Name: Amanda
Web Site: http://www.sometechsense.com
Bio: Amanda DeCardy is an Apple Distinguished Educator and National Board Certified Teacher currently working as a Technology Integrationist at Shanghai American School, Pudong Campus. She has worked in international schools in China, Saudi Arabia and Japan, serving as a classroom teacher, a Professional Development Coordinator, an ATLAS Coordinator and most recently as Technology Integrationist. Ms. DeCardy has presented at EARCOS and NESA conferences and has taught graduate coursework through California State University-Northridge. She a mother of two girls: Madeline, age six and Amelia, age two. Her writings can be found on her two blogs, www.sometechsense.com and www.maddiesminute.com
Posts by Amanda DeCardy:
- animation
- green screening
- acting in filM
- using Foley for sound
- Students become more thoughtful with their answers
- Students have the opportunity to listen in and respond to their peers, expanding their own knowledge
- Students have the opportunity to see how others use tech and ask questions about it, wanting to learn more
- It started off with one to one professional development around the blogging platform for a few of my teachers. Four teachers were blogging last year and now we have all but four blogging – not once has administration said that teachers must blog. They blog because they want to do so.
- I was also a life-long learner after I planned with a 7th grade Humanities teacher. We (I) decided to use Photobooth to record Rome presentations only to discover after the fact that Photobooth flips the image so that all of the writing is backwards. MacForums to the rescue, I discover that you can use Quicktime Pro to flip the video horizontally. I taught the kids how to use Quicktime, taught them how to load it on our school portal and then embed it into their school blog.
- I also taught four 8th grade Science classes where I introduced all of the kids to their 8th grade wiki for their Environment Science NGO Project. Before I got them on the wiki though, I got them onto their school email account through our school portal because we’re trying to standardize all logins.
- I then met with two of my elective kids as they podcasted an interview with a teacher about our Movember – Save it or Shave it campaign. My wonderful colleague Simon Power is helping to orchestrate this fabulous event. We then interviewed the lead student actress of the MS Play and podcasted that interview. We hope to have all of this put together for our weekly student podcasts for the middle school. The kids have learned so much about GarageBand and sound boards… it’s time for them to fly!
- Technology has to be seen as fun…
- Technology should help teachers celebrate the successes of their students
- Technology should help everyone is our communities stay connected; parent to teachers to administrators to parents to teachers to administrators and back again.
- What do you want people to know?
- What do you not want people to know?
She’s had her computer for three weeks…
November 18th, 2009Tomorrow I have the honor of presenting at our school PTSA meeting which is solely going to be centered around one topic: technology. I love it when topics are so broad. Really, we could talk about anything and everything under the sun. What scares me a bit is that we are going to spend too much time talking about the stuff that really doesn’t matter so much.
Recently, I blogged about Apple Remote Desktop and talked about it with my PLN on Twitter. I heard the voices loud and clear where many said that ARD only distracts us from the important work that we are lucky enough to do with our students… making connections, integrating technology, developing our students into true global citizens. Tomorrow, I feel like many of the parents will want to talk about parental controls and screening software such as Apple Remote Desktop. While these topics deserve a conversation, I want to focus on what our students have been doing during the first three weeks of our 1:1 rollout program.
Because of the new software and the new server, our students have been turning work in digitally to teachers. The teachers have been giving feedback on student work digitally from highlights to recording their comments in Garageband and placing them on the student work. The teachers have then been returning work to the kids digitally.
Language teachers have kids learning beginning Mandarin and all of a sudden saying things like “I like apples” is an interesting statement and the kids are engaged. Why? Because technology has increased engagement across the board.
Science teachers have students creating talking worksheets for vocabulary and give them the option to design a product which displays their knowledge about Biospheres. This designing a product was an OPTION for the students. Guess what? Over 80% of the class took their teacher up on the offer even though the technology component didn’t impact their grade. Cassie has only had her computer for three weeks and look what she was able to do…
I’m hoping that the conversation around “watching” students will be short tomorrow because I have lots to celebrate on behalf of my students and teachers!
Leave your comments here for Cassie and I will share them with her!
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On a side note: Congratulations to U-Tech Tips contributor David Gran and his lovely wife Kim on the arrival of their new baby girl!
Apple Remote Desktop – A Good Thing?
