This is the last week of school for me, and I wanted to give the 3rd graders an engaging challenge. Since many teachers are fond of scavenger hunts at the end of the year (search throughout the classroom/school/latest copy of Scholastic News for Kids), I decided that it might be fun for them to search the world for famous landmarks and places.
So I opened up a word document, fired up Google Earth, and created a simple 8 question scavenger hunt. I didn’t want to make it too difficult since it was meant to be more of an entertaining tour around the world, rather than a brain-busting puzzle. Most of the clues are homophones that are borderline corny (Get an eyeful of this tower in Paris, France), but like I said, these are 3rd graders. I put all of the clues in a table so I could squish them small enough to fit two scavenger hunt sheets on one piece of paper (always trying to save the school district a few dollars), and then came around with a marker to check off each landmark as they found it. While many of the clues were absurdly easy to find (Mt. Rushmore, the White House, Great Wall of China), a few clues had the kids stumped (Great Pyramids, Mackinac Island), so they happily used up a good 30 minutes traveling around the globe.
For those that found all 8 locations before time was up I made up a Google Earth “Geo-Explorer” badge over at Says-it.com, and printed off a bunch of copies. Much to my surprise, many of them taped their badge to their shirts and promptly started helping other students find the harder locations. Many others simple ignored the badge, which was fine by me as I was more interested in seeing how they were searching in Google Earth. Some would type in words directly from the clues, while others would try to figure the clues out, and search for a general location first (like flying to Washington D.C.), and then looking for the specific landmark (the White House). I’ve made note of it for next year when introducing the different ways to search for places using Google Earth.
If you’re looking for something to do these last few days of school, feel free to download and print off the attached copy of my Google Earth Scavenger Hunt. It would work well for 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade.
On Fridays I like to share an interesting comment or resource from either the forum here on the site, or a forum I frequent elsewhere on the intertubes. The goal is to get some interesting conversations going about “bigger” ideas, or really popular tools on the web. This week, based on conversations I’ve recently had with a number of individuals at the annual MACUL leadership retreat (our state’s ed-tech association), I thought I’d offer a useful too and conversation starter for all of the edubloggers out there.
I’ve created a short poll, which is by no means scientific, to give anyone who visits this post an anecdotal look into which networks are most important to us. At our leadership retreat, the topic of MACUL’s social network came up, and how well our association’s special interest groups maintain interest and stay in contact with their members. Then while talking with a MACUL member about a summer PD event, I suggested tapping into our association’s resources for presenters. He responded with the comment “I never thought of that…”. Which of course, got me thinking. how well do we, as educators, work our networks to our advantage? Do these large state or national organizations exist solely to feed us information, rather than be our “goto” places for human resources? Or perhaps the majority of educators rely more on their own homegrown network of resources? Take a quick moment to answer the poll below, and feel free to use the results on your own site!
It’s very possible that many educators simply rely on what they have in place in their own district or building. I know many teachers in my building that turn first to what our district and building leaders are providing us when they have an educational problem to solve. Then again, I also know many teachers in my building that first turn to the web, Google, or another network they’ve created for themselves outside of school or online. Where then do we strike the balance between being networked with those around us, and those we network with online? In our work setting there are individuals more likely to have a higher stake in our success as an educator and can target specific problems and situations that are common throughout the building, while online we can tap into a much wider experience pool? Obviously the answer is to find a balance, but I’m curious to know where everyone is right now. I personally value the connections I’ve made with the members of my state’s ed tech organization as well as the network I have in my building. I haven’t even thought seriously yet about joining a national educational organization, and I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing….yet. We’ll see what the poll results reveal 
On Fridays I like to share a topic or resource from the forum that highlights a particular need or thought that I want to share with a wider audience. Often times I’ll pull from other forums and websites, to showcase brilliant thinkers that make my musings seem like the juvenile ramblings of a kindergartener eager to please his parents. However, this morning, I found my inspiration from the most unlikely of places, Woot.com. Several of the teachers in my building are addicted to the website, and today’s listing for a USB HD Tuner antenna for your computer included a quip about how the antenna’s ability to pull TV out of the air and turn your computer into a DVR seems an awful lot like those old AT&T advertisements from 1993 that predicted the future with the tagline “You Will”. The commercials were voiced over by every one’s favorite private detective, Magnum P.I. macho actor Tom Selleck. In the commercials, various scenes of a vaguely familiar future depicted students using the library to view books from around the world, patients carrying medical information with them on a credit-card type device, and business executives carrying on teleconferences from the beach using their laptops.
