Leigh Graves Wolf

More #edtech questions answered – Elementary Tech Scope and Sequence and Middle School Careers Class

In continuing my quest to blog more - here are two more questions that appeared in my twitter feed today that prompted a post!

MAET student Mr. P tweeted:
Do you have any examples of scope and sequences for elementary tech?

I did some quick searching for you. The first things that came up on google were quite old, so I restricted the search to the past year. (Search results here)

Most of the scope and sequences that popped up were aligned to the ISTE Educational Technology Standards for Students or to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.  A really nice feature in the publication section of 21c website are the skill maps for each individual curriculum area.

The National Educational Technology plan can be found by visiting:
http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010

And finally, the state of Michigan Educational Technology Standards and Expectations can be found by visiting
http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-28753_33232_37328---,00.html
Using these international, national and state standards will be very helpful as you are developing your own scope and sequence.  Take the best from the existing frameworks and be innovative and fill in gaps that exist.  As you're in the process of building your scope and sequence, consider crowdsourcing - I see great potential here! Keep us updated on how you're progressing.

MAET Student Ms. R Facebooked:

Shout out to all of my teacher friends: Does anyone have any good resources to help me teach a careers class? (Leigh, do you know of any good technology sites that might help?)

First off, I love that I was mentioned in the Facebook post! What an honor! When I went to the State of Michigan Department of Education website and looked up the curriculum for "Career and Employability Standards" I was quite surprised to see the standards had not been updated since 1998. Quite a bit has changed since then! Looks like the area is ripe for a committee to rewrite the standards - if you're interested I can find out who to contact and you can be instrumental in making change happen.

For your class, I think starting with the ISTE/21c skills I suggested to Mr. P above would be a great place to start - they will assist in setting up the flexibility and innovation your students will need to prepare for jobs in fields that don't exist yet. I think the kids would love the "Quickfire challenge" idea.  Take a look at the existing state benchmarks, keep the ISTE/21c skills in mind and let your imagination take over - I would be happy to help in the brainstorming process.

Whenever the word "career" is mentioned, I think of @MSUAAJohn (John Hill) Director of Alumni Career Services at MSU.  Additionally, we have the Career Services Network at MSU which has gathered quite a few online career resources.  I'm sure John would love to connect with a fellow Spartan (and with potential future Spartans in your classroom) to help bring an outside perspective to your students (live via Skype or even a brief recording.)

I hope this helps get the ball rolling!

Video Voicemails

Here is another inquiry I received yesterday from MSU technology rockstar Jodi Spicer (follow her on twitter! @JodiSpicer)

I am hoping you can help me - I am working with a couple faculty in our department, and trying to help them figure out ways to incorporate little videos into their online and hybrid courses. One of the things I remember you sharing at a brown-bag lunch that I went to was your "video voicemails" that you sent to your students (probably last summer?) I remember you were sitting near a fountain in Europe somewhere, and it was about 2 minutes long. Would you be willing to send me an example or two - so I can share with faculty? I would GREATLY appreciate it. As I said, I'm trying to help them see the usability, feasibility, fun and interactivity that FlipVideos can provide.

I started using video voicemails in my CEP 815 and 820 courses a few years ago.  I frequently use the FlipCam or the PhotoBooth on my Mac to record the video.  They're a great, quick way to stay in touch with my students, even when I'm traveling so they know I'm still present in the course! The video voicemails help create the connection between student and instructor and are also a nice outlet to reinforce important concepts/theories, address confusion, and create a class culture.

Remember, keep them short!! Around the 2 minute mark - otherwise you'll move beyond "voicemail" and it becomes a "regular" lecture.

Example from CEP 820: Teaching K12 Students Online

Example from CEP 815: Technology and Leadership

Super-user tip:

Some of my students live in countries where YouTube is blocked - so I would always upload to FlipShare and YouTube so I could send out alternate ways to access the video or post the full movie file in the CMS.

Your #maet #edtech questions answered!

I love when people ask me questions! Over the past few days, I have received some great questions from MAET students and COE colleagues - are are a few quick ones worth sharing with a wider audience.

I'm moving from an elementary homeroom class to a middle school writing classroom - what advice to you have for me?

I outsourced this question to twitter - here's what came back:

Write WITH your students. Honor their writing. Check out nwp.org for juicy resources. via @andreazellner

Spend as much time as you can during the first week building relationships and setting expectations! (TO INFINITY). Have the class collaborate on the rules of your classroom - have THEM develop what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Post it on a big piece of paper! Have them all SIGN IT! via @ronhoutman

UPDATE: Another submission from the survey!

Buy Nancy Atwell's book "In the Middle" that focuses on reading and writing workshop. It's amazing!

My advice - tweet! Personal Learning Networks are a great source of support and knowledge - you never know where a RT will lead you. Also, post the question to #edchat - so many educators ready and willing to help out there. If you are worried about privacy and posting questions "out there" in the twitterverse you could always create an anonymous twitter account, or, email me! I'm always happy to help crowdsource! For those just running across this post, feel free to add your tips in the comments.

I always see you post links from delicious on Facebook/Twitter, but I couldn't figure out how to do it myself today. How do you do it??

I use twitter feed - http://twitterfeed.com/ I use it to feed Flickr, Delicious and shared Google Reader items to twitter. It's easy and free!

Update 8/31:

Follow up question: is there any way to control which delicious links I share via twitter and which ones I don't?

Yes! When you're tagging things with delicious, create a special tag for things you want to go to twitter (something like totwitter 4twitter, etc.) Then feed TwitterFeed the RSS for that tag only.  For example, if I only wanted to share things I tag with "maet" to twitter I would feed TwitterFeed the following URL:

http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/gravesle/maet

So, just replace my username with your username and "maet" with your special tag! I believe it is case sensitive, so make sure they match on delicious/TwitterFeed.

I am looking for an online scheduler to do one very specific task: Allow students to sign up for office hours.

Tungle.me http://www.tungle.me
The amazing and talented Cary Roseth -  introduced it to me last semester - it's a gem! (and free!)