My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Piraino (you can imagine the nicknames we had for her), was a teacher that loved creativity. Every year she transformed her entire room into Santa’s workshop, letting her students build life size reindeer out of cardboard and decorate the walls with paper-crafted strings of garland. During the small group novel studies, she encouraged students to build dioramas, even entire set pieces for scenes from her favorite books. But while she would let our creativity run wild for large projects, I always sensed that her comfort with letting her students "play" with learning concepts was always a bit more straight-jacketed. What elementary student wouldn't find this both funny and awesome? I remember while learning about homophones, she read aloud to us from "A Chocolate Moose for Dinner", a popular children’s picture book filled with images depicting what idioms and homophones might actually look like if they were real. She gave us an assignment to try and come up with our own homophones and idiomatic phrases, then illustrate them for comedic effect (i.e. "my dad put a new wing on the house" would turn into a drawing of a house with a feathery wing stuck to the side of it.). I failed miserably at the assignment. It wasn’t from lack of effort though; I illustrated half a dozen homophones that I hadn’t seen or heard in any of the books my teacher had used, and I was proud of "playing" around with the concept. Sadly, I had the assignment returned with red marker all over it, so I gave it a second go; still no good. After a week of trying to play around with the concept, and receiving little to no feedback beyond the red marks of "try again", I finally just turned in some copies of illustrated homophones and idioms lifted from one of Fred Gwynne’s books. I passed the assignment. While Mrs. Piraino had an amazing streak of creativity that I will be forever thankful for, I remember that one assignment as an example of how she didn’t really allow us to "play" when learning new concepts, or rather, she didn’t take into consideration or make note of the progress we were making while we played, and sometimes struggled, to make sense of some new piece of information. To this day I’ll never know if I actually understood homophones back in 5th grade, but what I did take away from the experience is that as a learner, I feel that I’m learning best when someone is supporting my playful learning, failure, and struggles, rather than just saying "copy what’s in the book". I’ve found that trying to build new understanding, whether it’s difficult topics like encouraging social activism or just learning how to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro, I usually learn best when working, failing, playing around with ideas,  and building something new with the support of a community. Which is why I’m so enamored with the ds106 community. They are a powerful community of educators that understand how to support one another through play, social media, and constructive criticism. To be fair, the ds106 community has its own set of quirks, trolls, and problems, but any group of people that gives me the opportunity to re-mix the train chase at the end of Back to the Future 3 as a silent movie, and then applaud my sophomoric video editing efforts, deserves high praise in my book. Check out "Silent Era Back to the Future - Dr. Brown to the Rescue", my "Return to the Silent Era" ds106 assignment submission below. If you want to view it on youtube, just follow the link here. So why the lengthy introduction for this movie? I felt my experience offered some value in helping to better understand how I learn, and why I teach the way I do. Whether it’s working with young learners or adults, I have always despised the "carbon copy" approach to learning, in which the students are expected to produce a reasonable facsimile of the teacher’s example in order to prove they’ve acquired new skills. Whether it’s learning a new writing form, practicing math skills, or learning a new piece of software, I find myself growing ever more fond of allowing learners to create what they want to create, or at least giving them a challenge to create something in a particular style, but giving them completely free reign over the subject. I followed that belief in my attempts to learn Adobe Premiere Pro, a terribly difficult video editing platform (I come from several years of just using the simple iMovie and Windows Movie Maker), and rather than just follow some simplistic "paint by number" tutorial on how to use the tools that Premiere Pro provides, I decided to do it the hard, yet infinitely more enjoyable way, by choosing a project and jumping in with both feet. How I made "Silent Era" Back to the Future - Dr. Brown to the Rescue I started with the following clip of the original train chase scene from Back to the Future 3: In order to make it look like it came from a silent film, I had to get it downloaded from the web first, so I used my good friend KeepVid, which allows you to download many different formats of YouTube videos. I chose the 480p version in hopes that would keep my video project on the small side. After downloading the clip I imported it into Premiere Pro and used the "razor tool" to slice it up and remove some of the bits of video. Note, the razor tool was great after getting used to it, but I much prefer having a nice keyboard shortcut so I could just line up the playhead and cut away with the shortcut. If I missed that shortcut, or an easier way of using the tool, please share! You can find the razor tool with all the editing tools, but I couldn't find a keyboard shortcut After slicing and dicing the original video clip to remove a few unwanted portions (although in retrospect I would have cut a lot more out to create a more polished flow with the music), I was ready to start playing with the "aging" process. Apparently there are a a lot of thoughts on how to best make a piece of footage look like it came from the silent era using Adobe Premiere Pro. Some people suggested using posterize and fast blur effects on keyframes to produce the "jumpiness" and uneven exposure of old silent film. I wasn’t quite ready to dive into key frames (perhaps on the next project), so instead I just focused on the degradation of quality, black and white, and film grain. I selected all of my video footage and then applied some of Premiere’s built in video affects by dragging them over to the Effects Control pane. Noise, Black & White, and Gaussian Blur effects helped produce the right low quality look I was looking for, while the Lighting Effects allowed me to add that "vignette" like effect with a few soft spotlights. The video effects and the setting I used to create the "aged" look Merely making the film look old didn’t quite do it for me. I played around with a lot of the other video effects (there are a ton more than what I’m used to in iMovie), but none of them seemed to add what I was looking for without investing a lot of time fine tuning each setting. That’s when I decided to go digging around the internet some more and came up with this great Particle Illusion project that had a video overlay of 8 seconds worth of film grain, scratches, noise, and flickering. I simply looped the 8 seconds over and over for the entire length of the film to ensure that it had all of the same noise from beginning to end. Making the film look like it had come from the silent era was only half of the task, however. After making sure that the video footage looked reasonably old, I had to make sure that it sounded right (since silent films were typically accompanied by a piano), along with some title cards to share dialogue spoken on screen. I decided to complete the title cards first, since I like to save music and audio for the very end. By finalizing the video and stills first, I have a clear idea of just how much music I’ll need, so I started looking for a "silent film" title card. I came across this awesome silent film title card by Farrin who blogs over at CopyCatFilms. Not only was this a high quality piece of work that she had produced using Adobe Illustrator, she had provided it for free, yay! If you take a look at an image of the original title card below and the final version you’ll notice a few changes. I opened up Farrin’s title card in Photoshop, removed the fleur-de-leis, and replaced it with a snippet from this graphic of the flux capacitor (it’s what makes time travel possible, don’t you know). I’ve already blogged about the awesome Back to the Future font that I found on dafont.com, so I just used it again to create each of the title cards. I turned down the opacity of the flux capacitor image and the text to help age it a bit to match the aesthetic of the original title card. Notice the "yellowish" tint to the final card? That’s from the film grain and noise video overlay that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. title card before I made a few modifications title card after adding the flux capacitor and text Once I had successfully spliced together all of the title cards, my aged video footage, and the video effects, my last stop was music. While many people have commented that they would have liked to have seen this video with an "old timey" piano version of the Back to the Future theme, I was hard pressed to find one. Oh sure, you can find plenty of piano renditions on YouTube of the main theme, but many of them aren’t terribly polished, and none of them really captured what I was looking for. It worked out for the best, because I was able to find this amazing collection of royalty-free silent film scores over at Incompetech (such as awesome name) by Kevin Macleod. I used a couple of tracks from the site, one being "Iron Horse Distressed" which was perfect for producing that stereotypical "silent film train chase" atmosphere while Doc Brown and Clara are struggling to hold on for their lives. The second piece, "Merry Go Distressed" was a chance to be a bit playful with the storytelling, as this much more cheerful music kicked in after Doc successfully rescues Clara with the help of Marty and the hoverboard. The original speed of the tunes didn’t quite fit well for me (they were too slow for the action in the video), so I used the Clip Speed/Duration pane in Premiere to adjust the speed of the audio clip to produce a much more "frantic" train chase. Although I didn’t alter the speed of the video, having the faster music almost makes it appear as though the action is sped up as well to me. Having access to "distressed" music also helped add to the ambience of the piece in my mind. playing with the speed of a music clip can often change he entire mood of a video Once everything was tweaked to my liking, I then had the the fun task of learning a new way to get my finished project out of Adobe Premiere and uploaded to the internet. It seems as though no two video editing application are alike for even the simplest of tasks like exporting your final piece; iMovie uses the Share menu, Windows Movie Maker Live has you Publish your videos, and Adobe Premiere uses a much more straight forward Export command. My first attempt to export the video resulted in a helper application being opened, the Adobe Media Encoder. While it was quick, I realized I had exported a low quality version of my movie, so I went back to the FILE>EXPORT>MEDIA command, choose the Quicktime format to export too, and then checked a tiny little box that I hadn’t before called "Use Maximum Render Quality" which took a bit more time, but apparently didn’t need to open the Media Encoder (at least I didn’t see it open), and produced a much higher quality video. Sometimes it's easy to miss little things like this checkbox With that, my day long editing and remixing task was over! While I had worked on this piece off and on for the better part of the Friday before Spring Break (I had the day off of school), in total I must have spent about 5-6 hours editing this together; not terribly long or difficult, just time consuming as I learned what each of the video effects did, searched for tips and resources, even stopping to figure out just how to export the final product. It probably took me longer than if I had followed some basic tutorials in a text or watched a few prescribed videos, but the end result was a labor of very playful love, and I value the time spent with the entire project that much more because I was able to play, and fail a few times, on my own! Want to try remixing one of your favorite films as a "Silent Era" movie? Head over to the ds106 assignment bank and give it a try!

