For Parents:

Last week, Jeff and I led a Parent Technology Coffee Morning (an informal parent technology training held every first Wednesday of the month in one of the MPB rooms, usually at 7:30 or 8:30) focused on introducing new parents to tech at ISB.

We basically went through every tool listed on our student portal page and covered the most frequently asked parent technology questions:

• Changing passwords for PowerSchool & managing online updates
• Keeping up with student assignments via PantherNet (and the fact that only students have passwords for their PantherNet accounts)
• Keeping in touch with what’s new in classrooms via the Inside.ISB blogs
• Keeping in touch with what students are learning via the student blogs.ISB
• How to access the new Google Apps accounts we have for all students and why this is such a powerful tool for our school

We had over 30 ES & MS parents in attendance and we’ll most likely run this session again at least one more time this year since many of the parents were not new and simply wanted an update on what’s available and happening at ISB.

For Students:

I’ve also done 2 similar trainings for all of our new MS students (though not all students were released from class for both sessions). Thanks to James for the idea!

These new students should now be comfortable with:

• Using PantherNet as an online classroom (how to access information)
• Logging in to Google Apps for e-mail and Google Docs
• Basic blog posting (we created blogs and set up categories today)
• Navigating through PowerSchool to keep up with grades
• Finding community information on Inside.ISB

For Families and Teachers:

Our wonderful counselors and I have also created a standard letter home for all new students with a clear listing of all new ISB accounts (and their related passwords). Most seem to keep this paper at home, but if they’re having trouble accessing any of their accounts here at school, you might want to ask them to bring it in.

Hopefully this will help both our students and parents feel more comfortable with the many tools we use here at ISB!

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Our event is called TEDxBKK, where x=independently organized TED event. At our TEDxBKK event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will be combined to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

Check out the list of speakers! You might see a familiar ISB name!

TEDxBKK 2010 will be held on February 13, 2010. Limited seats are available for sign up. If you wish to apply, please visit our ATTEND page.

10 Technologies That Will Rock 2010

Now that the aughts are behind us, we can start the new decade with a bang. So many new technologies are ready to make a big impact this year. Some of them will be brand new, but many have been gestating and are now ready to hatch. If there is any theme here it is the mobile Web. As I think through the top ten technologies that will rock 2010, more than half of them are mobile. But those technologies are tied to advances in the overall Web as well.

CoSN Report: Leadership for Web 2.0 in Education: Promises and Reality

Web 2.0 tools can provide highly interactive and participatory environments that establish communities, open a myriad of communication channels, and ensure each individual and group a voice. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that the collaboration inherent in the participatory nature of Web 2.0 tools can be leveraged to deepen student learning through authentic, real-world learning.

This report documents the beliefs, perspectives, and practices of educational administrators which help or hinder effective use of Web 2.0 in K-12 education.  The study collected data from nearly 1,200 school administrators on the role of Web 2.0 in American schools and was made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now

In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users’ privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.

FrontLine: Digital Nation

Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we’ve gained?

In Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, FRONTLINE presents an in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world. Continuing a line of investigation she began with the 2008 FRONTLINE report Growing Up Online, award-winning producer Rachel Dretzin embarks on a journey to understand the implications of living in a world consumed by technology and the impact that this constant connectivity may have on future generations. “I’m amazed at the things my kids are able to do online, but I’m also a little bit panicked when I realize that no one seems to know where all this technology is taking us, or its long-term effects,” says Dretzin.

We’ve now integrated PantherNet and Google into one system! This means that once a student is logged into PantherNet, they are also logged into Google Apps. Now there’s only one address to remember http://panthernet.isb.ac.th.  Once there, students can login with their school username and password and along with their PantherNet courses they will see along the right hand side this nice little box.

Click on one of links and it will automatically log you in to your school Google Account.

Exciting News from VoiceThread: Advanced Language Support

VoiceThread now supports the use of non-Latin scripts in text comments. This has been one of our most requested features for some time now, and we’re excited to finally release it.

