ohler Website

My second session was taught by the Technology Director and Assistant Super from New Hope-Solebury School District. The title was "Technology Staff Development that Works!" The session spoke to the importance of the relationship between technology and curriculum. This district has a serious tech focus and the Professional Development is planned around teaching with technology. I would like to see this focus brought to FR to improve our curriculums.
Technology Newsletter

My third session, Google Beyond the Search, covered the many tools available for FREE in the Google Suite. You can use Google to share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Google Earth can be used to build uber-interactive web quests. Gmail, google maps, google calendar, and google reader are just a few more of the tools covered. Hopefully you will be seeing more of this later.
Google Wiki

Feel free to Skype me (Skype name:coachroger)Tuesday or Wednesday if you would like to ask any questions about the sessions. I will be on all day Tuesday and til noon on Wednesday.
thanks and have a great day!

Weekly Byte 2.3.09

Well after an awesome SuperBowl win by the number one team of all time, I am lucky enough to be at a two day training in Beaver. After braving the hour plus drive for two days I thought it would be good to give some feedback about what I learned at this training.

1. I was reminded how easy it is to create a mulitmedia presentation using Photo Story (this is loaded on the CFF COWS and teacher laptops.
2. What a great graphic organizer Inspiration is (on CFF laptops) and that you can access an online version of this program, Webspiration. Good tool to teach students how to organize thoughts.
3. www.podbean.com is a great tool to post audio and video files to allow student access. (more on this later)

I will be attending the Pennsylvania State Technology Conference next week. Stay tuned for updates from the conference (Feb 7-11). Check my blog for daily updates. I will also be bringing back to FR alot of new resources and ideas to share with you.

Important Dates:
February 24, late start for embedded learning. (make sure that login to your account before this day to make sure that you don't have any issues. i would like to solve any problems before this day so you can get 3 hours of good work)

February 27, Flip the Switch event. There will be local politicians, central administration, school board members in the senior high school for the morning. I will be asking some of you to be feature teachers, we will schedule a period where you will be using technology in your lesson.

thanks and have a great week! (the first person who emails me the phrase "i cant believe its not butter" wins a prize

Weekly Byte 1.14.09

Happy New Year!
I hope everyone had an enjoyable break. I know i needed it and I enjoyed the long break. But all good things come to an end eventually so now its back to work.
I have already had a busy month as more and more teachers need my assistance.
Dept Meetings
I attended the English Dept Meeting last week to inform them that Kristin and I will be working on developing resources for the entire dept. Teachers were asked to submit lessons/units etc to Kristin and we will work to bring them into the 21st Century.
This week i will be meeting with the Social Studies Dept to discuss my suggestions after i have observed the teachers from that department.
It is my plan to begin the English Department walkthroughs next week (Jan 19-23rd)
My Services
I am currently looking for one person per department to work with me on creating 21st century activities for their departments. Tina has approved one teacher from each dept to get one release day to begin building dept resources. Let me know if you are interested.
Please dont hesitate to get lessons/units/activities to me and i will help to update them with technology. I will even help you co-teach the course to help with the technology.
Site of the Week
Google Alerts, mentioned in the previous post, is a handy web research tool. If there is topic that you or your students frequently search for, consider creating a Google Alert for that topic. You can create a Google Alert using any combination of search terms. Each time new content matching those search terms is indexed, the content or link (depending on your selection), is delivered to your choice of email or RSS reader.

Awesome stuff!
The first person to email me the passcode "Wookelar" will win a prize!

Twas the Night Before Break

I had started to create an FR rendition of this traditional Christmas story however I realized that I am not a writer so I stopped in the middle. I just wanted to take time to thank the teachers for all their hard work during my first few months as the Tech Coach. I would also like to thank administration for their support. I hope that I have been helpful. I have alot of ideas and plans for the future. I just hope that we continue to get more time to really change how education looks here at FR.
When we get back from break I will continue with my classroom walkthroughs and plans for each department. I have enjoyed my visits so far in the Social Studies Department and I can't wait to visit with the other departments.
I am working dilligently to find other ways to get time for teachers who want to use technology and to find ways of getting resources to teachers.
We will have a late start in February to work on our embedded courses. It looks like most of you are moving right along with these.
Thanks again for your efforts and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Featured Site!

Thinkfinity
Is a great resource. If you like nettrekker you will love this site. You can search for tons of resources from lessons to interactives to media to assessments to worksheets. There are over 55,000 resources all for FREE!
Subjects include, art, economics, foreign language, geography, history, literatue, math, philosophy, language arts, science and social studies.
You can sign up for a free account so that you can collect resources under your login or you can just use the site without setting up an account.
There are resources for teachers, parents and students.
This site is well done.
Don't miss this one!

Weekly Byte 12.9.08

Good day CFFers

Holiday Break is almost here! I can't wait to spend time with family and friends.

This week I have begun my walk-throughs of the Social Studies classrooms. I am learning alot about Sociology, Civics, History and International Studies. I am learning alot about our teachers' teaching styles and I have alot of ideas to help better engage students, extend the learning beyond the school day and allow students to work collaboratively. I will be putting together my suggestions for next week and help this department implement anything that they choose.

Visitors
Frank Ansell the Technology Coach from Yough High School will be visiting a few classrooms this Thursday to see our FR tech teachers in action. Kristin, Trap and Pam have graciously agreed to welcome him to their classes to share some ideas.

Resources
As always I have been updating the CFF Place Moodle page with resources, the blog is here, I am working on a training wiki to give teachers a place to find step by step instructions, and I will continue to do individual as well as small group trainings.
Today will be nettrekker training and when we come back the January trainings will be on Google.

Site of the week
My special CFF friend passed this one along to me. http://www.tizmos.com
This site allows you to quickly create a page that will create thumbnails of your most used websites. It will update them automatically and all you have to do is click and go to the site. Great tool!

Have a great week!
Coach Roger

Weekly Byte 12.3.08

Things have been going smoothly. All classrooms have finally been connected! Phil and Julie were the last ones and they were connected over break. Promethean board usage has been increasing and I have been meeting with several people helping them set up lessons and use technology tools to enhance their classroom experiences.

TEACHER TECHIES
Gaye has been busy implementing Moodle discussion boards in her English classes and she has begun to look into creating a classroom wiki for her students. Kristin has been creating flipcharts like mad! I recommend that all English teachers use her as a resource for content specific technology integration.

REMINDER!!!!
Thursday December 4th we will be having a late start. CFF teachers will be working on Embedded Learning coursework. I have made discussion board posts to each course. I will be on tomorrow during the morning to discuss course topics with you. Check out mine and other colleagues' posts. (www.embeddedlearningacademy.com/pde)

TRAINING
Next week we will have a training on Tuesday before and after school for nettrekker. Nettrekker is a tool that allows you and your students to search for educationally approved websites. This tool is great for helping you plan lessons.

Next week I will begin to do my classroom walkthroughs. I will email departments to inform you which rooms I will be visiting.

Have a great week!