I don’t mean to imply that this video fits the generally accepted definition of propaganda; I don’t find anything particularly biased or misleading. Instead, I applaud the Common Core State Standard Consortium in their attempt of tackling the huge task of informing educators about what the Common Core Standards are all about. I just wish it wasn’t so cheesy. This is a HUGE time in education. The "powers that be" are finally giving educators standards that blend both the "what" and the "how" of education, have built in structures for students to fail (on purpose, crazy huh?), and demand that we bring real world challenges into our classroom on a regular basis. While technology will play an increasingly important role in that last idea, what will be more important is that educators be willing to let go of entrenched lessons, projects, and activities that only reinforce the "what" of education. If someone could create a piece of propaganda that speaks to the honest need for serious change in "how" we educate students, I imagine it would be much less "cutesy" than the above video.

Sean Astin and Kevin Bacon starred in a film back in the late 80s titled White Water Summer. What starts as a rather innocent summer camping trip meant to help shape a few young men’s outdoor survival skills while teaching important life lessons, turns into a battle of wills. Alan, a teen more focused on sports, computers, and isn’t entirely excited about "roughing it" begins to butt heads with Vic, the lone adult leader of this wilderness adventure. Alan, played by Sean Astin, tries to use his wits and crafts several "smarter" ways of getting things done in the great outdoors, one of the more powerful scenes being his creation of a fishing trap, catching a horde of fish for dinner. Vic, the "do it the right way" leader, admonishes Alan for using his brains rather than his brawn, and after berating him in front of the other campers, he forces Alan to gut all of the fish himself (something Alan doesn’t seem excited about), and leaves him on a small island in the middle of the lake, telling him to signal when he’s done. Alan of course, becomes disgusted, and not only doesn’t signal that he’s finished, but sleeps outside in the rain just to spite Vic’s harsh "life lesson". The battle between the two only escalates from there, to the point where Vic severely injures himself while trying to teach Alan another lesson. It then turns to Alan to see the entire troop safely down the mountain, using a mix of both Vic’s survival skills and Alan’s ingenuity. Other than being a rather rudimentary and rushed description of the scene, it’s an excellent metaphor for how I see myself as a learner. It’s not that I want to be obstinate, and purposefully look for ways to "circumvent" what it is that any of my teachers have asked me to do (I asked my 5th grade teacher if I could dress up as an actual flag-pole sitter for our class musical about the roaring 20s rather than dress in a white shirt with a bow tie). I’ve recognized over my 33 years on this planet that I have a fierce independent streak within me, and quite often it shows itself in the learning environment. I want to learn "my way", reflect upon and build new knowledge in ways that make sense to me, whether they mesh with a given assignment or not, and I’ve butted heads a couple of times with instructors who don’t seem to "get" that what I’m doing is not only helping me learn, but doing so in a much more personal and meaningful way than the assignment they’ve doled out. That’s not to say that I don’t get along well with my teachers and colleagues, but when your 7th grade science teacher yells out across the room as class is being dismissed, "that’s another nail in the coffin, Rimes" it makes you wonder whether or not you should dial back just how independent you are. So as I write this letter to any other obstinate learners out there, I say strike a balance! Work with your teacher, but just don’t accept assignments and tasks given to you by your teacher as the simple tasks they may be, completing them without question. Find ways that you can make some of them your own; find ways to inject your own personality into them. Case in point; this letter was supposed to be written as a letter home from camp. Not an actual camp that Alan had to endure under Vic’s leadership, but a virtual one. I’m helping out as a "Camp Counselor" for ds106′s Camp Magic Macguffin for the next 9 weeks (go bunk 5!), and while I was supposed to write this letter to those "back home", I choose to write it instead as a reflection for those that might struggle with either obstinate learners, or for those that might be obstinate learners themselves. Teachers, please find ways to let your students add their own personality into projects or regular assignments. You might not always get the best academic work out of them, but they’ll be much more engaged in what they’re doing, and the good will you’ll earn usually pays off later when you have to ask them to complete a particular assignment the ways it’s written (because eventually they have to conform at least a bit). So to all you obstinate learners out there, develop good relationships with your teachers, whether you want to or not. Those relationships will help you in the future. And teachers of obstinate learners, try to find ways to mingle what you need your students to accomplish, with how they want to accomplish it. Sincerely, Ben P.S. Camp is great! I already have several baskets woven and more leather punched money pouches that I have pockets!

Of course, Captain America would choose the BGY-11 as his background. They're both as American as apple pie. What does Captain America do when not saving the world from crazed Nazi scientists? We know he served his country as a part of the U.S. armed forces, and is an integral member of The Avengers, pontificating on what is or isn’t righteous in a rather old-fashioned Americana way. Most recently he spent a few years thought to be dead, only to be reborn in mid-2009 when it was deemed that a character of his moral fiber was needed once again (translation, he had been dead long enough to capitalize commercially off of it). But what does Captain America do when he’s not busy stomping enemies of the USA and being six feet under? While I might have a Herculean task comparing what most public school teachers do for a living to Captain America’s exploits, the question I found myself pondering today was what do teachers, much like super heroes, do "behind the scenes" that the public doesn’t get to see? How do we unwind ourselves in such a difficult time (at least here in Michigan), where it seems as though all of our traditional foundational structures are shifting out from beneath us? Captain America and the rest of the Avengers can hang out in cool secret flying military bases for only so long before they must have to seek out something to stave off the boredom in between world-ending evil plots. As the summer looms large for many educators, some already on break, I wonder what my colleagues do in their "off time". I know that some tend to small family farms, others do driver’s education (more teaching), and tutoring (ditto), but I’m always curious about the teachers that have jobs beyond what you might expect. I used to work at a small independent children’s bookstore in the summers, which actually complimented my growth as an elementary educators, but I do know a few that have tended-bar, played "dj" for the summer, and one recent discovery was a teacher who has taken a 2 year leave of absence to join the Peace Corps. Those are certainly "un-teacher" like in much the same way that Captain America typing away on a computer doing data analysis or input would seem rather "un-hero" like (even if it is just a tiny LEGO model of him). I don’t have the luxury of unwinding anymore; I work almost all year long (save for July) in my position as an instructional technologist. The summer is different, where I get to develop and work on curriculum and plan for the coming year, but it’s still in the same environment as the rest of the school year, and I miss that "down time" of being able to turn off teacher-me and do something completely else. Which is probably why I’ve been so enamored with ds106 this past year, and plan to spend a great deal of time this summer learning a lot of new tech tricks and tools thanks to creative assignments such as the "comic book effect" image above. I hope it can get me through the rather lonely weeks of late June and early August when the buildings are close to deserted and I have to force myself to stay on task, with only the clock as my closest reminder of any deadlines. For those curious about creating the  comic effect above with Photoshop, I found a rather ridiculously easy tutorial on YouTube that you can watch below.

