I’m not sure why I’m even posting this. Maybe because it’s 3:00 on a Friday afternoon, I’ve spent a good portion of this week running around doing "lunch and learns", mini-workshops, planning for and leading the district technology leadership meeting, cleaning up lots of Google Docs, setting up some WordPress sites, helping run a community learning night, and managing to keep myself relatively sane thanks for copious amounts of caffeinated beverages. You can blame me for posting the following videos on the fact that my brain is mush, or praise the teachers in them for being courageous enough to do the videos. I leave that call up to you. I hope you enjoyed your Friday. The following video was the first teacher version of Friday, which is more or less the teacher’s just having fun doing a lip dub. Curious about the teacher holding the baby while sitting in the driver’s seat.   The first actual parody I found that changes up the lyrics for the song AND makes fun of a lot of things that I’ve experienced in our school; mysteriously cold or warm rooms, fountains at odd heights, and teachers looking rather awkward dressing up like their students.   One music teacher’s rather humorous parody of Friday, including confetti, jump ropes, and vacuum cleaners!   Last, but not least, this one is probably my favorite of the bunch. Just about as closely accurate to the actual video as you can get (sets, camera angles, etc.), it also has some great "hand dolphin" out the car window. My favorite part? They call their professional development "Pro-D" day. I’ve never heard that one before, it struck me as rather odd, not sure why.

In my constant effort to try new interventions and create flexible spaces and times with which to meet with teachers and introduce new or changing technology tools, I’ve been trying out "Lunch and Learns" for the first time this year. Andy Losik, a fellow instructional technologist in Michigan, has been doing lunch and learns this year with his staff in Hamilton Schools, and after reading a few of his blog posts about his experiences, I felt encouraged to try a few of my own. As of today I’ve held 3 of these lunch time meetings across our school’s campus, and I felt as though I needed to get a few thoughts out now to make them better for next month. nom, nom, nom…sandwich! What I’m Trying to Do The idea and need for the lunch and learn is simple enough. Teacher’s time is precious, and it seems like every professional development (PD) hour is filled with looking at assessment data, restructuring curriculum guides, Common Core discussion, a bit of technology, and a whole heap of others topics. Far too often there are tiny little "tech tools" that undergo changes, or introduce new features that don’t warrant the same priority during PD days that a serious look at Common Core crosswalks and data from student assessments merit. I mean, let’s face it, we don’t need to slice out PD time to discuss every single time Google changes the icons and layout for Docs or Gmail (which seems to happen more frequently than you would think). However, the change over that Google made from the basic "Docs" app to "Drive" is big enough, and brings about enough changes that I felt like I should offer something for my staff other than just the occasional "calls for help" or videos. So I setup a small list of goals for myself with this first set of lunch and learn gatherings: No more than 20 minutes (keep it simple) Introduce new features or tools in a way that’s not "mission critical" and warrants a full PD session or workshop Show teachers how the tool can be leveraged in their instructional practice, not just what it does Make it completely optional and obligation free so people don’t feel compelled to attend, and those that do will (hopefully) value the time Make it casual and comfortable (hence during a lunch period) I tried to apply this to the big change that Google has made to their cloud based document and file storage system (Google Drive), as most of the changes it has made won’t really affect those in my district using it; for most they’re fine knowing that clicking on Drive means essentially the same as Docs used to. They can continue to create & share documents, create folders (previously known as collections), and keep working the way they have grown accustomed to. However, by taking just a short time (say, 20 minutes during lunch), I thought I could interest some of the "power users" in my district that quite often serve as either go to people in their buildings and cheerleaders for spreading tech use throughout the district. I even made a humorous "scary" movie trailer to try and entice people to come that might be curious….at least I hope it’s humorous. My Thoughts on Lunch & Learn Thus Far As I said earlier, I’ve done 3 lunch & learn sessions in three of the four buildings on my campus. I’ll have to wait until after Thanksgiving to get to the High School, so I might have more to reflect on once I’m done. However, I thought I had enough to reflect about, so I’m putting fingers to keys and pounding out this quick reflection. Plan AROUND conferences - A lot of people warned me about planning lunch and learns during conference season. Not wanting to wait until December to start them, I pushed through and scheduled them anyways during conference weeks. My experience as a former "specials" teacher obviously gave me a skewed perspective of what conference prep means, as I rarely had to prepare (I would average a dozen or so visitors during conferences in a school of 900 students). Lesson learned, stay away from conference week. Fridays aren’t always the best day of the week - I choose to hold these lunch and learns on Fridays because I thought it might be the most relaxing and casual day of the week, and teachers might feel relaxed and ready to just chat about something simple. Fridays in our schools are "casual dress" days, and most teachers are doing end of unit or chapter assessments if they can. Turns out, in at least one of the buildings, the grade levels have this nice ritual of "lunch time" together where they can all chat about the week and connect if they weren’t able to earlier in the week. I knew that this happened, but I gambled that they might be willing to have that same casual connection with me present talking about some tech stuff. It didn’t happen, so lesson learned, other days of the week are a go for next time. Providing examples of integration into instructional practice is great! - One of the things that has gone well was my inclusion of a few examples of how other teachers in the district are using Google Docs or plan to use Drive. Teachers getting to see what’s happening in other classrooms, grade level, and buildings is a huge motivator for them to try new tools and ideas for themselves. They see that they might not be the first to try, and are more willing to experiment knowing others have had some success. That, and it was great to actively develop new ideas on using Google Drive as we were talking about it! One 4th grade teacher was excited about students creating shared "Writing Portfolio" folders that students could drag and drop exemplary work into from their Google accounts throughout the year. Making the gatherings optional and "come if you can" has paid off in spades! - While I’m certainly not connecting with a large number of teachers (less than a dozen in each building), the casual conversations I’m having with the teachers that attend goes a long way in developing and strengthening my relationships with them. I used to work alongside many of them and have existing relationships, but many I am still trying to "figure out" and connect with on a professional level, so this has been a great way to have conversations in a very informal and comfortable setting; their own classroom. As I said before, I’m sure I’ll have a bit more to add when I’m done with my first full round of lunch and learn sessions, and on the whole I’m glad that I’ve started this. It makes me wonder what other people in my position are doing to build connections and relationships with their colleagues as they try to work in some of the smaller "bits and pieces" of technology tools without the need for full blown workshops and professional development sessions. image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuskyn/4462573611/

