Saturday, September 24, 2011
First Roll Out Done!
Well, we finally got something right! We were able to image 120 iPADS in about four/five hours yesterday! Pretty amazing to see--but typing in the repetitive numbers and codes was draining. I think I was very energized for the first three hours then I hit a wall and my brain quit working. Perhaps the biggest hurdle this time was the fact that not all the codes on the cart we used (Ann's) wanted to go into the iPADs for syncing. I talked to Gail and she has experienced a similar thing on her cart when charging. As a result, we will make sure each teacher has some extra cords to manually connect each pad to the computer rather than the cart for servicing. It felt good to hand each teacher a box or two of their ipads and know that our part in the roll out is almost done! Fhewwwww! State cadre here we come! Can't wait!
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Talk about a flat tire....
Roll out Day 1!
Joe and I arrived at WMS around 8:30 AM in order to accomplish two things. First, we wanted to meet with each teacher and get a feel for how things are going and build a schedule for rolling out the iPAD2s. Second, we wanted to create use our updated image from Gail's class and copy it to each of the five macbook accounts.
As with all great laid plans there are always pot holes and road blocks. Instead of pot holes and road blocks we actually discovered the bridge was out in some cases and that the pot holes were actually sink holes the size of a barge. Least to say we didn't quite accomplish what we set out to do. Don't get me wrong...the meetings with teachers went great--better than great! It was the iPAD2s that caused us trouble. Ok, Joe and I (mainly Joe) worked through them and now know what not to do! Ultimately, we discovered that we had to build a fresh, unblemished master iPAD2 for each itunes account (associated with each macbook). These would then become our master back-up for all future edits. Being the ESTJ that I am, I took copious notes on how to complete this process and was assigned to create these masters for each macbook at home over the next day. So far things have been going well! I went through Kolleen's and Amber's to see what we missed and double checked the restrictions. As I was doing this I had Gail (on Facetime) check a couple settings at the school! iPAD #2 happened to be the one she grabbed and instantly she was asked for a password and it appeared apps were trying to sync wirelessly. This is something Joe and I have been confused about--some pads try to do it and some don't. In addition, we thought we had turned off all the settings for this when registering ipads--low and behold, I found a button in the restrictions under "Store" that needs to be turned off. On some ipads we had turned that off (as we found out checking others in Gail's room) and others we hadn't. It felt good to be able to process why some were and some weren't trying to sync wirelessly. Now we need to decide is we want this or not. It seems like it would be nice--but would it not work if the ipads are close to other teachers' macs. Still some experimenting to do!
Well, back to work. I need to get around for my substitute job this afternoon. I will finish the other two masters when I return.
Joe and I arrived at WMS around 8:30 AM in order to accomplish two things. First, we wanted to meet with each teacher and get a feel for how things are going and build a schedule for rolling out the iPAD2s. Second, we wanted to create use our updated image from Gail's class and copy it to each of the five macbook accounts.
As with all great laid plans there are always pot holes and road blocks. Instead of pot holes and road blocks we actually discovered the bridge was out in some cases and that the pot holes were actually sink holes the size of a barge. Least to say we didn't quite accomplish what we set out to do. Don't get me wrong...the meetings with teachers went great--better than great! It was the iPAD2s that caused us trouble. Ok, Joe and I (mainly Joe) worked through them and now know what not to do! Ultimately, we discovered that we had to build a fresh, unblemished master iPAD2 for each itunes account (associated with each macbook). These would then become our master back-up for all future edits. Being the ESTJ that I am, I took copious notes on how to complete this process and was assigned to create these masters for each macbook at home over the next day. So far things have been going well! I went through Kolleen's and Amber's to see what we missed and double checked the restrictions. As I was doing this I had Gail (on Facetime) check a couple settings at the school! iPAD #2 happened to be the one she grabbed and instantly she was asked for a password and it appeared apps were trying to sync wirelessly. This is something Joe and I have been confused about--some pads try to do it and some don't. In addition, we thought we had turned off all the settings for this when registering ipads--low and behold, I found a button in the restrictions under "Store" that needs to be turned off. On some ipads we had turned that off (as we found out checking others in Gail's room) and others we hadn't. It felt good to be able to process why some were and some weren't trying to sync wirelessly. Now we need to decide is we want this or not. It seems like it would be nice--but would it not work if the ipads are close to other teachers' macs. Still some experimenting to do!
