My First Video Game - Pong

Pong - I was better than my brothers! At least this is what I remember!

Play the game here - http://www.ponggame.org/

Games for Learning Focus

Part of my focus on video games is to explore and learn more about how video games can be used for learning. I know there has been a lot of research on this and the one expert I would like to learn more from is James Paul Gee. He has written a book, published in 2007 called What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. I read this book while on vacation in Massachusetts and I really enjoyed it.

James Paul Gee was born in 1948 and works at Arizona State University as a Professor of Literary Studies. He was not a gamer but decided to become one after watching how much his son became absorbed in a video game and he wanted to find out more about the video game world himself. It was interesting to read about his experience and how he connected it to learning. Most of the comparisons of learnings in a video game with learnings in school were in the science field so it was applicable to my understandings.

He identified 36 learning principles of video games. He organized these into 6 different learning theory areas - Semiotic domains, learning and identity, situated meaning and learning, telling and doing, cultural models and the social mind. I liked this organization and I enjoyed learning about his experiences with different types of games. This information seems to justify what I know about what we learn from playing video games.  However,  I am looking more for how we can actually bring video games into school and use them for learning.

Lately it appears that Dr. Gee is running a course on Coursera and has summed up the learning principles under only 3 categories of learning - Empowered learners, Problem-based learning, and deep understanding. Here is a the video for How Games Teach:

My next book will be to read Reality is Broken - Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. 

Game Tutor Game #1 - Threes

The iTunes gaming tutor said that this game was "an ideal entry point." I agree it has an elegant design, is easy to play and understand and is addicting. It is made for my iphone so I can play everywhere. The object of the game it to slide tiles together to add up numbers by 3's. As you slide the tiles to do this is makes room for additional tiles to fill in the extra space. The board is a 4 x 4 square. Whenever like numbers come together they make cute noises but I ended up turning that off. I wish there was an undo button. Maybe in their next update!

At first I was just happy to be adding up and increasing the points I got. Then I discovered that a challenge was to get the highest number in the square. My highest overall score is 4,041 and the highest add up was only 192. Is this good? Just went over to Ryan Clark's Website Brace Yourself Games to find some tips on playing and his high number is 28,077! Wow - I need to read his tips!

So now I need to understand why iTunes included this as the first game of becoming a Gamer. I think that is was so easy to learn to play and very simple. There are some strategies to the game that I was trying to discover as I played. I think this is what keeps us motivated to keep playing the game because you know you can do it! I found myself getting a little frustrated but powered on! Now to move on to the next game.

Video Games here I come!

Next year I will be facilitating (teaching) a course in the HS called Digital Game Development with the help of DigiPen, an institution that develops game designers, graphic artists, computer scientists, animators and offers other digital expertise. I will be doing a course in July to help me to understand the content of delivering a course such as this. I have not been a gamer but I believe that I understand the nuances of games from hanging around all the techies I hang out, Digital Frontier members and the serious gamer in the family, Dagan my son. So I have decided to do 2 things in June:

1. Play Games!
• I ran across from iTunes essential, a Game Tutor. They said that if I play these games in
  
  order that will help me to gain skills and techniques to be a gamer.
• Games for Learning in Steam - Portal 2 and Dream are 2 games recommended to me by Carson. I am also learning about other games that come on sale in Steam.
• The Room - Dagan's newest iPad game that he loves. We will talk about this game during the summer as we both play, or as I get help from him as I struggle through.
2. Read books from Gaming Gurus and learn about gaming
• What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee.
• Don't Bother me Mom, I'm Learning by Marc Prensky
• Reality is Broken by Jane Mcgonigal 
• The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell

My plan will be to able to reflect on these 2 areas as I engage in them.

Let the Games BEGIN!