In honor of Jim Groom, who can’t quite seem to keep the H.M.S. DS106 in ship-shape (it’s hard, all of us passengers are always banging on the hull and tossing vital equipment overboard). As the counselor of Bunk House 5 at Camp Magic Macguffin this summer, I thought it be best if I lead by example. For starters, I’ve invented a new camp game, called "ds106 technical difficulty art" and for this week only it’s worth 36 stars! That’s right, 36 stars, which means I’ve topped Mr. Groom’s star count for this week of Visual Assignments. I will gladly add this to the official ds106 assignment repository once it’s back up and running. UPDATE I’ve now added this as an official assignment in the ds106 assignment repository, which means I fully expect a whole heap of ds106 technical difficulty warnings/labels/macguffins by the end of the current incarnation of the course. I really wanted to place this assignment in a "free form" sort of category, as you could easily complete it with a wide range of media (especially given ds106radio doesn’t handle images too well last time I checked). In the end I felt a visual assignment would be best because you can create a still, or the illusion of a video with an animated gif (which is what I did above).

lazy weekends call for lazy art, right? It’s the weekend, time for a few errands, grocery shopping, mending a bit of that landscape edging you promised your wife you’d get to a month ago, and spending some time with the kids. Truth be told, our weekends are usually all sorts of busy here in the Rimes’ household, and I’m sure any other family with younger children will agree, it’s far too easy to find yourself working harder on a Saturday than you might have during the week. We’d like to think of Saturday and Sunday as "lazy" days in which we can relax with our family and friends, and just enjoy the brief time we have before heading "back to the edu-coal mines" on Monday. Reality though, typically means that we plan more activities and structure instead of playtime on those two precious days (at least it feels that way in our house many weekends). So I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone by capturing a silly moment, and completing a ds106 assignment (yes, even ds106 can feel like one of those weekend chores if you’re trying to "play good" and complete the right number of assignments). But that’s beside the point! How in the world is this applicable to the classroom? Quite often I see teachers in my district using Photobooth for one of two projects; either photos of everyone at the beginning of the year to go up on walls or special bulletin boards, or "special effects" photos for big projects. It’s a shame that they don’t have access to the Macbooks more often (each elementary only has 2 MacBook carts, the MS and HS 3 carts apiece), because Photobooth would make an excellent visual journaling tool for capturing daily learning experiences, moods, and just the general well-being of learning going on in a classroom. Photobooth does stills and video, so you could switch it up from day to day, maybe even taking subsequent shots to stitch together as an animated gif, or create a series of video reflections from a bunch of students after a rather large project. Today, I just used it to capture the kids and me being silly around the breakfast table. The "Warhol Effect" was appropriate, and rather than print it out, post it on a nice bulletin board to make the hallways or classroom walls "more presentable" like I see at school, I’m just going to post it here in a quick "this is what’s going through my head right now" manner. No doubt the kids and I will stumble across it in a few years time (I’ve dumped it into my iPhoto album as well) and have a nice memory of this morning.

The end of the school year is always difficult for me. Whether it’s due to the fact that I’ve lived my life by the typical North American school calendar stretching back as far as my memory will take me (K-12, then college, followed immediately with my first teaching job), or if I just have a difficult time making transitions, the creature of habit within me gets a little melancholy when the halls empty, and there are no more "in the moment" teaching tasks or challenges to tackle. Were I a bit younger, and prone to more publicly venting my weariness with the world at this time of year, you might mistake me for a rather pessimistic being, but truth be told, I’m usually the first to try and find the silver lining in most situations. Which is why I decided to write this morning (that and there’s another 14 minutes left of upgrading on the machine I’m working on). Usually the start of June is a time when I’m trying to not crash and burn, having flown at high altitudes for most of the school year, and try to slide gracefully into summer with my creative and productive fuel tanks holding only fumes. I’m not sure if those outside of education understand the mentally and physically draining demands of the "always on" work flow of those in education, although I suspect I could be a bit biased, not having experienced the world world outside of academia (a reality that I’m sure some would say is not real cause to complain). The truth is, it usually takes me a few attempts to really relax into summer, and I had my first good attempt this past weekend in the backyard with the kids. We got playing with a new app for my iPad called Echograph, an incredibly powerful cinemagraph creation tool. I created the animated gif above of my daughter sliding down into our backyard using it, and while it certainly doesn’t quite create the high quality animated gifs that can be achieved through the use of a professional tool like Photoshop and a very nice DSLR camera, it does a rather serviceable job for being a $2.99 app on the iTunes store. I won’t go into detail on how to actually use it (it’s dead simple and the app itself walks you through each step of the process), but I really appreciated the concept behind the actual app. The creators wanted to make sure that the technical process of creating such striking digital art didn’t get in the way of digital artists, whether they be casual weekend dabblers like myself, or professionals fine tuning their craft. There’s even a way to import high quality media from a camera (a DSLR with a nice lens) to produce high quality animated gifs that do much more to codify the digital artifacts as actual art, and not just a way to "dress up" the art by calling it a Cinemagraph. Check out one of the developer’s videos as they explain the importance of how I see tools that "get out of the way" for the creator, rather than provide a barrier. Here’s to hoping that a 3 dollar purchase can help ease my landing into summer, and let me refuel some of the creativity I’ve lost/spent/shared over the course of the last 9 months. My guess is though, that spending more time with my kids will most likely have a much more lasting and substantial effect For those interested in the app, you can check out the link below. It’s well worth the money for a tool that can create something in less than 5 minutes that would normally take me anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes using Photoshop to meticulously stitch it all together.  

I’m not much one for creating "how to" videos, at least not ones that I share publicly on a regular basis, but I felt as though I owed it to some of the people whose blogs I’m following to help out a bit with the monolithic application that is Photoshop. Don’t get too excited though, I am far from being a Photoshop expert, most of my skills having waned since being a heavy Fark.com Photoshop Contest participant in the early 2000s. When I saw Melanie Barker complete the quick, but fun "Slide Guy" assignment (which coincidentally remind me of a lot of the Fark contests), I was impressed. When she said she did it because she was afraid of Photoshop, I wanted to share just a couple of simple tools that I use for cutting and pasting elements from one image to another. Below is the image I created for the ds106 Slide Guy Visual Assignment using a still from a rather famous movie and a shot of Tim Owens joyously sliding down a child’s playground slide. Look at that slide guy having so much fun trying to crush poor Dr. Jones! Again, please bear in mind that I am an absolute novice when it comes to Photoshop, and the tools I show may very well be the worst tools to use for cutting, copying, and pasting images as far as a professional graphic designers are concerned, but these tools are super easy to use, and don’t really require that much to figure out, just a bit of practice to master. If it benefits you at all, please enjoy my 6 minute walkthrough of using the magic lasso tool in Photoshop. You can view it below or click here to watch via YouTube.