It’s only 2 days until one of my most beloved holidays here in the United States, Thanksgiving. A day for families far flung around the country or close-knit to come together and be thankful for all that we are be blessed to have. Whether you’re thankful for your family, a roof over your head, a car that gets you to work in one piece, or perhaps something as simple as a pen and paper to journal your thoughts, Thanksgiving is an opportunity to thank both the extraordinary and mundane. While I’m thankful for many things is my own life, I didn’t want to drone on in length about the "Thanks" that I have to give, so instead I created a short assignment that any teacher (or parent) could give their students and children as a quick way to reflect, share, and comment on what we all have to be thankful for. I’m not nearly as green as this in real life, but I’m thankful that I have the time and tools to be creative in small bursts throughout the day. I’m going to call it, "10 Seconds of Thanks!" And the rules are simple, straightforward, with one big requirement, your efforts must be shared online in some way, shape or form. If you’d like to play along or have your students complete the assignment, please feel free to link back here so I can comment and share with others! 10 Seconds of Thanks! Using a timer, write what you’re thankful for in just 10 seconds! Anything and everything that you can think of being thankful for is fair game, but stop at 10 seconds. Share what you’ve written on a blog, wiki, or some other digital space that others can comment on. Bonus! Complete a 10 second drawing of yourself to accompany your writing, inspired by the November 19th, 2012 Daily Create. Besides, being simple & quick, it’s relatively low-tech in application; you could easily do the assignment in a single shared Google Doc, or post some thoughts to Corkboard Me to produce a nice collection of thanks from your entire class. The real payout though comes in the conversation, collaboration, and potential for creative writing either directly afterwards or when you return from Thanksgiving break (if you and your students are in the U.S. that is). You could use the simple short writings as prompts for students to compare their "Thanksgivings" with someone else in class, or even start a small persuasive piece on what the most important items to give thanks should be and why based on your community of learner’s own answers. So here goes! I’ve already completed my 10 second drawing above, but here’s my "10 seconds of thanks!" "I’m thankful that I have the time and tool to be creative in small bursts throughout the day." That’s it! Simple right? I suppose it isn’t terribly inspiring or well thought out, but I enjoyed putting the small activity together. This should be no small thanks to ds106, the students and staff at my school walking through the halls today smiling as they wished everyone a "Happy Thanksgiving", and the digital tools that I have to be able to create, publish, and share my ideas in less time than it takes to accomplish "bus duty" at the end of each day.

As seen on TV, Peter Coyote has one of those unmistakable voices, most recently heard narrating the excellent Dustbowl documentary on PBS. Where I didn’t expect to hear his voice, but am glad that I did, was narrating one of several of Edutopia’s videos about Assessment. I’m not sure Peter Coyote’s voice can calm hurricanes, but I’m pretty sure it could soothe a room full of cranky retirement home residents. I was actually assigned to watch the video as a part of a course I’m taking about blended learning environments, and besides making the totally meme-worthy image above, I couldn’t help but compare it to another video that I had watched from earlier in the module about assessment in a blended learning environment. While there are countless resources, media artifacts, and website to point to for a brief look at the differences between Formative Assessment and performance-based Comprehensive Assessment, The juxtaposition of the two piece of media I was given to watch struck me as oddly humorous. For a quick overview of what Formative Assessment can be we were given an example of a teacher-created Photostory (yes, some districts still use it on aging Windows XP machines, including our district) that uses Comic Sans quite prominently. You can view it below, or on YouTube. Gotta love that awesome Photostory synth music, eh? Now transition from that overview of Formative Assessment to the much more polished video taking a look at Comprehensive Assessment (it’s professionally produced by Edutopia and has a very "PBS/NPR" feel to it). Besides the fact that the Comprehensive Assessment video includes many teacher and student voices, including footage taken from an actual classroom, the soothing voice over narration by Peter Coyote means you could gladly listen to the short 3 and a half minute video for easily 60 minutes or more on loop play. Where am I going with all this, besides an unabashed willingness to purchase anything Peter Coyote wants to sell me? Just highlighting a moment of dissonance that I experienced this weekend while trying to better myself and the way I practice my craft. Maybe there’s something deeper too….the "straw man" that Comic Sans has become and represents in the educational world can be easily overlooked and dismissed in favor of more polished productions despite the importance that of both the forms of assessment that these videos offer a glimpse of. image credit: Aspen Ideas Festival -  http://www.aspenideas.org/sites/default/files/pictures/people/Peter_Coyote.jpeg

Regular perusal of my blog feeds has long since gone by the wayside as I juggle the responsibilities of the quasi teacher/coordinator possession I hold at work, the demands of  fatherhood, and still trying to hold onto a few tattered shreds of what used to be my social life both with friends and my wife. Not all is lost though! I did manage to read a book for professional benefit thanks to a great group of educators, and just today I found myself with a few minutes during lunch, reading through some back posts on Brian Bennet’s blog. I was drawn to his most recent post about the "Point of Learning", and found myself both in agreement with his thoughts, with a few caveats of my own to sharpen some of the details. Not entirely sure that this is anatomically correct…I only minored in general Science. Brian is having a rough year. He’s teaching in an urban independent school in South Bend, IN. Having grown up less than 45 minutes away from South Bend, and having had former colleagues in both the traditional public schools and charter schools there, I understand a little bit of what a struggle it can be to work with students who are coming from a questionable background of home support. Compound that further with high school-age students that have gone through many years of traditional "schooling" in which they’ve learned how to effectively shut down with three simple words, "I don’t know", and you’ve got a recipe for any teacher to have a rough year. Brian ponders if whether it’s just his students’ way of resignedly letting him know that they really don’t care about thinking too critically, but don’t want to just come out and say it. Which gets him to the point of the blog post, in which he postulates that the "point" of learning, regardless of content area or age level, is to establish a careful balance of pushing and supporting. From Brian’s original post: I think the point of learning is when students feel challenged and supported at the same time. This balance comes from every teacher, administrator, and student in the building working toward the same goal. The point of learning is the hardest part of school because it is in an educational "sweet spot" where everything is working together the way it is meant to. Without coming right out and saying it, he’s talking about finding that Zone of Proximal Development in which students can achieve new learning, understanding, and accomplishments, but only with the help and guidance of another, in this case the teacher. There are many tools and techniques that educators use to help discover and establish a learner’s ZPD, but short of an entire dissertation about how to find it, it’s probably best to start by simply getting to know what makes your students "tick". Which is where my thoughts on the point of learning would sharpen down to a narrower point than the one Brian makes. For me, the point of learning is to figure out who your learners are as individuals; what they’re passionate about, what irritates them, how far you can push them or joke with them, and what brings them back to "normal" after a meltdown in which a student destroys a classroom as he tries to "calm down" (it’s happened to me, it wasn’t pretty). Before I could even attempt to connect with learners’ needs through assessments, collaborative peer work, or the arrangement of my instructional space, I need to attempt to connect with them as individuals. Maybe it’s some latent life lesson learned while being the often over-looked "nerdy kid" that never really learned how to make friends and connect with a wide range of individuals, but the point of learning for me is to identify with my learners on a level that lets me figure out what makes them tick as a person first, and a learner second. It’s really not that different from what Brian was getting at, just slightly off from the mark he made. image credits: School, by Elizabeth Albert - http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabeth_albert/4998473663/ Gears Icon by Dima Yagnyuk, from The Noun Project - http://thenounproject.com/noun/gears/#icon-No2174  

