Reflections of a Techie

Catching up at the Perk

There's nothing like starting the morning off with a little coffee and chit-chat.  Near my son's apartment is this lovely little shop, the Lincoln Perk.  It's as cute as its sign...friendly, homemade muffins and good conversation.  During my trip, we'd walk over here and chat a little about everything.  What a perfect way to start the day.

Microgreens. Yummy!

Microgreens....where less is more.  These amazing little sprouts are full of flavor and provide a huge nutritional punch.  Found a whole greenhouse full of them while on the KC Urban Farms & Garden tour last weekend.  I love the radish sprouts....immediate you knew what it was and it would be a perfect compliment to a salad, changing up the whole iceberg lettuce thing.

Accumulating a digital footprint...what students should know

"Digital footprints?  For real, Mrs. Ratzel?  I've never heard of anything like that...I can surf the web and no one knows who I am or where I come from." 

"Do I worry about who sees my work that I post?  No way."

"I love talking with my friends online and posting on their walls.  It's a blast and there's no one to tell me what to do."

Image licensed under Attribution CC http://goo.gl/AjLSL

I hear these whenever I bring up the subject of digital footprints to my students.  They feel all the power of surfing the web;  going wherever they chose, no one to say yes or no;  the perfect place for them to flex themselves as they grow and mature.  Can you blame them?  We felt that way too and just expressed it in different ways in our generation (doesn't matter how old you are, does it when you think of it like this).  I think the idea of a global generation is important with which to come to terms (the link will take you to a wonderful online speech by John Palfrey).  Digital identities leave behind traces of who you wherever you "travel" online.  Something like Google will bring these little pieces of "you" all together into a composite picture which mutates into a singular digital footprint.

So digital footprint matters.  As the adult in my classroom I know it and what I must do is to provide a learning experience to help students arm themselves with understanding.  I've been thinking about this idea of  digital footprints before.  Will they still feel that invincible power of teenagers?  Sure.  But maybe it will give them just enough of an awareness that they can hesitate (ever so slightly) and make a better decision.

Do you think they realize that all this goes on?

  

Now I've always used a digital driver's license approach.  It worked pretty well and it includes a set of 4 lessons, based on the Common Sense curriculum, that students must complete before I allow them to do much with computers. 

1. What information should be private and what can I share with the world?
2. How can I be smart about online talk and messaging?
3. Cyberbullying---it isn't funny and what you should do to make sure it doesn't happen to you as well as what you can do to help stop it
4. Sharing what you do with your parents---how to keep them informed, sharing passwords, and teaching them about what you're learning

Last year when I started blogging with students, I  incorporated a tiered system of gaining access to student publishing by having another gaunlet of skills that they must demonstrate before they were able to get their own blog, publish blog posts without my moderation and/or write posts for the class blog.  I read lots of materials, including some interesting work at the Youth and Media project which considers not only how this issue affects American youth, but youth throughout the wordl.

This year in a graduate course I teach, we started talking about all the aspects of digital citizenship and the driver's license.  They questioned whether a driver's license was broad enough to incorporate all the places students would be going.  Their questions made me realize that I need to revamp the idea and turn the driver's license into a passport. 

Changing from a Driver's License to a Digital Passport Makes Sense

It makes sense to me to manage the footprint with a passport because a student has to "visit" so many different places.  It allows me to use the metaphor of the internet being another world...and each place we go will be like another country.  To enter that country, you have to have a valid passport visa.

 

 I'm in the process of defining each of those "countries" right now.  Here's my brainstormed list so far

• Searching---synomyns, keywords
• Twitter---how to read, how to interact
• Images---copyright, how to find them
• Image alterations---where to manipulate the way they look both online and with school software
• High quality posting and commenting
• i Touch skills
• Recording audio & editing it
• USGS and NOAA websites---where to go; what you can find;
• Citation---how to do it; web-based citation helps; citation apps
• Scribe posting--how to notetake for the class; where to post
• Archiver--what to document, where to store what's been gathered; how to curate what you've done so other people can find it in the future

If there are things on this list that you think would be useful, please make a suggestion.  I've been designing an electronic version of the passport which I will post in the near future so that everyone can use it.

So what would you add?

