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1.  Tammy Worcester - Rev Up Your Reading and Writing with Technology

• Nifty Links:
  • Tammy Worcester
  • Workshop Handout for Today
  • Survey
  • Results
• Tammy Speaking:
  • I’m excited about the Web 2.0 tools but our kids need lots of different tools in their toolbox.
  • We’re reviewing the tools that appear on this web page in groups. Here’s a list of tools:
    • Spelling City - Features include easy to upload word lists (for spelling lists), where teachers can batch upload their own lists….
    • VozMe - Takes any text you type in and converts it to an MP3 file you can play on screen or download to your computer. Easy way to convert text that must be read to students to audio format. It is also available in spanish…worked pretty well for short phrases.
    • Wordle - Lots of fun.
    • Newspaper Clipping Generator - create your own newsclippings.

1.1  COSN CTO Meeting

Online Testing

2.  Feedback from Mark Gabehart

• Provide budget assumptions…
  • Infrastructure for school: caveat, the older the schools, the more need there will be. $2000 was budgeted for 25 computers to include electrical, cabling, etc. At our old schools for end of course testing—where we have to put together extra labs (5–6) or laptop scenarios. The money being provided is 3–4 times less than what is being provided.
  • In Abilene ISD, we would get $600K from TEA instead of $3–4Million needed. $1000 per computer, which is fine, but they did not budget for the infrastructure costs.

3.  Response from TEA’s John

• Division of Assessment went out to get an estimate. “I’ll have to share that with them.”
• Mark: Online testing and state technology allotment are equivalent, so it may very well be that the allotment may be repurposed for online testing.
• John: Title 2, Part D
  • Open system in April to drop tech literacy assessment numbers
  • Preliminary numbers:
    • Unduplicated number of computers for instructional: 861 responded, or 71%. Total numbers: 1.6 million computers. Majority of computers are connected to Internet at 45bits per second. 45,000 had no connectivity, and 2000 that use dial-up internet access.
    • Section 2: 8th grade literacy. Out of 247,000 participating 8th graders, 73% passed.

Question from Dr. Alice Owen, Irving ISD

• Alice: Every district did their own thing. We did a pilot.
• Response from TEA
  • TEA doesn’t have the authority to establish an online assessment.
  • Section 3: Administrator data…lots of blank spaces. This will be reported in February once it is shared with the federal government.

4.  Alice from Irving ISD

Laptop cart initiative: 9–10 years of experience:

• Great professional development for teachers
• Teachers have to stay ahead of the kids
• Give your teachers laptops long before you give them to your students.
• More proficient (students).
• Allowed to take laptops home. It’s not a 1 to 1 if the laptops are just kept on carts.
• Extra time at home and work with family members at home.
• Strong support from the administrator. With a weak administrator, weak results. Schools that have implemented better, we see improved TAKS scores.
• Plan to fail, fail to plan.
• The easiest thing is getting the laptops. The hardest is getting teachers to change pedagogy. Don’t talk about it as a learning program, getting teachers to change. Work with districts who’ve already done it.
• Activity about org charts

4.1  Technology Applications:TEKS -

Fort Davis ISD

• EasyTech
• Tech Apps Grades K-2
• http://www.learning.com
• TEKS K-2
• SHowcase
  • Video
  • Powerpoint
  • PhotoStory 3
  • WebQuest

5.  Showcase #1: Math Video -

• Instructions for students. Write your script…do not show the solution. Your classmates will see if they can solve your story problem
  • Picture box
  • Say
  • Action
• The presenter is showing a great story problem that shows children solving a math problem that they created. After they scripted it, then the students worked through that. They did this in PhotoStory, too.

6.  Showcase #1: Shapes

• Worksheet shows students who take pictures of diff shapes on the campus. One has the clipboard, one has the camera, then they bring back…
• No transitions or PPT bells-n-whistles until after they’ve setup their PPT presentation.
  • Presentation elements….
  • Variation on the SHAPE pictures is to use shapes appearing in NATURE
• Presenter shared that she has a box of 10 cameras to use.