For anyone who may be in their mid 20s to late 30s, and grew up watching PBS, the following remixed and auto-tuned video may bring on sudden waves of nostalgia. Please be advised that those under the age of 12 may exhibit signs of confusion. Please ignore them, and then share how amazing Reading Rainbow was with them! But wait, there’s more! Although Reading Rainbow went off the air in 2006, Levar Burton has managed to revive the essence of the show in an app for iPads, and it’s free!! Read books by yourself or with a narrator, play games, or watch special videos exploring the world with Levar Burton! There’s really a lot of great stuff in the app, but this is a much different model than what you would expect from the old PBS television show. While the show was free (tax payer funded, and free for actual consumption as long as you have a TV and an antenna), this new app has an in-app subscription service built in. In other words, like many other "free to play" apps, you get the basics (and one free book), but in order to "check out" more books and get access to more features it’s either $9.99 a month or $29.99 for 6 months. Levar Burton has to make a living somehow, right? You can have multiple children’s accounts in the app though, so one subscription is good for unlimited books for every user of the device….which is kind of nice. Oh, and if you aren’t already, you most definitely should be subscribed to the PBS Digital Studios Channel on YouTube. They have a small, yet growing collection of other great classic PBS shows remixed, and while you’re there, go blow your mind with the awesome PBS Ideas Channel!

Public educators in Michigan have been under an extreme amount of pressure and stress lately. Our state legislature is getting ready to completely overhaul the funding model of public education, create a state-wide school district that is untethered from meeting assessment standards should the Governor choose, and then this happened earlier today. I’m not going to go into more detail (for now) and debate where I stand on any of these issues. The unfortunate reality is that what I feel is good or bad in all of this news is moot; elected officials making these changes are in the majority, and pointing out positive or negative highlights in any of the legislation isn’t what’s going on right now in our state. In fact, just about the only thing happening in our state right now is both sides pointing fingers at each other and trying to both yell the same thing simultaneously, "I’m right, you’re wrong!". So in the spirit of trying to briefly lift the spirits of people that might be weary on either side of the debacle debate, you should take a moment and just enjoy the following Youtube clip. It’s one of just many in a series subtitled (Kids Tell, Adults Act), a hilarious premise for short skits in which children’s conversations are over-acted and made gloriously funny by adult actors. Enjoy, and if this didn’t make you smile, I’m sorry, I’m not sure what will today. It worked for me! P.S. Special thanks to Derek Braman for sharing this with the #michED people last night.

It’s back….from the archives of blogs posts long lost! From the farthest reaches of the internet, comes….."My Animated GIF Day!" Poor setup, I know, but for those who didn’t see the original animated GIF day post back in February, I’ll be telling the story of my day through animated GIFs all day long, so feel free to leave a browser tab open to this post to follow along with my day using that most meme-worthy of digital storytelling devices, the animated GIF.   My son, the YouTube junkie, getting his fix at 5:15 in the morning. 5:15 am My son, like my daughter and myself, is an early riser. While this makes for some unpleasantness when certain people want to sleep in at our house, it also means that if he’s quick enough, my son can run into our bedroom in the wee hours of the morning, snatch my wife’s iPhone from the bedside table, and manage to sneak in a few minutes of his current obsession; watching home-made Thomas the Tank Engine videos on YouTube. We usually don’t let it go on for too long, but some mornings he can get in a good 15-20 minutes of watching before either my wife or I are awake and aware of what’s happening.   My daughter, bless her heart, would gladly spend all day reading if she had a stack of books large enough. 5:44 am My daughter has grown into a love of reading, much like her mother. While I used to "pretend" to be a reader, I was never as enthralled with books as much as this little one. After finding her brother obsessing over the exploits of Thomas, I found my daughter re-reading (for the 4th time) one of her "Faerie" books. I could easily spend the entire morning reading with her tucked under some comfy blankets, with the smell of fresh pine from the Christmas tree permeating the house.   Scrambled eggs for breakfast, yum! 6:34 am I made scrambled eggs and sausage this morning for the family. Usually my wife makes us something special for breakfast at the end of the week (she doesn’t have to work on Fridays), but I took the opportunity of being up early to get started on breakfast for her. Kindly ignore the faded blue tile and grungy-grout countertop. It was in the house when we bought it, and would cost somewhere between "new countertops cost how much?!" and  "ha, we wish we had that much money to spend on remodeling!"   Some criticize me for the amount of cream I drink in my coffee. I typically criticize them for the amount of coffee they drink in their cream. 8:28 am Morning coffee. It’s a ritual, an addiction, and a nice quiet time of the morning for me to collect my thoughts and chat with our System Administrator who happens to sit on the other side of the wall behind the coffe maker.   Forget iPads, we’re going retro cool with iPod Touches…refurbished to boot! 9:05 am After reading and responding to a number of morning emails, I helped our System Administrator get some new iPods destined for our Early Elementary school ready. We had to asset tag them with barcode stickers, put some screen protectors on them, get them snuggled into their new silicone cases, and then make sure they were good to go. We purchased older refurbished 4th generation iPod Touches rather than splurge on new ones, so there’s always that feeling of "are we sure they’re going to be ok?" They will very shortly be used as modern listening centers, replacing old CD/tape units in classrooms. We have some enterprising teachers turning their analog audio into digital formats (with publisher permission) so multiple students can listen at once with a listening station, and then repurpose the iPods for classroom use the rest of the day.   Warning, rapid scrolling may lead to "repetitive stress injuries" for your pointer finger. 10:03 am I left a comment on a particularly well written, and even better visualized, recap of a presentation that Tom Woodward presented recently at the annual Virginia Society for Technology in Education conference. Tom and I go way back to 2005, although curiously we’ve never met in person. If I recall correctly, we were both teaching in 1:1 environments  he in Henrico County, Virginia and me in Benton Harbor, Michigan. He may have been drawn to the community that I once tried to foster and facilitate on my site through a connected forum, and I was certainly drawn to his DIY ethos when it comes to education. I feel like Tom is probably the closest and dearest friend that I’ve ever made online, but have yet to actually meet (don’t worry Jim, you’re high on the list too). He’s a very thought provoking individual, and I’ve certainly taken more from his ideas and work in education than just about any other colleague that I work with.   Mixed nuts….the snack of champions…..and squirrels. 11:34 am Most days I spend this time eating lunch, but today I got busy finishing up a number of smaller tasks from earlier in the week. I helped out with a few tech issues, answered some email, worked on a grant amendment, and journeyed down into the "dungeon", the old locker rooms underneath the bleachers in what used to be the High School. We use it as a central store house for technology past its prime, or waiting to go into service. When I don’t have time to eat, I snack….healthy of course, for the most part. I keep this tin of mixed nuts by my desk for when I feel the munchies, but know I shouldn’t be wandering down to the donuts that I know are in the teacher’s lounge, or the chocolates in central office.   F3, F3, F3, F3, F3, F3……. 12:47 pm After lunch I started to really dig into the grant amendments that I had been tasked with earlier in the day. While a large part of my job is helping teachers with technology, leading professional development workshops, and troubleshoot minor problems, I spend a good portion of my Fridays doing administrative work. This afternoon I’ve been reworking elements of previous grant applications and expenditures into an amendment for our school’s current consolidated grant application. I don’t have a decent workflow for this yet, as disparate leaders in our district share through various ways (email, Google Docs, print out, etc.). I’m grateful for F3 on my mac though, as Expose helps me make sense of it all.   as the world turns…. 2:14 pm There are some afternoons at work when it’s so quiet in the office that if I were to get down on all fours and put my ear to the ground, I could almost hear the crust of the earth shifting beneath me, and the magma churning along deep within the mantle. I spent a lot of my afternoon piecing together the grant amendment that I mentioned before, walking around from building to building to talk to various parties and people involved with some of the projects and initiatives that we fund with the grant. I hate working in isolation and not including voices in work that will affect a good number of people, so I typically try to get a few conversations going as I work. Since my amendment isn’t due until the middle of next week, I started some small conversations now, and will finish up with those I couldn’t get a hold of next week. In the meantime, the world keeps spinning, as it always does.   Round and round they go! 6:28 pm After coming home and having dinner, our family headed out to the Tree Lighting Festival in our small town, walked through the brightly lit shops, and enjoyed hot chocolate, treats, and merriment. I love living in a small town, especially a small tourist town, because we get to reap the benefits of the extra "charm" and "down home cheerfulness" (if there is such a thing) that comes with living somewhere where everyone is trying to relax and enjoy themselves. These lights are easily 5 times as obnoxious in person. 7:49 pm The evening is just about over for a family with two young ones that have spent a very busy week filled with birthday parties (my youngest turned 3) and the excitement of having the house decorated for Christmas. My mother-in-law is visiting for the weekend, so we went down to the bluff above Lake Michigan to see all of the lights. While some find it beautiful, I find it rather obnoxious when every single tree is flickering spastically in rhythm with the sounds of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra being pumped over loud speakers through the park. When walking around with family though, it becomes quite pleasant, and I enjoyed the way the children laughed as they hid behind the trees and ran in circles around the giant lightbulb-covered snowflakes.

