Terri’s Thoughts to Ponder by Terri A. Stice is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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In this assignment we were asked to visit the Creative Commons website and create an appropriate Creative Commons license for our blog.  After exploring the selection of licensing options, I decided the best fit for my blog would be the “Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs” license.  What will this license choice do for my blog or for me?  According to Creative Commons attribution is define as the author agreeing to let others copy, distribute, display and perform copyrighted work and derivative works based upon it, but only if giving credit to the author of the original piece of work, which in this case is my blog.  Adding the NonCommerical-NoDerivs piece to this license adds the conditions, which must be followed in order for someone to share (copy, distribute, and transmit) my work.  My intent is anyone can use my blog, in its original context, but I do not want someone sharing bits and pieces of my work where it might be implied I said something or created something totally out of context.  If the person desiring to use my work wishes to contact me and discuss their intended use this license will allow me to waiver if I choose to do so.  I found the form on the Creative Commons site extremely helpful in assisting me in making selections to guide my choices in the process of creating my license.       I am a teacher and I tend to want to share my materials with anyone who is eager to learn from them.  By attaching a Creative Commons license to the work, it allows others to learn from and add to the work, while at the same time honors my time and effort in the development of my work by requiring the user to link back to the original source (me).       I do think I would encourage my students to create the same license for the same reasons I chose to create the license for myself.  Students are valuable contributors of content to the World Wide Web and their work, time and effort should be honored as well.  

Posted on July 9th, 2010 by Terri Stice
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My virtual field trip takes students on a journey back to the days of yesterday visiting the events and places of the causes leading to the Revolutionary War.  Students will be working with a partner throughout this learning experience in order to have someone to share their thinking with as they learn together of our nation’s history.  My goal is to have students empathically thinking like a historian; investigating into past events such as The Stamp Act, The Townshend Act, The Boston Massacre and The Boston Tea Party; making their own predictions about what happened and then, after digging deeper into the research, reach conclusions as to what actually did happen, why it happened, and most importantly how life today is different, because it did happen.  For each site students visit, they will be asked to complete various tasks.  In addition to the traditional information, students will learn from this Google Earth Virtual Field Trip, they will also be able to get a feel geographically, for where these events took place in reference to their own school. 

Through studying and learning to understand about conflicts of the past, students learn to make different decisions in the future.  Gardner (2007) says, “Whether reading works of literature, dissecting the history or the political system of various nations, examining the artistic productions of a region or discussing current events, student should be brought face-to-face with how groups have related to one another in the past and how they might productively connect in the future.  In overcoming hatred, rivalry, the burdens of history, it is crucial to search for common ground.”  Through delving deeper into the causes of war, instead of concentrating so much on the actual war itself, teachers and students are able to have rich discussions about how alternative reactions to conflict, through the eyes of the respectful mind, might have lead to a more peaceful outcome than the Revolutionary War.  Learning the lesson of what it means to earn another’s respect by showing respect to others should permeate one’s life.

Gardner (2007) talks about the ethical mind as “Abstracting crucial features of one’s role at work and one’s role as a citizen and acting consistently with those conceptualizations; striving toward good work and good citizenship.”  By allowing students opportunities to reflect upon the major historical events/reactions to situations previously happening in the United States, they will hopefully, be able to learn the importance of building strong character traits to be all they can be personally, professionally, and as a productive citizen of the USA. 

Link to Virtual Fieldtrip - Causes Leading to the Revolutionary War 

Reference
Gardner, H. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Press.

Posted on June 24th, 2010 by Terri Stice
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Educators becoming designers of lessons for global collaboration and learning opportunities for their students is essential to their students’ current learning, but perhaps even more to the success of their futures.   While many of the global projects discussed in the article, Global Collaboration and Learning – How to create a world of success without leaving your classroom written by Julene Reed; the one I found most intriguing and wanted to build upon is that of digital storytelling.  As Julene described students creating videos of the environment in which they live, work, learn and play as well as scenes from their community, I thought about the potential of designing a lesson where two classrooms from very different cultures, very different perspectives in general, could compare the affects of a global issue.  For example, the recent Gulf oil spill seems to have taken over the news as of late.  However, this catastrophe has different meaning for the people and communities of Louisiana, than the people and communities of Mexico. It would be interesting to see the work from the two very different perspectives about how the oil spill has impacted these two places in very different ways.  As an essential component of this lesson design the teacher would need to be prepared to help students seek understanding, as Gardner puts it, and to work effectively with each other being respectful of each others differences. Through the exchange of the digital stories, students would have opportunities to exercise their respectful minds as they listen and learn from each other ultimately, being then able to tap their ethical mind to react appropriately and responsibly.

Another comment worth making on the article by Julene is I’m glad she acknowledged teachers’ needing direction as to where to begin with a global project.  Often times it seems like there is so many barriers to overcome in order to make a project of this magnitude work those teachers don’t investigate further.  However, by utilizing the resources she list in her article, teachers will soon discover through their own exploration of these sites, it is through the effective and efficient use of technology resources available in most of our classrooms today, global collaboration and learning can happen in their classrooms today in very manageable ways.  

