Thompson R2-J is providing  a district-wide subscription to this valuable resource, free of charge, to our teachers, students and media/librarians and other staff members.

If you haven’t used Visual Thesaurus before, please go to: http://thompson.visualthesaurus.com/  and create a new account. (If you are asked for a registration code, please contact Val Downing through our district email system.)

Visual Thesaurus does just what it says, plus a whole lot more! It can be used for English words and also for many different World Languages. It can be used to differentiate parts of speech, create spelling lists, pre-teach vocabulary, and provides resources for teaching vocabulary and grammar from all over the country.

It works from your web browser without any additional software to install and will also work on the iPad and other tablets and iOS devices.

From their website:

The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words. Its innovative display encourages exploration and learning. You’ll understand language in a powerful new way.

Say you have a meaning in mind, like “happy.” The VT helps you find related words, from “cheerful” to “euphoric.” The best part is the VT works like your brain, not a paper-bound book. You’ll want to explore just to see what might happen. You’ll discover — and learn — naturally and intuitively. You’ll find the right word, write more descriptively, free associate — and gain a more precise understanding of the English language.

For additional information, please create a login and click on the “Educators” tab on the page. There are some wonderful resources on that page.

Also, please view this short (4 minute) video on using the thesaurus and dictionary functions of the product.

The International Association for K-12 Online learning, or iNACOL, identified blended learning as an emerging trend in 2010. The phrase “blended learning” can be a bit confusing. Their definition is as follows:

Blended learning is any time a student learns, at least in part, at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, path, and/or pace.

A report from The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning, authored by Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Innosight Institute labels six types of blended learning approaches:

• face-to-face driver programs where teachers deliver most instruction in a live classroom and use online activities to supplement or remediate what goes on in the brick-and-mortar school;

• rotation models where students follow a schedule that alternates between face-to-face class sessions and in-person instruction;

• flex formats where most of the curriculum originates online, but an on-site instructor provides instruction as needed in individual and small group sessions;

• online lab sessions where students do work online, but in a computer lab at a brick-and-mortar school with aides who offer supervision but little subject guidance;

• self-blend schools where students may take online courses a la carte to supplement their brick-and-mortar school’s curriculum; and

• online driver constructs where students receive most of the course online and independently, but participate in required or optional face-to-face meetings.

So, what are we doing here in Thompson with blended learning?

First of all, we are starting small and expecting to grow fast! We have been working with Boulder Valley School District on a combined Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) grant to pilot blended learning in a Learning Management System (LMS) called BrainHoney. We have approximately ten teachers in three high schools that will be using blended learning in their classrooms. These teachers will be mainly using the first learning approach of face-to-face. With the predicted success of this program, we are making plans to enable this capability (over the next year or two) of using an LMS to any teacher in the district that desires it.

Secondly, we are working with the Curriculum and Instruction Department to provided Professional Development to our teachers through the LMS. Teacher trainings in the areas of Math, Literacy and Technology are already “in the works”, and will have an online driver, as well as face-to-face components. This program will also be using BrainHoney as the LMS.

Thirdly, we are working on moving the content from our online school, Thompson Online, into BrainHoney. The online school uses a combination of the online driver, online lab sessions and flex formats to meet the needs of students that prefer on online environment for their educational experiences. For additional information about Thompson Online, please contact Kellie Bashor, Thompson Online principal.

In addition, we are working with a publishing company to provide a rotation model of blended learning in Math in one of our middle schools. Although the i’s haven’t been dotted, nor the t’s crossed, we are hoping to have this phenomenal product and learning environment available starting 2^nd semester of upcoming school year!

Although, I stated that we are starting small, you can see we have many projects addressing the growing trend of blended learning. We feel that this is truly where the future of learning is leading education and are making a strong stand to help our teachers and students become, even more, successful.

Here is a neat one that could apply to being an enchanting teacher by Guy Kawasaki:

1. Make sure the first question is “student name.” Otherwise you won’t know who submitted which answers.
2. You can mix question types (multiple choice, short answer, paragraph) but if you have too many types and too many students, the spreadsheet can become difficult to navigate.
3. When embedding the form into a blog, make sure you edit the width to fit within your blog’s main column. You can use the same principles of editing the size of a YouTube video for editing the width of a spreadsheet.

