Chanatown

Chanatown’s seen some tumbleweed roll through and the single post in June is really starting to gather some dust. Well, the end of the school year brought joy and relief to many teachers, but for this Technology Integration Specialist, it meant a whirlwind of responsibility from working with classrooms on final projects to setting up summer school teachers with technology tools. The pinnacle of activity came in the form of a four-day series of technology training workshops that we offered to our teachers. With the exception of a SMART Board training led by our partner at COTG, and an assistive technology workshop led by another specialist, each 2-hour session was organized and facilitated by yours truly. They included:

Image via Wikipedia So, I finally completed the certification process for becoming a Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer . Yesterday, we had a meetup in the Google offices in downtown Chicago with the live feed from Mountain View, and although I learned a few things I'm not allowed to share, I'd like to reflect on a few nuggets of Google goodness that's open knowledge but might have flown under the radar.

In my overview  post on Discovery Education Streaming (DES), I discussed how to use the main homepage (My DE) to begin your search for relevant, engaging, and embeddable video content. However, as noted in the post, DES Streaming has over 80,000 videos and its supply increases daily. Today, we'll look at how to narrow down your search, how to save your discovered content, and discuss a few more ways to get the most out of this great resource.

Image via Wikipedia Today's workshop focused on giving some basic training to teachers using a Tablet PC for the first time. During the 2-hour training, I helped teachers become familiar with their new machine (Lenovo X61t), offered some tips and minor tweaks, and we then explored some possibilities for using the Tablet in the classroom.

Living in the " second city ", I'm a big fan of the Improv scene and local comedy clubs that are close by.  This morning and earlier this summer, I've been giving short presentations to our incoming 9th graders on using our electronic gradebook system along with Google Apps.  After introducing students to their mail account, I gave a brief talk on Google Docs .  Rather than making students sit through a presentation, however, I tried to get them as active and immersed in the activity as possible, even if it's something as simple as sending an email to their teacher, though this proves to be very useful, as the teacher can then create a quick group contact list.

Part of our final assignment as Google Certified Teachers is to prepare a final reflection.  The end of the school year seems a fitting time to do this, and I would have written this sooner, but I've been busily involved with organizing and running a week's worth of professional development for our teachers followed by an awesome trip to Denver for ISTE 2010.

This link will take you to the Agenda for the Netbooks and Literacy workshop day #2.   Netbooks and Literacy is a summer project approved by Evanston Township High School (ETHS).  Its main objective is to train English/History teachers on the hardware, software, and Web 2.0 tools that will be available to them during the 2010-2011 school year.  These teachers will be piloting the second phase of a project designed to utilize netbooks in the classroom with the goal of improving literacy instruction.

This link will take you to the Agenda for the Teacher Websites workshop. This workshop is part of a week-long series of voluntary technology trainings provided by Evanston Township High School (ETHS).  Its main objective is to train teachers across disciplines on the features, benefits, and impact of designing, creating, and maintaining a classroom website.

This link will take you to the Agenda for the Tablet PC workshop. This workshop is part of a week-long series of voluntary technology trainings provided by Evanston Township High School (ETHS).  Its main objective is to train teachers across disciplines on the features, benefits, and impact of using Tablet PC's in the high school classroom.

This link will take you to the Agenda for the Google Apps workshop. This workshop is part of a week-long series of voluntary technology trainings provided by Evanston Township High School (ETHS).  Its main objective is to train teachers across disciplines on the features, benefits, and impact of using Google Apps in the high school classroom.

This link will take you to the Agenda for the Netbooks and Literacy workshop day #1.   Netbooks and Literacy is a summer project approved by Evanston Township High School (ETHS).  Its main objective is to train English/History teachers on the hardware, software, and Web 2.0 tools that will be available to them during the 2010-2011 school year.  These teachers will be piloting the second phase of a project designed to utilize netbooks in the classroom with the goal of improving literacy instruction.

Yesterday, we sent out an invitation and link to a Google Form (live sample - please do not use this to apply) for our series of technology professional development workshops this summer. Within minutes, we had several 25+ teachers sign up for multiple trainings, so I think this helps to answer my question of when is the best time for teacher training .  I'm looking forward to developing most of the materials for these 2-3 hour experiences.  I plan on using a similar template to that of the Google Teacher Academy resources , for I particularly enjoyed being able to view a presentation in progress on my own screen, and I didn't need to worry if I missed something as nearly all of the resources would be linked through the site.  I'm looking forward to help reshape how we incorporate technology in education at ETHS, and this summer (my first official one as Tech Staff Developer), I'm excited to be working with a large number of dedicated teachers, all willing to come in...