School District 60: Peace River North – You must connect yourself to connect your students.

TEDxOntarioEd – April 9th, 2010 – 4pm – 7pm local time

What is TEDxOntarioEd? http://www.tedxontarioed.ca/

TEDxOntarioEd is where educators, academics, students, and other remarkable people will have 5 minutes to share their ‘idea worth spreading’ about motivation. This dynamic sharing will discuss the concept of motivation, how it relates to students and educators in our rapidly changing world, the tools that enable motivation, and how motivation is manifested in various contexts. Through the support of TED, this event promises to bring together creative minds from across Canada that will immerse an audience of live and remote participants in a rich dialog about innovative ideas.

SD60 to Host LAN Party for TEDxOntarioEd

We will host a LAN Party to view TEDxOntarioEd. We will have a video, skype, and twitter link to the conference so we can view and participate. Also dinner will be provided for participants who are able to attend. If you’d like to attend please email me jbell@prn.bc.ca with the number of people.

Toni Thompson and Kim Boettcher demonstrate personal story interviews with iMovie.

Mrs Jensen and Mr Longley’s class took part in a skype chat today with U of T astronomers through skype. Great questions from our grade three and six students!

I was please to join a discussion with the Socrates Cafe at NPSS today about Facebook. We only hit the tip of the iceberg but I’m really looking forward to more. Karl did a great job moderating a very interesting topic!

I’ve included the MP3 as this month’s Tech Aware podcast.

Facebook Discussion Feb 25, 2010 @ NPSS

Spent a little time with Brian Campbell today setting up www.prn.bc.ca/careers/ which will host info on Careers, AVID, and International Education

I’ll be doing a presentation on Digital Tattoo – considerations for educators around their online public and private lives.

February 4th, at 4:45pm MST on Elluminate, come join me for this CEET presentation (Community of Expertise in Educational Technology)

http://elgg.openschool.bc.ca/pg/event_calendar/view/4015

BCeSIS Scheduled Outage: March 5 @ 5pm PST until March 9th @ 5pm PST.
As noted on the www.isw-bc.ca will be a scheduled outage during the Provincial spring break which does not coincide with our spring break.
You need to be logged off before the beginning of the outage as work entered may be lost if you are still logged in.
We have of course voiced complaint regarding this time along with other districts who do not follow the Provincial spring break.

Correct Website for BCeSIS
I’ve noticed while working with several people that they do an internet search for BCeSIS and click on a link which takes them directly to the log in screen.
This is not the correct way to access BCeSIS. Staff should always access the database through www.isw-bc.ca as there are critically important messages regarding planned or emergent outages that must be read.
There is also a link to BCeSIS on our district website which takes you to the ISW.

Very proud to come and do some video of six grade 4 students from Charlie Lake school who entered and won a BC Hydro PowerSmart contest for a radio spot. The students worked with their teacher, Linda Haugen, during their grade 3 year to plan, write, and produce their commercial entry.

This week they had the opportunity to record the following spot at the MooseFM studios in Fort St John. Way to go guys!

BC HYDRO POWER SMART IDOL – Charlie Lake Students

Internet Safety with Parents

Had an enjoyable evening with several parents last night about internet and safety. I’ve included the presentation above, but it was mostly great conversations.

I tracked questions and concerns on twitter and have included them below.

1. jbellsd60 what are the right questions to be asking our kids? #sd60

2. jbellsd60 time and a place for technology #sd60

3. jbellsd60 education is important around using internet and technology for good #sd60

4. jbellsd60 internet over xbox, talking with other gamers/users #sd60

5. jbellsd60 keeping up to date with what they are doing, what they are using #sd60

6. jbellsd60 lack of technical skills in teachers – concern #sd60

Here is a great Prezi which talks about a lot of the tools that can be used to engage students with technology.

http://prezi.com/obqzirjhtf-q/

Parents asking which school should I register my student in (home school) can check the Baragar web tool that asks for your address. The tool will give you the K-12 schools your child should attend.

If parents wish for their students to attend a different school, they still need to register at the home school and ask for a Variance form. Variances must be approved and depend on space at other schools.

http://mybaragar.com/index.cfm?event=page.SchoolLocatorPublic&DistrictCode=BC60

The Tech Aware Podcast was created as part of a joint Professional Growth Plan with Norbert Kaspar and Jarrod Bell. The Tech Aware podcast is focuses at students but helpful as well for parents, and teachers. Our first monthly episode looks at your Digital Tattoo. What are you posting or what is being posted about you online? Are you aware of how that can affect you in the future? Time to Give it a Ponder!

