Let 2013 Begin - Part 1 - 2012 in Review

The words to John Lennon's song keep swirling in my head
"...And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun." 

Yes, indeed what have I done? And what plans do I have for the new one that has just begun? Well, here in Part 1 I will review my Year 2012. Tomorrow I will post Part 2 about what I am planning for 2013. 

January

Decided my #365Project for the year would consist of me grabbing a screencast of a tweet that I found inspiring each day. As usual, I did not complete the entire project but I continued longer than most. You can see my posts here. **Bonus - I received a DENny award for this series of posts. 

February

I was a featured presenter at METC in St. Louis. I enjoyed my time connecting with members of my PLN and making new friends at that event and I even got to see snow. 

I celebrated my third Twitter anniversary. You can read more about that here. 

March

I celebrated another birthday. 

April

As I prepared my students for the annual high stakes test that is a part of the Louisiana educational system, I couldn't help but be excited for when it would be over. My students did very well on the LEAP test. 

Thanks to a discussion on #4thchat, I began #ImpromptuSkype calls. 

May 

I received a beautiful trophy for the DENny PL DEN Award from the Discovery Educators Network. Read more about it here. 

I was invited to join a Skype group called Hello Little World Skypers. There are roughly 100 members from around the world who are par of this group. They are very active and enjoy sharing and learning with and from each other. My students were able to do their first international Skype call this year with Mr. Steve from South Africa. 

School ended for my thirty-sixth time and I attended the Bayou Country Fest in Baton Rouge with my dear friend, Janet. 

June

ISTE is always the highlight of my summer (and my year), but this year it was especially memorable. I finally got to meet my Skype Buddy, Jan Wells, face to face. You can read more about that here. 

I had such a wonderful time in San Diego and would love to send hugs and kisses to Beth Still. She included my on her presentation panel again this year. She also made all of the arrangements for the #educrib we rented while in California, where I got to bond even more with Jan and all of my other house mates. 

June-July

I hosted an online Professional Development opportunity for just over 30 members of the #4thchat community. As different people talked about using Edmodo with their students during our weekly Twitter chats, there were just as many who wanted to learn about Edmodo. So I started the #4thchatPD group on Edmodo, and ran the course over the eight weeks of June and July. Yes, I used Edmodo to teach others about Edmodo. It was a great learning experience for everyone involved. 

July
This month marked the second #EdcampLA. I am one of the organizers for this exciting and different form of PD. We had a great turnout and can't wait for our third one next July.

I began to learn how to use Google Hangouts with various members of my PLN. I knew this would be a tool I would want to add to my toolkit and had fun learning it with others. 

I attended several training sessions on the Common Core State Standards both in person and online. Louisiana will be transitioning to the CCSS with full implementation during the 2014-2015 school year. 

Also during this month, I started collaboratively working on a virtual PD that was being hosted by Theresa for her teachers in Illinois. Ten educators from the HLW Skypers group were involved. We used GHO and a wiki to doing the planning. I agreed to present about Edmodo. 

August

I participated in the Connected Educators' Month. You can read more about that in this series of posts I wrote. I was even the guest tweeter for the day of August 5. 

It was a short summer as I headed back to begin my thirty-seventh year of teaching on the second week of August. I found out that I would teach two blocks of math and science and one class of social studies this year. Woohoo - this science minor finally gets to teach some science. 

I was so proud of my students, who after just a short time in school, were able to do a masterful job presenting virtually to a group of teachers, most of whom were located in Illinois. My kids told them how we are using Edmodo in our classroom as our learning management system. Check out our presentation here by scrolling down to the Edmodo part. Thanks, Theresa Allen, for this amazing opportunity. 

September

We missed seven days of school thanks to Hurricane Issac. When we returned it felt like we were starting the year over again. 

I signed up to have my students participate in Quadblogging this year. Unfortunately the time out of school threw me off schedule and I never had my students fully participating as I had hoped to. Here is my one and only post for our group.

During this month I worked collaboratively with a group of educators to start the Global Collaboration Network. Jefff Bradbury of TeacherCast fame worked closely with us to build this website. Bill Krakover, Nancy Carroll, Dan Curcio, Jerry Blumengarten, Jessica Baumburger, Kim Powell, and I met weekly in a GHO to create the projects and try to build the website. We were hopeful that we would get accepted to present at ISTE. 

October

My students and I participated in Jen Wagner's annual O.R.E.O. Project and had fun with the Great Pumpkin Project. We started doing Mystery Location calls. We call them that instead of Mystery Skype calls because sometimes we use Google Hangouts instead of Skype. Read more about the name change here. 

