To Learn Twice

Here is a tech tip I just sent out to my staff: I wanted to share a neat feature that Gmail Labs offers us for communicating with our students, parents, and community. You have the ability to turn on "Message Translation" which will use  Google Translate  to convert a message from another language to English (or to another language of your choice). Here are the simple steps to turn this on in  Gmail (link) . Of course, it isn't as good as having a live native speaker translate for you, but it will allow you to receive messages in 58 different languages (and growing) and it translated. I showed this to a group of parents last night and they were empowered with the idea that they could reach out, in a language where they are comfortable writing, to someone at school. Even understanding that it might not be perfect, but getting a general idea across was possible, brought tears to one mother's eyes. Please take a moment to set it up and ask a...

I am excited to help to announce an upcoming first time ever event. The Midwest Google Apps Summit on November 3rd and 4th at the Glacier Canyon Lodge in Wisconsin Dells, WI. The summit will feature several Google Certified Trainers from across Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, will feature members of the Google Apps for Education Team, and will also have representatives from vendors listed in the Google Marketplace.  The two days will offer presentations around a  variety of Google Apps topics and tools. Sessions will include from hands-on, best-practice, classroom examples, success stories, and much more. The conference costs $250 and includes breakfast, lunch, snacks, refreshments, and LEARNING! Rooms are available for $70 per night.  Details and registration for the conference can be found at  tinyurl.com/MWGS11  and a flyer is here:  http://goo.gl/NQqrE We hope to see you there!

Last summer we successfully launched our Maine Summer Institutes with just a few courses in cooperative learning and problem-based learning.These programs were very successful which has motivated us to expand our course offerings and repackage our summer program under the title,  "Maine 207 Summer Professional Learning Academies."  Throughout the summer, beginning with the week of June 13th, we are offering a variety of different workshops on these topics: Differentiated Instruction,  Cooperative Learning (Johnson and Johnson model), Problem-Based Learning (IMSA model), Data Driven Decision Making, Literacy and the Common Core Standards through the lens of one's discipline, Google Apps in the Collaborative Classroom, Google Certified Apps for Education Trainer Preparation Program, and Co-Teaching for Success. As was true last summer, we are making these courses available to all teachers, no matter what district they are from. Out of district teachers will be requir...

I have been gathering a list of educational institutions in Illinois using Google Apps for Education. Here is what I have found: The map and list can all be seen in a larger format here . Please let me know in the comments if your school or district is missing. Illinois Seal Image from: http://www2.illinois.gov/about/PublishingImages/seal.gif

This is the second in a series of posts about roadblocks organizations face in deploying Google Apps for Education (GAFE) . In the last post I went into depth about the FUD that circulates around Google Apps Deployments. In this post I will discuss CRUD, which are the reasonable Concerns, Reservations, Unknowns, and Decisions (along with some of the “ ilities ”) that emerge when choosing to use Google Apps for Education. As the person that feels the heat for anything that goes wrong with educational technology in our district, from PEBKAC errors to full network meltdowns, there is CRUD that goes along with any hardware, software, or cloud based deployment. A big part of my job is to be paranoid and critical about technology until I can be reasonably assured that it will work reliably, to the point of invisibility, to my schools. Although few products are actually invisible, to the level of a classroom chalkboard, my goal is that they all end up there. With that in mind I am alway...

When I was first teaching I had an administrator tell me that he was able to be productive because he had an "Clean Desk Policy". Nothing was allowed to sit on his desk for more than 24 hours. After 24 hours it was either taken care of, put in a bin to be filed away, or foldered with materials surrounding a larger project. I have tried to follow this practice as well, and my desk usually has nothing on it (except for times of extreme craziness). As Email started to take hold I found that much of what used to come across my desk as paper was now coming across digitally. However, the tools I had in my email system were not as easy to work with. Email conversations were not limited to 1 sheet of paper, they came in as many individual threads that were scattered across my inbox. Foldering was crazy, I had over 300 folders for every type of conversation, because finding old messages was impossible. Then came Gmail. Gmail has two powerful tools that destroy all other email systems:...

A question that I am hearing a lot about lately is: with all of these schools jumping on the Google bandwagon what do we do if Google goes rogue and becomes EVIL? We leave. To do this we need an exit strategy. This is what I posted in response to this question on Miguel Guhlin's blog What IF...The Google Cloud Evaporates? This isn't a question that just just be asked with a Google product, or a product in the cloud. This is a question that I ask with every piece of software we purchase: "What is the cost of leaving this product". What if suddenly Microsoft announced that they were releasing a "patch" that allowed them access to your servers? What if the company providing your SIS is taken over by another company and you cannot get support for your product any more? What if your anti-virus company goes out of business and stops updating definitions? In all of these cases you need an exit strategy - and coming up with one on the fly is dangerous and expensiv...