Norbert Kaspar and Jarrod Bell will be offering additional pro-d sessions on technology. Here is the schedule and topics

SMART Boards
(SBO RM132 Jan 14th 3:30-5:00)

Google Education & Extensions
(Jan. 18 @ 3:30pm @ NPSS lab)

SMART Boards
(Feb. 11 – SBO RM132 3:30-5:00)

WIKIs & Blogs
Edublog
Edu Paint / PB Wiki
(Feb. 22, 3:30 to 5:00 – NPSS Lab)

Moodle
(March 1 – 3:30 – 5:00 @ NPSS Lab)

SMART Boards
(March 18 – SBO RM132 3:30-5:00)

SMART Boards
(April 15 – SBO RM132 3:30-5:00)

Moodle Advanced
(April 26 – 3:30 – 5:00 – NPSS Lab)

SMART Boards
(May 13 – SBO RM132 3:30-5:00)

Web 2.0
(May 27 – 3:30 – 5:00 – NPSS Lab)

SMART Boards
(June 3 – SBO RM132 3:30-5:00)

Internet in the Classroom / School
(June 8 – 3:30 – 5:00 – SBO – DDC)

I’ll borrow UBC’s Digital Tattoo website name for a presentation I’m doing this afternoon with the AHCOTE teachers about their digitial presence online and where they may need to be for their future teaching careers.

Here’s the preso. Digital Tattoo Presentation (PPT)

While I like posting some great tech tips, it is often beyond the time I have to come up and build them. Fortunately there are many in my PLN (Personal Learning Network) of people and sites that share theirs. Innovative Educator is one that I’ve subscribed to with RSS so I thought I’d share it here with you as one of my often read blogs.

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/

http://shift2future.blogspot.com/2009/12/disruption-is-coming.html

A colleague of mine in a different school district puts it nicely in his blog post above. As more and more technology and content approaches “free” we should expect to see it in our schools. Rather than apply the “no hat/no gum” approaches that have resulted in nothing but conflict we need to look at how do we integrate them to help the individuals in our classrooms.

I agree, disruption is coming.

Technology Services will be closed on the 24th & 25th of December 2009 and the 1st of January 2010. Someone will be available on helpdesk the other days (250-263-6442), but if no one answers please leave a message!

Merry Christmas!

Grade 7 classes at the middle schools will be part of the 1:1 Wireless Writing Program. The core grade 7 teacher will be expected to be using the laptops as per the usual WWP expectations. Professional development will be provided in a similar fashion for new and veteran teachers to the WWP.

Possible Changes to note:

* Roll out may happen a little later than normal (mid-October) to accommodate the transition in the first year.
* It will also be decided at a later time whether students will be able to take the laptops home or at what time in the year they will be able to take the laptops home.

See the whole article at http://bit.ly/66Dxsw

1. eBooks Will Continue to Proliferate

2. Netbook Functionality Will Grow

3. More Teachers Will Use Interactive Whiteboards

4. Personal Devices Will Infiltrate the Classroom

5. Technology Will Enable Tailored Curricula

Here’s an example of a quick notebook file for the smartboard looking at a zero to ten number line. Please change it to suit your needs!

Integer Number Line

I was often concerned about switching from an older thin client to a fat client around the power consumption difference. Looking at the signature line from Computers for Schools though I feel pretty good about it all of the sudden!

Transfering 100 computers from business to schools extends their useful life, often by double and is the equivilant of:

* Electricity to power 30 homes for a year

* A reduction in CO2 emissions of 1,469 metric tons

* Removing 13 cars from the road per year

* The weight of 9 refrigerators of primary material savings

* 9 pounds of toxic materials

Along with the reuse of a still capable computer we can apply power saving features from our LanREV software to save even more power!

We received 15 computers to replace Teacher-Librarian thin clients from CFS and they were immaculate and all Dell GX280s with at least 512Mb of ram and a windows xp pro license. For a low cost of $50 each! (The thin clients won’t support the new library system which will be implementing over the next two years.)

Time for a serious look at CFS http://www.cfsbc.ca/

Name changes are an intricate time consuming process for Technology Services. To aid in this we would ask that the process below be followed.

1. Employee wishing to change their name must speak with Payroll (250-262-6000) and appear in person to sign necessary forms
2. Payroll will generate a work order to Technology Services to change the DWL and Mail accounts which will include:
   -Previous Name
   -New Name
   -Work Location
   -New password (minimum 6 characters)
3. TS upon receipt of the work order will change the DWL account, create a new Mail account, and forward the old mail account to the new one.
4. TS will send a mail message explaining the changes to the DWL and Mail accounts to the employee
5. TS will return the work order as completed to payroll and payroll will update the payroll system so that pay stubs get sent to the new email address.

We believe we have solved the issue with the paystubs. It was related to a progressive failure of our old mail systems as it appears that the stubs are getting sent out to people that had been missing them before. In the new mail system you need to Download the attachment to view your stub. The system offers a View link but it cannot view the PDF because of the encryption, download it first! A short video shows you how.

Great Resource! http://emergentbydesign.com/2009/11/24/75-resources-educator-guide-for-integrating-social-media/