The Innovative Educator's EdCampNYC Recap

Question
What do you call teachers who get together to learn on a Saturday not because they’re told to, not for continuing ed credit, and not because they’re getting paid, but simply for the love of learning and connecting?
Answer
EdCamp!

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend edcampnyc, an unconference created as an outgrowth of edcampphilly organized by some of my friends and PLN members @mbhertz and @kjarret. When they shared their plans for the conference at the #140conf last spring, I knew they were on to something great, and when I discovered one was being organized right in my neighborhood by local educators including my friend @spedteacher, I knew I was in for a treat.

PRE CONFERENCE AT #CLUB602CAMP
The conference started with a pre-conference the evening before. The first annual #Club602Camp attended by @dancallahan, @lfleig, and @eatthedamncake. Sadly, @kjarret was sorely missed as he was a last minute cancellation. At #Club602Camp we had a small group of passionate educators hosted locally by me @Innovativeedu pre conference. My guests were treated to appys, drinks, and a cozy and FREE place to sleep in exchange for lively conversation about all things education. We talked about our plans to transform education well into the wee hours of the night hitting the hay at 2:00 a.m. We arose the next morning had some coffee and Fresca (note to self, buy O.J. for guests) and were off to edcampnyc.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE EDCAMPS
Formalize a “Have space” “Need a space” process. If the locals can host the visitors, not only does it make for a great pre-conference experience, it also makes educators more easily able to afford such opportunities. A section for commuting buddies would be great too.

ARRIVAL
There was an hour for breakfast and registration. We got there right on time which was great as participants have the opportunity to connect the faces with the many brains we have come to know and love online in places like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, or even listening to them present at conferences. The informal times like breakfast, lunch, and post bar activities are not to be skipped as the conversations and learning are undoubtedly as rich as are the sessions.

Upon arrival folks had the chance to post up sessions up on the board that they wanted to offer and look at the sessions being offered by others. I decided to spend my morning listening and my afternoon presenting. It was great to see lots of familiar names up on the board. My goal was to find names I see all the time from people whose stuff I read about a lot and who I don’t have a chance to see too often. I started my morning of with @elemenous and @joycevalenza followed by @paulbogush.

Some pictures from right before sessions started are here and here.

SESSIONS I ATTENDED
Student Research - A Vision of the Future with @elemenous and @joycevalenza
Lucy Gray and Joyce Valenza hosted the first session where they shared great ideas about student research in the future. It was not only fun to listen to them, but also to listen to the conversation with folks like @thenerdyteacher and @mbhertz.

Take Aways

• What is the 21st century loose leaf notebook? @JoyceValenza
• For me, a wiki, blog, cell, and Diigo
• Hiding work in a notebook to later throw away is so 20th century @JoyceValenza
• I feel dirty teaching research w/index cards. Diigo makes me feel cleaner :-) @thenerdyteacher
• Asking kids to put it in their own words is slowing them down @elemenous (I think)
• Powerpoint can be a 21st century index card. Title-source, info-body, notes-link @mbteach

About the presenters:
Joyce Valenza - Librarian Springfield Township HS, PA. Blog
Lucy Gray - Former teacher - now consultant on Search literacy. Website

Podcasting/ Recording Audio/ Live Streaming – @paulbogush
Paul Bogush shared the nuts and bolts of podcasting in his session sharing stories of his progression from one microphone and a computer to the rather extensive set up he has today. In Paul Bogush’s 8th grade social studies class, world leaders are not just names of unknown stuffy old people in a book. Paul started a group with his students called, “Lunchtime Leaders” where students interview leaders from around the world on their opinions about what students should do to be prepared for the future. It started in the fall of 2008 where he and his students decided to interview all the candidates that were running for Mayor in their city. When they were done they decided to keep the project going and found more people to interview. They are called the Lunch Time Leaders because they actually interview all of the leaders during their lunch period which means that we have to start and finish within twenty minutes.

Three years into the project, Paul and his students do most of their interviews using Skype and fancy equipment. You can listen to their podcasts at http://lunchtimeleaders.podbean.com.

About the presenter:
Paul Bogush - Paul is an 8th Grade Social Studies teacher in Connecticut. Paul is passionate about given students authentic opportunities to learn and share and podcasting is one of his favorite tools. You can follow his work at http://blogush.edublogs.org as well as on Twitter @paulbogush

SESSIONS I PRESENTED
The 9 Step Plan to Combating illTWITTERacy
In this session I shared with participants reasons why educators and administrators might use Twitter as I had shared in my blog in a post by the same name. In my session I was quiet impressed with the aunt of conference organizer @SpecialKRB. Aunt Deb is a principal who attended the conference and in my session she set up her Twitter account @mrsdbdrossner. If you’re reading this, please follow her!