Learning 2.013 Conference - UWCSEA Singapore

Learning 2.013 conference took place on the beautiful UWCSEA East Campus this year with the theme of Learn, Design, Play. Here are some resources of things I learned that I did not know much about

Learning in the Making - you will see additional resources for making - arduino, makeymakey, squishy circuits, rasberry pi

https://sites.google.com/a/briancsmith.org/learning2013/

Games in Education - I really liked this session about the stories behind games and how students can easily make their own! Great ideas for a Writing and Games Integration course

http://gamesined.wikispaces.com/

Schools and Balance - this guy is great!  A counselor who is focused on balance with students. Lots of ideas generated in this session!

https://docs.google.com/a/sas.edu.sg/document/d/1RYJl4TYzm6qn_Sl6aUDo_jn2mFich2u_5LuLzgqW7Ws/edit#

I was involved in a project called Apple Orchards which combined students from SAS and UWCSEA to get involved in a person passion project. Students presented on topics from taking notes with digital drawing devices, using pictures to make subjects more meaningful, bringing music into your classes, and games to help you learn at this project. This was supported by different Apple Distinguished Educators - ADE from the 2 schools. The students met 2 Saturdays and defined their passions and put together a presentation for the Learning 2.013 conference. I learned again how hard it is for students to create something that is not outlined nor defined for them. They struggled but seemed to be very proud of their final outcome. Here is an album capturing the learning on those Saturdays and presenting at the conference.

Another cool thing that happened at this conference was the involvement of our student tech help team - Digital Frontiers who supported the attendees. The students who supported were the seniors of our team and became role models for the younger student helpers.

Next year Learning 2.014 will take place at NIST in Thailand. The group is also forming a Learning 2.014 in Addis Ababa.

I earned my first digital badges from this conference! See them at this Link!

Alan Lavine presentation at UWCSEA - Digital Storytelling

In my job it seems I am aware of so many things around tech but I don't get to go in depth in these things. This year, I have gotten a chance to work with faculty with digital storytelling. So when I heard that Alan Levine, http://cogdogblog.com/ , was coming to UWCSEA I made a point to be there.

I have been following Alan and his blog for some time and I do like his thinking so I knew I would get something out of his talk. It was a timely session for me because I was running the iMovie sessions for a teacher course the next week. Here are some of my new learnings and ideas from the session:

1. Why is Video so hard to teach? Andrew Lin and the 5 Shot Redux
2. Get in the habit of tagging and giving information on uploads - always add captions, notes to photos, map it, pop up note on the flickr images with hyperlinks
3. Creative commons attribution helper - an extension you add to your browser but this led me to a another one - OpenAttribute . Easy to use and I am going to teach these guys all the time!!
4. Look for great project ideas on his ds106  - A new area is The Daily Create which is a space for spontaneous creativity.
5. Use http://thenounproject.com/ for some great images!
6. Video Story problems - AWESOME!
7. Orange Slices Video - No audio but powerful
8. Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories - Freytag pyramid for the standard formula for screenplay 
9. Paul Zak: Empathy, Neurochemistry and the Dramatic Arc - Distress and Empathy make a difference
10. Nancy Duarte - Effective Speeches
11. Lost flash drive - Remixed and Then Returned
12. Many Eyes and GapMinder -  Data Visualization 
13. Upping your image IQ - A wiki resource Alan made to help find visuals

Innovative Teaching & Learning with Technology - Punya Mishra, Ph.D.

I got the opportunity to join in on a  workshop at the Centre for International Education at UWCSEA with Punya Mishra, Ph.d @punyamishra. The topic was for administrators to understand the TPACK Model. I knew about this model and was looking forward to learning more about how to implement it here at SAS. Here are some of the notes I took with @jayatwood and @jasoncone.

Image from http://tpack.org/

The first part of the day was thinking about learning in the 21st century.

