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Where to Start with Technology Integration in Oklahoma?

I received an email recently from an Oklahoma teacher in a small, rural school district which just received their first classroom computers and needs help getting started with technology integration ideas. These were the five ideas I shared with her via email. What would you add to this list of suggestions?

1. If you can, I’d recommend sending at least a few of your teachers to the upcoming Heartland eLearning conference at UCO the first week of March. This is geared toward eLearning but there are always good sessions and ideas relevant for K12 teachers. More info is on:
   http://www.uco.edu/heartlandconference/
2. The best conference of the year (in my opinion) in Oklahoma for K-12 technology integration was just last week, it was the OTA/EncycloMedia conference. They are going to have that conference both in the fall and spring next year, I think Nov 6-7 is the next one. Their website is: http://www.oktech.org The Innovative Learning Institute sponsored by the OU K-20 Center is also excellent, and is usually in November.
3. I would recommend that you and your teachers watch some of the videos from the free K-12 Online Conference and use them for professional development. This is something I could possibly introduce to you in an after school session and you could continue to do. This is a free conference that has over 40 free videos published each year. The full schedule of presentations from last year is on:
   http://k12onlineconference.org/?page_id=824 I would recommend starting with some of the keynotes.
4. My book has some practical ideas for ways to use media with students. You can find info about it on:
   http://playingwithmedia.com/pages/about There is an accompanying site of student projects that you can use to get ideas and resources. It’s on:
   http://share.playingwithmedia.com
5. OETT grants are one of the best ways to obtain both money for technology equipment and training as an Oklahoma school. Unfortunately the application deadline just passed. Information about this is on:
   http://oett.org/grantmaking/ (They provide grants to Oklahoma districts every year.)

I probably should have also let her know about Celebrate Oklahoma Voices workshops offered by Storychasers, but their school doesn’t have any funds currently for professional development and those training workshops aren’t free.

What suggestions would you provide to this elementary educator interested in getting technology integration training started at her small, Oklahoma school?

Technorati Tags: ccss, oklahoma, technology, integration, ideas

Where to Start with Technology Integration in Oklahoma? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 16, 2012.

We’ve Only Just Begun (to share our voices with media in Yukon Schools)

On February 15, 2012, the Yukon Review newspaper shared the following photograph and article about my work this semester as an “innovative instructional coach” for Yukon Public Schools in Oklahoma. I am focused primarily on helping a group of fifteen teachers integrate multimedia into their curriculum as required by the new Common Core State Standards. Among other things, I am using a set of “media map storyboards” (still under construction) to help teachers “map media to their curriculum” following the Common Core standards. Part of our focus is helping students create and safely share media products online in safe, interactive environments.

I’m working four days per week with teachers and students in Yukon on a five month contract, funded by federal grant dollars. I am absolutely LOVING the opportunity to work on a sustained basis with fantastic teachers, students, and administrators in Yukon Schools. There are MANY, MANY positive things going on in the district and it’s a great blessing to be able to join their team as an “instructional coach.” One of the projects I’m helping with is a district “learning showcase” website (showcase.yukonps.com) where outstanding examples of student learning are amplified. This website is linked from the “media” option in the Yukon Public Schools’ new iPhone and Android app which was released in January.

The Yukon PS Common Core Aligned Lessons website (lessons.yukonps.com) includes links to resources and tools related to my CCSS integration work in the district. A growing number of teachers are using interactive websites to showcase student work as well as provide moderated, public platforms for students to practice safe digital citizenship. Some teachers in the district are using MyBigCampus (a closed, free educational networking platform provided by Lightspeed Systems) or Edmodo as classroom learning management systems. While both those platforms are wonderful (as well as free) they do not permit the kind of public, INTERACTIVE sharing of student work which sites like Kidblog do.

See the Google Doc of links and notes (Google sign-in required) from today’s REAC3H regional meeting in Yukon (posted on Oklahoma EduShare) for more resources related to CCSS. Links I shared at the end of our meeting are listed at bottom of the document.

