Distinguished Colleagues December 9, 2008
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What happens when you cram a posh hotel conference room with sixty Apple Distinguished Educators for a week of geeking out on their MacBooks? Add to that Singapore's lovely sights and soothing sun rays and you can expect some exciting results.
I was fortunate to spend a majority of the time collaborating on a project with Amanda DeCardy and Jonathan Chambers, two of my colleagues from Shanghai American School. You would think that during the course of the school year we have several opportunities for professional development, but for technology PD we are often the ones providing the workshops, leaving little time for us to get together and pool our many talents, resources and ideas. We meet on a monthly basis and swap dozens of emails yet this is not the same as collaborating on a project that is meant for teachers to actually use with their students.
For several years, Apple has held week long institutes that provide invaluable opportunities for Mac-savvy educators to network, discuss educational technology challenges and often produce a project that showcases effective technology integration. I pitched the idea of having students collect stories from elders in their communities about how their city has changed. Amanda coined the project's title of "Wisdom Lost, Wisdom Found" and that really provided the context for the project. With any digital storytelling project, providing a clear purpose for why you're creating stories always helps. We were off and running from there. In the solution section of my thesis on digital storytelling, I suggested that providing teachers and students with a digital story template will improve the story teaching part of the project. Teachers and students need more than a few video tutorials on the technical side of creating a digital story. It only took me three years to finally follow through on this idea. In our project, we provide director's cut style videos that help teachers and students prepare for the field interview. We created a scaffolded approach to the editing process, detailing three options (quick and simple, moderate editing, advanced editing) for creating the final digital story. Check out the project: Wisdom Lost, Wisdom Found. See also iTooth by David Gran and Mikey McKillip.
SAMS Poetry Podcast October 29, 2008
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Finally got around to using Garageband to create a podcast. Very easy.
Google - A Teacher’s Best Friend October 24, 2008
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In a school of nearly 500 students and 50 teachers using over 350 computers, there are always plenty of tech-related questions. I think every teacher would love to have their classroom next to the IT department, but that's rarely how schools are configured. While you can't clone your building's go-to-tech-person (I don't like being referred to as "the tech guy"), every teacher does have access to Google. And that sometimes is even better.
Today's situation. I was trying to import video footage into iMovie. Something I've done more than a hundred times. But today the computer would not recognize the camera. I remember something like this happening last year. Our school's video camera records in PAL format instead of the NTSC format that I'm used to in the US. I spent 15 minutes trying to figure it out. Thought of asking the video teacher down the hallway, but he was in the middle of teaching a class. Where else can I turn to? Google. I enter "creating a PAL iMovie project" and get a list of links to forum replies from people who have experienced the same problem. Whenever you think you've got a unique computer problem, chances are very high that someone else in the world has solved it. Google can connect you with that person. I read over replies from three people and found my answer. And then I got even more than what I was looking for. Lennart Thelander created an empty PAL iMovie project and made it available for anyone to download. Three minutes later I launched it in iMovie 06 HD and resumed importing the footage for the project.
When I needed to learn how to create a green screen effect in Final Cut Pro, I Googled it and found an excellent YouTube tutorial from a college student that taught me exactly what I needed in just 20 minutes.
We tell students that technology is supposed to help them think creatively and critically about how to solve problems. I think that we need to push this same message to teachers. It's not enough to put technology in teachers' hands. We need to teach them how to use it to be more effective educators. That's a thorny issue, but I see teaching them how they can learn from Google and the vast resources out there on the web as a large part of my job, much larger than being "the tech guy."
Google Docs - another reason why Google should be a teacher's best friend. Even though they're still working out some bugs, I'm excited about where this set of tools is headed. This week, I wanted to create a quiz for students to take. Sure I could have used Survey Monkey, but I was curious to see what Google had to offer. In the Documents section of your Google account, create a New document and select Form. Very easy quiz option. Easy to analyze results. And of course there's a great YouTube video tutorial that someone has created to help walk you thru the steps of creating one.
Using Google Forms to Create a online Quiz
Google Docs in Plain English
5 Step Blogging Staircase October 15, 2008
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If you are new to blogging, you may be feeling overwhelmed by creating your first post. Chances are you've seen a blog that allows you to listen to an audio clip or watch a YouTube video without ever leaving the space of the blog. You may have seen teachers posting Word documents, images or other files that are intended to be downloaded. STOP! You don't need to do all of these things to have a successful blog. And what exactly is a "successful blog?" It depends on your purpose. If you want to share information with parents then you can do that by easily posting short updates about what's going on in your classroom. As you become more comfortable with blogging, you can include other media elements, such as video clips, that help pull visitors to your blog. After all, a blog can be much more than the digital version of your classroom newsletter because it takes advantage of digital media that's easily posted online.
I shared a Powerpoint presentation with my staff last week. Here are five steps you can take to develop your blog from a space where you share just text to an online space where you're extending your classroom beyond your four walls:
Step #1: Add a short description of what's going on in your classroom.
Step #2: Add a link to a website supporting what's going on in your classroom.
Step #3: Share a picture of student work, a completed project, etc. Later, you can add more advanced media like audio clips or video.
Step #4: Invite a response by posting a question and requesting people to leave a comment.
Step #5: Add a post that reflects on a lesson, your use of technology, or just your thoughts about teaching.