Posted on June 15th, 2010 by Terri Stice
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Glogster might best be described as a digital interactive poster.  A Web 2.o tool that is certain to prove to be very purposeful in teaching and learning.  Thriving in Glogster’s culture, one learns to value and promote the tool’s three interlocking practices:  participation, collaboration, and distribution.  This tool has many instructional purposes from both perspectives of the teacher as well as the student.  As a teacher, the more I experimented and played with the Glogster tool, the faster my head began to spin with ideas of how I might use this tool to improve teaching and learning in my classroom.  My first thought was to create a Glog to support whole group instruction on an interactive whiteboard.  How efficient and effective it would be to have all of your resources, which include audio, video, images, hyperlinks, formative assessments, and so forth, organized in a very focused, creative manner, reinforcing the learning targets for the lesson.  Yet on the other hand, Glogster equally lends itself well to independent learning.  Teachers could easily design and create a Glog with the intent to allow students to independently explore and discover the topic of study.

 Standards

As you will see in the Glog embedded in this post, it is grounded in the standards as it addresses – NETS standards as well as connections to social studies (current events), science, and writing content standards. 

 The most exciting aspect of using Glogster is to empower students to become accomplished synthesizers of content knowledge and then authors, designers, creators, and publishers of Glogs to share their learning, while at the same time teaching others what they have learned.  So, how does Glogster help to nurture and grow the minds for the future?  We learned from our reading in Topic A:  Creativity and Innovation that while creativity may be greatly valued for numerous reasons, one of the most important is that the innovative mind comes from creativity.  Typically, the innovator finds success in our world today but perhaps more importantly, shapes our future.  Gardner speaks in his chapter on The Creating Mind about the challenge for educators to retain the mind and the sensibility of the young child throughout life.  “Given even a modestly supportive environment, youngsters are not only intrigued by a wide range of phenomenon, experiences, topics, and questions; they persist in exploring, even in the absence of encouragement.”  In essence Gardner is saying if teachers provide a supportive environment (lead the students in the direction they should go) and turn the students loose with an engaging and stimulating tool such as Glogster, the students will flourish.  One final thought, Gardener talks about the cultivating of the creative mind and describes the process as follows:  “Going beyond class requirements to pose new questions; coming up with unexpected but appropriate school products and projects”.  Encouraging students to use a tool like Glogster promotes the cultivating of the creative mind.  As the teacher you will have receive unexpected work, so get ready for it.  Likely it will exceed your expectations! So why use Glogster?  Because, students begin the process of developing the product with the disciplined and synthesizing minds and end with the five minds of the future in full effect.

 Reference

Gardner, H. (2007).  Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA Five minds for the future. 

Posted on June 11th, 2010 by Terri Stice
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The digital tool I have chosen to use to help develop the creating mind is Animoto.  This tool analyzes and combines your images, video clips and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills and techniques that are used in television and film.  Coupled with Jason Ohler’s, Visual Portrait of a Story mapping tool and Discovery Education’s repository of images, video clips and audio clips, this learning experience,  creating a digital story, is sure to challenge students of all ages as well as spark their creativity, stretching their creative minds.    

In his book, Five Minds for the Future, Howard Gardner talks about the creative powers of a five year old and that those powers are achieved through the child’s playfulness, curiosity, and imaginative powers.  He further explains, when provided with a supportive environment, intrigued by a wide range of phenomena, experiences, topics, and questions the young child persists in exploring even in the absences of encouragement (p.84).  It is with Gardner’s description of how the creative powers of a five year old are achieved I determined Animoto and Discovery Education would be the digital resources and tool I use to meet the challenge of keeping alive the mind and sensibility of the young child. 

By requiring the students to use the Visual Portrait of a Story mapping tool, they will look deeply at the story core (the beginning, identify the problem (question, opportunity, challenge, goal), building tension, and then transformation, resolution and solution, then on to the closing) ensuring they have thought through all of the parts of their story.  In addition, once students have completed a solid story map, defining the elements of the story and drafting the script will be much easier.   It is essential students have a solid script before they are turned loose with Animoto because the tool itself is highly engaging and without a focus, kids (more specifically, creative kids) could get lost and waiver onto their own playful and curious pathways.

One of the most exciting features about allowing students to use Animoto is the feature of the site allowing students to share their creations with an audience that reaches far beyond the four walls of their classroom.  Sharing them is a cinch as well as you can add them to your MySpace and Facebook profiles, on your blog, e-mail them to friends, put them up on YouTube or download them onto your computer.

Finally, as I wrap up this post I reflect back on Gardner’s description of the creator, he says often he/she is dissatisfied with their current work, current standards, current questions, current answers; they often strike out in unfamiliar directions and enjoy being different from the pack; and many times they are tough skinned and robust.  As I thought about his description carefully, it sounded all too familiar to me in my own educational experiences.  I couldn’t help but wonder, how many of my own fellow classmates could best be described as Gardner’s description of a creative student; however, in reality were often labeled by the teacher as, “the problem child”.  How sad it is to think about the many missed opportunities teachers have to nurture the creative minds of students.  It is fortunate, in the developed creative mind, there lies the ability to refuse to be defeated and therefore, many persevere to creativeness. 

ReferencesGardner, H. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston, MA: Harvard Business  

     School Press.

 Ohler, J. (2008). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom, Thousand Oaks, CA:   

     Corwin Press.

Posted on June 1st, 2010 by Terri Stice
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