NPR had a short piece this morning about the connections being made between Algebra students at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Springs, Maryland and their teacher, Jake Scott. What made the learning environment in Mr. Scott’s classroom worthy of national attention? Mr. Scott teaches a diverse student body, where "Students come from various neighborhoods in the district, some rougher than others." His own experience growing up mimics the reality for some of his students; selling drugs, theft, and other less than ideal past times. Which is why NPR decided to run a story about how Jake Scott is using rap to help engage his algebra students.   The idea of using rap to engage students, and get them past that extrinsic/intrinsic motivational point isn’t anything new, as Mr. Duey has been doing the same thing for many years as well right here in Michigan.   In fact, a quick search on YouTube show just under 80,000 videos about "math raps", many of which follow in the same vein as the educators above, as well as Alex Kajitani, the Rappin’ Mathematician.   I’m not going to even attempt to match my rap wits with these fellow educators, and I’m certainly not going to be sharing any tips on how to solve math problems…my last experience actually teaching math was 11 years ago during my student-teaching experience. What I love about what’s happening here, and what NPR picked up on, is the connections that Jake Scott is trying to make with his students. While I can’t vouch for the other educators in the videos I posted, it seems like they’re looking for the same common vernacular to build connections with their students. That to me is more powerful than any video Khan Academy or "expert videos" created by other content publishers. Mr. Scott even takes it to the next level, encouraging his students and fellow educators to work with him to create and share other rap examples of math problem solving.   As far as I’m concerned, these guys earn high marks in my book, not just for putting themselves out there, but developing a new spin on the age-old practice of creating mnemonics and rhymes to help students remember some of the fundamentals of mathematics that should be automatic before students take on higher math functions. What’s even better, is that it’s a great model for your own students to express themselves and connect through a medium that "speaks" to them. It’s not so much about the resources each of these educators has provided (there are plenty, go look through their channels and bookmark your favorites for use in class). It’s about the storytelling and the personal connections that we should all be trying to make, and letting technology amplify what we do as educators, not serve as an extra barrier between us and students. via NPR - http://www.npr.org/2013/01/08/167471106/2-pi-rhymes-and-radii

Last week I introduced myself to the #ETMOOC course with a rather whimsical poster of me enjoying a snack and a few tid bits of information. This week? I thought I’d tackle a few of the thoughts and ideas that came out of the Elluminate Live session last night. One of the ideas that seemed to be at the forefront of the conversation was digital storytelling, and how to define it. I didn’t participate in that session, as I was attending to much more important duties; playdoh play time with my kids. I actually created a video of our play time last night, not only because I needed an excuse to use the Frameograph App on my iPhone (I’ve been neglecting it), but I wanted to kick off this post about what digital storytelling "is" with a simple, but fun, example.   The video wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be after one view, but then again my only goal was to just have some fun with my kids and see what would happen. The magic for me came after repeated viewings; small little moments became gems of captured memories (my son and I pretending we had giant playdoh boogers, or my daughter and I making playdoh cupcakes). This is digital storytelling; capturing emotions through video. Music is optional, though like gravy, it usually makes things better.   Last week was unseasonably warm here in Michigan. We had temperatures in the mid 50s during January, and while it wasn’t quite a record, it was still depressing; snow fell, but melted instantly, children were running through a muddy yard rather then a snowy one, and the skies were grey. I used the opportunity to chop a lot of firewood as I prepared for what I hope will be a Winter filled with many more colder days. It was only a small pile, but for a good while I spent some time in my backyard splitting wood in a nice regular rhythm, humming the "Whistle While We Work" tune from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (what can I say, I’m pretty simple minded). On a lark, I grabbed an old Flipcam, captured a few seconds of video, and imported it into photoshop and turned in into an animated GIF, the  cadence of the ax-fall producing a rather cathartic experience for my chore. This is digital storytelling; capturing a singular moment of video and looping it in an act of "scholarly scrutiny".   "Good learning is often messy." @catherinecronin #etm #etmooc ^AS — Alison Seaman (@AlisonSeaman) January 15, 2013 As I said earlier, I missed the "face to face" connection for the #ETMOOC course last night, but I’ve been following the Twitter stream, and while most of it has been the usual acclamation of "this is awesome" (it’s still early in the course, energy is high), there’s been some thoughtful nuggets of affirmation that speak to me. The tweet above is one such thought, and one that I’ve been taking more to heart lately. We make mistakes as we learn, and regardless of whether we share them or not, the learning process is messy. The process should be focused on helping identify "good" messes, and separate them from the "bad" messes. This is digital storytelling; Tweeting, liking, commenting are all ways of sending small "pings" of text out into the ether for others to consider. It’s a domino, looking for some others to knock over.   I thought finding some audio introductions to #ETMOOC would produce more results, but I found one, just one. Thankfully, the one I did find was a nicely done little audio introduction by Rod. I’m always slightly hypnotized by SoundCloud, the way the playhead follows along the waveform of the audio piece, listening with anticipation for the moment that will catch my interest and give me an excuse to fill the comment box with some response to the story. There isn’t any "whizz bang" digital work going on with most audio, or the construction of textual metaphors and idioms. This is digital storytelling; Using audio to capture simple, raw, quick stories told through the oral tradition that human beings have always done naturally.   I could go on for paragraphs about what Digital Storytelling is, as there’s isn’t very much that it’s not. There are several resources out there that help explain how digital storytelling is simply a way to convey a point of view through media to masses beyond your immediate physical audience. It can be as complex or as simplistic as you want it to be, and my hope is that this post would serve as a means for others in the #ETMOOC course to share what digital storytelling is for them. I’ve missed a number of other tools for creating digital stories, but this post wasn’t meant to highlight the particular tools you can use to create them, rather the product you produce using them. I’m eager to see what other stories my fellow participants create, and share, as a part of this course; I’m eager for something to comment on.