November 13th, 2009Over the course of the next couple of days at my school we are requiring that all students in the 1:1 laptop program permanently change their computer settings. As a school we are going to require that each and every student in the 7th and 8th grade have their Remote Login and Remote Management boxes checked under their system preferences on their computers.
This will enable us as a school to better monitor student activity and help guide appropriate student behavior while the students are on campus through Apple Remote Desktop. They have been informed: If a student changes their settings it will be considered a discipline issue.
You see, we gave our students administrative rights to their machines. With administrative rights, the students can install programs they may need, update their software on their own (so very important), and really make this dynamic learning tool their own.
We are in our second month of our 1:1 laptop program and it’s going very well. Teachers are modifying the way they teach and following many of the recommendations they received during their Out in Shanghai days training. And as Jason Ohler found in his most recent research, the student engagement in educational activities is through the roof. Quite frankly, students don’t have time to get into trouble with their computers while in the classrooms.
So why are we as a school doing this? I am still trying to come up to the answer to this question and I’ll diligently gather my research over the coming months. The jury is still out for me though. I don’t want this to be a “gotcha” program because I think that without student input it could erode the positive culture and relationship that currently exists between teachers and students. However, I am not ignorant and I know that there is always one… one student that cyber-bullies another without an adult knowing about it… one student that secretly chats with a friend back home on Facebook while she should be working on her talking worksheet in science class… one student that skips lunch to play Halo on a regular basis, avoiding conversation with friends and exercise for the soul.
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This has been cross-posted on Some Tech Sense and Voices of ADE Asia
Student Film Festivals Spark Creativity
April 19th, 2009
David Gran and Mikey McKillip open S2F2
After months of planning, the Shanghai Student Film Festival proved to be one of the most rewarding experiences of this teacher’s career.
Why?
The number of students from international schools across Shanghai and across the world that were able to participate and be a part of this event were inspiring to me. Elementary students, middle school, high school… all were represented and each and every one of them brought something unique to the festival. From the gregarious student to the shy student, many students were able to explore learning 21st century style by telling stories using film as the medium. As Scott McCloud mentioned in his opening S2F2 speech, films are still a relatively new medium and the potential to discover new things using film is great indeed.
Sky McCloud joins Shanghai students in the workshops
At my school, we had a quarter long elective class every other day to expose kids more in depth to art of film making. Kids made short films in this class, but what I find surprising (and encouraging) is that students submitted films that were either made on their own time OR that were created within the classroom to share their learning. Is this not
Shanghai students celebrate their success
fantastic?? As educators, this is what we want for our students… embedded technology and authentic uses of technology. Just another reason every school school have a tech integrationist….
If you are thinking of starting a film festival in your neck of the woods, I want to share with you something that made our event this year even more special. Students who submitted films from all over Shanghai were invited to our school for the day so that they could attend a mini-conference just for them. They signed up using a google form ahead of time which helped us organize the event. Over 100 students attended interactive workshop sessions about:
If you have questions about staring a film festival in your area, please contact us as we’re more than willing to help out. Tim Bray has the Phoenix Film Festival coming up at the end of April as well – we’re so excited to see film festivals growing in the region!
Students receive a free S2F2 t-shirt thanks to our sponsors
I’ve loved working with David Gran, Mikey McKillip, Jonathan Chambers and all of the others on the board for this event – remarkable educators. We’ll be presenting at the Apple Education Leadership Summit in Hong Kong (April 24-26) and we hope to see you there!
Please start a student film festival in your area…. start small and then watch it grow!
Labbing Out Loud in Science!
April 4th, 2009My job is to help teachers integrate technology into their curriculum – not to force it but to compliment the existing program by empowering students to take more control over their learning. As this quarter comes to a close, Mr. Olivas’ science students have been busy uploading their Labbing Out Loud (LOL) movies to their wiki. In 6th grade science, students learn the fine art of writing a very technical lab report. But we decided to take this one step further in Mr. Olivas’ class. While students completed and analyzed a lab about Forces and Motion, they documented their journey through the entire process. Through video and pictures students captured their learning and then created a Labbing Out Loud lab report complete with a Bill Nye moment. Several students even submitted their films to our Shanghai Student Film Festival!! This wasn’t just your typical lab report. This engaged every single student in the classroom by using technology to bring them all into the same circle of learning.
