One year ago ShowMe was actually launched at ISTE. Needless to say the ShowMe team was excited to be in San Diego this past Sunday-Wednesday for ISTE 2012. This Conference, hosted by the International Society for Technology In Education (ISTE) is one of the largest Educational Technology events in the world each year. Thousands of people from many different countries gathered together to attend workshops, foster new relationships, and learn about new innovations regarding technology in education.

Things We Did:

On Monday and Tuesday ShowMe had an Ice Cream Truck outside of the convention center handing out free ice cream to all attendees.

ShowMe team in front of the ice cream truck. Like our shirts?

Happy attendees enjoying ice cream and their new Boxwave styli

The best part of the conference was being able to meet and reconnect with so many awesome people and share ShowMe with them. Special thanks to Donorschoose.org and Boxwave for donating giftcards and styli for us to share with the ShowMe community!

It was really beneficial to have the opportunity to meet current users and hear their ideas and feedback firsthand.  We were finally able to meet ShowMe Ambassador and power user JR Ginex-Orinion*, a Chemistry teacher from Orange County, CA. We also met two educators from Chile,  @jessievaz12 and @titialvayay, who’ve used ShowMe in their classroom, and @kcakderw and Educational Technology enthusiast who created app4ed.com. These are just a few of the awesome conversations we had at ISTE, thanks to everyone who sat down to chat with us! We had a blast!

*JR wrote a great post-ISTE blog post filled with some really good advice if you are interested in attending the conference next year. Take a look here.

Happy Weekend Everyone! We hope to see some of you at ISTE in San Diego from Sunday June 24th to Wednesday June 27th! Take a peek at our collection of ISTE Survival Guide ShowMes here. 
AFT and Britain’s TES Connect Unveil ‘Share My Lesson,’Which Will Become Largest Online Site for U.S. Teacher Resources
This is a press release from the American Federation of Teachers. They, along with Britain’s TES Connect,  just released the website Share My Lesson which is now the largest online community for US teachers to share their lesson plans, resources and ideas. AFT president Randi Weingarten explained that this initiative aims to help teachers that often face barriers to receiving free shared resources from other teachers across the country. The website will allow teachers to upload resources as well as rate and review resources of others. An important additional feature will be the high supply of resources created to support Common Core Standards, which are being implemented in 46 states this Fall. Randi Weingarten believes this will become the “single most important tool the AFT has launched in over a generation.”
7 Things Graduating Seniors Should Know About College
These tips are a compilation of excerpts from the book “The Secrets of College Success” by Lynn F Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman. They focus on the academic side of college, topics ranging from when to pick your major, to what to expect when writing a paper. Jacobs and Hyman make the great point that a college paper requires “analysis and research” at a much higher level than high school. (This was something that took me a few months to fully grasp in my freshman year!)

Before Standardized Tests, Teaching Children Not to Drown
Swim For Life is a project in New York City that was brought to life parks commissioner Adrian Benepe, who knew many drowning deaths each year could be prevented if everyone had access to swim lessons. Although weekend and summer courses are available in the city, Benepe felt it was important that swim lessons were provided to students during school hours. Over the past 18 months 14,385 second graders in New York City have participated in swim lessons during school hours at indoor pools across the city. The program has been a success, especially for those students that  started the program petrified of water. After ten weeks these students were able to confidently and happily swim.

Developing A Student iPad Leadership In Your School
Many kids have the ability to pick up an iPad and begin downloading apps and playing games within minutes. However key skills like troubleshooting issues, keeping safe online and learning effectively through technology may not come as naturally to students. It is our responsibility as educators to teach students proper digital citizenship. This article contains several awesome resources you can use to teach your students how to troubleshoot problems and use an iPad effectively and safely in school.

This ShowMe created by Harry Amos is awesome for several reasons.

1. He gives us a great overview of how to find the missing angle of a triangle!

2. He created some really nice looking images for the intro of his ShowMe using the Paper53 iPad app. (It’s a great app- I recommend it!)

3. He finishes the ShowMe video with a picture of Success Kid– can it get any better?

Be sure to check out his entire library of helpful math videos!

RIP White MacBook: The Future of Apple Computers at School
This Monday Apple hosted its annual Developer Conference and presented all new updates to the Mac Line. The big news for schools was the unveiling of iOS 6 for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, available this fall. The update included “guided access” which allows teachers and parents to restrict students to viewing one app at a time or limit touch input. This is a great feature for schools with iPads, and the number of schools with iPads is growing rapidly. In the second quarter of 2012 iPads outnumbered sales of macs to schools by a ratio of 2:1. Even with the increasing popularity of iPads in schools, many still wonder why there is no replacement computer for the white macbook pro that was very popular in schools. The white macbook was sold for $999 had a large amount of memory and a CD drive, but they were taken off the market it 2011. The only computer in the same price range currently is the 11 inch Macbook Air which in addition to being two inches smaller, also does not have as much memory or a CD drive. Perhaps iPads are becoming the go-to computer for schools.

Can Free, High-Quality Education Get You A Job?

It is fantastic to see the increasing number of free, high quality, online college courses being offered by top name schools. It’s a huge step in the right direction when it comes to democratizing education and bringing it to people affordably at a large scale. But can these courses help you obtain a job? Mindshift recently asked company recruiters from tech start-ups, finance firms and banking companies if they would consider non-traditional candidates who received their education from these schools. At this point in time it seemed like all three fields were hesitant to accept a candidate that did not have a traditional college education. I would be interested to see if this changes in five years, after courses are more established and taught on a broader array of topics.