What does it mean?

It means that whenever a text comment contains a non-latin character, it no longer matters whether the person viewing the comment has the correct fonts installed. If they don’t, we’ll perform some technical magic in the background and make sure they see the text comment in the language that you intended, without any additional work on their part.

The beta release of this feature applies only to text comments, and if all goes well, we’ll apply it to other text fields very soon. Because of the technical complexity of fonts and the way that different computers handle them, we can’t give direct technical support for this feature. If you have any questions or feedback please go here.

Google Earth News from the Google Earth Sightseer

Winter Olympic Venues in Google Earth

The Google Earth team is pretty excited about the upcoming Winter Olympics! In December we added 3D buildings for a number of venues in the Vancouver area. We recently published the remaining buildings, including the Whistler Olympic Park and Whistler Sliding Centre. There are over fifty buildings in total, all of them developed using Google SketchUp. Want to (virtually) experience what it feels like to stare down the ski jump? Fire-up Google Earth and steer your 3D mouse to Vancouver and Whistler!

Haiti Imagery in Google Earth

When the devastating M 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 14th, we worked hard with our imagery partnerGeoEye to acquire, process and publish their latest satellite imagery. To the general public this imagery illustrates the scale of destruction and to disaster response teams, it is an invaluable source to aid their efforts. To view this imagery, download the KML file here and open it in Google Earth. It is also viewable via the ‘Historical Imagery’ feature. We’ll continue to update this layer as we acquire more data. Stay up to date at the Google Lat Long Blog.

To convert from .mp4 to .avi, Rob has installed a converter software on all Flip cameras in the ML, which you can easily drag off the camera and onto your computer, then convert, the import into MovieMaker.

However, if you have files already on your computer you need to convert, you can easily download the software here.

Explore our changing climate in Google Earth

Today we’re launching a new series of narrated Google Earth tours all about climate change as part of Google’s effort to make climate information accessible leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. This series brings together scientific geo-data about our world under a changing climate — in a manner that can be explored interactively. The data includes temperature and precipitation projections and the rising risks to food security, water stress, coastal zones, health, and much more.

You can view the first released tour, Confronting Climate Change, narrated by Al Gore that takes you through some of the worst impacts expected due to our changing climate, and points us towards the upcoming tours introducing the range of solutions for confronting it.

5 K-12 Technology Trends for 2010 (THE Journal)

With technology evolving at the speed of light, and everyone looking to benefit from the latest, greatest hardware and software, keeping up can be challenging for educators, administrators, and school districts themselves. To help, THE Journal spoke with a handful of technology experts and came up with a short list of top tech trends you’ll want to watch in the new year.

Head over to the full article for all the trends.

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education (Wired Magazine)

How do you educate a generation of students eternally distracted by the internet, cellphones and video games? Easy. You enable them by handing out free iPhones — and then integrating the gadget into your curriculum.

That’s the idea Abilene Christian University has to refresh classroom learning. Located in Texas, the private university just finished its first year of a pilot program, in which 1,000 freshman students had the choice between a free iPhone or an iPod Touch.

The initiative’s goal was to explore how the always-connected iPhone might revolutionize the classroom experience with a dash of digital interactivity. Think web apps to turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades. For classroom participation, there’s even polling software for Abilene students to digitally raise their hand.

The verdict? It’s working quite well. 2,100 Abilene students, or 48 percent of the population, are now equipped with a free iPhone. Fully 97 percent of the faculty population has iPhones, too. The iPhone is aiding Abilene in giving students the information they need — when they want it, wherever they want it, said Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies who helped plan the initiative.

Are They Really Ready to Work?

In collaboration, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and The Society for Human Resource Management conducted an in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results from both an in-depth survey conducted during April and May 2006 and interviews with a sampling of a dozen HR and other senior executives.

In addition, a workforce readiness report card is included which provides a summary of the basic knowledge and applied skills that are either “deficient” or “excellent” in those areas that employer respondents rate as “very important”.