cat by Nickym007 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License Your browser does not support the audio tag. kitten19.wav What you’re seeing (and possibly hearing) above is the result of some rather clever code & mashup work done by John Johnston, an amazingly creative ICT Development Officer (which is U.K. speak for "educational technology nerd who likes to create nifty tools for others"). I’ve been finding it difficult to get back into the groove of things after last week’s rather anticlimactic end to the school year (we had lots of layoffs and the mood was grim). I thought I’d try a few simple tools found over on the ds106 assignment repository to just play around and see what I could find that I haven’t tackled before, and wham! Here I find this amazingly little tool that John cooked up called FlickrSounds! The concept of FlickrSounds is rather simple; enter in a search term, let’s say "cat" from the example above. John’s little magical tool scours two popular sites for an image and a sound that match that term. Once it’s found media tagged with your search term, it delivers a Creative Commons lisenced image from Flickr, and an equally Creative Commons lisenced sound from the Free Sound project (a fantastic site that I highly encourage you to go visit and use for all of your audio needs….just as soon as you’re done reading this post!). While I was a bit skeptical of how I might actually create something of interest beyond the early elementary set of learners (look, a cat, and you can hear it meow!), what my search returned greatly astonished, entertained, and excited me! While I expected the Flickr search to return an image of a cat, I got a picture of a Catterpillar brand excavator instead! I was estatic! What a fantastic way to not only violate the expectations of learners, but also help them explore the world of language, meaning, homophones, and more! The connotation of the word "cat", while most universally accepted to mean a small furry pet, has other definitions in certain circles (construction and excavation work obviously). What a fun way to help students grasp the idea that our cultural and personal experiences with language help shape our view of the world through the mental images we bring up when we hear words. This is more easily identified when working with homophones (deer/dear, meet/meat, etc.), but the juxtaposition of the imagery and sound with the FlickrSound tool is astonishingly more eye opening! As proof, I give you 4 more searches I submitted using the same term, "cat". You’ll find what you expected, some cats and soft cat-like noises, but you’ll also find the electronic sound that "Nyan Cat" makes as it flies through the air leaving a rainbow trail (don’t ask, just go watch, it’s a Japanese thing). You’ll also find some "cat" beats from snares, and while I didn’t include it, there are plenty more images of construction equipment. I’m half surprised I didn’t find some "hepcat" jazz musician via the random Flickr search. cat by Castaway in Scotland Attribution-NonCommercial License Your browser does not support the audio tag. rawdata4.wav cat by WebSphinx Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License Your browser does not support the audio tag. cat (Betty McDaniels 3).wav cat by WebSphinx Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License Your browser does not support the audio tag. CatBeat_Snare.wav cat by MiNe (sfmine79) Attribution-NoDerivs License Your browser does not support the audio tag. CatBeat_Hit.wav If you work with English language learners, either as their primary or secondary language, the FlickrSounds tool developed by John would be a must in my bag of teaching resources to provide a really nice visual and audio twist on helping students explore the quite fluid nature of the English language. It’s free, it’s fun, and best of all, it has a real nice embedding tool that will let you add multiple searches to a preview window, so you can embed multiple creations all at once (as I did above). Think it’s just for younger learners? Ha! Check out the searches I did for the word "rough"! Talk about a great way to build up vocabulary through visual and audio interpretations of a word! There’s so much imagery stored deep within our brains that a single word can conjure up, this tool might also be useful in illustrating just how easy miscommunication can happen, especially when conversing with just text across the web. rough by Robert Hruzek Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License Your browser does not support the audio tag. MPC2K59.WAV rough by Capt’ Gorgeous Attribution License Your browser does not support the audio tag. MPC2K59.WAV rough by Doun Dounell Attribution License Your browser does not support the audio tag. snap.aif rough by henna lion Attribution-NonCommercial License Your browser does not support the audio tag. MPC2K56.WAV

Kid these days… They can text rings around us adults, figure out the most complex of technical devices, and multitask so fast that keyboards are in danger of spontaneous combustion from all the furious clicking of keys, right? Wrong! I have yet to see any students exhibit on a mass scale the skills and innate abilities that those labeled "digital natives" are supposed to have (note, I never used the term digital native, I thought it was bogus from the start). The truth of the matter is, some students are more apt to be able to figure out complicated software, dart in and out of multiple windows, but no more so than the number of students who excel at football, complex differentials, or playing the guitar. I’m not saying that students can’t adapt, but rather the myths of multi-tasking (aka acquired inattention) need to be laid to rest, and replaced with actual shortcomings of attempting to multi-task. Which leads me to the following audio snippet I captured earlier this evening at my piano (warning, I’m not that great at piano). To me, the ability to multi-task doesn’t impress unless someone is attempting to accomplish two rather difficult cognitive tasks (completely dependent on the individual’s talents that is). For example, I have a terribly difficult time trying to play the piano and talk at the same time. Thus, I present to you, my attempt to "Multitask This!" Download: 12-bar-blues.mp3 Imagine how much fun it would be to showcase your shortcomings the first day of school by sharing a small piece of audio like this? Let your students know up front that there are some things even teachers have a hard time accomplishing (and maybe get a few laughs out of it). A bit more seriously though, the idea of multi-tasking is that it’s either HARD to accomplish a few tasks well, or it’s EASY to do a pretty crappy job at a lot of tasks. Would you rather have your students struggling to accomplish something monumental, like creating effective and moving persuasive video essays of their written work? Or would you rather keep them busy with an endless litany of mindless "edu-games" that mostly just serve as distractions? If you’re interested in creating your own "Multitask This!" audio snippet, I’d love to hear the results. Just capture some audio (unedited of course) of you trying to accomplish two tasks that seem rather basic, perhaps even elementary when completed in isolation, yet present quite a challenge for you when combined.

I’ve been following Jim Groom’s "Name that 80s movie" 4 icon challenge series, and while he promised that they would become more difficult, I think the many summers I spent glued to the TV watching HBO for hours on end gives me an unfair advantage (I totally nailed the Flash Gordon one). I thought I’d try to up the "name that obscure movie" difficulty level, and while it was entertaining for myself to put together the following 4 icon challenge (I learned how to make a parchment-like background in Adobe Illustrator), I’m not sure if I did actually come up with something that will stump anybody….at least not anyone who is halfway decent with Google searching. Think you can name the this movie? I continue to fiddle with the 4 icon challenge concept, this time blending both icons and actual images, one of those images laying over another. It’s not that I think it adds to the piece any, I’m just having some fun as I mess around with trying to visually represent the major elements of the story. If you haven’t read any of my previous posts about the 4 icon challenge, you can check out how visually summarizing a movie, book, or other story is both really easy using tech, and is a great way for students to summarize major story elements, while having a bit of fun. image credits: vitruvian man - http://thenounproject.com/noun/vitruvian-man/#icon-No2532 gold brick - http://www.officialpsds.com/Gold-Bricks-PSD31100.html mask - http://www.denbigharmysurplus.co.uk/army-stores/balaclava004.jpg cup - http://thenounproject.com/noun/coffee/#icon-No16

When I was young, I remember the often corny, yet well-intentioned, motivational and inspirational posters that my teachers would tape to the walls. Whether it was kittens, scenes from nature, or celebrities telling me how cool reading is, I noticed that some posters appeared in more than one classroom. Throughout my formative years, certain posters crept up more often than others, and whether it was just that those posters were more popular, or if the teachers just got a bunch of freebies throughout the district of the same ones, I always thought it would be fun to make your own. And that’s just what I did today during one of Rushton Hurley’s digital media workshops. Since I use most of the tools and resources extensively that Rushton talks about, I thought I’d use my "exploration" time to use a piece of creative commons media, rather than just find an example to save for later. I thus present to you, my own "super-cheesy" inspirational poster made with the help of this creative commons licensed image created by pfv on Flickr. Knowledge….it’s cheesy. I know that images of books or monitors with bright lights illuminating someone’s face are trite and overused, most likely because the metaphor is so easy to convey via visual media. The point is, in about 5 minutes I was able to create my own cheesy motivational image using a Creative Commons Flickr search and Adobe Photoshop (although GIMP or even Preview on your Mac would do this for free). I didn’t spend any money, I can most likely print this off for less than 25 cents at my local library or school, and I can create new ones each month, week, or even every day if I get bored easily…which I do. Feel free to create your own "lazy" inspirational posters and share them!

