Here is one more digital book:
Peace (in sharing),
Kevin
Author Archives: dogtrax
Powerful Video of Birmingham, 1963
My class is finishing up reading either The Watsons Go to Birmingham or Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and I have been on the search for a good end-of-novel project. Both books revolve around racism and how families cope (or don’t) with the times they are living in. We’ve had some real powerful discussions about racism of the past and racism of the present.
I found this video this morning and it is perfect for what we have been talking about.
The movie is part of the Media that Matters Film site, which seems like a great resource. I downloaded the activity/discussion guide but I need time to look it over. We did watch the beginning of Spike Lee’s Four Little Girls (the inspiration for the Watsons book) and it was powerful … a bit too much. A few kids went home really shaken. That emotional response allowed us to have more discussions about our country’s past and how far we have come.
Meanwhile, I think we may move into creating Claymation movies that address the bigger idea of tolerance for a final project that will just about wrap up our school year (we go until June 25 this year due to ice and snow this past winter). I just worry about having enough time …
Peace (everywhere, all the time),
Kevin
And another digital science book
On the Prowl for Days in a Sentence
How is your day? Your week? Consider joining this week’s Day in a Sentence. Just reflect on your day or week, boil it down to a single sentence, and then use the comment link on this blog post to share your thought. I will collect and publish all of the responses over the weekend.
To entice you to join us, I created this short Pivot Stick Figure Movie for you all. Consider it a welcoming invitation:
Peace (in your days),
Kevin
Sharing more Digital Science Books
The Sharing of Digital Science Books, part one
Today, I am going to begin sharing out a few of the digital science books my students have created over the last few weeks. I’ll also work on a final reflection later this week. Basically, students had to use the theme of Cell Mitosis (the science connection) and an adventure story genre with Powerpoint to create a digital book. I have taken a few of the books and converted them into video for easier sharing. (I use a paid software program called PPT to Video that converts powerpoint and maintains all transitions, sounds, etc.)
This book actually had some video embedded but that did not come out. I guess the conversion program has its limits.
Here is the first:
Peace (in the books),
Kevin
The Tree Speaks for the Year
During this school year, I have been taking photos of this lovely tree that stands above a picnic table just on the edge of our school recreational grounds. It’s been interesting to see how the tree changes as the year progresses and it became a way of marking time.
After one final picture of the tree back in full bloom, I decided to create a collage of the photos.
Peace (in the trees),
Kevin
Numbers Plus Words Equal Reflective Days
This week, Days in a Sentence had a numerical element to it, and as always, the contributors were wonderfully creative:
Anne arrived at a conference after many hours of traveling. I hope she blogs about the event.
After school on Wednesday, I drove 3.5 hours to Melbourne to catch the MH138 flight to Kuala Lumpur from terminal 1, gate 10 for a 7.5 hour flight, on a plane that was only 2/3 full, which landed me in KL at 545 hours for a 10 day break with 6 days long service leave and 3 days of MS Innovative Teachers conference.
And Nina, too, is conferencing this week. You just have to love the name of Webheads in Action.
In the 72-hour online marathon of the Webheads in Action Online Convergence I have so far logged 24 hours about evenly divided between Learning Times/Elluminate and Second Life; we are about halfway through.
Jo’s equation here is a struggle for her as she juggles kids and computers when the numbers don’t quite add up.
My smallest sophomore class has 21 students + I have 3 student computers in my room + the 1 available computer lab is closed for testing + the library houses only 13 computers and was only open to me for 2 days (due to testing) = 1 huge headache from finagling resources to get research projects done.
Ken goes the route of using numbers for words in his creative way. Which, of course, is what I always expect from Ken.
This has been 1 busy week that, 2 put it bluntly, has 3 aspects to it that will bring 4th at least 5 separate issues, the 6th derivative of which precedes the 7th as you might expect by the same margin that exists between 8 and 9, and if you feel there should be a 10th part to all of this, then you subscribe to a pre-20th century concept, that of decimalisation.
Ykes! Janice is hit by the Number Plague this week.
