Julie+Balfanz

Julie Balfanz** Technology Paraprofessional Stillwater Junior High School
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 * Monday 6/30**

Malinda and I attended two very good Apple hands-on workshops. (She is having difficulty with some wireless connection issues and is unable at the moment to update the wiki). Workshops consisted of small groups, very organized and well staffed. Equipment provided (iPods, Belkin voice recorders, HUGE monitors, etc.) Short, focused lessons. Big focus on real-world collaborative classroom applications, extending the students' learning day by tying into their "play" spaces, asynchronous learning. Successful examples of engaging, motivating and collaborative projects.

ali.apple.com

Engaging readers and language learners with iPod**
 * Listen, That's Me!

Based on the number of iPods we end up confiscating during study halls, I have to assume that a large percentage of students in our district have iPods, and we know they are very adept at using them, along with the iTunes software. Nice way to leverage technology, already in the students' hands. It was very interesting to see how they were being used in this session with a language learning application. I came away with some really good tips on how to modify the ID3 tags (the metadata container) for each recorded file to customize the data according to teacher needs. Tips for using custom tags and SmartPlaylists to makes teacher file management much easier. The world language teachers at SJHS already use a lot of technology in their classrooms, and I can really see where they could utilize iPods (especially as the available technology is stretched pretty thin, with more teachers utilizing the laptop carts for extended periods of time.

Experience a model 21st century project**
 * Rolling on the River

Wonderful example of a successful collaborative project - both locally and globally. Using Google Docs to do collaborative research, analysis, and script writing. iChat interviews with experts to augment reasearch. Creating **quick** and **easy** podcasts using Photobooth (inputting alternative backgrounds via a "blue-screen" effect). Can see application for projects where teachers have limited classroom time to spend on video recording and editing, but would like to incorporate video podcasting. Very cool collaborative ideas!

Spent time exploring the Exhibit area and attended demonstrations...

America's Digital Schools 2008: Six Trends to Watch** Presented by Tom Greaves, co-author, and George Warren of AMD
 * Evening presentation by AMD: (Very interesting and informative...)

Main idea: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.” -Wayne Gretzky Where will the puck be in the future? Their goal is to isolate the most important ways in which technology is changing teaching and learning and identify the implications of those changes for the future. Several new 1:1 districts attended, as well as those looking for data to bring back to their decision-makers.

Talked about the new quad-core processors coming out next year - bandwidth will increase by more than 50%. 3D imaging will be more widely incorporated: Google Picasa and Google Earth- 3D viewing, Spacetime.com -3D web searching

Six Trends to Watch: 1. Learning Management Systems (WiMax is coming, more effective than WiFi-greatly increased distance - he was talking 30 miles instead of 3...) 2. 1:1 Computing 3. Online assessments 4. Mobile computing devices 5. Interactive whiteboards 6. Bandwidth (Their findings have indicated that bandwidth will prove to be one of the major factors impacting future funding challenges. Will need to think about leveraging bandwidth capacity by using application specific caching appliances or local application content servers, burstable bandwidth from ISP, peak vs. average bandwidth, etc.




 * Tuesday, 7/1**

Tried to attend a couple of sessions, but was locked out. Dropped in on another Apple workshop:
 * Hey, I have Something Important to Say!** - Podcasting with GarageBand, showed some really cool examples done by elementary age students. Came away with several practical time saving tips and project management suggestions.

Attended session titled: Cell phones used for instantaneous video-casting, live feed from cell phones embedded in blogs, IP cell phones tied into admin security cameras in schools, examples of text messaging integrated into G-Cast (free service) and PollEverywhere.com, Voice to Text applications using Jott (gave some useful examples such as foreign language translation and admin uses for documenting intervention). Dynamic presenter... very entertaining.
 * It's In Your Pocket: Teaching Spectaculary with Cell Phones**

Attended evening dinner session sponsored by Cognos/IBM.