A Glimpse of What's to Come

Today I went to work for our Olympic School Kick Off that we've been working on every Thursday morning for a large part of the summer. This allowed me to send Landon (and William of course) to their babysitter's house for a few hours. I dropped him off at 12:30 and picked them up at 3:30, since the event was only in the afternoon. He did very well and (not surprisingly) slept almost the entire time. He only had ONE poopy diaper. That's like a record for him, but he had just had a small blow out and then another poop for me right before I dropped him off.

The event was fun and I really think the students AND staff had a genuinely great time. It was so great to see so many smiles and hear so many cheers. I truly believe this kicked our school year off in the positive way we hoped for. Now just to keep the energy going...

After the Olympics and pep rally I was surrounded with some of my former students asking about the baby and my return. I had surprised them by coming to the event and they had endless questions.

It was also very nice to see my coworkers. I work with some of the most amazing, dedicated, funny, and all around awesome people. I felt overwhelmed by all of the compliments they showered me with in regards to my family and post-baby appearance; it felt very good and was just the little boost of energy I needed!

I told one of my coworkers that while it felt strange to admit this, I enjoyed being at work because it allowed me to regain my sanity. Then we laughed knowing that as soon as school starts back up for me I'll be wanting a day at home to regain my sanity. :)

As I drove back to the babysitter's house I was overcome with two conflicting feelings: I was so glad to have been at work to be a part of the excitement, yet I was so glad to be going back home to my boys. Honestly, even as great as it was to have been there I'm not ready to be back.

Our babysitter snapped this picture of Landon in her arms.  Obviously they got along well. :)

Techie Tuesday: Featured App - Aurasma

Since it seemed like last week's Techie Tuesday post received some good feedback, I decided to stick with featuring an app for the iPad/iPhone/iPod again this week.  In fact, I might just do this every Tuesday until I can't think of anything else to feature!  Today I will feature the app for Augmented Reality called "Aurasma".  If you haven't heard of it, you better hold on... b/c it's pretty CRAZY!!!

The Aurasma App for Augmented Reality

I wanted to start with Aurasma, because Augmented Reality is all the rave right now in technology.  I first heard about AR at eTech last February, and the idea just blew my mind.  If you don't know what it is, I will do my best to paint a picture, but I would encourage you to watch this video to see Aurasma in action. 

Aurasma is an app that allows you to focus in on a picture of something and see far behind that image.  What do I mean by that?  Once you get the app downloaded, take out a twenty dollar bill, and focus your iPad/iPhone over it with the app open.  You will see that the bill turns from a piece of green paper to a multidimensional video/music/moving image.  It's unreal and terribly hard to explain on a blog.  Trust me - it's something you have to see to believe. There are TONS of images you can focus in on in order to "see beyond" its flatness.  In fact, the coolest thing about Aurasma is that you can actually make your OWN versions of augmented reality.  I have done this twice... the first with a guitar and the second with a Wizard of Oz book.  On the guitar I was able to link a video and a picture of a guy playing the guitar and the Wizard of Oz book turned into Dorothy stepping into Munchkinland after landing on the Wicked Witch of the East.  Don't get too excited; neither of these were that cool and neither provided anything worth using in the future other than simply figuring out a LITTLE about how to make my own augmented reality.  Why would this be good to know?  Well, I wouldn't mind setting up a system in my English/Theatre/Speech classroom where the students could take pics of posters in my room that would lead them to instructional videos/music/etc about that topic.  Currently that isn't really possible because my kids don't have iPads and are not allowed to use iPods in the room.  Yet maybe in a few years this will all change.  Regardless, I want to stay on top of technology so it doesn't run me over!  Seriously, before February if I would have been told about this app I would have thought the person speaking about it was from the future.  Actually, it's kind of like that.  There is so much "from the future" that is available today, it's virtually unreal! PUN INTENDED!

