Building Learning Communities - 2013

Another amazing Building Learning Communities Conference for me and my students.  I've been bringing students to BLC since 2006 and every year has been provocative and educational, but this year it felt like my students were more engaged than they ever have been.

They had the opportunity chat with Alan November and he asked what they were taking away from the conference. They answered with all the exciting ideas they'd picked up, but then he challenged them. He challenged them to go back this year to school and do something about those ideas. (We've scheduled a follow up in October to see what they've come up with.)

That's the type of experience you don't get in the classroom. Sure, I can tell them to try new things, but when someone outside challenges your kids to be amazing, magic can happen.

---

Additionally, the Tech Sherpas invited attendees to join them in a live show from BLC. They were able to talk about some of the work they did there and their experience throughout the conference.

---

And of course, all the people they meet from around the world. How often do you have the opportunity to give authentic feedback to others (like the awesome folks at TechSmith) and be listened too, taken seriously and have your suggestions realized in actual products.


I also wanted to give a shout out to Melanie Spencer from Canberra, Australia who was inspired by the students to start their own Tech Sherpa team, FANTASTIC!

We're already looking forward to next year!

Summer Technology Institute

From the 18th Annual University of Maine

 Summer Technology Institute in Belfast 

we discuss working with students at tech support. 

This hosts this week were Kern and Dan.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"How do you use students as tech support?"

---

We will be back Tuesday, July 23rd at 3:00 EST

Where will Tech Sherpa's be this summer?

Looking for some PD opportunities this summer? Check out some of the events the Tech Sherpa students will be presenting.

Learn Everywhere.org

Professional Development Opportunities

---

Student Showcase

Date: June 8th

Location: Sebasticook Valley Middle School, Newport ME

Website: www.studentshowcase.org

---

Summer Tech Institute

Date: June 24th - 28th

Location: Hutchinson Center, Belfast, Maine

Website: umainesti.umeedu.maine.edu

---

Building Learning Communities Conference

Date: July 22nd - 26th

Location: Park Plaza, Boston MA

Website: blcconference.com

---

Google Education Summit

Date: August 8th - 9th

Location: Hampden Academy, Hampden ME

Website: me.gafesummit.com

---

PREP Conference Keynote

Date: August 21st

Location: Orono, ME

Website: Penobscot River Educational Partnership

---

ACTEM Conference

Date: October, 10th

Location: Augusta, ME

Website: ACTEM.org

---

Student Technology Showcase

Another successful Student Technology Showcase where our students get to show their technology projects.  For more information visit:

www.studentshowcase.org

Below is our Tech Sherpa coverage. In a very 'meta-moment' there is a section where the Tech Sherpa students are streaming as the Channel 5 reporter interviews them.

WABI Channel 5 coverage

 

Newport - The RSU 19 middle schoolers were at school on Saturday, but none of them were sitting in a classroom. They got to show off to friends and family all that they have done this school year.

Keith Kelley is the Integrated Technology Teacher, he hopes the Student Technology Showcase is a learning experience for kids and parents.

"Our robot kids that built the robots are now having to describe to mom and dad how to run it... so they learn a lot from that," Kelley said.

Connor Verreault is in the 6th grade at RSU. Saturday he got to learn about the robots. "I think it would be more fun to interact with the robots and build them for the end of the seventh grade year," he said.

The students host a live web "hangout" once a week during the year. They were hosting one Saturday as well. During the web chats they answer questions about technology from teachers around the world.

Jared Gay is one student who helps facilitate the online chats, "you can help teachers everywhere and that just always feels good and you know that your helping their students and it reaches out to them," he said.

Carol Burnette is one student's grandmother. She was excited to see what he learns at school, "it's a great experience, it's wonderful to see what the kids are doing and RSU has some great things that people should know," she said.

Riley Savage spent the year learning to build a skateboard, something she didn't think she could do.

"When I come into IT I feel like I can do anything that I want with my skateboard. After I did that I was like I can't believe I finished it and then after I did the grip tape and the trunks and the wheels I was like wow, I'm done" she says.

