SJ3-Education Blog
Future Careers Need Technology Integration Now.

Preparing our students for workforce and career planning must include 21st Century Skills along with technology integration grounded in NETS Standards. Most career paths, current employment opportunities, and jobs that haven't yet been created do and will continue to require employees to have problem-solving skills, technology skills, and an approach to self-directed learning. Today's employment rate and the unpredictable future for new job growth places an even higher demand for students to acquire skills valued by future employers.

I want to take agriculture as an example (mainly because it often isn't thought of as highly technical). Farmers are using advanced types of technology everyday to be highly productive and to minimize unnecessary input costs. I'll use my husband's job as an example. He works in the agriculture industry to provide a product to farmers that will increase productivity while decreasing input costs. His company provides GPS auto-steering for tractors. Let me walk you through all the technology tools he frequently uses.

Google Earth:
When planning for tower locations that will transmit a satellite signal to tractors in fields, he uses Google Earth. The GPS signal will transmit a 12 mile radius. He plots all his tower locations on Google Earth along with their coverage area. By using layers and plotting points he can create an interactive map which displays current and future areas in which accuracy for automatic steering to the nearest inch will be available.

Word, Excel. PowerPoint, Adobe Elements, Outlook, Read Atlas, XMap
These list some of the common software he needs to be able to use. Wether communicating with his board and dealerships, presenting at conferences, creating multimedia of product demonstration, and working with several mapping software; he must be able to learn software and do technological trouble-shooting. Not everyone will have a team of technicians available to them, so 21st Century Skills are a must.

Wordpress & Blogging
His company website needs continuous updates of relevant information. He had to learn Wordpress to manipulate the website information. He also keeps a blog for updating on current events and tower construction.

Cloud computing & Digital Dropbox
The company my husband works with is a collaboration of three individual partners, so they do not share a common network. Cloud computing and utilizing services like Dropbox allow for secure document sharing that is easily accessible and editable by the parties involved.

Mobile Device (Droid Phone)
When he is traveling between rural tower locations or out in the middle of fields he still needs access to documents, contacts, email, and internet. He also updates his blog and website by using his Droid. He is able to take pictures of tower construction sites and upload directly to his blog. His mobile device increases productivity, communication, and allows for instant information flow.

GPS Equipment
Global Position System (GPS) is what the farmers' tractors use to communicate with the local towers and orbiting satellites. This technology allows the tractors to set a path and drive on autopilot. GPS is a technological advantage because the exact path can be repeated by the tractor. This will save on costs from seeding, fertilizer, chemical spray, to harvest because the farmer can be extremely accurate on application.

Portable tower with GPS signal
He also uses a portable tower that will reach up to 110 feet that will transmit a GPS signal in a range of 12 miles. This is used with other mobile GPS receivers to test possible permanent tower locations before a tower is even built.


All of these tools (with the exception of a portable 110 ft tower) are easily available for learning in the classroom. The knowledge of learning and utilizing all of these technological tools required quick learning and self-directed learning by my husband. He wasn't taught how to use every tool, but because he values digital technology for it's productivity and collaboration power he has successfully applied them to his work.

You will notice that the tools we teach our students are also tools that can be directly utilized in the workforce. As we use common terminology such as 21st Learning Skills and NETS Standards in our strategic planning. They do have a direct correlation with meeting the needs for our students beyond high school.

iPad Apps for Language Arts: Disney Digital Storybook

iPad Apps for Language Arts

Disney story apps: Toy Story

Objective: Read with Expression and increase fluency.


Recently I had the opportunity to work with two summer school elementary age groups. It was a fun day for these students as I worked with the summer school staff to create a day of technology integrated activities focused on building language arts skills. For many of the students this was their first time working on an iPad and iTouches. We utilized several learning applications. For this blog I will focus on a iPad activity that was one of the students favorite.

During the activities students individually worked with one teacher on a iPad activity. We wanted to focus on reading with expression and fluency. Disney has several story books for the iPad. I choose Disney's Toy Story Digital book for a couple reasons. This application has a great recording feature and allows for individual and automatic page turning control. The story is written to express excitement and exclamation. The reading level was appropriate with a few challenging words for new vocabulary. Also the timing of the new Toy Story 3 movie out this summer added to the fun and familiarity with the story characters.

