• Microsoft Office Resources/Training Materials -Training PowerPoint decks can be found under the Templates tab, use template search box  (Word 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007, SharePoint)
• Learning Essentials- Free tools, templates and tutorials
• Make your own Training Video Podcasts- Community Clips (capture your desktop and narration)
• OneNote- Super powerful teaching and learning tool
• WorldWide Telescope- Seamless exploration of the universe for freeWord 2007- Microsoft Math - A free add-in  to help math and science teachers graph and solve equations in Word 2007
• Save files as PDF or XPS using Microsoft Office 2007- Free add-in
• SharePoint Link

Mahalo!

Scott

Plea for Time

I am amazed when I talk with teachers about the amount of instructional time that is consumed on non-instructional tasks—and not by their choice. It's crazy and getting worse. We as a nation are devoting too much time to benchmarking and not enough time to supporting relevant learning in the classroom. Our teachers spend blocks of time on hand outs, special events, and other times that are not critical to supporting the learning environment. Does this mean that we get rid of all pep rallies? Do away with award and recognition events? Stop benchmarks? Of course not. We need to celebrate the accomplishments of learners, inject culture, and create field learning experiences.

However, how many times do you interrupt class over the course of a school year? Moreover, what are you trying to accomplish from your learners? Are you trying to trying to cultivate critical thinkers ready to meet the challenges of the new world of work, or are you trying to get checkboxes checked for NCLB? As leaders, we have the responsibility to stand up for learning in the classroom. Stand up for teachers and support their instructional time. Preserve the time, embrace it. Find ways to enable productivity gains, break down organizational barriers, remove silos and fan the flames of innovation.

Quantify Instructional Objectives and TIme: Overview

So do you know a teacher or three  that has too much time on their hands?  Likely, you do not. Most teachers are swamped by the number of tasks that they are expected to cover, the mandated activities, not to mention short class periods because of the odd pep rally or other ad hoc non-instructional glob of time that takes away from the instruction.  Many of these are relevant and useful to help students, but what about all of the items that stay on the plate of teachers?  How are school districts measuring the expected quantity of activities against the actual instructional time available? 

Enter Microsoft Project 2007.  Using the proven project management techniques, instructional directors can actually model to see if all of the instructional nuggets fit in the yearly instructional time available bucket.  Those of us who have taught know that keeping a class on task and productive is critical.  But keeping a class on task does not mean you will have all of the time necessary to cover the expected ground.  The same can be said with all classroom management techniques.  If you only have 55 minutes with students, you cannot schedule 90 minutes of activities and expect that quality instruction will happen.  This is not the fault of the teacher, it is a lack of quality management. The tools for conducting this analysis can be used in a very powerful application called Microsoft Project.  More to come on this important topic.

Instructional Technology Dispatch from J. Scott Thompson

Windows Vista MovieMaker

Educators have been using MovieMaker in XP for years.  But now, there is Vista.  Vista has many cool advancements over the earlier XP versions.  MovieMaker is now very powerful and renders movies in much less time than before.  There is great control and ease of use.  Students and teachers will love the innovations!

Touching Surface Computing

Microsoft is a great bet for innovation. In fact, it is an uber bet for innovation.  When I joined Microsoft, I was not quite sure what to expect.  What I found were the smartest and hardest working innovators I had ever encountered, and I’ve been around the technology block. 

Last week, Microsoft knocked another one out of the park with the announcement of Surface Computing. This totally cool form factor ups the game of human interaction with machines in a very intimate way.  Using touch, you can reshape photos, videos and have multiple people interact with the device collaboratively.

Check it out at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/.

Dispatches from the early days of K-7!

Those Early Days

For those who know me, it is usually hard for them to believe that my first recollections of teachers are not positive, and it is somewhat interesting that at one time in my life I was a teacher.  I have especially terrifying memories of teachers from elementary school.  I have no idea how old you are, but for me, elementary school was some time ago. It has been long enough that the memories are softened and fragmented.  I hope none of these are what you experienced.

In first grade, I remember a kid who used the word "deal" too frequently for Miss. Brantley.  I recall sensing she hated that child, and she would spank him frequently with a ping pong paddle- hard enough that she broke several of them that first year of school.  We also could not erase mistakes on our Big Chief Notebook Tablet.  Everything had to be done right the first time.  I still wonder what was the instructional thinking behind that move. To this day, I have bad handwriting. I'm thinking her approach did not work for this kid.

There was my third grade teacher Ms. Johnson, who I remember having a crush on and I can say she was one of the few nice teachers in the early days. 

However, I really don't feel like I got much from elementary to seventh grade.  I've got a part to play in that to be sure, but it was not uncommon for my teachers to sit at their desk doing whatever it was they were doing while we wasted our time with those old SRAs. I remember having classes in elementary school where we ended up playing Heads Up 7-Up.  In the 70s, I guess the 21st Century was a long way off.  That kind of stuff was lazy on the part of many of my teachers.

I am glad to say that due to accountability and better instructional standards, many of those teachers don't make it into the classroom today.   Moreover, I'm glad that today we now have better classroom accountability.  Teachers today are doing a better job inculcating students with rich content.  Students are learning more.  Today's students, I believe, are in ever better hands.  Even if you had a bad experience or three with a teacher in your past, give teachers your support and expect much from your school district.

Instructional Technology Dispatch from the world of K12 Education

A Digital Backpack for Students

Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2007 is a wonderful digital backpack that rich tools that students need to conduct research, develop quality work projects, and has a powerful math tool called Microsoft Math. Microsoft Math is more than just a calculator that gives an answer; it walks the student step-by-step through solving the problems, and has a powerful graphing feature that allows equations to become more tangible. Moreover, it can help students with their problems in their textbook. This is key as many parents are reporting that they feel challenged by some of the homework that students now bring home.

Extend Teacher Reach

Student 2007 helps extend teachers' reach as it is a very easy to use and friendly tool designed to be used by students to help them with class assignments and projects. Transportation, schedule conflicts, and other factors can get in the way of students and teachers meeting for tutorials.  With Student 2007, learning can happen at anytime.  Loaded on student machines, students can research and remediate on key concepts. It is highly interactive and easy to use.

Cool Stuff

Included in Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2007 are cool tools like an easy to use chart maker, a timeline that allows for multicultural and comparative analysis, as well as an interactive world atlas that allows students to a host of topics including climate. As Encarta Premium is incorporated with Student, learners can be assured that the content is authoritative and instructionally relevant. From quotations, book summaries, foreign language tools, to the periodic table of the elements, Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium 2007 is a powerful tool for students and teachers.

If you would like more information on how to welcome the troops home please check out http://www.welcometroops.com/.  Whether you are for or against the war, I think you will find this is a positive way to support the men, women, and families that have made significant sacrifice.

Pulling it Together

Microsoft has a number of exciting technologies that allow teachers and students to collaborate using very powerful, yet easy to use tools. Among these tools is a wonderful tool called Microsoft Office OneNote.  Microsoft Office OneNote allows students and teachers to take notes and conduct research.  As the content is captured electronically, the notes can be searched and flagged.

I've just finished working with one school district that has their students and teachers using OneNote. They are excited by the possibilities and power.  They have found that OneNote extends beyond simple note taking. It becomes a staging ground for research and organizing ideas for papers, projects and more.

As someone who has taught in public school, I know that time is a precious commodity for educators. Any work that can be leveraged, that is reused, is of high value. OneNote allows teachers and students to leverage their research, ideas, and work.

When I taught language arts, I remember getting ready for the following week, and working out the lessons that I would convey to my students. I'd usually brainstorm at home, feet propped up on the couch, with a yellow notepad. I would sketch out critical and provocative questions to engage and guide students and conduct research to sharpen the lessons. Now, teachers can sketch things out, and reuse the work across preps.

Here are several ways to save time and increase your productivity using OneNote in the classroom:

• Instead of writing questions on the board or on an overhead, use a data projector to use display questions, exercises and notes. Capture student reaction and participation in OneNote.
• Using the Shared Session option in OneNote, you can share your notes and students can interact with your notes in real time.
• Save a copy of your notes and provide to students who missed class, or for students who have IEPs that require you to provide written notes of work conducted in class.
• Allow students to conduct education-centric research and develop unified notes using a Live Sharing Session.
• Capture notes from parent/teacher conferences
• The faculty can have cohesive set of notes, developed in real-time using the Live Sharing Session
• Students can use OneNote as a staging area to assemble notes, research, and screen clippings. Ideas can be organized and published into Microsoft Word, published directly to a blog using the new blogging feature, or saved a webpage.
• The built in OCR capability allows you to search notes and images you have collected in your notes.
• Develop a Shared Notebook, where notes and ideas can be shared among many learners.

Microsoft Office OneNote is a powerful tool that allows educators, learners and even parents to share notes.  More information can be found at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/default.aspx.

Scott Thompson is on the move, talking to educators across the United States. This dispatch is from the field.

Create your own Education Podcast today using XP or Vista

Have student participation you want to feature? Need to add instructional technology to your lessons?  Want to broadcast your classroom norms, key concepts, or project criteria? Creating a mediacast is for you. You can create a mediacast with ease using your Windows XP or Windows Vista machine. Mediacasts are simply audio files that are posted to a website. Districts may want to syndicate the podcast using RSS (more on RSS in a later blog)—however districts should consider using SharePoint as it is a truly enterprise collaborative tool and has RSS built in.

Getting Started

So if an audio mediacast (aka podcast) is a simple audio file, getting started is a breeze. Simply capture your voice using the audio recorder. It will create a file and you are basically done. Upload your audio file to the website.

Extra Credit: If you would like to add music or bumper music to your podcast, use Windows MovieMaker. I especially like the refinements found in Vista. You can really tweak the bit rate for an AM, FM and other settings for ever increasing quality. By the way, free music is available on the microsoft.com/office website. Under the media search look for music. There are also sound effects and more for the taking.

If you desire, you can convert the audio file to a MP3 format using free or for purchase utilities that are easy to use. Many can be found at sites such as www.download.com (search for MP3 converter).

Syndicate the Content

So you are now ready to syndicate your content. This is done using RSS. RSS or Really Simple Syndication is essentially XML that is on a website that indicates that there is content available for subscription, or if you will, consumption (subscription implies a cost, which there is none unless you charge for access- and most podcasts are free so we are just talking about making it ready for the taking). If you have a RSS aggregator you can capture the updated content on your desktop. What is very cool is that Vista, Outlook 2007, and IE7 are shine with RSS capabilities. IT Pros will like the fact that the new Microsoft SharePoint has RSS built in. So using SharePoint, syndication is a breeze and is handled for you.

Add Photos, Movies and Effects

Now that you have gotten your feet wet with MovieMaker to create your auido mediacast, you can get extra points if you use MovieMaker to feature photos or videos of student work, say from the class field trip. These mediacasts allow teachers to create powerful content and impact student learning.

Student Use, Acceptable Use, and Governance

Check with your district regarding policies specific to student work on the internet, the use of personal information on the Internet, and any release forms that may need to be completed. Districts use student voices on the Internet, but some districts prefer not to have students identify themselves nor provide identifiable information in the podcast. Here, policy, common sense and prudent judgment rule. Also, CIOs may want to consider where the content is residing, so that the district can maintain proper governance over the content.