ISTE2015 Ignite Video - How iPads Transport Students Through Time And Space

Being one of the ISTE Ignite speakers at this year's ISTE Conference was an amazing experience and allowed me to share many of the innovative, engaging ways that teachers in my district are using technology to engage students. Kudos to all of the teachers in my district who are working to integrate iPads and technology integration into their classrooms to make learning more engaging for students!

TEDx Burnsville Video Released - Real World Ready

The long-awaited TEDx Burnsville videos have been released and I'm excited to share mine below.

Please watch why I believe we need to start recognizing that our students learn differently than most of their teachers did and that traditional classrooms must change in order to retain our students' interest and develop their academic skills.

The amount of screen time that our students devote to their interests and hobbies online could impact their academic learning if schools tapped into using more digital resources and online delivery formats that could extend the school day beyond the classroom walls and typical school day bells.

The amount of technology from previous generations still being used in our schools today seemed to hit home with the audience as a humorous walk down the path of instructional technology used during my K-12 educational years. If you missed an earlier blog post I wrote about some of the inspirations for my TEDx Talk, it's worth noting that the idea for sharing the timeline of educational technology was spurred by this 2011 Edudemic article by Jeff Dunn on the "Evolution of Classroom Technology" and has been a topic that I have poked fun at in some of my previous ISTE presentations over the years.

A popular flat icon graphic from my presentation was the depiction below created by my amazing colleague David Freeburg based on an Apple presentation showing the timeline of our current students' lives and the immersive availability of technology that has developed throughout their short lifetimes.

Image Credit: David Freeburg

I would be remiss if I also did not give credit to another of my talented colleagues, Lee Vang, whose images below not only demonstrate her eye for layout and skill with Photoshop, but also represent visuals for two of the primary initiatives in my school district that the department I am working in supports.

Image Credit: Lee Vang

I hope that watching my TEDx video inspires other educators to see the need for change in the classroom to better engage our students today.

K12 Online Conference Session Video Released - How Schools Are Preparing Students To Be Real World Ready

The K12 Online Conference is taking place over the next two weeks. The conference theme this year is "Igniting Innovation."

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My K12 Online Conference session this morning was about "How Schools Are Preparing Students To Be Real World Ready."










My session video is embedded below:

K12 Online Conference - How Schools Are Preparing Students To Be Real World Ready

TEDxBurnsvilleED Only One Week Away

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With only a little over a week to go until my TED Talk, I'm rehearsing constantly in preparation for my time on the stage at the Minnesota History Center.

I'm looking forward to hearing the other speakers and am humbled to have been chosen for such an honor. I'm also excited to share some of the same concepts that have been driving the work in my district to empower students and to ensure that we are providing the access to devices and other technology that they need in order to be well-prepared for life and studies after leaving my school district.

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In my opinion, it's imperative that we as educators are providing the access to devices and support needed for how to use them for educational purposes in order to ensure that all of our students are real world ready and can navigate through life after high school and be successful, no matter where that path may lead them.

The Evolution of Technology & Visionary Thinkers

I'm wondering if science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke would ever have dreamt of the evolution of computers from giant room-engulfing, punch card monsters to the elegant wrist watch-sized model just released by Apple when he was interviewed by ABC News for the One Day A Computer Will Fit On A Desk video in 1974.

The video below may be restricted from playing here in the blog due to ABC News. If the video does not play, you can click on the link in the player below to watch the video on YouTube's website.

It's funny how most things that are technology-related have consistently shrunk over the years both in terms of expense to manufacture as well as the physical size of the device. On the other hand, automobiles range from the tiny, ultra compact Smart Cars to gargantuan SUVs, with relative size indicating prestige and quality for the larger size vehicles.

It's interesting how mankind has evolved technologically buy yet still equates luxury and status with excessively large vehicles which are not overly friendly for the environment. Maybe Apple should be working on a driverless car instead of Google. Combining Apple's classic sense of style with their advanced technological engineering could only result in an amazing set of electric-powered vehicles differentiated to meet both the performance and economic needs of consumers. Of course, it would probably be highly likely that each car model would require a different cable to charge, thus requiring multi-vehicle families to purchase additional Apple cables.

Phones - Then and Now

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Cell phones have come a long way from the original Motorola DynaTAC handheld mobile phone created 41 years ago by Dr. Martin Cooper in 1973.

