As I prepare myself for another trip down the rabbit hole with ds106, I had to remind myself that there are still a plethora of amazingly great resources out there to share with teachers, parents, and others that want simple, practical ways to update their curriculum, or replace static learning experiences with much more fluid or real world experiences. Thanks to the Google Earth blog (one of my personal favorites), comes news of a way to track sea turtle migration via Google Earth. Better yet, if you’re running a relatively up to date computer, you can use the web browser embedded map to track the sea turtles without having to fire up Google Earth itself. The interactive map has you following Jklynn, a female hawksbill sea turtle, as she makes her annual migration through the Caribbean. The map includes her previous locations, where she’s at currently, nesting sites, and includes a handy slider to view where she was at any given point in time. Amazing what satellites, radio transmitters, and the internet can give us in this day and age, eh? This would be a fantastic resource for secondary biology teachers talking about the habits and migration patterns of specific animals, although I could easily see an elementary teacher using this resource to show the basic idea of migration, and how it’s not just a thing birds do. Oh, in case you’re a heavy Twitter user, you can follow Jkylynn via her Twitter feed; apparently she managed to slip her tracking collar off back in December and was quite proud of it!

I’m playing with the Common Core Standards in attempt to try and find ways to represent those standards which relate to technology to the rest of the standards as a whole. My ultimate goal is to try and find a way to emphasize the presence and requirement of student use of technological tools and methods of communication within the Common Core, without trying to isolate them as yet another "add on". I’m not sure if this visualization is helping. In the interest of full disclosure, the top image is a collection of high frequency words from any and all language in the Common Core documents with the term "technology". The bottom image a collection of high frequency words from all of the language from both the ELA, History, Science, and Technical Subjects Standards and the Math Standards. In fairness I removed the words "student(s), number(s), standard(s), and e.g." from both sets of words as they were very high frequency words with little impact on the comparison. I also removed the word "technology" from the top image so it wouldn’t stick out so much. Am I missing something that I haven’t already highlighted, or am I manipulating this data too much to the point of uselessness? high frequency words from all of the Common Core language that references using "technology" high frequency words from both the ELA, History, Science, and Technical Subjects and the Math Common Core standards

Richard Byrne posted a great screencast about how to locate the Google Advanced Image Search now that it’s hidden from plain sight in the new layout. Since there’s always more than one way to get a job done, I thought I’d create a video response to show a second way to locate the old advanced image search. There certainly isn’t a right or wrong way to go about it, it’s just which way you find more natural to your own web-surfing and searching habits. The more I play with YouTube, the more I’m liking the idea of creating a referential video help network thanks to video responses. There might be some value there in using it with your students to create a series of homework help videos from multiple points of view.

The Video Story Problem Channel and concept have both been gaining steam since a small group of educators started collaborating on them in the fall. Currently there are almost 60 videos of math, science, and inquiry based problems that have collected over 4,000 views! That’s close to 70 views per video! I don’t want to applaud just the numbers we’re all amassing, because the learning and work that students are accomplishing added to the new avenues educators are exploring for publishing and creating materials for their classes is really what payout here. Just take a look at this recent submission from Tyler Hart, who has managed to capture an amazing "any questions" type of open ended video story problem, in which he asks his 3rd graders to create their own word problems to this video. It was such a fantastic concept to see in action at the elementary level that I had to share. I’m starting to really enjoy watching how each teacher involved with this project approaches the challenge with a classroom of learners. From more traditional word problems turned into video asking for a specific answer to much more open ended video story problems asking students to pose questions rather than solutions, this project is beginning to beg the question, "How do we make this as routine or as simple as students writing a paper or working a list of math problems?" Which is why I created this very simplistic, and rather crude, planning template for teachers to hop on board with the video story problem concept. I choose what I’m going to call the "lowest common denominator" type of video story problem; presenting a simple problem using a real life context, and then present its solution. As an added bonus, students are encouraged to flip the paper over and write the entire script for their video on the back side once they’re done planning out the problem, and before they record. This is actually one of the only rules (if there are any) that I hold paramount to creating video story problems; the students should have a clear road-map to follow for shooting the video, thus writing out a script so that they think everything through at least a couple of times before grabbing a camera. This is the first draft, created with Comic Life 2. Ideas for version 2.0 are eagerly accepted! If you’d like to try making some video story problems with your students, PLEASE feel free to download a PDF version of the template below, and start posting and sharing the videos you and your students create on Vimeo. I’d love to include them on the Video Story Problem Channel, and explore this wonderful intersection of writing, math literacy, and media! Oh, and if you have suggestions for improving upon this template, I’m all ears! Video Story Problem Planning Template (PDF)

How easy is it to nominate a teacher for the Worth Ave. Group’s "Greatest American Teacher" award? It takes less time than it would typically take to get a cup of coffee in the morning. Seriously, watch! A few little pieces of information that might prove pertinent that weren’t included in the video above; the nomination process is open until March 31st, 2012, and you can nominate that teacher each day until the deadline. Teachers with the most nominations by March 31st will receive top honors and awards from the Worth Ave. Group, a company which not only provides individual and enterprise insurance policies for lots of technology (iOS devices, laptops, etc.), but they’ve also helped sponsor the site for a couple of months. Start nominating!

Frank Noschese blogs about his experiences in the classroom at http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/ Are you an educator frustrated with the efforts of education reformers to turn our profession into the 21st century equivalent of a correspondent course? Have a bone to pick with how people interpret the Khan Academy as the "savior" of the modern educational system? Frank Noschese might just be someone you should have in your PLN. Frank is an amazingly reflective educator, who is constantly asking himself, and others, whether what we’re doing both in and out of the classroom is truly helping students. That’s not to say he gets bogged down with over analyzing how he can effectively teach Physics at the secondary level, but he’s incredibly vocal when it comes to educators and others who cheerlead first, but ask critical questions later (or sometimes not at all). Which is what attracts me so much to his theories of educational practice. Frank often toes the line between putting teaching strategies and ideology first over professional relationships, something that often leads many people who comment on his blog to miss the nuanced critiques he often makes. Don’t get me wrong, Frank values relationships as evidenced by his strong professional learning network on Twitter, but when it comes to Khan Academy, Frank makes no bones about how he sees the "revolutionary" video learning platform in his "final remarks" posted early last year. In that post, Mr. Noschese points out how the content and format of Khan’s lessons (short content-specific video lessons) aren’t really revolutionary. Frank argues that Khan videos being touted as supplements to typical math instruction might be a decent idea (although he has yet to find any he feels fit well with his curriculum). However he also argues that many people speaking highly of Khan are in danger of using it in terribly inappropriate ways by replacing entire lessons, removing opportunities for student creation and creativity, and simply replacing in class lecture with Khan’s mini lectures. For setting his phasers on the Khan Academy, and challenging them to "DO BETTER", I applaud Frank for reflecting on the many aspects of the Khan Academy, not just the videos. Frank blasts holes in the "this is shiny and new, therefore it’s better" arguments by pointing towards the effectiveness of modeling in his classroom. You can view a small news clip of the instructional method below. Frank also takes shots at the value of engagement through video versus engagement through hands on learning and student creation. The system that Khan Academy has created around its videos follows a pre-determined set of steps through a mastery-like sequence that can just as often encourage "gaming" the system as it does truly engaging the learner to grow. While I’m of mixed minds when it comes to the use of video for the "engagement factor" (personally, I love and become much more engaged in a project if there’s a compelling piece of media accompanying it), I can value the way Frank critiques Khan’s methods in a way that suggest and encourages certain paths and opportunities to improve the system.  He offers suggestions for feedback and student data that Khan Academy’s learning platform could provide him, rather than simply tearing it down. In short, Frank likes to reflect, albeit a lot more than the average K-12 instructor. And that’s why I had to write this piece today, despite what some might consider as being "stale" (Frank’s final remarks about Khan were posted in May of 2011, well after a lot of discussion had already been tossed out on the subject). I’ve been reflecting lately on my attitude towards other educators championing and cheerleading certain technologies as I still struggle to determine whether they are truly transforming the way we teach, or simply providing a new spin on old tricks, the iPad and the Interactive Whiteboard being just two of the technologies that I often find myself flip flopping about in my mind. I know that learning is a continuum, and that people must move through adoption and substitution phases of using technology that quite often don’t add any value to instruction. I criticize much too often and harshly on those not yet approaching the transformative ways we can bring about change in education through technology. To be fair, I’m guilty of simply cheerleading substitutional strategies myself  (I question the value of my encouragement of Video Story Problems sometimes), and I beat myself up in my own head. I use that guilt as fuel to push myself further, and find ways to encourage other educators to play around with the concepts I’m developing and wrestling with, and lo and behold they begin to do some pretty transformative teaching and learning that they can then share using technology (examples include some of the "any questions" type of videos on the Video Story Problem channel). The question I wrestle with then, is how do I stop zapping the educators around me in a very "Steve Jobs" like way, and find constructive ways to build them up? I don’t have the best answer for that yet, but sifting through a lot of comments and reflections on Frank’s blog certainly help focus my thoughts. Thanks, Frank!  