I found the ads on YouTube, and had to share them, because it got me thinking about a really awesome video project for an end of the year activity.
After swimming through the flood of memories about Freshmen year of high school that these ads brought back, I immediately started recognizing which of the “You Will” predictions have come true. Sending faxes wirelessly from a laptop on a beach? Totally possible. Video conferencing from anywhere in the world? Thank you, Skype! Viewing books from around the world? Hello, Google Books! Some of the other prognostications seem almost steam-punk scifi, particularly the video camera in a phone booth (when’s the last time you even saw a phone booth?!). But when I was done watching the ads, I got to thinking.
How great would it be to have students produce their own videos about the future of technological innovation, post them to YouTube, SchoolTube, or one of the other various video sharing sites, and then revisit them every few years! Or better yet, have your students create the videos or slide shows in elementary, and then save them in a digital portfolio to watch again when the graduate. A prediction of the way they will use technology when they leave high school would make a great video time capsule. If you don’t have the video skills, you could just have the students draw pictures or write about what they think technology will look like in the future (two projects that I’ve done with students in the past).
Or perhaps it simple works best as a reflective piece; look where we’ve been, what we thought would come to pass, and where we’re headed in the future. Are we preparing our students to enter a world in which they understand the importance of being able to search through a variety of international books online (do I even understand the importance)? Are we helping our students to better understand how the more we become connected with our devices, the more we lose the anonymity the web once gave many of us, forcing us to behave online just as we would in real life? Whatever the case may be, I can’t wait to see where technology takes us in another 15 years!
It’s difficult to find a clear focus for students as the end of the year approaches. It goes doubly so in a specials class where there are no looming final assessments or tests to prepare for. Any projects need to be highly flexible, because field trips, grand parents’ day, and a host of other end-of-the-year activities will quickly eat holes into the time you spend with your students. So with the hindsight that I’ve gathered these last 5 years of teaching, I’ve given the 4th graders a relatively simple, yet deceptively engrossing project; self portraits.
I’ve had Art Rage, a fantastic painting simulator, installed on my machines all year, but couldn’t find an engaging way to work it into a project as it requires complete attention from the user. Art Rage isn’t just some fancy version of MS Paint, it’s a full on painting simulation that lets you mix colors as though you were using a real brush and paints. It includes all manner of tools including chalk, markers, colored pencils, and paint knives. If you use it for even 5 minutes, you want to keep playing with it for another 15, and then it turns into an hour of kaleidoscopic twirling of paint. I decided a couple of weeks ago that I would let the 4th graders use it to create self portraits. So I fired up the digital camera, took pictures of them while they played with all of the digital painting tools they could figure out, and then used the digital pictures as tracing images on their screens (Art Rage has a nifty feature that makes using tracing images a snap).
What did I discover? Besides the fact that elementary students want to seem to use the paintbrushes as pencils and outline themselves and their facial features before painting (must be a developmental thing), quite a few of the boys enjoyed giving themselves facial hair. Not just any facial hair either; we’re talking handle bar mustaches, goatees, and sideburns that were dangerously long enough to braid and wrap with bows. An interesting situation, as though they were all very eager to grow up and start shaving, or rather grow up and not bother with shaving like they do now and actually have something to show for it. In either case, the portraits are coming out smashingly well, so I thought I’d share a particularly hairy fellow (check out that beard!), and point out that Art Rage is a great program for teachers that want their kids to be creative, but don’t have the art supplies, or for art teachers looking for a way to get their students into digital art without having to go the graphic design route that seems to dominate so many high schools. It does have a paid version, but the free standard version is good enough for this non-mustachioed teacher.
On most Fridays I like to pull an interesting topic from the forum and share it with a wider audience. Quite often, there are many interesting discussions elsewhere on the Internet, and I found one earlier this week that hits home. We’ve been in the planning stages at my school to implement the first round of interactive white boards and document cameras throughout the building. So it was with great interest that I read Richard Kass’s post on whether or not document cameras were for everyone. Richard is a technology director (officially titled the director of information services) for what appears to be an elite private K-12 school in Oregon. Despite the obvious resources that a prominent private district could wield in purchasing new tools for their teachers, Richard plays devil’s advocate with his response to an article entitled “Today’s Teachers Thrive with ELMOs in the Classroom“.
