2012-04-30 Tuesday

This morning was CNC plasma cutting, tweaking some of the directions in a blog post I wrote a while ago, and then helping judge some student projects in a box-making competition.

The afternoon was more help and documentation writing, and some other unrelated things.

For those that are curious, here's most of what my office currently looks like. Not pictured are the shelves on the north wall that are full of miscellaneous things.

013-04-29 Monday

I spend some more time this morning at SCA Secondary updating the CNC software, helping develop their CNC workflow, finishing a project, and showing a student how to vectorize scanned objects and import that into VCarve Pro to create tool paths.

I also hung the "please be quiet because we're recording" sign outside of our media room.

This afternoon was some discussion about social media, digital citizenship, and school and district policies.

And then I answered emails and phone calls, had some discussions about Configurator, and documented the vectorization process for students.

2013-04-26 Friday

It seems that the post didn't go up. I'll try again.

Today I finished up some (physical) projects, such as the one pictured.

I also met with a music teacher about technology and sound systems, and spent some time in a wood shop teaching some students how to use a CNC router and experimenting with creating an MDF tool control mat.

2013-04-25 Thursday

ADLC, Robots and Pencils, and GoForth Institute have developed an iPad app that teaches Entrepreneurship Essentials. Through the simulation of running a lemonade stand, it uses gamification principles, text slides, videos, and auto-graded quizzes to deliver the content for five one-credit CTS courses (ENT1010, 1020, 2010, 2020, and 2030).

It is fairly well designed, certainly better than most LMS-based online courses. Students will still need to be somewhat self-motivated to make it through, but the badges, notifications, and challenges should help.

From what I hear, schools that register students in this "course" can receive all of the CEU funding if they have a teacher assigned to do the "marking" and tracking, or they can receive 3/5 of the funding if they get ADLC to do all of that.

There has been some media coverage by CBC News and the Edmonton Journal. If you're interested, check out more information and an introduction video.

At any rate, I'm certainly going to recommend it to high schools that have students interested in entrepreneurship and/or interested in trying a different method for getting CTS credits. Information about registration is here.

2013-04-24 Wednesday

Most of the day today was spent on Configurator experimenting and documentation.

We also met to plan our upcoming "Innovation Exposition" sharing afternoons.

2013-04-23 Tuesday

The morning and part of the afternoon were spent at Salisbury helping people with things like digital signage, Source Filmmaker (and other things related to Comm Tech), and showing students the 3D printer.

Later in the afternoon we had a meeting about Configurator and staff training on a number of new things for our district (such as Adobe CS6, Discovery Streaming, Exchange/Outlook, etc.).

2013-04-22 Monday

After a quick stop at the office to get a few things done, I spent the morning at AJS helping with the Configurator process. They had 30 new iPads to get set up, and despite a few glitches with USB hubs everything seems to be working.

I had a great conversation at lunch about technology implementation and some related issues. His point, and I agree, was that we should certainly be using technology where possible, but it should all be in service of the greater purpose.

After lunch I got my scheduled time for a job interview later this week, did a little soldering, and started constructing some tutorials on the Volume Purchase Program and Configurator.

2013-04-19 Friday

The start of my day was the Professional Development Committee meeting where we had a hard look at how EIPS is offering professional development for staff.

I had good conversations today about pedagogy and technology, school-based decision-making, and collaboration between ET and IT.

We also shot Ed Tech Now Episode 6, so it should come out in the next few days.

2013-04-18 Thursday

I spent the day at Ardrossan Junior Senior High today. Most of the time was with the "Peer Helping" AISI project. They have about 25 students and 5 teachers involved.

A lot of my morning, though, was spent helping get the library's 30 new iPads set up and configured.

I also spent some time with a grade 7 computers class helping get some of them started with Arduino and CodeAcademy.

2013-04-17 Wednesday

Today I created some tutorials, did some programming, and organized some upcoming events.

2013-04-16 Tuesday

This morning I spent some time in CommTech at Salisbury helping them set up Source Filmmaker and talking about some future direction for their program.

Over the lunch hour I hung out with the Video Game Club.

This afternoon I spent some time preparing presentations, organizing our media studio, and other office-related things.

Oh, and I'm starting to teach a Maker course tonight.

2013-04-15 Monday

Here are a few highlights or notable events from today.

I was invited to a meeting with Discovery Education about their new digital textbook offering. In essence it looks like a CMS with digital resources.

This afternoon was a Convergence Conference planning meeting via Google Hangout.

2013-04-12 Friday

Professional Development day today. The first session was "Innovative Classroom Environments" with fruit.aisi.ca. Next was the "Innovation Playground" where participants could explore and get help with various websites and technologies, as well as hear about different innovative environments that other EIPS teachers are exploring.

After lunch I helped facilitate an iPad session with Donna Griffin that went all afternoon.

2013-04-11 Thursday

Today I prepared a little more for tomorrow's professional development day, helped with some troubleshooting, spent some time with the Salisbury Maker/Hacker Club, wrote a blog post about Source Filmmaker, and started curating some digital citizenship resources.

Speaking of digital citizenship, we've gotten a few requests recently to block (filter) some game websites on the EIPS network. Currently the category "games" is blocked, but of course there's no way that FortiGuard could possibly categorize all the game sites on the Internet, but they are flagging many of them.

The issue is usually that students are playing games on school computers when they are supposed to be doing something else. Occasionally the staff member finds the games themselves offensive, and requests that they be blocked for that reason. In general, though, the issue comes down to increasing supervision of students while on computers. As I tend to say, it's difficult or impossible to have technological solutions to behavioral problems.

2013-04-10 Wednesday

After a brief meeting about professional development sessions for Friday, I spent the rest of the day talking with Ministik teachers about gamification as well as technology.

