Blog

Calendars

Today I sent out the email that you needed to redo your calendars… I was feeling bad that people had to do all this extra work, but it is an inevitable part of using technology. Nothing ever works perfectly the first time. Actually, that applies to just about anything in life, right? Then why do we seem to get more frustrated with technology? I think it’s because when technology works, it’s pretty incredible, so we expect it to always be that incredible. The disappointment is thus greater when it doesn’t work.

But while we are on the subject, I thought I would share some other things about calendars that you might find useful:

1. Calendars on your phone.

Do you have a smartphone? Does it sync with your school or personal calendars? This is probably the #2 thing that I use my iPhone for (after texting). Recommendation for iPhone users:

  • Built in Calendar app – go to settings to add an account. If you are using your go.oes.edu account, select “Gmail”, and then type in your email as name@go.oes.edu.

or

  • Use CalenGoo ($6.99 – the most expensive app I own) – it actually looks like Google calendars and works great. It will add all your calendars (the Calendar app won’t) and will sync with iCal. I like it WAY better than Calendar.
2. Set reminders.
  • This is where you can actually make the technology smarter than you because it remembers to do everything on time. When you make a new event, edit details, add a reminder. It can send you an email or pop up on your screen (or on your iPhone) the week, day, hour, minute before your event.
3. Agenda view
  • Instead of viewing by week, you can look at the days in a list. I don’t use this much, but what do you think?
4. Add flair to your events. (This is my personal favorite)

  • Up by settings, click the gear wheel and select labs.
  • Enable “Event Flair” and Save.
  • Select your event and add flair!

 

 

 

 

 

Race Report


So many of you know that this past Saturday, I completed my first Ironman event.2.4 mile swim + 112 mile bike + 26.2 run = 140.6

I thought I would use this blog for two reasons: share how the race went (personal) and show how blogs make us write (professional). Honestly, before having a blog, I would have never taken the time to write all this down.  English teachers, take note.

Here goes.

For me, completing an Ironman distance event required four things:

  1. Training
  2. Support from family & friends
  3. Mental toughness

1. Training. Obviously, I did a little swimming-biking-running before the event, and while it was not nearly as much as I wished: there are trade offs to be made by mere-mortals who also have jobs and families.

  • The swim: 1:17:20. The swim is over so fast, relative to the other legs. It is the closest (and not friendly) contact you have with other racers. (Watch this clif bar commercial simulating the swim to get a sense of what it is like.) The funniest part was how shallow the water was (maybe 2 feet deep at times). Lots of people were standing up and trying to run through it. When I got to the finish, I tried to stand up on the rocks and promptly fell over. After getting my balance, I ran up to the transition area where wetsuit-strippers were waiting to help get your wetsuits off. Just a quick 7 minutes later and I was hustling up the hill with my bike.
  • The bike: 7:34:43. I’m probably most proud of this part because I pushed myself the hardest, even after the wasp sting during the second lap. The worst part of it was the road. It was in such bad shape that it felt a bit like riding a bronco. One woman’s gatoradebottle fell out behind her and landed on the road in front of me. I missed it by centimeters. The hill at the bottom of Chalk Hill Rd was tough. On the first lap, it was hard; on the second, it seemed impossible. Several riders stopped and walked. My mantra was “Pain is temporary; pride is forever” but it sometimes mixed up in my head to “pain is forever, pain, pain…”
  • The run: 6:09:06. Not so much a run as a long shuffling trot (with walk breaks on the hills). It was every bit the death march as predicted. But there was the guy in the tutu and the girl for whom this was her FIRST triathlon. We chatted and cheered each other on. I did my first two laps, then the sun began to set. 
    By the time I reached the finish line, it was pitch black out. But I knew that I would finish. I paired up with a woman from Texas to run the last 4 miles, and that was the best time of the whole run. We cruised into the finish at a blinding 12min/mile pace.
  • Recovery: Thank you CrossFit and my chiropractor. My knees ached for 24hours, then my muscles were sore for 24hours, and then… fine. A week later and I’m feeling totally recovered.