Also check out the podcast of the presentation, “Bringing the Community into the Classroom,” shared on the free Fuel for Educational Change Agents podcast channel. I co-presented that breakout session with Ben Grey at TechForum Chicago in May 2011, and many of Ben’s ideas have been inspirational to me in shaping my work this semester in Yukon.

If I had to select a song to summarize where we are with empowering students and teachers to “share their voices with media” this semester in Yukon, it would have to be “We’ve Only Just Begun.” To storychase, that is.

Technorati Tags: ccss, learning, oklahoma, showcase, website, coach

We’ve Only Just Begun (to share our voices with media in Yukon Schools) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 16, 2012.

Student Storychasers Begin Work at Skyview Elementary in Yukon, Oklahoma

(cross-posted to Storychasers.org)

On February 15, 2012, the Yukon Review newspaper shared the following photograph and caption about the first student Storychasers group starting at Skyview Elementary School in Yukon, Oklahoma.

3rd grade students are working with their principal, Carla Smith, to write articles about school news and record their articles as a “radio show.” Radio WillowWeb from Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska, is an inspiration to these young Storychasers. Tony Vincent (original founder of Radio Willowweb and author of the “Learning in Hand” website) along with Maine educator Bob Sprankle (the creative genius behind the New York Times acclaimed “Room 208 Podcast”) are also major inspirations for the idea of a student Storychasers club.

A website for the group is being established and their first program will be published soon. The Storychaser student clubs in Yukon are pilot groups starting in Spring 2012. Hopefully, if things continue to go well, this is program which will expand to other schools in months to come. Learn more and sign up for updates on the Storychasers’ mailing list by visiting storychasers.org/clubs.

Technorati Tags: club, elementary, oklahoma, student, yukon, storychasers, storychaser, skyview, record

Student Storychasers Begin Work at Skyview Elementary in Yukon, Oklahoma originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 15, 2012.

Think Differently and Support AutismOklahoma.org

Did you know 40% of children diagnosed with autism cannot speak? For reasons we don’t completely understand, the numbers of children in our society diagnosed with autism are on the rise. The following is a beautiful, powerful video scripted and created by AutismOklahoma.org. This was published at the end of last month on YouTube. It is a magnificent example of digital storytelling.

If you know someone in Oklahoma affected by Autism, put them in touch with http://www.AutismOklahoma.org if they are not already involved. If you live in another state or location, seek out an autism support group in your area.

Hat tip to my wife for sharing this video. She and her church nursery workers provided child care this evening for parents of children with autism to have a Valentine’s Day night out. I’m thankful for the blessing those nursery workers shared tonight with many of our Oklahoma families touched by autism. There is tremendous power and value in collaborating and networking together to better understand and address challenges like autism.

Think Differently and Support AutismOklahoma.org originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 15, 2012.

Online Petition: Oklahoma City Public Schools Must Adopt Balanced Internet Content Filtering Policies

To acquire and practice literacy skills today, students and educators in Oklahoma City Public Schools require access to Evernote, Google Docs, Gmail, Edmodo, Posterous, Celebrate Oklahoma Voices, and other educationally appropriate, interactive websites. All these websites are currently (as of February 9, 2012) blocked by OKCPS for student access. OKCPS must stop its “draconian” and unjustified Internet content filtering policies and adopt BALANCED policies. The district must TRUST teachers and empower them to directly bypass the content filter with their login credentials when it is professionally justified for instruction and learning. As an Oklahoma City parent, teacher, student, or other community constituent, I encourage you to sign the following online petition to make your opinion heard by the OKCPS superintendent and school board members:
http://www.change.org/petitions/balanced-internet-filtering-in-okcps

I also encourage all parents to directly CALL your respective OKCPS board member, using the phone numbers available on the district website. I also encourage all parents to call the district superintendent’s office directly, and call the school board chairwoman directly. We need to stand together and speak out together so decisive action will be taken to remedy the wrongs highlighted below.