• Research show that students are not adept to using technology for learning
• Definition of learning is still very 'school-based' Made me think about these favorite videos: http://youtu.be/KM2Iv5D10Bs , http://youtu.be/by_eUi2C_g8 , http://youtu.be/hENtGSrOj5Y

• What is 21st Century Learning Document synthesising all the different theories. 3 areas - To Know, To Value and To Act - need to have a balance in these 3 areas.
• Foundational Knowledge (know) - content knowledged, ICT/Digital literacy, cross-disciplinary knowledge
• What is the cost of foundational knowledge -- especially within an externally dictated curriculum
• Humanistic Knowledge (value) - life/job skills (Self regulation skills), cultural competence, ethical/emotional awareness
• Meta Knowledge (act)  - Problem Solving, critical thinking, communication / collaboration, creativity / innovation
• Literacy - how you define it is important. It's not just traditional views -- includes visual and images.
• Robert Sternberg at Oklahoma State University - Standardized scores are starting to be ou and Creativity is becoming a part of admissions requirements
• Assessment - You must teach to the "test" - the problem is that the tests may not be worth teaching to
• Finding the basics of 21st century skills to start conversations on to get people to start thinking - Where do you have these conversations?

Technology integration/innovation/PD (TPACK)

When the ETT is working with teachers, we need to frame our collaboration as we bring the TP and the teachers bring the PK so together we have it all!

Examples

• Distance to the moon - using Audacity as a data tool
• Representing educational tensions through images using Pixlr. Also use Pixlr for finding images of geometry transformations and translations
• Dynagraphs Applets representing a function in a dynamic way - Geometry Sketch Pad and Geogebra
• Xbox Kinect - Ireland and scratch - scratch.saorog.com
• Jackwei0831 - Kinect Math (YouTube playlist)

Developing TPACK

• TPACK Game - http://mkoehler.educ.msu.edu/tpack-101/the-tpack-game/
• Barriers
• Time, expertise, access, resources, support
• Levels of tech use in the classroom that is close to SAMR
• Mechanical - USE
• Meaningful - INTEGRATE
• Generative - INNOVATE
• Learning by Design
• Give them a design problem and have them come up with an answer
• Open ended problems
• Diversity within the group - cross-disciplinary
• Teaching & reflection
• somewhat limited b/c you don't know what you don't know
• Instructional modelling
• Watching a model
• Doesn't get people to internalize very well
• Learning Activities
• http://hs6911.sas.edu.sg/integration-framework/standard1
• From AES - https://docs.google.com/a/sas.edu.sg/document/d/1uQ1kt_xG7migWjj2y3LT_V93Lie0Qy6xnz43MFN_95c/edit
• curriculum keyed learning activities
• http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/ Great ideas for Activities and examples of technologies organized by subjects
• Using Deep Play to reflect on TPACK in micro/macro/reflecting ways
• Using digicam to see world in a different way.
• Find Letters
• Finding faces.
• Macro photo of the world
• Testing misconceptions
• Where does the ball fall? Tennis ball & video (e.g., Newton's 1st law)
• understanding understanding using video
• e.g., where does the condensation on Coke can come from?
• Where do shadows come from?
• How do we taste?
• Ideas Generated by the group of Approaches that work...
• How it's structured
• PLCs - embedded w/ a group
• How does it transfer back to the classroom?
• Exemplary class -- Lab classroom, Observe, Debrief. Using Evernote & Explain Everything
• Speed Dating - Appy Hour
• Demo Slams
• Student presentations at Lunch
• Bootcamp Basics (including online)
• Badges - Gamify
• Twilight sessions - 3:30/4:30 to share expertise. Have to do a certain number per year. 3 phases. 1. Intro, 2. Share Practice, 3. Reflective and future planning
• Teachers leading it -- they have credibility
• Goal setting - shared w/ Ed Tech Team. Must be tied to overall school goals, commitments, DSLOs, etc...
• As a school how do you reward it? How do you hire for it?
• Teachers yearly reflect on what they are doing in the classroom to integrate technology
• Action research toolkits provided to schools.
• Getting DATA!! Helps to know what to offer.
• Alcohol! Food!
• Have students teach the integrated tool - ie iMovie
• Don't teach the tool, have them do the activity which grounds it in context
• How it's framed
• Based around 21c Skills
• NETS
• Problems of practice

