April 11, 2008

Location:
Davis School District - Educational Technology Center  

Welcome - Davis E.T.C. Group

C-Forum Planning for 2008-09 School Year – Lynn Sorensen

• Thanks to the Davis team for hosting and planning
• Tribute and thanks to Kathy Webb who is being replaced by Cory Little from Nebo School District on the C-Forum organizing committee
• Lynn Sorensen would like to start recognizing a person each year who has put time and effort into supporting C-Forum. Next year we will take suggestions from the group, but this year he wanted to recognize Karen Krier as the C-Forumer of the Year.
• Next year's C-Forum meeting dates and locations:
  • October 3rd - Alpine
  • November 7th - Provo
  • December 5th - Granite
  • January 9th - UEN
  • February 6th - Jordan
  • April 3rd* - Nebo
    * This is a tentative date. We need to check the district calendars because it may conflict with Spring Break.

Online PhotoShop Express - Clint Stephens
Free 2 gigabytes of storage with a limit of 10 megabytes per file. Be sure you have the bandwidth to use it. Adobe says there will always be some kind of online storage and access. Allows you to choose your own URL for sharing online.

Picnik – Darren Draper
Another free photo editing tool. Does not require membership. Does not organize your photos and the editing tools are a little bit different.

ChitCh.at - Rob Bentley
An Educational Network that is free. Works like a course management system online.
Allows:

• Creation of different classes
• Blog posts
• Embed images, videos, links, and sounds into posts
• Posts may require
  • Sign and collect
  • Shared
  • Collaborate
  • Teachers only
• Ability see assignments, give feedback, and grade them online
• Flashcards:
  • Cards created will show up on students’ pages
  • Allows practice
  • Allows student to see the answers
  • Tracks progress on flashcards over time
  • Charts gaps in understanding
• Ability to invite students to join
• Unique class codes for students
• Personal information for students is not required
• Ability to view student information on how they are doing
• Ability to send alert to all members of the class at once
• RSS feed
• Browse ability enables you to see other teachers’ assignments and copy/use them
• Wiki creation is coming

Skitch - Darren Draper
A screenshot utility that allows you to write directly on the screenshot, draw arrows, etc.. and then easily upload the edited screenshot to the web. Beta and Mac only.

When you install Skitch it puts an icon in your menu bar where it can be accessed any time. What makes it different are the things you can do once you have the screen shot.
You can:

• Put text on it
• Put arrows on it
• Create shadows
• Rotate, resize, crop
• Share by dragging into any application
• Post your shot to the web
• Png, pdf, jpg, etc.

Upload is possible to anywhere you want, but they do provide some space for you to upload as well.

Jing for PCs – Darren Draper
Similar to  Skitch

Diigo - Darren Draper
Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Social Bookmarking and similar to del.icio.us, but it does more. A social tool that includes a bar or dashboard where you can navigate. Allows you to see bookmarks, messages to your friends, sites your friends are visiting and viewing, but there is more. When you are working together as a team you can annotate a page and include sticky notes all working on the project will see.

• Bookmark
• Tag bookmarks
• Annotate
• Sticky notes
• Create lists
• Create groups
• Send messages
• Play a list as a slideshow
• Private notes
• Use like a blog with students
• Ability to see who has been to your page

VoiceThread – Darren Draper
Show and Tell on the internet

Learning Events Calendar - Darren Draper
"Learning Events" are web-casts, Skype conferences, video streams, or physical conferences around technology and learning. You can use this wiki page to participate in or to schedule an event.