As you may have heard Google is offering a Google Teacher's Academy for Administrators in March the day before ASCD starts. Several people have commented on this David Jakes , Kevin Jarrett , and Miguel Guhlin . I have been asked to be one of the leaders for this session and will be somewhat involved in the planning process. So, what would you like to see out of the Academy? Let me know and I will pass it along. You can send it in directly to the GTA Team at gteachers@gmail.com

Here is the follow-up sent out from Google: If you are interested in signing up your school for Google Apps, please visit our website In case you'd like to share this information with others, or re-watch again yourself, please make use of these assets: Recorded webinar Slide presentation Q&A Session Transcript Google Moderator page of questions (with posted answers to questions - click 'View responses' next to question) Case study Thanks for again for joining us - and we look forward to seeing you at future Google Apps Education events. The Google Apps Education Team

Google has posted the webinar on their resource page: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/resource_center.html It is also available directly from YouTube We have also responded to all of the questions on the moderator page. http://moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=cdd2b The focus of this webinar was on how we got up and going with Google Apps. Eventually I will put something together on how our teachers, students, and administrators are using it. Of course you can always contact me with any questions.

We have been using Google Apps for Education in Maine 207 for a couple of years now. As of the 2008-09 school year all of our students have Google Apps accounts including Gmail, Docs, and Calendar. We have been working closely with Google to make suggestions for changes and to be aware of their roadmap into the future. They have been great to work with, and we recently participated in a case study for them. You can read it here

This is a twofer. There was a board meeting last night so I really didn't have much time to reflect on the day. So over the past 2 days my time has been spent: 1. Preparing documentation for our feedback that will be included in Google's case study of how Maine 207 is using Google Apps for Education. This has been cool chatting with Google about our philosophies and how we see the product improving to meet the needs of schools. A follow up to this was contacting my teachers for examples of the activities they are using with their kids that require Google to get them done. This is a great learning experience for me because I have seen several activities teachers are using, but I have a much broader scope now. 2. Working on the announcement for the winners of our RFQ. You can see the winners here . We got some really good deals. The savings we have here can be leveraged towards other products or be returned to the Education Fund (business managers really like it when you come ...

Here is what I submitted for my May Newsletter Article for SetConnections . SETConnections is an organization dedicated to helping educators use technology to better meet the needs of students with individual special needs. My favorite tool for anything online is Google. I am not talking about Google Documents, Calendar, Tasks, Maps, Sites, Blogger, Moderator, Sketch-Up, iGoogle pages, or any of the other applications they offer (FOR FREE!!!). I am referring to the good old Google search. – you know – www.google .com. What is so great about it? We all know that if you search for something you can get back something that is probably related in a split second. Actually you usually get millions of pages of information that are related. There are a couple of tips out there for making these searches better. Google has several pages put together to help you use this powerful tool better. Here are some you might want to visit and some highlights associated with each: Bas...

Here is another great way of visualizing information differently. Google has in it's labs area a product called NewsTimeline http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/ IT allows you to take anything in the news and look at all of the stories that apply to it chronologically. As the site says: Google News Timeline is a web application that organizes search results chronologically. It allows users to view news and other data sources on a browsable, graphical timeline. Available data sources include recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and information about various types of media, like music albums and movies. Check out the details of how to work it effectively here .

Thanks to Scott Weidig for getting me looking into this more! Happy Cyber Monday! I recently ran across a couple of resources to help your searching power when using Google. These tips will help you find better information faster! I also found a handout to keep handy or to share with colleagues or students. The best tip I have learned recently is to type in the answer instead of the question . Example: You want to know how tall Mt. Everest is. Don't type in "How tall is Mt. Everest?" Do Type "Mt. Everest is * tall" The " * " acts as a wildcard and Google looks for the missing information. There are a lot of other great ways to search better and the resources below will help you out. Here is how to use Google to find information you never knew you could: http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html These two videos are helpful as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxfYd15ALsw http://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Today's tech tip is just something fun and geeky. Check out Google Maps Street View. http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/help/maps/tour/#street_view There are 15 cities in the US that are now offering street view. What is it? Why must you have it? Well, its cool. You virtually drive down the street and see around you. You can twist your head and look around 360 degrees as well. I just took a virtual trip down Michigan Avenue. How can it help your kids? Here is the really cool part. Google Street View is in 15 cities. Use it to drive by Ground Zero, or follow Holden Caulfield through the streets of New York in a modern Catcher in the Rye , compare architecture in different cities, or use proportional triangles to determine the height of a building...there is a lot of potential there. I don't know if you have used other features of Google maps yet in your classroom, but I will be showing you how over the next few weeks as we embark on another thread ...

I just played around with Google's customized search. There is one on my homepage for educational technology . Feel free to contribute to building it. Nice new application of Web 2.0.