North Carolina DEN

Our school is off to a blazing start with our 1 to 1 laptop learning initiative. We have rolled out 205 shiny MacBooks to our 6th grade students. Lots of preparations have been made to assure sufficient technical infrastructure, professional development, parent communication, inventory control, and more were ready to the computers in the hands our our learners.

Now, the dust is settling and as we round the Thanksgiving break corner and head in to the Christmas Holidays, teachers will be challenged to keep the students focused on constructive learning. One strategy our teachers are using is a– student wiki.

Our district technology department set up an Apple X Server and configured a wiki for our students. We set the wiki up so that students must log in to be able to view anything about the wiki. This would really disqualify the site from being classified as true wiki. But, our 6th graders have been very impressed with it. They have use their built-in sight cams and modify the photo by using effects. They can comment on their classmates wiki posts and poke fun of each others photos. The comments are moderated, which in addition to it not being live to the world is another modification we have considered needed. This brings me to an interesting discovery. The comments so far have been almost all –appropriate. It has to be the fact that it is new and the students know the comments are moderated. The students that I consider our “early adopters” are family with online social network sites.

One cleaver use of the student wikis came from one of my middle school mathematics teachers. Michelle Strickland,  our Academically Gifted and Talented mathematics teacher, came flying into the Help Desk room and shouted- I get it! She was so excited to share that all her students were now doing their homework in her class with their MacBooks. Her 6th grade class of 18 students all had turned in their homework that morning–online. The students posted their work on their individual student wiki page and she had been assessing their work during her planning period. She loved not having to round up their papers, beg them to turn their work in, and not having to put them in their mail box after commenting on their work. I did not ask if she grades each item or whatever, maybe I will ask her next week. [Note to self- follow up with Michelle and see how she plans to use the student wiki to assign homework.]

Our student wiki as generated some interesting applications for learning in one of our computer skills classes. In Elizabeth Roberson’s  8th grade class, her students created PowerPoint presentations and exported the into Movie Maker on their PC desktops in the lab. They attached their final product their wiki page. Prior to this assignment, Elizabeth’s classes posted a response to a writing prompt and photo on their wiki page. The prompt, which I do not have the exact quote, but it asked them to reflect on what strategies they thought they would need to use to successfully transition to the high school next year. I read many of the student posts and noticed many students think the wiki is their cell phone. Lots of “texting” jargon, misspelled words, and punctuation errors. One the other hand, she has some really creative writers in her classes. From a technology stand point, our Apple wiki page does not seem to support .WMV movies. We are looking for a reasonably priced or freeware application that will convert .WMV to .MOV or .MP4.  I use VisualHub to convert .WMVs, but was disappointed to learn they are no longer supporting VisualHub. I downloaded the student’s .WMV files and converted them to .MP4 format files and posted them back to their wiki. Could I have done it for a couple of hundred students- no. So, before we expand this use, we need some way to convert on the student’s computer. Maybe Apple has a plug-in for their wiki that supports .WMV formatted videos. If you know, please post a reply.

Our wonderful journey continues. We are looking for engaging strategies to use with our 6th grade 1 to 1 program. Streaming video was not in our budget this school year. I am working on it for this coming school year. Our alternative school funded their streaming video and I have been hearing raved reviews from those teachers. In my next blog, I hope to have some success stories from their prospective.

It helps to remember– We are all learners and we are all beginners.

P.S. (do people still do this?) Hope to see ya’ll in Greensboro at NCETC, Dec 3-4.  If you on on Plurk, look me up or add me to your follow list on Twitter. My Plurk and Twitter user name:  blakej 

Babe Ruth

Google partnered with LIFE and is now in the process of digitizing their photos. Some of these photos date back to the 1750’s. Odds are you won’t recognize most of the pictures as they were never published. Right now, only 20 percent of the collection is availabe. Over the next few months the entire archive will be online. That is 10 million photos.

LIFE photo archive

Google’s blog post

If you are a Thomas Friedman fan as I am, you will be interested in this link

http://macmillan.hosted.panopto.com/CourseCast/Viewer/Default.aspx?id=610215c3-a3c8-429c-9dcd-3f8b72ee8a99

that features a video and PowerPoint of his latest book Hot, Flat ,and Crowded. Educators may find many of Friedman’s comments in this presentation are very timely with the possible collapse of the American auto industry. World economy and global warming are at the heart of the 21st century learner and what a way to integrate science and social studies for our students.

In 1963 Maurice Sendak published Where the Wild Things Are.  A story of Max, who is sent to his room without supper.  In his room, Max’s imagination takes over and he journeys to the land of the Wild Things.  It has been a beloved children’s book ever since.