The New York Times has published an amazing interactive online application that allows readers to explore and analyze all the words and phrases spoken during all of the big speeches at the two major party conventions that just wrapped up last week here in the United States. On the surface, the tool looks like a fancier version of Wordle, with words and phrases that had higher frequencies during speeches being placed in large bubbles, while lower frequency terms have small bubbles. That however, is just about where the comparison between Wordle and the "At the National Conventions, the Words They Used" web app ends. The New York Times allows users to click on the terms, compare how often they were said by both major parties (per 25,000 words spoken), search for your own terms, and even browse the words of phrases in context of the speeches, with quotes from everyone who said them. It’s really a bit more complicated to talk about and describe, so I decided to make a screencast of the tool in action (which I’m labeling a "futzcast" due to the impromptu and unpolished nature of it). You can view the interactive below or click here to view it on YouTube. I’m only able to scratch the surface of teaching ideas using a tool like this, but immediately the prospect of being able to easily compare themes or rhetorical devices in an english composition or debate course jump out at me. With the inclusion of the original quotes, putting the terms in context, students can see how orators at the conventions may have used words to help shape a message, soften a stance, or create the dissonance between "the other" candidate’s viewpoints and what the speaker wants to focus on. Being able to search for your own terms extends this tool immeasurably for the purpose of vocabulary building, personalization of the examination, and to explore what themes or elements may have been ignored by both major parties. It’s like Wordle 2.0, on steroids, with a shot or two of adrenaline. If you’re a teacher of civics, oratory, debate, or composition, you should at least play around with it for a few minutes to see what other ideas you can come up with.

When I set out this morning to make a low budget temporary green screen, I didn’t imagine that it would take less than 10 minutes, and actually cost me next to nothing thanks to some left over paper in the teacher supply room of our elementary building. While I wanted to call this a "free" green screen, I can’t justify the statement fully as I’m sure there’s about $6.45 worth of materials that went into the screen, even if it didn’t actually cost me anything to make. If you’re interested in creating a super cheap low budget green screen for your classroom or other amateur video work, check out the video below, or watch it on YouTube.   I was so excited when I finished building this green screen that I posted a picture on Twitter. Low budget green screen is complete! 10 minutes, left over roll of wrapping paper, and some tape! Video coming soon twitter.com/techsavvyed/st… — Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) September 14, 2012 To which I had a question from @coachk: @techsavvyed Sweet! Do you have a space where teachers come to you? That would be amazing to have a teacher learning area. — Kelly Kermode (@coachk) September 14, 2012 While we do have a couple of green screens in the district, at least one is in a room that has been turned into storage, and another is in an active classroom, so I don’t have access to it. I wanted a way to do some simple, off-the-cuff green screen effects to help show teachers how students might be able to add images or videos for informational videos, PSAs, or other video projects. A lot of time, students want to add a picture-in-picture element to help visually illustrate a speech, presentation, or video, and they typically rely on a cut-away transition like those found in Movie Maker or Photostory. Since we have an increasing number of Macs in the district, I thought I might encourage teachers to use some of the more robust movie making tools with the addition of a super cheap green screen that they can put up and take down over the course of one day or even a class period if they’re in a time or budget crunch. There are plenty of other "how to make a green screen" videos to be found on YouTube and across the internet, but I always like to tackle as many of the DIY projects myself, to demonstrate how practical it is to do some relatively simple projects on your own. In fact, this project is so simple, students could do it during a snack time, break time, or just use a single piece of green paper on their desk to create a special effect. I’m hoping that my efforts to create, film, and put together this video will help encourage a few people to try this in their classrooms, and let students explore what they might be able to create with it. For some inspiration, check out the great green screen videos from teachers and students below.

It may come as a shock to many of my educational colleagues and friends, but I’m not "a reader." Alright, so that’s a bit too blunt. I do read a lot online; magazine articles, blog posts, emails, and other "short form" digital media clippings. When I say I don’t read, I’m using the common idea of what "I’m a reader" typically means to people. For example, my wife is "a reader." She has no fewer than 3 to 4 books on her nightstand, will be reading multiple books at once (including ebooks on her Nook), and does not hesitate to "put down a book", never to finish it again due to lack of interest or time. That sort of thing drives me crazy! I’ve always been the type of person that feels compelled to finish something that I’ve started (although the last 5 episodes of Caprica still lingering in my Hulu cue may say otherwise). "THERE’S A FUTURE IN BOOKS and a book in your future." Vintage book poster by Cowman Publications. circa 1955-1960. Back in the late 90s, when I could still consider myself to be a reader, my bed-side table always had at least a couple of books, one for a college reading assignment, and one for my own personal pleasure. Sometimes a text book or two might get tossed in there, but for the most part my life was filled with lots of great trade paperbacks, young adult literature (I was an Elementary Education undergrad), and the occasional piece of science fiction. After graduating from college in 2002, finding a job, getting married, having kids, etc. I slowly found myself finding less time to read for pleasure, forced time to read for my master’s work (most of that reading being online), and eventually the most I read these days are Roald Dahl and Peter Pan to my kids at bedtime. I can’t complain about reading such excellent children’s literature most nights with my kids, but thus far this year I’ve only managed to read one book for myself from cover to cover. That’s it, just one single book, and even that took me almost 9 months given my sporadic reading cycles. It’s not that I try to avoid reading, I’m just not that great at it. Sure, I can skim through digital texts and webpages with the best of them, but I am a slow, deliberate, and plodding reader. I’m not sure if it’s a decoding thing, a slow comprehension process, or some form of mental "slow down, and savor this" obstacle that my brain puts up whenever I sit down to read, but it typically takes me 3 to 4 times as long to read the same passage that my wife or another equally accomplished reader might be able to do. Thus, when I attempt to read books together with my wife I get frustrated, and give up before long. Which is why I’ve always wanted some sort of open and accountable process for forcing me to read again, while being able to deliberately slow down the process (because training wheels aren’t always that bad of a thing). This is how I feel sometimes about reading, even if it’s only just one or two books.http://www.flickr.com/photos/waltstoneburner/3372746317/ So I decided, what the heck, I’ll construct myself a loose digital framework that deliberately slows down the discussion and enjoyment of a text through a collaborative online meeting space. I know that I’ve always done my best reading in an educational setting, when our small high school literature groups tore into books like Grapes of Wrath and A Tale of Two Cities. While working at a children’s bookstore in the summer for several years of college and beyond, I eagerly read young adult and children’s literature so I could talk with customers about what they liked, and what I found exciting, thrilling, or frustrating about the books in the store. The common thread in both instances was community; a face to face connection that is difficult to capture online through asynchronous means, forum posts, and status updates. I also had a huge layer of accountability to make sure I had actually read the book! The literature group needed my input to be successful, and customers wanted to hear what I thought about some of the books in the store. And that’s where an idea for an online video chat came into my head. It would be easy to replicate everything that I’ve been considering with a face to face virtual meeting through Skype, a Google+ Hangout, or some other video chat. It wouldn’t be good enough just to put up a sign saying "hey, let’s do a video chat about books". There would need to be some sort of framework and expectation of what to read, when to read it, and how to best organize the discussion. There are certainly many tools available online to create digital spaces for discussion including a free forum, a Google Group, or WordPress blogs, but I wanted this effort to serve a dual purpose, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. Not only do I want to be "a reader" again, but I also want to help put together a loose model for what an effective online book club might look like using Google Apps for Education tools. Why? I support some 260 teachers and almost 4,000 students that all have access to Google Apps, and while many use Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar, and Groups effectively, I also wanted to start creating some integrated and innovative way to leverage the connectedness of these tools, and I think I might have a decent start. Starting this Thursday, October 11th, at 8:30 pm EST, I’m going to be hosting a Google+ Hangout each week for 4 to 6 weeks, discussing a book that I’m tossing out to the internet to decide. I’ve put together a Google Site (a rather frustrating and limiting experience given what I know I can do using WordPress or building a website on my own), tossed up a simple Google Form, and have a YouTube video describing my thoughts behind the book club in a bit more animated detail than what I have here. I fully expect a big fat check from Google any day now for all of that advertisement, and if it’s not enough, I also have plans to use Google Moderator and perhaps Google Groups to help facilitate both communication and discussion. Voting is going on right now, and while I don’t have much else than just a simple overview on the site, I thought it might be best to start documenting the process here, so I have a lot of my thoughts out of the way when I start to unravel the entire experience at its end this November, and I can build something that’s useable for teachers and students in my district for the second semester. All that’s left is to try and get enough people to actually participate with me, and help me read a book. Care to join the discussion?