I don’t typically go on rants here on the blog. I’ve occasionally voiced frustration about political developments, subpar video sharing sites dedicated to education, or questioned the heralding of large Bill Gates-backed video learning projects, but when it comes to calling out other education blogs, I’m typically quiet. Why? Well, for starters, it usually invites a host of negative or critical comments on my own work, which engenders the type of "sour grapes" responses that make me look jealous of others’ success. This in turn can make it quite easy for anyone, close colleagues and acquaintances included, to conclude that Ben Rimes is a rather crotchety, pessimistic, jerk that would rather whine about others than rise to the occasion. I suppose that today, I’ll have to accept those likely outcomes, as this weekend a number of musings, thoughts, and ramblings came together for me. Here are a few of my growing concerns with the mainstream education blogging space. My concerns about mainstream education blogs aren’t really alarmist. They’re more like, "should there really be aloe flavored yogurt?" Drinking From the Firehose is Apparently the Popular Choice I get listed on some of the spammy/SEO-like posts put out by various entities that go by titles that are all basic permutations and assemblages of the words "College, Online, Best, Helper, Ranking, Success". When I browse through those lists there are a lot of great reflective blogs, and each list seems to be slightly different as times passes. There are a few blogs though that seem to seize an inordinate chunk of the edublogger zeitgeist; the blogs that have anywhere between 5 to 15 posts a day, and average no more than one or two paragraphs per posting. They’re the kind of blogs that value quantity over quality, seem to garner a hefty amount of Tweets, Pins, and Facebook postings, and yet when you visit them they seem like little more than rehashed press releases with little to no value added. Don’t get me wrong, everyone needs to drink from the firehose every now and then after stumbling across the digital wastelands of the internet, but when the first comments on your blog post are basically commenting on how poor the service you’re mentioning is, and can only say "it’s a start I suppose", maybe you should step back and take a bit more time digging into the content you’re posting, and turn that firehose into a manageable garden spigot better suited to cultivating and feeding reflective learning. Back Patting is Great, But We Need to Grow Many blog posts I see bouncing around the Twittersphere are usually high spirited "Huzzah-inducing happy posts". There’s nothing wrong with that, and certainly we need to share some positivity, but I don’t see a lot of the good critical stuff happening in smaller circles in the wider mainstream education blogs. Tom Woodward is probably my best example of how to "Lose Friend and Alienate People" when it comes to regular critical blog posts that might contain explicit lyrics or criticisms of large corporations taking over education. Tom usually makes some pretty great reflective critical comments where others dare not (myself included mostly) when it comes to accurately pointing out what we should really be focused on in education. I love the great big circle hugs, inside jokes, and support that most educational circles on Twitter and Facebook provide for one another (we need it for the most part after the societal and cultural lumps that we take far too often). However, when it’s time to really grow as individuals and professionals, I can’t seem to recall the last time I created lasting growth and deeper understanding by a round of "good jobs". In fact, feel free to use this blog post as a way to tell me what I’m doing wrong, and call me out on a number of topics. I’ve been down that road before and when someone like David Warlick calls you out on your published thoughts in a national magazine, once you get passed the wincing and wound-licking you have a great opportunity to emerge stronger and more thoughtful. EduPreneurs Make Me Leary I come from a long time on entrepreneurs. My father, his father before him, his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father (you get the point) were all independent business men at some point in their lives. Among various dalliances with side businesses and sales jobs, my family had a small department store for over 100 years before it finally closed its doors at the turn of the millenium. I grew up in the world of retail, service, independent entrepreneurship, and sales. I don’t have anything against people wanting to carve out a successful business for themselves on the merit of their own experiences, wisdom, and talents, but I do know this from my own family’s experiences; being a successful entrepreneur means that you look for opportunities, some more opportunistic than others, about how to grow your business. It doesn’t matter how much you might profess your dedication to helping students, teachers, and education in general, eventually the bottom line is going to take hold in some small way. I’m not trying to be pessimistic or cynical in this, just pragmatic…I’ve seen it happen all too often. Granted there are great examples of educators taking the EduPreneur route and sticking to a more altruistic over tones. Prominent edu-blogger Dan Meyer has managed to do this with his 101qs site revolving around making math instruction better. I just begin to develop that sense of distrust when a prominent blogger or education thinker starts to evangelize one particular learning/technology platform over another, then discover that they also happen to be heavily invested in developing applications or tools for that particular platform. Those Fancy Infographics Are Just Posters, And They’re Getting Worse Once upon a time, infographics used to be really cool (hilarious, but don’t open that link while working with students). Many are a nice blend of humor, play on cultural references, and actually use the graphical elements to make an emphatic point about the data. Sadly, most of the infographics I see getting posted on many mainstream education blogs are the equivalent of graphic design sweat shops that don’t exactly create strong visual references or elements that help tie all of the data together in a cohesive piece of art. They’re more like posters 2.0, and for the vast majority of infrographic publishing PR firms, there’s nothing amazing going on here. It’s an epidemic actually, spurred on by many of those link-bait sites I mentioned in concern number one; they must have this nice email list that they share with one another containing several hundreds, if not thousands, of regular education bloggers asking for "guest" posts, and suggestions of infographics to share, because I seem them tend to pop up in small clusters. Oh, and those really cool tools that let you create your own visually stunning info graphics? Those aren’t infographics, they’re just graphs….with the added detriment of having to scroll through them to see everything. Sharing Corporations & Products More Than Student Work & Lessons Learned This could very well be my biggest beef with many mainstream education blogs. While I have certainly been guilty of sharing products over process, the general rise in the number of blogger-turned-product-placement-professionals is a bit unnerving. Not that the blogosphere is in danger of becoming overrun with legions of consumer-level PR machines, but as more and more bloggers receive complimentary gadgets, accounts, and services from a variety of corporations, it can become increasingly difficult to tell if they really value the product, or are just moving onto their next sweet deal. Are people writing about the gallon of IdeaPaint they picked up because they bought it themselves, and they’re really enjoying it, or did they receive a complimentary gift to try it out, write about their experience, and then moved on to something else that caught their attention? It’s not that I have a problem with this, as I’ve received a number of pretty sweet deals throughout my blogging tenure, but my concern is what happens when the majority of mainstream education blogs become nothing more than just another media channel for corporations to push their wares? There aren’t any terribly bad culprits of this that I can callout; it’s more of a general warning to any mainstream education blogger. If you’re writing more and more about amazing products and services, and less about actual instruction, student experiences, and something that adds to the educational world without having to purchase it for $29.99, you might have tilted the scales a bit too far. So What Now, Ben? Remember how I said I don’t do this sort of thing very often? It’s because while I like to sound off quite frequently in face-to-face conversations and forum posts (some might say I have a rather stand-offish attitude at times), I like to make sure that when I take the time to write, share my feelings, and actually try to put some prosaic words in a little text-box, I have some type of reflective after note. In this case, my response to these concerns is actually rather simplistic, and in a way I hope might deflect any of those negative comments that I’m sure some might be more than willing to share. I did link directly to a few examples of blog posts that concern me, and it would certainly be easy for me to say "start reading my blog!" as a response, it’s not how I feel. My blog is certainly not intended to be mainstream about anything, and as I mentioned earlier,  I notice some of the growing issues out there happening in my own blogging as well. I would strongly encourage anyone with an RSS Reader (people still use RSS, right?) to check out a few blogs that are both well established in educational thought, and do a wonderfully profound job of being reflective, adding to the rich narrative of teacher and students voices here on the internet, and are being written first and foremost for the author. Alan Levine, Audrey Watters, and James Paul Gee are just a few to get you started. The way they write is often profoundly simple, and while they may ramble on in comparison to the typical "10 sentence maximum" blog posts on many heavily trafficked education blogs, their writing represents the kind of reflection, introspection, and self curation that I wish more educators and students could develop. In an era when so many are caught up in MOOCs, Alan is willing to openly question the very foundation of why we need to have courses at all. Audrey describes the most amazingly detailed "test" that she runs through when meeting with new EduPreneurs, and short of giving them a long form essay question on the history of educational theory, she lays out a number of critical questions that I rarely see many popular education bloggers postulating of the services, products, and individuals they’re talking about. Heck, I know I’d fail if I ever found myself on the receiving end of many of those questions. Mr. Gee has led me to believe that a lot of educators talking about Gamification in the classroom are going about it all wrong. There are certainly hundreds upon thousands upon millions of great educational voices out there in the world, and my hope is that those fortunate enough to be competing for the most mind share of classroom teachers are being good stewards in their position of prominence.  

