This page contains information and links to material related to the presentations I did on March 20, 2009, at the SVRTC Awards Luncheon and the evening session in Richmond. These resources will only remain available online for a limited time.

The materials are for your personal learning with some rights reserved under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, share alike license. You can find specific information about your legal obligations under that license at this link.

I appreciate your support of my efforts to provide educators with materials that enhance our work to empower teaching and learning, and I hope you find excellent use for these materials to enhance your own personal, professional practice!

Below and throughout this post you will find links to student-created movies and screencast(s) of presentation(s) I made while visiting with you. The screencasts were made with ScreenFlow, a powerful program! The movies were made with iMovie and Final Cut Pro. For these media files to play in your browser, you must have QuickTime, which is free, properly installed on your Windows machine. (None of this should be an issue for Mac users as these come on your Mac at purchase.) Perhaps the best way to do that is to install iTunes on your Windows machine. iTunes, which is also free, opens up a whole world of amazing content to you! Download times for the media files vary depending on your connection speed. You may need to be patient!

I want to tell you how much I enjoyed my time with you. Both the morning session in which I had the privilege of seeing the awards recipients and here various people tell me of the wonderful things going on in Virginia schools! You are doing such excellent work.

Feedback

I know things can be very hectic at a conference, even for presenters! Sometimes I don't think to mention how to provide me with feedback, which I use to inform my professional practice. So below are two ways you can provide me with feedback about the presentation content, presentation style, resources provided, just anything that's on your mind.

• You can send me a text message. [This is another great way to use PollEverywhere, which I may have demonstrated in one of the sessions you attended.] Simply text 45569 followed by a space and then your text message to: 99503.
• You can also click on this link and fill out a short, more traditional online survey.

I appreciate your helping me better help educators!

Movie Links

I didn't have the time to show the movies I would normally show you. So allow me to include links to them here. Each link goes to an entire series of movies. Each of the times listed next to the movie is the section of the movie where the student interviews begin. The movies start after the interviews.

• Celebrate Achievement: the student interviews for this 2005 movie about special needs students actually appear at the very beginning of the link.
• Chocolate: the student interviews for this 2006 movie about child slave labor on the Ivory Coast can be found 4 minutes and 33 seconds into the URL.
• Stem Cell Research: the student interviews for this 2006 movie presenting the pros and cons of stem cellresearch can be found 13 minutes and 21 seconds into the URL. I rarely show this interview with the students.
• Frankengenes: the student interviews for this 2007 movie about genetically modified food can be found 7 minutes and 39 seconds into the URL.
• Organ Donors: Who Lives and Who Dies?: the student interviews for this 2007 movie can be found 20 minutes and 21 seconds into the URL.

Numerous excellent movie projects abound both on MabryOnline.org at this link and on the iTunes Store at this link. I invite you to check them out.

PollEverywhere

I mentioned Poll Everywhere, an excellent tool for educators that are comfortable allowing student use of cell phones in school (with parent permission). If I didn't mention it in the sessions you attended, you might want to explore it here. Below are a couple of polls embedded on this page. You can embed PollEverywhere polls into your classroom and parent presentations for realtime feedback as well as on web pages or blogs.

We didn't actually used these two polls, but I wanted you to see different ways of using this technology. If the polls were still open (they probably are not) you could actually vote from here as well as see the results. The results will change over time as I reset them for different groups.

This is an example of the same poll in a different format--one that allows SMS (text messaging) use when the poll is actually open.

You can also choose to just embed a results graphic which does not permit voting from the site or by SMS.

Tools I Use

Below is a list of tools I may have used during our time together. Since I get a lot of questions about these, I'm including the information here for your use.

