Technology for Teachers

You never saw this when I was in school… Kids hanging out just to charge their gadgets! This is from DRHS….

My Sunday/Tuesday session (longer version) from TIES:

My Monday session at TIES:

Sorry but you had to be there for the discussion portion. 

@wfryer I posted a few book suggestions before I sign off. Night. Happy reading!

any recommendations on iPhone apps?

I had a few presentations at this years TIES conference in Minnesota.  The following cut/paste email is a response I sent to one of the participants from one of my sessions.  They had a few questions that I think more than one person may have….

<MESSAGE>

Thank you for the compliment on the session, it was a great time at TIES this year.  I’ll respond inline to the questions you posed:

1.  do you need a gmail account…I thought I  heard you say that it wasn’t neccesary but when I looked today it sort of looks like you do.
>>If you are setting up a personal account through google you end up using a gMail account even if you never use it for email.  Similar to having access to the Calendar and many other Google tools that you have access to even if you don’t use them.  As far as email for kids….  if you use the "Google Apps Education Edition" http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html your student don’t need an "email" account.  With this setup you (or another person) act as the administrator for all of the users and add their accounts.  Using the education edition does setup student email accounts, but you can turn that feature off.  Their username then becomes their login id.

2. Can I sign up as the admin for a class and then the kids won’t need an email acct?
>>Yes!  If you use the http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html version you act as the administrator and setup student accounts (you can add them one at a time, or import from a spreadsheet (CSV)).  If I’m hearing you right this is probably the setup that you’re looking for.   Just a side note…  you mention little ones, if you are in a lab setting you can write down usernames/passwords on recipe cards and keep them in a central location where you can hand them out to kids who have a hard time remembering….

Is this feasaeble for little kids?
>>Great question!  Some would say that this depends on the age of the student… while I can’t disagree I’d say that your purpose holds much more importance in answering this question.  I guess my point is that you take into consideration what standards/outcomes you are looking at attaining and decide which "technological" option is your best bet.  Or which one gives you the greatest ROI (return on investment).  It sounds like you are looking for "free" options and although Google doesn’t cost anything $ wise, you’ll still be investing your time and instructional time with students as you learn how to implement this (and any new) program.  So for this question I’d have to say I need a little more information, mainly what standards/outcomes are you looking for.  Once I know that we might even be able to brainstorm some other options for you.

There is sooo much info on the website and I am the impatient type.
>>Aint that the truth!  It can be overwhelming at first but once you have in mind your goal and know where you are heading the hard work seems much more worth it. 

What we are dealing with here at our school is we are trying to find an app that is on all the computers.  We use macs and we have versions from OS9 to laptops with OSX.  We no longer can use Appleworks and we aren’t real happy with Pages and the school district does not want to pay for Word.  So, after hearing you yesterday I thought we could use Google Apps for the kids to make reports, etc.

I hope this makes sense, otherwise I’ll try to answer later in the day next time. 

If you could look this over and let me know the ages of your students and what you’re looking to accomplish (standards,etc.) I can hopefully give you a better hand.  Although I presented on Google Docs we might be able to find something different that matches our purposes.


Thank you again for your compliment and taking the time to write to me!

Sincerely,

Sean Martinson
Dean of Students & Activities Director
Deer River High School

Cell: 218.259.3129

M.S. Educational Leadership
Licensed K-12 Principal
Education, Leadership, and Technology Consultant

@shareski, couldn’t pull the link up on my end.

Coming to TIES gets me fired up again for tech…..

gave @wfryer many props in my talks so far…..

Our school year has yet to start (with students) so in my role as a Dean of Students I’ve yet to fully implement my iPhone in that role.  As far as my role as Activities Director (also known as Athletic Director) I’ve begun to use a handful of apps to increase my productivity.  One of the main group of items is from Google as I use Google Docs, gMail, picasasa, Google Calendar, etc.  I recently added an app called MiGhtyDocs which lets me access my Google Docs quicker.  I have a doc set with all of the officials and game workers still needed so as people call back I can quicky pull up an up to date list (the Google Doc also lets me make it viewable to people as a webpage).  I still use Evernote off and on.  I’ve also recently added WhitePages which works pretty slick as an iPhone phone book.  I also have the WordPress App installed but I’m waiting for our seasons to get in full swing to see if I use it to post mobily to wordpress blogs for our Activities Department.  I added Adventure to see what the pre-k style apps are starting to look like, a bit too simple for my daughter though.  So all in all I’m increasing my productivity through the use of this phone.  I’ve been able to import all of the contacts from around our state that are using the same program for their Activities Departments and I await a list of all the ADs in our state.  Pretty sweet phone.

• Google iPhone Apps: http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/
• MiGhtyDocs: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10012949-2.html
• WordPress: http://iphone.wordpress.org/
• EverNote: http://evernote.com/about/download/iphone/
  
• WhitePages: http://www.whitepages.com/
• Preschool Adventure: http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/08/18/review-preschool-adventure-for-iphone