Tom Murray TALKS About Digital and Blended Learning Environments

Tom Murray, Director of Technology and Cyber Education
Quakertown Community School District, Bucks County, PA
Digital and Blended Learning Environments: Cyber and Blended Learning, 1:1, and BYOD
January 8, 2014, 8:30 – 11:30

The Quakertown Community School District in Bucks County, PA, has been nationally recognized for its unique approach to cyber and blended learning under Tom’s leadership. Winners of the iNACOL Innovative Program Award and one of three districts in the country to be recognized on Digital Learning Day 2013, Tom’s program offers ‘complete versatility’ for students. BYOD and 1:1 implications, considerations, risks and rewards will be discussed. The Quakertown story, including successes and roadblocks along the way, will be shared.

Breakout Session: Professional Development Smackdown
Is your district utilizing a one-size fits all approach to PD? Is most of your PD top-down? Are you cultivating a culture of teacher leadership and allowing teachers to lead? What’s your district’s philosophy and vision for professional development? This session will explore methods for PD reform, discuss the value of teacher ownership as part of the professional development process, and ways your district can transform professional development from top to bottom. If surveying your staff wouldn’t lead to overwhelming positive feedback regarding your district’s PD, this session is for you.

Breakout Session: Digital Leadership for Administrators
Administrators hold the key to technology integration in their districts and school buildings. Are you a model of high quality digital leadership to the people you lead? From faculty meetings to in-service days, or with day to day communication, this session will focus on concrete ways administrators can digitally lead by example in their schools. Utilizing Twitter to become a connected educator and grow your “personal learning network” will also be explored. Come ready to share your own successes and learn from colleagues!

Please join us for a great opportunity to meet with our keynote speaker and network with other curriculum and technology leaders! Register here.

About Tom Murray
Tom Murray serves as the Director of Technology and Cyber Education for the Quakertown Community School District in Bucks County, PA. A former middle school assistant and elementary school principal, Murray is passionate about proper technology infusion and differentiated professional development. He was the 2012 recipient of the Blended Schools Network Leadership Award and was featured in Tech & Learning Magazine’s Leadership Profile in December of 2012. Murray’s QCSD cyber and blended learning programs have been highlighted by Forbes.com, T.H.E. Journal, Project Red, the Innosight Institute, iNACOL, and on Digital Learning Day 2013, among others. Murray serves on the advisory board for THE Journal and has co-founded and moderates both #sbgchat and #edtechchat. Connect with him on Twitter @thomascmurray or at www.thomascmurray.com.

Appy Hour: December 12, 2013

Looking for ways to integrate iPads into your instruction?  Join us at the CNYRIC for our quarterly iOS User Group meeting to share your favorite apps, tips and tricks, and integration strategies for iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. This is a "BYOD" event, but we will have some iPads, Chromebooks, and Google Nexus 7 Tablets on hand for you to use as well.  We are hot off the heels of the annual NYSCATE Conference and are thrilled to share some of the latest education apps we learned about.  

Event Details
December 12, 2013; 1:00 - 3:00; CNYRIC, Conference Rooms 1 & 2

Registration:   Click here to register on MyLearningPlan

App for That: Tellagami

I am excited to share with you a fun app for students to demonstrate their content knowledge.  For those of you that are familiar with Voki, an app called Tellagami will allow students to customize a male or female avatar, set up a background image, and add voice via the keyboard or voice recorder.

Click here for some examples from Tellagami's YouTube channel.

View the video tutorial below to learn how to use Tellagami.

ITD TALKS: Patrick Larkin TALKS About Getting Your School On-Board With 1:1

  

Patrick Larkin, Assistant Superintendent for Learning

Burlington Public Schools, Burlington, MA

Getting Your School On-Board With 1:1

November 13, 2013, 8:30 – 11:30

CNYRIC, Rodax 8

Keynote:  Getting Your School On-Board With 1:1

Putting laptops or tablets in the hands of all students in a school is a tremendous change for both the students and adults in a school community. This session will highlight the detailed plans Burlington High School (MA) took to ensure success in its 1:1 plan. Major points of emphasis will include communication to all stakeholders, embedded professional development for staff, training for parents, and deploying a student support team. Using this model allowed Burlington High School to create an understanding that going 1:1 is an instructional initiative and not just a large technology purchase. This model of implementation has allowed the district to grow its 1:1 throughout the school district.