Each student was assigned to a selected page from the digital story to read. On average each reading selection was a paragraph of about 25 - 35 words and contained a combination of expressive and narrative sentences. First the students listened to the page read to them by the built in narrators voice. They were able to hear the selection read smoothy and able to see visually by the highlighted reading when the narrator read with expression. Then the students were able to practice their reading selection prior to recording their own voice into the iPad. They were also able to rerecord their voice if so needed or desired.

While the students worked on each of their reading selections they did not hear the entire story from the digital book. All of the students did understand the content of the story because of prior knowledge of the characters and movies. All students had seen Toy Story at one time. The fun part for the students is when they all gathered around for the story in it's entirety. Once the digital story with the students own voice recording was played the iPad version provided a unique experience for the class. When the application was put on auto page turning mode with the class recordings for narrations, the story also added theatrical background music and sounds effects.

The students enjoyed hearing their own voices and the voices of their peers. The recording feature and playback gave students confidence for their reading to be heard by the group. It was great joy to see some students who struggled with reading and reading in front of others to be excited for their readings to be shared. This activity and application was a success for increasing fluency, using expression, and building confidence with reading.

SJ3 Education

iPad in Careers & Schools

SJ3-Education Blog
iPad in Careers & Schools


This is my first blog post done entirely from the iPad. I am convinced the mobile device world is the direction of the future for productivity. So by default it has it's merit and place in education and our schools.

The iPad is such an easy tool to use and incredibly resourceful it has completely changed my morning routine and increased my productivity throughout the day. Apps in my morning routine are; calendar, email, weather bug, google reader, and Twitter. Throughout the day I may check updates from some of my favorite news apps such as Mashable, Rueters News, and USA Today. Then just to share a few more favorite frequently used apps are Netflix, Ellen, ABC Player, and Pandora. I will discuss more Apps that I find useful in future blogs. There are just too many to list.

I find it interesting that so many people are blogging about the iPad. Educational sources such as Edutopia are expecting great uses from this tool. Edutopia blogger Bob Lenz stated that he predicts the iPad and tablet type devices to revolutionize the way students access all types of information like research, media, and books. Even leading technology education expert Kathy Schrock wrote a 4-part blog on the iPad alone and still continues to write and Twitter frequently about it. It isn't so surprising to see educational professionals raving about the iPad, what I find as more evidence that these devices are products that should be used in education is the professionals outside of education that take time away from their usual business to rave about the iPad.

Two examples I want to share are from Rich Karlsgaard, the publisher of Forbes Magazine and from Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway.

Rich Karlsgaard is the publisher for Forbes Magazine and authors the Digital Rules Column. Most of Rich Karlsgaard's articles I would describe as political, controversial, and often focused on America's finance. Recently he took the time to dedicate one of his entries entirely to raving about the iPad. He describes the iPad as a tool he has 'hired' to do the job of bringing him the news. He discusses how the iPad has become his tool of choice for the newspaper, magazines, and blog feeds, along with videos from the web. The very point that he just doesn't use the tool, but compelled to tell everyone about it in a break from his usual job supports the impact tools like the iPad will have in future careers for our students.

Take another example from an interview conducted by Newsweek with Prime Minister Jens Stolenberg. The interview was focused on how Norway stayed healthy during the economic crisis that has hit so many nations. The part that I found interesting was that even the Prime Minister made note to praise the iPad during the interview. He discussed that he bought an iPad in New York when he couldn't fly home due to the volcanic ash hindering flights and how he used it to help run his daily operations for his country. He was also quoted saying, "We are going to start to use it now in my office; it is an excellent tool."

It's one thing to hear how our educational experts view tools like the iPad and it's potential in our schools, but when I find strong testimony for these devices coming from professionals stepping outside of their business as usual to praise these tools, i know this is a direction schools need to take. Not only are our educational experts embracing 21st Century Skills and technology integration, but other career professionals are using and excited about the new technology devices and how these tools can improve their own productivity in the work force. There is always a balance/tug-of-war among costs for resources, personnel, curriculum initiatives, professional development, technology etc. in our schools. Luckily I don't make all of these decisions, I just make recommendations. I place my support for mobile devices and iPads in our staff and students hands.