When I was first introduced to Augmented Reality, I was informed that people are using it everywhere for tons of different purposes.  The most interesting thing I heard about was that there were specific t-shirts being made for augmented reality.  I heard that some people are wearing them at college sporting events and you can walk up to the t-shirt wearer and zoom in on their shirt and their school mascot will come alive and their fight song will play.  To me that seems a bit intrusive.  I mean, think of it... complete strangers are walking up to you and zooming in on an image that is plastered across your chest.  Yet I guess if you bought the shirt, you want people to do that... so it's your choice!  Anyway, I haven't been able to find anything like that to show you but I did find this video on marketing with Aurasma. Pretty crazy stuff, eh?

This Techie Teacher Recommends Aurasma for:

• Teachers! Play around with creating your own augmented reality for a more inner-active classroom.
• People who are interested in new marketing techniques.  This is like the next "QR Code" phase.
• People who are creative and want to tell stories within stories within stories.
• People who want to stay on top of what's next in technology.

This Techie Teacher does NOT Recommend Aurasma for:

• No one really!

Main Downfall of the App (if any):

• Augmented Reality is new and expanding every day.  I wouldn't say that there is a DOWNFALL to this app, it's just that you might not use it all of the time unless you create your own.
  

If you think that Augmented Reality is just a fad that will be leaving soon, think again.  In my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the future.  Here is one final video on the possibilities for Augmented Reality within the new few years.  In fact, I bet that this video becomes truth in less than a year's time.

What are your thoughts?

Techie Tuesdays: iPad Training Session and Featured App Review: TourWrist

As many of you know, Dom and I invested in an iPad last Black Friday.  (We didn't open it until Christmas though... isn't THAT impressive?)  Since getting an iPad, I have been working on improving my understanding of its countless functions and capabilities.  I was fortunate enough to represent my school district for a second time at the eTech conference in Columbus back in February.  It was there that I learned a little more than I knew before.  Yet understandably, technology is an ongoing and ever-chaning process.  I have made it my goal to try to keep up with its changes, because if I don't I (like many other frustrated people) will get run over.  Therefore, I knew I wanted to schedule and attend regular trainings for my new gadget.

In the spring, I arranged for our staff to go through two voluntary after-school iPad trainings given by our NWOET representative. Both of these were big successes.  The teachers who attended one (or both) sessions walked away with a handful of new apps they could use in their lives and classrooms right away. In addition to learning a ton about the iPad, I loved the fact that the training was done by a person who is open to learning from his students as much as teaching them.  Technology allows students to become the teachers at times, and I believe that is a big step to engaging learners in today's classrooms, so I felt that our instructor modeling this was an excellent move on his part.

Below is the link to the presentation for the iPad training I hosted at school.  I promised a lot of people on Facebook that I would post it, so here it is. WARNING:  This is an "INTERMEDIATE" training.  If you are looking for the basics of iPads, then this is not where to look.  It is also not advanced, so don't expect that either!  Before you click on the link, here are some directions you will need once you get to that site:

- Click on the link to the training

- Look for the QR code on the right side of the screen

- Below that code there is a link that says, "iPad Intermediate Presentation" 

- Click on that to open the training session
- There you have it!  Read through at your own pace, some of this will be new and some will probably be review for you! 

- NOTE: You might even want to save it to your iBooks account so you will have it indefinitely!

- ok, NOW you can may begin here: Intermediate iPad Training 

I will be identifying some of my favorite apps in later "Tech Tuesday" blog posts, but I will leave you with one today.  I am really digging TourWrist right now because it takes your iPad or iPhone and turns it into a viewfinder.  You can search anything from the London Bridge to a cafe in San Fransisco where you would like to eat brunch.  Once you find what you are looking for (say a hotel in New York) you simply check the "tour" out by moving your iPad or iPhone up, down, and around like a pair of glasses and you can see a 360 degree image of the place!  Try looking off a cliff!!! It's so trippy!

This Techie Teacher Recommends TourWrist for:

• Teachers!  You can take kids ANYWHERE with technology. Our district cut field trips out of its budget YEARS ago, but even then we could never take a kid to the Great Wall of China!
• People who are about to go on a vacation and want to check out hot spots, resorts, clubs, diners, hotels, etc.
• People who are interested in geography and landmarks.
• People who want to look silly moving their iPads or iPhones up, down, and around while waiting in the doctor's office.