This was the 9th RSU Student Technology Showcase, and organizer hope to make it even bigger next year.
Channel 5 Wabi Story

Tech Sherpas - Google Hangout Best Practices

This hosts this week were Kern and Dan.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"What are your best practices for running 
Google Hangout  sessions in the classroom?"

Links:

• About Hangouts
• Eric Curts' Hangout Handout
• Lucy Gray's Hangout Tips

---

Join us at www.StudentShowcase.org 
this Saturday, June 8th 11:00 - 12:00

Tech Sherpas - Using Lego MindStorms in the Classroom

This hosts this week were Keith and Kern.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"How do you use Lego Mind Storms in the classroom?"

Links:

itsvms7.blospot.com

Android NXT Remote App
iOS NXT Remote App

---

We will be back Tuesday, May 21st at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - Collecting videos with YouTube and Digitizing Elementary Students Work.

This hosts this week were Jacob and Kern.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The two questions covered this week: 

"Can I set a YouTube playlist up so 
anyone can upload to it?"

www.youtube.com/account#mobile

"How do you digitize elementary students work."

Livescribe Sky Pen

Collecting Math work.

Using an iPod Touch to have students hand in work.

Examples of Students Digitizing their own work

---

We will be back Tuesday, May 14th at 3:00 EST

A Spoon is not a Fork.

This hosts this week are Jared and Chandler.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"What do you think of the proposal for Maine's 1to1 laptop initiative?"

This weekend the Maine Department of Education announced the next device for the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.(MLTI) The MLTI program has operated since 2002 and offered Apple devices to 7th and 8th grade students across the state of Maine. This year for the first time the DOE has gone with Windows PC, the HP ProBook.  Here is the full article in the Portland Press Herald.

We discuss some of the implications of this shift for students, teachers and the state at large. It's important to note that as of the latest information, districts will still have the option of buying into the other hardware choices (iPads and MacAirs) if they foot the cost of the difference.

---

My personal feelings is that I know it matters what platform you use, but less and less than ever. If the web is your production platform, then the devices just become the conduit to your content. That said, there is undoubtably a trade off. There are local programs and features that do not have the equivalent in cloud services yet. A spoon for soup and fork for spaghetti. But that's changing, and all the major players know it. Microsoft's latest version of Office saves your files in their Skydrive (cloud storage) BY DEFAULT. That's a huge shift in functionality and assumptions about users. One of drawbacks of this is how each company is building their own digital fiefdom, and not playing well with others.
iCloud vs. Google vs. Skydrive vs. Dropbox, etc.

We don't want them to build these artificial digital ecosystems where you have to choose one closed garden over the other (think AOL circa 2005.) Facebook is pushing this, they are the one service to rule them all, the difference is there's no cost to changing social networks. Hardware costs money and all the apps we buy for them will not transfer. Right now when I buy music, I buy it on Amazon which downloads a copy to iTunes which syncs with Google Music. Yes, I now have the song in each service, but it's quite a Rube Goldberg way of accomplishing this.

Hopefully it will get better.
Spork anyone?

---

We will be back Tuesday, May 7th at 3:00 EST

LearningModule.com

This hosts this week are Olivia and Carter.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"How do you prepare students for online learning?"

This week on the Tech Sherpa Show we discuss the online course I created that our middle school students take to prepare them for the high school. The site is www.learningmodule.com and it is a Google Site template that anyone is welcome to take a copy of and adapt for their own needs.

www.LearningModule.com

The purpose of the site is twofold,

• First, for students to prepare the new Google Apps account they will be using in the high school. They subscribe to school calendars, organize their Google Drive folders and take a copy of our Student Portfolio. All in preparation for our digital portfolio system. 

