I hesitated to share this video story problem that I created at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Although poking fun at myself, it does concern me that I ask the right questions to at least get learners headed in a direction with vocabulary and a frame of reference that will actually lead them to success. I haven’t been in the classroom for a few years now (teaching full time that is; I still visit and work with students on a weekly basis), so I had to ask some of my well respected friends in the world of science education if my video story problem about Foucault’s Pendulum even made sense. I’ve never been great at higher math and mathematics-based physics (I earned a solid C in my advanced calculus-based physics course in college). So I was nervous to ask what seemed to be far too simple a question (possible a naive one) about the conceptual workings of Foucault’s famous pendulum designed to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. I had no idea how this pendulum would work (in theory) unless if was directly above one of the two poles on the planet. So I asked some educators with much larger brains than I have when it comes to science: @techsavvyed I like how you are thinking about it. Here's a nudge: Foucault's Pendulum doesn't work the equator. @MR_ABUD @falconphysics — Frank Noschese (@fnoschese) April 15, 2014 Frank gave me encouragement that I was at least thinking about it in right way, and helped me better understand that there actually would be many points on the Earth on which this pendulum just would not work the way Foucault intended. Thanks, Frank! One of the questions I’m left with then is whether or not we should have educators that would be willing to appear genuinely confused/curious about scientific concepts? Ira Flatow, the host of NPR’s Science Friday, does a masterful job of asking innocent questions that often make me wonder whether he truly knows what he’s talking about. It makes me wonder if parents and students would support the same type of activities, or at least guiding questions, in which the educator displays a sense of wonderment, curiosity, and perhaps a bit of naivety in hopes of generating interest in the topic by learners. Or would they rather prefer to have content experts doling out the information that learners need, exactly when they need it?

I LOVE using digital cameras for visual learning activities! I’m presenting at the MACUL Mobile Learning Conference this Friday! I’m finalizing my presentation, and I want to squeeze in a few more quick activities for using digital cameras, tablets, and other devices that capture images and/or video for the attendees? Have some simple 5 minute activities involving video or still cameras? Please share them below.

Yes, yes, I know I’ve taken a few days weeks off from my "14 Days of #macul14″ series. Life happens, wood floors must be refinished, Spring Break must be mostly work free, and in retrospect I may have been a bit too ambitious with my original idea. That having been said, I now have to admit that I am a card carrying member of the "I’m on Pinterest" club. I’ve resisted joining the social site for many reasons, the least of which being the stereotypical excuse that its core audience is of the feminine persuasion. I have no problems operating in an environment that is predominantly populated with women (I work in a school after all). So, Why Pinterest Now? I sat in on a bit of Erin Klein’s Pinterest session, and was amazed at how many people were enraptured with the way that she was using it to help coordinate and organize learning links for her students. More impressive yet, is the way that many teachers in my own school district have used Pinterest to curate, share, and collaborate on learning resources for their classrooms. We have many teaching families (groups of 3 or 4 classrooms that collaborate closely) in which the lead teachers have dozens of Pinterest boards for "transition videos", math activities, even activities based on the months of the calendar. They then coordinate their boards, and share with one another, building up a rather complex, and yet easy to navigate filing system for all of the websites they need to navigate throughout a busy day of school. It just didn’t make sense for me to ignore Pinterest anymore. What I’m Enjoying So Far I like that fact that Pinterest harkens back to a simpler time on the web; the early days of Delicious, and saving bookmarks was "to the web", because we hadn’t started talking about "the cloud" yet. The browser extension (I’m using it in Chrome) makes it easy to quickly pin images and links to my boards, even creating board on the fly when I realize that what I want to save doesn’t fit in any of mr current boards. And I LOVE the visual aspect of it. As a long time user of Diigo for more academic reading and annotating on the web, I appreciate the simplicity and endorphin-releasing pleasure that sifting through images brings me. That and creating separate boards for each of the primary colors, just for grins, is actually a small relaxing joy. I’m gaining a new appreciation of just how addictive, and significant, the simplicity of the tools is. Which leads to some of my grumbles with it. Where I’m Grumbling I mentioned before that the general user base of Pinterest wasn’t an issue for me, and it still isn’t. After a few weeks of use (and after only a few dozen pins), I’m starting to grow increasingly frustrated with the simplicity of Pinterest. There are many links, images, or resources that would easily fit on multiple boards. Yes, I know that I can "re-pin" something multiple times, but in a world where semantic tagging is the dominant form of sharing, Pinterest seems almost quaint. I can include multiple hashtags on my tweets, tag my photos on Flickr as much as I want (and share to multiple groups at once), and even fine tune which individuals or groups see my Google+ postings. So when I’m given the opportunity to pin an object on just ONE board, it leaves me feeling like I’m not using a full fledged web 2.0 tool, as much as I’m using a slightly more grown-up version of my browser’s bookmark toolbar. There isn’t much else that bothers me about the tool, although I would love to be able to subscribe to another user’s board, and then see that board appear on my profile page. The current system of just getting a stream of their pins in one giant "regurgitation" of sensory overload on my home page isn’t what I’ve come to want out of my sharing and discovery tools. I can see where many would, and are, enjoy it, but it’s just not my cup of tea. For those that have used Pinterest for awhile, are my grumbles accurate? Do others experience these same desires to have a slightly more complex visual tool for curating the web? Or should I just embrace Pinterest for what it is, and enjoy the visual explosion of ideas?

Scan through some of the most popular blogs about educational technology and you’ll find two words that take up a disproportionate amount of the conversation; "apps" and "free". I’m not going to place any judgement or question how the focus on those two terms helps or hinders the long-term pedagogical success of our instruction. At least not in this post. There are certainly many worthy free applications (for mobile and desktop platforms) that have both short and long term value in our learning environments. Long time readers of my blog know that I’m curious. So I wondered what sort of excellent apps and tools we might be missing when we condition ourselves to automatically filter out anything that can’t be downloaded immediately for free. I use a wide range of rather low cost apps on my mobile devices (ranging from $.99 to $4.99) and a smaller number of more robust and expensive applications on my desktop platforms (anywhere between $19.99 to $99). Sure, I’m an anomaly; as the only instructional technologist in my district, serving all educators in the K-12 setting, I need to be familiar with a variety of apps and tools for a wide range of abilities and age groups. So I download, and pay, for apps on a regular basis to see how they work, and then advise my teachers which apps are worth spending their precious classroom or limited district funds on. Walking away from all the "BEST Free App!" sessions at the MACUL 2014 Conference, I couldn’t help but ask what would happen if we took time to highlight and showcase the apps teachers use that AREN’T free. What if we took the word "free" out of the equation for app purchase decision making, and instead asked educators what applications they felt were so essential to their instruction (or just downright awesome) that they were willing to pay for it? I got a few answers to that question last week at the MACUL Mobile Learning Conference, a wonderfully intimate conference held each April in Kalamazoo. I hosted a "Paid Apps Showdown" session, in which I invited audience members (we had about 20 or so) to show off the apps they valued enough to pay full price for. The thought of course being that these apps aren’t necessarily "better" than their free or "lite" counterparts, but that they had become so essential to an educator’s or student’s digital workflow that it was worth investing in the app. Below is a Storified archive of the #paidappshowdown Twitter feed that Steve Dickie helped me out with during the session. I hope there’s some value in the apps, and if you have anymore paid apps that you can’t live without, share in the comments! I led a 60 minute app showdown at MACUL’s Mobile Learning Conference, and it went pretty well considering we only had a couple of dozen attendees at the session. These are the apps that were shared that attendees felt so passionate about, that they went ahead and plunked down money for them. View the story "Mobile Learning Conference - Paid App Showdown" on Storify  

It’s been a few days weeks since I posted last, and I thought I’d better make this post really count. I’ve got some interesting reflections to share, I still need to finish up my "14 days of #macul14″ series, but for now, let’s keep it simple. This time of your many schools are saying good buy to students for the last time, and a good number of those students want to take their Google Apps for Education account information and data with them. Last year I created a handy guide for how to do that based on the following thought process. Problem Your school district has students leaving and not coming back next year (graduating seniors, students moving out of district, or going on to other schools) and they have a ton of stuff in their Google Accounts that they’d like to take with them. Compounded Problem Google has decided that it’s either not technically or systemically feasible to allow Google Apps for Education Accounts to transition/be directly transferred to personal Google Accounts. Potential Solution Google has created Takeout, an increasingly useful utility that allows Google Account users to pack up and take almost all of their Google account with them to be uploaded to a new Google Account. This works whether you’re moving from a Google Apps for Education Account, or a regular Google Account. Please note that the video I created below is almost a year old, and doesn’t include the new ability for Takeout to export all of your Gmail messages: Problems with Potential Solution For reasons as of yet unknown to me, Google Sites, and a select few of Googles other apps, can’t easily be exported. Most likely the complex nature of the websites being built within Sites would be too cumbersome to create an easily transferable folder of HTML documents and supporting files. Never fear, there’s a way to transfer ownership of those sites, and then make a copy of them with your new Google account. The video below details how to do this: This is great Ben, is there a page where you describe all of these steps for your students? You can click RIGHT HERE to access the directions for migrating all of your Google Apps for Education account that I modified and assembled directly from various Google Help sites. I also have a couple of video tutorials for how to do this, which you’ve seen embedded earlier in this post. I hope this information helps, and if you identify any flaws, let me know, so I can improve the documentation for my students, and other educators that end up using the resource.  

Disclaimer: I will likely contradict myself, and/or prove myself a hypocrite on many of these points in the coming weeks. This is what I was feeling today, and felt I needed to write it down. Take it for what it is; a mildly self-critical moment of reflection. Despite having joined the ranks of blogging educators back when blogging was fashionable for the first time, I have found my efforts to offer a mixture of reflective, humorous, and educative "how to" posts to be a mixed bag. To be fair, I had no over-arching goal when I first started blogging; sharing resources that might be valuable got me started, and then quickly moved into more reflective writing as I found myself overcoming the fears of the neophyte teacher. In my current role, I spend much less time with students, and more time thinking through larger problems with staff, and facilitating meetings of admin and teachers. I’m exceptionally overly critical of my own work, and despite my best efforts, I find it difficult to escape the role of the critic when working with others. That’s not to say I criticize others at every chance. In fact, many that I work with tend to offer me thanks and praise for providing a direct and honest critique of their work, and how to make their instruction/projects/work better. While driving home from a conference in Detroit two years ago, one of my closest friends asked me if it was possible for me to "turn my teacher brain off?" My answer came quicker than I would have thought; "no." I find myself constantly wanting to evaluate, coach, and critique those around me, even to the detriment of my relationship with them. It ebbs and flows, at times making it easier for me to ignore the impulse to suggest just a few "minor tweaks" to someone’s workflow, or offer up unrequested assistance. At other times, I seem downright rude, unable to contain glaring omissions of deeper analysis on behalf of my co-workers, and incendiary assessments of my own work. This blog post is a combination of the latter half of that reality. #1 - I have failed to accept myself as a "brand" Many of the top tier educators who blog (the ones making the rounds at many regional and national conferences) have either actively managed or encouraged the adoption of themselves as a "brand". I know many of them, having conversed at conferences, and even collaborated on a few projects. I can honestly say there are very few of them that I find to be disingenuous (most educators really are awesome). But the rise of "rock star" educators as brands has never sat well with me, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I want to build relationships with people, not brands. I want all educators to be approachable, and able to be questioned, critically. I would gladly change my Twitter handle in a heartbeat to push myself farther away from branding if "Ben Rimes" wasn’t still squatting on it. #2 - I write inconsistently Mentioned in the opening, my writing is amateurish at best (editing is a constant process after I post, catching many mistakes post publishing). I write about Digital Storytelling. I create "how to" videos about geeky power user features of Google and other technology. I attempt to write about books intelligently (a practice that I am dubiously qualified to do). I share goofy videos, and half-baked thoughts. In short, I am a jack of many technology trades, and a master of none (except maybe WordPress). I don’t have a clear message, and I’ve been told by many that my blog is "difficult" to describe. Which….is fine. I’m okay with that, as I see this blog as a reflection of my own thoughts and experiences, which also tend to be sporadic and eclectic. But it’s difficult for me to establish a clear message for others to enjoy when I’m all over the place. #3 - Follow through is lacking After one of the most excellent MACUL Conferences I’ve ever attended, I was excited to write 14 posts detailing all of the thoughts and resources I had running through my head after 3 days of learning and conversation. I made it to 12. So close….yet not enough. So much for my dedication to following through on ideas. #4 - I am reserved in my "Cheerleading" I praise, exemplify, and applaud many amazing practices and individuals, but rarely do it here. There are exceptions, and even some to come (you should see my list of unpublished drafts), but for the most part I don’t praise educators as "all stars" the same way that many other bloggers do. It’s not that I don’t think my colleagues and friends are amazing; I just find myself slipping past the sentiment of "awesome work" to the more thought-provoking "how are you going to make it even better next time" much quicker than the average educational cheerleader. I re-read many of my more critical posts, and hear bitterness, disapproving, and confusion in my posts as I search for deeper meaning. The cheerleading that I do lead tends to be focused on the practices and strategies put in place, not necessarily the individuals implementing them. #5 - I really dislike the "trendy" nature of technology As a self-proclaimed technology enthusiast, I confuse many by poo-pooing many of the more consumeristic trends in the technology sector. Augmented Reality, Chromebooks, and coding are hot right now. Two years ago it was QR codes, iPads, and gaming. Coming up will be Google Classroom, iWatches, and personalized learning. I enjoy the benefits of some of these developments, devices, and trends, but I know they’re fleeting. The practices that don’t go out of style are what get me excited; collaborating, building relationships, and creating safe environments for discourse and critical feedback. Can I do this with the latest and greatest? Sure! But why share my hype about the "BEST NEW FREE APPS!" or the latest consumer device that educators are eager to co-opt as a learning tool when cardboard and tape still manages to enrapture us? And that’s about it for now. I feel a bit better having written this out, and read through it a couple of times. This blog has been incredibly cathartic for me over the years, and for better or for worse, it will continue to be a reflection of my thoughts, not a branded, ad-laden, trend setter. If you’re okay with that, feel free to keep reading