Breakout Session: Embracing 21st Century Learning Tools

This session will answer the following questions: 

1. What is social learning and why is it more important today than ever before? 

2. How can increased technological connectivity expand, change, or improve student learning? 

3. Is connectivity expanding our concept of who is a literate or educated person today? 

In answering these important questions we will look at some well-articulated standards that can assist in the implementation of these digital tools. Discussion will focus on getting community support, professional development, and concrete examples of how this shift is necessary to best prepare our students for their future.

Please join us for a great opportunity to meet with our keynote speaker and network with other curriculum and technology leaders! Register here.

About Patrick Larkin
Patrick Larkin is the newly appointed Assistant Superintendent for Learning for Burlington Public Schools in Massachusetts. Prior to this, Patrick served 15 years as a building level administrator at the high school level. He was recently selected as one of three national Digital Principal Award winner by the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP). Patrick’s school has made the transition to a 1:1 environment in the 2011-2012 school year after distributing over 1,000 iPads to staff and students. Patrick is one of the founders of the Connected Principals Blog and #cpchat on Twitter. He is one of the authors of the Super Book of Web Tools for Educators, an avid blogger, and a proponent of social media to better engage teachers, students, and parents in the education process. His article "Getting Connected" was published in September’s issue of Principal Leadership. In June 2012, he was featured in an article in Technological Horizons in Education’s THE Journal entitled 7 Habits of Highly Effective Tech-leading Principals.

Tech Tip: Google Slides

 

PowerPoint and Keynote are handy tools for presenting information, but what if your students don't have licenses to these expensive software packages? And what if you would like students to collaborate on a presentation? Google Slides is a great alternative!  Google Slides is an online presentation app that allows you to show off your work in a visual way. Here's what you can do with Google Slides:

• Create and edit presentations
• Edit a presentation with friends or coworkers, and share it with others effortlessly
• Import .pptx and .pps files and convert them to Google presentations
• Download your presentations as a PDF, a PPT, or a .txt file
• Insert images and videos into your presentation
• Publish and embed your presentations in a website

Whether you’re trying to wow your boss with an end-of-quarter presentation or impress your classmates with an animated book report, the new version of Google Slides can help. All of your new presentations will be created in the latest version of Google Slides. Any presentation you upload and convert to Google Docs format will be converted to the latest version of Google Slides.
Check out some of the new features in the latest version of Google Slides:

• Character-by-character collaboration: See updates in realtime as you edit presentations with other people.
• Drawing on canvas: Draw organizational charts, flowcharts, design diagrams and much more right within Google Slides.
• Transitions: Enhance your presentation with new ways to transition between slides.
• Shape linking: Turn shapes within your presentation into hyperlinks to other slides, presentations, or external webpages.
• Better animations: We’ve added new themes to make it easy to create show-stopping presentations.
• Commenting: Collaborate with other people by adding comments to shapes, text or slides.

Click here for an overview of Google Slides and view the video below for a brief tutorial.

Tech Tip: Google Sheets

Spreadsheets can be a great tool for organizing and manipulating data. Whether it is calculating student averages for report cards or putting together a budget, Google Sheets can help automate some basic calculations.

Like Google Docs, Google Sheets is a component of Google Drive.  It is an online spreadsheet app that lets you create and format spreadsheets and simultaneously work with other people. Here's what you can do with Google Sheets:

• Import and convert Excel, .csv, .txt and .ods formatted data to a Google spreadsheet
• Export Excel, .csv, .txt and .ods formatted data, as well as PDF and HTML files
• Use formula editing to perform calculations on your data, and use formatting make it look the way you'd like
• Chat in real time with others who are editing your spreadsheet
• Create charts with your data
• Embed a spreadsheet — or individual sheets of your spreadsheet — on your blog or website

Click here for an Overview of Google Sheets from Google and view the video below for a brief tutorial.

Tech Tip: Google Docs

CDs, DVDs, Flash Drives...Are these technologies headed for the dust bin of history where they can sit in obsolescence with the VCR? With technologies like Google Docs, cloud computing is becoming a convenient way to create, edit, and share documents without relying on external storage.    