Since August 24, 2011, I have been meeting with district teachers, administrators, board members, and parents to advocate for more BALANCED content filtering policies in Oklahoma City Public Schools. These efforts are documented on the website balancedfiltering.org and on a detailed timeline linked on http://wfryer.me/filter. To date district officials have been unresponsive and unwilling to change their policies. The district director of technology erroneously maintained in a meeting I had with him and the district superintendent on November 21, 2011, that these policies are justified because:

1. “All other large, urban school districts with comparable numbers of students to Oklahoma City block access to interactive websites like Google Docs and Gmail.”
2. “Requirements of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) mandated through the federal E-Rate program require our district to block all interactive websites like Evernote.com. We risk losing millions of dollars in E-Rate funds if we unblock these sites.”
3. “The district must prevent students from bringing pornography onto district computers by blocking access to any website which permits file and document exchange.”
4. “The security vulnerabilities posed by websites like Google Docs and Evernote.com are too great to justify their use by district staff or students.”

All of these reasons are factually incorrect. The legally-mandated Oklahoma Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS) include student skills in the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S). (wfryer.me/netss) These require students to practice safe, electronic literacy activities including multimedia publishing and digital collaboration. These activities are also required by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) currently in phased-implementation by all Oklahoma public school districts. (wfryer.me/ccss) The draconian Internet filtering policies of OKCPS prevent students and teachers from meeting these legally mandated standards. Karen Cator, the U.S. Department of Education’s Director of Educational Technology, clarified legal requirements for school district content filtering in April 2011. U.S. school districts are NOT required to block all access to interactive websites, as OKCPS staff erroneously maintain. (wfryer.me/cator)

Current OKCPS Internet content filtering standards fail to empower teachers to make instructional decisions regarding digital content for which they are state certified and paid by district taxpayers. As the parent of three current students in OKCPS, I call on our school board members and district superintendent to change these policies immediately. Certified district teachers must be directly empowered to bypass content filtering restrictions using their official login credentials when they deem it is professionally justified for instruction and learning. In addition, a transparent and speedy process must be instituted immediately to electronically document and respond to teacher requests for websites to be unblocked. The district’s current Internet content filtering solution permits websites to be unblocked on a campus by campus basis. This process must be made digitally transparent and accountable so all stakeholders can monitor and assess both the speed and quality of the IT department’s responses to website unblock requests. In fall 2011 district IT staff failed to follow their own paper-based procedures for documenting reasons requested websites would not be unblocked despite teacher requests. This process must be made digital, transparent, and district officials must be made to follow it as policy.

In a large, high profile meeting with top district officials in OKCPS in spring 2011, national digital learning consultant Alan November highlighted the discriminatory gap which exists currently between the filtering policies of Oklahoma City suburb school districts and Oklahoma City Public Schools.* This discrepancy cannot be justified and defended on a legal, educational, or network security basis. “Draconian” content filtering policies in OKCPS have been defended by district officials to date through a combination of:

1. misquoted / misinterpreted legal mandates
2. fear
3. exaggerated security vulnerabilities
4. inaccurate perceptions of the IT department’s purview to censor and restrict employee and student access to digital content

The specific websites highlighted in this letter and accompanying online petition must be unblocked immediately for students as well as teachers in OKCPS. In addition, the CULTURE of fear and digital access repression which district officials continue to reinforce must be changed.

As parents of students in Oklahoma City Public Schools in 2012, we cannot stand by idly and permit district officials as well as our elected district representatives to maintain these unjustified and draconian content filtering policies. Certainly the district should and must continue to provide a basic level of content filtering on the district network for pornography and other offensive material as required by the Children’s Internet Protection Act. This is NOT a call to stop all Internet content filtering. This IS a call to adopt BALANCED policies for Internet content filtering and empower our certified teachers to act as the professional educators they are. As petition signers, we demand that OKCPS board members and district officials stop creating an overly-restrictive culture of digital access based on fear, threats, and misinterpretations of legal mandates. Our state law requires our students to acquire and practice digital literacy skills at school, and as parents we insist our school officials embrace balanced filtering policies which will allow those mandates to be met.

