Today is day three of the UM 4T Virtual Con. It’s an amazing combination of sessions from across the country, with participants from across the country as well! Sadly, general registration is closed, but you’re welcome to join us for these sessions on Wednesday, featuring School of Information folks! GO BLUE and join us!

(Following this list of Wednesday sessions is a list of the archived sessions from Monday.)

Wednesday, 2:45 - 3:45pm
Empowering Teachers With More Pluggable Educational Technology
Session Type: Lecture
Dr. Charles Severance, University of Michigan School of Information
Tech Plan Strand: Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description:
Teachers are often greatly limited in the educational technology they can use in their classes because it becomes increasingly complex to use on the web software from many different vendors. Students must get a separate account for each new system, teachers need to jump between systems to assess and grade student work and transfer grades between the different systems. Thorough the IMS Global Learning Consortium (www.imsglobal.org), the marketplace is developing standards that will allow course rosters and roles to be moved from one system to another and for graded to be moved between systems without rewiring hand-copying of data between systems. The new standard is called ‘IMS Learning Tools Interoperability’. For example if your school uses Moodle and you would like to use www.chemvantage.org for Chemistry homework, you can simply ‘plug’ ChemVantage into Moodle and the rest is handled automatically. This presentation will introduce IMS Learning Tools Interoperability at a very high level and show some demonstrations of it working with Sakai, Moodle, and Blackboard.
http://www.dr-chuck.com/
Twitter: @drchuck
Moderated by Kristin Fontichairo
Session URL (link opens 20 minutes prior to session)

Wednesday, 2:45-3:45pm
Storybird for Classes
Session Type: Workshop
Presenter: Kara Fribley, UofM School of Information, Master’s Degree Candidate 2012, Library Information Services
Co Presenter: Natalie Mulder, UofM School of Information, Master’s Degree Candidate 2012, Library Information Services
Tech Plan Strand(s): Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description:
Storybird is a website that allows online books to be created for free, with artwork provided for users. It supports use by classroom teachers for one or multiple classes or subjects. This session will teach participants how to use this Web 2.0 tool for classroom purposes. It will instruct participants how to create and administer classes in Storybird, how to use the “discussion” feature of Storybird, how Storybird works from the student perspective, and how to create online books using this website. Finally, the option of viewing the book online or ordering a physical book created by the students for the classroom will be discussed.
Session URL (link opens 20 minutes prior to session)

Wednesday, 4:00-5:00pm EST

Amping Up Student Learning With Learning Management Systems
Session Type: Lecture
Presenter: Stephanie Teasley, Research Professor, University of Michigan School of Information
Co-Presenter: Kristin Fontichiaro, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Michigan School of InformationTech Plan Strand: Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description: Teachers, administrators, and school districts are adopting learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle, Sakai/CTools, Blackboard, and Edmodo at unprecedented rates. Whether you’re an enthusiastic adopter or reluctantly following a district directive, how can you use these virtual classrooms to improve learning, not just store information? This session focuses on holistic thinking about learning management systems and strategies for how they can be used to improve students’ interaction with content, with instructors, and with one another. We’ll also touch on legal issues of student privacy, parental access, and what’s OK to use in a password-protected system. The concepts discussed can be applied to a variety of learning management systems rather than focusing on any particular LMS.
Moderated by Kristin Fontichairo
Session URL: (link opens 20 minutes prior to session)

Wednesday, 7:45-8:45pm EST
Ten Things That You Can Do At School With a Kindle (Beyond Buying Books From Amazon)
Session Type: Workshop
Presenter: Kristin Fontichiaro, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Michigan
Tech Plan Strand: Learning: Engage and Empower
Session Description:
2011 may be remembered as the year ebooks went viral. If you’re considering bringing ereaders like Amazon’s Kindle into your classroom or library, there are many ways you can use the devices beyond reading purchased titles. In this workshop, we’ll look at ten Kindle tools and strategies you and your students can use to support struggling learners, preview new reads, read Web content, hear text read aloud, and more. Although most of the tools we’ll examine are Kindle-specific, some are applicable for other ereader brands.
http://blog.schoollibrarymedia.com/index.php/about/
Twitter: @activelearning
Session URL (link opens up 20 minutes prior to session)

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MONDAY ARCHIVES

Interested in some quick PD that you can browse over the summer? Here are yesterday’s Webinars for the 4TVirtualCon. More are being recorded as we speak! Sadly, general conference registration exceeded the limit, but here’s your chance to see what you missed! We here at the School of Information are particularly tickled about Addie Matteson and Emily Thompson’s session on Twitter, as they are both SI alums!