Here are the big ideas that participants enjoyed.

• Principals can have their Tweets feed right into their blog page. Participants liked the idea of principals visiting classes and Tweeting (or having their students Tweet) about successes they felt were worth celebrating. They loved how this gave parents and families a window into their school and how easy it was to celebrate the great things students (and staff) were doing.
• Participants like the idea of using a Twitter hash tag for classes to collect research. The idea was a good one when they realized they could do a search for that hash tag to compile a collection of research, but what really brought this to life for them was making a newspaper from this tag using Paper.li. We then discussed how students can developed their own hashtags when doing research to create their own paper or just have a paper created based on who they follow. I wrote a post on this topic which brings clarity to how it works at Provide Students with a Personalized Newspaper Everyday for Free!

Harnessing the Power of The Tool in Your Pocket – Cell Phones
This was a great session. I noticed a lot of familiar faces and was to sharing some ideas about harnessing the power of cell phones. What is so fun in these sessions is finding the tools that people had not yet heard of and watch the “ah ha’s!”

I introduced participants to the five step plan for harnessing the power of cell phones as follows:

• Step One: Teacher Use of Cell Phones for Professional Purposes
• Step Two: Teacher Models Appropriate Use for Learning
• Step Three: Strengthen the Home-School Connection with Cell Phones
• Step Four: Students Use Cell Phones for Homework
• Step Five: Students Use Cell Phones for Classwork
  

I then talked about tools and ideas for each step and gave participants a chance to try what I was talking about. By the end of the session participants had a lot of new digits entering ChaCha, Google, Poll Everywhere, Wiffiti and Google SMS in their phones.

From the participant response I think favorite tools were:

• Vokis for voice casts
• ChaCha for putting a smart friend in your pocket
• Flickr for making dead simple, on demand slide shows from your phone
  

Here are some Tweets from the session:
cspiezio Christina Spiezio - InnovativeEdu Great to meet you as well!! Also, I'm a little obsessed with ChaCha and loving it! Thank you!
mrami2 Meenoo Rami - Learning about using cell phones in the classroom with @InnovativeEdu #edcampnyc - sitting with @cspiezio and @cpoole27
@JohnPalomaki JohnPalomaki - "Thinking outside the ban" by @innovativeEdu - love it! #edcampnyc
rgriffithjr Rob Griffith

• Being on your phone does not mean you're not paying attention - @InnovativeEdu #edcampnyc
• Educators can be partners in teaching cell phone etiquette - @InnovativeEdu #edcampnyc
• School is better when it matches the real word - @InnovativeEdu #edcampnyc #cells4ed
• In #cells4ed session with @innovativeEdu focusing on breaking the "ban" - #edcampnyc
• Watching @InnovativeEdu demonstrate phonecasting with Voki at #edcampnyc - very cool!

TO THE BAR AT EDCAMPNYC
The after party at the bar was just as interesting and informative as the pre conference and conference and conference. Highlights include.

• Chatting with Al Doyle @aldoyle about how he is able to follow his passion and help students find theirs while learning math, science, computational thinking and more in his game design/games in ed classes at The Dwight School. He also demonstrated drawing without fear on an iPad.
• Chatting with Meg Wilson @iPodsibilities about how she uses podcasting and other technologies to support her students which I included in a post about the topic here.
• Hearing what it’s like to work in The School with the technology students need and the filters they don’t from @nykat4 and @SpecialKRB
• Listening to how @nborota and @fronk2000 share how they are trans­formed learn­ing in their school by allowing students to own their learning and why @nborota believes he can get anyone to see the beauty in math.

HATS OFF TO THE ORGANIZERS
A big shout out to the EdCampNYC organizers who did a terrific job putting together a thoughtful event where everyone had the chance to speak, listen, learn, discuss, and, as I mentioned in one of my popularly Retweeted Tweets...
“It was great to be at a conference where others know that being on the cell DOES NOT mean, you’re not paying attention.”

You have read this article edcamp / edcampnyc / podcasting with the title podcasting. You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2010/12/the-innovative-educator-edcampnyc-recap.html. Thanks!

Ten Ideas for Educating Innovatively with Phone Casting (aka Podcasting made easy)

In the busy school day of a teacher many feel their schedules don’t allow for the complexities of the equipment and set up necessary for podcasting. But it needn’t be that way. Even the busiest of teachers can get started quickly and easily with just their cell phone. Because of its ease and simplicity, phone casting has become a popular resource in the bag of tricks used by teachers such as Josh Stumpenhorst, Meg Wilson, Lydia Leimbach, and Paul Bogush. They know using the tools students love is a sure fire way to engage 21st century learners.