I’m pretty big on carving out time for reflection in any learning environment. As evidenced by my latest blog post, taking the time to reflect allows learners to be critical, yet constructive, in addressing their own educational shortcomings. In other words, I want students to be able to identify what they’re struggling with, and how they might go about thinking how to get better. The problem will reflection is that there isn’t always time to do it within our busy classrooms and pressures from the curriculum. Which is probably why "exit slips" have become popular as of late. Teachers give students a quick, simple form to fill out (digital or otherwise) that provide a "snapshot" of how learners feel about the day’s concepts/learning goals. Collected as students exit the room, these mini assessments can often be filled out in less than a minute, and work into most schedules. This is not your english teacher’s usual exit slip. I didn’t want to create another "run of the mill" exit slip with simple bullet-point driven reflection, or cute clip art. Don’t get me wrong! Those are nice (and effective), but they’re awfully "plain jain". What if we got a little playful and tapped into the popular zeitgeist of teen literature? With zombies, nuclear apocalypse, and other "world ending" scenarios currently dominating popular teen fiction, I got the bug to create some "Apocalyptic Exit Slips" this weekend. It’s a perfect metaphor too for the purpose of the tool; students are exiting your comfortable, and familiar, classroom just as an apocalypse is an exit from the world as we know it. That works, right? Even if it doesn’t, I had a heck of a lot of fun tinkering with informal assessment and alien invasions! My wife helped out tremendously in sanding out the rough edges of this concept, so I wanted to give her a quick shout out; thanks Nicole! I’ve uploaded and shared 3 different version of the exit slips (PDF, Word, and Pages) to make it as easy as possible for others to use. If you just want to print out the PDF version and run copies, go for it. If you don’t like what I’ve got, but dig the concept, go ahead and change it up. I’ve included four varied reflective activities, but you may wish to simply copy and paste just one of them. If you do alter them, please share! I recently came across something rather exciting that I’ll be blogging about later this week about the importance of sharing. Apocalyptic Exit Slips (PDF) Apocalyptic Exit Slips (MS Words) Apocalyptic Exit Slips (Pages Document - Zipped) Oh, and I’m taking this opportunity to test a little theory. Many educators in my circles deride Teachers Pay Teachers for a number of reasons. At the forefront is the notion that we should be sharing freely with one another, not following the path of the for-profit education industry. However, most complaints I hear about the site are the "cutesy" copycat nature of the most popular offerings. I’m a firm believer in that ecosystems and communities can change over time, and thus I want to see if building up a small cache of rather "off beat" resources might help others see some potential in the website. Or, it may just stay a Comic Sans-filled warm fuzzy fest; who knows. For you, you can find the Apocalyptic Exit Clips on Teachers Pay Teachers (the PDF version that is) for free as well. Special thanks to the Noun Project for providing the graphics (either Public Domain or for a reasonable royalty free fee). If you need the Zombie font used in the document, you can find it here from dafont.