Iteach: Considerations And Possibilites For Using Ipods And Ipads In Classrooms-Steve Best

Microsoft’s Mouse Mischief: Transforming Inexpensive Computer Mice Into Invaluable Assessment Tools By Kevin Hankinson

Moodle Mayhem - Be The Moodle Administrator! - Miguel Guhlin

Technology Awareness And Use–Sara Lukaszewicz

If You Tweet It, They Will Come:using Twitter To Form A Professional Network–Emily Thompson and Addie Matteson

Flip To A More Reflective Practice–Renee Pesheck

Manythings.org For Esl And Efl Students

Cell Phones: The No Excuse Tool–James Kapptie

The Joy Of Trial And Error With 6th Graders–Catina Haugen

Social Networking By Using Edmodo To Engage In Literacy Learning–Liz Kolb

Multiple Uses Of Engrade–Dana Mccarius

Second Life For Professional Development–Jessica Brogley

 4T VirtualCon:  Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology - 4T Virtual Conference: Teachers Teaching Teachers about Technology via kwout

Here on the University of Michigan campus and in homes and schools around the country, we’re engaged in the 4T Virtual Con (the four T’s stand for Teachers Teaching Teachers About Technology). A project that grew out of the School of Education’s Master of Arts plus Certification program, the goal was to host a virtual conference for current students, professors, alumni, and educators both within and beyond campus walls. Sadly, interest far outweighed our capacity, so the conference doesn’t have room for any more registrations, but I’ll be sharing some archived Webinars with you.

We opened on Sunday with a keynote by UM professor Barry Fishman, who was on the committee that gathered input and created the National Educational Technology Plan (NETP).

His presentation gave a terrific overview of the theories, beliefs, and elements behind the NETP. There are many opportunities for librarians within the NETP, as its visionary scope goes far beyond “tools for tools’ sake.” Instead, it looks at how technology can better inform teachers, connect them with peers, and expand and extend our definitions and capabilities for learning.

You’re welcome to view the archived Webinar here (it is archived in Elluminate, so you will be asked to download a small, harmless Java script called “Play” in order to view it).

Enjoy - I think you’ll find many commonalities with L4L (the AASL Standards and Guidelines).

And GO BLUE!

photo © 2008 Liz Henry | more info (via: Wylio)

Today I gave a Webinar for LMC about how we’re in a new generation of ed tech and need to go beyond just using technology to using technology to make learning better than it was pre-computer. It’s a hard concept, especially when we are in our comfort zone.

I closed out of the Webinar and found the headline above in my Google Reader. Sadly, more evidence that we haven’t pushed technology as far as we can if our goal is to increase our students’ toolkits beyond point-and-click. From the executive summary:

In October 2010, Project RED released The Technology Factor: Nine Keys to Student Achievement and Cost Effectiveness, a study that identifies specific methods of successful educational technology adoption. The research, based on a survey conducted in close to one thousand schools, measures results in eleven categories including graduation rates, test scores, and paperwork reduction.

The findings show that when properly implemented, technology investment leads to measurable and qualitative improvements in learning that have the potential to transform student performance.
The research also pinpoints factors that make some technology implementations perform dramatically better than others, including:

Consistent use of technology in intervention classes,
Skillful leadership by the school principal,
Strong student-to-computer ratio, and
Effective integration of technology into core subjects at least once a week.

The Technology Factor also details the financial savings that come from successful technology integration in schools. For example, the report documents the degree to which the reduction in dropout rates through the use of technology produces a savings to the taxpayer of more than $56,000 per student.

You can read the Education Week summary of the report here.

You can visit the Pearson site and read the report here (and let’s be honest, they are in the digital assessment business, so know that going into the report).

It’s important, y’all, to keep reflecting on how we can bring our critical eye from collection development into the digital arena. Now that most students have either a mobile device or a computer in their household, merely teaching how-to is not enough. What’s important is leveraging the technology to do more.