So What Exactly is ISTE?

Over the next few months you are going to hear a lot about ISTE. Chances are if you have spent 5 minutes on Twitter over the last few weeks you have seen people tweet about presenting (or not presenting) and ISTE this summer and you wondered what all the fuss was about. Hopefully this help make some sense of it all. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is a nonprofit organization that “serves educators and education leaders committed to empowering connected learners in a connected world.” ISTE is an international organization that has over 100,000 members. I first became familiar with ISTE in 2008 when I was doing research to figure out how to better use technology in my role as a teacher. I joined one of their virtual networks and I attend their annual conference and I was absolutely blown away by my experience. I have been back every year since then, mostly on my own dime. Needless to say I have become an expert on how to attend ISTE on a shoestring budget, but that is a completely different post.

Over the next few months I’m going to write a series of posts about ISTE which I hope you will find useful on some level. This first one will focus on what ISTE is and why becoming a member is beneficial to you as a professional. After this post I will narrow the focus to the ISTE standards. Later in the spring I will share some posts that will be useful to first-time conference attendees. (It is actually quite an overwhelming experience and it can be frustrating if you don’t approach it with a game plan.)

So what is ISTE? Basically, ISTE is an international professional organization that provides educators with resources, ideas, and networking opportunities to help advance the use of technology in education. Here are the highlights of what ISTE  provides for members:

• Technology standards for a variety of different groups of people from students to administrators. These standards provide a clear picture of which skills are important in our changing society.
• Variety of professional development opportunities including webinars, books, and online courses.
• Advocacy opportunities to help promote change anywhere from the local to national level.
• Membership in affiliate organizations from around the world. Many times membership in an affiliate organization means you qualify for a discounted ISTE membership.
• Meaningful way to give back to our learning community by providing volunteer opportunities.
• Connect with educators year-round in the online ISTE community. You can also connect with other educators using official conference hashtag which is #ISTE2015. (Rebels will use #ISTE15 so you might want to follow both.) The ISTE Twitter account, @isteconnects, is also very active and responsive to questions. You can also connect with ISTE and ISTE member on Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
• Digital and print access to entersekt.
• ISTE’s annual conference. The conference is held at the end of June in different  cities across the United States and it attarcts anywhere from 15,000 to 18,000 educators. To say it is HUGE is an understatement. This year the conference is going to be in Philadelphia and in 2016 it will be in Denver. I will write much more on the conference in the coming months but I would urge you to find a way to get there and get a room booked soon because they are filling up fast! If you are planning on attending try to find a way to get there by Saturday morning. There is always a great “unconference” that takes place and it is a usually one of the highlights of my ISTE experience each year.

Membership in ISTE is around $100 which is less than 30 cents a day. I look at it as an investment in myself. I have had the opportunity to do so many things because of my membership in ISTE. Please take a few minutes to check out their website and consider joining if you can. If you can attend their conference this summer it would be an experience that you would never forget!

Best of the Week of Dec. 12, 2014

I have been busy collecting great resources, but I got behind on sharing them! If you have a few minutes before the end of the year you might want to check out some of these posts. 

• 60 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom- Twitter is one of the most powerful communication tools we can use. We can connect to anyone in the world in an instant. Lots of educators shy away from it because they see it as a waste of time, but when used with a purpose it can help us do so many great things! Students are already using it so why not incorporate it into our repertoire? This article has lots of interesting ways that students across grade levels can use Twitter in the classroom.
  
• 12 Expert Twitter Tips for the Classroom- This post explores how Twitter can help make connections between learning and concepts.
  
• How ‘Deprogramming’ Kids From How to ‘Do School’ Could Improve Learning- This article explores what differentiated instruction looks like and how one teacher completely transformed his classroom by using a different approach.
  
• Mission #1: The Power of the Blog- This blog will probably only appeal to math teachers, but it's a really good resource so I wanted to share it.
  