The PBS IdeaChannel is my new favorite YouTube addiction. Imagine taking everything thought provoking that PBS hangs its hat on, and wrap it up with nostalgia for the 80s and 90s, and you have the social media makings of PBS 2.0, designed for my generation.. For example, let’s compare Santa to Hulk Hogan shall we? Yes, yes, the premise sounds far fetched, but the way the persuasive piece of storytelling connects the emotions and cognitive awareness of the "buy in" to the "fakeness" that is Santa Claus and the professional wrestling world is almost magic. I can’t help but wonder what big educational thinkers behind the Common Core State Standards might think about such a seemingly well structured thesis, especially as persuasive writing seems to be so dominant throughout the CCSS language. Having seen a few more Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium assessment examples that include students being able to assemble a persuasive and supportive argument after watching a brief video, participating in class discussion, and then reading two articles, I wonder how well we’re preparing out students to "decode" and comprehend media like this. It’s not exactly as easy as doing some text coding, or applying other forms of written writing comprehension skills. If I were still in the classroom, especially at the secondary level (because who wants to ruin Santa Claus for a bunch of 3rd graders), I would certainly consider using media like this to start exposing my students to the sort of persuasive digital media pieces that they could potentially be creating.

It’s official, the ds106 GIF Fest is upon us! Just in time for the coming Mayan apocalypse no less, huzzah! I thought I’d set the bar really low, to see if I can anger the GIF gods to come and make something better. That, and I thought it might be nice to create a GIF that many of my educational technology brothers and sisters could use in a pinch to illustrate the frustrating nature that is the 21st century work place; we seem like we’re all in a hurry to get somewhere (usually collaboratively, reflectively, and in a standards-based fashion), but we just can’t seem to get there. It’s like we’re all in a hurry to wait for the next thing, which of course how I felt when I saw that pulsating blue progress bar today as I copied over a bunch of videos from around campus to turn into some teacher introductions. Our teachers and school board members don’t often get a chance to meet with one another (typically our principals present to the school board about what’s happening in their buildings), so last year I helped craft a few videos to present some of our "tech leaders" to the school board. It’s been awhile since I’ve done any, and I thought it might be time to pick it back up as we have some new school board members after the election last Fall.

You get at least one of these children in your classroom every year; the overactive student. He or she is that one child that makes the Energizer Bunny look like Droopy the Dog. If you’re quick witted, and a bit lucky, you can usually figure out what makes that particular student tick, and find ways to channel and harness that extra energy for productive work in the classroom. Some days you’re not so successful, and you wind up with what I can only describe as a "Pinkie Pie Tornado". Alright, so maybe you don’t equate your student’s behavior to My Little Pony characters…..but if you did, I think Pinkie Pie’s exuberance would make an excellent metaphor for some of the wilder moments that take place in classrooms just a few days before a big holiday break, whether they’re your "easily excitable" students or not. For those educators that might be dealing with such students, feel free to share this GIF with them. It kept my 7 year old daughter enthralled for at least 5 minutes, and the 3 year old put in at least a couple of minutes and a few great guffaws! For all of you young, eager, energy-filled learners, please consider this Pinkie Pie Tornado as a tribute to your boundless vigor. I’ve created it to memorialize your zest and zeal at a time of the year when most of the adults around you would most likely be happy to take a nap right about now.  

