Remember everything.

The motto of the Evernote Corporation pretty much sums it up.  I’ve been using Evernote for a few months now, but the software came into its own a few weeks back during a Leadership session where we broke out into six different groups, each assigned to a chapter in the ASCD Book Curriculum 21.  Each group put together a hand-made poster of the main ideas on their chapter.  I decided to try taking snapshots of the posters for each group on my Droid smartphone in the Evernote application.  Within seconds the photos appeared on my laptop’s Evernote Desktop Client, ready for additional note taking as the groups discussed their chapters. Minutes later, the photos had been archived, and the hand written text was indexed and searchable.  .  .  Suddenly Evernote went from a potentially useful tool to a crucial part of my workflow.

[EVERNOTE.COM]

Today marked the first day of teaching with the Promethean board that I hijacked am giving  a good home in my classroom.  At first I was hesitant to really commit to creating the space in my classroom for the board, because those things, when on the mobile stands, take up a ton of room & I’m already pressed for space as it is.  Now I’m considering totally rearranging my room to accommodate the tool (and potentially ticking off everyone who shares with me).  What I did today was nothing fancy, I just played with the ability to pull a screenshot straight into the Flipchart and had students identifying vocab (and isolating patterns in Noun Genders).  The students seemed to have had little chance to interact with a whiteboard, so they get a kick out of writing on the board.  As an instructional tool, it was a cinch to get content onto the ActivStudio flipchart and use it in class.  As far as student learning goes, it was mixed.  The IWB engaged one student at a time when used like this, so the others needed to have a more structured way to follow along. . .

I still have some questions about the software, so I discovered that there are tutorials and a free Foundation-Level training course offered by Promethean. . . checking it out.

Today at TRETC, our regional EdTech Conference I’m presenting along with @balthof, a friend and classmate from our work at Carnegie Mellon on building a Professional Learning Network.  Since we only have an hour to present, the presentation turned into a highly focused Twitter session. But there is so much more to building your PLN!

Here are the links I promised!

@mrplatts on Twitter

@balthof on Twitter

Twitter in Plain English – By CommonCraft

Getting the pulse of the net – visualizing Twitter:

Twistori.com

Visibletweets.com –> Check out the TRETC Tweets!

Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog -> Blogging and a little common sense

How not to tweet!

How not to tweet

Finding Tweeps –

Twitter for Teachers Wiki

Connexions: Directory of Learning Professionals Online

Twellow

Twitter Search

Twitter Lists – Tretc-Tweeters

Just a few days ago Google announced that it would be halting uploads to Google video. Previously uploaded content will be maintained (for now) but new uploads will stop working soon.

Unfortunately that puts me in a bit of an awkward position. I’ve been using Google Video to host “unlisted” videos at the private “intranet” section of my Speech Team’s website.  I’m using Google Apps for education to host the site, and chose the Google Sites option because of the wiki-esque nature of the system.  Now I’m sort of stuck.  See, Google doesn’t let me embed much external content, even Google maps are too scary for Google Sites.  I’ve read that fixes are in the works, but I’m skeptical that Google is not letting me embed html and iframe content because of security issues,rather they want to control what content hosts you use.

Without Google Video’s semi-private functionality, I don’t know what I am going to use to embed video.  I and my kids do not want their practice pieces published online, the whole point is to see the bad things in it, make the fixes and compare versions of their speeches within the privacy of our team.

Wise up google, if you are not going to provide the same functionality in your new tools, at least open your system to allow us to embed content outside of your whitelist of “gadgets.”

I discovered today that I can stop whining about how cumbersome BlackBoard is, because in their new release it is almost all AJAX Driven, virtually eliminating all of the excess clicking and page reloads. I’m cautiously optimistic about the improvements. As I’m piloting BlackBoard through our provider BlendedSchools.net, I signed up for a preview account in the BlackBoard Sandbox. I only hope that I have positive things to report from that little experiment.

From what I’ve seen so far, this release brings BlackBoard into the Web 2.0 style.  It looks less like it belongs in 1998 (Frames? Really?) and the behind the scenes stuff looks way slicker.   I haven’t even gotten into the Moodle Course integration & Facebook notification options (though I doubt that will be in my middle school version)

BlackBoard Release 9

I’ve been a bum for the past few months.  Well, maybe that’s not so accurate, but I have sort of fallen off the productivity wagon since the disruptions of late.  Though, today I started early, got energized and excited about a few new projects and hope that I can keep up some momentum in the coming weeks.