This Techie Teacher does NOT Recommend TourWrist for:

• People who get motion sickness.

Main Downfall of the App (if any):

• Like most apps, it is still fairly new, so there aren't as many "tours" as I would like to see.  Yet keep TourWrist on your radar;  I am fairly certain it is going to do some amazing things very soon.
  

Please feel free to share your favorite apps with me as well.  Like I said before, technology is amazing in that the students can actually become the teachers and then learning can become the circular activity that I believe it was always designed to be.  I love learning, so PLEASE ... teach me! :)

Monday = Mama's Day: Summer Vacation??? I think not!

So technically I have been on "summer vacation" for 10 days.  Our teacher work day was June 1st.  I admire the people who are able to leave that day and not look back.  I just don't know how they do it.  I have always worked a lot during my summer vacation, and this year is no different.  I have been in my classroom working every day EXCEPT last Friday, because I had to meet with the bank for our home purchase and then attend the home inspection of the house we are going to buy at the end of this month. 

So what have I been working on at school?  Well, first I needed to just tie up some lose ends from the year.  Then I needed to search for texts, supplies, and workbooks for my SEVEN classes that I will have next year.  That's right... I am teaching six new classes on top of the one I taught this year.  This might not be that big of a deal any other year, but the fact that I am going to be on maternity leave for the first six weeks of school and then have a newborn/no sleep for a large chunk of the remainder of the year makes this entire thing significantly more stressful.  I am excited about teaching these six electives (even though I am not excited about the fact that I will have the same number of regular English students as I did this year, crammed into larger classes) but I feel like I don't have a true sense of direction.  I guess the hardest thing about work is that I have too many freedoms.  I have always been given the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want in my classroom, which is nice and all... but I would prefer to have freedoms within a boundary that was designed for me.  Of course, in English we have the state Common Core standards so at least I have somewhere to start.  But with electives, I have even MORE freedom and no official texts, so it's a completely blank canvas.  That's great for most people, but that requires a lot of time to plan and search for lessons, time to seek out the best texts and documents to use, and time to create most of the documents on my own. I am working as diligently as possible right now WITHOUT kids to teach and papers to grade, and I STILL don't feel like I have the proper amount of time it will take to do an excellent job at all seven of these classes next year.  Hence the reason why I am always so shocked by teachers who don't have to take their work home or work over the summer. 

Most people just tell me to relax and let it go, that I don't have to do an excellent job because the expectations are not there since the classes haven't been offered in years.  However, I see it differently.  Think back to when you were in high school.... you sat in a desk assuming that the teacher in front of you knew everything (or almost everything) about the subject that he or she was teaching.  If you didn't think that about the teacher, then it was likely that the rumor was that he or she was incompetent.  I don't want the kids to think I am incompetent, but I would be lying if I said that I knew everything about what I will be teaching next year!  Now think back on your high school experience and ask yourself if you ever thought about how much experience the teacher had with the subject that he or she was teaching... I don't think I ever thought about this.  I just looked at my schedule and saw a teacher's name and then assumed that that person was going to do a good job... and if he or she did not then I didn't like them or the class.  Well shoot, now I want to go back in time and cut new teachers some slack!  It's exhausting trying to master the content of one subject, let alone seven!

Don't get me wrong:  I love my job and I am excited to do something different next year.  I just want to do as good of a job as possible and it seems like whenever a teacher starts getting into the grove, the game changes.  Pray that I will be able to handle all of these changes with ease next year and trust me when I say I am doing my part right now in preparation for what the next school year will bring.  Like I mentioned earlier, I have yet to start my summer vacation and I will be at work every day this week except Wednesday as well.  After I finalize the POs for my classes, I will begin to revise my syllabus from this year and create syllabi for my six new classes.  Then I will start writing my maternity plans. 

Ultimately, I feel a bit relaxed when I remind myself that as soon as this baby comes I will be off until October 1st.  I may be working hard now, but I will be doing everything other than working on school work once baby comes and all of this hard work and preparation will have paid off. :)