First of all, a belated Happy Birthday to my father, who turned 91 (yes, 91) on Sunday. Twas quite the experience trying to FaceTime him from VA to NY. When I told him he looked great, he replied, "I'm 91, and I don't feel great" to which I replied, "Well, if you're not going to feel great, you might as well look great." It's been a tough time these last few months, but it was a joy to see him surrounded by loved ones, both in the room and around the country.
Tonight is a celebration of transformative work done at TES. We've titled it "A Truly Transformative Evening". There's artwork up and down the halls. There will be music spilling out of the gym and the music room. The morning show will present rare evening broadcasts. There will be projects on display, too numerous to name, in all forms, real and virtual. It's going to be quite the extravaganza. Come one, come all!
The last two days have been busy helping teachers put the last minute touches on their projects and presentations. From iMovie to AudioBoo to PowerPoint to YouTube to VoiceThread and on and on. To top things off, MVES is having their own transformative exhibition next week, so I've been bouncing back and forth between schools to help with various projects.
And in the mix, I have two full days of Aspen train-the-trainer training tomorrow and Thursday, followed by a probable ETF meeting on Friday. Once the MVES transformative exhibition begins on Tuesday evening, I'll be switching gears and presenting "Twitter 2.0: Beyond the Basics" as part of our Technology Tuesday program of online professional development. This doesn't just happen, either. There are hours of preparation that lead up to a successful Technology Tuesday seminar. And, peeking around the corner are those everpresent SOL tests. Happy, happy, happy.
Among other things . . .
As my morning coffee began to cool, I had one teacher after another come to my office to plan the best way to incorporate technology tools in projects they were undertaking. One of these teachers wanted to record her students reading reports they had written, then print QR codes to display. The reports go along with dioramas they created. The QR codes would be posted beside the dioramas, allowing visiting family members to hear the students' audio recordings.
I was familiar with many apps for recording audio. I had recently used Voice Recorder, and liked it well enough to consider it for this project. Unfortunately, the only way to share the recordings was through e-mail, and I wanted to share them with URL links. Admittedly, I was limiting myself to free apps, but one after another there were reasons why they wouldn't fit our needs. I considered websites, like Vocaroo and Recordmp3, but either they required Flash (a no-go on an iPad) or they wouldn't recognize the microphones -- internal and external -- on my device. (I even tried the app Puffin, which opens a browser on the iPad capable of viewing Flash video. Still, no luck.)
So, as we often do when we run into a brick wall, I e-mailed the other ETFs and tapped into their collective experience. One of my colleagues had suggested Vocaroo and even attached a task card. I was just about convinced to scrap the app, and go in this direction with a laptop. Then, another colleague suggested an app I had considered; I just hadn't explored far enough. AudioBoo has a web version that will allow you to create pages (called "boards") that can be shared in a number of ways. Thankfully, one of these ways is by creating a QR code. Bam! Problem solved.
For some strange reason, in most instances, when I reach out to my peers, magically the solution arrives the moment I hit the SEND button. Today I needed a little help from my friends, and I got it!