Project 1:

Making Global Connections — Recently a colleague directed me to an interview on one of our morning talk radio shows.  They were interviewing Steelers Fans in all different partse of the world, among which were the UK, Germany, Pakistan and others.  She suggested I try to get in touch with the interviewee, webmaster of PittsburghSteelers.de. Since Sascha seemed to put up with the antics of the radio guys, I figured a few middle school kids would be no problem.  I contacted him this morning, and got a very positive response.  Here’s  hoping that I have a recorded Skype chat to share here next Friday!

Project 2:

Becoming an agent – maybe a change agent – this has been a theme with me recently, something that I shared in a comment on Teach42 — Steve Dembo asked, Is joining a PLN bad for morale? I commented that as I read more and more about the innovative, and impactful things that people in my PLN are using technology to achieve I find myself occasionally isolated or frustrated, but simultaneously primed to do something about my situation.  At the unveiling of our new Strategic Plan this week, it became clear that it was now or never.  One of our main areas in the new plan is getting the staff and students up to speed on technology issues.  I stuck out my neck, copied all the higher-ups on an email to the professional development group, laid out what I have to offer, and asked to be part of the team.  My offer was accepted.  I hope I can make my voice heard, and help to develop a differentiated plan for technology PD in our school.  There is a lot to post about later.

Project 3:

BlendedSchools.net – This summer and Fall I became one of a small contingent of teachers asked to pilot BlendedSchools.net, a BlackBoard provider.  While I’m not the biggest fan of Blackboard:

I’m willing to give the platform a shot.  I might not stop complaining about the endless clicks required to perform simple tasks, but at this point BB 8 is what we have to deal with. In September we lost my dad, which had a huge disrupting effect on all sorts of endeavours. (Note the almost total lack of blog posts since then)  Fortunately, I planned ahead and had developed a framework, and filed in the barest of content to get started.  It’s a journey, and I’m learning as I go what works and what doesn’t.  But, I’m reaching the end of what I developed.  So, first I’m revisiting what I did and adding in improvements while they are fresh, and then I will try to get some chunks of content in place for the second semester.  This time I intend to use tools like Hot Potatoes & SCORM instructional content (and maybe a little Flash) to beef up my content.

Updated to WordPress 2.7 — nice quick automatic upgrade through WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. I like the Quickpress on the Dashboard where I am writing this note now.

I know we are past the tumultuous election season already, but I started thinking about the effect that a conference, even a smaller local education conference like the TRETC (Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference) — I thought it timely that CoolCatTeacher blogged about making the most of a conference experience.  She quoted a reflection written by Mitchell Weisburg, after attending EduCause.

In the spirit of reflecting about reflecting (is that meta-reflection?)  CoolCatTeacher blogs about the importance of the reflection element by conference attendees.

Require Reflections from Conference Attendees
I think every person who attends a conference should be REQUIRED, yes, I said REQUIRED, to write a reflection. It should ideally be an open blog post, but at least one on the intranet for others at the workplace to see.

It could also be a gcast, or cell phone recorded podcast, or a video where a person talks to the screen. Really, it could also be photographs that are shared. But it should be something, done in a medium that is the simplest way for the person who attends to communicate in.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be one of 12 attendees from my district who attended the conference. We are not ‘required’ to reflect on the conference experience, but this is generally something I do on my own.  As a district we are HUGE on reflection by the students, on any given professional development, we are not yet culturally in a place where we can expect teachers to reflect.  I would love to get a bit more formalized reflection from my fellow attendees, and perhaps continue the conversations that we began yesterday.

For the past two years I have attended on my own, but the experience was different in a group.  The obvious positive is the direct focus that our conversations took, in how we can leverage the strategies, tools and concepts that we learned about in our school. Also, with a group of 12+ like-minded people “on the same page” it seems more realistic that we can make an impact in our home-buildings, and increase the use of technology to impact student learning in our district.  Additionally, our administrators also attended, and saw some of the great things that can be done with technology.  I’m not sure we are quite in a place where our district envisions a “new way to do school”, but at least we are moving in the right direction.

The downside to being in a large group is the external networking that get missed.  Often you sit in a session with someone you know, are less likely to introduce yourself around, and expand your PLN.  (I still managed to connect with a few new people through Twitter. Though in full disclosure, three of them were at a conference in Philadelphia, not in Pittsburgh.)