2. Support of family & friends.

  • Scott and I rented a Eurovan and made the 623 mile trip down to Guerneville, California. He drove most of the way and did most of the cooking. Throughout this journey, he has helped me plan workouts, sherpaed for training rides and races, listened to me talk about every detail ad nauseum afterwards. I couldn’t have done it without him.
  • For the race, I used a sharpie to write the names of supporters on my left arm, to remind me of all the help I have had along the way and all the people thinking of me during that day. They were a mix of my immediate family, friends from KSI, colleagues from OES. I would look at the names of people during the race and know that they were cheering me on.

3. On my right arm, I wrote two words: Vision and Strength.

  • After 15 hours of being alone, you get kind of tired of yourself. I used these two words as inspiration to remember the vision of crossing the finish line (which I have replayed in my head during many early morning training runs) and to know that I have the physical and mental strength to finish, no matter what I felt like at the time.  I also counted a lot: 10 steps, 20 steps, 30 steps, 40 steps, 50 steps, walk for a minute. Repeat. Funny how the mind games keep you going. It reminded me of the Marshmallow Test because the kids who had strategies to get through were the ones who succeeded.

After crossing the finish line, confused and not really sure what to do with the ribbon blocking my way, I returned my timing chip and they wrapped me in a space blanket. I flopped down onto the curb and said to Scott, “No matter what I say tomorrow, or the next day, don’t ever let me do this again.” I’m glad I did it, and I am proud that I did it, but I think I’ll stick to the shorter events from now on!

NO MORE BOOKMARKS BARS!

Now we do everything in our web-browsers: compose email, write papers, make presentations, shop, read, even monitor our own use. If you are like me, the bookmarks bar always felt like it was cluttering up the space and yet I NEEDED it.

Enter Google Bookmarks.

Now, I go to my iGoogle and have my list of bookmarks in the form of a gadget.

You can customize your bookmarks, make labels so that you can have your OES links, your personal links, shopping links, etc. Unfortunately, for now, you have to add them manually.

And it is just one more reason to get an iGoogle page (see other reasons why and an explanation of how to make one here).

Tech Leadership – Blogging Challenge

I posted earlier about a blog challenge to write about good technology leadership.

Here are my brief thoughts about good leadership in general:
–Good leaders share. Information, reasons, expectations, ideas.
–Good leaders balance. The long view with the immediate; the theoretical with the practical; the kids, he parents, the teachers; academic, social-emotional, physical; tradition, innovation; time.
–Good leaders ask questions. They know the people, the program, the culture.
–Good leaders do not need a title to be a leader. “Leadership is a behavior, not a position.” – Pearl Kane

Interesting quote:
“The responsibility of educators is to ensure that today’s students are ready to live, learn, work, and thrive in this high-tech, global, highly participatory world.” – Cheryl Lemke, Innovation Through Technology, 21st Century Skills, (ed. Bellanca, Brandt): p. 244.

Relevance for OES?
1. Participating in a blog challenge is one way to be connected to your PLN (personal learning network). By reading this post, you are connecting to other educators, and I’m excited to be sharing resources that I have found.
2. This helps me be a better teacher, colleague, edtech, leader, problem-solver. (Just getting this posted included writing it in Word, typing it into my iPhone WordPress app, learning a little html, and posting from the Minneapolis airport!)

Klingenstein “Pearls”

(travel.nationalgeographic.com)

Most of you guys know that in june I attended the Klingenstein Summer Institute for new teachers.  Here are a few “Pearls” of wisdom:

  • Don’t think of it as “change” – it is really just continuous improvement.
  • “When everything is graded, when can [students] fail?” – Kelley Nicholson Flynn, science leader teacher
  • Does it require “the power of the group?” – Josh Pretzer, science leader teacher – when referring to whether or not to assign collaborative work.
  • Growth mindset: try, fail, learn.
  • 1% change: Don’t try to change everything at once – Gary Giberson, founder of Sustainable Fare, Lawrenceville’s dining services.
  • All my best assignments meet Stipek’s 5 dimensions of motivation:
    1. need for sense of competency
    2. need for sense of self-determination
    3. need for interpersonal connection
    4. need for sense of purpose, meaning, or relevance
    5. interest
Finally,
  • “Every idea I’ve had has been improved by others” – Pearl Rock Kane, co-founder and school leadership visionary
Many of these probably don’t make complete sense without context, but I’d be more than happy to buy you a cup of coffee and elaborate!