I encourage all Oklahoma City Public School parents to sign the online petition on Change.org to make your voice heard in this campaign:
https://www.change.org/petitions/balanced-internet-filtering-in-okcps

In addition, please “like” and join the Facebook cause page created for this effort:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Balanced-Internet-Filtering-in-Okcps/105351902927185

Please get involved in this campaign with your local school’s Parent Teacher Association / Parent Teacher Student Association and spread the word. Use your social media connections on sites like Facebook and Twitter to encourage others to join and take action. Use email. Use text messaging. If the citizens of Egypt can precipitate changes in their federal government through the use of social media and other communication technologies, as parents of students in Oklahoma City Public Schools we should be able to use these same tools to force our elected and school officials to pay attention to our voices. We can and we shall with your help.

Thank you for your support and action on behalf of our students and teachers in Oklahoma City Public Schools.

Sincerely,

Wesley Fryer
www.wesfryer.com
A complete and updated timeline of advocacy efforts for OKCPS balanced filtering is available on Google Docs via this link: http://wfryer.me/filter

* I spoke by phone with Alan November on November 17, 2011, and learned the details of this early spring 2011 conversation / meeting with OKCPS officials.

Online Petition: Oklahoma City Public Schools Must Adopt Balanced Internet Content Filtering Policies originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 13, 2012.

5th Graders Develop Problem Solving Skills with Lego WeDo Robotics

(cross-posted from the Yukon Public Schools Learning Showcase website)

Some 5th grade students at Lakeview Elementary School in Yukon Public Schools are developing their problem solving and computational thinking skills using Lego WeDo Robotics kits. On February 13, 2012, fifth graders Cade and Thomas used the graphical, icon-based programming environment of the Lego WeDo Robotic software to control the motor of a Lego project other students created. In this two minute audio interview, they describe what they are doing with Lego WeDo Robotics and why they enjoy learning how to program a basic robot.

Cade and Thomas Talk About Lego WeDo (mp3)

5th Graders Develop Problem Solving Skills with Lego WeDo Robotics originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 13, 2012.

Podcast388: Oklahoma CCSS, TLE & Virtual School & Education Reform Update (Feb 2012)

This podcast by Wesley Fryer is an attempted synthesis of a variety of issues and updates mentioned in conference presentations, workshops, and news articles from the past several weeks regarding Oklahoma “educational reform” efforts. These include our state’s transition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the Teacher Leader Evaluation (TLE) system, proposed legislative changes for K-12 schools regarding virtual schools and other issues involving mandated, high stakes testing and teacher evaluation. As is the case with ALL the content on my blog, these opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my past, present, or future employers. Please share feedback or questions as comments to this post. Lots is happening in our state with respect to “school reform,” and we need to remain informed as voters as well as advocates for our children.

Show Notes:

1. Oklahoma EDUshare
2. Common Core State Standards Initiative (official website)
3. Common Core Transition Ideas via Marzano (workshop notes, 26 Jan 2012)
4. Transition to Common Core Standards by Jan Hoegh with Marzano Research (1 of 2 – 24 Jan 2012)
5. Transition to Common Core Standards by Jan Hoegh with Marzano Research (2 of 2 – 24 Jan 2012)
6. Teacher Leader Effectiveness (TLE) and the Tulsa Model (my notes at OAESP – 20 Jan 2012)
7. What’s So Common About Common Core? (my notes at OAESP – 19 Jan 2012)
8. NCLB Waivers: Implications for Testing, Standards Implementation (EdWeek blog post – 10 Feb 2012)
9. Executive Summary of Oklahoma’s ESEA Flexibility Request (5 page PDF, from Oklahoma SDE website)
10. Digital Learning Now (organization articulating Oklahoma’s current educational reform efforts)
11. Roadmap for Reform from Digital Learning Now (includes 72 different metrics)
12. 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning (note teachers and the importance of teacher/student relationships don’t figure high here)
13. Supplemental Oklahoma Rules for K-12 Online Courses (my post – 17 Jan 2012)
14. How to Make Your High School Students Fail Online Courses (my notes from ODLA – 9 Nov 2012)
15. Standards Mapping the Common Core to Everyday Instruction and Teaching (my notes at OTA – 7 Feb 2012)
16. A Call to Increase the Volume of our Profession in Educational Politics (my notes at OAESP – 19 Jan 2012)
17. Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARC Consortium for CCSS Testing/Assessments, Oklahoma is a member)
18. A Response to the Alleged Consensus on America’s Failing Schools (my post – 12 Feb 2012)
19. Remember TEACHERS Make the Biggest Difference, Not Devices (my post – 20 Jan 2012)
20. Anywhere, Anytime Learning by Janet Barresi (my notes at OTA/EncycloMedia – February 2012)
21. Janet Barresi’s ODLA 2011 Keynote (my notes – November 2011)

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Podcast388: Oklahoma CCSS, TLE & Virtual School & Education Reform Update (Feb 2012) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 12, 2012.