The article is a fantastic read, and gives examples of how educators throughout K-12 and across the curriculum spectrum are using document cameras (a.k.a digital presenters). Ideas about using the zoom features to explore fine details of objects and raise awareness of observational skills to the convenience of being able to magnify and display any type of document or object at a moment’s notice, without the need to run a copy, make a transparency, or copy to the board. Based on the article, Richard made his own list of pros and cons to consider before making document cameras ubiquitous in our schools. I enjoyed reading his take on the article, but I thought I would add my own thoughts and revise Richard’s to better fit my philosophy.
“Magnification: in classes that work frequently with very small objects, a document camera may show more detail/be more convenient than simply passing the object around the class. Sharing student work: in classes that frequently share student handwritten/drawn work, a document camera may increase the convenience of making the work of an individual student visible to the entire group.”
I couldn’t agree more. Instead of passing around delicate or small objects, a document camera would allow a teacher to show in fine detail what an object looks like without the danger of it being mishandled. Artifacts brought in to study local history, or student created projects in an art room would be great examples. Math manipulatives and scientific instruments or measuring implements would be much easier to model for the classroom. Sharing written work would be much simpler to just place under the camera, instead of having to copy it on the board, and provide immediate feedback rather than having to wait until a planning period to go make a transparency. The immediacy and often frequent “teachable moments” could be greatly capitalized on.
Playing Devil’s advocate, Richard makes a few more statements:
“The class shares objects of larger size (can be easily seen or too large to fit under the camera). Holding the object, not just seeing it, has high pedagogical value. Students complete work to share with small groups, the teacher, parents, or themselves, not the entire class at once. The teacher doesn’t spend much time teaching from the front of the class. The teacher prioritizes aural or text-based instruction over visual. The class is primarily organized around student-led projects. The depth of the object is important (3D vs. 2D). The classroom is physically organized around “activity centers.”
To be fair, I’m cheery picking certain comments so as to make this post flow better, but I’ve tried to pick a few comments that I both agree with and disagree. Yes, holding physical objects like rocks, minerals, artifacts, and manipulatives for math or science are much more powerful than simply viewing them. However, I’ve seen many teachers using those giant rulers, protractors, and massive compasses during math classes and thought it would be much simpler to just use a normal sized tool (in a normal manner and not holding them in awkward positions up on the board). And to say that every single piece of student writing, or object would go under the camera is a bit extreme. Like any other tool, document cameras are best used for the most appropriate situation. If students are working in small groups, then you don’t necessarily have to show the entire class a particular piece of writing to help 5 or 6 students in one writing group. However, if you noticed that several groups were having problems with a particular writing mechanic, you could easily interrupt and show the entire class a good student example and then quickly return them to their work without having to make a copy for each group. That goes double for making transparencies, as the cost of making copies is usually more when turned into plastic film for traditional overhead projectors.
In my opinion, document cameras would be successful in both teacher and student led classrooms, especially in a classroom where the teacher is constantly moving about the room, and is rarely at the head of the room. Calling on a student to share their work by simply placing it under the camera is a no-brainer, and would even encourage the teacher to circulate more around the room rather than root themselves as they do to traditional overheads. Without the mess of overhead markers and cleaning fluids/spray bottles, I would probably be more encouraged to let small groups of students use the document camera to display work to both their own groups and the entire class. In a way, I see document cameras as the next necessary evolution of visual presentation, and would strongly argue that a document camera greatly enhances many forms of teaching in ways that a light blub-powered overhead projector can’t do.
Are they worth the expense then? Perhaps not with the currently dominant modalities of teaching. But as more and more educators become accustomed to visual learning styles, something which I believe most elementary teachers have been doing successfully for decades, you’ll see a greater and greater push for document cameras, digital projectors, and other tools that take visual learning one step closer to becoming ubiquitous.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nextspace/571719680/
I’m a very project-based educator. I like to give students all of the pieces of a learning puzzle, show them how some pieces can be arranged to fit with others, and then let them see what they create. I very rarely give examples of what I want their finished work to look like, because I don’t want students to have some pre-conceived notion of what is “good” or “bad”. Instead, I like to work from rubrics or level of engagement. If a student isn’t engaged with a project, I’ll try to find a way to tailor the assignment for him or her. Likewise, modifying assignments for students that are struggling is a constant as well.