In yet another installment of the ds106 GIFfest, I decided to tackle Michael Branson Smith’s animated GIF assignment and produce a Muppet GIF. It was actually pretty easy, as YouTube is overrun with great video clips from both the classic era of the Muppet Show, and the more modern Muppet creations. As soon as I accepted this growing GIF challenge, I knew I wanted to to capture the classic "Kermit arm flail". It’s the perfect spastic out-pouring of pure jubilation, excitement, and energy. I can safely say this uninhibited display of joy is probably happening in a lot of K-12 classrooms across the United States today, as teachers and students brace for the last days before Christmas break. I wonder if college & university professors and students might already be in full on "Kermit arm flail" state, having finished up their finals and enjoying their mid-year break a bit earlier than K-12. Thanks to Tim Owens for giving me the inspiration for a Kermit GIF.  

I wanted to take a moment this evening from all of the animated GIF creations to send warm wishes and good tidings to all of those wonderful people in my life that support me, challenge me, and help me make it through each and every day. From my fantastic co-workers and hard working educators in Mattawan Schools, to my loving family and close friends both near and far, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! To my ds106 brothers and sisters, and all of the other incredible educators that I follow on Twitter, thank you for helping shape me as an educator, and may you have a Happy Holidays! To anyone who may be passing by my blog as they stumble across the Internet, I wish you the warmest of Season’s Greetings as well! I felt determined to produce something that would be more than just the usual fluff that I create, and craft something that I could share with everyone regardless of whether they find my ramblings through a web search for educational purposes, entertainment, or out of dumb luck (which we could all use a bit more of, eh?). In honor of this holiday season, and the ongoing ds106 GIF Fest, I hope everyone has a very Merry GIFmas!  

In the midst of the ds106 GIFfest came a flurry of posts from Jim Groom in which he animated some classic Atari 2600 games. His 8-bit Noir was brilliant, comparing Night Driver to the classic black and white film, The Killers. What really got me jonesing pretty bad to create one of my own was his Haunted House GIF. I’m not going to try and pretend that I have the same sort of nostalgia for Atari 2600 games the same way Jim and those a few years older than me do; I was born in 1979, and while my house was filled with bleeps and bloops in the 80s, I played most of the classic Atari games a few years after many of the era experienced these classics during their "first runs". Still, I’d like to think my memories of these 8-bit wonders aren’t any less significant. Missile Command is probably one of the fondest memories of gaming from my formative years. I’ve played it in most of its incarnations, from the Atari 2600 and Macintosh, to the re-imagined versions on the Nintendo Gameboy and even the iOS platform. What makes this game such a memorable piece of my gaming history is the opportunity it gave me to garner a class period free from work and lab write ups in Chemistry. Mr. L had an aging Mac in the corner of his room that had a few graphing applications and some video games, one of which was Missile Command. Having endeared myself to him earlier in the year by memorizing the theme song to the Road Runner Show, he gave me a turn at Missile Command while I waited for a paper to be graded. Not realizing how practiced I was at the game, he turned back towards his desk, leaving me to spend the next 15 minutes blasting nuclear missiles from the digital sky. When he finally realized how much time I had wasted (his fault entirely of course), he tried to kick me off the computer. I invoked his unofficial "but I haven’t died yet" rule, which gave him pause. Would he risk losing his status of the coolest science teacher in school by kicking a kid off the computer despite having all my work mostly done, or let me continue to monopolize the machine? His solution was rather brilliant; he taped a piece of paper over the top half of the screen, and grinned at me. "Go ahead and see how well you do now, Rimes", he challenged me. Thinking he had gotten the better of me, and that I would soon be dead, he called over a few other students to see how long it would take me before I choked. 5 minutes later I was still blasting away, and in a fit of annoyance, Mr. L lowered the paper so only the bottom third of the screen was visible, making it impossibly difficult to catch all of the missiles before they hit. I shifted strategies from the typical "high orbit intercept strikes" to defending just a few cities. I watched a couple go up in nuclear flames, the millions of virtual inhabitants turned into casualties of war, and feverishly watched for missiles coming towards the two cities closest to the central launch pad. By this time a small gathering of the class was behind me, cheering me on, and eagerly watching both the computer screen and the clock; I had managed to derail any meaning productive work for at least 25 minutes now, and with another 10 minutes of "must defend" mode, I had successfully helped many in the class avoid their work for the better half of the class period. I wish I could say how the class period ended; whether I gave up or the pressure of having all of those eyeballs behind me getting the better of my missile-launching trigger finger. I don’t actually recall how the class period ended, but neither I nor anyone else in the classroom got to play any of the games on Mr. L’s old Mac again. I had destroyed his goodwill, and despite enjoying a day without worrying about whether my lab write up fit the proper grading template, I still had to do the work at home that evening. I’d like to think that everyone has a story like this to tell about a teacher they’ve had; a time when you had a chance to "escape" the usual routine of the classroom and steal a moment or two to connect. I had a blast in Mr. L’s class, and despite spending a good half an hour goofing off that day, I did really well in in the Honors Chemistry course. That, and for a nerd like myself, it helped give me a little boost to my ego, something a heck of a lot of teenagers can appreciate.

I’m having a blast with creating GIFs for the ds106 GIFfest, but I’m also enjoying Stella, the excellent Atari 2600 emulator that Jim Groom turned me onto before Christmas. I spent a few good solid hours playing some of my old favorites, including Miner 2049′er (just as difficult as I remember), Moon Patrol, and Missile Command (still as good as I remember). I wanted to create a bunch of separate GIFs from these games to try and capture the twitchy nature of 8-bit gaming, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the results.     It was difficult for me to capture a moment in Miner 2049′er that conveyed the strongest memories I have of the game, which would be a still shot of my miner in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the level after falling from a high ledge. I created a GIF of the miner falling to his doom, but I wanted something that worked better as an seamless loop, not just a "restart" and fall. The same goes for the Moon Patrol GIF. I wanted to create a seamless action shot to convey the frenetic "run and gun" that you felt while playing the game. Miner 2049′er and other platformers at least gave you a safe spot to rest or wait until pushing ahead. Moon Patrol was not so nice, as your vehicle pushed forward whether you wanted it to or not, in an endless treadmill of UFOs, pits, and other obstacles. During the creation process I kept thinking about the episode of Futurama in which Fry, a present day schmo transported to the future after being cryogenically frozen, dreams of visiting the moon. His future friends take him to the Moon Park, which turns out to be a huge disappointment for Fry as the moon has been completely "Disneyfied" and turned into a cheesy theme park. The lunar rover ride is on a rail, cotton candy comes in "moon rock" grey, and the most awful form of revisionist history takes place in a riff on the "It’s a Small World" ride; the "Whalers on the Moon" ride presents Moon tourists with what is believed to be what man’s first trip to the moon looked like, a bunch of drunken sailors with harpoons who have set out to hunt whales on the Sea of Tranquility. The only way to clear my brain out was to create a new ds106 assignment that I’m calling "Animate 2600 Mashup" and take both my Moon Patrol and Miner 2049′er GIFs and cram them together, thus creating "Miners on the Moon". Sure, it’s not quite the same thing as the Futurama joke, but it was a fun remix of the idea.   And because you’ve been a good sport about reading this entire non-education related blog post, I thought I’d at least create a "how to" video on creating an animated GIF using Photoshop and just about any video clip you can get your hands on.