I’ve had 3 snow days so far this week. That means I’ve had plenty of time to answer lots of emails, work on non mission-critical projects that have been piling up, have a bunch of fun with some media and digital storytelling, and catch up on some good old fashioned TV watching. Which would bring us to Adventure Time, a comically strange yet hypnotically hilarious cartoon that airs on Cartoon Network here in the United States. It’s quite a nostalgic romp through a fantasy world inhabited by magical dogs, fire princesses, and evil wizards. My family doesn’t have cable, so sadly we can’t watch the show regularly, but enjoy small snippets here and there, or more recently through video memes that manage to get stuck in your brain on endless loop like any good "mind-worm" videos should. Take for example, the Bacon Pancake viral video meme (I’m sure that’s not actually a term, but I’m using it anyway), in which Jake the Dog is making some delicious bacon pancakes in an endless loop.   I happened across this video last week, and it’s been stuck in both my head and at least a couple of my other family members’ short term memory. I can’t vouch for the 3 year old, as the only thing he’s been expressing lately is his adamant desire for a "talking Diesel 10". We found ourselves all humming the tune 2 nights ago, and decided that maybe actually making some bacon pancakes might help us get over the tune. Turns out, making the pancakes only made us want to sing the song more, so we created a lip dub of the bacon pancake clip starring the entire family. Thanks to the copious amounts of lake effect snow, I was able to spend a good portion of yesterday with a pot of coffee, some warm slippers, and Adobe Premiere Pro assembling the footage. You can watch below if you’re a fan of the show, or just want to see how cute my kids can be when I’m forcing them to star in a family video   If you’ve suffered through my brief diversion long enough, or were scanning this post for the actual "how to" video, you can check out my amateurish video editing skills below or watch on Youtube if you prefer. I’m tossing this post out to all the DS106 people in the form of a new Video Assignment I created for re-enacting viral videos, as well as the #ETMOOC people as there’s talk of creating lip dubs, and a few participants might be interested in creating some videos with multiple layers. Keep in mind, I’m not a professional, so there may be better ways to do this.