• Second, the students have experienced learning purely online. There is no class time set aside for students to complete the mini-course. There are 5 tasks, though none of them are particularly arduous. The point is for them to complete school work, (without a teacher prompting them over their shoulder.) Also, there are a handful of technology skills embedded in the task. For example, watching a short video and recording a response. This is not a difficult task, but in completing it, the students have shown they can reflect, digitize that reflection and hand it in.

---

We will be back Tuesday, April 30th at 3:00 EST

Managing Bulk Users with Google Apps for Education

If you are the administrator for Google Apps for Education you're probably thinking ahead about the  upcoming summer break and might be wondering what you're going to do about your student accounts. If you want to pause student access to their account for the summer, the easiest way is to simply reset the password. There are a couple ways to accomplish this, if you're into command lines and enabling APIs a great resource is GAM or Google Apps Manager. You can find GAM here:

https://code.google.com/p/google-apps-manager/wiki/GettingStarted

But, if you're looking for a more straight forward method you can update all user passwords at once with Bulk Uploader.

1) Login in as an Administrator of the Google Apps Domain.

2) Retrieve a CSV file of all your users by copying and pasting this link into the browser:

http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/DOMAIN.ORG/DownloadUserData/UserData-DOMAIN.ORG-20130405.csv

and replacing DOMAIN .ORG with your own Google Apps domain address. Once you have the CSV file  upload it into a Google Spreadsheet. This file can be sorted or filtered if you only want to reset certain users.  The final spreadsheet should only have these column headers:

Username | First Name | Last Name | Password

By replacing the password column with one that you set. Then, click File and select Download as .csv file.

3) Go back to the Google Apps for Education Dashboard. Click the Users tab and select More actions - Bulk upload users. 

Make sure you check Update existing accounts so passwords will be reset. You can also force users to reset their password after they have logged in.

---

There are Third Party Apps in the Marketplace that will help with some of this process. One is Flash Panel which is free and helps with user management as well as other features.  Also, if you are looking for an easier way to sort, filter and manage the users, click the link for a copy of the

Bulk CSV Creator Template 

that I use to collect the users accounts, sort them and change the password in a click. I then download the sorted, filtered CSV tab at the bottom.

Tech Sherpa Show - Backing Up Google Data

This hosts this weeks are Chandler and Jon.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"How do you back up your Google data?"

---

RESOURCES

 Tools for individuals to backup: 

       Google.com/takeout

Dataliberation.org

Tools for Domain level backup:
     Google Vault

     Backupify.com

Mail Archiva (Gmail only)

We will be back Tuesday, April 9th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - March 26th

This hosts this weeks are Jared and Brock.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

• "Do you know of any screen recording Chrome Extensions or websites for screen recording on Chrome books? The lack of Java and Shockwave have my class set somewhat limited. Want students to create screen casts."

• "How do I edit video using YouTube Video Editor?"

We will be back Tuesday, April 2nd at 3:00 EST

Untapped Resource

In the book I'm Feeling Lucky, Douglas Edwards relates the story of his initial interview with Sergey Brin when he applied to work at Google in 1999. Near the end of the interview, Sergey got up and told him, "I'm going to give you five minutes, when I come back, I want you to explain to me something complicated that I don't already know."1 He could pick any topic he wanted, but would explain it to Sergey in great detail. After the interview, when he asked why he had to cover a topic that had nothing to do with his work, Sergey explained, that if he hadn't been hired and time he spent in the interview was a waste, he would have still learned something.

It's the same having students provide tech support in education. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a mantra I'll share with anyone willing to listen. The most underutilized technical resource that we have in education is the students themselves. And, most importantly, it's not about the technical work that they're doing at all, it's about everything else they get from it. The experience of helping others, building relationships with their teachers and learning how to communicate.

The value of their involvement in a 'Tech Team' is twofold:

• First, the school has them using their powers for the forces of good. Rather than spending their time finding ways to thwart the content filter, they can be helping out. If you think this the equivalent to letting the animals run the zoo, understand that last year National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander addressed DEFCON, a yearly gathering of the hacking community, and asked for them for help. The NSA chief said. "You know that we can protect networks and have civil liberties and privacy; and you can help us get there." Seeing all those   intelligent, motivated people as a group to work with rather than against. In most schools if you need to know how to get around the security, ask the students. It's having the discussion with the students about the why we do what we do that is crucial.