  I don’t expect a lot of people to read this post, let alone actually click on the title in genuine interest. It’s not that I don’t think the meta-cognition that takes place around teaching and learning isn’t important, it’s just that many educators I encounter on a daily basis both within and outside of my school district are often not concerned with reflective or recursive practices that are vital to helping construct life-long learners. To be fair, it’s not always their own fault that they don’t express interest in helping students find ways to create their own learning environment; educators have families, second jobs, stresses from administration, assessments, evaluations, etc. and quite often many of us are just looking for the quickest way from point A (start of the school year) to point B (final exams/end of the year). I feel that the school district I work in does a better job than most at hiring and supporting teachers who reflect upon pedagogy (our middle school being a very effective model for supporting reflective teaching and learning practices), but it’s my opinion that a large number of school districts do very little (or nothing at all) in the way of articulating curriculum and designing schools that can effectively support three recursive practices that Gardner Campbell identified as key elements of teaching and learning in a post-lunch lecture at the 2009 Open Education Conference. If you’re so interested, you can watch the entire presentation below, but if you’re short on time, you can skip the video and go straight to my distillation of these three essential practices for teaching and learning at all levels. Narrating The first recursive practice laid out by Gardner Campbell is one which almost every learner has been doing, with or without the help of their teacher. Narration is writing, blogging, retelling, journalling, reflecting; all of the wonderful writing that we ask our students to accomplish in order to prove not just to us, but to themselves that they are in fact learning. Gardner simply takes it one step farther and asks that we as educators practice narration as well. Whether it’s through artist statements, poetry, or simply taking notes about a particularly terrible or amazing lesson, the art of articulating one’s own experience is a practice which has proven to be effective for many students and teachers. And you don’t even need technology to do it! Have your students write their thoughts down on scrap paper while thinking through a difficult assignment or task; or maybe carve out some time for reflection at the end of each of your units. You could even make Friday "narration day" in which students get to write about one fantastic and one terrible experience they had that week. Make it interesting and challenge students to come up with their own writing prompts, or create ones for them. Geting students to tell their own story is the first recursive practice that can begin to have a profound impact on their lives. Curating Simply narrating isn’t enough to instill students with the sense that what they think and how they think will affect them for the rest of their lives. They must curate their learning, organize their thoughts, and arrange it in ways that make sense to them. I imagine it is very much like John Cusack’s character "Rob" in the movie High Fidelity, in which after experiencing a particularly painful breakup, he completely re-arranges his massive vinyl collection according to biographical significance. The order in which he places his albums tells the story of his many loves and breakups over the years, and while we don’t necessarily need to get students to be constantly re-examining their love lives, we do need to instill in them a love for self examination and reflection. Portfolios of student work, assembling "best of" folders of writing for conferences, and reading previous work in an effort to re-asses its value in the face of new understanding means that narration and previous experiences are revisited, and sorted in a way that makes the learning process easy to follow. Again, technology doesn’t have to be used in order to do this. Technology helps with typical blogging platforms automatically curating archives, categories, and tags in a way that makes it easier to sift through one’s previous experiences, but any way in which we can encourage students and teachers to curate their own lives will help bring a better sense of accomplishment and achievement after accomplishing new tasks. Sharing Up until this point, a teacher could easily accomplish these recursive practices without technology, and to a certain extent sharing can be accomplished through many face to face strategies. However, the true potential of Gardner Campbell’s visions comes from the complete and total process of "narrate, curate, share" happening on the open web. Through individual blogging, connections among social networks like Twitter, or group conversations in a forum, students can begin to shape their own presence and existence as a life-long learner not just within the classroom, but in the real world. Gardner’s thoughts and theories can best be summed up in the statement "put it out there!" Get students sharing through their own personal blog at Kidsblog, activate Blogger on your Google or Google Apps for Education account, or find someone in your school district that’s savvy enough to get your very own installation of WordPress (my personal favorite) on a school web server. If you’d rather have a collaborative group effort or conversation you could go setup a free forum at FreeForum, Forumer, or install your own copy of phpBB or BBpress with the help of that same tech-savvy individual that setup WordPress for you. The point is to make it open, accessible, and live to the rest of the web, rather than behind the shroud of an LMS, or the curtain of privacy of an "education friendly" service. While I realize this may not be possible in some districts due to policies or comfort level of the teacher, it’s an eventual necessary step that students must take at some point in their K-12 experience if they are to become better prepared for life beyond school. Feedback I told you that Gardner Campbell laid out three recursive practices for effective teaching and learning, so why then is there a fourth one that I’ve included here? Transitioning to narrating, curating, and sharing on the web requires a crucial step that isn’t immediately apparent to some teachers who are used to the informal discussions and feedback that happens face to face in the classroom. For students and teacher to truly be immersed in what Gardner calls their own personal cyberinfrastructure, feedback from others is the extrinsic motivator that pushes individuals forward if they struggle to do so on their own. Gardner however, warns of providing too much feedback or "training wheels" that are often typically never matched with a gradual release of responsibility that allows students to struggle and grow on their own: "Pointing students to data buckets and conduits we’ve already made for them won’t do. Templates and training wheels may be necessary for a while, but by the time students get to college, those aids all too regularly turn into hindrances. For students who have relied on these aids, the freedom to explore and create is the last thing on their minds, so deeply has it been discouraged." - Gardner Campbell, A Personal Cyberinfrastructure So what does this mean for providing feedback, then? As the teacher you must find that balancing point between providing feedback on student blogs, comments on wikis, or notes left in collaborative google documents, and letting the learner narrate, curate, and share on their own. Too much feedback, and the student will always expect it, no matter how trivial the topic or piece shared. Too little, and the learner will feel as though their work does not warrant the attention of the teacher. While many veteran teachers can do this almost automatically in a face to face setting, to do so online can be exceedingly difficult as the experience blurs distinctions between "work time" and "free time", with students and teachers narrating and sharing when the mood strikes, rather than the dedicated time you have with one another in a traditional classroom setting. It’s also highly important that students are offering feedback to their peers, and reacting to that feedback in a way that models good constructive criticism and improving upon ones work. Opening up students work to the web means that it’s not just the teacher that’s responsible for leaving the feedback and providing that extrinsic motivation for continued growth; it’s now on the shoulders of everyone in your learning community to help one another in a much more public and open way. I could continue to drone on about the need for students to publish, reflect, curate, and receive and react to feedback, but I don’t have to; the increasingly relevant Common Core Standards already call for this to happen at all levels of K-12 using technology. The question then is not really should we be doing this in education, but are you prepared to have your students narrating, curating, sharing, and offering feedback openly? I’m sure many are already doing this within the walls of their classroom with pencil, paper, and perhaps a Google Doc or two. It’s time now to explore what happens when you open the door wide and begin to invite other learning communities into your own through the web.

"Hey McFly, you bojo! Hoverboards don't work on water!" What is digital storytelling? Rather than bore you with a rather lengthy history of the term, and how it has been applied in the past to both the realms of education and entertainment, allow me to illustrate how I see it with a highlight from Wikipedia: You can continue to read on, and ponder why someone would arbitrarily decide that 8 minutes is the acceptable limit for digital stories, but what’s most important about the term is the practice of "ordinary people" creating meaning through the use of digital tools. Further exploration of the term through the lens of ds106 could even cause someone to conclude that digital storytelling is in fact, NOT just movies. The use of movies to tell a story is merely one facet of the digital storytelling spectrum, and as far as I’m concerned, a much better definition of the term exists further down that same entry on Wikipedia: "One can define digital storytelling as the process by which diverse peoples share their life story and creative imaginings with others." As I prepare for a presentation on digital storytelling at the upcoming 2012 MACUL Conference, I’ve begun to ask myself how teachers can more easily adapt newer technological tools to allow students to share their own "creative imaginings". Not being someone who is comfortable "talking the talk" without producing some actual goods, I decided to create another entry in my "Warning to the User" series, which is my own creative take on the Warning Assignment on the ds106 site. The assignment in question asks creators to imagine a warning poster or label for something that exists only in your own imagination or a movie. I had previously created a warning poster for the flux capacitor (the device that makes time travel possible in the Back to the Future movies), and I wanted to extend upon that thread in a playful way, hence a warning poster for the hover board used by the main character in the series, Marty McFly. The first in my series of warning posters for BTTF What speaks to me most about this assignment is that while I put a considerable amount of time into the process using Photoshop to assemble the images and the text (even going so far as to find and install a custom font inspired by the movie), it’s actually a rather simplistic assignment. Any teacher or student could achieve the same with a word processing program and some clipart quite easily. Making sure that images are set to floating or "wrap behind text", it would be quite easy to fill a page with a few choice elements from a film or book, and then use text boxes to place key points, main events, or themes from the story. I could see elementary students using a "warning label" to describe the main events in the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, or perhaps some magical warnings for using a wand from the Harry Potter series (highlighting all the times wands were mishandled in the series). I choose to mix plot points, scenes, and over-arching story elements from the first Back to the Future movie in my warning poster (lightning storms and technology don’t mix well in any timeline). However, any teacher could ask students to focus just on main events to practice sequencing, or include quotes from the main characters to help identify how mood is established in a story. While all of us in K-12 continue to "hover" around the impending implementation of the Common Core Standards, it might serve us well to begin to explore how a little bit of creativity might help students (and ourselves as educators) figure out how to reintegrate some of the process standards and college readiness standards in ways that will encourage students using a diverse set of tools to write, produce, and publish. Case in point; I used Google image search, an image editing program, and a blogging tool to create, narrate, and publish this particular piece. Toss in a little piece on using the advanced image search or a creative commons search for images and you have yourself quite the well-rounded 21st century project for your students!