I work with many different teachers in my district that in turn work with many different grade levels of students. While most of the teachers call for my technical skills for a project to take care of the nuts and bolts of getting the students up and running with a technology-rich project, I usually bring my former teacher self as well to the classroom. When I present students with a potentially new work space, especially one in which they may be connecting with one another through comments, blogs posts, and Google Doc collaborations, I want to make sure that both the students, and the teacher(s) I’m working with understand why we’re shifting to a blended learning environment, and what is expected of them. This week I had the opportunity to introduce a brand new semester of our 8th grade Writing for Publication students to Blogger, with the help of their fantastic English Teacher, Kyle Krol. I like to ask leading questions, hopefully ones that will generate some conversation (which is really hard with 8th graders, at least for me), and this time around I decided to frame their connected digital work spaces as places for creativity to take root. I wanted to be careful in not assuming too much, so I started with the following question.   I asked this highly subjective question in hopes that we could come to some agreed upon definition of creativity that could basically be summed up with the sentiment, "there are more ways to be creative then to not be." While I didn’t quite get there with this group of 13 and 14 year olds, I did get a few answers that made me all warm and fuzzy inside. "Taking something that already exists, and creating some new with it" was one of my favorites, as was "making something unique". Students also gave answers about various forms of writing or videos that they felt exemplified creativity. One rather ambitious answer included "making something for the web with code". The important piece, that I was hoping to get out of them, was that there was no single definition of what it meant to be creative. I made a big list of all their answers on the board, and we quickly chatted about each answer, whether anyone felt they agreed or disagreed with any of them. No one disagreed with any of the suggestions, and that’s when I opened up the conversation a bit further and asked them simply about writing. I expected some simple "yes" or "no" replies, but the learners in the classroom, speaking much to their maturity, didn’t have any "no"s to give me. I asked them the all important "Why?" question that many teachers ask in order to get some rationalization as to why students thought that writing on the internet could be creative? They seemed much more timid in supporting their theories and beliefs of writing as a creative practice than they were when simply giving examples of creativity, but what they gave me was all good. From writing poetry to creating fan fiction, there were a few solid answers among the head nods of agreement, and I’m glad that Ms. Krol has a decent start to her new semester working with these young writers. More valuable to me however, was the time spent trying to connect with the idea of what these learners were going to be using their blogs for, and what the students would be creating and sharing with them and through them. Only then did I start with the mechanics of actually getting the blogs up and running.

I have just under 70 blog posts on my site dedicated to my work for DS106, the original anti-MOOC course that encourages all participants to "Make art!" Since this week in #etmooc we’ve been challenged to attempt some digital storytelling through various means (and I fully intend to create something new), I took the opportunity to do some curation and look through my DS106 assignments. Since being able to reflect upon and curate our work is just as essential as making it in the first place (or at least so says my personal belief), I broke down my work into a few categories that I feel typify the amount of energy and craftsmanship that I put into each digital artifact.     Ben Could Have Created Something Better With a Glue Gun and Some Paperclips This category isn’t necessarily meant to denigrate my own creations, it provides examples of digital storytelling in which I was either "playing around" or trying to produce a digital artifact just for the sake of creating it, not necessarily telling a story. An "Average Day" with DS106 - My attempt to create something whimsical using the average of 50 separate pieces of visual media. I thought it might make something pretty…instead it looks like a big brownish/grey mess. I think with a bit more effort I could have created my own visual, rather than let the machine churn this out. 30 Minutes @ Work in 90 Seconds - These "hurry up" videos are the epitome of lazy create for me. That’s not to say they don’t create something cool when shot properly, but most of mine are simple cop outs at times, with nothing more than just a single still camera of something mundane, the footage dumped into iMovie, speed cranked up, and "blah". Multi-Task This! - I wanted to try doing something different, performing two cognitively intensive tasks at the same time to show how truly difficult it is to multi-task. So I gave a brief chat about a piddly little 12 bar blues that I was playing on the piano, creating a little snippet of audio. At best, it seems like showing off, "Look, I can play piano and give a mini-lecture at the same time!", and at the worst it’s "Ben plays the piano horribly, and talks a lot of nonsense about stuff he really doesn’t know much about".   Hey, Ben Doesn’t Think This Stuff is That Awful Digital artifacts/stories lumped into this area are examples that I’m actually a little proud of. They might not be perfect examples of my best ability, but they’re the pieces that I go back to quite often when I really want to push myself to create something better than I have before. These pieces were usually created with a clear storytelling purpose in mind, which I suspect helps the impact of the piece. Merry GIFMas to All! - Not only did I have a blast creating this, I also had the opportunity to de-construct some iPhoto template files for creating cards. I was able to assemble the images taken for our static "paper-based" Christmas cards, and turn them into an animated GIF for my online friends. It was great to play with all of the photos that we took trying to get the "right" shot for the printed card, and gave us something that gives people warm fuzzies. Hover Boards as Digital Storytelling Devices - While preparing for a presentation on digital storytelling and trying to create a visual reference for the idea of K-12 education "hovering" around the the implementation of the Common Core Standards, I got an idea to work with some source material that is fond in the heart’s of many 80′s pop culture fans. I also started to explore some ideas on just how easy it is for teachers to create their own posters, media, and visual artifacts using any photo editor or word processing tool. Hunting Trolls in History - Not only did I get to collaborate with Shawn McCusker for this digital artifact (a social studies teacher that I’m a fan of on Twitter), but I also got to create something that I always strive for in an educational setting when presenting some new concept; a discrepant event to get learners thinking. Abraham Lincoln, apparently advocating for white privilege, and misquoted as Thomas Jefferson, creates this huge confusing puzzle that may or may not serve as something that students would need to solve or unravel, along the way encountering some of the hugely conflicting ideals about race in this country’s past. Ben is Really Excited That People Really Enjoy This! It’s not too often that we as individuals get to see our work spark the curiosity or interest of others. It’s the reason I became a part of the DS106 community in the first place, as it’s a nice way to get a pat on the back, support, encouragement, or advice on how to make your digital storytelling devices better. Sometimes, the nuggets I toss out there get swept and transformed, remixed, and turn into something even better than what I created. These are a few of those examples. Video Story Problems - I started creating these about a year and a half ago with a few teachers in my district, and now the idea has started to spread to other schools in Michigan, Dan Meyer has used them as an example of math through digital storytelling at the elementary level, and they gave me an excuse to make one teacher of the hearing impaired extremely happy! http://twitter.com/tcsamaripa/status/299573013484015616 Fantasy TED Talks - The Dude Abides - Many of us have our favorite TED Talks, and many have TED Talks that we despise. Regardless, the whole TED Talk movement is something interesting that allows us to explore both the positive and negative sides of "sage on the stage" syndrome, in which we herald the 60 minute lecture of an expert as the panacea that will solve all of our problems…if only everyone would just listen! I thought "The Dude" was a great example that everyone could abide by….until I saw the awesome creations that my fellow DS106 creators made!