This post is long overdue, as I finished What Video Games have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy by James Paul Gee more than a month ago, along with the other members of Book Club 106. It was a monumental achievement for me personally as I hadn’t ever read an "academic" text outside of required reading for courses. In fact, I haven’t read many books at all outside of required course readings for several years now. Thankfully, there were enough people out there on the Internet to encourage me to get through the heavier early chapters of this book, and finish with a wonderful, if exhaustively long, conclusion about several learning principles that can be derived from good video game design. Before diving into the final wrap up of this work, I wanted to share the two final Google+ Hangout discussions I had with a few more members of Book Club 106. I had to skip a couple of weeks of the video discussions due to a power outage after a wind storm knocked down some lines and some scheduling conflicts, but the next to last discussion with Jim Groom and Patrick Brewer was a satisfying conversation about providing balance in educational spaces between letting learners struggle and when to "step in" to help, and how to create a cohesive narrative in learning and curriculum design akin to game development. Oh, and we talked about some great video games!   The final video discussion for the book was a treat for me because Rachelle Winkoop was finally able to join in for a video discussion after several technology induced mishaps that prevented her from joining in any of the previous discussions. We had the opportunity to talk about teachers needing to "step back" from being the sage on the stage, Montessori education’s place in the 21st century, and come back around to how James Paul Gee recognizes a lot of learning principles inherent in good video game design that can help prepare learners for being life-long learners, not necessarily life-long gamers.   Final Reflection My final thoughts about this text hover around the great question posed by Rachelle in the last video discussion; we learn with much better context as networked learners, not just individuals, so how do we get students to a place where success is defined by being able to ask the right questions, and not just knowing an answer? Being able to simply provide the correct answer on a test or other final assessment piece is not always indicative of success in the real world, outside the confines of our school buildings. In the closing pages of chapter 7, Gee makes point to acknowledge the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky (a reference I was hoping Gee would make), and his idea of individual’s possessing a "zone of proximal development". This concept is typically essential reading in many teacher prepatory programs (or should be) as it describes that ever-shifting area between the level of accomplishment that an individual can achieve on their own versus the usually much higher level of accomplishment an individual can achieve when working with others. Other important points of the final chapters in this text speak to the growing "connectedness" that many successful emterprises, networks, and schools are beginning to adopt. The rationale that Gee makes for remaining critical and vigilant of patterns of practice that may seem to be successful at first blush, yet fall apart under deeper scrutiny, is a great breath of fresh air in the middle of the digital badges and gamification trends currently happening in many education circles. That’s not to say that I or Gee would necessarily disagree with either of the movements, but that in all areas of education, it’s important to remain reflective, and possess a modicum of self-cognition so as to keep the main goals of a project in constant focus. For example, on page 188 of the book, Gee maintains that although many schools and educational environments may experiment and alter their instructional design to better suit learners, adopting some of the learning principles he’s identified as being more effective than traditional methods, those institutions still cling to traditional assessments and measures of student achievement. This creates a dissonance between how we’re preparing learners to enter the real world, and how they will actually be challenged after their schooling is formally complete. Anyone expecting this text to be a ground-breaking departure from the current learner-focused, problem-based learning movement that’s taking root in many schools in the United States would be disappointed. That’s not to say this isn’t a great read, as I see it as the seminal work behind a lot of game design and gaming as metaphors for effective instructional design and learning. However, either due to the age of the text (it was originally written in 2004), or perhaps the rapidly changing climate of K-12 learning in our hunt for the next "magic bullet", the collected thoughts of James Paul Gee seem rather matter of fact and straightforward. His 36 learning principles are rather concise, and make a lot of sense for any educator that has been wrestling with how to codify a method of successful instructional design. In other words, this is a great comfort read, for me especially on two levels, as I’m both an educator and a gamer. When Gee makes reference to Half-Life 2 I can recall many of the shared experiences he conveys while playing through it. When he makes the connection between the excellent game design that Valve put into Half-Life 2 and the learning environment, it’s done in an elegant manner that makes you realize why you didn’t see the connections before. Any educator that’s serious about their professional practice and gaming should read this book. It’s a little bit of nostalgia mixed with pedagogy, and an affirmation for those teachers looking to develop meaningful connections, collaboration, and reflection among their learners.   Several sticky notes were sacrificed to decoding this worthy text. A Few Thoughts That Stood Out I can’t leave this collection of observations quite yet. While I warmed up to the text as I dug deeper into the chapters, and farther from Gee’s own self authored concept of semiotic domains, I realized a few connections between Gee’s observations and my own personal experiences. Of all the learning theories that Gee described, a few stood for me. These learning principles are the culminating observations of hundreds of hours of both video game play, and studying educational practice. While several describe or re-hash existing learning principles put forth by various psychologists and educational theorists, some bring the uncanny similarities between great game design and great educational design into clear focus.  I jotted a few musings down in the margins and on stickies while reading most of the book (alright, so I heavily butchered the margins and went through nearly an entire pad of sticky notes), but I felt there were a few worth sharing. Learning Principle #27 Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle "The Learner is give explicit information both on demand and just in time, when the leaner needs it or just at the point where the information can best be understood and used in practice" Of all the various types of games I enjoy, the Metroid series is probably the best example of this principle. Important tools and resources needed to gain access to higher levels of difficulty or different parts of the game world are earned and discovered as you play through the game. Often areas of extreme importance or interest can be seen just out of reach, making them tantalizing goals with no means of accessing them. Cleverly, the next large boss fight you encounter, or perhaps a newly discovered treasure  will allow you the skills or tools to go back and access that previously unexplored area of the game. Just as in the game, in the classroom learners have access to a host of information, yet often we wait to give them certain tools and resources until we know that they will be able to accomplish learning goals with a higher degree of success. You aren’t given the ability to fire missiles, launch into devastating spin attacks, or double jump early in most Metroid games as the designers want you to explore the tools you do have access to, preserve ammunition, and try to solve problems creatively. As educators, we should be seeking ways to ensure that we aren’t "over-powering" our learners at too early a stage, giving them tools that might hinder them if they haven’t had time to fully understand, appreciate, and master underlying concepts. Learning Principle #30 Cultural Models About the World Principle "Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about some of their cultural models regarding the world, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models that may conflict with or otherwise relate to them in various ways." This is probably the most excruciatingly difficult principle for me to put in place. Our ultimate goal as educators is to push learners forward; push them to new understandings, new concepts, and to help them realize that what they can achieve is often limited by their experience, thus seeking out the experiences and wisdom of others can and should be a positive way to grow even farther. However, if we don’t critically examine our own experiences and reflect on them in a constructive way, the introduction of new materials, resources, and concepts can have the adverse effect of destroying the learner’s sense of self-confidence, and possibly even push them farther down a path of self-imposed ignorance. I struggle with this all the time. How do we cheer the ascension of the learner to a new learning goal, yet know that the very next week we’ll be introducing them to concepts and problems that may fly in the face of what they know, potentially reducing what they have learned to nothing more than an exercise in futility. It’s the same concept that applies to a group of individuals playing through a game together, such as an MMO, in which the skills, experience, and resulting accomplishments needed to pass low levels in the game become increasingly irrelevant as you progress to higher levels of difficulty. In other words, rushing head first into a band of Orcs with a battle axe may work when you’re still at a low level, dealing with just a few enemies at a time. However, once the game presents you with magic and long-range weapon wielding enemies, the "berserker" tactic may fail miserably, and you may even have to suffer humiliations in front of your peers as you struggle to adapt and win. I wonder how often I, and other teachers, may be ignoring this crucial principle of supporting learners as they struggle to move from an easier concept to a more difficult one in which earlier experiences no longer apply. One example that comes to mind is trying to apply the previous concept of multiplication as repeated addition to the multiplication of fractions. I haven’t yet figured out a fool-proof method, but I’m a huge fan of reflective journaling (hence my blog), and getting students to narrate how they went about tackling a problem in hopes that the meta-cognition going on will become the focus on the learning experience, not just the achievement at the end.   The "Big" Takeaway I could easily write a dissertation with the mountain of references Gee provides in his text, both from the gaming world and academia. The bibliography pulls from research papers, articles, dissertations, and texts from across three decades of writing and thought, and the gaming references another 2 decades. However, in an effort to find the one "nugget" of an idea that I can take away from this text, I would make reference to a small sentence at the top of page 207 in which Gee is describing the features of an affinity group, a group of individuals with common interests who typically work together to achieve common goals. In addition to pointing out a focus on the "whole process" and access to extensive knowledge that is both embodied in each individual of the group as well as being distributed across the group at large, Gee plainly states that: "Knowledge is not first and foremost in heads, discrete individuals, or books but in networks of relationships"  That’s my takeaway from this text. A simple concept that while I may be merely a node in any network, and while any one individual may find it easy to assess my abilities and value through my ramblings on this blog or my singular efforts in the classroom, they would be underestimating my abilities to accomplish great feats as part of a larger network of learners and educators. As proof of this I would offer up the reality that while most of the videos I create and publish to YouTube garner not more than a few dozen views, it was only after an exhausting two full days of collaborative video editing work with a wide range of teachers, artists, and bloggers that I was able to produce a Back to the Future "Black and White" remix that wound up being featured on several other social media sites, including Gizmodo, and climbed above 100,000 views. My network made that happen, not me.   What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy - Part 1   What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning & Literacy - Part 2  