We also had our entire fourth grade signup for and participate in a webcast by Scholastic featuring Taylor Swift. Our kids really enjoyed it.

During this month I worked collaboratively with a group of educators to start 

November

I prepared to attend and present at LaCUE, our state technology conference. I did four presentation and enjoyed time with my members of my PLN. We had a small tweet up at Deannie's and I enjoyed a stay at the Hilton.

Since I had become a presenter for Simple K12, I jumped at the chance to become an ambassador for them. They were thrilled to have me join their ranks, and I was thrilled to get my very own pair of bunny slippers. I wore them proudly during my LaCUE presentation entitled PD in Your PJs.

Mark, at My Town Tutors, invited me to write a guest blog for them. Here is my post.

I also completed my first formal evaluation under our state's new system and received a highly effective rating.

December
The Sandy Hook tragedy took its toll on me. I went into a depression and had a hard time gearing up for Christmas this year. One of the most hopeful things that came to my attention was this post by Beth Still's husband.

Bill informed the Global Collaboration Network that we were not select to present at ISTE. However, we plan to do a presentation for ISTE Unplugged while in San Antonio this summer.

**********************************

So there is my YEAR 2012 Review.

My Proudest Accomplishments

All of my presentations (check them out here)

My DENny Award

Becoming a Simple K12 Ambassador

My collaboration with others

What were your greatest accomplishments in 2012? 

Photo Cube

Photo Cube

I just discovered Photo Cube and decided to make one for my blog. I'm sure there are many ways to use this tool. I bet my students would love adding one to their blogs.

It is just a matter of browsing your photos and uploading them to the Photo Cube page. Then you copy the HTML code and add it to your blog or website.

How could you use this site in your classroom?

Feeling Helpless? Read and Share it Widely

Friday marked another horrible school shooting rampage. This time in Connecticut where 20 students (mostly kindergarten aged) and 6 adults lost their lives. As we got the news from our phones during our lunch break, we discussed how we would probably be required to review and practice our lock down procedures. And sure enough, that is what happened as grade level chairs were summoned to the office for just that reason.

As I reviewed the procedures we have in place at my school, I couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't more we could do. Well I got my answer today as I saw a tweet that lead me to this guest post by Kris Still on his wife's, Beth Still, blog.

Preparing for the Worst Case Scenario

Please share this post with everyone you know who has a child attending school or a family member in the education field. Kris gives us some sound ways to properly prepare to protect ourselves and the children faithfully placed in our care everyday. Go out immediately and start gathering the materials he talks about or seek funding to get these items into every classroom as soon as possible. Let's be as prepared as we possibly can be should such a horrific event ever enter our school. 

From Mystery Skype Call to Mystery Location Call

For the past couple of years, classrooms around the country and the world have been participating in Mystery Skype calls. (You can read more about that here.) These "learning calls", as Silvia Tolisano likes to refer to them, are a great way to integrate technology into your lessons. By following Sylvia's suggestions for giving students jobs during the Mystery Skype calls they are all actively engaged in the process. As many of my PLN (personal learning network) friends have mentioned on Twitter, their students eagerly look forward to each Mystery call and beg to do more of them.

This year some of the teachers who have been doing Mystery Skype calls are now turning to a newer tool to use for video conferencing - Google Hangouts (GHO). While those of us that have tried GHO are excited about the improved quality of the calls and being able to conference with up to nine other classes at one time, it caused a dilemma. What do we now call these Mystery calls? 

Well, tonight during a GHO with several others, we were working on a collaborative Google document for some projects we are working on. In the section where we had typed Mystery Skype Call, I changed it to Mystery Location Call (via Skype/GHO). Everyone else working on the doc liked the name change. So from now on I plan on using that wording when I write about or tweet about them - Mystery Location Call.

You can read about the first Mystery Location Call I did using GHO with Bill Krakower's class here. And below is the animoto video Bill made of our call.
Make your own photo slideshow at Animoto.
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I hope that others will agree to the change of the name from Mystery Skype Call to Mystery Location Call.

Have you done a GHO yet? How have you used GHO to connect with another class?

Day 5 - Connected Educator Month

Today I am the official tweeter for @ConnectedEd. Each day during the month of August one person will assume the profile of @ConnectedEd and send out tweets about their connectedness. Here is the link to the list of tweeters for the month. Thanks, Karen, for setting this up.

1. I began my morning at 8:00 and sent out my first tweet after I got logged in and changed the profile to reflect that I was the tweeter for today.