33 is the number of sleepless hours I’ve spent this week worrying about all the math concepts my grade 6 students still don’t know, and 3 is both the number of school days and the number of math periods left before the dreaded EQAO test that will remind them of all that they do not know, $450.00 is the amount of money I’ve spent so far trying to get rid of a ridiculously annoying plantar wart on my heel, 10 is the number of weeks I’ve been visiting the foot doctor hoping for said persistent wart to DIE, 49 000 000 is the number of dollars I did NOT win in this weeks lottery, and 5 is the duration (in seconds) of my long heavy sigh as I think about all these things!
Illya sees two plus two equaling four, even if the first two may not quite equal the second two (confused? read on).
Out of four days of vacation, I happen to be in bed for two of them, leaving two more to have fun on, hopefully.
Paul also gets creative with the number-word conversion system.
1 day left 2 the 3 day weekend be 4 the last 5 weeks of school.
The countdown for Art is underway.
The last 5 days of school I find myself more restless and ready to leave than many of my students.
The ol’ Email Timekiller hit Connie. I know that one all too well.
After three cups of black tea, pondering which of my 34 overnight emails to respond to before 8:30, I notice a pattern: one email led to 2 others, which led to 3, then 5, 8, 13, 21; suddenly I feel dizzy like I’m spiraling into the day as a Whirling Dervish.
Gail P. has little ones moving up. I love seeing her and her students in our building. They are darn cute.
17 kindergartners from my class will move on to 4 different grade 1 classrooms in 25 more school days, or is that 24 now, but who’s counting, right?
Bonnie was all about digital story celebrations earlier this week as her ongoing work with a local school paid dividends when the kids shared their work with their families.
I created a digital story focused on celebrating the digital stories of 76 very cool 6th graders but when the numbers were counted officially , it was really 79 digital stories of 79 6th graders with the support of 2 classroom teachers, a tech teacher, a substitute teacher and one HVWP TL.
Thanks to all of you for sharing!
Peace (in the number line),
Kevin
Gathering Feedback on Digital Science Books
I had my students take an online reflection last week as the final stage in the Digital Science Picture Books (on cell mitosis) after we shared the books with other students. We may yet do more sharing next week. Here are some of the results of the survey. These questions tried to get at the use of technology in creating a book project.
Click on the image to get a larger viewing.
My own interpretation is that my students are becoming much more adept at using the technology to create the books and much more comfortable. I had more use of audio and more use of embedded video, and more ease of these tools than in past years. It may be that I am getting better at structuring the lessons, or that they are more comfortable with the tools, or that they are unafraid to try new things. They seem pretty fearless, for the most part, when it comes to using the computer as a tool for composing a book. I like that and wish more teachers were like that, too.
Peace (in the results),
Kevin
What my tagline means ….
Long ago, when I first started this blog, I added a tagline quote from Charlie Parker. I thought carefully about that tagline and wanted it to capture the concept that this would be a place where I would explore the intersections of writing and technology myself so that I could consider the implications for my students in the classroom.
Thus: “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”
Yesterday, I was asked by my friend Christina to explain what that tagline means. It is going to be used for a book by the National Writing Project on the topic of digital writing in the classroom (exciting!) and it only took me a few minutes to write out my response. The response came quick because I think about this idea all time when I am tinkering and connecting and doing my odds and ends on this blog.
Here is what I wrote to her:
This quote means a lot to me because it captures the concept that you have live the world in order to understand it. As teachers, we don’t often spend enough time exploring technology and writing ourselves before bringing it into the classroom. But I would argue that this kind of exploration is the key to understanding the possibilities of learning and critical thinking of our students.
I am also a saxophone player and as a kid, Charlie Parker was a musician that I idolized (not for his drug use, which I learned about later). His focus on his own vision of music and his creativity and imagination, and the way he brought the world into his music and his music into the world, touched something in me in a way that has remained with me until this day. My friends had pictures of athletes and rock and rollers on their walls; I had Bird.
A few years ago, at the Hudson Valley Writing Project, I sat in on a session where folks were using Photostory to create visual poems. I drove home that day with my own poem for Charlie Parker in my head and when I got home, I created this:
Peace (in what it all means),
Kevin