 

Passport picture Image licensed under AttributionCC http://www.flickr.com/photos/gravitywave/366712496/sizes/m/in/photostream/

 

 

Captain Steampunk---Do you know him?

Encountered this fine fellow at the Maker Faire (@makerfairekc ) today. What a wonderful afternoon listening to inventors, creators, artists & scientists. Loads of ideas for discovery learning in my class next year.  My students would love something like this and there was so much to see, questions to ask and explanations to be heard.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone

Student video provides great reflective tool

I was sifting thru my video clips and found this gem from last year's 8th hour class.  These girls were not the most enthuastic science students and yet they shared a fun way to think about how friction changes the way a toy car moves down the desk.  They willingly presented their activity to the rest of the class....and everyone joined in.

(Remember these are middle schoolers which is why you have to enjoy the one young lady who decides to try out her friction device on another student's hair.  This age group requires that you smile and enjoy these things vs frowning and being upset with off task behavior.)

How does the surface change friction? from Marsha Ratzel on Vimeo.

 It's easy to see how this can be a powerful learning tool.  The girls can sit down with their video clip (made on a FlipCamera but could also be made on a cellphone camera) and watch their presentation.  Upon reflecting and with a little questioning from me, I would have them think about what they did well....it would boost their confidence and make them see that it's not only boys that can "do science".  I might ask them how they could do something just like this with a different topic and give them a chance to do another in-front-of-the-class-demo.

There are so many more ways to use video for student reflection?  What are some of the ways you do this...and/or....what ideas do you see coming out of this video?

 

Is our ice cream on fire? JJAProject Day 22

Funky little shoppe in Wicker Park was a fav find during weekend trip to Chicago.  Kate, Eric and I had concerns our ice cream was on fire...but it was only the process of freezing the cream by using liquid nitrogen.  Very yummy on such hot, humid days.

 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Don't you love the Delivery Hand at the end...no body, just hand!

 

Citizen scientist reporting for duty....

I've been working on the idea of engaging my students in authentic scientific research.  Well that's pretty hard given that I'm a teacher not a scientist.  But through the power of the Citizen Science website, I'm finding pretty neat possibilities.  Here's the project that I tested out today...and it is easy to see how I could do something like this with my 6th graders.

Dr. Kathleen Gorski (from University of Massachusetts in Springfield, MA) asked for citizens to help her collect more data points in measuring the solar energy that bounces back from the earth and into space....or earth's albedo.  Very easy to do ....just walk outside today (June 21st) anytime from 5pm to 8pm and snap a picture of a white piece of paper.  Email the photo off to Dr. Gorski's group and they'll take over.

This group will compare the proportion of energy that is bouncing off the paper to the proportion that is coming off the surrounding ground.  All of this helps to accumulate data on monitoring how the climate/weather is changing.

Such a super easy way for students to become involved....I think the only hard part is waiting for Dr. Gorski's group to process the data and make it public.

What was very cool about this project was that my photoblogging colleagues offered to jump in and participate.  We have banded together and taken the Summer Photoblogging Challenge which is to find something worthy of a photograph every day all summer.  There are 34 teachers who are working together to post those pictures on our Group site within Flickr and share them with each other.  It helps us learn how to post pictures, how to use Twitter as well as take pictures.  The power of Twitter connected the Tweets I was making about this project to the teachers in the JJAProject.  All of sudden, there were more people interested in participating and helping out.  Should help the scientists collect more data and more data will make for better conclusions.  The power of all this collaboration just gets bigger and bigger.

 

 

 

 

 

Tea time rhymes

Bustin' out the rhymes at our tea time
No matter what i do my rhyming ain't my prime
But with my partner in crime things is so sublime
Using Webster dictionary to strengthen my mind

Word.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone

1953 Webster Rhymes

I loved sharing an ice tea, picking random words from an old dictionary, with my son. He's trying to teach me to rhyme and I cannot to do it. He, on the other hand, seemingly does it with ease and brilliance. We had great fun sipping tea in this old brownstone house turned coffeehouse here on Clark Street.

Sent from my iPhone

Art in Chicago

Is this how the paintings see us? Wonderful day at Art Institute of Chicago, especially loved the design exhibit.

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