Personalized Learning – Swedish Style
Outside of Stockholm lies one of Sweden’s top-performing schools – Kunskapsskolan Tyresö. This is one of a network of 33 Kunskapsskolan schools in Sweeden, all funded by a public voucher system with no tuition that accepts students on a first come first serve basis. Key tenets of the school culture include interdisciplinary work, collaboration between students, and technology. Every inch of space is used in the school and filled with tables, chairs, and gather places for students to collaborate. All students responsible for setting personal learning goals for themselves and create strategies to reach them. My favorite aspect of this school culture is the coaching sessions each student has once per week for 15 minutes with their teacher. This is a highly personalized and structured discussion where students share their weekly assignments, reiterate what they have learned, and share what their goals are at this point in time. There are certain issues with this program- for example the voucher system it uses is a very controversial topic in larger school programs like the one in US. But I thought this was a really interesting look at a different program that is seeing success.

College Attendance Costs up 15% Over Two Years, Report Finds
The US Department of Education recently released its listings of public and private universities tuition and fees. These listings show that the average cost of attendance at a university or college in the United States has increased over 15% in the past two years. These increases are partially due to the cuts in funding for many public schools across the country. In some states, public school tuition increases has increased over 40%. Over the past decade school tuition prices have increased by an average of 5.6% per year.

Food Trucks Draw Hungry Kids For Free Summer Meals
In many areas of the country, students depend on free and reduced school lunches as a main food source in their lives. However, as a the school year comes to an end many of these students are unable to find transportation to attend the summer food programs, often still offered in their school cafeteria. Last year, Tim Cipriano, the executive director of school food services for New Haven, CT, decided that instead of having students come to a certain location for food, he would bring the food to them driving a colorful food truck to areas with a high population of students qualifying for free and reduced meals. Last summer he served 17,000 meals in 20 days. This year he hopes to provide 40,000 meals for the months of July and August.
Social Media: Help or Hindrance to Education Reform?
There are many issues that comprise the topic of Education Reform. One of these is the importance of Social Media as a learning tool for educators and students. However, some wonder if this focus on Social Media is actually distracting teachers and reformers from other, more pressing issues. Tom Whitby, a support of Social Media in education, explains why he believes that Social Media can actually be a powerful tool to improve Personal Learning Networks for educators. One point that stuck with me: Historically teaching has been an isolated profession, any problems or successes you experienced could only be shared with co-workers in your school or district. With Social Media educators from around the globe can come together both online and in person to discuss what they’ve learned, and that is a powerful thing.

Schools to track students’ whereabouts with computer chips

Starting next fall a school district in San Antonio, TX  will be issuing student ID cards containing a tracking chip device. This chip monitors students on school grounds and notifies the school if a student leaves during school hours. The district advertised the initiative to parents as a safety procedure, however the decision is getting mixed reviews, one large concern being students’ right to privacy. The school will spend $500,000 to issue cards to 6,000 middle and high school students.

Summers Are For Learning
Remember, summers are a great time to learn something new, for both students and teachers! If you think you may be interested in reading, joining a book club, kickstarting your creative process, leaning to code or serving others through community service this summer, this article has a list of some fantastic resources you can use to get started with self-learning this summer!

Happy Memorial Day weekend to all that celebrate!

On June 7, Join the Conversation About Summer Reading
On June 7th the NY Times Learning Network is hosting a day long twitter conversation to kick off their Third Annual Summer Reading Contest which begins June 15th and runs till August 17th. On June 7th people will come together in a twitter chat with the hashtag #summerreading to share information. You can tweet your summer reading list, great suggestions for others, best places to read or ideas for starting your own book club! The learning network will be reposting their favorite tweets throughout the day. We will be participating in the day, so expect an update soon on how we plan to get involved!

Google’s 80/20 Principle Adopted at New Jersey School
Fifty-five teachers from New Milford High School in New Jersey were given a break from their typical lunch and hall monitor duties 2-3 times per week to make room for a 48 minute professional development period where they could focus on teaching related issues that interested them. (Based on the Google model which gives employees 20% of their time to pursue company related topics that interest them.) Teachers have focused on interdisciplinary projects, differentiated assessment and ways to integrate technology into their curriculums. The results have been fantastic. Student behavior has remained the same, yet teachers now have the opportunity to record videos to attempted a flipped classroom and integrated more technology into their daily student lessons. At the end of the year teachers are required to hand in professional development logs where they report the topics the studied and how it enhanced their learning. Next year they will even begin to create portfolios on what they’ve accomplished.

The Most Honest Commencement Speech You’ll Never Hear
Lisa Bloom starts this article by sharing the grim reality that many of our college graduates have diminished expectations for their future as they graduate debt-ridden with high unemployment rates. (43% of high school females would rather be a celebrity assistant than a CEO or college president) Many students year for jobs, independence and adulthood, yet they are forced to move back home with parents often working jobs outside of their chose field much below their chosen salary rate. At the end Bloom gives her own version of a commencement speech, apologizing for her generation, which she believes has failed recent graduates by not providing low cost education and jobs after graduation.

Eight Free Tools for Teachers to Make Awesome Infographics!
I love infographics! (You can check out our own infographic pinterest board here)  Recently it has become very easy to make high quality infographics of your own, so check out this great article if you’re interested in making one of your own!

We are excited to announce we now have a Community Forum for our users! We hope this can become a valuable place for community members to share ideas and help support each other as we use ShowMe!

On the Forum we hope to :

• Discuss Feedback and Improvement for our App and Website
• Share different ways that you’ve used ShowMe in the past
• Brainstorm different ideas for using ShowMe with others
• Support those experiencing difficulties
• Report bugs or problems with our app or website
• Anything else you’d like to share!