• Creating on a Chromebook- Peter Vogel is a Canadian educator who was one of the first to use Chromebooks. He has shared this doc that is a list of common tasks and apps that students can use to complete the tasks. It's a great resource!

Stories in the Data

Last week when I was at the Google Teacher Academy in Ausin, Texas I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Aviles. He was a brilliant and energetic lead learner and his session on 21st Century Storytelling left my head spinning. The focus of this session was how we can look at data and tell a story with it. Chris introduced us to a tool called Ngram viewer. Ngram allows you to search for words in over 5 million books that date back 500 years. I don't know about you, but I think that is incredibly impressive!

David Warlick just wrote a post about how he is using Ngram to help him write a book about this history of educational technology. Imagine all of the possible ways that students could use this in a classroom! Instead of telling students how events and people are related, with some guidance, they can begin discovering these connections for themselves.

Ngram is not the only powerful tool that you can use to search data. Here are some other ones that Chris shared with us:

•  Google Trends- shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. Click here to learn more about Trends.
• Google Scholar- Google defines Scholar as a "simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research."
• Google News Archive- Search current or archived news stories from the US and other countries. Users can also search by topic.
• YouTube Trends- Google describes YouTube trends as "a new destination for the latest trending videos and video trends on YouTube and a resource for daily insight into what’s happening in web video."
• Google Correlate- Google Correlate is a tool which enables you to find queries with a similar pattern to a target data series. The target can either be a real-world trend that you provide (e.g., a data set of event counts over time) or a query that you enter.

Possible applications for these tools: 

• Learning the Mathematics of History through Ngram Viewer
• How to Use Google Correlate
• Fun with Google's Ngram Viewer
• How to Use Google Scholar

Creativity through Photography

Earlier this week I attended the Google Teacher Academy in Austin, Texas where I had the privilege of learning with over 50 of the brightest minds in education. One of my favorite learning sessions was Mobileography which was led by Cory Pavicich and Nicole Dalesio. We learned about about design principles as well as how to use NFC (Near Field Communication) tags. This article explains how NFC's work and this one provides some interesting ways to use them.

I enjoyed this session because ever since I was really young I loved taking pictures. I remember getting my first 35mm camera when I was in elementary school. When I was in high school I took an entire year of photography and I learned how to develop my own pictures. I can still remember the chemical odor of the darkroom and my excitement as the images began to develop. While darkrooms are a thing of the past for most of us what has replaced it is better! Mobile devices allow us to take pictures of everything which is great, but it can also be overwhelming! I learned how to take better and more interesting pictures in this session.

Imagine how photographs can enhance what we do in the classroom! If we teach students to take great shots and then use those images to tell a story. Photos can be used in so many creative ways to help students express their learning. If that isn't enough here are even more nine more projects to try with your students. I encourage you to think of a way to incorporate photography into your classroom before Christmas. Even if you have just a couple of devices students can take turns taking pictures. Take them outside and have them explore our world! Then for fun take a series of pictures and use Auto Awesome to create a movie!

Here are more resources shared by Cory and Nicole:

• Free Online Resources to Spark Creativity 
• How to Take Pictures with Your Phone 
• Snapseed for Android
• Repix App for Android or iOS

PDF's into Google Sites

Over the last couple of weeks I have had more than a handful of teachers ask how they can insert PDF's into their classroom websites. To be perfectly honest I do not have much experience working with PDF's so I did some research and I want to share what I have found. If you have a file that you would like to upload into your classroom site without losing the formatting then converting it to a PDF might be a good option. Some teachers have found that when they try to convert some of their Word documents to Google Docs that some weird formatting things happen. When she saved the file as a PDF she was able to upload it into Drive without losing the formatting. You can convert different file types to PDF's including slides. To get the PDF into your class Google Site takes one extra step, but it is pretty simple. After you create the PDF you will need to upload it into Google Drive. Change the settings on the PDF so that anyone with the link can view it. Copy the link to the PDF then open your Site and go to the page where you want to embed your PDF. You can create a new page if you wish. Go into edit mode then select Insert -----> More gadgets ------> Include Gadgets (iframe). Once you select the iframe gadget a box will appear. Paste the link to the PDF that you should have copied into the box. I recommend setting the width at 100 percent. Adjust the other settings if you like then save. Your PDF should appear on your page.