not necessarily my own opinion, just exploring a point I have a pathological need like to argue. It’s something that I was apparently born with, as my mother insists at a very young age I was quite obviously cut out to be a lawyer. Despite my best efforts at self-monitoring and awareness of this trait, I often relapse into base level arguments when unprepared for a conversation that may challenge my viewpoints. Perhaps that’s why I was drawn to create the image above for the ds106 Big Caption assignment. While some may question the taste of the piece (it certainly doesn’t reflect my own personal beliefs), I wanted to create something that could be used as a way to provide a contrasting viewpoints, rather rational or not, to a topic of interest that students and teachers wrestle with. In this case, I found an image from Boston.com’s Big Picture photo journalism project, an amazing look at news from around the world through striking imagery. You can see the original image of a woman looking out through the ice-covered window of a bus in Bucharest below. I took the image into Photoshop and added the text, applied some simple effects (stroke and color fill), and viola! The end result is meant to be slightly tongue-in-cheek, but the idea is to try and provide a conversation piece that might provide a contrast to a topic you’re covering in class, or perhaps just practice rhetorical skills. A woman looks out a bus in Bucharest on February 2, 2012. (Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press) Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not in favor of global warming, but quite often the more important discussion of how global warming will affect the lives of everyone on this planet is overshadowed by the much more mundane argument of whether it actually exists. That doesn’t sit right with me, as while I am capable of arguing over almost anything, I’d like to think that I’m discussing a topic that will lead to answers and results with greater value for everyone. Disproving global warming isn’t going to help anyone if it still happens, but talking about how cultures, countries, and citizens might have to change their long term living patterns seems as though it might be a bit more important. I love the Big Picture site that this ds106 assignment is based upon, and the idea of captioning of striking image with a humorous, insightful, or other type of caption was made popular by the Big Caption website (warning: not all images and captions are appropriate for the K-12 setting). Forgetting the captions for a moment, there is a near constant flow of amazing images from around the world on the Big Picture site that could be used for classrooms talking about current events, or want a way to bring the world into their classroom in a very humbling manner (see the rest of the images from the European winter which has many homeless living in underground heating vents). Imagery, especially such vivid photographs as those taken from around the world by professional photo journalists, can play a very intimate and important role in spurring discussion, or illustrating a point. I highly recommend any social studies or language arts teachers to give the site a look, and see what you could take from it for use in your classroom.

Cheerios, the breakfast of middle class families across America! Friday, February 10th, 6:15 AM: We interrupt this regularly updated ed tech blog for a series of animated gifs. Consider this experiment in digital storytelling an indication that I’m thoroughly lost in the labyrinthine halls of ds106. Come back throughout the day for updates on how my animated gif "journal" is going. My morning commute of 40 miles reduced to 10 seconds of driving Friday, February 10th, 7:15 AM: While my wife is certainly not thrilled that I was taking photos while driving, I risked life and limb to explore how you can illustrate any type of mundane event with a creative use of digital media. In this case, I took 10 shots in rapid succession with the click of my phone’s camera (I had one hand on the wheel for this, and didn’t attempt to line up the shots as I was focusing more on the driving). Thanks to the GIF SHOP app, all you have to do is touch the screen to take a shot, and it’s ready to go for the next one. The magical coffee machine of plenty keeps on brewing... Friday, February 10th, 9:15 AM: Once I’m at school, it’s not long before a trip to one of the many "caffeine stations" located around the building. This morning, the tech department coffee pot had yet to be started, so I worked my way down to the central administration office’s Keurig. I wanted to produce a slightly different effect with the coffee machine this time around, hence the "rewinding" of the gif instead of simple looping. Thanks to a somewhat steady hand, and the ability to use "onion skinning" built into the GIF SHOP app, I was able to produce a much cleaner animated gif in an attempt to meet Alan Levine’s challenge to reduce the amount of movement in the piece. Still not happy, but the day is yet young! There's work to be done on the interwebz! Friday, February 10th, 10:00 AM: Although I work with teachers and students throughout the week, a large portion of my day is spent sending emails, communicating, and coordinating via the internet. Just this morning I made a test connection to a school in New York for an upcoming video conference celebrating reading month, I’ve blogged about exciting things happening in the district, read a few websites and educational articles, and "Skyped" with a couple of other people in neighboring counties about some educational collaborations. swim, fishies, swim! Friday, February 10th, 11:15 AM: I spent some time working with a 2nd grade teacher who wanted to better understand wikis and figure out how he could use them to get his students working collaboratively. He had already been blogging with them, so he had a much better grasp on the concept of a wiki than he was giving himself credit for. While waiting for him I managed to grab some shots of his fish tank with my phone propped up against his keyboard. Something excited going on at the bottom of the tank there. No, this isn't my lunch, just a tasty treat afterwards Friday, February 10th, 1:00 PM: I ate lunch with a group of teachers today, and while I’m usually comfortable doing strange things in front of people with technology (like taking a rapid succession of shots and obsessing over the lighting), I didn’t want to intrude upon the conversation with an animated gif of lunch. So instead, I created one of a Baby Ruth bar that one of the nice administrators at the later elementary building gave to me after lunch. I was able to stand my phone up so it remained stationary, allowing me to create the "magic" disappearing candy bar. I especially like the way it unwraps itself. Just a few open applications right now Friday, February 10th, 1:55 PM: I had a Skype call with TechSmith today to record a segment for The Forge, and I decided to create a short animated gif showing off all the applications I had open while talking. We talked about technology in the classroom, engaging screen casts, and more. It was a lot of fun. A clean window, is a happy window Friday, February 10th, 3:05 PM: I elected to go home bit early today as we were having a bit of freezing rain and slush, so I wanted to afford myself some extra driving time. As luck would have it, it also allowed me to participate on "This Week in ds106". The drive was pretty intense with the roads pretty slick from the slushy rain-snow, but I think the live Google Hangout show was even harder. Princess games are a favorite in our household Friday, February 10th, 7:15 PM: After a wonderful evening hanging out with the family, enjoying a home-cooked dinner, and everyone getting into their jammies (well, the kids at least), my daughter and I decided to play a little bit of Tangled Wii. I was glad for two reasons; A) I got to set my phone down and take another stationary set of shots using GIF SHOP, and B) I love playing games with my daughter. We particularly enjoy Tangled because there’s a cooperative element, where both characters can only progress as long as they help each other at certain points in the levels. A great way to finish up the evening before brushing teeth, bedtime stories, and finally, bed. I created all of these animated gifs in about 30 seconds using the very handy GIF SHOP app for iPhone, though it works just great on an iPad 2 as well.   Special thanks goes to Alan Levine for kicking off this assignment in the wee hours of the morning. If you’re a participant in ds106, or interested, you can see the assignment here.  