Trans-disciplinary skills for creativity

• One has to have deep knowledge in the discipline to be creative
• Without the rock of knowledge genius has no foundation - Rosamund E. M. Harding
• (in)Disciplined creativity - http://punya.educ.msu.edu/21cli/handouts/Mishra-Creativity-Handout.pdf
• Where do the ideas of creative teachers come from?
• Have interests outside of the classroom.
• Passions are brought in which leads to creative teaching.
• 7 habits key trans-disciplinary tools - perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing, synthesis

Navigating leadership tensions

• multilemma (multiple dilemmas)
• Leadership is not just about solving problems
• Leadership is about resolving dilemmas
• Facebook learnings - Done is better than perfect, code wins the argument, the journey is 1% finished, move fast and break things, the journey is always 1% finished
• If you can’t imagine anyone linking to what you are about to write, don’t write it.
• EXPLORE . CREATE . SHARE
• e.g., the proposed Ed Tech PD model fits into this!!!

Key Takeaways

• Teachers need to be involved in their own Learning Development
  Using TPACK frame our (ETT) jobs.
• Use, Integrate, Innovate as a model to assess lessons or the SAMR
• TPACK = Planning and tech integration model. All lessons should be in the center or don't use it. In the center = meaningful
• SAMR = evaluative on how your using technology. Each lesson can be at any level, as long as it's purposeful.
• What does it mean to be a good teacher today?
• TPACK can be distributed across teachers

Harnessing Creativity with iLife and iWork Course

Over the past 10 weeks, I have been involved in a course designed to help teachers learn more about the Apple iLife and iWork suites. The focus of the course is to help understand how the programs can promote and harness creativity in the classroom. Something I have learned along the way in being involved with this course.

• Being creative means that you purposefully make a choice to go with an element or direction in your work. If you are using technology as a tool for your work, if you do not know about those elements of the technology then it will be harder to harness creativity.
• Visual literacy should be a part of every curriculum and we should help students to understand the meaning of being creative through images.

One of the last projects was using Garageband and making a podcast. Here is my latest attempt to harness my creativity:

Emerging Technology Websites

These are some websites to locate emerging technology ideas:

http://mashable.com/
http://www.gizmag.com/
http://www.wired.com/
http://www.cnet.com/
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-tech-technology.html?mod=WSJ_topnav_tech_main
http://techland.time.com/
http://geekbeat.tv/

If you find any that you like leave a comment!

Interim in Vietnam

It is hard to believe it has already been 2 weeks since we returned from the Vietnam Blue Dragon Interim Trip.  The trip fulfilled all the outcomes and more. Students were challenged and pushed out of their comfort zones to accomplish some amazing projects for the people of Vietnam. They worked together so well. It is hard to believe what they accomplished in such a short period of time but this was because of the strong collaboration skills they all possess. The short experiences of the local vietnamese culture and history in both cities and villages provided a good chance for the students to understand Asia and the world a little better. The opportunities to share in the leadership and in the organization of the trip developed the students in ways that promoted their independence and confidence. We are so proud of these students and we both loved this trip!

See for your selves by reading the student reflections and photos posted on the web site.

https://sites.google.com/a/sas.edu.sg/blue-dragon-vietnam-service-trip-2013/home

Professional Learning Communities are great!

One area of positive change I have made in my school this year has been my involvement with the English 10 Professional Learning Community. This involvement led to one of the most generative experiences I have had as a tech coach.  The English 10 curriculum was already strong but the teachers were questioning how do students read, write, think and create differently in a digital age? Through collaboration things changed. The summer reading book talks moved to book trailers. Students narrative writing became digital storying telling projects. The unit of research involved using a site for gathering research in one place.
Why do I think that this is the best tech integration I have been a part of?