So after 3 weeks of the 3rd graders conducting research on the Native Americans and Early Michigan Settlers of the 1800s (remember, I only have about 25 usable minutes each week after typing time), the kids were getting really discouraged with the work. It was slow, tedious, time-consuming, and was really starting to bum me out. Which is why I decided to make a really nice worksheet with graphics and text bubbles for them to fill out….which really got me depressed got me even more bummed out. Here I am in the 21st century creating a “prettier” worksheet and expect them to be engaged by it?
Instead, I fired up Kidspiration, downloaded a dozen or so pictures depicting early settler and Native American life, and let them roll with it. I asked them a few questions about “Little House on the Prairie”, and why it was such an interesting story. After talking about how Laura Ingalls Wilder managed to mix historical accounts of daily life with an interesting story, I showed them the pictures I had gathered in Kidspiration, and encouraged them to get creative. Instead of just writing down the information on a piece of paper, which they had been doing, I encouraged them to create a little story, as if they were actually a Native American or an early settler, and use the pictures to create “visual notes”. The end result was that the students had a lot of fun making their worksheets to suit their learning tastes. Some students focused on creating humorous lines to explain their life 200 years ago, while others were very serious and staight forward about describing the pictures. Many even started using other pictures that I hadn’t downloaded to help them better explain facts from the past.
Sure, they were still worksheets, but instead of fill in the blanks by searching for information, they were creating a personal story that they could alter, edit, and show to other people instead of just reading it. You could easily accomplish the same thing using Microsoft Word and inserting images, or fire up a painting program and have the kids draw the pictures themselves with their notes. These are a few that I thought were particularly nice. Just click on them to see a larger version.
As Earth Week 2008 wraps up around the globe and corporate promotions come to an end, it’s important to help our students understand that caring for our environment and practicing what we’ve learned on Earth Day should be everyday, not just a few days in April. Over the last month I’ve been sharing a few websites and ideas for encouraging environmental education throughout the year, so I thought I’d end my series of posts with a few ways to make Earth Day Everyday. Whether you’re a kindergarten teacher, or a high school environmental studies instructor, there are simple ways to incorporate environmentally friendly activities, videos, and resources on the web in your classroom throughout the year. Below are just a few to get you started.
Earth Day, Everyday at Wilderness.org
The Wilderness Society has put together a really nice collection of teacher resources in their Teacher’s Lounge that emphasize making everyday a day to respect the Earth. Lots of links to Earth day sites, environmental organizations, and downloadable lesson plans are just a few of the teacher resources. Interactive adventures, photo treks, and recommendations for off line reading help round out the resources for students from kindergarten through high school.
National Geographic’s Earth Day
Always providing the most in depth and immersive resources on the environment, National Geographic does a fantastic job of blending the latest environmental news with timely in depth articles and interactive activities. The Earth day page of National Geographic’s website is well suited for middle school and high school classes, though an elementary teacher could “cheery pick” resources. Daily environmental news updates make the site a MUST for any environmental studies classes, interactive virtual habitats on the Earth Pulse section of the website were always a must when I taught middle school science, and topical issues like fresh water conservation are a great resource for secondary classrooms.
Earth 911 is a great resource for starting your own grassroots recycling and ecological efforts. Club Earth 911 lays out simple plans for starting your own school wide recycling program, including logos to print and tips for spreading the word. The teacher’s page includes the ABCs of simple steps to help the environment, a fun resource for early elementary students. Or you can check out the latest news of national contests that are available to students who want to show off their “green-ness”.
Other posts in my Earth day series:
Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Planet Green Game
Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Google Earth & Climate Change in the Science Classroom
On Fridays I like to share a resource or discussion that I’ve found to be incredibly helpful or thought provoking. While I will often pull in a resource from another website, today’s Friday message comes from a recent post on the Tech Savvy Ed Forum here on the site.