How often do we feel like our work will never be done in education? I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to escape the circular reasoning behind the notion that "teachers don’t have time to create their own learning resources." I believe that notion to be completely false, yet walk into any school building and you’ll easily find a good majority of teachers that claim they’re too busy to worry about "one more thing". Perhaps….but what if the reason they feel so overwhelmed is that the time they do have has been structured to be inefficient and cluttered with a lot of "small chores" that never seem to be done? This past Saturday morning I woke up to 17 inches of fresh snow. It was quite a shock, and after suiting up in my winter gear and shoveling a path to the driveway, I got the snow blower warmed up and started to clear off the driveway. It was extremely slow going, and thanks to a very narrow band of lake effect snow fall, the sticky white flakes continued to blanket the ground the entire time I was working. By the time I was halfway done with the driveway, I had to go back and re-do what I had already cleared off. I found myself slightly miffed at having to do the same work over again, and was downright annoyed when I realized that I would most likely have to come back out later in the day to clear out the end of the driveway again after the road plows came through, burying us yet again. I carried out my frosty chore though, because I knew that tackling the "big chore" would make it easier to clear off the driveway again later in the day. I could have just as easily gone back inside and waited for the snow to stop and the plows to clear the road, or even waited until the middle of this week when the weather would be warm enough to melt a lot of the snow, but that would have made things exceptionally difficult for me. Which of course is when my brain switched over into "let’s learn from this" mode (a setting that I would all too often love to be able to turn off voluntarily). 17 inches of snow at the end of my driveway. Teachers constantly prepare for the lessons of the week. Copies of handouts are made, activities are setup, trips to the computer lab are scheduled, and just about every other detail that would require some foresight is taken care of. Teachers regularly "bite off" a big chunk of tasks at the start of the work week, or before a large unit, so that they can spend more time working with students and enjoying the learning environment, rather than having to slog through the proverbial 17 inches of snow that would be menial tasks that get in the way without proper preparation. So why do many look at developing their own resources, especially those created with technology, any differently? Rather than get out there and tackle the "big chore" (creating an iMovie, making some animated GIFs, assembling some graphic organizers with a word processor), educators spend a lot of time searching for the perfect resources that may or may not exist, to fit within their units. Many use excuses of "why bother reinventing the wheel" or "it takes so much time!". Which of course to me is a bit silly. You don’t have the same students as you did last year, maybe they might need slightly tweaked resources, and if you spent some dedicated time at the start of a unit playing with a piece of technology (perhaps even alongside your students) you might discover you have a knack for a particular task (making animated GIFs to illustrate learning objectives with humor or motion). Instead, often is the case in which teachers wait until after all the learning is done, or when they have 3 hours to sit down and dedicate themselves during a professional development day. I know what I say next may not be popular, but you have to play! And you have to do it sooner than you would like or think, forcing yourself to start creating something that is yours, not just taken off the shelf (or at the very least, something you’ve taken, but have tweaked to your own purposes). I had to force myself out into the cold last Saturday morning to snow blow that driveway, even though I knew I could have waited out the snow fall; but I would have been hindered by the snow to say the least, and it would have made driving in and out of the garage difficult (to say the least). So I sacrificed time with my family and relaxing in a warm chair on a weekend morning to clear off my driveway for almost 2 hours. We may feel like our work may never be done in education, especially if we start sacrificing other opportunities to start producing our own learning resources, but what opportunities would that afford us in the future? By regularly clearing off my driveway I don’t have to worry about ice, getting my car stuck, or blocking others from visiting. By creating my own resources (even something as simple as my own writing prompts and graphic organizers), what could you allow your students to accomplish?

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/winning-information/2314384136/ I was in the middle of leading a workshop for a group of teachers in my district yesterday when my phone started to buzz. One of my blog posts was getting hit with a lot of comments, and the emails came flying in all at once. Our lunch break was ending, so I took a quick peak and was positively mortified by what I saw. To say the comments were mean-spirited, or examples of cyberbullying, would be putting it mildly. Instead I’ll simply describe it as a few teenagers making some extremely poor decisions about how they could degrade one another in a very public and foul manner. Not having the time to deal with the matter directly, I turned to Twitter to help ferret out someone from the district in an attempt to have someone "catch" the students in the act, and help them make some better decisions. How should I handle these students from Jessamine Schools bullying one another on my blog? techsavvyed.net/archives/671#c… — Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) February 16, 2012 Twitter answered my plea in the best way possible! @techsavvyed 1) contact principal. 2) delete comments (after #1). 3) move to moderated comments — Steve Keinath (@keinath) February 16, 2012   @techsavvyed Gotta go Hammer Time on that. Time to find an email for the principal. — Andy Losik (@mrlosik) February 16, 2012 At first, I thought I was being a bit of a narc, but after a moment of reflection, I realized it was an amazing show of assistance and support from educators across my PLN in Michigan working together to help stop some students in Kentucky from making some even worse decisions. While I began the afternoon portion of my workshop, a colleague in my district tracked down the Twitter handle for the district in which the students were commenting from, the offending comments still pouring in on my blog mind you. The person running the Twitter account for Jessamine County Public Schools stepped in to help. @techsavvyed @beckdbeck Administrators at the school have been notified.Thank you very much for the tip. — Jessamine Co Schools (@JessCoSchools) February 16, 2012   I then took the opportunity to "unapprove" the comments so I could retain the information. You see, while people like to make poor choices they aren’t always thinking as clearly as they could be. Rather than a horde of students commenting and bullying one another on my blog, it actually appeared to be just a small handful of students submitting the comments under the names of their fellow classmates in an attempt to get them into trouble. While submitting the comments, they used the same email addresses for each comment. In fact, two email addresses came up most often. I’m going to assume that the email addresses used by the culprits were in fact legitimate because after a bit of clever google searching, I discovered one of the email addresses attached to a couple of forums where teens were looking to score some "suboxone", a drug that is currently on the rise for being abused by teenagers looking to get high. I’m not sure if there’s necessarily a connection between two destructive behaviors, so I’ll just leave that point rest. The important point is that whoever left the comments on my blog most likely either used their actual email address, or was clever enough to find an email address that made it look like someone else was posting. My hope is that the student or students involved down in Jessamine were identified, because they obviously need some sort of positive attention and modeling in their lives right now. Just a few minutes after the first tweet from the school, this one came across the wire. @JessCoSchools Would love contact info for admin, thanks! — Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) February 16, 2012   Suffice it to say, I gathered all of the pertinent evidence, and this afternoon sent it to the principal of the school along with the following email. Hello Principal Granada, As I’m sure you have been made well aware of, yesterday there was a cyberbullying incident in which at least one or more of your students made some very poor decisions in posting public comments on my blog. I wanted to sympathize with any frustration or disappointment you might be feeling. Please know that as an educator I understand that individuals make poor decisions, and I hope that you and your staff can use this as an opportunity to create a valuable learning experience for these students or student involved. I will be removing the comments from my blog post shortly, but I felt an obligation to connect with you and make sure that you had any and all information you needed to make sure that you can address this issue. I’m including the emails the students used to comment on my blog and a link to a valuable website that I’ve used in the past with students to help promote the idea of being a responsible digital citizen (http://www.digizen.org/). If you require anything else of me, please ask. -Ben Rimes www.techsavvyed.net The point I’m trying to make here is that with the help of Twitter, and a sense of "let’s get to the bottom of this" a bunch of educators dedicated to helping prevent the kind of bullying that happens inside our schools everyday were able to help identify some students several state away that are in need of some help. I certainly don’t wish for this student or students to simply be punished. I genuinely feel that someone willing to write the horrible comments that appeared on my blog yesterday, and attribute them to someone else in an attempt to blame them, needs some guidance. I hope that they get that from the staff and learning community down in Jessamine County.

Who watches the watchmen? If teachers are to be held accountable now for every single result that their students achieve on any and all testing, who makes sure that every single teacher in a school building is bringing their "A" game every single day? If it falls upon the administrators, then who is it that makes sure those principals and evaluators are able to observe every single teacher, each and every week, in order to maintain at least a semblance of consistency? If each and every state is going to hire external monitors, pay for expensive testing protocols, and report data in a near-constant stream to the public, which oversight body of elected officials or bureaucrats is going to have to spend every waking moment following through on this? If all of these measures are going to cost millions, if not billions, of dollars, where is that money coming from, and what could it be paying for in education in it’s stead? Who are the tax payers and voters that ultimately have to hold this entire process accountable, or at the very least, know enough about it so they can shut it down when it becomes far too cumbersome, inefficient, and completely irrelevant to predicting students’ success in the real world? My fear, is that nobody is watching the watchmen, and they have run amok with our schools.

