I made this comic because we are off to such a good start to the year. I have a terrific class. The student characters here are avatars of my homeroom class that they made in our webcomic site.
Peace (in the positive energy flow),
Kevin
Tracy Hosts Day in a Sentence, as transition
Over at Tracy’s blog, Leading from the Heart, she has posted this week’s call for Days in a Sentence, but with a theme of transitions (See her picture to understand the big transition coming in the next few months).
How can you capture a moment, or a phase, of transition in a reflective sentence? Come join Tracy and us and add your own thoughts to this week’s Day in a Sentence.
Also, I am going to be “transitioning” Day in a Sentence over to Bonnie (of Digital Bonnie), letting her do most of the hosting and asking for help with co-hosting this year.
When Bonnie and I first took over Day in a Sentence from The Reflective Teacher a few years ago, we saw it as a way for the two of us and volunteers from you to host the concept. But mostly, my blog became the launching site. Now, we are going to shift to let Bonnie’s blog become the main launching site. I hope you continue to follow us, and contribute, there.
Peace (in transitions),
Kevin
Dream Scenes, complete
The deadline for students to complete their Dream Scene digital story projects came yesterday and, with me shouting out “20 minutes” and “seven minutes” in my teacherly count-down mode, every single student (except one) finished up their projects on time. Phew. That’s about 80 digital stories, with me scrambling around on my flash drive to get a copy of them all.
I decided to use my classroom Flickr account to host the videos, since I can put each class into a set, and then the sets into a collection, and then embed the sets right into our classroom blog for parents to view, and for classes to see each other’s dreams.
Here, I gathered up some of the music-themed dreams, since I have a soft spot for budding musicians.
Peace (in the dreams),
Kevin
Some results of my State of Technology Survey
Thanks to everyone who took part in my sample State of Technology Survey yesterday. I am working on a survey for my students as part of a year-long inquiry project that will be examining how young people may be using technology out of school and if they bring those skills to the table when composing and creating inside of school.
There were 92 people who took part in my survey, mostly via Twitter and my blog, but also through my network of National Writing Project technology liaisons. So, the results are somewhat skewed in favor of us techies. What I wanted to know was whether the survey w0rked and if folks had any suggestions for improving it (they did — thank you).
A few things jump out at me. First, unlike many of our students who use cell phones and mobile devices as the source of their technology (this is something I want to find out from my own survey), we adults still are mostly straddled to our desktops/laptops for our technology. Second, not too many of us are doing online gaming, which is a huge part of technology in the lives of some kids (and a lot of boys). Finally, we spend more than three hours per day with the screen. If you think about that, that is a lot of time.
Here are some of the data graphs:
I also asked an open-ended question about why one would use technology. There were plenty of answers around ease of use, and being connected, but here are a few other responses that jumped out at me.
* Technology opens up my options for expressing myself. I like options so I choose technology. I would probably use technology that I feel comfortable with, in order to get my point across more clearly.
* I’m more efficient in conveying my thoughts via technological tools, and since most of the school I’ve taken lately has been via distance, I prefer to collaborate on projects online (via things like GoogleDocs) than in isolation. Also, I like the social nature of doing projects with technology, with a wider sense of authorship and audience.
* Using technology makes my projects come to life. I am not an artist, but I can do a project with tech that lets me be creative in other ways than the typical projects that are assigned- which you need to have artistic skills to do well on.
* I’ve worked in technology use since 1984. It provides me a common language with many students. Though other purposes and ends may be met, technology is a guaranteed end of the world they will inhabit once they leave my classroom
* Why wouldn’t you use technology? Technology allows me to write, edit, revise and display information in a very unique and professional way.
* It makes sense to have the tools in the palm of your hand (especially when using perhaps an iPod touch or iPad). It keeps me connected with the rest of the world, and mostly it is how I do business.
* I can’t imagine doing anything without a computer these days, be it word processing, research, getting feedback, the visual component you can add, the interactivity available using different technologies…
* Technology is exciting. When I went to school we did not even have calculators. Students today will be using technology at work not even invented today. We have to make them aware of everything that is out there. How do we prepare them for the real world otherwise.
Peace (in the data),
Kevin
A Sample Tech Survey
(I am creating a student survey and want to try it out on my friends, so if you have a moment, please give it a try. Thanks. Kevin. — Here is the link if the embed doesn’t work too well)
Get Paid to Write about Tech/Ed
I want to pass along this note from my friends and colleagues at Instructify, where I write reviews of educational tech sites and apps. I often tell friends that my work writing for Instructify pays for a few date nights with my wife, and it does. I also learn a whole lot from both the writing, and the reading, at the site.
Do you have a great instructional technology idea that you want to share with your fellow educators? Are you a good writer? Instructify is looking for practicing teachers and media specialists to write feature-length (1,500 word) articles on technology integration. If you write something we can use, we’ll publish it on Instructify and LEARN NC, and pay you $200 for your trouble.For full details, please see our feature writing guidelines.
Peace (in the writing),
Kevin
Dot: the world’s tiny stopmotion movie
This is pretty neat: the world’s smallest (so they say) stopmotion movie made with a tiny microscope attachment to a mobile phone’s camera. The movie is called Dot, and there is a behind-the-scenes video of the making of the movie, too. I love when they do that. The character of Dot is just 9 millimeters tall. She’s tiny!
Peace (in the little world),
Kevin
Dream Scenes, Nearing Completion
Dream Scene: Vet from Mr. Hodgson on Vimeo.
It seems like with every digital project, there comes a time when the teacher has to crack the whip and tell his young composers: the deadline looms, so stop chatting and get working. I made that statement yesterday, letting my sixth graders know that the end of class on Monday is our deadline for completing their Dream Scene digital stories.
Thus, a few projects began to trickle in yesterday, and I am quite pleased with what I am seeing so far. The aspirations are terrific, and the digital stories are coming along quite nicely. This year, I am really pushing the editing of the music levels with the narration levels.
I am trying to see if I can create an Animoto of a collection of Dream Scene videos and will share that out when it gets done, if it works. I am running into the problem of Animoto requiring music underneath the video, but I don’t want that: I want to use the narration/soundtrack of the kids. Hmmm.
Peace (in all of our dreams),
Kevin
The interactive Social Network trailer
I admit: the movie looks intriguing (even though I am NOT on Facebook). Check out the interactive movie trailer, though, with clickable points of information. Surely this will be the trend of movie trailers in the future:
Tending to the (Answer)Garden of Dreams
My students are in the midst of creating a Dream Scene Digital Story Project (which I can outline another day) and yesterday, as they were making the transition from creating an image in Paint to trying out Photostory (not one of my 80 students has ever used it before), I had them add their “dream or aspiration” to an AnswerGarden I had set up at our classroom blog.
AnswerGarden is a word cloud site that collects words and phrases. I noticed some new features at AnswerGarden that seem new to me. I can now create an administrative password and get the information sent to me via email. I can remove any words from the cloud (a source of concern for us teachers). I can now even send the final information over to Wordle, and let it create one of its beautiful word clouds with the AnswerGarden information (wow — I love that connection!)
We all got a kick out of how many budding chefs and musicians are in our midst, but I also loved seeing words like “doctor” and “architect” and “lego designer” in there, too.
Peace (in the rich earth),
Kevin