I’m not going to pretend that I remember enough about my high school physics to speak intelligently about the difference between  centrifugal and centripetal forces, but I do know a good piece of teachable media when I see it. When you introduce a brick to a front-loading washing machine spinning at several hundred RPMs, you get something both destructive and magical. If your mind works in similar ways to my own, you most likely giggled a bit, guffawed a lot, and then started thinking about what a great visual piece this is for students! They get to see a little destruction (popularized by shows like Mythbusters), laugh at the absurdity of it, and then have this wonderfully discrepant moment of a washing machine thrashing about on the ground because someone tossed a single brick into the rotating drum. I can’t even begin to fathom the great leading questions that students could generate from watching this in a physics class while preparing to talk about forces and motion….in fact, if you do use this with your students PLEASE share any and all questions they come up with in the comments below!

I have this little project going over on Vimeo called the Video Story Problem Channel, and up until now most of the teachers involved have been creating a lot of really great student-created videos based around actual math from the real world (video from restaurants, home improvements stores, four wheeler races, etc.). Recently, I’ve been dabbling more with science-based videos, and wondering if there isn’t a way to encourage students and teachers in disciplines outside of the typical math classroom to latch onto the idea of creating videos of curiosity to help provide some learning experiences that are slightly more authentic than what we find in a text book (paper or digital). With that in mind, I created a short video in an attempt to provide a prompt for talking about viscosity. I intended to have the video serve as a prompt that might engage students to start thinking about what they already know about fluids, how they move, and maybe perhaps formulate a rough concept of what viscosity means. However, it could also serve as a formative assessment piece, one that requires the students to process what they may have been learning about fluid dynamics or viscosity, apply it to the leading questions in the video below, and then try to apply their growing understanding of the concept by creating their own video.   Now, the question I know many teachers are going to ask is "doesn’t this take a lot of time?" My reply would be "yes….and, no". If you look at just using a simple substitution of your usual content with this video, and then expecting the students to author, shoot, create, and publish the film in your classroom, it’s going to take a tremendous amount of time. More so if they’ve never done a media project like this before. However, if you’re willing to be flexible with your time-tables, and can afford some independence to your learners, you could certainly assign this as weekend homework, or maybe as an ongoing activity over the course of a unit. Students might be given some small amounts of "flex time" in your classroom, and use some time outside of class, to put together their example video. Regardless of how you set it up, the result is that you’ve got a really nice piece of formative assessment data, complete with some real world application, that will give you a much deeper understanding of how the students are grasping the concept, and more importantly trying to apply it to the world. The videos could then serve as examples for future courses or learners in other sections of the course. Once you’ve completed a few rounds of this type of video-based assessment, you’d have a nice snowballing of students video production skills and a level of comfort with the process that should help the students become more independent in creating and publishing them. Which in turn helps us lean towards the "not really" answer when the teacher across the hall wants to try and asks if it’s going to take a lot of time. Because we’re all supposed to be working towards the long-term growth and acquisition of skills, right?