Davis School District ETC Updates - Davis E.T.C. Group

• Google Photos Screensaver
  Recognizes your software and allows you to use your pictures as your screensaver as a collage or just pictures. Just select a folder on your computer.
• Davis is highlighting technology in their schools through a plasma television in the foyer.
• Introduction of Carol Nef who was hired to run the technology enhanced classroom lab. The lab has all the equipment they would like to put into the classrooms in schools. Teachers must apply for a grant and after being accepted, the teachers are trained on the equipment. Includes interactive whiteboard, clickers, interactive pads, document camera, and projector. Carol also conducts online classes and goes out to the schools to help.
• my.DSD- a website for teachers, students and parents to access a variety of resources that kind of work together. This is a secure website which includes Gradebook, Netrekker, media (coming soon), journals, Novel lockers, Adobe products, and OnDemand. Joanna, Kathy, and Paul illustrated the following:
  • Adobe - Checks the machine for Adobe products and allows you to access them. Teachers who take classes on these products are allowed to install the software on their computers at school. If the person coming in is a lab manager, they are allowed to put the product on their entire lab. Media kit is $45.00 and paper license is $35.00. Three classes are offered for Photoshop Elements. Teacher examples were shown. Short demonstration of the Create tools in Photoshop Elements.
  • Premier - demonstration and teacher examples.
  • Gradebook - students and parents may check grades, account balances, and attendance.
  • Netrekker - available to the entire district by school
  • Journal - works like a blog with text, pictures, and embedded items that could be stored in the myMedia section.
  • Locker - created by Novell to provide a way to save files and documents to a web based location. This is for students and staff. They save directly to their network drive and will have access to the files at home. Able to download single files or multiple files. Multiple files come in a zipped format. Shared drives are also available for teachers to put files students can access. Even students have access through the wireless to their files. This does not require the client.
  • OnDemand - an online video library. Teachers and students can create a playlist, skip intros, move through the video at will, and view them at full screen. The goal is to put video projectors in as many classes as possible. Mpeg4 codec is required, but can be downloaded. The database of videos is searchable.

UCET Updates - Margo Shirley

• 1200 attendants
• 120 survey respondents - 83% said they would attend again.
• Next year will be March 6th and 7th
• Speaker will be Tim Tyson
• Location: Taylorsville High School
• UCET grants - 17 submitted and winner will be picked soon. Grants funded by venders.

UEN Updates - UEN staff

• Summer CMaP Training - Ross Rogers
  • Week long class: 8:00- 5:00 (Spots available in Utah county workshop)
  • $50.00 registration, but get GPS unit, learn GIS, and build around a community project
  • Project-based learning
  • Next year looking at Cedar or St. George, Salt Lake, Utah county, and CUES area
• UEN Professional Development's summer schedule and Fall schedule are being put together and the are already getting full.
• Contact Victoria Rasmussen if you would like UEN to conduct workshops for your district.
• The final FY 2009 appropriation for UEN is an increase of $2.5 million ($1.3 million one-time and $1.2 million ongoing). The new funds will provide for employee compensation increases, important network projects and the first phase of a multi-phase project to expand bandwidth capacity in the elementary schools.
• my.uen web statistics: there has been nearly 50% growth in visitors and over 200% growth in bandwidth usage from Feb. 2007 and Feb. 2008.
• You will be seeing a new design for UEN.org sometime in the next few weeks.

USOE Updates - Rick Gaisford / Doug Jones

• iTunes Public Ed Site – go to iTunes U for university content.  The goal is to launch Utah’s iTunes U site at NECC.  Currently they are designing the site and identifying assets to include.  Demonstration of University of South Florida’s site with audiobooks available on their Lit2Go site.  Check out the beyond campus area, KQED, and others.
• Legislatively there was no new money for technology this year.
• On the federal side there will be more EETT grants starting in November this year.  Most likely will be two year grants and the federal government may pass a resolution giving more money.  Grant money may be provided for state portal sites like UEN for development or augmentation.
• ITC update – 53 workshops (25 more) and has morphed in two workshops and a two day schedule.  If you haven’t contacted Vicki Arnold about where it is held, etc., please contact her at once.
• Wimba – Tuesdays at 4:00 forum all are invited to join.  Website available thanks to Kevin and Nebo district at http://utahlink.org.  Information is archived each week and if you need access to them, contact Doug Jones by e-mail.

          

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