I let myself get caught up with several of the new Google+ Communities over Christmas break. While I’ve mostly been seeing a lot of cross-posting by some of the bigger "ed tech" heavy-weights spamming opportunities and interesting articles across several communities (mostly good mind you), there have been a few bright points of conversation, most of them stemming from Steve Hargadon’s Education Revolution community. In addition to exploring the wonderfully reflective questions and conversations that Steve can induce in most corners of the Internet, I also signed up for #ETMOOC, one of those trendy Massively Open Online Courses with a twist; it’s taking a desegregated  approach to conversation and learning in that all of the participants will be blogging on their own individual websites and blogs, with the results being syndicated through a central hub. It’s very much akin to DS106 (it should be as they’re both sharing the same technical expertise of Alan Levine), and is attempting to allow each of the course members to have their own distinct voice, yet curate them into one gigantic stream of narration. I predict a massive conflagration of learning and blogging, but there was one hurdle that took me awhile to overcome while going through the course’s pre-orientation check list; Introductions. Like a good constructivist-based course, the first goal of the instructors (led by Alec Couros) is to get us all connected, introduced to one another, and feeling comfortable. To that end, they setup a Google+ Community for us to have a centralized common "class discussion" area in addition to our blogs. Many people have introduced themselves with links to their blogs, brief descriptions of what they do, and where they live, but after starting (and stopping) several time to craft a succinct introduction post, I gave up. The course itself is a study of Educational Technology and Media, so I shifted gears, opened up Photoshop, and took a page from one of my old media creations on introducing oneself. Thus far, the "Hello" poster that I created has been warmly received, which was a huge relief to me. Most of the other course participants hail from universities and institutions that make it their business to teach and facilitate others about the use of media and technology in education, so receiving their nods of approval was great validation. How much time did I invest in my introduction image versus a traditional "Hi, I’m Ben" post on the forums? A LOT! Was it worth it? Hopefully, yes. A large portion of educators talk and talk about media, yet a lot of us seem to keep coming back to share through just one form of it….text. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing! Text is comfortable, re-assuring, and highly accessible by many (the image I created is terrible for those with visual impairments), not to mention that ability of it to be translated into other languages via simple and free software. It’s just that the more I find myself working with a variety of media in classrooms while helping teachers and students, I discover that the fidelity I can create with that same media pales into comparison with the level of writing that I would like to pretend I’ve achieved. Thus, my first foray into a course on media begins with a media creation that mixes both text and visual elements…..and a small container of aloe vera yogurt (it tastes about as good as you’d think, but I’m usually excited to try new things). It wasn’t that hard either. Just a few minutes with Photoshop, the eraser tool, and the text tool. I could do without the background layer, and drop shadows on the text, as that’s what took me the longest trying to get the "perfect" look to the piece. I’m not going to do a "how to" on this one, although Brian Bennett might chastise me for it. Instead, I’ll link to my previous "What’s Inside Ben Rimes" poster that I created a year and a half ago as a similar way of introducing myself to the DS106 community. I’ll end simply not by linking to some new app or website that you can create your own introduction image, but rather a challenge to actually open up Microsoft Paint, Preview, GIMP, or some other visual editing tool (heck, even Word or Pages would work), and create your own "introduction poster". It’s certainly not going to be high art, and my creation isn’t the best piece of media I’ve created, but you have to start somewhere, and saying hello is certainly a good place to do it, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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