Google Docs, one of several components to Google Drive, is an online word processor that lets you create and format text documents and collaborate with other people in real time.  Here's what you can do with Google Docs:

• Upload a Word document and convert it to a Google document
• Add flair and formatting to your documents by adjusting margins, spacing, fonts, and colors — all that fun stuff
• Invite other people to collaborate on a document with you, giving them edit, comment or view access
• Collaborate online in real time and chat with other collaborators — right from inside the document
• View your document's revision history and roll back to any previous version
• Download a Google document to your desktop as a Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip file
• Translate a document to a different language
• Email your documents to other people as attachments

Click here for an Overview of Google Docs from Google and view the video below for a brief tutorial.

Tech Tip: Google Drive

You know you've made it as a company when your name is synonymous with the service you provide. Need to know something on the Web?  Just "Google" it!  But Google provides more than just a search engine.  Google Drive is an outstanding tool for collaborating and communicating "in the cloud" (i.e. on the Web).  All you need to get started is a free Google account.  From there, you can create and share Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Forms (Surveys), and Drawings.  Sharing options include View or Edit.  You can also store your original documents like PDFs, Word Documents, PowerPoints, and even video files on Google Drive and access them from any Internet enabled device.  View the video tutorial below to learn more. Click here for more support from Google. In the coming weeks, I will be blogging about each of Google Drive's services, including Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and Forms.

Tech Tips: Three Ring

Now that you have a year's worth of experience with APPR under your belt, it may be worth your time to explore Three Ring, an iPad app for capturing artifacts that represent evidence of student learning.

From Three Ring's home on the iTunes Store: 

"The easiest way to capture qualitative evidence of student learning. Three Ring allows teachers and students to document anything, organize it in seconds, and have it seamlessly available at school and at home. Three Ring is your ultimate instructional resource and the easiest way to make portfolios, save artifacts for IEPs, demonstrate student learning in non-tested subjects and the Common Core and much more."

Getting started with Three Ring takes just a few minutes.  Content is organized around three types of information to allow for easy retrieval later on:  Class Name, Student Name(s), and Tags.  Tags are a labeling mechanism you create--subject area, type of activity, Common Core Learning Standard, etc.  The app allows you to capture video, audio, and/or photographic evidence and upload it to the Three Ring website.  Once it is uploaded, you can access your artifacts on the Web, share them with parents via email, and download/save them to your computer.

Check out the video tutorial below to learn how to use Three Ring.

Tech Tips: Kid Blog

By now, you have probably heard about the concept of blogging, or writing a "web log." If not, check out this short video from Common Craft, Blogs in Plain English.

Have you ever thought about setting up a space to enable your students to blog? Take a moment to read a blog post from prominent edu-blogger and practicing education administrator George Couros, as he outlines some key benefits of student blogging.

One of the tools I have found to be useful to support safe student blogging is Kidblog. Kidblog allows students to exercise digital citizenship within a secure, private classroom blogging space. From their website:

• Teachers have administrative control over all student blogs and student accounts.
• Your students’ blogs are private by default – viewable only by classmates and the teacher. Teachers can elect to make posts public, while still moderating all content.
• Teachers can add password-protected parent and guest accounts to the community at their discretion.
• Comment privacy settings block unsolicited comments from outside sources.
• Kidblog is fully COPPA compliant and does not require any personal information from students.

Check out this brief overview of Kidblog and learn how you can get started today!

Model Schools Summer Professional Development

 

Model Schools Summer Professional Development

The catalog of summer professional development events from the CNYRIC's Model Schools Program is now available:   http://www.cnyric.org/itdpdevents.cfm

 ^

• All of our offerings are covered under the Model Schools CoSer--there is no additional charge for participants to attend. 
• We are offering on-line courses as well as face-to-face workshops at a variety of venues including the CNYRIC, Tully High School, Cortland Jr.-Sr. High School, and more.
• To register for events, participants can click the hyper-linked date in the far right column, which will take them to MyLearningPlan.
• If you would like to host a Model Schools workshop in your district, please contact the Model Schools Coordinator to schedule an event.  You will not be charged a Model Schools day so long as 20% of the seats are open to participants outside your district.  If you would like to host an event that is exclusive to your district's faculty, you would be charged a Model Schools day (each district has 3 days via the Model Schools CoSer).

We are looking forward to serving your teachers' and administrators'  technology integration needs!