On this day I was privileged to work with 22 Middle School Social Studies teachers, 5 building Technologists, 5 Media Specialists, an Instructional Coach and an Instructional Technologist on what would be their first day of using and seeing their class set of iPads for instructional practice. I was very thankful to have the help of our Apple representatives, Patrick Benko and Frank Vretos as they led the bulk of the hands-on training that day, while I navigated the questions about set up, synching and district implementation, policy and planning.

As you can image, this was not the first day of working with the iPads for me! That day began many months before, when our Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Diane Lauer, proposed to the Social Studies Task Force that they think about integrating and investing in technology for their classrooms when the new Core Standards rolled out, and not necessarily in textbooks. This idea was discussed and debated for several months before it was finally agreed that not only was this a direction the group wanted to take, but they wanted to focus on the two grade levels that would see the most significant change in their curriculum standards: sixth and seventh grade. In addition, they wanted to invest in iPads.

From this point on, I spent as much time as possible in learning the educational application of iPads. I attended several webinars, trainings, followed blogs, followed Twitter and engaged in as much discussion as possible about our venture. Our district Apple technician, Don Cochran, was also a great help to me when I had questions or encountered problems that I couldn’t solve by myself.

In early December, our Board of Education approved the Curriculum plan for Social Studies, and things really began to move quickly. We ordered 315 iPads before we left for Christmas vacation. They arrived in my office the day we returned. Before this three week flurry of activity that involved: unpacking, assigning asset tags, dividing into teacher groups, placing in cases and synching; a few other steps had to be completed.

• We assigned an iPad to each of the 5 Middle School Social Studies teachers on the Task Force, along with a MacBook, and asked them to explore apps and give us feedback about positives and negatives.
• We set up an Apple Volume Purchasing account and purchased vouchers through Apple for the apps we wanted to buy.
• We decided on a total of 41 apps to initially synch to each set of iPads. 30 of those were free apps. We used Volume Purchasing for the remaining 11.
• We tested 4 different cases, hoping to find a better and less expensive case than the one that Apple sells for $39. After seeing iPads literally fall out of each one, we went back to the originally Apple case.
• We decided that each teacher that was receiving a set of iPads would also receive an LCD projector, an iPevo document camera and a MacBook to use as a “synching station”.
• We also bought 1 or 2 iPod Touches for each classroom, mainly to give a camera to each teacher.
• Separate iTunes accounts were set up for each school and grade level before the synching began.

Then…. the synching began. Each Macbook was pre-loaded with the apps, and 15 iPads were synched to each station. I enlisted the help of a good friend, to help me do all this synching. Each iPad took about 10 minutes to synch, and she had multiple stations synching at the same time. I couldn’t have finished without her assistance! Thanks Nan! I also enlisted the help of anyone I could to get the iPads into cases, count cords and label boxes during the last week. Many thanks to the SSC staff, especially Reyne, Susan, Lynn, Glenna, Andy and Mary. My last step was to get the warehouse drivers to deliver the 50 plus boxes to our training site.

I set an ambitious agenda for the day of the training. We talked about synching, about purchasing and basic care and handling. Patrick and Frank amazed everyone by with the ease of creating an e-pub in “Pages” and sending it directly to the iPad where students could engage the iBooks features of highlighting, bookmarking and using a dictionary. We spent a lot of time on basic iPad 101 questions, settings and applications and even experimented with some of the apps. We also spent time on helping some teachers get a basic understanding of the MacBook, since some teachers did not have any experience with the Mac OS platform.

So, what’s next? I’ve been out visiting the classrooms where the iPads have been deployed. I’ve managed to touch base with 16 teachers to offer support and answer questions. I had some amazing conversations about teaching, learning and the tools that we now can use. Most teachers are feeling excited and a little overwhelmed. They tell me they’ve never experienced anything like this.

Overall, I’d say it really was a great day!

• iPods (5 sets of 5)
• Clickers (2 sets)
• Kindle e-readers (2 sets of 6)
• Netbooks (2)
• Laptops (6-10)
• Document Cameras (2)
• Mimio System (1)
• Flip Cameras (5)
• WebCams (3)
• Digital Cameras (6)
• USB midi Keyboard (1)

Most items can be checked out for six weeks at a time. To reserve an item, contact Val Downing on our district email system.

Did I mention, if you like it, the district will continue to pay for your membership!