• Professional Learning communities are excellent places for Tech coaches like myself to collaborate with teachers and help them understand how to effectively integrate digital literacy skills for student learning

My professional responsibility is to support, mentor and train teachers to improve students’ digital literacy and Professional learning communities in my school offer a powerful avenue for me to accomplish this.

 This is actually my Google Teacher Video that I made in a very short period of time. I submitted and did not get accepted. I do firmly believe in the work teachers are doing in their PLC's and I am looking forward to continue that work and the work I do with numerous Google applications.

PowerSchool Summit Series - Common Core Standards and More

I spent 3 days at the Pearson Learning headquarters in Rancho Cordova, California learning about how you can use PowerTeacher and the PowerTeacher Gradebook to support the 15 Fixes for Broken Grades from Ken O'Conner's book A Repair Kit For Grading. Along the way I have been learning a lot more about the Common Core State Standards and how Singapore American School is implementing them from our Director of Assessment and expert, Jennifer Sparrow.

Ken O'Conner poses two essential questions that all educators should ask themselves about their grading practices:

• How confident are you that the grades students get in your classroom are accurate, meaningful, consistent and supportive of learning?
• How confident are you that grades you assign students accurately reflect your school's published content standards and desired learning outcomes?

In the summit, Pearson took us through an activity of a teacher having a split personality of be a "Traditional" Grader and a Standards-Based Grader. Two classes were set up and the students in the classes were given real personalities - such as Andrew Average, Gwen Gifted and Nicholas Knucklehead.(sound familiar?) I became more familiear with the 15 fixes as we went through these activities.

The 15 Fixes for Broken Grades

1. Purpose of grades - Don’t include student behavior in grades
2. Late work - Don’t reduce marks for “work” submitted late
3. Extra credit - Don’t give points for extra credit or use bonus points
4. Cheating - Don’t punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades
5. Absences - Don’t consider attendance in grade determination
6. Group work - Don’t include group scores in grades
7. Grade report structures - Don’t organize grading by assessment methods
8. Objectives - Don’t assign grades using inappropriate or unclear standards
9. Grading on a curve - Don’t assign grades by comparing students to each other
10. Assessment quality - Don’t rely on evidence from poor-quality assessments
11. Score validity - Don’t rely simply on the mean
12. Missing work - Don’t use the zero for missing evidence or punishment
13. Timing of assessments - Don’t use formative assessments or practice in grades
14. Reflecting current mastery - Don’t summarize evidence accumulated over time
15. Involving Students - Don’t leave students out of the grading process

Here are some of the things I learned that I would like to share with faculty:

Me Drawing? No Way...

My daughter, Dominique, had 4 weeks off for her Christmas holiday and in normal fashion she wanted to make sure that her time off was productive. She wanted to take an art class and I agreed that it might be fun to do with her. Earlier I had participated in an Apple Learning Academy, that was put on by Drawing by the Right-side of the Brain here in Singapore. I knew about drawing from the right-side of the brain from one of my favorite books by Daniel Pink called "A Whole New Mind - Why Right-brainers will rule the future." In his book, Daniel Pink talks about the attributes of the right brain leading us to be more creative, and the book also gives the readers hands on ideas, such as using Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain, to help sharpen these R-brain abilities.  I really liked the instructors, Nicola and Tricia, at the Learning Academy and their focus on brain research impressed me. I felt like doing a drawing course with them would be meaningful. I have never taken an Art class before and I would consider myself before this class not even able to draw stick figures well. By day five of the class, that all changed! You will see below my attempts.

Each day began with about an hour long chat that included L-Brain and R-Brain information. Nicola and Trish tried to help us to turn off our Left brain by doing things like drawing our hand without looking at what we were drawing and turning things upside down. We needed to let go, ignore the verbal chatter, judgement and preconceived ideas, labels and symbols. I really do believe that I was able to do this and I tapped into brain processes that I did not know was there before. As you will see below with my drawings, I was able to decently make them on white drawing paper, something that I thought I could never do.