Discovery Education Streaming has the Where the Wild Things Are video.  The video is just over 7 minutes long and a teachers guide is also available.  Both the book and the video are appropriate for grades K -2.

After showing the video or reading the book, take you kids to buildyourwildself.com to, well, build your wild self.  I turned myself into a Gaz-ossa-rusa-frog that likes to play guitar.  The site was created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium.  Students will have a great time creating themselves into a monster.  Since they are using parts from an actual animal, it is easy to bring in science into the lesson.  Talking about the places the animals live brings in social studies.  Math can be integrated by sorting the monsters.  Fans of the Madagascar movies may enjoy that the site was recently updated with Madagascar parts.  Don’t worry if you don’t recognize the animals, there is a short explanation at the end.  Buildyourwildself.com allows you to save, print, and send your wild self to a friend.

Here’s cross-post from the DEN Blog - mark your calendars…it’ll be a special treat!! 

“On Wednesday, November 19th, Alan Kay will be our featured speaker on EdTechConnect, a free webinar series from Discovery Education.  While this is open to all educators, I strongly recommend you only share the link with colleagues of your that have an open mind.  Alan will most certainly stretch the way you think about education.  Register yourself and then pass the link along.  I know I say this often, but this is one webinar you will NOT want to miss!

Click here to register!

 Alan Kay is a technology pioneer who has consistently been at the forefront of the computer age.  He was one of the first researchers to realize the significance of mobile computing in education, and his ideas have been a major influence in the OLPC project.

“The important thing here is that the music is not in the piano. And knowledge and edification is not in the computer. The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.”  - Alan Kay

If you want a sneak preview of Alan as a presenter, check out his recent presentation on Ted Talks.”

It’s my favorite time of year again - the leaves are turning, the air is crisp and - it’s time for NCETC!! This year’s theme is “Unlocking the Power of Technology in 21st Century Schools!”

For anyone new to technology education in this area, the North Carolina Educational Technology Conference  has been an outstanding conference for educators for 21 years now. Held annually in Greensboro, North Carolina, at the Koury Convention Center, this year’s conference will be from December 1- December 4 and expects to see some 2000 educators.  There are pre-conference workshops Monday and Tuesday, regular sessions Wednesday and Thursday and too many special events to list. You’ll find more information, a schedule,  and registration information at the conference website:

http://www.ncetc.org/index.htm

This year our own Nicole Gray will be presenting a session on Virtual Fieldtrips…using Google Earth and DE streaming. She’ll  be sharing the project she created at the DEN National Institute. I know we will all want to make this session!

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there! 

Did you miss the Fall DE Virtual Conference or do you wish that you could view some of the sessions again because they were SOOOOO AMAZING?? Well…you’re in luck…the archives from the Virtual Conference are now online. Not only are the archives posted…but the chat window also shows up in real time - how awesome is that!!!!

So visit the Virtual Conference page (http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/fall-virtual-conference) and you can enjoy all 5 presentations again and again. Share them with your colleagues…with your administrators…with the world!!!!

Just a heads up…the archives are hi-rez with audio, video and chat, so they’re pretty big files - about 100MB or so.   Keep that in mind when downloading!

Thanks to all the presenters…fabulous job!!!!

           Thursday evening, I was privileged to attend a screening for Jeff Corwin’s The Vanishing Frog, a new Animal Planet Documentary in Charlotte, NC at the Discovery Place.  Jeff began his presentation by stating “It was hard to get people to see that frogs are sexy things,” and I very much agreed.  He continued saying that there are currently 6,000 species of amphibians and within just a few years, we would lose 3,000 of them (since the 1980’s, 120 of these species have already vanished).  The Vanishing Frog is a documentary about these species in danger.  I found the film to be extremely interesting and intriguing and “Yes, I even thought that the frogs were cute.”
          During the day, Jeff Corwin was able to visit local Charlotte schools and talk with the students.  One of the audience members asked Mr. Corwin about the types of questions that he was asked.  He said that his favorite question from students was always the ones that asked “How can I help?”  His reply was to start by looking in your local town or community for a “species in crisis” or for other ways that you could get involved with any community organization or efforts to help the environment.  He then proceeded to discuss his first encounter with nature.  As an inner city kid, there were no backyard areas to observe nature so his father would take him to the “inner city pond” where he discovered frogs and their world.  He now has a passion for nature that he shares with the entire world through his documentaries on Animal Planet.
          The Vanishing Frog will premier November 20th at 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT) on Animal Planet.  Also on November 20th, subscribers to Discovery Education Science will find the episode available for the classroom.  If you would like more information about The Vanishing Frog, check out the following links:

• Animal Planet:  The Vanishing Frog
• Save the Frog
• Discovery Education’s Save the Frog Lesson Plans