Reflections of a Techie

Social lessons of PBL...what I didn't expect but am learning now

Lots of creativity. Lots of energy.  Lots of fast moving, free flowing learning.  It's been a fantastically positive experience for all of us, most of the time.  It's loud but if you were there, you see that they pretty much all talking about their projects and the things they're building.

Using passion research to make product from Marsha Ratzel on Vimeo.

 

A few tears along the way.  Groups couldn't come to an agreement and harsh things were said to each other.  No one would compromise, so I had to broker a treaty.  Honestly one group had a couple fo members that wouldn't budge...both parties felt like their position was the "right" one.  It was a different kind of teaching victory...because I didn't let them go on until it was resolved.  The next day people had better attitudes...still not happy and certainly not forgotten. 

They're learning to listening to each other...trying to listen more than they talk.  It's hard.  Boy I can understand that.

 
I think this will be a journey not only for students but for me.  I need to continue to grow in my ability to lead students thru this kind of conflict resolution.  Asking those questions and being quiet enough...not rushing in to be Bob the Builder/Fixer.....because they won't learn if I do it for them.  Yet I have to make sure that everyone feels like I'm not watching the fireworks take place....it's my presence and proximity that has to lend the mantle of civility on the words and actions that they deploy in trying to solve their problems.

Some students really haven't had to learn to compromise and find that third solution out there...adults have solved it for them or they've been allowed to work by themselves.  I'm not saying that neither of those solutions are possibilities at other times, but this was a group project and that means learning different social skills than you will in other situations.

Other students have had to learn about craftsmanship.  Pride in product.  Doing the best on your project because it's yours. 

Did I forget to mention this....this is an un-graded project!!!!  No grades.  It's all about the learning.  I tried to free myself and them.  That hasn't gone well either.  Parents have emailed to say that their student has worked so hard and isn't getting any credit.  "Well no", I say but " they've learned a lot.  They knew going into it they weren't getting a grade so this isn't a surprise."  That doesn't sit too well with some parents.  Other parents couldn't be happier.  I just have to keep on moving forward believing what I see before my eyes.

 

Students have worked on this way more than I required.  Mostly because they were so interested and wanted to do all these creative, performance based things.  It's a good thing and I'm glad for the bumps in the road.  It's where I learn the most and I think I'm building up my PBL muscles.

Boxing match photo was from Flickr.  Licensed under a Creative Commons attribution license.   http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrovezini/6156189348/sizes/s/in/photostream/.  Listening ear was licensed under the CC Attribution License http://www.flickr.com/photos/hansvanrijnberk/2598234846/sizes/s/in/photostream/

From reporting riots to exchanging ideas...tools like AudioBoo help

I've been working with Twitter and learning how to follow real-time events. Text can be limiting, though and I'm just beginning to understand the subtleties of this.

The London riots have exposed me to another way to get the same info as Twitter but in a more human way...Audio Boo.  It's a simple application to make a recording from your computer or iPhone or iTouch.  Somehow the human voice transforms an already tragic situation into something that grips you emotionally.                                        

                                                                                       http://www.flickr.com/photos/beaconradio/6015648177/sizes/m/in/photostream/

 

 

 

Listen to RadioKate's heartbreaking account of events.

This is the raw power of the Internet and it's ability to let us hear first hand what's happening in the world.  Such a simple to use piece of software makes it possible to create high quality audio files that are easy to share.

Another colleague has been using AudioBoo to record his ideas and to share them with the rest of our working group.  When we hear his voice explaining his thinking, again those non-verbal cues are there. 

A conclusion I'm coming to is this....unlike the sterileness of text, hearing the human voice adds more information to the exchange and I understand more.  What are the implications of knowing that?  Where and when should I use the human voice to interject more cues into the communication?

Looking for Green Dirt Farm

We took a trip up where the Missouri River cuts thru Weston.  There are beautiful rolling hills as far as you can see and because of all the rain and snow melt, as far as you can see the Missouri has lowlying land under water.  Only the bright silver galvanized metal of barns and tall power polls can be seen out of the water.   High up on one of the bluffs we found this gorgeous old barn.  It's not one of the tobacco barns that are so famous.  Just a farm barn.  I thought it was beautiful and just perfect for trying out one of my new apps...Silent Film Director.  I don't think you'll be able to hear the old ragtime music but the style of video is great fun.  Thanks Rick for the inspiration & the heads-up on this cool app.  Check out his 365 Photo Blog.

