WallWisher Message Board

I have created a Wallwisher wall for our use. It is a simple web page where we can post messages easily. Messages can include links, images and video. to Please try it, then think of all the ways you might be able to use it.

Happy Posting!

Cool Tools from ICE

If you are looking for new tools and presentations from ICE, please visit the Cool Tools blog.

Permission to Publish

If one or more of your students were briefly featured in the Board Presentation, you should have received an email w/photos and a description of what they discussed in their snippet. Emailing the video did not work, even when I zipped the movies.

Please remember:  Turn a copy of the signed permission slip in to Kevin Anderson c/o Penny Sylvester by Thursday, if at all possible. I won't be at the office to pick up my snail mail.

A Few Tasks

Here are a few important Digital Leader tasks:

Permission Slips Needed: Due Friday, 2/26
If your students were featured in the Board Presentation, we are asking you to try to get written permission to publish the short video clip featured. There is no identifying information that would endanger the students. I will be sending you the clip in question. A permission slip is posted in the sidebar for easy access. I believe we are talking about students from the following teachers' classes: Jackie, Phyllis, Ashley, Debbie, and Pat. Please stay tuned. The Board is eager to have the presentation published. Please send a copy of the permission slip in the snail mail to Penny Sylvester, not me. I will be out of town. :-)

Survey Regarding New Laptop Discussion: Due Thursday, 2/25
Please complete a brief, 2-question survey regarding the new laptops we are discussing. The questions will take some thought to answer, so you might want to look at them first in order to ponder and think about your answers.  Go to Form

Questions?
Don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks so much for the important work you are doing! I'm looking forward to seeing some of you on Monday at 4:00 to kickoff the Internet Safety Curriculum Committee. We will meet at Central Office.

Internet Safety Committee Kickoff Meeting

If you signed up for the Internet Safety Committee, please submit your RSVP or regrets for our meeting on Monday, February 22nd.

RSVP or Regrets

Board Meeting Last Night

First and foremost, much thanks to the Digital Leaders who trudged through the snow and came out in support of 21st Century Learning in D97! Your presence and effort to get there in spite of the weather made a big statement and having you in the audience meant a whole lot to us! Don't worry if you didn't make it, everyone in the room knew it was weather-related.  Thanks for the texts, phone calls and emails letting me know you just had to get home.

In spite of my terrible video-taping skills, I believe our message to the Board was loud and clear. The work you are doing is great work, and it is certainly worth doing.  You have all made incredible strides as you work your way through the technology adoption life cycle and use the the computer as a tool for learning.  Hearing you speak passionately and viewing snippets of the work  your're doing is music to my ears.  Wow!

If you didn't attend, I realize you are most-likely very curious about the content of the presentation. Sharing an enormous PowerPoint with lots of embedded video clips is not easy, as you discovered if you tried to download it the first time. Here are my ideas for sharing...

1. I am going to begin the process of emailing you snippets of the Flip Video you were featured in. This is not by any means the total picture of what was presented, but it is worth viewing and saving in your digital portfolio. If you haven't started collecting materials for your digital portfolio, this would be a good time to create a folder, and start to save samples, including this video. It could be priceless one day.
2. FYI...A glog is not a bad tool to use for a Digital Portfolio for yourself, and it's a great tool to use for students portfolios because they can pick and choose what they want to include. I have samples of student glog portfolios if you are interested.
3. Kevin is going to give me a copy of his PowerPoint. Once I have it in hand, and can see the size of the file, I will use it to guide some discussion in the upcoming weeks. The goal would be to role out information steadily through the blog. 
4. I will provide the group with another opportunity to view the full presentation at an upcoming meeting. If you attended the Board Presentation, you can skip that meeting! 

Blogs & Sites

It's probably not a bad idea to make sure your blog is updated and current at this point in time. After our presentation tomorrow night, it's quite possible someone might want to take a closer look at your work on the web.

In addition, I will try to draw some attention to your web work and have created links for easy access.
I will also continue to feature snippets of your work and sending it out to staff. I have a lot of footage to use for the time being, but I'll be around to collect more.

Virtual Meeting:

Click the link below to access the Virtual Meeting Agenda.

Meeting: February 8th

Given the fact that we all have the opportunity to get together on Tuesday evening, the meeting scheduled for Monday at 4:00 will be virtual instead of in person. This will give everyone some flexibility while also getting some important work done. 

An agenda with tasks to be completed will be linked to the blog by our scheduled meeting time on Monday. Please plan to attend the virtual meeting within the next couple of days to work on some important tasks, including an opportunity to assist with the launch and implementation of our Internet Safety curriculum.

If you haven't yet sent your RSVP or regrets for the Board Meeting on Tuesday, I would appreciate this a.s.a.p. It's very quick and I would like to know who's coming.

The Final Presentation

I've spent time this week taking many of the slides submitted and inserting them directly into the video clips to improve the flow of the presentation. Slides with large graphics and headings were best suited for this, and also greatly appreciated. My goal was to use images, video, and carefully chosen text to convey our message. We want the audience to be able to  take it all in and get excited about what we are doing. 


Slides submitted with long text were filled with really good information and ideas, but unfortunately no one watching the presentation will want to do that much reading. For this reason, I've taken many of those slides apart and reused them, trying to keep your ideas in tact. I've also visited your blogs and taken some snapshots of samples to include. Your published student work and resources were easy to find. Nice work! 


A lot of content was submitted, and sorting through it was not easy. Hopefully you will like the choices I made. You should be very proud of your progress and accomplishments as Digital Leaders


How much content was there?

• 98 slides were found in the shared Google Presentation
• 258 FlipVideo clips were uploaded to my computer
• 104 snapshots are sitting on my desktop

Board Meeting Update

We are now scheduled to share our work with The Board on February 9th. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm and technology is a big agenda item. Please plan to meet in my space, right outside of the Board Room at 7:00.

After we illustrate what a teacher can do with a laptop and a focus on 21st Century Learning, Kevin Anderson will lay the groundwork for why we need a new focus on the use of technology. It should be an exciting evening for "geeks".

Please RSVP for the Board Meeting