This would be an easy way for students to share different projects with you as well. If they were to create a trifold brochure using LucidPress or a diagram using LucidChart they could either share it with you through Drive or hyperlink it on a document that is editable by students that is shared on your Site. This might sound complicated but it is actually quite simple to set up and it is MUCH easier than sorting through 150 emails! 

Gmail 101

Teachers in my district have been using Gmail for almost a year. The switch from Outlook was welcomed by some and dreaded by others. I get that. Change is difficult, especially when we are crunched for time. When I planned workshops for this year one of the things I knew I needed to teach was Gmail. 

I put together this slideshow to help teachers as they being to make sense of Gmail. I had a Gmail account for years before it ever occurred to me that I could customize and make it work for me. Of course I changed the theme to make my inbox more attractive, but that was merely a superficial change. The true magic began to happen when I realized how to make Gmail work for me. 

My hope is that each teacher in my district will take the time to explore Gmail so they can really get a grasp on all of its wonderful features. I only have about 45 minutes with them to show them the features which is not even close to enough time! I wish I could take all of the credit for this presentation, but the amazing Amy Mayer is the one who created and shared the fabulous tutorials which I have included. 

Meet Josh Stumpenhorst

Blog: Stump the Teacher

Where are you from and what do you do?
I am from Oswego, IL and teach 6th graders to love reading, writing and history as an ELA and Social Science teacher. In addition, I am a basketball coach, track coach, athletic director and academic team leader. (Josh is also a former Illinois Teacher of the Year)

How are you connected to Beth?
I first connected with Beth via twitter a few years ago. We connected prior to an ISTE conference where she helped me get connected with other educators as I was a bit of a social media novice at that time. We have since worked together on other things including presenting together on a panel at ISTE.

How did you get involved in educational technology?
I see my involvement in educational technology as simply a natural extension of my role as a teacher. To me, technology is a series of tools and resources that allow me to do my job in a more effective manner. Early on in my career I sought out ways in which to use technology to engage my students in meaningful work beyond just use for the sake of use.

How has being a networked educator impacted your life?
Being a connected educator has changed my life in profound ways. I recently wrote about this for Corwin.

What is some advice you can give to teachers about how to start finding resources and building their own PLN.

This is a huge question and not a simple answer. To start the obvious first step is to get online and create accounts in these spaces. From there, reach out to other educators doing similar work to you and connect with them. I always suggest newbies use twitter and hashtags to find folks worth connecting with through that manner. For me, I started following the #SSchat on twitter and found lots of great Social Science teachers to connect with and learn from.

What is a tool that has captured your attention at the moment? What do you like about this tool?

The tool I have become quite fond of in recent years is KidBlog which allows my students to share content with a global audience. While this is not a new tool it has been new for me and I find it incredibly powerful as a way to create authentic audiences for students.

What is one piece of advice that you can give to educators who are just getting started with integrating technology into their classrooms?

The best advice I have is to stop and think before using any technology in your classroom. Is the technology going to allow you or your students to do something they can’t do without it? Will the use of technology improve the learning or simple be a distraction or a replacement for something already going on? The answers to those questions I find critically important to the way in which technology is used in schools in appropriate ways.

What are some things you hope to accomplish professionally in the next year or two?

Surviving common core and the new standardized assessments might be high on my list of accomplishments in the next year or two. :) Beyond that I hope to finish my first book with Corwin Press for teachers looking to start a revolution of ideas and practice within their classrooms. As always my goals are always to stay relevant and evolve my practice to best meet the individual needs of my students.