On the whole the conference was fairly good.  I was not as impressed by the keynote speaker as in past years, but I think that highlights the qualities of the DEN speakers we saw in the past rather than the speaker from the US Department of Education (aka The Feds).  Apart from looking like Tim Robbins, the speaker was pretty sound.  Tim Manger (Director of the US Department of Ed. on Educational Technology) was in the right place with his remarks, though his presentation wasn’t anything I had heard before, and borrowed heavily from other presentation I’m familiar with (without giving credit, I might add).  I am, however, checking out the “School 2.0“  website he demonstrated.

Out first session was more of an hour and a half sales pitch from Promethean.  I’m not sure if this is typical of technology conference sessions, but in any case it was very good.  Wendy Zuber demonstrated the tools very well, and having some hands on time with the responders made a pretty big impact on the audience.  Sure, it just made me wish for a classroom set of responders and a “real” interactive whiteboard.  We do have a Promethean Board on wheels, that is rearly used by teachers in out school.  But carting it down from the upstairs lab, setting it up, and then recalibrating every few minutes afer it gets knocked (or the projector gets bumped.)  Maybe in our brand new new building (in a few years) we will have “modern” classrooms.

Second, I attended a presentation on iTunes U.  It appears that our friends at Fox Chapel School district are once again on the bleeding edge of all that is technical, and are the first Pennsylvania school to distribute content through iTunes.  My feelings are mixed as to how practical a solution this actually is.  What’s worse is that the State is involved in the process, and wants all content that is posted to be tagged with state standards.  I’m not sure if I can think of a more effective way to squash teacher enthusiasm than to insist that content is pigeonholed into a specific set of state standards.  And where does Foreign Language content go?  We have no state standards.

Lastly, I attended a great presentaiton by Grace Poli of Union City, NJ.  This was one of the best organized presentations, and had the most direct foreign langauge impact of any that I’ve done.  She poitned me to some outstanding resources, and strategies for using technology (iPods) in teaching.  (Hmm . . . I was going to link to her Slideshare, which she PROMISED she would have up by this morining, maybe I’ll add it later.)

My remarks at my dad’s memorial service on September 20, 2008. (Cross-posted from our Family Blog)

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All of you are here to day to help us to celebrate the life of the man who you may have known for all or some of the last twenty years, since my family moved to Pittsburgh from England. You all know some facet of Mick Platts: the friend, the neighbor, the colleague, the family-man, the artist, the teammate, the runner, the athlete, the chicken-wire and paper mache parade float-builder, the handy man, the father, the husband, the proud grandad.

My dad was a remarkable man for many reasons. He may have taught your kids to shingle a house, or frame a window, or hang drywall on the summer mission trips that he joined us on. My mom and he helped to lead the Youth Group when there was a need.

He was often quiet, just biding his time for the right moment for his quick wit and sense of humor to send us into side-splitting laughter. If you could have been around the dinner table with us when he got on a roll, you would have experienced such joy and happiness, even as your belly hurt from laughing so hard.

But today, I need to share with you the man that I have known since I was two-years old, and what he means to me, my sisters and my mum.

Many of you may not even know that my dad is my step-father. It was never necessary to make the distinction. My grandmother has often reminded me that when I was a little boy I would say to her:

“Do you remember the day I married my dad?”

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Anne and Mick met one night in a bowling alley in 1982, their matchmaker friends had been hard at work. Dad had just moved back to Barnsley, after quitting a job that he didn’t like, and joined the local police force. (That’s right, add Mick the Bobby to the list) A group of friends were out together, and I was there. According to my mum I was a huge pain, I tried to break the pinball machine, spilled my Lemonade down the bowling lane (some things never change.) And after the evening out, my dad ended up crammed into the same car that was giving mum and I a ride home, accidentally, on purpose. There was a full moon, that reminded my dad of something. . . “Has Richard seen E.T. yet?” Which was of course his round-about way of asking my mum to the movies. . .

The story continues, but we can skip ahead to three days before my third birthday, November 12th 1983 when my mum and dad were married and we continued on with the journey of a lifetime together, as if nothing had ever been different. . . My mum and dad and I were a family, he was my dad and I was his son.

In my adult life, I realized what a brave step it must have been for him. A lesser man might have been scared off by a single mom with a three year old child. To start a family at twenty-four years of age. But not my dad. He fell in love with an amazing woman, and with me at the same time.