I recently had the opportunity to spend a day in my old teaching position; an elementary technology class. I was always big on working with media when I taught the class for the 4 years I was in the position, so I took the opportunity to give the students a challenge taken from the pages of ds106, the wonderfully playful and media-rich digital storytelling community. The particular challenge that I gave them comes from the 4 Icon Challenge Assignment found on the ds106 site, and asks those willing to complete it to break down a story into 4 basic elements or themes, and then whittle those 4 ideas down into 4 basic icons. The students LOVED IT! I had them open up Neo Office on their school Macs, though it could just have easily have been done with Pages, MS Word, or some other word processing application. I then walked them through using the advanced Google Image Search to find images that were licensed under Creative Commons as free to use. They could have just used the regular Google Image Search, but I’m a fan of secretly embedding important skills and practices without necessarily droning on about why until after a few projects. The idea is that they’ll be in the habit of using those skills, and have a better understanding of how to use them when I introduce the concept of "why" at a later date in the year. Plus, I only had 45 minutes with each class. I created a simple 4 Icon Challenge on the fly (a simple Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), before turning them loose to create their own. I opened up the assignment a bit as well. The original guidelines called for summarizing a movie or story into four icons, whether it be setting, characters, plot devices, etc. When students asked if they could do TV shows or songs, I told them that was okay, however I did put up one HUGE disclaimer; no one was simply allowed to find images from a movie or television show and use those, as that would make the assignment far too easy. The idea is to assemble 4 rather generic looking icons in an attempt to summarize the story. I actually did that below just for you folks this evening to see if you can guess the story: 4 important elements from a popular series of books While the student didn’t necessarily use the same design aesthetic that I did (I’m going for bonus points), they did come up with a great number of 4 icon summarizes of some rather popular stories and songs. I was working on shared machines, so I couldn’t take screenshots, but I did get some cellphone snaps to share with you. If you’re feeling rather sharp this evening, see if you can guess the student created 4 icon challenges below. a popular children's fable a popular children's tv show a song all of us have heard, at least once a year I love that so many students stepped up to the challenge, and could visually assemble the summary of their stories/songs with very little help from me. Granted, there were a number of students who struggled with some of the basic mechanics of using the computers (copy, paste, dragging and dropping) but the beauty of doing something like this is that all of those students still desperately wanted to completely their 4 icon challenges even if they only one one or two images by the end of the class period. To me, that’s a huge win, because the students were practicing basic computer skills that they need to learn, and doing so in an engaging way, rather than just practicing the skills for the sake of practice. They all wanted to tell the story they had in their head, and were willing to attempt new things on the computer, many of whom repeatedly failed, but in the end all were still engaged with. Those students that finished early wanted to create more challenging summarizes, while some wanted to help those around them (with just words, mind you, not "driving" the computer for them). The students that were stuck on the mechanics were eager to continue practicing. If you wanted to attempt this summarizing strategy in your classroom I would HIGHLY recommend the following guidelines the first few times you try it: Students should choose a well known story (movie, book, fable, etc.) so no one is at a disadvantage for figuring out the summaries. Have the students focus on just one or two elements of the story (settings, characters, plot devices, events, moods, etc.) Don’t let students use the actual images to describe something. For example, when I created my Harry Potter 4 icon challenge, I found an image of a wizard’s hat, NOT Harry Potter himself Don’t worry about using technology! You can do this with pencil and paper. Once the students have it mastered, then move online so it’s easier for students to share their creations on a class website, or some other space. You’ll find that the students will quickly outgrow these guidelines, and the sky really is the limit where you take this visual summarizing strategy, as long as you focus on stories that have clear beginnings, middle, and ends (I saw students trying to do sports, and it just didn’t work well as you had to use the actual images of the game balls, fields, equipment). I could easily see teachers using this to help students at the secondary level process non-fiction passages of reading in science, history, or math. It’s worth giving it a try, and at least seeing how it could be incorporated as an option for students when taking notes, or summarizing what they’ve learned from a lesson or unit. If you try, please feel free to share, and if you guessed any of the 4 icon challenges in this post, please leave your guess in the comments! image credits from my 4 icon challenge above: "ring" - Christopher T. Howlett, from The Noun Project"mountain" - Marco Acri, from The Noun Project "eye" - John Caserta, from The Noun Project "sword" - Christopher T. Howlett, from The Noun Project

On February 11th, 2012, I woke up to 13 inches of fresh snowfall. The night before my driveway had all of half an inch of snow on it, and I was shocked to say the least! What multiplied my amazement even more was that an extremely narrow band of lake effect snow (no more than 5-10 miles across) was dumping this snow on my poor little town along Lake Michigan at an alarming rate. By the end of the event we had over 20 inches of snow on the ground. I managed to capture some of it while snow-blowing the driveway for the second time that day, and I turned it into a video story problem that I hope might be useful as a way to introduce the concept of weather or lake effect weather patterns in a science classroom. While I understand the powerful effect of Lake Michigan on my local weather, I’ve found that quite often people who aren’t from one of the Great Lake states really have a difficult time understanding just what some of the largest fresh water lakes in the world can do. I did my best to sound genuinely curious, and not provide too much misinformation or misconceptions, although I suspect you could easily use a video filled with misconceptions to get your students looking for the "right" answer to a question or two about a concept. I figured that since our rather pathetic winter weather here in Michigan this year is winding down, it might be nice to share that those of us in a tiny corner of southwest Michigan did in fact have at least one decent dumping of snow.

Of all the various ways one could weave a digital story, I’ve noticed that audio seems to be the least favorite medium of both educators and students. Video is by far the king of the digital storytelling spectrum, followed very closely by still images and text based stories. Podcasting has been around for awhile now, and while many may point to that as audio having a strong showing when it comes to digital storytelling, the majority of those podcasts seem to be radio-style narratives. What I refer to as a "red-headed step child" are often the much more complex audio only pieces that rely on sound effects, layering, and other manipulative audio techniques that require story tellers to assemble and work with a medium and skills that most likely they’ve never worked with before. For example, the Sound Effects Story Assignment on ds106 asks learners to assemble a story using only sound clips and sound effects that have no verbal communication whatsoever. In other words, paint a story using only non-spoken audio. While people might simply discount that challenge as easily accomplished by carrying a microphone with them, quite often the audio that accompanies an event doesn’t offer a clear picture of what’s happening, and doesn’t always convey the same sense of "movement" that a story typically has, with a clear beginning, middle, or end. To meet the challenge of the assignment, I assembled 5 different pieces of audio, some captured by me and some downloaded from the fantastic Free Sound Project. You can listen to my "winter walk to church" using the embedded player below. If you can’t see it, you can follow the link here to listen to my sound effect story. I had a blast putting this sound effect story together, but it was incredibly tough! Not from the standpoint of figuring out how to tell the story, but making sure all of the pieces fit together nicely. While spoken audio, or radio style digital storytelling projects are relatively easy to assemble (hence the popularity of creating podcasts), it was a challenge to make sure all of the sound effects "faded" in and out at the appropriate time to make them sound seamless. It took extra time and thought to make sure it sounded as though the worship music was in fact behind the door (playing it very softly), then ramping up the volume dramatically when the sound of the door opening occurs. For those curious, I used the following sound clips to create this sound effect story: 20 seconds of me walking in the snow - I captured this with the voice memo app on my phone, and did a silly duck walk as I crouched down trying to capture the foot steps. I then looped the audio to fill the 60 second story 10 seconds of a car driving by in the slushy road - I captured this with the voice memo app as well, then cut it down and copy and pasted it to produce the effect of multiple cars 30 seconds of my church’s contemporary worship band - again, captured with the voice memo app, then cut down to fit Snow Day 002 (Free Sound Project) - http://www.freesound.org/people/dkettle/sounds/113973/ Metal Push Door (Free Sound Project) - http://www.freesound.org/people/pagancow/sounds/15315/ My guess is that many people would be able to tell a story like this quite easily with text or video; most schools spend a great deal of time on writing, helping students develop a good sense of using "juicy" adjectives, or describing a setting or mood with detail. Capturing the story on video would be a bit more of a challenge as you would have to carefully edit the clips to assemble the story, but being able to film each "scene" or setting would be fairly easy, provided it was Winter time and you had fresh fallen snow. The audio however, was a huge challenge for me. In retrospect I could just be attributing my own experience of working outside my typical comfort zone in assembling an audio story from scratch to others in the K-12 digital storytelling community unjustly. From observations in my school district though, I rarely see teachers doing podcasting or other "audio only" projects with students, let alone attempting to create digital stories like this, using only found or created effects. Am I wrong in my assumption, or do other educators see the area of audio in the digital storytelling spectrum woefully lacking in examples beyond the "podcast" format?