(Using students as classroom webmasters.)

• Now, that doesn't mean that every student is up to the task. It's imperative that the organizer   connects the right students with right teachers. Not everyone is a fit, but if you are familiar with  both groups then when a teacher asks for help, you can match them with a willing student. I am often asked, how do I find these students? And the answer is that I start young. You don't start a winning sports team in high school. I work with kids as young as fourth grade and start thinking about which kids I believe will be interested and able to handle the responsibility when they're older. When I talk to the kids I'll ask them, "What am I looking for in a Tech Sherpa?" The response I usually get is: 'Someone good with computers' or 'Has straight As' and I tell them that, tech wise, I can teach them what they need to know and that good grades are great, but not required to take part. The number one requirement that I'm looking for is trust. I need to trust that the students I send out to work with others will be professional and be able to deal with whatever situation arises. Including not knowing the answer. There's no harm in saying, "Sorry, I'm not sure how to answer that question, but I'll get back to you." Then the student does their research and tracks down the solution.   

---

This was the impetuous behind the Tech Sherpas. A weekly live tech support show that is run by students. They take questions during the week on the www.techsherpas.org site and every Tuesday at 3:00 EST (UTC-4) where the students run a live Google Hangout. Everyone is welcome to connect, ask questions and join the conversation. You can find show notes from previous shows here  and for the full story, visit Actem's Electronic Educator. When students don't have the answer, they use the week to research the topic and have it ready for the next week.

Tech Sherpa Show - March 5th

This hosts this weeks are Jared, Jon and Gavin 

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

• "How can I use Google Tools to make an easily updatable District Web App."

Example: mobile.nokomiswarriors.org

• "Using Google Spread Sheet I would like to create a Rule that means if the text column A is ALC and the Text is column B is DSB, then in column C 2.1 automatically gets entered in.

https://sites.google.com/site/techsherpas/tutorials/-if-then-spreadsheet-template

We will be back Tuesday, March 12th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - February 12th [Motion Charts]

This hosts this weeks are Jared and Jacob.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered this week: 

"I have a 5th grader who has collected 3 years of data from other students about their height and arm span in centimeters. He now wants to put the data into a chart to possibly make some statements about his observations.


I can see that the height and arm span data would need to be separated but can't figure out how to chart each into a meaningful graph. Can you help me and this 5th grader?" 

We will be back 
Tuesday, February 19th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - Sharing Google Docs

This hosts this weeks are Fenton and Matt.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The question covered: 

• How can I easily share a Google Docs Folder with a class? 
• How can you share Documents? 

We will be back Tuesday, February 11th at 3:00 EST

Tech Sherpas - January 22nd

This hosts this week were Chandler and Mr. K.

LINK TO THE SHOW NOTES

The questions covered this week: 

• How to add events to a Google Calendar with a Google Form. 

• Ways the Tech Sherpas help other students, teachers, and educators both in the district and at conferences around the country.

We will be back Tuesday, January 29th at 3:00 EST

Digital Portfolio System

I was fortunate to be asked to present at the Google Education Summit in Hawaii last week and during one of my sessions a participant asked how we implement our digital portfolios system. I have discussed the process in various settings, but I don’t think I ever really mapped the process out step by step in detail with diagrams, examples and templates. So, here goes.  

The Digital Portfolio Process

---

I break the management of student digital portfolios into three distinct stages that build off each other. First, the digitization of student work. Second, collecting the work in manner that's easily organized. Third, students publishing exemplars of the work that best reflects their interests.

Stages of Portfolio Types.

---

- FIRST STAGE - 
DIGITIZATION

Initially this stage is the equivalent of the traditional bulk folder where anything worthwhile gets stored. Students become comfortable with the technical process of digitizing their work. This can be accomplished with any media, but generally are images or video.