Johnegood, a new member of the forum, shared a fantastic spelling practice website called Spellingcity.com that he has apparently had some hand in creating. While I don’t usually write about posts, press releases, or e-mails that people have written to me in order to promote their specific product, I had a few minutes to spare this morning, and played around with Spelling City. That coupled with johnegood’s casual, no-pressure post made me want to share the site with all of the readers.
While on the surface, SpellingCity appears to be a simple tool to create an online spelling list, I found at least 3 reasons that this site is much more than a digital worksheet, and could really lend itself well to improving vocabulary.
1. Play a Game - After typing your spelling list into the boxes it provides (you can add as many boxes as you need), you can play a spelling game in which every word is given with it’s pronunciation and used in a sentence. NOT textually, but verbally; actual people have made actual recordings of the words you put in, so you can click on a button and hear a human voice say the word, and even hear them use the word correctly in a sentence, very much like a spelling bee. If you get words wrong, you can always try the “Teach Me” button, and the site will spell out the words you missed while also giving you the sentences they’re used in.
2. Share Spelling Lists - The site is completely free (which is awesome), and teachers can create their own accounts to create and share lists with their students. You can create as many lists as you want, and students can find them easily without having to have a login. They simple have to type in the first or last name of the teacher or the name of the list, making it simple for them to find lists. Once they’ve found a list they can take a test, have the list “taught” to them with a review, play the game, or print off the list to work with it in the real world.
3. Lists of the Month - If you’re a competitive type, or just want some recognition for your wickedly difficult spelling lists, you can nominate your list(s) for “List of the Month.” When I checked the most recent lists, I found vocabulary words from the first chapter of “Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, soccer terms, and 3rd grade homophones.
Apparently, there’s more in store for the website, with more games coming online in the near future. With just the one game, I can see how students might quickly become complacent with the repetitive recordings; clicking on the sentence or pronunciation button yields the same recording each time. This is definitely a site worth checking out for elementary and middle school students.
This morning on the way in to work I was listening to NPR and heard about the tragic story of Harry Potter superfan, Steven Jan Vander Ark, being sued for copyright infringement. Apparently, he’s publishing his popular online version of the Harry Potter Lexicon. The long and short of it is simple; J.K. Rowling LOVES the fan site, as it catalogs everything Harry Potter, and has even gone so far as to the use the lexicon site for her own research while writing the last few books. However, once the book was published, it became something of a copyright infringement beacuse there was money to be made.
There have been other Harry Potter books published not authored by J.K., but they have contained so much commentary, speculation, and original material that they’ve fallen under fair use guidelines. Unfortunately, most of the text in Mr. Vander Ark’s book is actually lifted from the Harry Potter books.
The thought that popped into my head was “THIS WOULD MAKE A GREAT LESSON ON COPYRIGHT!” Imagine providing students with the framework of the issue (copyright versus fair use), and then provide them with a media portfolio of images, articles, references, etc. They could use all of that media and information to state and defend their position using powerpoint or some other multimedia presentation tool (could even be a short movie). What do you think? Is the idea half-baked, or does it have some merit? I figure the popularity of Harry Potter would make it a HUGE favorite for kids of all ages, and really provide lots of resources, images, articles, and media for putting together a persuasive “visual essay” on whether they agree that J.K is having her material infringed upon or not.
Here’s where it gets really fun! I need your help! I’m going to put together a “You Be The Judge Project” on this, but the more help I get, the sooner is can be accomplished. If you have any resources, images, or websites that deal with copyright, fair use, and specifically this whole court case, just add them to your response. I’m also collecting resources with a simul-post over on MACUL Space. I’ll gather all of the resources and share them during a Forum Friday post and see what we can create!
I know this would be easier with a wiki, but I wanted to get the ball rolling now while the idea was still fresh in my mind. Please share anything you have, and we can use it all to create webquests, projects, lessons, or whatever else we can think of.
I’ll get everyone started:
Online News Articles about the Harry Potter Lawsuit
I’m a recovering hardcore gamer. In college, I would purchase at least 2 to 3 video games a month, play Mario Kart well past midnight (but then again, who didn’t in the late ’90s), and once stayed up all night with my roommate not because we were at the hottest party on campus, but because we were attempting to build a massive transportation empire that would drive our competitors into bankruptcy.