Well, back to work. I need to get around for my substitute job this afternoon. I will finish the other two masters when I return.
Friday, September 16, 2011
First TIID Training
These first two days of training were quite a eye opening adventure! Although I already knew about the different personality types (Myer-Briggs inventory) it was a great reminder of each and how it affects both coaching and teaching.
For the last ten years I have really focused on how it affects my students, but since I have quit teaching and moved into a mentoring position, my focus has needed to change! Interestingly enough, I found day two to be the best when it came to learning how to use this information to promote more productive coaching relations, but not detailed enough. I learned that our technology coach and I are complete opposites when it comes to work and that the biggest insult I or anyone else could ever do is to do his work for him. Fortunately I was grouped with him quite a bit (due to being opposites) and learned quite a bit about him. We also practiced dealing with coaching scenarios and were given some great tools to use when coaching other personality types.
As for my role in this grant program I think my job can be identified as an instructional coach. I find it interesting that many of the larger school districts don't have both the technology and instructional coach positions. Instead in many cases a classroom teacher is fulfilling one of these positions as well as the project director. Not to mention that we are very far ahead of other districts. In some cases the schools haven't even placed the order for the equipment and in others the teachers have just received their pads to play with. None of the students have the equipment yet! Good to know.
Finally, I know were concerned about ideas for lesson plans. On October 12, 2011 teachers will get this information. I think since we will have 7 people at this meeting it will be very important to divide up amongst the break out content sessions and then reconvene to share what we learned. Because some schools have laptops and others have iPAD2s there will be sessions that include apps and web 2.0 tools. In our case, I hope that our teachers will realize that they need to be using both of these tools rather than trying to replace web 2.0 tools with apps. The free apps aren't there to do this and we would really be giving up on some great resources if we did this.
I am looking forward to learning more about this and have found that the teach.oetc.org/coach site has a link to lesson plan ideas from past grantees. I will be exploring this site very soon. We also did a lot of video creation and although I forgot to ask what program was used to by other groups to make theirs, I did learn of quite a few worth exploring. Two I think we can use include Splice and Videolicious for iPAD2! Check it out!
For the last ten years I have really focused on how it affects my students, but since I have quit teaching and moved into a mentoring position, my focus has needed to change! Interestingly enough, I found day two to be the best when it came to learning how to use this information to promote more productive coaching relations, but not detailed enough. I learned that our technology coach and I are complete opposites when it comes to work and that the biggest insult I or anyone else could ever do is to do his work for him. Fortunately I was grouped with him quite a bit (due to being opposites) and learned quite a bit about him. We also practiced dealing with coaching scenarios and were given some great tools to use when coaching other personality types.
As for my role in this grant program I think my job can be identified as an instructional coach. I find it interesting that many of the larger school districts don't have both the technology and instructional coach positions. Instead in many cases a classroom teacher is fulfilling one of these positions as well as the project director. Not to mention that we are very far ahead of other districts. In some cases the schools haven't even placed the order for the equipment and in others the teachers have just received their pads to play with. None of the students have the equipment yet! Good to know.
Finally, I know were concerned about ideas for lesson plans. On October 12, 2011 teachers will get this information. I think since we will have 7 people at this meeting it will be very important to divide up amongst the break out content sessions and then reconvene to share what we learned. Because some schools have laptops and others have iPAD2s there will be sessions that include apps and web 2.0 tools. In our case, I hope that our teachers will realize that they need to be using both of these tools rather than trying to replace web 2.0 tools with apps. The free apps aren't there to do this and we would really be giving up on some great resources if we did this.