Who would have guessed that mobile phones would eventually evolve to the streamlined size and amazing capabilities that the smart phones of today have?

The evolution of smart phones is a testament to the development and rapid advancement of gadgets and technology in general. Just as mobile phones have expanded in rich feature sets while lowering the purchase cost, the continued development and production of other technology such as iPads and the myriad of Chromebook laptops is following a similar trajectory of more features with a smaller footprint size and a lower cost of ownership.

As the use of mobile technology and phones in the classroom approaches a new level of acceptability and proliferation, iPads and smart phones allow for students to connect and collaborate in ways unlike ever before.

Seven Days Until ISTE 2013

 I found this handy free embeddable countdown timer for websites and blogs from timeanddate.com (http://www.timeanddate.com/clocks/freecountdown.html).  The countdown timer is also available as a website-based timer (http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/create).

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The countdown to any date timer has an easy-to-use simple interface. Simply choose the countdown design, enter the timer title, select the date and time, and time zone of the event and click the Create Countdown button.  Simple as that!

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The website-based countdown to any date timer produces an easy-to-read countdown that stays active as long as you keep the webpage open.

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Timeanddate.com also offers a free online timer with a easy-to-use interface interface as well.  You can assign a name to the time, enter the amount of time, and select a sound to play when time runs out.

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The timer interface produced is easy to read and with the ability to create additional timer would enable a teacher to use this timer for station rotations without needing to reset and restart a timer.

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The third free online tool available at timeanddate.com is a stopwatch timer.

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The stopwatch timer even saves splits, which can be labeled onscreen. This could be handy if 

you want to time several students doing the same task and compare elapsed time or speed.

Overall, there are many handy tools available at this website for teachers to use in multiple ways in the classroom,  on a mobile device at their favorite sporting event, and maybe even to remind them of an anniversary or birthday coming up!

Google Translate Makes Blog Content Language-Friendly

Have you ever wanted to be fluent in a foreign language?  Well now you can be!

Not by spending  hours listening to self-paced Rosetta Stone language lessons or by living in a foreign country with a host family.  Thanks to a Google widget you can install in your blog layout, you can instantly become fluent in multiple foreign languages with the click of a simple drop-down menu widget that makes it quick and simple to translate the text content of your blog post on Google Blogger to another language.

You can quickly revert to the original language of your blog, especially if you're not as fluent as you used to be in the translated language and don't quite remember the original content of your blog, by simply clicking the X at the top right corner of your blog.

Imagine having a collaborating classroom partner in another country with students who speak an entirely different language than your own students do.  Now your students can easily use Google Blogger to create a blog of classroom writing and connections that can become instantly multi-lingual with a click of the Google Translate button, making the experience much more personalized for the collaborating classroom students while enabling global connections.

Tracking Derecho Winds With Wind Map

Last night's unusual derecho weather produced strong winds and rain. If you're like most people, you're probably wondering what a derecho is.  I certainly was when I heard my local weather forecaster Dave Dahl mention derecho-like weather predictions yesterday.

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A derecho is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a land-based, fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms. Derechos can carry hurranic or tornadic force and often deliver torrential rains and perhaps flash floods as well as strong winds. Winds convection-induced take on a bow echo(backward "C") form of squall line, forming in an area of wind divergence in upper levels of the troposphere, within a region of low-level warm air advection and rich low-level moisture. They travel quickly in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to an outflow boundary (gust front), except that the wind is sustained and increases in strength behind the front, generally exceeding hurricane-force. ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho

What a great opportunity to take advantage of an interesting and fun Web 2.0 website called Wind Map. http://hint.fm/wind/

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Wind Map is a personal art project created off hourly updates to surface wind data from the National Weather Service National Digital Forecast Database (http://ndfd.weather.gov/technical.htm).

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The site also includes of gallery of "Snapshots of Winds Past" (http://hint.fm/wind/gallery/).  One the past wind snapshots is of Hurricane Sandy's (http://hint.fm/wind/gallery/oct-30.js.html) near 40 mph winds.

Some of the great features of the wind maps include being able to hover over a region and get a pop-up of the wind speed at a particular latitude and longitude.  Clicking on a area of the map creates a zoomed in view, which can produce some great visuals for teaching meteorological concepts.

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A great classroom use of this website might be to take a screenshot of the site at relatively the same time every day use the thumbnails as part of a morning meeting activity or to create a table or spreadsheet of weather-related data comparisons of the wind, temperature, etc.