7.  Showcase: WebQuest Take Care of Your Own Pet

• Did this with 2nd grade
• Web quest at Dr. Bernie Dodge’s site

Friday Fun

• Presenter: Cindy Hedeman, Bowie Intermediate
  • http://sites.google.com/site/chedeman
  • 940–689–2906
  • cindy.hedeman@bowieisd.net

8.  Mystery Picture

• Fill in and work with grids - Teacher Created Materials

9.  Acrostic Poem

• Opn MS Publisher
• Choose a vertifical style and key in your word. I like the students to use all capital letters for their main word
• Choose different styles of horizontal word art to complete the acrostic poem. Students need to remember they don’t need the first letter of the word.
• More on CD

10.  Tessellations

• Instructions
  • Open Paint
  • Click on Image and uncheck draw opaque
  • choose the solid rectangle
  • Draw a rectangle
  • Use freeform tools to draw a shape on left edge. Be sure to enter and exit the left side.
  • Move this shape to the right side
  • Repeat from top and move to bottom
  • Select shape
  • Copy shape and drag away to recolor
  • Move next to original shape and repeat to make a pattern.

10.1  TexTAN Legislative Panel and Reception

• Each of reps will introduce themselves by the area that they serve.
  • Rep Dan Branch, Dallas, Tx
  • Rep Harold Dutton, Houston, Tx
  • Rep Rob Eissler, Houston, Tx
  • Rep Scott Hochberg, Houston, Tx
  • Rep Dora Olivo, Houston, Tx
  • Rep Diane Patrick, Arlington, Tx

Discussion Rules

• Address 1 question to representatives and then others can speak up.

Discussion

• President Obama - “…equip tens of thousands of schools…with 21st century labs and libraries…technology…enabling them to compete with other countries.” How can Texas Legislature support this vision?
  • Eissler: I find myself agreeing with this issue of education. The classrooms of today in Southern Oklahoma, and found a one room schoolhouse at a ranch near the Red River. I was surprised at how close this schoolhouse was close to the classrooms of today. Our classrooms should look more like Board rooms where kids can interact more. We ought to think about how we design our classrooms. When I visit schools in Dallas ISD (core urban Dallas), teachers tell us the particular computer classrooms where students are coming for one hour of the day to do work/learn, and A) Students don’t want to leave; B) Kids are focused and engaged for that one hour. Again I’m just giving you anecdotal evidence. Finally, if we could find a way to give districts a little more flexibility, not have a 1 size fits all approach to content…maybe digital content will be more relevant to students in appropriate age-groups. Districts need a little more flexibility…in a time when we have shrinking budgets, in a day when Lt. Governor and Speaker have said to cut 2.5 percent from budgets, spend 2 billion dollars on proclamation, we need more flexibility in pricing and delivery of content.
  • What does the classroom of the future look like? Schools today are like Kiwanis airlines. We have to turn off all our technology, strap in and trust you that you’ll take us where we want to go. We don’t want kids to go backward in technology. Looking at the Clayton Christianson book—Disrupting Class—it’s the “disruptive technology that will take over the market is the software” and when adapt to learning styles.
  • By 2014, 50% of courses will be available online…tele-commuting, especially those in rural areas. Educational Opportunity equity is a big item. What can the legislature do? There is 3.5 billion dollars coming to Texas…is it pork or stimulus (or stimulated pork?)?
  • Looking at Technology plan and use that for extra money.
  • Stahan: Tech spending will be on tangible stuff. Having thought about this for a long time, the killer app where the state ought to be is the content itself. And, if we could start by putting all the best lesson plans online…a great portal to every educator in the State who thought this was the greatest place to start—because they could find the things they need to teach tomorrow and save them time, improve quality of instruction and rate them…almost like a wiki that they could improve over time, that seems to me the really smart and efficient way for the state to advance the ball.
  • In the longer term, I want to see best pedagogical, great instruction on the Internet for kids. When schools have the hardware/infrastructure for kids to sit at a computer and go at their own pace, they will be able to do that….
  • When the legislature talks about money, they ask what can we buy. A lot of our tech initiatives are focused on buying devices. Where we’ve missed the boat, and why the results (1 to 1) of these haven’t been awe-inspiring is because we are coming at this from the box standpoint.
  • We asked a lot of teachers how they could do their jobs. They didn’t say put a laptop on every desk. They said, “I’m a math teacher, I have 5 sections of kids, and get TAKS scores. Wouldn’t it be neat to find out which students didn’t get trig?” Where are some open source pedagogy that would be good for kids? That award winning teacher wants an analysis of student information. We have all this information but we don’t have a crowbar to open it up.
  • What questions are we trying to answer? It’s great for us to talk about organic wikis—”I’d like a pound of organic wikis to go please!”--but if we’re going to make all this stuff available, leverage what’s out there, and it’s important that everyone has access, not just at work but at home. . .projects worth mentioning, it’s important to get them access through a loan program. It’s important to get WiFI.