Google vs Microsoft, Coke vs. Pepsi, An Apple a Day

Competition in technology has created some great innovations. Deciding which tool is right for the job, always keep in mind that technology is changing and often it’s a race to who can brand name it first. At times it can be overwhelming choosing the right technology. Anything from choosing a blog, a wiki, email, web host, to social bookmarking can send us into decision overload.
Some schools have been using Google Docs and Apps within their classrooms. Google has been one of the driving forces to move applications, document storage, and collaboration to the cloud environment. Microsoft recently launched its own extension of applications to offer more cloud environment based features. All of these features require log-in and email hosing service and that can often be the catch. Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail among others want your log-in. Free services always come with a catch. Google Docs is a great easy cloud environment for classroom collaboration. It’s also like putting Coke vs. Pepsi into the schools. If they start using their product early, they are more likely to stick with it in the future. Mac did a great job of getting its computers into schools when schools were first adding computer labs. Now look where Apple is in the market. Who are the biggest demographics for Apple users – the generation that grew up with them in schools.

Delicious once stood on its own, but has recently been purchased by Yahoo. This is why you are now required to have a yahoo account to log into Delicious. Yahoo hopes to gain more web traffic to gain more add space on yahoo. They hope if you have a yahoo account, you will use yahoo news, email, and tools more frequently to drive their business marketing. Microsoft looks to launch a social bookmarking site to compete with sources like Delicious. There are several more out there trying to up each other and get your log-in.

I see several things with competition. Most of it good. Product cost is lower and many applications are free to use. More features, tools, and applications are available to use. This has allowed for more creative options, collaboration, and problem solving tools to reach students. Teachers are becoming great facilitators of meeting digital age instruction and preparing students with 21st Century skills.

We need to keep in mind why tools are free. Students and educators need to understand what public web applications are and how they can use these tools to enrich the education experience. We also need to keep in mind of teaching kids how to keep safe in free and open platforms.

Competition among technology is strong and real estate space for marketing tools especially with social platforms has become a huge driving force for competition. We have amazing innovations all around us in technology. This has created tools that schools have been able to take advantage of for our students.

Pen, Paper, and User ID

As I see student learning and the use of all of our tools in the classroom, I now often see the User ID as the most important. Now don’t get me wrong the paper and pencil are important. They need to write their User ID down somewhere before going to the lab.


I often find myself saying to people “since I have been using cell phones, I can no longer remember anybody’s phone number.” The sad truth is I often can’t even remember my own work cell number. But ask me what my phone number was growing up and its embedded in my brain forever. I can even remember some of my old high school friend’s old phone numbers, which does me very little at this point because they are all moved out of their parent’s homes by now. (or at least they should be).


Now our brains memory focuses on the User ID. We may still have memory issues on this and not surprising our students also do. Why? Because most students go home to their own computer and they have used the remember me item on their log-ins. This allows the computer to recognize their log in and automatically puts their password access in for them. Great tool if your home computer is completely secure from anybody’s use, but I still don’t recommend using that feature.


Students are better in ways at internet security than we give them credit for. First when they come to school they are forced to remember a password every time they log in because they are using public accessible computers and can’t use the remember me feature. Also most of the students have experience or know someone who has had their password sabotaged. This experience/knowledge for an adolescent is very personally violating that they quickly learn the lessons of private passwords. Yet we still need to encourage changing passwords frequently and keeping them private. When was the last time you changed your log-in password? I would be interested to see if our students are better role models of this or us educators.

SJ3
Meeting our Students Needs

How igoogle has increased my connection to people and streamlined my knowledge.

I am a fan of igoogle. There are so many things you can do with it, but I am just going to tell you how I use it. We have so many sites and applications that we can use, but logging separately into all of them and viewing the information is timely and overwhelming. I am able to organize my needs on igoogle for quick view and access.

The items I use on igoogle include: Twitter, Google Calendar, Facebook, Plurk, News Feeds, Google Reader, Weather, Google docs, Gmail, Blogs, Hulu, and YouTube to name the main applications. My communication tools such as twitter allow me to make updates and follow conversation threads easily. Once you discover RSS feeds and the power of information seeking you, instead of you wasting time searching, it can become a powerful knowledge gathering feature. I recommend using Google Reader.

I also have other frequent tools that I use that can be added to igoogle, but I prefer to have them set different. I use Delicious for social bookmarking and I am an avid user of Skype. I have Delicious on my tool bar for quick access and Skype on my task bar. These locations are very convenient, so I don’t need them to take up real estate space on my igoogle page.

I recommend starting with a couple digital tools. Get familiar with one tool and as you grow with digital tools add them to your igoogle home page. This can help you feel organized and up to date with your profiles and tools.

-SJ3
Meeting our Students Needs