ITD TALKS: Dr. Howie DiBlasi TALKS about Empowering the 21st Century Educational Leader

  

Dr. Howie DiBlasi, Digital Journey
Change is Good, You Go First: Empowering the 21st Century Educational Leader

March 14, 8:00 - 12:30

Keynote:  Change is Good, You Go First
"We need to prepare students for the world that is their future, not the world that is our past." Prepare students for the world that is their future. Engage learners, change the learning environment, and transform the way students are taught. Educators and administrative leaders can be the “Agents of Change” to upgrade our classrooms in the 21st Century. Empower our teachers, educational leaders and students by giving them more control over their own learning. Learn how to boldly step up to the challenges and the need for teachers to be prepared to teach in a technology-rich learning environment and meet the demands and challenges of 21st Century learning.
 ^
Upon completion of the session participants will be able to identify, plan and evaluate:

• Technology that will develop proficiency in 21st century skills and support innovative teaching and learning
• Publish and share projects and communicate with students and adults worldwide
• Use software and the digital process to Integrate programs into the classrooms with new knowledge and skills
• Understand Social Media, PBL, collaboration, integration and how to implement into the classroom
• Connect students with Global Communities

Please join us for a great opportunity to meet with our keynote speaker and network with other curriculum and technology leaders! Register here.

Dr. Howie DiBlasi was recognized as “Vocational Teacher of the Year” for the State of Arizona and nominated as a finalist in the “Top Secondary Leaders in America”. He has been featured in several magazines as “A CIO that really thinks outside the box.” He is a published author, "Change Agent", Educational Technology consultant and the Producer of the “DID YOU KNOW“ YouTube series, Versions 2-3-4-5-6. He was recently recognized by the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration with the "Pinnacle Award" for outstanding Professional Development Programs. Dr. DiBlasi has extensive experience in the education field (20 years), as a business leader (10 years), and as a CIO (14 years). His emphasis is on Digital Technology, multi-media, Interactive Video Conferencing and 21st Century Learning. He has presented to thousands of Educational Leaders, administrators and teachers from Bangkok to Boston. Howie is a member of the I.S.T.E Board of Directors, serves on the TxDLA Board, and is Communications Director of the I.S.T.E. Special Interest Group for Interactive Video Conferencing and a member of the Alan November Consulting Team.

ITD TALKS: George Couros TALKS about The Networked Leader

George Couros, Division Principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning for Parkland School, Alberta, Canada
The Networked Leader
January 18, 2013, 8:00 – 12:30

Keynote:  The Networked Leader
As society changes, schools seemingly are staying the same.  As school administrators, it is important to not only be instructional leaders, but we need to model for our organizations that we are also learners.  As the face of our schools/organizations, it is important that we learn, connect, and humanize our schools.  Social media gives us the opportunity to do this in a way that did not exist before.  In this keynote/workshop, George Couros will be articulating why networked leadership is so important to our organizations, and then offering practical ways that leaders can connect with some of the most innovative educators in the world to help further their organizations.  Learning, sharing, and leading are synonymous; it is important that we share how this can be done in an effective manner in our schools today.  ^
Please join us for a great opportunity to meet with our keynote speaker and network with other curriculum and technology leaders! Register here.

George Couros is the Division Principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning for Parkland School Division. He resides at the Centre for Education working closely with the all schools in the division, as well as the Future Planning Team, Lead Team, Learning Services Department and Information Technology Department where he pushes the leading edge in implementing Alberta Education’s new Goal Two – Educational Transformation. George has worked with all levels of schools from K-12 as a teacher, technology facilitator, and school based administrator. He additionally co-facilitates Great Leaders, Great Teams, Great Results leadership training, and is a leader on the effective use of social media to improve student learning. He is a sought after speaker on the topic of innovative student learning and engagement. George is also the creator of the Connected Principals blog site as well as the founder of Connected Canada.  His focus is to help organizations create optimal learning environments for innovation within schools. 

Although George is a leader in the area of innovation, his focus is always the development of leadership and people and what is best for kids.  He uses humor as a way to connect with all of those that he works with.  His presentations are known to be both informative and entertaining, yet creating an emotional connection that helps people move to the next level.  His mix of research, personal stories, and practical ways to implement new learning help participants feel comfortable in taking risks in their own learning.  You can learn more about George at his site http://georgecouros.ca/blog/.