I was recently approached by Dan Spencer of the Jackson County ISD here in Michigan to be apart of the REMC Connected Educator Series. He really enjoyed the idea of all the work a lot of us are doing with Video Story Problems, and wanted to help highlight it at our upcoming state ed tech conference, MACUL. Seeing as the conference typically brings in between 3,000 to 4,000 educators from around Michigan, Canada, and the Midwest, I jumped at the opportunity to highlight not just want I’ve been doing, but hold up a lot of awesome work that other teachers and students in Michigan, Indiana, and Virginia have been doing with the idea of video story problems. It was also an opportunity to reflect on why I started playing around with the concept of video story problems in the first place, and why I think it’s such a powerful model for both bringing real world problems and curiosities into the classroom, as well as a great way for students to tackle some of the Common Core’s Standards for Mathematical Practice. Many of the students have had to model, demonstrate appropriate strategies, and use technology to "explain the mathematics accurately to other students". It’s still an imperfect process, but most learning worth tackling is, and I have no doubt that all involved will continue to grow and get better at using digital media to help students demonstrate math in the real world and share mathematical processes with their peers around the country. Dan Spencer asked me to create an "infommercial" screencast that focused on the basics of creating video story problems for the Connected Educator Series. After watching a number of other screencasts that covered a LOT of information, I wanted to create something that was simpler, and allowed me to showcase several examples of video story problems without the need for me to drone on and on. Below is the screencast I put together last weekend with the help of my daughter, teachers Brian Bennet, students from Michigan in Sean Dardis and Ben Curran’s classrooms and students from Virginia in Tyler Hart’s classroom. If you can’t view the embedded youtube video below, you can watch it here as well. I really wanted this presentation to be a "Video Story Problems for Dummies" type introduction, as I don’t claim to have as great an understanding of mathematical concepts beyond the rather simple elementary topics of numeracy, fractions, and number sense. I do have a decent grasp on creating digital media, including video work, and wanted to showcase several different ways teachers and students are using video to capture and/or create mathematical learning experiences. There are certainly a LOT more people involved with the video story problem project, but I wasn’t able to fit them all in to the screencast for time reasons. I would highly recommend also checking out videos from Chad Conklin, Jason Osborn, Derk Oosting, and Jason Valade. While I’ll be giving a brief overview of the concept next week at the annual MACUL Conference in Grand Rapids during an "Innovation Zone" presentation, there are several other ways to learn more about video story problems, and how you can get started with them in your classroom. Check out some of the links below to learn more. Video Story Problem Channel - All of the currently submitted to the VSP Channel on Vimeo are found here, and you’re welcome to hare your own if you create some, just contact me! Sean Dardis’ Video Problem "Think Through Form" - A nice graphic organizer to get learners thinking about the steps and processes needed to create a video story problem. Ben Curran’s "Leave Your Mark" post on VSP - A nice reflection on all of the "hidden" lessons students have to learn while creating a learning artifact for others. My Video Story Problem Planning Template - A simple graphic organizer for getting students started.

This year at the annual MACUL Conference there were a number of firsts. We had over 3,900 educators from around the state and the Midwest attend, making it one of the biggest conferences in many years, over 1.2 terabytes of data was transferred from attendees devices to the internet and back, and I was actually able to attend a session in which I able to chat with the featured speaker afterwards over lunch. I’ve always been a fan of the idea of "exploratory learning". Had I not possessed this undying devotion to working in public schools, I might have sought out a teaching position at a private Montessori school, where I could have helped students nurture their own independence and curiosity in a much less "standardized test craze" environment. As it is, here I sit, in a public school building, excited and humbled that I can work with amazing teachers and students that allow for explorative learning. In his featured presentation on Powerful PD, Rushton Hurley spoke of getting teachers to "open up" to whatever it is that may be new, not so much because it’s better than the old, but rather because you never know when you might find something engaging and exciting. I’ve been working on that for the last year in my district, and after building a LOT of relationships with teachers, I’m finally ready to start sharing their amazing work, because what’s often overlooked at large conferences is that it takes a lot for many educators to share. For better or worse, many of us in the teaching field are quite comfortable leading a group of 28 twelve-year olds, and sharing their work in the hallway, but when it comes to sharing their work with colleagues, standing in front of a room at a conference in which other adults will be scrutinizing their work, the situation is very much different. I’ve seen veteran teachers clam up, sweat, get butterflies, and while I experience the same anxiety of public speaking, I’ve always looked at presenting in front of my peers as something that makes my own instruction better, and is an essential part of the two-way street that sharing and collaborating requires. I’ve spent a lot of time building relationships with the teachers that I work with to make sure that they feel confident in sharing their work, and more importantly, they understand how much I value the work and activities they’re doing with their students. Honoring fear, something that was essential to Rushton’s talk, is something that I put a lot of value in, and brushing off fears in a complacent manner can get you into hot water, especially if a teacher isn’t ready to present on their own, and you leave them high and dry when it comes time for them to stand up in front of an audience because you forgot about your own schedule (it’s happened before, and I’m not proud of it). So I got excited about the possibilities of "shifting" the sharing to on online forum, someplace where I could share teachers’ work without having the anxiety that some teachers feel when standing in front of their peers. I created the Mattawan Learning Connection (still very much in its infancy) where all teachers in my district can share student work, discover resources, and have an audience without having to stand up and perform in front of them. That’s not to say the work I’m sharing couldn’t be showcased by the teachers themselves, but it’s an easy way to get exciting happenings from the classroom up quickly and broadly. This blog has been up for a little more than a month, and as I’ve assembled all the pieces, it was this year’s trip to MACUL, and the words of Mr. Hurley to encourage me to "go all in" and dedicate a lot of my time from now until the end of the school year on getting into classrooms, sharing what I’m seeing, and getting teachers to share themselves on the blog. "There is something cool that happens on your campus everyday" - Rushton Hurley, MACUL 2012 My intention then after this MACUL experience is to be the "ambassador of cool" for my school district. I want to share and encourage sharing all the amazing little things that the teachers in my district do with the world, not just for their sake, but for the sake of parents, students, and others in the community that would love to look a little closer into powerful practice in our district. That’s my goal for helping others fight their fears about growing and sharing. If you’d like, follow along!  

Late last summer I went on a video-binge, capturing so many video story problem concepts that my iPhone and Flip cam regularly ran out of battery power before mid-afternoon snack time. While recharging and importing all of the videos to my laptop, I dumped all of the videos in folder, which I mostly forgot about until recently. Most of the videos weren’t terribly interesting after looking at them a second time, but a few stood out, particularly one I took from a playground at an elementary school somewhere in the middle of the "thumb" area of Michigan. The playground had one of those "zip line" pieces of playground equipment, and I couldn’t resist a chance to zip across the playground. It reminded me of my intern teaching, when I put together a small project, asking the students to share examples of Newton’s Laws of Motion in the real world. At the time, the students put together scrap-book like projects with magazine pictures glued onto notecards and whatever other materials they could find at home. I love those sorts of open-ended student assessment projects, and that thought popped into my head as I hurled myself along the zip line, so I got out my camera, and my lovely wife captured the video for the science challenge video below. If you can’t see it, you can follow the link here to view. I’m not sure if I asked the question correctly, or even if it’s as open ended as I thought it was when I was "geeked" up on playground fun, but I left the challenge open for students to create their own videos as well. What’s more important, is that any teacher could use a simple video prompt like this to get students up and out into the "real world" and complete assessments! That’s not to say I’m looking for a way to push more work into home time, but rather, find a way to get students engaged enough about what’s happening inside the classroom that they might actually want to keep exploring topics and the world around them outside of the classroom. What they bring back would be an excellent way to check for their understanding in the middle of a unit, or just give them a chance to show you that they’re playing with the concepts from the classroom.

I’m a huge fan of the Seinfeld TV show. Despite being in middle school when the show first aired, as I began to understand the world with a bit more cynism and farce as I entered high school, Seinfeld came to be the lens through which I perceived the world of hypocrisy, people behaving poorly, and observational comedy. There was a particular episode during the last season, in which one of the main characters, Frank Costanza, had been diagnosed with having high blood pressure. In an attempt to relieve himself of stress, he is advised to repeat the calming mantra "serenity now" when he feels his stress level rising. In true comedic fashion, whenever Frank begins to feel stressed during the episodes he yells, "SERENITY NOW!" at the top of his lungs, completely negating the calming effects that a peaceful mantra might have, and providing plenty of laughs during the episode. If Inner Peace truly was available at Target, I think the world would be a much better place. I often wonder how many people use a calming mantra effectively, and being someone who is far too hyper-aware of media, I’m always drawn to those calming music kiosks you see at many big box retailers like Target. I decided to produce a 10 minute video of calming music and scenery that might actually have some sort of beneficial nature when viewed, and then create a ds106 video assignment out of it. You can watch the video below, or see it on Youtube by following this link. The nature scenes in the video are very repetitious, which is by choice. I was hoping to produce a variant of the 10 minute "Insane Edition" Youtube challenge, in which a small piece of audio or video is repeated for ridiculous effect, and then copy and pasted for a total of 10 minutes. Many of these videos are nothing more than the same 3 or 4 seconds of video in a constant 10 minute long repetitive loop, making it a challenge to sit through. Since I didn’t feel that the idea of providing serenity would be met with the same structure, I took three video clips that I gathered this last weekend at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, and cut them down to about 52 seconds each. I then repeated those same 3 clips to create the sense of circular passage of time, rather than linear. I then went hunting over at Soundcloud for a 10 minute piece of ambient music that someone had shared with a creative commons license for resuse, and I found this wonderful gem of a tune by "Psyeck" titled "Elements of Nature". The music is very serene, and the imagery coupled with it actually produced a rather calming effect for me. I’ll admit, it’s very simplistic, and in hindsight, I would have gathered more video clips for this, as I didn’t want to rely on "off the shelf" stock footage. I wanted the video to all be mine, reflecting places that I found serene. So why in the world am I sharing this then? Well for starters, I’m a HUGE fan of using imagery, video, and music to affect the mood of my classroom. I kept several playlists of different music to help coordinate and frame the different periods and activities throughout the day in my class. Peaceful quiet music for reading or independent work time, Classical music for taking tests, and high energy music for group work or bell time. This video would be something I could have used at the end of a long week, or a way to get students to try and "clear" their minds before doing some reflection. HOWEVER, pushing aside all of those touchy, hippie-like sentiments, an assignment like this might give a teacher an excellent window into their student’s lives. Ask them what calms them, what brings them to their center, and makes them feel safe. Maslow contested that if learners don’t feel comfortable and secure, then higher-order learning objectives would be very difficult to achieve, and asking your students to create something personal like this could help to establish the professional bond that teachers have with learners. It wouldn’t require much class time, and even if you did have students put this project together in class, it would be an amazing way to assess how well they understood emotion and persuasive storytelling through video and other media, a skill that is rapidly becoming necessary in an increasingly digital world.