11.  Visions of the Future

12.  Paper-based textbook

• Hochberg: Can I phone a friend? Don’t get Dan started. Well, as I read the education code and proclamations, there is nothing statutorily that specifies districts must use textbooks. The problem is, where do you get it? To me there are several barriers…the material is available. Where do you get the money to buy the Kindle or the gadget that allows you to use the digital content?
• The publishing industry is going through…they haven’t really figured out how to take their business model forward. Folks at Rice and UT that have decided McGraw-Hill doesn’t have a reason to exist, and they can generate and publish materials on an open source platform…for $20-$25 you can print it all out. Will we be able to do a significant amount of the curriculum? Vetting? Will the materials be any good?
• Based at Rice, they’ve contracted with entire California system to publish online instructional materials the 10 courses across the state with largest enrollments. They can print it out, buy a book after picking your binding style…
• If you choose to buy your next set of textbooks, the state will split the difference with you in whatever you save. If you use that $25 open source textbook, and it saves you $100, we split the difference. This is the first time TEA is looking at it…we don’t have a response from the publishers.
• 2nd thing we’re doing to open up the process, if you don’t get in on it, you can come in late on the cycle. If you have a digital version of something, even in year 4, and you get on the approved list for districts to use. Looking at more ways to make that more maneuverable…and I think my fellow members are committed to this…everything competes for attention.
• Even with the state paying for the 1st set of textbooks, students/classrooms end up without books. I don’t want to put teachers in the situation of having to teach without instructional materials. We need to find a better way to deliver content, not just shipping it via freight.
• One of the concerns that the State Board of Education didn’t have staff and as such could review content…if that’s the issue, then come to us and we’ll try to get you more staff to review the content. When things are changing and our current students…ways to deliver content quicker, review it quicker and provide it to school districts in a more economic fashion. Schools in rural and urban and schools can do this in a more cost-effective manner.

13.  *McGraw-Hill…Strana says there’s a reason to exist, even in an electronic content world, if the content you create goes beyond digitizing content and putting it into a PDF. There is just not enough value added if you’re just doing that. Totally baseless and without merit: my sense is that in the textbook industry there are lots of geeks to improve learning to put content in an electronic format that is highly interactive, that lets kids drill down, vertically aligned, videos and animation

• Hochberg: what does the teacher really need? (Miguel’s observation: He really is pushing a curriculum management system with needs assessments, etc…sheesh!).
• Branch: Discussion of Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” and right-brain learners.

14.  Assessment for Learning- Using Data to Drive Instruction

• Olivo: EOC…we passed a bill but the money is not there. TEA is already working on this on how to clarify this. We better clarify expectations…the $30 is nothing of what we need.
• Hochberg: The reason you’re doing online…a computer in for every child in a school building to do online testing, that’s not a very good reason to do it. If you’re doing online course exams to get end of year assessments, that’s an even poorer reason to do it…it’s not something you’re doing daily to meet your mission. 1 of the things we missed the boat on—about computer in the classroom—we’re not leveraging the huge investment at home for kids who have access to tech. We need to focus, be more concerned about opening the vast world of the Internet and their only option is to do what is self-paced….that can be done at far less expense than just testing kids online. I will be filing legislation to make some changes to the immersion projects we’re working on and see if we can gain good educational improvements and get further on that than we have on the immersion stuff.
• Branch: I received an email about my freshman’s grade in high school. I tend to forward that to my daughter with some sort of comment before saying “Love, Dad”. I’ve had 5 kids go through this system…and I have real time monitoring of my youngest but hearing from teachers and that I can be response mid-semester or six weeks. It really works, transforms for parents how they can monitor for students.

15.  What are schools in your district telling you about their needs and your priorities?

• Strana: Need more money. We ask kids to power down when they come to school and that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen the intelligent classrooms and they say they are behind…relative to what? relative to where they want to be. So, right now, this is not a great session for new initiatives that are going to be expensive. Incremental goals…what we can hope for. One of the things I’m going to try to understand before the session is over, I’d love for there to be a portal that was really a great resources for preparing tomorrow’s lessons. We have the law but don’t have the portal which has been on the books for 6 years.
• Arnold Adair (Superintendent of Schools, Deer Park ISD): We don’t always need TEA to approve everything that gets taught in schools…the answers are in the heads of the people in this room. Not everyone will be ready to move forward at the same time, so let’s let them move ahead.
• Reception is immediately following…visit with them one on one.