2. I was lead to a YouTube video of Jarrod Lamshed and George Couros (to whom I am already connected -we presented on a panel together at ISTE11) singing karaoke to Justin Bieber's "Baby" by my friend @wmchamberlain's tweet. I decided to check out Jarrod's blog since it is titled "Connected Learning". Loved following this journey and I am now connected to Jarrod. 

3. I didn't get many takers when I tweeted about filling out this survey. Either people don't like filling out surveys, or they aren't sure how they are going to work on flattening their classroom walls.

4. I saw my friend @ncarroll24 had written a new blog post entitled "Schoolmares" so I hopped over to her blog, read the post, and left her a comment. Later in the day Nancy sent out a tweet thanking me for the comment.

5. Discovered Ellen (aka @play@cre8) because she retweeted (RTed) that I was the @ConnectedEd tweeter of the day. I saw her RT in the TweetChat stream and clicked on her avatar which led me to her blog. Funny thing is Ellen, whom I did not know until today, and I were in the Google Power Searching MOOC together this summer. She wrote about an interesting happening in that class here. I left a comment for her and am now following her on Twitter.

6. I spent part of the afternoon working on lesson plans and things for the beginning of school. I start back tomorrow and the students come on Thursday.

7. Unfortunately, I have a terrible head cold, so I took some medicine after I ate dinner and it knocked me out. I woke up and realized I had missed one of my favorite chats. I am a member of an Edmodo book club and we are reading Tony Wagner's Creating Innovators. Jeff McCouch set up the book club and moderates the #cistudy chat on Sunday evenings at 7 CT.

8. I read through the #cistudy tweets and RTed several as @ConnectedEd. One of the teachers who joined the #cistudy chat tonight was Dana Sirotiak, a 7th grade teacher from New Jersey that I connected with face to face last week.

I was presenting for the 21st Century Community Education Conference being held in New Orleans. A Twitter buddy, Bill Krakower, told me Dana would be attending the conference. So Dana and I and her traveling partner, William Diaz met and had dinner while they were in town. I love making connections like this.

9. So as I wrap up my day as the voice of @ConnectedEd, I think all in all it was a good day. I wish I had been feeling better because I wanted to host a Google Hangout or two today and connect with members of my PLN. I believe I sent out over 50 tweets and have others tweeting with the official #CE12 hashtag. So I'm off to bed to get a good night's sleep on the eve of the beginning of my 2012-2013 school year.

10. I am glad I had this opportunity and I am looking forward to the rest of the Connected Educator Month.

Day 4 - Connected Educator Month

I am spending this Sunday catching up on my posts for Connected Educator Month (CEM).

Saturday got off to a slow start as I slept in and nursed my head cold. Yuck! I spent the morning adding links to a Google doc that I will share with teachers at my school next Tuesday during one of our PD days. I have been gathering Common Core State Standard (CCSS)sites that I think will be helpful to them as we transition from our state grade level expectations to the CCSS.

 In the afternoon I went to school. I saw Brenda, my principal, and we chatted about what I would be presenting to the staff on Tuesday. She was so grateful that I have put together the Google doc to share with others.

 Tracy, the other fourth grade teacher, who will also be teaching math, science, and social studies to two classes of fourth graders and I did some brainstorming. I went over some Kagan structures with her, showed her how to log into our BrainPOP subscription, and set up her eBoard note. We created a 4th Grade folder in Dropbox so that we can easily share files.

Again due to not feeling well, I took an afternoon nap. I was supposed to attend a bon voyage party for friends who are moving to China for the next four years. I decided I was in no condition to party, so I dropped off dessert at Janet's house (the hostess) and said my good-byes to Vicky and Dwayne. Vicky and I talked about her Skyping into my class after she gets settled in in her new home.

Day 3 - Connected Educator Month

I am spending today catching up on my Connected Educator Month posts.

I hate having a head cold. You know the feeling - your head feels like the biggest bowling ball in the world and your neck aches from holding it up. I usually get a cold shortly after school starts each year. I always blame my students for giving me one. LOL  Well, maybe it will be over by the time I get to meet my new students for the 2012-2013 school year on Thursday, August 9.

Today my connections were on the local level. I went to school on the last Friday of my summer vacation to meet with the other three teachers on my fourth grade team. We discussed our schedule, the start of our transition to the Common Core State Standards and worked on setting up our classrooms. Since I will be teaching science along with math and social studies this year, I have reached out to several other fourth grade teachers in our district who have taught science to share any resources they might have to get me going. (Thank you Patti and Amy for sharing with me.)

After going home and taking a nap through an afternoon thunderstorm, I attended the Tim McGraw - Kenny Chesney Brothers of the Sun concert at the Superdome.

Picture Credits - Cold; Tim and Kenny