I loved doing this course over my holiday and I believe I was successful. It was a special time with my daughter and I think I have learned something new about myself. I actually feel more confident about being creative. I now have a small sketch book to carry around and have been trying to draw for 20 minutes at a time and I have done it twice this week! I would highly recommend this course to anyone who has a desire to find their R-mode. You WILL be successful. To find out more, Nicola and Trish were recently interviewed here about the course. You can also go to their website.

Day 1 - Our first self portrait

This was my first drawing with a using a grid. My HAND!

Day 2 we had to draw a chair by just looking for the negative spaces.

Day 3 we drew a corner of the Art studio by using sightings, looking for angles and proportions.

Day 4 - A profile portrait of my daughter. I am not really happy with this one but my model was being a little difficult.

Day 5 - My Self- portrait

Using Voicethread in Language Learning

For students studying a foreign language, knowing how, when and why to say what to whom is their ultimate goal. One way they achieve this in the language class is through 3 modes of communication - interpersonal, interpretive and presentational. Voicethread has come into the HS Language learning classes to help students with these goals as well as master 21st Century skills of communication. What is VoiceThread? As defined from the Voicethread Website  "A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). A VoiceThread can be shared with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too." If you would like more information about this tool visit http://ed.voicethread.com/support/resources/websites/ SAS has subscriptions available. You need to contact your Technology Coordinator if you are interested. It is also available on the iPad

Ways that HS Language students are using Voicethread:
In beginning Spanish classes the students have created a Voicethread called Quien es? In their Voicethread students speak about who they are, their favorite clothes, hobbies, family and travel. This meets the presentational mode of communication especially when they share this with others for viewing. The students then interact with each others Voicethreads through comments and then this moves into the interpersonal communication. The ability to listen, read and respond in Voicethreads will demonstrate the 3rd mode of communication - interpretive.

 

In higher level Chinese classes,  students interact in class discussions about different topics through Voicethread. One example is the topic of Chinese medicine. Students research the topics and provide information to the class via a thread. They present their opinions and respond to each other demonstrating all 3 of the modes of communication.

 

By using Voicethread for language communication skills students are using the different modes of communication. As they present, share, listen and respond they are strengthening the skills needed to become a better foreign language speaker. These are just a few examples of how some HS teachers are using Voicethread. Please comment and share any other ideas of how you might be using Voicethread.

Finally! Integration that I like!

My first 3 weeks of school have been devoted to a full blown technology integration projects. 10th grade English students were to create a Book Trailer of a summer reading book. Why do I  consider this integration?

• The teachers involved identified what they wanted students to know and be able to do, FIRST
• It was agreed that all students need the skills to be able to create a movie
• All teachers of the grade agreed upon the final assessment of the project
• Teachers learned how to create a project BEFORE it was introduced to students
• Teachers shared the same project information, steps, rubrics with students
• Every student in the grade was introduced to the skills, practiced them and used the skills in the project
• Ethical use of images, sounds and video was a focus. Kids had to cite their media

Here are a few examples of some of my favorites!

#beyondlaptops Conference TakeAways

I was fortunate to be able to attend the #beyondlaptop conference at Yokohoma International School in Yokohoma Japan on April 19-20. Here are some of my takeaways, thoughts and learnings.