Here, not every formative assessment that a students completes is digitized, but certainly the more important summative assessments. Initially this is one of the hardest steps and is dependent on a few key factors.

1) Parental consent for recording students. Though it's not difficult to collect permission slips from parents on this, there are still some who will not want to participant. In almost every instance of this, when the parents come in for conferences, and see other parents watch the recording of their child reading or scrolling through the images of their work they sign up. If there are specific legal concerns. I recommend checking out this site which covers the actual legal requirements.

2) Age of the students - My experiences has been that at roughly 5th grade on, students can be caretakers of digitization their own work. (One teacher I work with assures me her third graders are more than capable so I'm sure it's variable :)  That said, for the younger students, we have older student helpers complete the process from taking photos, videos, etc. This generally takes that burden off the teacher who simply views the shared work when collected. This example goes through the steps of an older student recording and sharing work with the teacher.   

3) Access to Hardware Of course, all of this is predicated by ready access to hardware. Again there are a couple possible scenarios here. When every student has his or own device with a camera, they can keep up with it and store them images in their own account. If it isn't a 1to1 situation, you may use a single class iPod touch where each student sets up a individual media collector [Steps to Creating a Collector Address] Or if the teacher has access to a digital camera that takes SD cards, another option is to get an Eye-Fi card and link it to a Picasaweb album so younger students set out their digital work and the teacher walks around the classroom snapping pictures that are automatically uploaded. Wherever possible students should be in charge of the recording, editing and collection process. Here's an example in Phys. Ed.

Now that students have ways to digitize their work, we setup have them set their Google Apps for Education account folder structure in Google Drive.  There are scripts and services that can automate some this process, but it’s also worth the students going through the steps to learn how to, Create a folder, Share a folder and add files and documents to that folder. 

How I explain this to my students is,

“You know how your teacher has a box in her room that you put your homework into?”   

Most nod and say, “Yeah, Mr. K”

“This is a digital version of the same thing, if you don’t put your paper in the box in the classroom, it’s not handed in. If you don’t name if correctly and put your digital work in the correct folder, you didn't hand it in.”

This doesn't mean students start to magically hand all their homework in, they will still put it in the wrong folder or not label it correctly, but this is all part of the process.

Our Google Drive Folder Structure
MS - (Shared with the account: portfolio@ourdomain.org)
Grade 8
LA - Student Name
Math - Student Name
Science - Student Name
SS - Student Name

The purpose of sharing that overlying MS folder (which stands for Middle School, we use ES and HS for elementary and high school respectively) is so the portfolio@ourdomain.org account can access all work domain wide with sharing setting issues. The individual subject folders are shared with the appropriate teachers so the LA teacher will see a list of 20 or so folders all called LA - Student Name. The teacher can then move them into her own folder by class, period or whatever makes sense.

NOTE: On it’s surface folder structure mirrors the way school are cut up by age and subject, we found that initially for students and teachers, it makes the easiest transition to see a familiar setup. That said, there’s nothing stopping us from eventually reorganizing this by topic, collaborative groups or projects. Work can also be housed in multiple folders. In the Drive Dashboard, click the check beside the file or document, click the More button at the top, select Organize, hold Ctrl on Windows or Command on a Mac and click the multiple folders.

---

- SECOND STAGE -
THE EDUCATIONAL PORTFOLIO

At its core, this is a list of the work to be completed by students throughout the year. It can be a list of standards or overlying themes that the work represents. We use a Spreadsheet set up as a template that students take a copy and share with their teacher and add it to a Google form. Districts may adapt the list to their needs. It’s important to note that this spreadsheet list of the summative work that students complete stays with them. Much of the work organizing and storing traditional portfolios falls onto teacher simply due to the reality of paper shuffling. The concept here is that students own their work and are expected to build that list. Parents and teachers have access and can look at the work any time they want, but the student owns it, and will go with them beyond the classroom.