The decade according to 9-year-olds

The decade according to 9-year-olds from allison louie-garcia on Vimeo.

At this student page, you can access:

• PantherNet
• Student E-Mail
• Google Docs
• Student Blogs
• PowerSchool
• Google Calendar
• ISB’s YouTube Channel
• ISB’s Facebook Alumni Page
• ISB’s Twitter account
• ISB website
• Main Library resources
• ES Library resources
• Each Inside.ISB blog for all 3 divisions

You might want to bookmark it for even easier access: http://www.student.isb.ac.th/

It’s very simple to back-up your course, please follow the directions in this video tutorial (thanks to Dennis!) and save to your computer.

Please note: If you would like to retain the work (assignments, forum discussions, etc) that your students have completed this quarter you do want to keep the “User Data” button clicked (which is not how Dennis backs up the course in this tutorial).

Once we return to school in January, you will only see next quarter/semester’s courses in PantherNet. At that time, you can restore the previous quarter’s course using the back-up you create now.

If you’re not sure, just back-up everything. Especially with tech, it’s always good to follow the “better safe, than sorry” rule.

Today, I facilitated a Synergy lesson with one grade 6 class that I think would work well for any of our MS students. Please feel free to take this outline and adapt to meet your needs.

1. Split the class into 4 different groups.

2. In each group read one of the following articles. Each group should be reading a different article.

• Caught on camera – and found on Facebook
• College Applicants, Beware: Your Facebook Page Is Showing
• Colleges scan Facebook during admissions
• Teen guilty of Facebook slur

3. After reading the article, have students retell the story in their own words to make sure that everyone understands the content.

4. Have each group discuss what the main “lesson” of their article was.

5. Depending on the group dynamics, have each group share to the class OR jigsaw into new groups where each person has read a different story.

6. As a class discuss the important lessons from each story.

Some other questions that may prompt discussion:

Have students close their eyes and answer the following questions by raising their hands:

• How many of you have put something online that you regretted later (could be on FB, or somewhere else, could be a comment or a post or an image - anything)?
• How many of you have thought about putting something online that you decided against?
• How many of you have seen something online that was hurtful or inappropriate? If possible, share a story (without names). How did it make you feel?

If you still have time, or you want to prompt discussion in a different way than the article jigsaw, here are a few videos that will spark discussion. Please make sure you watch these in class and discuss - they are better seen with a group, rather than at home alone.

• The Bulletin Board
• Everyone Knows Your Name
• The Kitchen
• The Talent Show

You might also want to share the following article with your class as well:

• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

Media literacy skills have been important for decades as the news media transitioned into entertainment and a few international corporations consolidated control over information. While media literacy was important in the 1960s, it was sorely neglected. It may be even more crucial today but remains unattended by many school programs.

WatchKnow

Dr. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has launched a new website designed to gather and organize educational videos for students ages 3 to 18. The site currently features more than 11,000 videos across 2,000 categories on subjects such as math, science and history…  The site, which features videos from National Geographic, YouTube and Google Videos among others, took more than 18 months to develop and has been endorsed by educators from schools including Harvard, Stanford, Brigham Young and more.

The Great IWB Debate (IWB is the generic term for SmartBoard)

On the fantastic Interactive WhiteBoard Ning created by Chris Betcher, he has started a conversation about the pros and cons of IWBs in the classroom. There are 2 pages of comments from teachers around the world in response to Chris’ prompt (you don’t have to be a member of the Ning to read the debate):

“In this discussion here on the Ning, can I ask you to reply with your thoughts about IWBs, either positive or negative. You can also pose a question that you think I should use as I frame up the debate, a question that you think is at the core of the issue when it comes to debating the value of IWBs.”

Video in the Classroom by Mathew Needleman

“Students can either be passive receivers of media messages or they can be digital content creators and critical thinkers.”

Video in the Classroom Introduction from Mathew Needleman on Vimeo.

Social Media Jobs on CNBC: