California DEN

Last Monday, my high school students couldn’t stop talking about the most recent Indiana Jones movie they had watched over the weekend. Normally, it would be one of those topics that I would have steer my students away from as we began our lesson, but this week I engaged it head on and integrated their opinions into my lesson. We discussed the shot styles and storyline of the film and a few students picked up ideas for their current assignment. What was I teaching, you ask? The Screen Education process from AFI, of course.

When I went through the AFI (American Film Institute) Screen Education course last year with several Star Discovery teachers, I knew it was something really cool, something I could use in a variety of ways and get kids excited about coming to school. This resource draws on the vast amounts of television and film that our students consume and allows teachers to apply knowledge drawn from media to core standard content. Over the last couple years, I’ve enjoyed using the AFI curriculum with my science students, who can’t seem to get enough of this stuff. They enjoy creating videos, even . . . (clear throat) educational ones. Currently, my classes are eagerly storyboarding a movie they’ll shoot next week - their own original episode of “Body Story” (a popular science series from BBC). Anyone else out there using Screen Ed to fight the end-of-the-year boredom?

This year, AFI added another component to the program; Screen Nation - where students and teachers can share their creations. Screen Nation is “a place where teen filmmakers can share their work, receive recognition and compete for prizes in ongoing challenges.” The Learn section features humorous tutorials from, Xander and Calvin, two young filmmakers who teach students the ins & outs of good filmmaking. Hopefully the recent episode I showed to my students on transitions will cut down the number of annoying zoom-outs and wipes in their current movie project.

Right now AFI has offered the first of many challenges. “Claim to Fame” gives students the opportunity to explore their hometown and see what makes it great. The challenge is to make a 5min. documentary video that includes interviews with at least 3 people. When you’re done, you upload it to ScreenNation. Deadline is June 30. Check out the pdf screen nation challenge1 as well as the video. What a great end-of-year project (not to mention principals love when students connection to community). And the winner will receive a Sony Handycam and tripod. Odds of winning right now are good - so what are you waiting for? What’s your town’s Claim to Fame?

This past February Google released a great new tool for educators, students, business’s and all around website needing folks. This new creation is Google Sites. Google Sites claims it fills the need of sharing a group website, which seems to be part wiki, part blog and part modular website.

I found Sites to be pretty easy to use, especially if you are familiar with Google’s interface for it’s other products, such as Blogger and Docs. There are several different templates, each with additional color and font themes that can give your site a customized look. You can easily upload/embed files of all sorts and create unique page templates or such features as announcements, calendars countdowns, links and other useful tools. Google pushes the Web 2.0 concept of sharing and collaborating by allowing multiple authors and owners. This is handy for a teacher wishing to allow other teachers, or even students, to modify the web page. However, this is also where I was both surprised and let down.

I indeed found Google Sites to be part wiki and part blog, but sadly, not enough of either to make it worth my while. I was excited to see that most pages included a “comments” section on the bottom. I soon found out though, that when I logged out, the comments section became locked. This essentially means that you can allow either everyone the ability to change the entire site or the inability to comment at all. I was hoping that viewers could simply comment on the bottom, without being able to tweak too much on the site. If anyone has found a way around this, I’d love to know. Other than that, Sites will be a great option for educators wishing to create their own site for free.

Check out the overview video here.

Additionally, perhaps some readers are familiar with Google Sites’ sister creation, Google Pages. Google Pages is a free website creation tool that allows the user to customize templates, arrange content and get a pretty professional feel to a simple website. Check it out too!

Final note, I hesitated on writing this article until now, as Google Sites was formerly only available to educators with a Google Apps for education domain. This week, it became public for all. If you still haven’t looked into Google Apps for Education though, stay tuned for an upcoming post about a great suite that transformed my classroom and can hopefully do the same for yours.

~Dave Kootman

This week CA DEN Stars got to hang with a couple big stars as they attended a sneak preview of Discovery’s upcoming series “When We Left Earth“. We got to see a special screening of the new high-def series that chronicles 50 years of space exploration and includes space footage never seen before. Episode 2 told the stories of the Gemini missions that NASA used as preparation for the eventual Apollo missions to the moon. The mishaps and challenges that astronauts and crew faced gave even more relevance to the heroism of those involved. I couldn’t believe that one pair of astronauts sat in one of those tiny capsules for 14 days while orbiting the earth. Footage of their return showed them stumbling and walking around the aircraft carrier. These are some great stories.
As if the backdrop of the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills and the screening of the new show in the high-definition theater weren’t enough, Buzz Aldrin and Bill Nye were in the crowd. After the show Buzz did a Q&A (with a little more time spent on the A) for the crowd. His knowledge of space history and the current NASA direction was impressive. Finally we ascended to the roof to gaze up at the stars and the same moon Buzz Aldrin had walked on nearly 40 years ago.

The series premiers on June 8th and will be available on DiscoveryStreaming! There’s some great connections to history and science.

Hall Davidson is doing an all-day workshop for teachers of the gifted at Audubon Middle School this Saturday. It is one of a continuing series of workshops done in collaboration with the California Association of the Gifted (CAG). Time is from 9 - 3 PM, with lunch provided. However, be advised that there is a registration fee of $95 for CAG members and $125 for non-members. There are state funds set aside for gifted education at schools with an identified gifted population and this is a perfect use for that. It makes you appreciate DEN Days of Discovery, which are free!

Audubon Gifted Magnet Middle School is located at 4120 11th Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90008. It is located at the intersection of Crenshaw Blvd. and Martin Luther King Blvd. The room is located on the first floor of the main building. Park in lot on 11th Ave. and Stocker, can’t miss it. Topics covered are media creation and building Google Lit trips with media. There are very limited spots available. Register at http://cagifted.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=79.

Everyone loves educational games. Learn and have fun.  What a treat!

I love Jeopardy! There, I’ve said it; I’m one of them.  I even tried out for the show in Hollywood once (didn’t make it ).  Perhaps you’ve heard of the Jeopardy PowerPoint that has been floating around the internet for along time now.  It’s pretty neat, as you can create your own slides and everything.  The template is set up so that all you have to do is insert your questions and the program does everything else for you.  It even comes with authentic sound effects!  As cool as it looks though, I have to say that I’ve always been very intimidated with the template itself.

Enter TechFortress’ Flash-based Jeopardy game.  Good ‘ol Mr. Kries created a game from scratch that allows all the same functionality of a real Jeopardy game, but in a much simpler format.  Now  you can make a great classroom game in about 5 minutes.  Then start all over and create one for a different subject or chapter.  Perhaps you could take a video from Discovery Streaming and use it as a video clue (just like on the real show).

It would be extra nice of our lovely readers if you could upload your Jeopardy text files to the DEN site to share. Just tag them with your grade level and/or subject.  You’ll see what I mean when you check it out.

And if anyone wants to join me nightly at 7:30 or for a Saturday evening game of Trivial Pursuit, it’s ON!