A Response to the Alleged Consensus on America’s Failing Schools

This evening I started reading Terry Moe and John Chubb’s 2009 book, “Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education.” I’m familiar with Chubb and Moe mostly for their article, “America’s Public Schools: Choice IS a Panacea” included in the 1995 text, “Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues” which I read for a course required in my first educational graduate program at Texas Tech University. In that excerpt from their book, “Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools,” Chubb and Moe spoke for the political right in advocating for vouchers as a solution to all that ails public education. Now, in “Liberating Learning,” it appears they have substituted “web-based CAI” for “educational vouchers” in proclaiming an educational revolution is imminent if only we would outlaw all teacher’s unions and fire all the lazy teachers in our public schools who can’t manage to get most of our students to read or do math well. Unlike Andrew Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur,” which was so horrifically researched and poorly defended I could not bring myself to read the entire book, I’ll probably read all of “Liberating Learning.” The friend who commended it to me hailed it as messianic prophesy on a par with “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns” by Christensen, Johnson and Horn.

This formative paragraph in “Liberating Learning” on page four shouted out to me for a response, arresting my reading and compelling me to take to my keyboard and blog. Moe and Chubb wrote:

What technology offers is profoundly important to the nation. America desperately needs to improve its public schools, and virtually everyone in a position of knowledge or public responsibility agrees that this is the case. The broad consensus among our policymakers — Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, from all corners of the country,– is that the public schools are not delivering on the goods, and that something serious needs to be done to turn the situation around.

Here is my cursory response.

This statement fails to properly contextualize test scores and student achievement data for U.S. K-12 students. NAEP scores of U.S. students have been stable (in reading) and climbing (in math) and average IQ scores continue to rise in our society.* US schools continue to educate middle and upper class students (children of affluent families) as well as ever, which means pretty well by traditional measures. What US schools continue to struggle with is educating children of poverty well. The “broad consensus among our policymakers” about failing schools has been carefully architected by policymakers as well as testing companies to shape the perceptions of voters. These entities want voters to view schools as failing, teachers as lazy slackers, and commercially-provided standardized test scores as divinely ordained as well as mandatory measures of learning quality in our schools. Yes our schools need to keep improving, and we SHOULD use educational technologies in transformative ways to improve learning… but teachers are not the enemy and all our public schools are NOT failing. What we need in this country, among other things, is a unified will to fight and address poverty. We must recognize that high quality educational opportunities do not and must not be focused on testing and assessment, they must be focused on engaging learning opportunities which begin with smart, passionate, well paid teachers. Our current political climate is incredibly toxic for teacher recruitment, and this must change. We must reject the idea that our states and cities must pay millions of dollars to commercial testing companies to meaningfully measure learning outcomes. Testing has become the purpose of public schooling because of political mandates regarding high stakes testing, and this culture must change. We must view learning as the purpose of school and education, not testing. We need an all-out attack on poverty in our communities, and this starts with high quality schools… and those depend PRIMARILY on high quality teachers. EVERY public school must be high quality, not just a few schools who win, earn, or are endowed with the title, “Charter school.” Charter schools are not a “silver bullet” for improving our schools and helping children rise out of poverty. Wonderful teachers are the silver bullet.** They always have been, and always will be. Web-based CAI (computer aided-instruction) is not an educational silver-bullet, it is a businessman’s proposal to divert public tax dollars from already starving schools to both home schoolers traditionally cut out of public school funding (via virtual charters) and private corporations created to funnel public education tax dollars into stockholder bank accounts.