Friday, August 5th….Leadership Day 2011

I’m participating in this… basically, it is a call to bloggers to post on August 5th about what effective technology education looks like: successes, wants, needs, resources, ideas, etc.  I’m continually impressed by what our kids do with technology, the risks teachers take to let them explore, and the trust from parents and administrators. I’m still formulating what I will write about, but most of all I’m looking forward to seeing what all the other bloggers write!

Google Docs: Series

With this post I’ll begin a series on the main apps in Google Docs:

  • docs homepage,
  • documents,
  • spreadsheets,
  • forms, and
  • presentations.

Hopefully this will help you integrate these amazing tools into your classroom in a way that works for you. As always, I love to hear what you (and your students) have discovered, so if you have additions to what I’ve written or other uses/shortcuts/tips, please add comments below!

In this first post, I thought I’d put some quick tips that you may or may not know in navigating the google app world:

1. Logging in. Do you always type in go.oes.edu? Yes, this will get you there, but you can also make an iGoogle page where you have your docs list, calendar, and anything else you’d like. You can customize your gadgets, so that when you open your browser, it’s one click to your calendar or one click to your most recent docs. You can also bookmark the docs homepage, but you probably want to organize your bookmarks using the bookmark manager.

2. New Google Navigation. Did you notice that it is black now?  Me too. Other than that it doesn’t seem very different. Click on the “more” tab and you can find groups, which might be useful, but if you go to “even more” there is a HUGE list. Check out:

    • iGoogle (hint hint)
    • Talk
    • Translate
    • Reader (I use this everyday)
    • Labs (seriously cool stuff like undo sent emails, flair for calendar events, dim events)

3. Zoom. Does all the text in your browser look really small?  Or everything is really big?

    • Zoom in: Command +
    • Zoom out: Command –
Hopefully this series will help you integrate these amazing tools into your classroom in a way that works for you.
As always, I love to hear what you (and your students) have discovered, so if you have additions to what I’ve written or other uses/shortcuts/tips, please add comments below!

Welcome Parents!

Here are some links that you might find useful:

https://sites.google.com/a/go.oes.edu/oes-technology/parent-resources:

  • OES internal website for parents

NetSmartz:

  • choose your issue (Cell phones, sexting, blogging, webcams, social networking, etc.) then you can watch the video or read an article.
  • Mary Heston, WiredMom: “technology is a part of our kids lives and navigating these technologies will be an important part of their success in school and beyond.”
  • Good source for articles about online safety.

Random stuff

Using the web can feel like trying to drink from a fire hose, so I’ll try to share a few droplets here.

Take what is helpful for you and your teaching, ignore what isn’t!

TED: Technology, Entertainment, and Design

  • What it is: ~20 minute videos on a variety of innovative topics from using games in education (how we will save the world) to David Brooks about emotion and logic (“people learn from people they love”) to William Kamkwamba harnessing the wind in Tanzania (“To all those struggling with your dreams … trust yourself, and believe”)
  • How it could be used: begin a class discussion with students, have students analyze what makes a good presentation, have students MAKE THEIR OWN and post to YouTube (see the TEDxClassroomProject)

Rubistar: making rubrics made easy

  • What it is: resource of customizable rubrics. You select the type of project (ex. science fair project) then the components you want (introduction, conclusion) and it AUTOFILLS the criteria.
  • How it could be used: quickly build a rubric for any project
Google Maps: beyond just finding your house
  • What it is: maps of anywhere in the world; zoomable and customizable (find your best bike route)
  • How it could be used: have students create maps of battle sites or stories and share them with each other
  • Extra resource: Use Richard Byrne’s free guide

iGoogle

Admittedly, when I first saw the iGoogle page, I wasn’t convinced.  But now I am. Here’s why:

1) Everything I want is 2 clicks away

2) It is independent of the machine

3) Personalization (It’s kind of like opening your computer and seeing an old, familiar friend)
Here’s how to get to your own iGoogle page…
1. Log in to go.oes.edu
2. Look along the top, where it says Mail, Calendar, Docs, Sites – click on More and then choose Even More…
3. Select iGoogle
Now the fun part – make it your own…
  • Change the theme
  • Add gadgets
  • Move gadgets around