I’m a terrible poet. No really, I am. Whether it’s over-using simplistic imagery devices, abusing similes, or providing rather juvenile metaphors that make other novice poetry writer’s efforts seem sublime, I can’t write consistently decent lines of verse to save my life. Which is why I need practice! So much of our educational experiences, including our own and those we thrust upon our students, is building up to the holy grail of reading and writing, the all hallowed "final draft". We become so fixated on that final goal, it’s often easy to miss all of the tiny little daily writing opportunities that help our students become better incrementally, and emphasize the process and practice over the final product. I don’t think I’d find many teachers that would argue with me on this point, but I do know many teachers that are often shoe-horned into instructional practice that has been prescribed by their school district or programs that are designed with a focus on "the test" or some other end goal. Which is one reason why I’ve been heralding certain aspects of the Common Core State Standards, specifically the "College and Career Readiness" standards for Grades 6-12 in ELA: Taken from the Common Core ELA Standards for College and Career Readiness for Writing - Grades 6-12 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences. There are many aspects of the Common Core State Standards which give teachers opportunities to participate in regular, online writing endeavors, and last year I created one such tool, the Poetry for People project. It was a bit clumsy, and I locked it down so that people had to be registered users, but I focused on just a few simple ideas; short daily writing tasks, publishing of student writing to the web in a collaborative manner, and focus on appropriate task and audience. This year, I’ve opened up the platform a lot (you can participate without an account), and emphasized ease of access by including Twitter and email subscription integration. I did away with all of the large trappings of a social network, and tried to make the Poetry for People project a very open, lightweight tool that teachers and students could do every day in about 5-10 minutes, or ignore for a week or two without worrying about not participating. It’s very much akin to the ds106 Daily Create site; you participate when you can, and no apologies for not participating. Click the image to visit the Poetry for People daily poetry writing project So with that, I’d like to invite you to come write some crummy, or magnificent, poetry with me each day in April. I know that I’ll get better the more I write, but more importantly, I’ll get better faster if there are lots of people writing along with me, sharing their poetic expertise, and providing me a glimpse into other perspectives, voices, and experiences! I’ve made it fairly easy for a teacher to use it with their classes. Every day in April, the site presents a daily poetry-writing prompt (around 10 AM eastern standard time). Each prompt takes the form of an inspiring image, and a suggested poetic form. Users of the site are encouraged to come back each and every day in April to share, read, and inspire others. It doesn’t matter if you’re a poetry novice, or a master wordsmith. The mood, style, or feeling of the poem is up to you, but please make sure to read the project guidelines before posting your poem. The project is dedicated to providing poets of all ages with a place to practice their craft, and give them a big audience. In addition to meeting several Common Core Teaching standards, this project hopes to serve as a model for effective and responsible online sharing, learning, and collaboration within a K-16 educational setting. For extra fun, feel free to submit an inspiring image to the project, because it’s more fun when you’re a part of any activity when you’re helping to shape it.

STEM is one of those edu-acronyms that gets tossed out at large conferences, as models for new innovative schools, and a "catch all" for science and math stuff lately, yet it still seems to mystify many teachers. An informal poll of teachers in my district revealed that while a good portion of them knew that it stood for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, many of them weren’t sure what it meant beyond students taking a more project based approach to science and math. Other teachers I’ve talked with around the state have a similar understanding, but a growing number of them have begun to understand that STEM is really about flipping the traditional classroom structure, from teacher-centered learning to more inquiry, problem solving, and exploratory learning. Yes, science, technology, and math play an important role in that, but language and communication skills are also are an important part of the STEM classroom; students must be able to effectively communicate with small groups, whole class, and project-groups both in face to face and online settings. My daughter programming the LEGO Mindstorm Robot with her very own special program. She was pretty proud. The stereotypical view of the STEM classroom is that of a group of students busily working around a robot (LEGO or otherwise) or some other highly technical piece of equipment, but that’s not always the case. Simply maintaining a classroom environment that focuses on hands on learning, student exploration, and experiential learning activities hits upon many of the STEM tenets. During a blogger’s round table I was fortunate to be a part of courtesy of LEGO Education in St. Louis last November, I shared a very sad story about a group of middle school science teachers down in Loxahatchee, Florida that had decided they were no longer going to allow students to do hands-on labs. Their justification was that labs are messy, introduce lots of opportunity for student failure, and don’t actually help move student data in a positive direction. To hell with data, I say! What about the powerful hands-on experience of failure; accepting it, learning to get past it, and most importantly, learning how to succeed afterwards. That’s not going to show in data, it’s not going to show in high-stakes testing, and yet these science teachers were claiming that’s all they were focused on now, the data. I brought up the article to make a point during the discussion I was having with Audrey Watters, David Banks, Eric Brunsell, and folks from both LEGO Education and National Instruments. As excited as people are about hands-on exploratory learning that will truly better prepare students for the real world, there exists a HUGE morass of reasons why schools aren’t willing to step away from the high-stakes testing prep model. Fear is the biggest of those reasons; fear of loss of stature, fear of falling test scores, and fear of the "unknown". So how can you begin to convince teachers in this mindset that the STEM approach might actually help students, address fear in a positive way, and allow us to explore education that doesn’t directly address high stakes testing? Audrey had a great post right after the STEM Summit that talks about how we need to start putting responsibility back in the hands of the student. When we hand students worksheets, bubble tests, clickers, and other prescribed forms of "learning", there’s no ownership, and certainly no sense of the type of responsibility we want students to have with their learning. We don’t have to return responsibility just through science and math though, we can do it in many ways, especially through some public narration, curation, and sharing of their learning experiences. Stephen Heppel understands this all too well. I was able to see one of his masterfully crafted student showcases in which the students were presenting high-level collaborative projects that most adults aren’t capable of achieving. Student powered mobile game development, CNC programming, robotics, and more were all on display last summer in St. Clair County, Michigan at "Be Very Afraid Extra". I don’t share this from the standpoint that these students were capable of working with applications and devices that adults couldn’t manage, but rather these students were working together in a way that most teachers (and often parents) don’t allow students to do, because they feel like students won’t be able to handle the responsibility, or don’t possess the skills to tackle large problems that the STEM model heralds. Unfortunately, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy if teachers don’t ever give students the chance to tackle large problems on their own, fail, and then provide the support their learners need to overcome that failure, adjust course, and continue on. Why all of this background information on a topic that has been around for awhile? It wasn’t until earlier this month when I really started to put all of these theories to the test. My 6 year old daughter and I built a LEGO Mindstorm Robot that LEGO Education was very nice enough to send me, and together we experienced the STEM model first hand. In fact, we made a time lapse of the unpacking, robot construction, and subsequent "play" after our build was done. You can see the time lapse below, or click here to view it on Vimeo. Besides the fact that I got a chance to use one of my new favorite apps, Frameography, to create the time lapse with my iPad, I was able to witness firsthand what many of the teachers on the discussion panels at the LEGO Summit were expressing when they talked passionately about students using all sorts of skills to effectively complete problem-based projects. Because LEGO build diagrams contain only images and no text, my daughter and I had to stop, tear down, and rebuild quite a few smaller pieces and structures of our robot during the overall build due to some of our mistakes. While the images were very helpful, there were times when our excitement to build the robot caused us to rush, make mistakes, and use incorrect parts. This allowed us the opportunity to better understand the construction of the device, and why certain parts were assembled in a given fashion. It also taught us that slowing down a bit can be beneficial at times. At one point we were presented with a challenge of which size "rods" to use. Before realizing that the pieces in the manual were drawn life size so we could easily match the correct size rods to the designs, we were trying to come up with our own way of sorting them on length, good practice for arranging, sorting, and curating the tools we had available to us. My daughter and I had a great time trying to figure out which unit of measurement LEGO was using, even if we didn't figure it out. When we realized that we could easily use the manual to determine which size rods we needed, we were then presented with another learning opportunity. Each rod was marked with a number. My daughter cheerfully suggested that the numbers were in inches, which I immediately knew was incorrect as a piece no bigger than three or four inches was marked as a 7. I told her I had doubts, and then asked her what we could do to make sure. "A ruler, daddy!" was her reply, so we grabbed a tape measure from the kitchen junk drawer and started measuring. It wasn’t inches, and after some thought, we found a metric ruler, and discovered that it wasn’t in centimeters either. We were puzzled, but we enjoyed the fact we had stumbled across a minor mystery, and had come up with some reasonable ways we could tackle it, even if we didn’t discover what those numbers meant (if you know, please share, my daughter and I would love to know!). By the time the robot was finished, my daughter and I had not only been able to practice a heap of communication and teamwork skills (we had to decide who would build which part, take turns being the "part collector" and the "builder", etc.), but we had managed to work in several basic mathematics and science concepts. The best part of the build were the little programming tutorials and examples that LEGO builds into the process. With the addition of each new sensor or motor, the building instructions give you a simple 5 step program that you can input using the robot’s NXT "brick" (the big box with the display and the orange button). We were only able to play with the motors and the light sensor during our initial build, but it was very easy, and my 6 year old figured it out after just a few minutes. It reminded me of programming the old Logo turtle application, only the feedback was much more visceral in that we got to see our robot move around in a physical space, bumping into things, rather than a few pixels on a screen. It was so simple to program that after adding the light sensor my daughter wanted to create her own program for the robot, which I gladly let her do. She came up with her own simple program that controlled the robot’s movement forward by waving her hand in front of the motion sensor. In fact she wanted to share the story of it being built, which you can view below, or watch here over on Vimeo. And that’s when it clicked for me! I finally understood what STEM was all about! It wasn’t from listening to other teachers laud the instructional methods behind STEM education, it wasn’t a fancy conference that showcased innovative uses of technology, it was from me and my daughter, tackling a project by ourselves. To be fair, the great conferences and conversations with teachers prepped me for the moment, nudging me towards a shared experience of struggling and success with my daughter, something that all teachers are capable of achieving with their students. What really pushed me over the tipping point was the shared learning and exploration that I had with my daughter (lots of great discussion and scaffolding of learning concepts happened during this), followed by her independent exploration of the programming tools. It took the both of us learning together to introduce her to certain concepts, and become familiar with certain tools, followed by her own exploratory programming and play to complete the full learning experience not just for her, but for both of us. While my daughter was learning what amazing things she could make her robot do, I was learning how the idea of STEM education helps the learning environment model many real-world project oriented tasks. Now all I need to do is figure out how to help the teachers in my district have their own "robot building" experience.

