Joplin Trip: Day 1

After 6 hours on the road, we finally arrived in Joplin, Missouri.  After a short rest at the hotel we went for supper with some member of the Joplin staff.  After supper, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Angie Besendorfer, Director of Technology Traci House, and Director of Special Services Lisa Orem talked about the storm and the reaction of the district.  They had 10 buildings damaged, over 250 classrooms lost, 54% of their student body was without a school to attend, and more than 3000 students were in the path of the storm.  Amazing as it was, they started school on time in August.  With many donations from all over the world, they were able to get their district back up an running.

It is quite amazing what they were able to do in just three short months.  You never want this to happen to anyone, but you need to have a plan.  One thing that Dr. Besendorfer made sure that we knew, NEVER have your students go in the hall during a tornado.  Just the security camera footage from the schools in Joplin is a good reason why.  She shared a story about a pop machine that went down one all, made a turn down another, and yet another turn and ended up in an elevator.  And the halls weren't short halls either.  The storm would go spinning one way, stop and then go spinning the other.

We are going to be touring a couple of schools, learning about their professional development system, and much more tomorrow.  I will post again tomorrow night, as well as to #nnncjoplin.  I am sure there will be several more posting to this hashtag as well, so join in our learning as well.
  

FYI

In my last post I talked about my upcoming trip to Joplin, Missouri.  This is just a reminder that I will be blogging, when time allows, about the trip.  You can plan on at least four posts about the trip.  One for each day and an overall summary reflection of the trip.  I plan to include pictures, and hopefully some video.

I will also hope to Tweet some interesting facts and pictures as time allows as well.  You can either follow #esu7 or #nnncjoplin for updated.

I am looking forward to this trip.  I am more than sure it will be VERY informational and inspiring.

Exciting Opportunity

It has been some time since I have written a blog post.  For that, I am truly sorry.  But I am also thankful that I have the opportunity to write these posts for all of you to read and hopefully ponder.

In about two weeks, I will be taking a trip that will be very informative and inspiring, but not just me.  Twenty-seven members of the NNNC (Northeast Nebraska Network Consortium) will be traveling to Joplin, Missouri.  As many of you know, on May 22 of 2011 an EF-5 tornado hit this town and destroyed many buildings and lives.  There were even several schools that were destroyed.  Yet, with all that happened they opened school on time in August.

The purpose of the trip is to look at how Joplin Public Schools is integrating technology skills into their schools.  There are many questions that I am wondering about.  For example: I want to know how their Technology Leadership Academy works, how they are using a “Big Box” store and flipped learning for their students, and how does their PD work.  These are just a few.

I will be taking pictures, possibly some video, and will be creating a diary of sorts to remember this trip.  As time allows, I will post pictures and blog about each day’s activities.  I will also, hopefully, be able to post to Twitter during the day as well.

I am looking forward to getting to know others from the NNNC, and most of all seeing how Joplin staff and students are rising up from this terrible event.

For more on Joplin Public Schools go to the following link:

http://bit.ly/WrS1qQ

UPDATE:

After writing this post, I received a copy of the December/January issue of "Learning and Leading with Technology" from ISTE.  In this issue is an article about the Joplin Schools.  If you have a chance check the article out.

Here is a like to the surveillance footage from their middle school during the tornado.

http://bit.ly/lWAPrJ

Walkthrough Mail Merge for Multiple Users and One Form

As I sit in my office writing the blog post for this week, which is actually making up two weeks worth of posts, I am thankful for a wonderful PLN that gives me ideas on what to write about.  The topic for this blog came from the Nebraska Ed Chat (#nebedchat) on Twitter last night.  It also came from a question and response on types of scripts used in form that we like to use.  I was talking about some email scripts that were in principal walkthrough forms that ESU7 (#esu7) principals use and how we made it so one form can be used by a district and have the bcc on the email go to the evaluator.  Ann Feldmann (@techiefeldie) from Bellevue asked about if I had a blog post on it.  I told her I didn’t, but thanks for the idea and I would do one.  So here we go. (Sorry for the shameless Twitter plugs)

Mitch Kubicek created the script that most of ESU7 principals use for their walkthroughs.  So I cannot claim, nor will I, that the entire script is mine.  All I did was change one row for the bcc.

The original script for the mail merge was the following:

MailApp.sendEmail(rowData.teacher, emailSubject, emailText, {bcc: “yourname@domain.org”  } )

To make the change so that all principals in a district or building use the same form and collect the data on the same spreadsheet you make a sport on your form called observer.  Make sure you format the data in the observer list the same as you did for the teacher list. The format needs to be: (First Last) firstlast@domain.org.  If you are adding this to your form, make sure it is to the left of the email sent column, or the script won’t run correctly.  You will then need to change the previous script line to the following:

MailApp.sendEmail(rowData.teacher, emailSubject, emailText, {bcc: rowData.observer } )

One word of caution: make sure what ever is after the rowData is worded the same as you did for your form.  Otherwise this will not work.

Those are the only changes you will need to make to the form and the script.  Just be ready for the email to be sent out by the creator of the form, not from the observer.  So maybe in the email template add in the following line:

Observer:${“Observer”}

And make sure that it is spelled exactly or it won’t fill it in.  It will also be case sensitive.

I know this helped some of you, but others it may not have.  Once again thanks to Ann for the idea.  I enjoy learning from all my PLN in person and on Twitter.

Internet Country Codes

For this weeks post, I am going to stray a little from providing a new application or web2.0 tool.  This weeks post will also be a little shorter than most.

When going and searching out websites on the Internet, you may see the .uk on a URL.  Have you ever wondered why?  Do your students know why that is there? You might even know that is the code for the United Kingdom.  There are codes for every country in the world, and even some for world organizations like NATO. 

Here is the link to a site that has all the Internet Country Codes.

This is just a fun fact and could be an interesting bulletin board topic, especially in a computer classroom.

Enjoy the list.