Not a quick email to say thanks. Not a little slip of paper or sticky note with a happy thought. I wrote an honest to goodness thank you note (written in cursive of all things!). It wasn’t terribly long, just a few lines; but it felt good to take a few minutes to recognize and give thanks to an educator that I appreciate for taking time out of her extremely busy schedule to lead myself and a few others on a tour of her school district. It gave me a nice warm fuzzy feeling despite a chilly rain shower pounding on the windows of my office. Sometimes low tech if the way to go. I’m not trying to fluff myself up here, or proclaim that going "luddite" for the morning is some sort of new trend that we all need to hop on board with. However, as much as I struggled with remembering how to properly loop my cursive letters (it’s been forever since I’ve written anything other than my name in cursive), and as much time as I might have "lost" not going the traditional digital route, I appreciated taking my time to craft something that not only spoke of my sentiment, but displayed it as well. At least, I hope a simple thank you card can convey that. Special thanks to Ann Smart for sending the "Thank You" note that inspired me to send my own.

I probably should have mentioned this sooner, but I’m notoriously bad at self promotion. Next week I’ll be leading a workshop on getting started with the "Video Story Problem Project" at the June gathering of the Institute for Innovation in Education (iiE). If you’re a teacher in Michigan and are looking to grab a few state continuing education clock hours next week, I promise it will be one of the most interactive workshops you’ve ever attended. The iiE is an international gathering of educators at the University of Michigan, and is focused on helping re-invent learning through conversation, collaboration, and breaking educators with complimentary skills together to help build global solutions to educational issues. Sounds pretty awesome, right? I thought it was, which is why I’m leading a workshop as a part of the pre-conference offerings for teachers! We’ll be shooting video, sharing student and teacher examples of video story problems, and talking about how to take the first baby steps to reimagining both formative assessment and a more inquisitive approach to math education. We’re not talking about Earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting, ground-breaking technological breakthroughs here. Just a few teachers, some cameras and mobile devices, and a willingness to "play" a little bit while we learn. Sign up for the Video Story Problem Workshop Here! Check out the rest of the Institute for Innovation in Education Gathering Here!

As if my summer weren’t already busy enough with conferences, curriculum planning, implementation of new software systems, prepping new iPads for classrooms, pulling off a minor ed tech conference, teaching CEP 810 for MSU, and squeezing in some family time; I went ahead and threw myself head first into Thought Vectors, a MOOC (?) from VCU starring several veterans of #ds106. It promises to be a conversation of "concept spaces" which has already referenced corny monster movies of the 50s. I’m not sure if that implies the course itself will start a bit cheesy, with the promise of great riffing happening in a digital space. I might normally be anxious about jumping into a course with an informal title that already sounds a bit fluffy (UNIV 200: "Living the Dreams"). However, with the pedigree of those putting it together, I’m looking forward to cobbling together some new thoughts and ideas. And since I’m off to a pretty terrible start by missing the official first event of the course (a Google+ Hangout) this evening in favor of an awards banquet in which I’m being honored, I thought I’d at least get a GIF posted to capture what little bit of play I managed to squeeze in with my kids the other night. My family time may find itself playing a large role in my "thought vectors" assignments this summer.