All groups put their LOL movies on the class wiki and then provided Mr. Olivas and myself with feedback about what they learned. Congratulations to all of the students in Mr. Olivas’ class for being so dedicated and producing quality products which demonstrate their learning. Congratulations also to Mr. Olivas for using Google forms and embedding the form into his wiki… it’s wonderful when teachers are true facilitators of learning and joyfully learn alongside with their students!
This is just one example of the Labbing Out Loud. Please stop by the Labbing Out Loud (LOL) wiki to view many more!!
Using Prezi to Share the Big Picture about 1:1
March 10th, 2009This is cross posted on Some Tech Sense.
As we move into full swing for our 1:1 planning at my school, we find ourselves in the position of celebrating and over-communicating about what we’ve been able to achieve with a laptop cart program. I decided to use prezi as it’s like a Keynote, but it’s much more dynamic to share those big picture ideas.
The big picture about our cart laptop program is that we’ve been able to achieve a lot of in a short amount of time across all disciplines in the middle school… must be the great software and the great technology integrationist!
This prezi presentation has given parents, board members, our superintendent, teachers and our students the knowledge that we use tech everyday across the board… at least that’s the feedback I’ve received so far. Just imagine what we’ll be able to do when every child has a laptop in every class!
I think that’s another prezi!
To view the entire presentation, click here!
Taking Essential Questions to the Next Level
January 19th, 2009This is cross-posted on Some Tech Sense!
I love my teachers. They are always willing to take risks and try something new with tech. They are so positive and jump in with both feet.
Over the past week, I’ve been working with our two 7th grade science teachers Mrs. McDaid and Mrs. Bugenske on taking essential questions to another level. They don’t just post questions on a wall and touch upon them occasionally. The EQs are a focus and the students make valuable connections by addressing them.
We created two wikis for their classes where kids answer the four questions. For 3 of the 4 quesitons, students must use some sort of technology. I gave them a few ideas on a Requirements page. Why use tech to answer essential questions?
You must watch what one of my students did for his first answer… Final Cut Pro, LiveType, citing sources. Do you think he’ll remember more about this unit of study because of his tech experience? I’m thinking the answer is…. YES! Are all of the students producing this type of work? No, BUT they want to… we’ve got them hooked!
Science Rules! Tech Motivates…
December 19th, 2008
I am constantly amazed by the students in our schools. We’ve all heard the age old adage, “If you give an inch, they’ll take a mile…” Well, we gave our 8th graders an inch and many of them took it the mile. Over the past month, students have been creating their own Environmental NGO. The students did a GREAT job of honoring our host country of China and focused their NGOs on Air Pollution, Deforestation, Desertification, Energy, Waste and Water Pollution.
One hundred and fifty students paired up and worked collaboratively across two teams. I created a wiki page for them that had the requirements of the project and I provided them with several screencasts showing how to link to pages outside and inside the wiki, create a table of contents, and create RSS feeds. They just needed the tools though… the brains, the meat of the project had to come from them! I gave them the inch and they took the mile!!!
Here’s an example of a pretty darn good wiki that one of my groups created… and a video that another group created. I’m motivated! Great work 8th graders!
Cross Posted on Some Tech Sense
Time to Reflect – Creating my Job Description
November 30th, 2008My closest friends are always telling me to take time to reflect…. so here I go. I reflect….
I have been so amazingly busy. I know, I know we are all busy, but this pace is incredible! Being a Technology Integration Specialist has given me the opportunity to have my hand in just about every nook and cranny of the entire school. As I’ve said before, this position is new at my school and when I took the job I was basically given a job description that said, “Go make tech work and build a program.” I was reading the Langwitches blog a couple of days ago and found the most perfect job description for what I do on a daily basis. That job description alone is giving me a framework in which to reflect on the daily occurances involving tech at my school.
Today I hit every single piece of the pie!
So there friends. I reflected. I actually think this is something more like five blog posts in one, but my days are busy and I’m all over the place. I walk 13,000 steps a day and I team teach in every nook and cranny of the school.
I think I’m starting to make some sense of this!
Image: Technology Integration Facilitator
http://langwitches.org/blog/2008/11/23/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-technology-integration-facilitator/#comment-27692
Glogs… Is there an Educational Purpose?
October 3rd, 2008I am constantly thinking of ways to try to get my teachers hooked into technology. Technology cannot be seen as just one more thing on their already busy plates.