Parents love to see images of their students from class. Teachers are always looking for an increasingly easy way to share those images. If you happen to be one of those teachers who has an iPad, iPhone, or a Mac computer, you can setup a free iCloud account, and setup a dead simple way to push images from your classroom to an online web gallery. Check out my "proof of concept" video below, or watch it on Youtube. WARNING! Sharing a Photostream publicly on the web via iCloud will make the images viewable to anyone with the link, so it’s best not to be sharing images that might be sensitive, and talk with your student’s parents beforehand to make sure they’re all comfortable with it. While I don’t think this is the best way for everyone to share classroom pictures with parents, thanks to the new shared Photostreams ability in iOS6 on Apple’s devices, it is just about the easiest way to do it. You don’t even need an iPad to do it either; iPhoto on a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPod touch will all work just as nicely. I’m actually using the shared Photostream albums to send pictures that I take of my kids directly to my mother’s iPhone, so she has new pictures of her grandkids to show off each week. I really just wanted to make a "proof of concept" video to show off how it could be done, without having to use a commercial site to share images that might put ads up, or force all users to create another account. As I said in the video, this isn’t even a long term solution for all of your photo sharing needs between school and home, just a fun way to share "in the moment" learning pictures, or share some cool stuff that happens throughout the week in your classroom. Heck, you could even use it as a way for students to be photojournalists, and share images from their learning experiences throughout the week, creating a visual diary of the weeks lessons and growth. If you end of trying this, feel free to share with others, and let us know how it goes!

There’s less than one week to go before the first discussion in what is increasingly my complex attempt to encourage the internet to force me to read a book. It started with the a simple concept; Ben doesn’t read books anymore (I’ve read 1 book this year cover to cover, and even that feels like a fluke), Ben wants to start reading more, so Ben has decided to put his shame out there publicly for the internet to see in hopes that some kind souls will participate in a book discussion, forcing Ben to read. Along the way I’m hoping to gain a greater understanding of how a lot of Googles various tools work in conjunction with one another, and already lamenting the huge rift between Google Apps K-12 accounts and the rest of the Google Apps ecosystem. "THERE’S A FUTURE IN BOOKS and a book in your future." Vintage book poster by Cowman Publications. circa 1955-1960. So it was with great excitement that almost 2 dozen people took it upon themselves to help select the first book for what I am dubbing Book Club 106, a loosely organized online book club. Starting yesterday I began reading What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, with the hopes that at least one other person is going to show up for the weekly discussion next Thursday evening on the 11th of October. If it turns out it’s just me and the voices in my head talking to the camera, then so be it. I’ll do my best to make it an interesting monologue, and will still know that by writing these blogs posts documenting the process will serve someone’s purposes in the future beyond my own need to become a productive academic "reader" again. If however, people show up for the discussion, which I’m sincerely hoping they do, it should make for an interesting exploration of just how effectively you can cobble together a reasonable facsimile of large corporate or open-source Course Management Systems (Moodle, Coursera, Blackboard, etc.). I’m not aiming to make this online book club a perfect substitute for the well polished and highly developed systems that many large institutions use for their online learning component. I’m just trying to apply my typical rolls-up-your-sleeves, DIY attitude to moving an instructional environment from the physical face-to-face realm to the digital realm of the internet. So far the jury is out on how well it’s succeeding, and I fully intend to continue to provide updates, including video of the weekly discussion chats, here on my blog. In case you’re interested in forcing me to read what is promising to be a fantastic book, feel free to head over to the Book Club 106 website, and give it a look. I’ve embedded a video below that goes over how discussion about the book will take shape, which you can watch on YouTube if you prefer. If you’d like to participate in the discussion, the steps I’ve laid out are hopefully easy enough for people to jump in even at this late stage: Read! Grab a copy of the book and start reading. The first two chapters are only about 40 pages. Submit Questions! Using the Google Moderator series on the Book Club 106 website, submit any and all questions you have while completing the assigned reading. Feel free to "approve" or respond to other reader’s questions. Sign Up for the Google+ Hangout Video Chat! Add Ben Rimes to your circles on Google+ and then fill out the simple form below to be invited to the Google+ Hangout.

Last week my school district received a very large donation of spiral bound notebooks from the Target Corporation. 5 full palettes, stuffed with lined paper notebooks, showed up at the loading docks, and news was quickly spread through the district of it’s availability. Not to underestimate the power of teachers in need of school supplies, I ran down to the loading area to grab some footage of the paper before it had been sent off to all the buildings. The result was a rather simplistic, almost math "bookish" type story problem, although I did leave out any formula or other strategy that might help students. I simply stated the question "How many sheets of paper are there here", and then gave them any information they may or may not need in order to solve the problem. You can view the multiplying paper video story problem below, or on Vimeo if you’d like. I figured this could be used as a good "warm up" at the start of the school day or class. Students working with multiplication or building their own strategies for tackling a problem and given a heap of data might enjoy this. Like I said, it’s not pretty, and feels like a typical story problem from a text book, just a little warmed over, but I was genuinely curious about how many sheets of paper were stacked on those palettes, and I thought it was pretty gosh darn awesome of Target to donate it to our school!