Citations:
* For rising NAEP scores: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2011/2012459.pdf
* For rising IQ scores: http://theweek.com/article/index/219002/are-americans-smarter-than-ever
** For teachers as the silver bullet: Amber Teamann on http://www.connectedprincipals.com/archives/5336

I also recommend “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” by Diane Ravitch for additional references and resources on these issues.

As I continue to read “Liberating Learning” I’m sure more blog posts will follow.

Technorati Tags: learning, politics, test, testing, chubb, moe, liberating

A Response to the Alleged Consensus on America’s Failing Schools originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 12, 2012.

How to Enable Comment Moderation on YouTube Videos

(cross-posted from Instructional FAQs for Yukon Public Schools)

When you post a video to YouTube, it is a good idea to turn ON comment moderation. As of this writing in February 2012, it is not possible to make “comment moderation ON” a default setting in YouTube. Follow these three steps after uploading a video to turn on comment moderation.

First, click EDIT info on the video you want to change.

Second, click SETTINGS.

Third, under COMMENTS choose ALLOW ALL COMMENTS WITH APPROVAL ONLY, then click SAVE CHANGES.

Now you’ll need to approve comments on that video before they will show up publicly for others to view.

Technorati Tags: howto, tutorial, youtube, comment, moderation

How to Enable Comment Moderation on YouTube Videos originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 11, 2012.

Publish a Combined iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar

Unlike the previous version of MobileMe, Apple’s new iCloud service does not appear to provide a direct way to share a “read-only” webpage or embeddable version of a calendar. In this post, I’ll share how to use the free web service 30boxes to publish a combined iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar. This can be handy if you want to publicly or privately share your calendars from iCloud and Google Calendar with other folks on a webpage.

Step 1: Sign up for a free account on 30boxes. Check your email to confirm your account.

Step 2: Open iCal on your Apple computer and click the CALENDARS icon in the upper left corner. Control-click the iCloud calendar you want to share and choose COPY URL TO CLIPBOARD. (If you haven’t already turned on sharing for this calendar, you’ll need to do that first from the same menu.)

Step 3: Click SETTINGS and then WEB STUFF in 30boxes.com after you’ve logged in. Under MY WEB CALENDARS, paste the “iCal” link you just copied and click ADD.

Step 4: After logging into your Google Calendar, click the arrow to the right of the calendar you want to share. Then click CALENDAR SETTINGS.

Step 5: Scroll down the page and control-click the iCAL icon beside PRIVATE ADDRESS. Choose to copy this link.

Step 6: Repeat Step 3 above, but this time add the link to your Google Calendar in 30boxes.com.

Step 7: Click the 30boxes.com homepage link and click SHARE – ADD TO BLOG. Then copy the desired embed code to share your calendar on a blog or other website.

Those are the steps. I learned about this method from this thread in this Apple Support Communities post. Do you know an alternative or better way to share both an iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar simultaneously on a webpage? If so please share a link to your method as a comment.

Technorati Tags: calendar, google, share, icloud

Publish a Combined iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 11, 2012.

Vimeo or YouTube? Where to Post Family Videos?

A family friend and member of our church has a middle school-aged son who is getting to be quite a videographer. I have taught him for two years in Sunday School, and have glimpsed on a few occasions some of the films he’s created with his friends. (Reminds me in a positive way of Super 8, actually.) I created the following seventeen minute video and screencast to answer the question for their family, “Where should we post our son’s videos online if we want to limit access to them?” My short answer for their situation (wanting to password protect videos that are longer than 15 minutes long) is Vimeo.com. Here’s the entire video, in case this is information that can help you or someone else you know.

What are your thoughts? Do you have a different recommendation for someone in this situation?

Access our family learning blog, “Learning Signs,” on learningsigns.speedofcreativity.org. In addition to the Vimeo channel for this site (vimeo.com/learningsigns) I’ve been using a free Vimeo channel (vimeo.com/blastcast) for the 5th/6th grade Sunday School classes I’ve taught the past four years. YouTube (youtube.com/wfryer) continues to be my primary channel for personal and professional video sharing, but as I discuss in this video it has some limitations which can make Vimeo a better choice for certain circumstances.

Technorati Tags: online, share, video, videography, youtube, vimeo, post

Vimeo or YouTube? Where to Post Family Videos? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 11, 2012.