I’m a HUGE fan of Google Earth. Ever since the terribly buggy and laggy days of its first incarnations, I’ve used the resources provided by it, oogled monumental structures from space, and found ways to encourage teachers to use it more in their classroom. Sometimes I get pushback from teachers wanting a resource that’s more accessible to students, doesn’t require the internet, and will always be there even if the power goes out (I believe they call these things maps, and they’re printed on paper). Other times I get teachers looking for ways to provide the sort of visuals that wouldn’t be possible with any form of conventional maps, and love all of the layers and information that the infinitely extensible Google Earth can provide. Whichever is the case, I find that if I’m not actually teaching, I forget about how amazingly and ridiculously awesome Google Earth is, which is a shame. So it was with great delight that I found a really cool tool via the Google Earth Blog that encouraged me to dig through some of my past links for Google Earth resources. The result was a great trip down memory lane, exploring resources both beloved and lost, and uncovering new gems that are providing me lots of excuses to once again share Google Earth’s resources with the teachers in my building. I thought I’d lay out a few here to see if anyone else discovers (or rediscovers) something that might help rejuvenate your interest in Google Earth. Check out the floating fleet of SES satellites above our heads SES Satellite Fleet Coming from the Google Earth Blog, this really great Google Earth browser plugin tool lets you check out all of the "geo-stationary" orbits of several of SES’s satellites. Besides being a fantastic excuse to pretend you’re a character from Star Trek and use the word geo-stationary, it’s a great way to help students understand how far out satellites are, what they’re communicating with on the ground, and the importance of "line of sight" transmission. Check out the SES Satellite Fleet here. Use fantastic literature discussion guides embedded in Google Earth with your students Google Lit Trips Google Lit Trips is an oldie, but goodie! Imagine taking one of your favorite "journey" novels (Watsons go to Birmingham, Candide, Walk Two Moons, etc.) and embedding the discussion guide within Google Earth! You and your students can follow the journey taken by the characters in the book, talk about the setting with contextual imagery and street views, and include all sorts of opportunities to bring Social Studies content into literature discussions! Check out Google Lit Trips here! Ancient Rome in Google Earth! I am a total ancient history nut, so when you find a resource that shows you over 6,000 historical 3D buildings from the ancient city of Rome, I get really geeked. Interiors, high detail, and lots of other historical information is shared through this giant Google Earth map. Make sure you’re running a recently new machine to handle all of this content. Check out Ancient Rome in Google Earth here! It's a global game of hide and seek! PlaceSpotting Imagine playing Marco Polo or Hide and Seek on a global scale! Now mix in Google Earth so it doesn’t take several hours of plane travel, and you’ve got PlaceSpotting. It’ an awesome way to help students practice basic map skills, including latitude and longitude reading. The concept is pretty simple; you’re given an undisclosed location in Google Earth, and then you have to find it, using the clues provided. Once you feel like you’ve successfully located the "hidden" spot, you can check your answer to see if you’re right. Send "geo-hunt" quizzes to friends, or create your own, it’s like having you own mini version of Amazing Race! Check out PlaceSpotting here! I could go on and on with all of the amazing resources shared on the web that tap into the power of Google’s virtual globe software, and the ways you could use them in the classroom, but the point is that it’s quite often a great idea to come back and revisit a resource or piece of software that you haven’t used in awhile, because you’ll never know how it might surprise you when given a fresh look. There’s more than enough here to get me fired up and putting together some Google Earth sessions for my teachers at our annual "tech camp" this summer, and perhaps go on a Google Earth binge into the next school year.

It’s no secret that I’m a "hit and miss poet". While I’d like to believe that my expository writing has improved since I started writing on a regular basis via this blog 7 years ago (I’ll let you pass judgement on the quality of my writing), I find that prose and other literary forms escape my realm of competence. Sure, I can turn out a decent poem or two if given enough time to consider meter, verse, and similes that don’t harken back to my grade school days. In fact, I feel that I wrote a rather decent cinquain inspired by this image today. What luminous delights are these that flit and slide across the screen they flicker forth new life and tease of new found exploration’s sheen glowing dreams for us to glean On the other hand, more often than not my poems are much more pedestrian. Consider the following "silly" short poem I pieced together for this image of a shower curtain covered in fish. swim, swim, swim scrub, scrub, scrub wash your hair in the tub, tub, tub rinse, rinse, rinse dry, dry, dry bath time with fishes for you and I, I, I The purpose for sharing my poetry isn’t to fish for compliments or beg forgiveness from making it public. The idea is to encourage sharing and exploration. Which is why I put together the Poetry for People project. Taking some basic ideas borrowed from the Common Core Standards for ELA, I wanted to help encourage teachers and students to start sharing their work openly in small doses. The "College and Career Readiness" standards for Writing at the 6-12 level make it clear that we need to have our secondary students sharing, publishing, and collaborating with others on a regular basis via the internet. That doesn’t mean sharing long-winded finished products like research papers or persuasive essays is the norm, it also means sharing short little bursts of creative exploration. Consider the standards I cherry-picked below: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences. What does this have to do with you then? I’d love for you and your students to come explore the type of open sharing, collaboration, and regular creative expression each day in April with the Poetry for People site! It takes all of 5 minutes to participate each day, and I’d love to have you and your students practicing "routine writing" over very short time frames all April long in celebration of National Poetry Month! Just follow the link below, or click on the image to visit the site, follow all of the poems via Twitter, or just grab some visual poetry prompts for use in your classroom. There’s no formal setup or registration, just write when you can, as often as you’d like. Oh, and if you really get into it, consider sharing an image for others to write poems with! Click the image to visit the Poetry for People daily poetry writing project Poetry for People Project - Daily visual poetry prompts all April long!