We had good discussions about Edmodo, KidBlog, Reading-Rewards, and Minecraft.

2013-04-09 Tuesday

For the morning I was at Pearson's Schoolnet "Day of Discovery". It's certainly interesting what they are doing with their software/services, but I think they are going in the wrong direction. It is almost all predicated on management (of teachers and of students), with a particular focus on multiple-choice testing (with large item banks). There wasn't much focus on sharing information about students and assignments with parents or even with the students themselves.

As well, I take exception to using the term "feedback" to mean students getting their (numerical) marks as soon as they had finished a digital test. I suppose that is a form of feedback, but knowing that you got 6/10 on that multiple choice quiz is not particularly useful. And if a teacher really wants a system like that, Moodle can do it for free, including preventing students from looking up answers and automatically checking for plagiarism.

They showed a video at the start of the day about Pearson's vision for the future of education, but I haven't been able to find it on YouTube. Watch Corning's "A Day Made of Glass" instead, since it's similar.

The afternoon included more preparation for tonight's ElkFest event and for going to Ministik tomorrow.

2013-04-08 Monday

This morning I helped a teacher with some Moodle issues, answered some email questions, experimented with some Red5 configurations, and had a great conversation about IT, video games, and the direction that Tech Services is going.

This afternoon, among other tasks, I started writing some AISI reflections (I've also pasted them below) and I did some preparation to be the MC for tomorrow night's ElkFest Film Festival.

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Reflections on flipped learning and blended learning

Early on in our "Innovative Learning Environments" project we realized that most of the environments involved blended learning in some form. This was particularly true for flipped learning, which seemed to be a good way to get teachers interested in posting materials and starting to interact with students online.

Some teachers were particularly excited about flipped learning, and started making videos and posting interactive and text-based resources. I liked being able to show them various options for creating videos and places to organize and curate content, such as Moodle, Edmodo, Google Sites, and others. Different choices appealed to different teachers based on their experience and needs, or those of their students.

The great thing about teachers posting materials online was that it gave students, and in most cases parents, a place to get information about the class. More importantly it started to create an online space for interactions with the teacher and among students. This space was sometimes used synchronously, but more often was used outside of class time. Teachers even found that absent students could keep up with what they needed to learn and do.

Not to upstage the Horizon Report, but I think it won't be long until most learning is blended learning. One of our favorite quotes from a teacher about her experience with blended learning was, "I won't go back to teaching the way I used to." I think that epitomizes the goals of the AISI project and innovative learning environments.

cross-posted from AISI Reflections.

2013-04-05 Friday

I spent a good portion of today with Moodle. I was at Fort Saskatchewan High to show them the Moodle Language Lab and talk about some other technology things. Next I was off to Ardrossan Junior Senior High to help some other teachers with their Moodle sites, and also to show off the Moodle Language Lab. I also spent some time helping a student get set up with some more advanced programming options, including Alice, Arduino, and CodeAcademy.

Back at the office I finished the following video for our Innovation session at next week's professional development day, helped troubleshoot some technical issues, and read some new job postings.

2013-04-04 Thursday

The first thing I did this morning was record a quick demonstration of Moodle Language Lab. I used two webcams and microphones, which was cool. Check it out.

Next was a meeting about our sessions for the upcoming professional development day, and we put some work into preparing for that. I'll post a Source Filmmaker video tomorrow that I was working on.

This afternoon I was off for a bit because of an appointment, then I participated in an "AISI Legacy" webinar.

2013-04-03 Wednesday

This morning I judged and commented on some ElkFest videos, and volunteered to MC the festival event. The student-produced videos that I've watched have all been very good.

We also had a brief meeting about contacting AISI teachers about the upcoming sharing sessions, and I spent some time emailing those teachers.

I also looked into why the Moodle Language Lab was working on the EIPS networks but wasn't working on outside networks. No conclusions yet, but I'm thinking it has to do with the DNS settings. Edit: It turns out it wasn't a network-related problem, the issue was that the flash player hadn't been updated on the machines I was using.

A good portion of my afternoon was spent providing written feedback for the ElkFest video submissions. Despite common issues with sound and lighting, I continued to be impressed by the quality of the student work.

2013-04-02 Tuesday

We're back from Spring Break today, and continuing despite the end of the AISI project.

This morning I caught up on some communications that had languished over the break, and then I took apart the nozzle on the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic in my office to clean it out and get it printing properly again. Here's a successfully printed iPad sound deflector.

Next on the agenda was getting out Episode 5 of Ed Tech Now, but that was mostly Donna Griffin's doing.

I also spent some time helping with a redesign of atleconference.ca to get it ready for the pending launch, and organizing a Communications Committee meeting. The conference will be November 20 - 22, 2013.

After that I spent some time troubleshooting and fixing some devices.

I also had another conversation about school language labs, and how schools are looking at spending $20,000 to $40,000 (per site) on software to replace tape-based language labs. I suggested, again, that all of that could be accomplished using Moodle Language Lab, which is already set up. And also that most of what teachers want to do with a language lab can be accomplished better with services such as YouTube or SoundCloud.

At lunch I had a great conversation with a teacher about the things she is doing differently in her classroom, and how student engagement and achievement have improved. She hadn't been involved in an AISI project, but had just been doing this on her own. I had talked to her in the past about some of her ideas, but it was very cool to hear more of what's going on in her classroom.

This afternoon I spent some time with our Moodle Language Lab making sure things were configured and working. It turns out that it wasn't working after an upgrade because I had to change the languagelab_red5server variable to be just the FQDN without a port number, since we're using the default port (5080).

I also experimented with and installed PoodLL in our Moodle as an alternative approach to language assignments.

At the end of the day I was at the ElkFest Film Festival judges meeting.