Last night was the inaugural discussion for Book Club 106, the loosely organized online book club that I formed last month with the goal of forcing me to actually read a book, while enjoying a nice weekly chat with other curious educators. Despite the power being out at my place for more than two hours, and the Google+ Hangout for the event starting almost half an hour late, it was a terrific conversation! Two of the other book club members attended, and while L Patrick Brewer had to duck out early due to a finicky satellite Internet connection, Johnathon Beals and I carried on a great conversation that touched on video games, Huizinga’s Homo Ludens book, social context needed for critical learning, and a host of other topics from the book. If you’d like to watch the 60 minute discussion between Johnathon and myself below (and can spare the time), I’d love to hear your feedback, otherwise a much more condensed version of my thoughts about the book thus far are below. What I Think Thus Far After having read both the introduction chapter to Gee’s theory of gaming as a metaphor for learning, and the second chapter in which he explains the underpinnings of his theory of semiotic domains, I have the sense that this book, while certainly playing on the hook of video games, is written for a much more academic crowd than the average "gamer" or teacher. That’s not to imply there’s anything inherently wrong with writing for a more collegiate crowd, but Gee misses many opportunities to spend more time talking about concrete examples and references to both video games and other elements of how we learn as individuals. A good amount of time is spent explaining how various domains exist within any given set of practices and modalities, and video games are no exception. Besides that fact that gamers comprise a rather large semiotic domain, bound together with both terminology and functioning literacy of how games work and how gamers relate to one another, there are also many sub groups within the larger gamer population, similar to the way that students have many sub groups within a particular learning environment. While I appreciated the time that Gee spent describing how semiotic domains function, and more importantly how one can participate in a particular domain (i.e. playing a first person shooter game), but not actually be able to function on a higher level (i.e. talk intelligently and reflectively about a first person shooter game), I feel a great amount of time could have been spent by using much simpler terminology such as "literacies", although I’m sure Gee would disagree, as he references his own previous work, among other’s work, to support this. My point is that when Gee uses concrete examples from both video games, and other areas of life, his theories and observations make a lot of sense, and help drive home the connection he’s trying to make between learning and play. Unfortunately, he doesn’t spend as much time on those examples as I would have liked. A Few Thoughts That Stood Out I was particularly taken with a few thoughts and questions that Gee posed in the second chapter of his book. While I’m reading the revised issue, I’m hoping that they were present in the original version as well. While describing "design grammars" he asks a question about identities which I found to be very intriguing, "can you recognize the sorts of identities such people take on when they are in their domain?" I really dig this question, because it spoke to who I am, not just as an educator or a gamer, but as a human being. I find myself constantly shifting identities depending on which domain I find myself in. I would use the word "persona", but it’s basically the same idea. My professional domain illicit certain aspects of my being that don’t always exhibit themselves at home or our with friends, and while playing a game or enjoying family time at home there are certain actions and "design grammars" that I get to use that wouldn’t always fit well in my professional life. The shifting identities that we employ as human beings to successfully co-exist with one another fits nicely with this question and exploration of different identities in video games. Towards the end of the chapter comes perhaps the most powerful thought. As Gee recounts to us the story of a young gamer playing Pikmin, and how he seeks to help and advice about how to play the game. When the young learner goes online to seek advice from websites and forums he claims it as doing "his own thinking." However, when Gee attempts to help the gamer out, the response is a very curt plea to stop "bossing hom around." This rings so true for so many educators, regardless of whether learners are struggling with technology, content matter, or other learning goals. Quite often our students want not just advice from their peers, but the validation from them that they can "walk the walk", and show to their fellow learners that they’re capable of achieving what others can, and that help is seen as shared work and thought. When that help comes from an adult however, there’s something lost in that accomplishment because we as adults are seen as having "all the answers", and when we offer advice it’s not some collaborative group effort, it’s not a shared sense of discovery, it’s a "we’ve been there and done that, this is what you should do" sort of statement that to many learners robs them of that self-discovery. Want To Join the Conversation? I’m hoping that the rest of this book club goes as well as last week, and I’ve heard from a number of individuals that they’re excited to read along and even participate in the discussion for chapter 3. If you’re able, I’d love to have you join us, or if you’re reading this after the fact, please consider using the resources below or the video discussions and questions on the Book Club 106 site for this fascinating book. A Few Resources to Figure Out Gee’s Thoughts on Learning & Video Games http://sites.wiki.ubc.ca/etec510/Semiotic_Domains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Paul_Gee http://www.jamespaulgee.com/node/28 http://www.amazon.com/Video-Learning-Literacy-Second-Edition/dp/1403984530 What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy - Part 2

I’m at the ISTE Leadership Forum today and tomorrow, getting schooled by some serious hard-core academic types that take learning extremely seriously. These amazing educators have devoted a large amount of their life’s work to helping establish lots of frameworks, graphic organizers, and other tools to help us visualize how various components work together. For example, here’s the Framework for Systemic Improvement we were shown this morning at the opening session: I’m not sure why or what compelled me to spend a good portion of my day struggling with Adobe Illustrator to create what I hope is seen as a rather humorous, yet effective homage to this framework from an elementary educator’s perspective, but here it is: Like I said, I’m not sure why I created it, but something inside my elementary educator’s brain just wanted to splash some Comic Sans and color all over this graphic. To any ISTE Leadership Forum attendees, I hope you enjoy!

As part of my ongoing attempt to force myself back into regular reading habits (academic, fiction, or otherwise), I was excited to have a new voice added to the Book Club 106 discussion last week of James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy. Ben Harwood, a technologist with Skidmore College in upstate New York joined me to talk about chapters 3 and 4 of the seminal title from 2002 that explores the effective structuring of learning environments through the analogy of video game design. Our Google+ Hangout was cut short due to our schedules, but I’m looking forward to an excellent video discussion this evening of chapter 5 after last week’s exploration of learning theories and just how effective we can expect learners to be if there isn’t "play time" built into regular instructional practice. You are more than welcome to watch the 45 minute discussion Ben Harwood and I had about the chapters on Youtube, or the embedded video below. If you have suggestions, questions, or thoughts to add to the discussion, please do so using the comments below! What I Think Thus Far At the end of chapters 1 and 2 I had a deep seeded belief that this was going to be a rather dry and heavily academic book. I lack a large amount of background knowledge in the areas of metacognition and learning theory that this book makes reference too, however, chapters 3 and 4 began to show a much broader examination of Gee’s Learning Principles that he builds upon at the end of each chapter. Having spent so many years away from academic texts, I forgot that quite often there is a great deal of time that must be spent on laying a foundation for the argument an author will be making, so that the reader has the proper context with which to consider the arguments and postulations. If anything, the new direction that the text is taking is making it much more accesible to the average educator (or dare I say casual reader). As more time is spent on exposition of the various scenarios and intricacies of specific game mechanics, giving the mid section of the text a much more narrative feeling. I would still not recommend this text to the average "gamer" or someone interested in using video games in learning. This book presents itself as a bridge between great game design and great instructional design through Gee’s learning principles. Gee is not advocating that educators use games in their classroom, but rather ask us to examine the deliberate nature of how we structure our learning environments, activities, and ways in which we can focus our students’ learning to be meta-cognitive (the hallmark of many great learning theories) and help them be aware of the various roles they move through throughout the learning process. As a gamer, the nice long passages in which Gee describes actual game play of popular video games is an often humorous (as he explores games as a "noobie"), yet poignant reminder that many great video games contain an amazing amount of carefully calculated design that feeds many intrinsic motivations that lead many people to play games. Whether or not Gee can successfully complete his argument of excellent game design being translated over to excellent instructional design remains to be seen as I finish up the middle of this text. A Few Thoughts That Stood Out I appreciated the way the Gee breaks down the identities we take on or are subjected to while playing video games. Gee makes a case for 3 separate, yet co-dependent identities within most games; Me as the gamer, the Character and it’s limitations as programmed by the gamer, and Me as the Character and the limitations we both experience due to programming and inexperience as a gamer or influence from past experiences. It’s easy to make this connection to the learning spaces within K-12 institutions as learners can be seen taking on the same 3 identities; the Student as an individual, the Student as an active learner, and the meta-cognitive Student looking at the learning process and exploring what past experiences influence how he learns in the present space. I’m sure that’s not exactly the analogy Gee was going for, but it’s the one that I’m currently clinging to to make sense of the book until I can develop a better analogy. Gee does make an excellent point about the reflective nature in which he goes about playing games, and I think it’s important to mention that like all endeavors, playing any video game can be done in a passive way, and very much like a passive student in our classroom, the results are similar; little engagement with any over-arching ideas, and a lack of critical thought regarding the game or learning goal. What Gee doesn’t point out is that both situations can still lead to an enjoyable experience for both gamer or learner, although most educators would hope passive learning isn’t our goal. This is why I read so infrequently…my mind goes into "learning nerd" mode. Very infrequently do I read anything in a book and create a sticky note that says "blog about this!" but I do find that I’m attracted to lists in a very Pavlovian way, and when Gee outlines three basic conditions that he sees as a "must" for truly effective critical teaching and learning, I had to both sticky and highlight it. 1. The learner must be entice to try, even is he or she already has good grounds to be afraid to try. 2. The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even is he or she beings with little motivation to do so. 3. The learner must achieve some meaningful success when he or she has expended this effort. These conditions resonate with my quite deeply. If there’s no attempt on the part of the learner to even try and accomplish something meaningful that will develop a deeper or new understanding of a concept, then I’ve failed as an educator. It was quite refreshing to see something like this, in quite plain english, written in a rather academic text. Gee continues in chapter 4 that learners who have only a verbal understanding of a concept (the idea that students could talk about the various parts of the water cycle without actually understanding how the water cycle is impacted by outside factors) have an almost useless understanding of the concept. Those learners be pushed to experience some form of embodied action that puts the application of their knowledge to a test, not just the regurgitation of that knowledge. Video games present a unique opportunity in that everything the "gamer" learners through various encounters and tutorials within a game are constantly being applied, transferred, re-worked, and then re-applied to an ever shifting set of variables, enemies, obstacles, and goals. That is of course, if the game has been designed effectively. I can’t help but wonder how many great learning opportunities educators could craft for their students if only more embodied actions (opportunities for students to apply knowledge, possibly fail, and then redevelop new understandings based on that failure) were present throughout the learning environment. Far too often we ask students to regurgitate information rather than apply it, and Gee makes excellent analogies and pushes for this type of learning through the text. Academic reading aside, the Common Core State Standards are pushing for this same experience throughout the K-12 continuum and within all of the subject areas. This might explain why so much in chapter 3 and 4 resonate strongly with me, as I believe that the Common Core Standards, if applied properly, will mark a significant shift in the way teachers provide learning opportunities for learners. Want To Join the Conversation? As I’ve already said, the last two chapters have meant of huge turning point for me with this text, and I’m excited to keep pushing forward. If you have the time to chat, have already read the text, or just want to observe the ongoing conversation, check out the ongoing discussion at the Book Club 106 site. There are still a couple of weeks left to take part in the live weekly Google+ Hangout as well! What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy - Part 1

