We received an award for our website from WantToTeach.com for being selected as one of the top 10 websites nationally for education.

From the wanttoteach website:

We at WantToTeach.com visit thousands of public school district websites each year in search of “the best”. We also receive many “blind” nominations as well from users to our site who take advantage of our nominating process.
During the course of each year, we then bookmark what we consider to be the best of what the Internet has to offer in preparation for our December deadline day.
Thus, the websites that we ultimately recognize each year represent what we feel are the best public school websites that the Internet has to offer.Our selection criteria is as follows:

1) Functionality - useful information and ease of access.

2) Design - a sharp design designating a sense of pride in one’s school and/or district.

3) Imagination - a sense of imagination present in the site.

4) Timeliness - the site is maintained and current.

2008 Top Website Award Winner

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We just conducted a test using X-Meeting on the Mac and were able to quickly and easily connect 2 Mac computers with live video and audio.  It was a really nice image and audio was great as well.  Making the connection was as simple as dialing the IP address of the other computer.  This can be useful for quickly connecting classrooms that may be working on similar projects or just want to share information - kinda like a pen-pal type of thing.  Between Skype, H323, and ePresence, we are exploring a variety of options for distance learning, collaboration, and video conferencing.

I am still without a server for Mahara ePortfolio, ePresence, and a district wide wiki application.  As we get closer to summer break, it appears that these three apps are going to be my big projects for the summer.   I am told that around July is when there may be a free server or two available for me to install these on.

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OK, Here’s me reflecting on the improvements we have made in the last 3 years…

• Completely re-engineered our district website to make it a first class educational hub for learning.
• Launched iLearn/Moodle for online classrooms. These courses meet the new Michigan graduation requirement that students be exposed to an online learning activity. We have several hundred courses and over 6,000 users.
• Created a comprehensive web publishing network based on Adobe Contribute for schools to maintain and expand their websites providing information for parents and community. The publishing network is all controlled centrally and easily manageable by one person. This was not the case prior to this with over 30 schools all moving in different directions for creating websites.
• Made classroom website creation as simple as entering a username and password. With iBlog, a teacher merely enters their district ID and a classroom website is instantly created for them and viewable to parents. iBlog is a wonderful website creation tool that allows teachers to update their website from any computer and anytime. We have around 500 teacher blogs.
• 24/7 Access to streaming video! We stream our public access cable channel on the web live. We also podcast and record all Board Meetings and have an archive going back to June 2005. Utilizing a QuickTime Streaming video server, any school can create a “live” feed to the web.
• D-tube is now the video sharing website of choice for Dearborn teachers and students. With D-Tube, students/teachers can upload videos share classroom projects etc. Teachers can upload videos and then embed these videos into their iblog websites for parents/students. D-Tube has about 90 videos and over 46,000 video views. Some videos have over 4000 views.
• Provided podcasting access for any teacher with a iblog website. Podcasting for all !!! With our podcast system, the feeds can be added to iTunes for easy viewing and tracking.
• Hours upon hours of training and trouble shooting for staff. To keep the system running, training and support are critical. Whether it is 1-on-1 or large group training, providing help is critical for getting people to adopt the new technology.

Here is kinda the game plan…

Phase I
Establish the main publishing and online tools (iLearn, iBlog, D-Tube). These three tools provide tools for learning, publishing, and multimedia/video. This is the foundation for our online learning platform. We are constantly adding new features, but this is the core group of web applications we are using. Staff do not need to use all three and most don’t. They each have strengths and weaknesses. It is important that we keep expanding the use and awareness of the core applications. This is done via the training sessions.

Phase II
Expand functionality: Communication, Collaboration, and Personal Learning Space.

With Phase II we want to enhance certain aspects of the core applications. Communication will involve adding on a “Live” web conference system (WCS). The WCS will allow teachers to record and archive lessons, concepts, etc. in a video and media format that will allow students to retrieve this information as they are studying 24/7. The WCS will also allow students/staff to instantly connect and meet with video and audio via a webcam and computer with eachother real-time, real-fast! So, the WCS will allow the teacher to record the instructional delivery of key concepts in the course and archive them for student viewing. It will also allow for real-time online meetings. The meetings would be beneficial for students who may be studying for a test at home and want to meet to discuss test items.

Collaboration will be covered by the release of a district-wide WIKI. Staff and Students can login using district ID’s and work collaboratively on WIKI pages for reports, projects, etc.

Personal Learning Space will in effect be ePortfolios where students can create profiles, store their works and educational bookmarks, blog, connect with friends, form study groups, and much more. It will become their personal learning environment where they can store their educational materials.
Phase II is just beginning… It will be exciting next year in September.

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Imagine a website created with Wordpress Multi-User (MU) that allowed you to create more of a community rather than separate blogs or classroom websites. Apparently the creators of wordpress have been working to create such a community-based software package.

Click Here for more details (from Download Squad Website)

This would be VERY appealing for us for a variety of reasons. We could create separate blogging communities for each school. It seems like there are some big plans for wordpress MU!

PS. This blog and every other Dearborn Teacher Blog was created using Wordpress MU. We currently have several hundred blogs in various stages of use.

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Well, it just doesn’t seem to go away. Just yesterday, I got another several emails from teachers wanting to archive classroom presentations. We have been exploring DimDim.com, Skype, and I just found a product called ePresence from the University of Toronto.

ePresence has really caught my curiosity. It is very polished and seems to be more powerful, but currently lacks support for creating presentations on a Mac OSX. While the system is setup for Windows Media, Quicktime, REAL Player, and Flash, we plan to only use flash so that will eliminate the need for a “media encoding station” as described in the setup. We plan to use it for 2 things: Live video conferencing much like a face-to-face meeting between 2 people/classrooms and for archiving instruction during a class.

We will have to wait and see how this all shakes out based on what teachers need for their classrooms. Based on our teacher needs, I guess it is up to me to find the proper solution for this.

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Moodle 1.9 was just released. This version has a much improved grading system and many new improvements. Most noteworthy is the Moodle-to-Mahara networking option for single sign-on. Mahara is an ePortfolio system where students can store and maintain personal learning artifacts. They can work on a document at school, upload it to Mahara, then download it from home to finish it up.

March 14th is the end of the report card marking period. I will look to upgrade Moodle and add Mahara around this time. It gives me a week or so to do the upgrade to Moodle and then launch Mahara as well.

Look out! Here we go!!!

Moodle  |  Mahara

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