I recently started reading Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. I was immediately struck by how connected our world has become. And we are not just connected to the Internet; we’re connected to business, industry, educators, and most importantly – people.

We started the Certificate Program almost 10 years ago by teaching classroom teachers how to use computers. Now we are working with teachers to help them both “use” and “infuse” technology.  As our technology resources and skills advance we are finding that our opportunities to connect with others in this “flat world” are increasing exponentially.  This “flattening of the world” will once again change our program to include issues of globalization and how technology can open up the classroom to global connections. 

Eight years ago my personal technology world consisted of connecting with teachers in Michigan. Three years ago my world expanded to connecting with educators in other states including Nevada where I’ve been working with the Clark County Public Education Foundation and the Clark County School District, the 5th largest school district in the nation. Then 10 months ago my world once again expanded, this time to North Africa after being hired by the U.S. State Department to work with the Algerian Ministry of Education.  For the next two years Michigan State University will be aiding the Ministry in the development of a national technology plan and connecting high schools in Algeria with high schools in the United States. The Ed Tech program has taken the vast changes that have come our way and turned them into opportunities to connect with educators not just in the State of Michigan, or in the U.S. but around the world. 

I encourage you to think about ways that you may challenge yourself and your students to expand your own worlds beyond the classroom and connect with others globally.  Call us today to learn how the Educational Technology Certificate Program can be the first step you take toward meeting that challenge.  Whether you are a teacher, prospective teacher, administrator, alumnus, or simply a person concerned about meeting the educational needs of today’s youth, we invite you to learn more about the program that we’re developing today to better prepare educators and their students for a “flat world”. 

Best Regards,

Joseph Codde
Associate Professor and Director
Educational Technology Certificate Program

Contact us at: 517-432-9259
http://edutech.msu.edu

Reserve Your Place Today for the Educational Technology
Summer Study Abroad Program in RUSSIA

The MSU Educational Technology Certificate Program is providing K-12 teachers an unparalleled opportunity to study abroad in a multi-cultural society that spans two continents.  For four weeks (June 18 – July 16) you will explore Russia’s fascinating ethnic diversity, art, and history while learning how educational technology can enhance your teaching. The graduate credits you earn while on this trip will lead to our certificate in educational technology and can later be transferred into MA Programs in Educational Technology and in Curriculum and Teaching.

The program combines the “hands on” teaching of technology tools (e.g., Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, FrontPage, and others) with an emphasis on how to use and adapt these tools to address content standards in social studies, history, language arts, mathematics, and science.  A specially designed set of experiences on Russian history and culture will be integrated into the Certificate coursework in Volgograd and will serve as “content” in the development of technology mediated curricular materials. You will also have an opportunity to meet and talk with Russian teachers enabling you to build a learning community that spans the globe.

While in Russia you will visit three unique and beautiful cities.  Moscow is often called the heart of Russia: a cosmopolitan, modern administrative and business center, as well as a treasury of Russian history and Orthodox tradition with over 850 years of history.  We call St. Petersburg a city of the tsars and “Northern Venice”, featuring a beautiful river, its canals running through the city, world famous palaces, parks, cathedrals, and museums.  We come here during the season of the famous white nights, when the sun almost never goes down.  Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is a unique experience for those interested in the history of the World War II, and it also serves the purpose of getting outside the capitals and experiencing Russian life and culture in a smaller provincial city. 

In all three cities we visit the best shows, including ballet, opera, folk, circus and more.  While our goal is to provide the highest quality experience, we proudly find ourselves within one of the cheapest study abroad programs in the country, taking advantage of our eight years of experience and the favorable exchange rates in Russia.

Don’t miss out on this unique and educational experience.  Call Brook Thompson today at 517-432-9259 or email her at Brookt@msu.edu and reserve your spot on this exciting learning adventure. Visit http://edutech.msu.edu/russia/ for more information.

–Joseph Codde, Associate Professor and Director

MACT: Master of Arts in Curriculum and Teaching Program

The MSU College of Education offers a master’s degree in Curriculum and Teaching on-campus in East Lansing; at Michigan regional sites in Birmingham and Grand Rapids; in summer-only programs in Traverse City, Michigan, and Plymouth, England; and in innovative online and hybrid (combination of online and face-to-face) formats.  There are also “study abroad” summer course work opportunities in South Africa, Australia, and Ontario, Canada.

The Master of Arts in Curriculum and Teaching Program (MACT) is organized around three themes: (1)The primary focus of the MACT program is “critical inquiry,” for helping teachers understand the research and scholarship generated in our field, and for helping them address and critique important questions in policy, practice, and professional development.  Central to this inquiry is improving and supporting all students’ learning and success in schools.  (2) “Accomplished teaching” is based on scholarship and involves the examination and application of best practices.  It develops and is refined over time through systematic and collaborative inquiry into one’s practice, and by pursuing shared goals and practices in a community of learning where teaching is made public and open to collegial dialogue, study, and improvement.  (3) The MACT program seeks to promote teachers’ “professional leadership” in its many forms, through developing positive dispositions and skills in collaborative inquiry and shared decision making in their schools and communities, and as public citizens who can exercise their commitment to public education in a variety of ways.

This 30 credit program includes three required courses of inquiry into professional development and school culture, one required and one “selective course” of inquiry into curriculum and schooling, three “selective courses” in subject matter and/or thematic concentrations, two elective courses, and a final evaluation of the student’s professional portfolio and synthesis paper that are developed through the program.   

The courses offered by the MA program in Educational Technology (especially CEP 810, 811, and 812 that constitute the program’s Educational Technology Certificate) are included among the options a student can pursue with advisor guidance and consent.

So if you’re a current MACT student you may wish to enroll in one of the educational technology classes offered locally at numerous school districts statewide. If you’re an Educational Technology Certificate Program student you may wish to consider applying for the MACT program. These are great options for both programs.

For deadlines and contact information please go to http://ed-web3.educ.msu.edu/mact  

–Doug Campbell, MACT Program Director

Scheduling Tasks on a Windows XP Computer

Performing necessary maintenance on your computer is often difficult to remember to do and can be tedious to execute regularly if one is not completely familiar with what needs to be done.  Why not schedule the necessary programs to run automatically during a period when your computer will be idle? 

In order to schedule certain tasks (such as disk cleanup and disk defragmentation) so that they will begin to run automatically, you need to open the Scheduled Task Wizard.  In order to do this, click on the Start Menu and move your cursor to All Programs.  From there, slide the cursor up to Accessories, and move to System Tools and then to Scheduled Tasks on the Fly-out Menus that follow.

In the Scheduled Task window that comes up next, you’ll see a small icon with the label Add Scheduled Task.  Click on this icon.  The Scheduled Task Wizard will appear, and you’ll be instructed to click the Next> button.  Depending on the speed of your computer, it may take several seconds to bring up a list of all the programs you can automatically schedule to start on their own. 
Scroll through the choices to find Disk Cleanup, and click on it once, and then click the Next> button.  The next screen will ask you how often you want the task done.  I usually select the Weekly choice.  In the next screen, choose the time and day the task is to be performed.  After clicking the Next> button again, you will be asked to select a user name and password.  A user name will be included by default, and you will be asked to select a password.  Even though the window indicates that if you don’t select a password the task may not start, this may be ignored.  The fewer passwords one needs to remember, the better!

The Scheduled Task Wizard will now review what you have elected to do and when you’ve scheduled it to be done.  Check the box to “open advanced properties for this task…” prior to clicking the Finish button.  You’ll probably get an error message telling you that the task might not be completed for some reason, but there’s no need to panic.  Just click the OK button.

A window will open with the name of the task you have selected to run.  At the bottom of this window, check the box to “Run only if logged on”.  If you don’t do this, your task won’t be able to run.  

Once you click OK, you will notice that the maintenance task is now added to the list of scheduled tasks.  This means that the task will now begin automatically on the day(s) and time(s) you have selected, but you may need to be present to provide “guidance” as the program runs.  For example, Disk Defragmenter will start as scheduled, but without user input, it will not know exactly what you want done.  Without your direction, it won’t be able to complete the desired task.

This process can be repeated to schedule a whole range of other maintenance tasks, and each can be adjusted to open at a particular time.  The main benefit of scheduling tasks is that it serves as a reminder of necessary maintenance tasks needing to be done to keep your computer in top working order.  We all have busy lives, and taking care of our computers often becomes one of the last things we do!    

– Carlton Matteo, Adjunct Faculty Instructor

Steps for Using Excel to Create a Digital (Paperless) Assignment

Do you have an assignment that you have students labeling parts of a graphic? Why not make the assignment electronic by following the steps below.

	What the Teacher Must Do
1.	Open Excel, making sure that a clean spreadsheet is available.
2.	Under Format in the Menu Bar, go to Sheet and then Background…
3.	Navigate to where the picture you want to use is stored.  In this case, the image I want is called Watercycle and is in a folder in My Documents called My Pictures.
4.	Select the image, and click Insert to insert it into the spreadsheet.
5.	Click in the blank square above the row numbers and to the left of the column letters.  This will select all of the spreadsheet cells.
6.	In the Format menu, click on Column, and then Width…
7.	Key in the number 1 to make the width of all the columns narrow.
8.	Now back to Format, and click on Row, and then Height… Key in the number 6 to make the height of all rows small.
9.	Now, deselect the cells by clicking anywhere in the spreadsheet.
10.	We’re going to hide the grid lines.  Click on Tools, then Options… and uncheck the check next to the Gridlines option.Also, check to be sure the Comment indicator only radio button is checked.  This will help ensure that students don’t check out each other’s work later.
11.	We’ll want to hide the extra images.  Click on a column heading just to the right of where the picture repeats.  Drag about 20 columns more to the right to highlight them.  Find the “Fill” icon ( ) and fill them in with white.
12.	Drag the horizontal elevator bar back to the left to return to the left side of the image. Now, click in a row heading just below the ocean’s bottom edge and drag down about 30 rows to highlight them.  Fill them in with white the same way.
13.	Add a textbox to an empty area in your image which will tell your students what to label.
14.	Now, save the spreadsheet with a new name: something like “Labeling the Water Cycle”, and save it on a common drive.
	What the Students Are to Do:
15.	Open the assignment, “Labeling the Water Cycle” from the common drive.
16.	Start labeling the image. Let’s look at the cloud in the upper right-hand corner of the picture.  Put the cursor on the black dot in the middle of the cloud and RIGHT-CLICK. Left-click on “Insert Comment”.
17.	A little red “flag” will be created at the upper left of the cell you clicked in, and a text box will be waiting for you to enter something in it.
18.	Backspace to erase any text there, and enter the word “Condensation”,Grab the bottom-right handle and diagonally drag it in to resize the box around your text.
19.	Click in another cell, and notice that the text box disappears leaving only the little red flag. Pass your cursor over the flag and note what happens!
20.	Continue adding comments until you’ve exhausted either the list of words or your knowledge, which ever comes first!
21.	When your students are finished with the assignment, have them click File and then Save As in the drop-down menu.  Have them give it a new name (Water Cycle – George), and click Save!
22.	When you call up a file to check,  go to the View menu and click on Comments.
23.	All the comments will show up together, making it easy to check for accuracy!If you try to print the assignment, the background doesn’t show up.  Thus, this activity is perfect for a paperless assignment!

–Carlton Matteo, Adjunct Faculty Instructor

Web Sites Worth Visiting

Our courses are taught by an outstanding team of MSU adjunct faculty, many of whom are:

• K-12 classroom teachers themselves who have experience using educational technology in the classroom
• Graduates from our certificate program
• Exceptionally skilled in educational technology
• Winners of awards such as technology Teacher of the Year from the Michigan Association of Computer-Related Technology Users in Learning (MACUL) and the national award of the International Society for Technology in Education

This quarter’s instructor spotlight is . . .

Carlton Matteo, Retired Teacher from the Lansing School District t and an MSU Educational Technology Instructor

My name is Carlton Matteo.  I am 55 years old and recently retired from the Lansing School District after having taught 5th grade for almost 33 years.  I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the classroom, and if I ever get that gold retirement watch, I plan to have them engrave on the back of it “A life well spent”!

While I cannot claim to have received many awards in my career, I will admit to having been nominated to “Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers” on four separate occasions by former students over the last fifteen years.  It pleases me greatly to know that students I had not seen in five or six years still remembered me as having made a significant difference in their educational lives.

During my last few years with the Lansing School District, I was involved in providing staff training in a variety of technology applications.  What started out as summertime workshop training grew into a yearlong training program aimed at assisting teachers with the integration of technology in their classrooms.  These experiences eventually led me to contact Dr. Codde with the Educational Technology Certificate Program at Michigan State University.

I have worked with the EdTech Certificate Program for a bit over four years now.  In that time I have instructed many classes in CEP 810, CEP 811 & CEP 812 in Lansing, Armada, Pontiac, and Birmingham.  What I love most about these courses is that there is little need to sort or rank students.  This fact allows us to encourage everyone to grow in their technology use irrespective of their current technology level of expertise.  Students are the same in many ways whether they are in elementary school or attending college; it is always rewarding to see their joy as they learn a new technique or teaching strategy.

Upon my retirement my wife and I purchased some property up north near Alpena.  It is a wonderful place to walk, enjoy the wildlife, canoe and explore.  When we are not there, we can often be found traveling in our motor home to Las Vegas in order to be nearer to several members of our family.  The dazzling blue skies and hot desert air are quiet a change for Michigan folks used to mild temperatures and a variety of weather!

I look forward to continuing my involvement in the Educational Technology Certificate Program and expect to continue growing both as an educator and a technology user.

Question: While reading your newsletter as well as other electronic and printed documents I notice images that are taken from a computer screen to help the reader know what they should be seeing next. I would like to create a document of steps that students will need to take for an assignment that is to be done on the computer. How can I get these screenshots and how can I insert them into my document?

Answer: Great question! There are several ways to capture screen shots. The most common way is to use the tools that are already provided on your computer. Both Mac (Shift-Apple-3) and Windows (PrintScreen) have options for capturing the screen which we will describe below.

As you mention this is a great way to provide visual directions for steps to be taken on a computer, Internet site, etc. You can also use this function to capture screen shots of error messages that you receive while trying to complete a task on your computer. This allows you to send the error message to your Technology Director/Coordinator, Tech Support, or a tech savvy friend to troubleshoot the problem.

Windows Print Screen Key

The PRINT SCREEN key, often abbreviated Prt Scr, allows you to take a snapshot or picture of your computer screen and copy it to the clipboard. You’ll have to look for this key on your keyboard, it’s placement varies with the type of keyboard.

To capture the entire screen:

• Press the PRINT SCREEN key. The image will be placed on the clipboard.
• Open an application such as Microsoft Word, pull down the Edit menu and choose Paste. Or, press Ctrl-V to paste.

To capture only the currently selected window on your screen:

• Press the ALT + PRINT SCREEN key. This allows you to target that specific window that you have open and nothing else eliminating the need for cropping. The image will be placed on the clipboard.
• Open an application such as Microsoft Word, pull down the Edit menu and choose Paste. Or, press Ctrl-V to paste.

Macintosh Screen Capture

If you have Mac OSX, it’s easy to use the built-in key commands for grabbing a screen.

• Press Command-Control-SHIFT-3 (all at the same time) to save a picture of the screen to the clipboard.
• Later versions of the Mac OS let you capture rectangular portions of the screen using Command-Control-SHIFT-4. The pointer turns into a bull’s eye. Select the area of the screen you wish to capture. If you leave the CAPSLOCK on during this key sequence, you can then just click on a window to capture that window to save a picture of the screen to the clipboard.
• Open an application such as Microsoft Word, pull down the Edit menu and choose Paste.

Screen Capture/Grabber Software Downloads

Although the screen capture options built into Mac and Windows will serve most purposes, you may wish to use a commercial software package for more advanced applications.

For Windows:

• 5 Clicks – Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
• CaptureEze – Windows
• Screen Capture – Windows
• SnagIt – Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP

For Macs:

• Screen Catcher – Older Mac (contains lots of choices and options)
• Snapz – Mac -

–Carrie Albin, Co-Editor

Are you a teacher interested in MSU’s Educational Technology Certificate Program? Check out the list below to see if the program is being offered in your area. If not, visit http://edutech.msu.edu/suggest.asp to get your district started with the program.

Spring 2006

Summer 2006

Fall 2006