IMG_0623.MOV Watch on Posterous

 

Simple questions asked & to be answered about photoblogging

Inspired by  Rick Kayler-Thomson (@rakt) iPhone4 photoblog and Sheri Edwards (@grammasheri), I am trying to learn lots of new tech skills over the summer.

I've never had a photoblog before and taking a picture everyday to post for the next three months has been daunting to me.  But I really need to learn these skills if I'm to be a better teacher and a better storyteller.  I've always taken pictures and use iPhoto to store and organize them.

I started off with posting a photo I took of my grandparents farm.  There is a milkbarn that holds lots of fond memories for me.  Funny thing how a milkbarn is such a sentimental things in my life.

 I've never learned how to post them and what I'm trying to do at this point is to put them somewhere to archive in a time efficient way.  At first I started uploading to Flickr and then Tweeting my photo arrival to the Flickr group.  I can do it but it's a lot of steps.

What I've been learning:   I went looking for a better, more efficient solution.  I noticed that Rick had talked about autoposting and I didn't know what that was.  So I looked into the Help notes to Posterous.  Sure enough this blogging service has an automatic feature..where I can link my Twitter and Flickr accounts to the Posterous photoblog.  I can email the photo to the Posterous photoblog and everything else happens without me doing anything.

The only thing I'm left to do is to move the picture from my general Photostream into the #JJAProject group in Flickr by adding a tag to the picture.  What's pretty cool is that the email I send carries the photo as an attachment and I can post the narrative with the email's message.  It's a great system...and if I can't finish all of it at once, I can save the email as a draft and come back to it when I've got more time.

This JJAProject group is the brainstorm of teachers who want to learn how to take on these challenges.  As teacher leaders, they've organized this project for anyone who wants to join and try.  What a testimony to the true spirit of teachers everywhere!!!

I'm at the place right now where it's all cumbersome and I feel clumsy.  But if I keep experimenting this summer, I'm hoping that by the end I will feel more comfortable with a whole host of new techniques in Flickr, Twitter and Posterous.  I think these will be very useful to me as a teacher and then I just have to think about how to best deploy these tools.

What I'm still wondering about:  Maybe you know things I should consider.  Would you share your ideas with me?  And if you've done projects that use these tools (or some corresponding kind of tool) that have been successful, I'd be thrilled if you'd share those with me.  What I really need is ideas for how to manage and organize students being involved as digital archivists in my classroom....can you help?  Thanks.

Please leave a message...Mrs. Ratzel is shooting a science video with her students right now...she'll call you back shortly!

We went outside to test out the hypothesis the 5th hour class had about friction...that cleats would cause more friction when you run.  And that by giving the runner more friction, they could go faster.  So the time between home plate and 1st base would be faster if they wore cleats than if they wore sneakers.

Everyone agreed they'd bring sneakers and cleats on Monday (that's today).  But almost everyone forgot.  Except Natalie.  She remembered her cleats and lots of other people had on sneakers.  So we went outside to try out their ideas.  The ladies marked off the distance between homeplate and 1st base and using the timer on their cellphones, they timed different runners going from home to 1st base.

We had to trade off using the cleats.  Which worked pretty well if you had size 8 feet...and not so well if you didn't.  In some cases, it meant that your toes were squished and hurt like the dickens when you ran.  And in other cases, it meant that the shoes were too big and you slid around as you ran to 1st base.  Needless to say it was a wonderful teachable moment in too many variables when got to the data interpretation stage (and it was such a middle school moment).  I really had to crack up laughing inside at the best laid plans going awry....and no they don't teach you about this when you're going for your teaching degree!!!!

We used cellphones to capture the video and edited it with ReelDirector...a slick little editor.  I added some text and background music  when I got it home and uploaded onto a computer.  But once again I see the incredibly useful and accessible platform that these phones give us.  There's no reason that we would have needed the music and titles...the video is terrific without it.

Do cleats add enough friction to make you run faster? from Marsha Ratzel on Vimeo.

You can hear students talking about all the explanations for why some students ran slower with the cleats and some had the same running times with either kind of shoes on.  I think they really liked being outside to test out their science thinking.  The real power will come tomorrow when I show this video again...and we processed what we think happened.  We'll have documentation on what went on and have the footage to refer to in our discussions as evidence.

Can you see places where this kind of phone video would work for your students?  How many students in your classroom already carry phones in their pockets...and since taking video doesn't even use cell phone minutes or data plans, it doesn't cost them anything.  In fact, as one of my PLN colleagues suggested....turning off the wi-fi saves the battery because when I'm shooting video I don't want text messages or phone calls coming thru.

 

Using my PLN to process video for science class

Using video can be such an engaging tool for science class...today we took video to record how Matchbox cars can show Newton's forces and another group used it to show how to measure forces with spring scales.  In both cases, students worked very hard to get their demonstrations to work smoothly, explain things clearly and get the concept across the audience.

Since we don't have lots of expensive equipment, they borrowed my iPhone and then we downloaded the video clips to the computer.   I was bemoaning the fact that my iPhone's battery died so quickly on my Facebook PLN and a colleague made this suggestion.

 
How cool is that....I didn't know how to do this and all of a sudden, I have a solution.  And technical directions from someone who lives halfway across the country as if she was sitting right here in my living room helping me brainstorm what to do.

Back to the story from school....I bought the iMovie app (count that $15) so they could start to edit the video clips and use slow motion.  The idea they came up with is to slow the video clips down enough to pinpoint where the Law can be observed and then add a voiceover to explain what's happening.  They also needed a microphone so they could add the voice so I had to buy one of those too (count that as $29).

So I've come home tonight to experiment a little bit with doing all this so I can help them out a bit more tomorrow.  I still want them to do the bulk of the work, but it would help if I could do something to help.   Fortunately I was able to ask my Twitter PLN if this is possible and almost immediately I had three ideas from people who know more about all this.

 

 

 

So guess what I'm off to try....yep.  I'm going to try the iMovie idea first because it sounds the easiest to do.  If that doesn't work, I'll try the other suggestion. The only downside to this day was that it cost me almost $50 out of pocket.  I know I could have put in a request thru proper channels and waited days for it to be approved, ordered and mailed.  But we'll have everything tomorrow instead of 10 days from now after the assignment is over....one of the downsides of doing something no one has done nearby.  I guess $50 isn't too high a price.

Wish me luck....hope it works and that we can see the science at work.  Thanks to my PLN for all your help.

Deploying the iPods

I'm taking a new plunge for my classroom and thanks to three special students, I am able to get these iPods up and running.  Through a grant I received from the Blue Valley Foundation, I was able to purchase 2 iPods and wanted to use them to expand the storytelling capacity of my classroom.  Inspired by reading Wes Fryer's blog and Kevin Honeycutt's blog, I've been saving up energy to try out this new kind of tool.

There's so much to learn, so much to decide and then put into action I've just been overwhelmed.  So I've been concentrating on blogging until now.  I had used the iPods to capture interviews with people for storytelling projects that I mostly constructed on the computer.  With a little over a month left in the school year, I decided I should really get going at thinking about the iPods as more than file storage.

I thought I'd share about my process only because I couldn't find anyone who said much about it online.  I had to cobble together different resources in order to get going.

1.  Tony Vincent's Learning in Hand website was a lifesaver to help me figure out how to get an iTunes account setup without having to use a credit card.  There are tons of other things to learn here and loads of ideas.
2. I searched high and low to find a good list of apps to use with middle schoolers.  There are tons of "the hottest" apps articles.  Don't need those.  I just need no cost, workhorses.  Very different from "hottest".  Here's the find of hours and hours of searching for me.  I couldn't find much info from this wiki, but their recommendations are top in my book.  It's called HCTechCoach.
3. I was disappointed that Apple, Apple's forum, the Distinguished Educator's pages didn't have more ideas.  But maybe iTouches are too old school and using just a couple isn't big enough scale.  If you know where to look for smaller scale application ideas, let me know.  Please.  At this point, I wouldn't waste my time looking there because I spent hours looking for ideas and never found anything that was helpful.

I'll keep coming back to update my list...expect this post to keep changing it's content. Hopefully that will help someone in the future who is trying to get their iPods up and working.  If you are already good at this and have something I should be seeing, leave me a comment and I would be very grateful.  Thanks.

Pioneering New Trails with Skype in Class

It's not new, but it's new in my building and in my room.  We've been experimenting with how to connect three different groups of students...in this case, my class, another set of class from a nearby middle school and a third group in California.

Our first attempt was to read aloud a book that was relevant to our unit of study.  We constructed a list of vocabulary words that would be important to know as we read the book, one of the teachers developed a graphic organizer that helped students actively listen for information and categorize that information, and then joined together to listen.  Our reader had embellished the read aloud with famous posters and art prints and stories that expanded what listeners were hearing.

By the end, we had developed a common experience for all three groups which will be important as we all move into the independent tasks.  Everyone will be trying to decide if John Brown is a martyr or a terrorist using evidence from a set of common sources of information; everyone will be developing Google Earth placemarks showing important dates/events in the abolishion movement; and having an online dialog between the classes about what role John Brown played in the country's history.        

Students intently listened and were highly engaged with the task.  More than being a flashy technology interchange, it really came down to trying to understand some big ideas.  Was it OK for John Brown to use "any means necessary" to accomplish his goal?  Exactly what does that phrase mean?  Have we seen anyone in today's world that believes this is true?  What implications does all that hold for the kids in the room?

So why do this with the other classes?  Couldn't this be done alone.  Absolutely.  But I believe we'll gain something more from having been a part of the group.  If I didn't believe this, it would be a huge waste of time and effort to link up with the other teachers and classrooms.

• First, I think my class studies ancient history so the contribution of the 7th graders, who study American history, will be invaluable as they serve as our experts in that field.
• Secondly, Mr. Miller's class has done far more with Google Earth than my class.  So I'm hoping his students to be our "go-to" technical consultants when we run into problems.
• My students are learning a new technique.  Realizing after this, the kids had little idea about how to behave or interact in this kind of learning exchange, I have the opportunity to expand the environments they know how to use.  I can only imagine that this kind of online conferencing will be more important as time goes along
• Hopefully my students will use their moderating and commenting skills with another set of people....another way in which to practice and get better and better.  These higher level thinking skills of evaluating, finding merit in other people ideas, being respectful and creatively finding mutual areas of agreement are increased with a larger community of learners.

If you have any classroom materials that would help me better lead my students in fine tuning their listening skills during a webinar, I'd be thrilled to hear about them.  I wonder if I shouldn't tap into their sensibilities....maybe allowing for backchats or Twittering of some sort.  Some way to keep them engaged and listening....digesting the information that flowing past them.

I've never done this before so I expect problems, setbacks and frustrations.  Honestly just having that in the back of my mind helps me tremendously in not giving up and really keeping a sense of humor.

We had lots of glitches (video problems, audio problems, I couldn't find a webcam to work with my school computer, I didn't have the dongle I needed to connect my mac to the projector, the sound system kept turning off because I was using 2 video projectors which responded to the same remote control)....but I was just determined not to give up.  I enlisted the help of my techiest kids....together we searched for ways around all the obstacles. This part was quite fun because they thought of as many solutions/work arounds as I did....so we really felt like joined-learners!!!

I'll keep updating folks on how this project goes.  If you have ideas on how to make the video conferencing go better, please let me know.  Or any ideas on what you've done to make this kind of learning work out better...I'd sure appreciate hearing your tips and tricks.  Until later...Cheers.

Final thoughts: Making Science Stories Stronger

When I started my digital storytelling project, I modeled my idea on a combination of an idea from CogDogRoo's 5 Picture Stories on Flickr and using the RAFT writing strategy about a 1st grade snowman.  The Flickr idea didn't have enough words and the snowman strategy needed more visuals...so I tried to blend the best of both.

I've written about what I'd change next time.  I have decided that I need to add more required visual to this project.  My students didn't do a good job of citing their sources.  We are still struggling with understanding the difference between Google as a source and the identifying the real source.  6th graders seem to think if they use Google to do the searching, then it's the source.

I'd have to add in a mini-lesson about learning the difference between those two ideas.  And then I'd make it more explicit that they have to have a citation slide in their story.  I got some, but I was extremely disappointed by the quality of their citation...basically they didn't get it and it's in disarray.  But on the bright side, I don't think it will be a big deal to fix this problem.

I wish my district had NoodleTools because it's a great tool.  I use it all the time to keep my graduate school bibliography and they have versions that could be useful to my 6th graders.  I think I want to spend some time thinking about the "words--bibliography, annotated bibliography, works cited".  Somewhere in here is a reasonable thing that makes sense for 11 years old...goes to the spirit of acknowledging the work on which their work is based.  The Ethical Researcher, at NoodleTools again, has some excellent things to consider.

I'm done with the project now...have my To Do list for next year when I start to prepare this unit again.  I liked my first time through.  There's so much more to improve but it was a good project for its initial rollout. 

Science stories--writing to learn

Students enjoyed this learning activity and I believe having the digital component helped motivate them to do more research than they normally would have undertaken.  Parents have been enjoying the fact that I posted them on our class webpage and they've been sending me emails about the stories they've seen.

Here are a couple of our groups in action.

Having forgotten my camera at home that day, I didn't think we could take pictures.  Until....one of my students reminded me that my iPhone takes digital stills.  Thank goodness for their quick minds.