• I typically use Keynote to do the presentations themselves. And I often control Keynote with one of several applications on my iPhone. These applications are downloaded through the iTunes Store and will work on the iPod Touch as well as the iPhone. iTunes will run on a Windows machine and comes automatically installed on every Mac. ( iTunes U and iTunes K-12 are rich sources of information and resources for schools and educators.) You can find detailed information about Keynote and the iPhone applications I use to control Keynote in this post on my blog.
• You may also have attended a session in which I mentioned CoolIris as the presentation tool. In fact, one of the links in the presentations section below is to a CoolIris version of the presentation: Leadership Applied: Building Powerful Learning Communities. CoolIris is not for the faint of heart. You must be comfortable editing a media.rss file, which is written in XML, a very unforgiving programming language. For more information about using CoolIris as a presentation platform, take a look at this post on my blog.
• The blogging system used for MabryOnline.org and for drTimTyson.com is MovableType. For more information about that implementation, you can consult this blog post on the MabryOnline website that covers answers to many frequently asked questions about the work we were doing at Mabry Middle School.
• The application I use to record presentations is ScreenFlow for the Mac. A number of screen capture utilities are available, but, as of this writing, I believe ScreenFlow to be the most elegant implementation of screen capture you can find on the Mac. Not only can it be used effortlessly and quickly, with just a few more minutes, you can make your screen casts look awesome. Exporting the finished screen cast is also incredibly easy: choose a preset and walk away from your computer while it generates the finished project for uploading. If you're interested in purchasing ScreenFlow, be sure to inquire about the education discount. A similar, but far more expensive, tool is available for Windows users: Camtasia.
• I also frequently use my iPod and a mic attachment (be sure you purchase one that is specifically designed to work with your exact iPod model) to record an audio only podcast of the presentation. You may also use your iPhone and iPod Touch to record podcasts. For more information on using the iPhone and iPod Touch to record podcasts, watch this podcast I produced on the subject.
• I also probably mentioned using uStream.tv to broadcast and record from the computer. As of this writing the service is free. Other similar services are also available.

Many other tools could be listed here, but this is probably more than you have time to explore if you're not already familiar with them.

Presentation Resources

An Irresistible Vision of Global Contribution

1. Screencast of an Irresistible Vision of Global Contribution: Regrettably, I recorded what was taking place on my laptop screen (the presenter's display) and not what was being projected on the large screen for the audience. So I am not posting a screencast of the presenter's display as it would be rather boring. My apologies.
2. Audio-only Podcast of An Irresistible Vision of Global Contribution
- This is the same presentation as above (in number 1); however, the audio was recorded with the small Shure stereo mic attached to my iPod Touch. No video or slides are shown, just the audio.

Leadership Applied: Building Powerful Learning Communities

1. Screencast of Leadership Applied: Building Powerful Learning Communities
2. Audio-only Podcast of Leadership Applied: Building Powerful Learning Communities
- This is the same presentation as above (in number 1); however, the audio was recorded with a stereo Shure microphone attached to my iPod. No video or slides are shown, just the audio.
3. CoolIris version of Leadership Applied: Building Powerful Learning Communities
- This may not be exactly the same presentation as above (in number 1) as I continuously make significant changes to just about every presentation I give immediately before I present it.

- The CoolIris presentation format requires a good bit of coding that does not lend itself to quick, last minute changes; however, this version gives you an idea of how you can use CoolIris as a presentation platform. Also, at the end of the webpage you will find credits for the creative commons resources used in the presentation.

- To view this as a "3D Wall," you must have CoolIris, which is free, properly installed on your Windows or Mac computer.
4. As I had a couple of questions about this, I'm including information on the iForm. The Mabry iForm was part of the registration process. We required the form be filled out by all of our parents. Parents would grant or deny permission for their students to "go global." Feel free to adapt this document to meet your needs.
   
   
   

Concluding Thoughts

I do hope that our time together was helpful for you! I hope it renewed your joy and passion for making learning irresistible for your students. As your students (and you) accomplish really exciting things, drop me an email with a link so I can include it in the Window Shopping section of my website.

I wish you only the very, very best!
Tim