I’m sure others may know about this, but I just stumbled upon it through my PLN on Twitter. Glogs are just one more way to get teachers involved. At the beginning of the school year, teachers were asking the question: How do I get my Publisher newsletter on my blog? “Our” answer was very simple: Yes, you can get your newsletter on your blog, but you shouldn’t as Jeff Utecht put it. We were trying to get our teachers to blog more frequently with the information that they normally would’ve put into a newsletter. I recognize though that it’s not easy for many to jump into blogging and make a clean break from their traditional newsletter. Maybe, just maybe, I glog would be a good transition for them. They are still able to create a newsletter of sorts, but the tech is just a bit more involved. What do you think?
I helped out my daughter’s Kindergarten teacher and made a glog of their first class Publishing Party. I can see possibilities for glogs with teachers and students. And by the way, my daughter and I did have FUN creating our first glog!
This is cross posted on Some Tech Sense.
Wordle of Words – What Do You Blog About?
September 26th, 2008
All this week we have been finishing up getting our middle school students on blogs. I love blogging with kids… they learn so fast and are like sponges when it comes to technology. I’m a technology teacher and what takes me 15 minutes to figure out will take them less that 5. It’s the nature of age and it’s the difference between being a Digital Immigrant vs. a Digital Native. Which one are you? I’ve learned to let the kids teach me what they know and learned to let it be okay that I am not the sole disseminator of information. Kids learn from each other, the learn from their parents, they learn from their teachers – I believe that we all work together, supporting each other. Age is not a factor in this equation – learning comes full circle.
I started blogging over three years ago – it was a personal blog and it got me hooked on technology as a means to celebrate learning and life! I started really blogging with my parent community last year as math teacher with this account and then created my professional blog a few months ago where I communicate with amazing educators around the world. Today I was curious about what I’ve been blogging about the most. As a teacher, I hope that I talk about my students the most and the learning that takes place in and out of school. A wordle is the perfect was to visually display this. The largest words are the most common words within my blog. I’m pleased that students and learning are a bit part of what I blog about! I think I’ll continue to take a look at wordles every once in awhile as a way to give me feedback about what I really think is important. Try it! Put your blog address in or create your own Wordle to showcase who you are and what you value!
Cross posted on From the Outside Looking In and Some Tech Sense
Creating vs. Controlling Student Online Profiles
September 14th, 2008Cross posted on Some Tech Sense
There are nearly 400 students in my middle school and I’ve gone and created a student blog for every single one of them. Some of the students blogged last year for the first time and, overall, they did a great job. As I was browsing some of the work they put up on their blogs, I realized that there was a strong need for students to be educated about Online Profiles. Thanks to some of Jeff Utecht’s and Julie Lindsay’s work, I’ve been able to pull together some of the best of the best messages you can send out to kids. I didn’t preach – I just told them a story and I told it the way it is…
I started the 40 minute introductory presentation off with a simple question – who has a Facebook or MySpace account? I was amazed that I had a few 6th graders that claimed they have had their Facebook account for three years which meant that they have been leaving their internet stamp since they were 9 years old. We talked a lot about the Connected Web and I showed them the difference between a young blog and a blog that had been around for awhile using this Websites as Graphs applet. The visual helped students begin to see that they truly cannot control where information goes via the web.
I asked the two questions of the students:
This framed our conversation around recent articles where people landed jobs because of who and what they knew through their online social network. But we also talked about some of the negatives of an online profile. The question came up: Can teachers find out what we have our Facebook page? I cited at least two instances where this is exactly what happened.
Most students will set up their blogs next week and I want them thinking about the true meaning of Digital Citizenship and I want them to be fastidious about Creating their Online Profile. They can’t control it, but they can form it and create it. Digital Literacy is part of creating their online profile. I asked my group of Third Culture Kids from each grade level if they know of Joe Biden. Most did, but most did not know that he was accused of plagiarizing a speech in 1987 and that little piece of news was still following him today over 20 years later. This was yet another reason students should form, shape and create their online profile today.
I presented to the three grade levels at three different assemblies and I had them engaged the entire time…. they are thinking about it because all this week, students stop me in the halls and during lunch to talk about what is okay to put on the web and what is not okay. Their awareness level has risen. What a great start for the school year!
My presentation is below in pdf because it’s a Keynote. The movies didn’t come through as a pdf so they are linked here:
