Mark Carls’ Blog

As a high school math teacher in a previous life before taking this job in professional development with CA BOCES I always valued the importance of gathering data.  Then, I enjoyed trying to make inferences from it, and look for possible sources of error or reasons why it might be skewed.  My wife would tell you that I’m terribly skeptical of any stat or percent thrown out there in the media or with friends.  I’m sure you all know this, but 73.6% of all statistics are made up!

In my new life with CA BOCES, I not only get to help teachers implement technology into their classroom, but I also get a chance to play with data and help schools find ways to use their data.  We used data from state assessments at my old school to help modify our curriculum, so it’s not new to me, but Data Warehouse & showing the data to other schools is new…..then again most everything I do now is new!

Here’s my point, it’s amazing just based on one assessment (and that is my drawback to all of this, it is only one assessment) you can gain so much insight.  Now that we have a few years worth of data you can look at one test, see what questions were missed, and find out how your students ranked among the region or the state.  Then, you can look at Trend Reports (just came out in Data Warehouse) where you can see how an individual student did the past 3 years.  The students earn a score of either 1,2,3 or 4 and this report even breaks those levels up into low, medium and high!   THEN, you can go even deeper and look at a particular student and see what questions they missed on an individual test….. BRILLIANT!

Now, I won’t act like this data is the be all, end all.  As one of my colleagues like to remind us, there is always a story behind the numbers.  However, if your a teacher and you can have the information of not only how your students have done, but how the students you will get in September have done, that’s a leg up that was never afforded teachers before.  Again, it’s just another piece to help out.  The communication with your other staff members and trying to keep strengths a strength and to improve on any weaknesses is very important.  Otherwise, it’s just numbers on paper…..maybe that is where the tall, dark and handsome data geek….I mean, guy, comes into play.

This is just my two cents anyways.  I spent most of my week working in Data Warehouse and it is a fresh topic in my heas as I try to get data for schools as I type.  Now, I need to polish my skills of finding certain data, and then delivering to teachers & administrators in a positive way to help their students succeed in school.

Quick thoughts on some sites I’ve found this week and at the very least have interested me….

Phonevite is looking great to me.  I first thought you may only get 25 calls total for free.  However, after two e-mails to Phonevite I found out that you can send up to 25 people at a time a phone message for free!  You can store as many numbers & groups as you want, so then you can turn around and do it again to a new group.  For instance, an Algebra group about their assignments due, then a Pre-Algebra group…..do you see where I’m going here?  I’m really liking this for teachers to get information out to parents.  I will have to continue to check into it.  Oh yeah, they have been very good getting back to me by e-mail.

A fellow colleague, Cindy Crandall, showed me Wikipedia Commons which seems to be like Creative Commons, a place to find free and usuable pictures, and some music on the web.  I have only played around with it to find pictures right now, but never new that Wikipedia was branching out.  I also heard from Tim Clarke about Wikipedia Books….are they trying to become the next Google?  I definately need to see what is going on with Wikipedia.

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How about Anywhere.fm ?  Not sure if this would mean much to me.  I don’t tend to even keep my iTunes updated, however, it might be nice for others to check out.  You can upload your music and listen to it anywhere!

Sometimes I don’t truly realize how fortunate I am with this job. We here at CA BOCES had the opportunity to have Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach out here to lead our administrators on Monday and then our teachers for next four days! I will unfortunately miss Friday’s session because of a wedding, but I would like to share some of the things I learned this week.

We had our Monday working with about 10 administrators and their section of the wiki is here.

The rest of the week we worked with six teachers on this wiki.

There was almost too much to take in.  I was able to work with some Hinsdale teachers before I start there this year as a tech integrator.  Using the wiki, Elluminate, Skype and Ustream Sheryl was able to pull in a wide range of students, teachers and technology experts from around the world.  If you read her blog post she sums up all it much nicer than I ever could.

What a great week!  I can’t wait for that opportunity again.

Thanks Sheryl!

Just trying to formulate thoughts on the “oversaturation” of the web. How many new sites can possibly come out?  I can’t keep track of what I even looked at last week!  .com, .net, .fm, is there a .carls somewhere???

How many times have you had someone say, “Check out this link“, then after clicking on it, I come to realize, not only have I already been there….but I have an account!?!?

Maybe it’s just me.

I remember when I had 15-20 sites on del.icio.us and didn’t share at all.  Now I have over 500 bookmarks!  I will say this, thank goodness for del.icio.us and diigo to share and organize.  Will I ever be able to get caught up?  I mean, physically, is it even possible?  Should I even be trying?  I want to know what is out there, maybe I’m too obsessive-compulsive.

Will this current trend hit another wall and we’ll get “oversaturated” to the point we’ll be spread out all over?   Or do I need to just “find a groove (of certain sites) and make it stick”….sorry couldn’t resist the “Cars” Disney quote from Doc Hudson to Lightning McQueen.

Ideas?  Thoughts?  Am I way off base?

My first summer tech camp and I couldn’t have been happier with the teachers and admin help we received at Franklinville the past 3 days. Day 1 was showing projector integration resources and help. Our wiki was just something I threw together quick in the afternoon to give them links. One thing I would’ve liked to have shown them was the new stacking feature with Searchme, but I never got to it.

Day 2 was work with wikis, however, only one teacher showed up, so we looked at blogs and some settings on her SchoolWires blog. With wikis we looked at Wikipedia, I explained how it’s like a whiteboard in the classroom that you can add or erase anything you’d like. Then, she got started on a Wikispaces one for her fellow teachers at her grade level to post and share resources.

Day 3 was a work day where we helped about 9 teachers with whatever they wanted. I ‘tried’ to help with the CPS unit, but mostly helped again with their SchoolWires accounts and School Island which I used quite a bit as a high school math teacher.

Great week, thanks to Franklinville and the admin for all of their help and support this week, I hope to do it again next year.

One thing I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve never done, was to do the “Christmas in April”, or as it’s known now, “Rebuilding Together“.  This is where businesses get employees to dedicate one day (this last Saturday) to help fix up someone’s house in the area.  With all the things I’ve tried to do in school, and with the National Honor Society in high school, I had never done this.  Plus, volunteering my time to help others less fortunate was a goal of mine somewhere around the start of the year.  Even though I sometimes feel that things are tough financially for me now, I’m very blessed to have a wonderful family and job that I love.

We started at 8am and finished up around 4pm with a lunch provided by the people at Rebuilding Together.  Our BOCES team was spread out throughout all the divisions, and I was able to meet a bunch of great people from up on the Hill and at other centers that I’ve never even met before.  I thought it was a great experience that even motivated me to come home and mow…..PLUS, weedwack!  Now I have to work on staining the decks!

My main job for this day was to paint after I finished caulking in a back window.  I started painting trim, and by the end of the day I had spent most of my adventure up on a 24 foot ladder.  Mostly painting near the top of the house!

Man was I sore Sunday morning!

I did have an excellent time, and I would suggest it to help build relationships in any business or school.  It was great to see people outside of work, and to build on connections that either didn’t exist before or were not very strong.  My next trip to the Hill will be much more interesting now.  I met two people who’s fathers worked with my dad, a couple of people who knew teachers I had worked with at CLCS and SWCS, and even met the husband of a teacher who was going to be in my Monday Tech Camp.

What an incredible collaboration at High Schools New Face from  JMT of the Western New York BOCES.  Held at Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, NY.  There are way too many people to thank and acknowledge here, but I will talk about our cohort and some of the national presenters.

First of all if you’ve neve been to Ellicottville, NY and to ski, golf, or just stay at Holiday Valley, I highly recommend it.  I would also suggest treating yourself to a nice dinner at Dina’s, or any restaurant in the town, they all seem very good.

We started off the week with a keynote from Ken Kay who talked about 21st Century skills and how nine states have adopted them and more are on the way.  I will say, for all of the national presenters I was ‘trying’ to run a camera, so it was hit or miss.  The link to most of their presentations is here!

Ken Kay ’s PowerPoint is there as well, and he really laid the groundwork for the week.

I had the opportunity to work with Steven Bartholomew from the MET School in Rhode Island for the “Personalizing the 21st Century Teen” cohort. 

Steven was engaging, very knowledgable and maybe a little crazy!  He did a get out of your seat activity right away and had us on the edge of our seat for both days (4 hours Tuesday, then a 3 hour and a 4 hour session Wednesday).  The people in our cohort seemed to really enjoy his thoughts, and he left the second day very open so that they could direct their own learning.  The majority of the resources are posted on this wiki.  It was an excellent time with Steven! 

What does happen to a styrofoam cup when left 1000+ feet below sea level for 10-12 hours???

Other highlights…again, I don’t have much detail to add, running the cameras used up most of my brain tissue, but:  Richard Ognibene  NYS teacher of the year from Fairport High School where he teaches Physics and Chemistry.  Richard was very nice and easy to talk to as we were able to talk over a few things during the Major League Baseball All-Start game Tuesday night.  Richard’s speech touched on some of the things that Steven did in personalizing education and he talked about his experiences with students.  He is able to let each student know that he cares for them and is there to help them succeed.  He received a very deserving standing ovation.

Tony Wagner from Harvard and his new book, “The Global Achievement Gap” which should be released by the end of the month.  He also talked about competing globally and talked about his visits to schools and keeping the students engaged.  Tony is also a Senior advisor for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and has his website here for School Change.  I was hoping to start on the book this weekend, but, well….there just hasn’t been the time.

 Any other thoughts from people out there?  This wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg!  We also had Thomas Payznat from Harvard, who started us off on Thursday about what America has to do to compete globally as well with his “Touch Choices, Tough Times” Power Point:  Thomas Payzant\’s Power Point

He was pretty straightforward and honest about how America is ranking against our global competitors.  Overall, I thought most everyone tied together the opening theme that schools need to develop and use 21st Century Skills to reinvent themselves to compete on a Global Market.

There were many others, including our other cohort leaders:

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Dennis Sparks

Giselle Martin-Kniep

Gene Couson

One last key for me, that I would have to mention was the ability to also build better relationships with other staff developers from Erie1, Erie2 & ON BOCES.  Looking forward to other projects in the future with them.

Thanks again to Holiday Valley, Rick Weinberg and the Tech Staff for letting me work the cameras (I will get better).  Thanks to Erie1, Erie2, ON and our CA BOCES for a great week.  Also, thanks to Tim Cox, our leader and the support staff (Linda, Kathy, Laurie & Mary) for pulling off a great week.

Trying to work my way around Lively, Google’s new MUVE release.  Since I’ve had little time to play, I’m hoping for help.  Since I couldn’t get my name, or mcarls, I had to go with my third option of Dukefan12.

I even tried to start Plurkville as a place to meet for educators on Plurk, but MAN, do I need help! 

I wanted to give this a real shot, but feel I’m falling behind.  Maybe I need help from some teenager!

Picture of me trying to figure it out at Lively School.

Now that I’m back to work and survived the holiday weekend I’m trying to get back in the swing of things.  Here is what’s on tap:

Wednesday, leave for DATAG conference in Albany, NY.  I found out to be careful Googling this one, there is another site NOT quite committed to DATA!?!?  This workshop should be very interesting.  I need to learn more about Data Warehouse and helping districts look at and build action plans using data.  Return late Friday with the family, just in time for BONAFEST at St. Bonaventure Parish!

Next week, High Schools New Face!  I’ve never been to one of these, but will be working with Steven Bartholomew from the MET School out in Ellicottville, NY.  Should be a very interesting and action packed week.

Still loving Plurk more and more.  Building Karma, but I do worry that my network will “Splitter” much like Chris Lehmann talked about down at NECC.  I do see more and more Twits using Plurk, however.  Then, in a month or so, something new will come along…..we’ll see.

Another good site dealing with the top 50 Open Source software and their counterparts is here.