Create Illustrated PDF Stories with Story Patch on an iPad

(Cross-posted from PlayingWithMedia.com)

In this 14.5 minute video, 8 year old Rachel explains how to use the iPad application “Story Patch” to create illustrated stories. Download Rachel’s FREE enhanced eBook, “Snowflake Gets Lost,” on meetsnowflake.com. Learn more about Story Patch for iPad and download it from storypatch.com.

We recorded this video using Screenflow software, and used an iPhone4 as our video camera with the $5 app iWebcamera.

Learn more about iPad applications for productivity on ipadwithwes.com and by following @ipadwithwes on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: app, book, create, howto, ipad, playingwithmedia, tutorial, story, stories, storypatch, pdf

Create Illustrated PDF Stories with Story Patch on an iPad originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 10, 2012.

Visualizing Sharing #edushare

Two of my top goals as an education advocate and “innovative instructional coach” in Yukon Public Schools this semester are to:

1. help teachers overcome their fears about using multimedia with students to develop literacy skills
2. encourage teachers to SHARE more

As I prepared for the two presentations I shared on Tuesday this week at our statewide educational technology and library conference in Oklahoma, I searched for compelling images which convey ideas about sharing. These ideals will hopefully be manifested in the new website project, Oklahoma EduSHARE. Some of these images are funny, some are poignant. All of them say, with pictures, “I’m sharing.” I love visual media which communicates in compelling ways.

All of the above images are licensed on Flickr under a Creative Commons Atribution-Only license. I found them using this search page.

Do you have a favorite image of SHARING? Consider taking that on as a professional development activity challenge in upcoming months: Working with a partner, take a photo which communicates some aspect of SHARING. Alternatively, find an image which visually represents SHARING. When you take or find a photo, post the image to Flickr and/or share it on Twitter using the tag/hashtag edushare / #edushare.

Dean Shareski is right, sharing is a moral imperative for educators!

Technorati Tags: education, share, sharing, edushare, flickr

Visualizing Sharing #edushare originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 9, 2012.

Embed a MP3 Audio File in a WordPress.com Blog Post

WordPress.com is a good, free blogging platform, but it can be trickier than Posterous to get rich media (like audio and video files) embedded in posts. Unlike Posterous, which lets users directly email audio and video files to a site where they are automatically converted to an “embedded form,” with WordPress.com you need to post your audio and video files to ANOTHER website and then use (for audio) a special code so it will be embedded. (If you purchase a WordPress.com space upgrade you can directly upload audio files, but free WordPress.com sites can’t.) In this post I’ll explain how to embed an mp3 audio file on a free (non-upgraded) WordPress.com site.

Last Sunday in our 6th grade class, students recorded an 81 second audio podcast about the theme, “Our Words are Powerful.” Since free accounts on AudioBoo.fm permit users to not only record audio using a web browser or smartphone, but also UPLOAD audio, I used it today to upload the audio from our 6th grade class. AudioBoo does not provide (as Cinch.fm does) a direct download link to the mp3 audio file for a specific Boo, however. To view and copy this link, I copied the RSS feed for my AudioBoo channel.

I pasted that link into my Safari web browser, which does a nice job handling RSS feeds and displaying them in a readable format. I then copied the direct mp3 audio file link.

I then created a new post on our 6th Grade Sunday School WordPress blog, and used special “short code” for embedding mp3 audio files in the HTML view of the post.

It would be nice if WordPress.com allowed the default AudioBoo embed code to work, as shown below, but for security reasons they don’t. On a self-hosted WordPress blog (like the one you’re reading right now) it’s possible to use this embed code, but not on WordPress.com. The WordPress.com site administrators have disabled some embed codes to “protect us” from malicious code, I think. Fortunately, this “short code” technique is pretty straightforward to use ONCE you have the direct URL to the mp3 audio file you’d like to use. There are other ways to do this too, but I like the short code method.

The Power of our Words (mp3)

What other techniques do you use to embed audio on your blog?

Technorati Tags: audio, blog, wordpress, embed, mp3

Embed a MP3 Audio File in a WordPress.com Blog Post originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2012.