Phone casting provides the ability to easily create and capture an audio broadcast from your phone that can be published and shared. While the services are ever changing a Google search will provide ideas for a number of free options. Currently iPadio, Voki, and Phonecasting.com are popular options for recording audio from a phone. When you hang up, Wah La! You’ve created a phone cast that can be broadcast to the world. What’s more, many of these services are beginning to allow you to listen to a phone cast from your phone as well. The following is a collection of ideas these educators have implemented to successfully engage learners with phone casting.

Ideas for Teachers to Enrich Instruction with Phone Casting

1) Daily messages on your class blog
Phone casts can be posted directly to your class blog. This is similar to posting a daily message on a class website. This is what 6th grade language arts and social studies teacher Josh Stumpenhorst does for his class in Naperville, IL. He uses phone casts as a way to communicate to parents and students about what he is doing in his classroom. This window into his classroom provides students, their families, and other interested school community members with up to date information about what is being done in class.

Here's what a phone cast looks like.


2) Capturing mini lessons
Wearing a basic headset that comes with every cell phone, teachers can record unit mini lessons with iPadio. This is a great way for students who were absent to catch up on what the class is doing, for students who need a lesson review, as well as for parents who are wondering, “What did my child learn in school today.” Teachers could even record several mini lessons in advance of a unit and let students flow through at their own pace.

3) Energizing students when they have a sub
When High School Technology Integrator Lydia Leimbach can’t be at her school in Farmingdale, Maine, Voki is in. She creates Vokis to let students know what they need to do in class. In the assignments section of her class web page, she simply creates a Voki for each subject area that day letting students know what they’re expected to do with further directions embedded right on the page.

Not only does this help the sub, it also gets them energized to get to work.

4) Share professional development success
Use phone casting in teacher professional development. Following professional development sessions, participants often complete a survey that only the instructor sees. Instead, turn this into a learning and promotional opportunity for your class. At the end of class, using your telephone as a microphone ask participants to share one thing they are excited about learning and how they plan to incorporate it into their practice. As the phone caster, the facilitator will want to have a catch intro and conclusion, end the call, and a phone cast is made. This can be posted on the facilitator’s online space with the course materials for others to listen to.

5) Discretely provide accommodations for students with special needs
Educators who have students with special needs know that in some cases students have accommodations for some of their students such as extended time, or having parts of the test read to them. In the past this has caused somewhat of a disruption either requiring the student to be removed from the class and a school staff member removed from their regular responsibilities to read to them, or in some cases the teacher and student sit in the back of the class as the teacher tries to read quietly to the student as the rest of the class hears this going on. Not only is this disruptive to the teacher’s schedule, it can also be embarrassing to the the students. In Meg Wilson’s class podcasting has changed the game. Staff is no longer required to be removed from their duties, and students are no longer singled out. Meg reads the student passage and creates a podcast for the student. During the test any student with this accommodation is given unobtrusive ear buds and a mobile device to listen to the passage. In today’s digital age, testing companies should be required to provide such accommodations, but until then, we have teachers like Meg.

Ideas to Enhance Student Learning with Phone Casting

1) Interviews with world leaders
In Paul Bogush’s 8th grade social studies class, world leaders are not just names of unknown stuffy old people in a book. Paul started a group with his students called, “Lunchtime Leaders” where students interview leaders from around the world on their opinions about what students should do to be prepared for the future. It started in the fall of 2008 where he and his students decided to interview all the candidates that were running for Mayor in their city. When they were done they decided to keep the project going and found more people to interview. They are called the Lunch Time Leaders because they actually interview all of the leaders during their lunch period which means that we have to start and finish within twenty minutes.

While three years into the project, Paul and his students do most of their interviews using Skype and fancy equipment, students can start their own project easily using phone casting. The simplicity of phone casting is traded with a reduction in quality, which is generally fine for teachers and students new to this work. You can listen to their podcasts at http://lunchtimeleaders.podbean.com.

2) Get to know your students
At the start of the year, reach out to parents and/or their children and ask them to make an “All About Me” phone cast. These can be placed on an “All About Our Class” page of the teacher’s website, wiki or other online space. The teacher will likely want to guide the parents with what they may consider including in the phone cast such as, “What are you most proud of?” “What do you generally do on weekends?” “What are you passionate about and how are you pursuing that passion?” “What do you stand for?” “What can/have you done to make the world a better place?” “What is your favorite meal?” For lower grades where student’s birthday’s are celebrated, this could be a part of the celebration. For older students, activities can be designed for classmates to get to know each other better. For instance, you could ask students to do a scavenger hunt like activity where they need to find 3 people with whom they share something in common and 3 people who they’d like to learn something from based on their “All About Me’s.”