NOTE: Definitions of formative and summative assessments. I’m using these terms to mean: Formative assessments are the day to day skill building work while summative assessments apply the content and skills they've accrued to create something more comprehensive. The easiest way I think of this is separating the Work and the Worker. Formative assessments are the work and summative assessments examine the student as worker. All summative assessments should lead student to a greater understanding. The Educational Portfolio template students use can include a combination of these assessments and can be updated as needed.

Here’s an example Google Site that students would go to at the beginning of the school year, click to take a copy, then fill in the form below.

Link to Site: http://sites.google.com/site/kernkelley/projects/portfolio
Link to the: Educational Portfolio Template
Link to the: Portfolio Collector Template

and here are the steps:

The Workflow

Once the routine of getting work into the "Digital Inbox" is established, we need to make it easier for the teacher to manage the work load. It is very easy to get overwhelmed in Google Drive with so many documents being shared with the teacher. The number of documents gets really large, really quick. A couple solutions we have implemented for this is to simply use the star feature. Some teachers like to clean off their desktop with all that they accomplished that day. The problem in the Docslist is that if you remove the document, you’re removing yourself from sharing with that document. So, if you use the star on the left of your Drive Dashboard you can keep it as empty or full as you’d like. 
There are third party systems that can be added to a Google Apps domain that streamline this like, Hapara and Haiku LMS.   

We have been using a form called the Assessment Collector that organizes the work by period or assignment. The student still puts it into their shared ‘Digital Inbox’ folder, but they copy and paste the link to that work into the form. This creates a filtered list to make it easier for teachers to find and manage all their collected work. 

---

- THIRD STAGE -  
THE SHOWCASE

This final stage brings it all together. Students go to the Student Showcase Template and click the Use this Template link at the top. They rename it and embed examples of them as a quality learner. This is the equivalent of a 21st Century business card. In my district we felt that leaving school with a digital presence was so important that we gift each graduating senior with their own domain name, forwarded it to their Showcase Portfolio. Cheaper than a monogrammed pen, we buy their name as a web address for one year at which time the student can take it over or let it lapse. This address is what they give to the college interviewer or prospective boss telling about who they are as workers, learners and people. 

To be clear, this is not a Facebook page, the information here is not overly personal in nature, but represents the best this young adult has to offer. It does include a standard resume, but also focuses on the students interests. If they want to go into science, it may have a video of a science project, if they want to be an artist, it may display their artwork or music concert. Even something not necessarily academic, but showing their team winning a championship. The idea being, showing a well rounded person that any employeer or college would want.

Here are a two examples of student with different goals. Justin wants to go into video editing and his site shows numerous examples of him as an videographer, editor and director:

www.kazmediaservices.com  

While Kris highlights his academic work and the technology presentations he has done for educators.  

www.kristopherredman.com 

You can collect the links student Showcase Sites in a similar manner as the portfolio sheet using this Website Collector Form.  A couple important technical notes, first is the ease that students can move content from one stage to the next. The difficulty isn’t technical, but in completing quality work and being creative of how it’s displayed. They are reachable by just about anyone with an Internet connection. Additionally, there are tools available to move their work out of the system. This is crucial. When digital work is created in an "information silo" it’s important that there are easy mechanisms to move data out. With the Google tool set students can transfer their work using: www.dataliberation.org  

---

The Case for Student Managed Digital Portfolios.

So what's the point of all this effort and energy?  Sure, students learn technical skills in the process of managing digitizing and managing their work. Teachers have a level of transparency that is difficult to replicate in a traditional setting, but in my opinion the real value? I think it's the personal record students build over the years. The growth they display that begins to wear away that unnatural mental split that develops over summer vacation where one grade level is thought to have little to do with the next. And finally, student can use their own learning as an easy reference, pulling it up any time they might need it. 

---

I want to thank a number of educators who have asked me to ‘package’ this process for some time and apologize that it has taken me so long to do so. Paul, Jeff, Don, Michael and many others, Mahalo.