For a while now I’ve downplayed the current trendiness of Gamification in learning. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why, but there are a few ideas buzzing around my head. At times I’m put off by the heavy reliance on replacing one form of extrinsic motivation (gold stars, points, etc.) with another (achievements, points, etc.). Quite often it’s the oversimplification of game design and instructional design theories, leading many teachers to just turn learning into a cheap facsimile of a game (which has its advantages and disadvantages). By far the critique that comes to the surface most often is the desire for teachers to cling to what’s popular, rather than step back and look at the roots of what makes games, video or otherwise, so attractive as analogies and vehicles for effective instructional practice and design. And then comes along James Paul Gee and makes everything so clear; it’s not about turning learning into a video game, it’s taking excellent video game design elements and structure that parallel effective learning principles, and then making sure those learning principles are replicated within our teaching and learning environments. It’s not about the regurgitation of facts, information, and concepts; it’s about the internalization of information, transference to new problems, and creation of new understandings as learners create situated meaning; deep understandings that are tied to individual experiences, ensuring that concepts are tied to important failures, successes, and struggles, not tied to the answer glossary at the back of the text book. Preach, on Mr. Gee, preach on! image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dimic-/5033993643/

Studebaker workers voting under the bleachers of a stadium in South Bend, IN circa 1950-1960. I’m a sucker for performing important civic duties…..and black and white photography. So I decided to craft this impromptu voting poster today with the help of the United States Library of Congress and their awesome digital collection. While I really don’t have much to say this morning beyond the trite "go, vote" mantra that even the least engaged citizen can accomplish, I wanted to point out that the LoC has a fantastic collection of images, legislation, websites, audio, video, and more! If you happen to be in the patriotic mood, go help yourself to one of their "voting images" from the photo, print, and drawing category (most of them are public domain, or available under free use exemption), load it up in an image editor of choice, and have your students create some propaganda for the simplest civic duty any of us can perform. I particularly enjoyed shifting through the LoC archives for a few minutes, to see see examples of political advertisements and images from a wide range of U.S. history, including the image above, which was taken not too far from where I live, about 30 minutes away in South Bend, IN. It’s a simple way to knock out a few technology standards in the K-12 arena, a brief exploration of historical imagery related to Civics standards, or a simple ds106 Visual Assignment in a pinch. Don’t live in the U.S. or want to explore other historical media from other nations? Check out the list below! Library & Archives Canada - http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/index-e.html Europeana - European Cultural Archives - http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ National Archives of Australia - http://www.naa.gov.au/ National Diet Library (Japan) - http://www.ndl.go.jp/ The MOTHERLODE - Links to Major National Libraries of the World - http://www.publiclibraries.com/world.htm

I’ve had a LOT of traffic on a Google Document that I created last year while exploring the Common Core State Standards. At the time I created it I was looking for a way to impress upon the teachers in my district that technology standards are now for the first time being embedded within the content standards (at least here in Michigan). Previously, the technology standards were published by the state separately from the core content areas, which created a convenient excuse for many teachers to basically say "well, they aren’t my concern, because they aren’t in my standards." Walking carefully away from that statement (which I know is far over-generalized), I wanted a positive way to show the teachers I work with where technology is being asked to be integrated within their instructional practice. For better or worse, all educators at the K-12 level are now responsible for ensuring that technological tools, student publishing and collaboration via the web, and many other technology-based instructional practices happen within every classroom. I decided to start by pulling every single Common Core Standard related to technology (including the College Readiness and ELA in Science, History, and Technical Subjects standards) from the 180+ pages of the Common Core that have been published. You can find the link to those below, but what was more fun was taking a bird’s eye view of the Common Core standards using Wordle, which I posted last school year. I present them again below without any markup or annotations. High Frequency Words in the Common Core State Standards High frequency words within the Common Core State Standards High Frequency Words in the Common Core State Standards related to Technology High frequency words in the Common Core State Standards related to Technology While this is certainly not a definitive look at how we should be using technology throughout our instructional practice, it is interesting to note that the words "produce, publish, writing, and collaboration" are quite prominent in the Common Core standards related to technology. This could suggest the shift towards a growing acceptance that students should be narrating and sharing their learning with forms of media beyond just pencil and paper. The internet, computing devices (including graphing calculators and other technological aides), and various forms of collaborative software are now being expected to be a regular part of a teacher’s "toolbox" for instructional activities. For the production and distribution of writing alone, every level of K-12 is mandated by the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards to do the following: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others. That one simple line is listed for both the K-5 and the 6-12 levels, and is one of the most straight forward guidelines for what teachers should be doing, as a bare minimum, with student writing. More specific requirements of that standard are repeated in the Writing Standards for each grade level starting in grade 3, as well as the Writing standards for Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects at the 6-12 levels. I won’t even get started with all of the technology related standards found deeply embedded within the Math standards. It’s not about just using technology and the internet as a resource anymore, it’s about adapting, infusing, and transforming instructional practice at every grade level to acknowledge that digital tools and the internet are here to stay as an integral part of student learning. If you’d like to explore the list of technology related standards in the Common Core documents, feel free to click the link below to view the Google Document I created, and please share with others! Click here for Every Common Core Standard Related to Technology