3) Get to know your school
Create an “our school” podcast. Let students create a weekly podcast featuring their school. This not only helps build the home-school connection, it also provides students with the opportunity to showcase great things that are happening at the school. Podcasts could include student of the week, teacher of the week, project of the week, event of the week...you get the picture. What a great way to not only celebrate the school community and build school pride, but also highlight the people, events, and projects that rarely are featured. If the school has a newspaper, this can serve as a great companion.

4) Publish student ideas about important topics
Students love video/audio but we don’t always want to show their faces for safety reasons. Voki allows kids to create a quick voice podcast with an avatar. It’s great when the task requires a concise message and the use of cell phone increases engagement. Lydia Leimbach used Voki as part of a cyberbullying project. After a quick Poll Everywhere survey she found if given the choice, students preferred hearing or watching information on this topic so Lydia used Voki to get their message out. Because it’s limited in time they had to be concise and make sure each sentence was information laden. From there the Voki’s could be both embedded on the class cyber bullying page as well as the student’s own web page.

5) Unit of Study Summary
Have students create a “What we learned in this unit” phone cast as you conclude a unit of study. Teachers may want to work with students to create a template to follow and share for “What we learned. This might include things like: “unit overview,” “things everyone should know about…” “what I still want to know.” This is a great way to get student perspective on the learning and a great project for interested students.

6) Help struggling writers create drafts
Have struggling writers create phonecasts with iPadio by telling their story right into a cell phone. Not only will they be able to hear their story back, but iPadio does voice to text conversion. Simply remind the student to speak loud and clear and then dial iPadio and your special personal ID number. After the student records their story, iPadio does the rest converting their spoken words into written ones. From there the story can be copied/pasted into a word processing document for final revisions and editing.

How to get started with these tools.
Tool: iPadio (http://ipadio.com)
How to get started:

• Go to ipadio.com and sign up for a free account.
• Once you get an account you will get a “secret” pin that you can use when calling into the 1-800 number.
• Once you call in and enter your pin you can record a message that will post instantly to you ipadio account. This is live and can be listened to right on the ipadio sight.
• You can have your “phlogs” as they call them, post directly to most blogs.

Tool: Voki (www.Voki.com)
How to get started with the tool:

• Register at www.Voki.com with your email and password.
• Select create.
• Select a character.
• Select the look, clothing and accessories.
• Add your voice by calling the number Voki provides, or have Voki call your number by entering it.
• Choose a background from the Voki library or upload your own.
• Click Publish to email to a friend or get code to take your Voki avatar anywhere

For additional ideas, resources, and workshops outlining additional ways to use cell phones for learning, including research-based strategies, lessons, and more, check out Teaching Generation Text. 

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Thank you to the following innovative educators for contributing to this post:

Paul Bogush - Paul is an 8th Grade Social Studies teacher in Connecticut. Paul is passionate about given students authentic opportunities to learn and share and podcasting is one of his favorite tools. You can follow his work at http://blogush.edublogs.org as well as on Twitter @paulbogush

Lydia Leimbach- Lydia is Technology Integrator at Hall-Dale High School and Middle School in Farmingdale, ME. She enjoys a student centered classroom and providing her students with as much creativity and choice as is humanly possible, and often learns a great deal from them.. You can follow her on RSU2TeacherTech and on Twitter @lleimbach

Josh Stumpenhorst - Josh is a 6th grade Language Arts and Social Science teacher at Lincoln Junior High School in Naperville, IL. He enjoys using a variety of digital media to enhance his curriculum and engage his students. Specifically, he uses a lot of digital storytelling and movie making to bring his curriculum alive for his students. You can follow his work at www.stumpteacher.blogspot.com as well as on Twitter @stumpteacher.

Megan Wilson - Megan is a Special Educator and Adaptive Technology Specialist in a secondary school in Connecticut. She is a mobile learning advocate who has a passion for educating others on the importance of individualizing instruction for all students. You can follow her work at http://www.ipodsibilities.com as well as on Twitter @iPodsibilities.

You have read this article Cell phones in Education / phone casting / phonecasting / podcast / podcasting with the title podcasting. You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2010/12/ten-ideas-for-educating-innovatively.html. Thanks!