• I liked the format of the conference. The activities were organized to provide thinking and sharing and led to some great conversations. I believe  this format could be modified to do within our school. There, the conversations could lead to action.
• Making a collaborative video. Archives the event with everyones contribution. Would make those who participate feel that their thoughts matter. Easy to do during an event, if you have someone to man the camera (maybe students?)
• It was great to have students involved in our conversations and they were such great kids - I felt like I knew them....
• Adaptive learning software - I was impressed at what I saw and would like to be able to see this in action. Listening to this made me think about SRA math I did back in 6th grade - which I don't feel positive about. I know there was a lot of apprehension in the group but I think that this could be a way to supplement a curriculum or to let students who this fits to do on their own ( move them to a greater goal) I don't think the thought is to replace the teacher but could free up the teacher to be able to work on creating great projects and developing relationships with students. Not spend so much time on assessment of the lower level skills and more on the higher order thinking skills. If you want project based learning we all need some knowledge to be successful in the project. Why couldn't students get this knowledge from adaptive type software. I would like to know how much students retain from doing this. It seems to be more rote memory and no application. Not much different from what is happening now. Not transformational. 
• Collaboration presentation of lessons learned - Reassuring to hear transformative things from school who have had a programs in place for more than 5 years. 
• Student involvement in our discussions was essential. I so wish students had more of a voice in our school - be their own advocates for learning. I know it is easier to just do what we say and not think but that is because we fill there time with very structured learning.
• Speaking of schedules - this is what I think #beyondlaptops is all about. I believe we need to fit learning into the schedule and not schedule the learning.
• This conference left me anxious to get started and to start changing things at my school.
• What is next???

Using Twitter to Learn

Emerging Technologies at SAS is a course for students to explore current technologies. Eventually students develop a project based on technologies that are addressed in the Horizon Report on the topic of how these technologies have an impact on education. The students must interact with these technologies. To begin this project students used twitter. Here are some of the things I have learned along the way.

Goals of using Twitter

• Use twitter as a way to share information in class. For example they came up with a definition of Emerging technologies from class tweets.
• Students tweet on the research about an emerging technology and linked to the article. They needed to following requirement see below. They are given time in class to do this and must provide at least 1.
• To be able to concisely explain what the topic of the research article is in 140 characters
• Learn from each other by reading each others tweets and going to links.
• Give feedback to each other by retweets and replies.
• Use the hashtag #sasect to set up a twitter manager - Like TweetDeck and to look up their topics.
• Search through twitter for research and find experts to follow
• Use Storify - put all their tweets together to show their research and what they are learning

Things I learned:

• 2 out of the 19 had a twitter account - Not many students in the high school at SAS have had any experience with using twitter in the classroom. It has gained some followings due to events at school like #IASAS .
• They were blogging before about what they were learning but I find going to each others blog was forced and feedback not meaningful. Twitter seems to be more open and comfortable and of course they like the 140 characters.
• Have given them a collaboration grade based on their contributions to the group - some are contributing beyond that
• Just because they tweeted something does not mean that they read it - Needed to verify this so they set up Diigo and started annotating/note taking.
• Setting up was easy 

My ASB Unplugged Conference Summary

Big Ideas that I learned at ASB Unplugged Conference 2012

1. Google Teacher Dashboard - http://hapara.com/ - Helps to organize classroom content generated in Google Apps. We have viewed it and put into place for a trial at SAS but I got a chance at the conference to see it in place by the students and teachers. It really makes the ability to work in Google Apps so much easier for both students and teachers. After leaving the conference, I wondered how users at the school use google apps for non-class use (clubs, teacher committees, ect) and if that is also done in Teacher Dashboard.
2. Idea of how to organize the tools we use at SAS into a ToolKit - into 3 levels:
• Tools that are central for allcourses and used all the time
• used to interact with students, to create content with students, or to assess students. These tools are used throughout the course.
• Web 2.0 Tools
3. Adopting the SAMR model to focus technology integration discussions with teachers.
4. I really got lots from Presenter: Scott Klososky's Social and Mobile Technologies: A Catalyst for the Renaissance in Learning - His presentation is Here. My notes are Here.

Highlighted Videos

Socianomics Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SuNx0UrnEo

ACLU created this video to show big brother and privacy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zh9fibMaEk

Using Technology Young - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGMsT4qNA-c

The Inner Net - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_smbQAYv4&list=UUFOwIsXQ-MN3MkYIagbfPNw&index=1&feature=plcp

Anyone can upload content - Keenan Cahill - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm_n3hg-Gbg