I am looking forward to learning more about this and have found that the teach.oetc.org/coach site has a link to lesson plan ideas from past grantees. I will be exploring this site very soon. We also did a lot of video creation and although I forgot to ask what program was used to by other groups to make theirs, I did learn of quite a few worth exploring. Two I think we can use include Splice and Videolicious for iPAD2! Check it out!
Sunday, September 11, 2011
IPAD roll out!
What an amazing experience--the kids are so comfortable with the ipads already! It amazes me how different kids are from adults...they have so much more experience in technology and far less fear! It is funny to me that they still want everything spoon fed to them though, but if prompted to explore and figure it out for themselves they will with much less frustration than adults. (This spoon feeding seems to be a direct result of our traditional teaching methods used for many decades--is this slowly beginnign to change? :)
Already I have found that the students are teaching us rather than us teaching them! They are quick to discover alternative ways to accomplish tasks and in many ways, much simplier methods--which any adult would like. For example, I don't have to double click the square button when holding down the on/off button to take a screen shot--I just have to hold it once (it being the square button). Nice to know.
As for syncing...it isn't that hard just time consuming since we will have to manually touch each pad in order to turn off some restrictions prior to syncing and then turn them back on afterwards so students can't purchase apps. This isn't what we had hoped...but it just means teachers will not want to sync very often due to time constraints. At this point once a month is looking doable--knowing that it will take additional time from either your own time before or after school and/or your prep period. Unless you can hire a tech guy/gal to do this...and what school has this lately with the economy the way it is? I can see this as a problem for all schools as they try to implement more technology nationwide.
Already I have found that the students are teaching us rather than us teaching them! They are quick to discover alternative ways to accomplish tasks and in many ways, much simplier methods--which any adult would like. For example, I don't have to double click the square button when holding down the on/off button to take a screen shot--I just have to hold it once (it being the square button). Nice to know.
As for syncing...it isn't that hard just time consuming since we will have to manually touch each pad in order to turn off some restrictions prior to syncing and then turn them back on afterwards so students can't purchase apps. This isn't what we had hoped...but it just means teachers will not want to sync very often due to time constraints. At this point once a month is looking doable--knowing that it will take additional time from either your own time before or after school and/or your prep period. Unless you can hire a tech guy/gal to do this...and what school has this lately with the economy the way it is? I can see this as a problem for all schools as they try to implement more technology nationwide.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Avatar Somewhere!
Ok, I managed to get my avatar onto my igoogle account and onto the blog! Yeah me! Now, where would teachers use it? Also, I still need to figure out how to get it on Facebook!
Dopple Me!
So I finally got my avatar to attach somewhere--to my eblogger account. If you go to Doppleme.com you can make avatars for free. Although it provides links to add to facebook and igoogle, I still haven't been able to accomplish either one of these! Also, I can get the http language for websites as well as copy and paste the picture of my avator into my pictures folders, but can't seem to get it anywhere else. There has to be a more user friendly way of getting this onto stuff the kids can use. I hope that Joe can help me with some of this. I am going to google my questions and maybe I can come up with a solution. Also, I recommended this site to all those in the group and hope they will register so I can get some coinage to "purchase" new accessories! Hee, Hee! If I figure this out we can use it as a lesson in the classroom.
So I finally got my avatar to attach somewhere--to my eblogger account. If you go to Doppleme.com you can make avatars for free. Although it provides links to add to facebook and igoogle, I still haven't been able to accomplish either one of these! Also, I can get the http language for websites as well as copy and paste the picture of my avator into my pictures folders, but can't seem to get it anywhere else. There has to be a more user friendly way of getting this onto stuff the kids can use. I hope that Joe can help me with some of this. I am going to google my questions and maybe I can come up with a solution. Also, I recommended this site to all those in the group and hope they will register so I can get some coinage to "purchase" new accessories! Hee, Hee! If I figure this out we can use it as a lesson in the classroom.
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