I’m helping facilitate a wonderful series of video conferences this week and next in my school district, and I wanted to share a little bit of the excitement as students in Michigan connect with others in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma, and many other states! Read Around the Planet is a huge collaboration in celebration of reading that happens alongside many other celebrations in the U.S. and schools for "March is Reading Month". Students get to work on real world presentation skills, public speaking, and share their love of literature with their peers in the next school over, the next city down the road, or the neighboring state or country! I created a Storify to share what we’ve experienced thus far in our district, and if you can’t see it below, I encourage you to check it out here. If you’re participating in Read Around the Planet as well, please consider sharing on Twitter using the #rap13 hashtag so we can all enjoy! Celebrating reading, writing, and literature by connecting classrooms through video. View the story "Read Around the Planet Makes Me Happy!" on Storify

It’s been awhile since I shared some of the video story problems that I’ve created, and even longer since I showcased some of the great work by other educators and learners out there. Shame on me! There’s a LOT of awesome work getting published, and I’ve been so wrapped up lately with Read Around the Planet and travelling around to conferences getting other people excited about video in the K-12 classroom, I feel as though I’ve neglected some great digital math-based storytelling. So here goes! A whole heap of video story problems for you! Oreo Permutations A video story problem in which I use a big math term, wax philosophic on the nature of stuffing an Oreo with Oreos, and challenge students to create their own flavor combinations of Oreos.   Emily’s Driving Dilemma Andy Losik’s first venture into the video story problem space (at least through the channel) in which a meticulous overview of the problem solving strategies are outlined in expert 5th grade fashion! Love the blooper reel at the end, and can’t wait to see what else these learners create!   Cup Stack A great video for elementary students working with time and decimals. Plus it has cup stacking, which is always fun to watch, even if it’s not from professional stackers Frank Fitzpatrick put this great video together with the help of students.   Road Trip The students in Pat Elsey’s classroom in Jackson, MI put together a deceptively easy video story problem about travelling across country, and adding up the duration of the trip. If you don’t think about time zones, you might have to rethink your answer, and think about how you can incorporate social studies content along with math.   Home Improvement Project Another Michigan educator, Michelle Dubois (click here for her class blog), has created an entire home remodeling project with her students! She gave them all a budget, took the class to Menard’s (A regional home improvement store) and captured a lot of great video story problems about whether the students had enough in their budgets to cover their expenses.   Having played with the concept of turning traditional story problems into video story problems for over a year now, even toying with the idea of using them as formative assessment tools, I’m looking to go on a bit of a digital storytelling "evangelism" spree in the next few months. I presented at ICE this month, am planning on submitting a workshop based on video story problems for the Games, Learning, and Society Symposium in Madison, Wisconsin this Spring, and have already sent in my application for an ICE Indiana workshop for the fall. I’d love to see more educators using video as a strategic part of developing "new literacy" skills in their classroom; I hope some of these examples help. They push me to create and challenge those around me in new directions every day.

Help, the sky is falling, the sky is fall….er, Google is closing down Google Reader as of July 1st, 2013. I know a LOT of educators use Google Reader for subscribing to professional, casual, and entertainment blogs through RSS. Many students use Google Reader as well to follow blogs for classroom purposes. Sadly, that’s all ending in less than 4 months. Time to start packing up subscriptions and moving to new digital tool for RSS subscriptions! Here’s how to export your subscriptions out of Google Reader into one neat XML file you can use to import your feeds back into other RSS feed readers.   This is only half the journey! Now you need to import that subscriptions.xml file into a new RSS feed reader. I use Newsblur (they’re getting hammered right now with new sign-ups), but there are plenty more out there! Please share your favorite RSS reader in the comments, and I’ll add them to a post tomorrow about alternatives to Google Reader for RSS subscriptions.