But our journey was only just getting started…

Two years later we had moved to Stockport, a town outside of Manchester in England. Dad had gotten back into his chosen field, and was pursuing his dreams and talents as an Engineer. We pick up the story in November, where my mum is expecting a baby. Jenny, not surprisingly was in a rush to join us, and they had already been to the hospital expecting to come home with a baby. . . twice. Despite all of this rush, my dad in his infinite wisdom felt that it was still ok to cycle to work. And on their second anniversary, my mum went into labor with the greatest anniversary present they could have imagined. Dad had to hitch a ride home with his boss to take my mom to the hospital. He was scared, this was his first time doing this. And the first of his girls – Jennifer, who kept my dad’s bright blue eyes, arrived just after midnight the following day. And he was the happiest man in the world.

August 25th, 1988 – we arrived in America with a box of silverware, a computer that wouldn’t work, and two bikes. Completely unprepared for the greatest adventure of our lives. People often ask my mum how long we have been here. To which she sometimes responds: “We came 20 years ago for a year.” America . . . the chance to come here was irresistable for a young family. They came to the land of opportunity, but with opportunity comes risk, and fear. What brave people my parents were to bring us here and risk everything to further our family.

Shortly after this move my dad began to work with Walter Buss, a colleague, friend and boss that my dad respected very much. He would want Walter to know that he looked to him as a mentor and father-figure here. My dad was a brilliant engineer, project manager; well respected in his field by his colleagues, and we know that he will be sorely missed by them.

It didn’t take long for my dad to be spotted, and Walter wasn’t going to let him go. Our one-year adventure became three, then four, and then we started to put down real roots, bought a house, made Mount Lebanon our home, joined the church and my parents made the decision to expand our little family. . .

Ellen arrived one night during a thunderstorm that would not relent. Dad did not bike to work, and mum and dad played cards all night. Ellen, unlike her big sister did not want to come, which is a surprise to anyone who sees how she jumps into things today. My dad was so proud of Ellen his brown-eyed baby girl, who has become a beautiful young woman in her own right. We are all so proud of her talents, she is an athlete, a kind and caring girl, a musician, and a good friend.

My dad especially loved the music that she and Deborah make playing the piano, and singing . . . gifts that both girls got from my dad. (Did I mention Mick the Guitarist?)

Soon my parents realized that at 7-years younger than her older sister, we would soon be out of the house, and Ellen may be lonely. And how lucky we are for that conversation. Deborah, as is her way, was an easy baby on my mum and my dad. He proudly, and nervously cut the cord of his baby (for the first time, I might add) and our family became complete with Deborah. Dad loved to hear her sing, and watch her compete, and is so proud of the young lady that she is becoming.

The five of us have a lifetime of happy memories with my dad, and he knew how much we loved him. He was proud of us all, and showed it to us every day. He loved me as his son, but he adored his baby girls.

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The past months have been hard. My dad protected us, and you, from the worst. But this time wasn’t without its blessings. For six-months after his first seizure, my dad could not drive to work. I took him in the morning, often running late, and with a couple of coffees that I picked up on the way to his house. And my sister often drove him home. For six-months, I got a half an hour every day to talk to my dad, like we have never had the chance to talk before. Sons and fathers don’t share often enough how they feel. But I took joy in having that opportunity. And I did tell him what he means to me. That he made me the man I am today. He gave me every opportunity that I have ever enjoyed. I teach German because, like him, I wanted to speak German. From him I got my strength, my ambition, and my commitment to my family.

We will remember my dad for the happiest of our memories. The vacation of a lifetime, on Kiawah Island, where all of us kids, and my wife, Marie and our baby Eleanor spent one of the happiest weeks we have ever had together. My dad and I learning together to cast a shrimping net, and while everyone else was out cooking and eating the best shrimp together over a beer, leaving the runts for everyone else.

One of the happiest thoughts that I am left with is just this past Saturday, during one of Deborah’s rainy soccer games. Marie was coaching the team, and looked across the field to se my dad protecting his granddaughter from the rain. Holding her close, loving her, and her loving him. They were helping each other.

Girls: Your daddy loves you, and is proud of all that you are. And, I know that I speak on behalf of my sisters and mum when we say.

“Dad, we love you, we are proud of your life. Now be at peace.”