These days, with a family, a 40 minute commute, and having purchased a house worthy of Tom Hank’s Money Pit, there’s little left to purchase games, and thus I’ve been limited in my choices. Which is why I spent a small part of my Spring Break today playing several games of the entirely free ElectroCity. It’s a fabulous city building simulation created for the educational outreach program of Genesis Energy, the largest producer of energy in New Zealand. To be fair, I can’t take credit for discovering it, as I found it via a post on Larry Ferlazzo’s excellent ESL Blog.
To start with, the game is completely FREE (I love that word). Better than that, this is a perfect game simulation for middle school and high school teachers looking to provide a reflective learning experience for students interested in how the environment is affected by choices made by local or state government concerning energy production and use. It combines the addictiveness of Lemonade Stand with the deep control and management tools of SimCity. With only 150 turns to create a thriving economy and growing population based on realistic environmental practices, I thought I would be presented with simplistic choices, and be railroaded into some pre-scripted “save the Earth, reduce energy consumption”, but I was happily wrong.
Players start with 10,000 people, a small town, and $400. You can choose to set the tax rate at whatever percent you like, use the city funds to play the energy commodities market where you can buy or sell coal and natural gas, enact environmental policies within your city, and even improve or demolish the landscape to suit your economical or environmental needs. I had two dismal starts to the game; I lost once due to bankruptcy after buying natural gas heavily and then seeing the market drop out, and then lost again when my city became a ghost town because of the people leaving in droves after building numerous coal mines and gas wells around the city. The third time was the charm, and although I didn’t create a booming population, I managed to maintain a balance of ecologically-friendly energy production (geothermal plant) and more traditional means of energy production (I built a natural gas rig out in the ocean). Enacting programs like energy efficiency education and solar panels in the city drained my city funds each turn, but I managed to offset that with a slightly higher tax rate and by selling off the excess gas I was producing from the drilling rig. You can see from my report card above that I received an “A+” on my environmental record, as well as “A”s in energy management and popularity, but I earned a “D” for my population growth and well-being.
Which is why I think that this game should be a center piece for any secondary classroom talking about climate change, energy use, and the repercussions for making certain decisions regarding land use. Sure, it’s nice to talk about establishing national parks and riverside campgrounds instead of lumber mills and aluminum smelting plants (both of which are available to build in the game), but making strict ecologically friendly decisions meant that my city was nearly bankrupt at the end of 150 turns, and my population severely “rollercoastered” as I had to adjust the taxation rate in order to make money. A stable economy, I did not have. Which is the second reason I love this game. Just like in SimCity, it’s based on a limited supply of resources, both environmentally and monetarily. If you don’t have the funds to purchase additional energy each turn for your citizens they start to become upset with you and your popularity drops. Likewise, if you decide to build a natural gas well to offset the cost of building expensive geothermal plants, you’ll pay a price to clean up the wells once the gas runs dry, which further eats into your budget.
I can’t recommend this game enough, as every time you replay it, there are deeper and deeper questions that must be asked, and not just questions about how we interact with the environment and produce our energy. This simulation could easily aide conversations of sustainable and responsible growth within communities. Or it could just as easily be an introduction into stock market trading, and how real world events affect the price of commodities, and why “buy low, sell high” actually matters. At the very least, ElectroCity is an engaging way to get students thinking about real world solutions when it comes to making changes in our energy use, and not just the typical “let’s make everything Earth friendly” lesson plans and activities that often ignore the real world costs and sustainability of such changes.
Other Posts in my Earth Day Series:
Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Planet Green Game
Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Google Earth & Climate Change in the Science Classroom
In an attempt to get a jump-start on providing activities, resources, and other goodies for Earthday 2008, I’ve found a number of really great resources. Alone they provide an interesting discussion, but together, you can really start to create some terrific learning opportunities using real world data for secondary science classrooms!
It all started with one of my new favorite blogs for science teachers. The “Science Teacher” (name isn’t provided on the site) over at the St Vrain Science blog was lamenting about a small group of students in an AP Environmental Science class that absolutely refused to discuss the subject of climate change:
I am very concerned about a small group of AP Environmental Science students (3) who have taken an aggressive stand opposing my teaching of climate change. I already teach it from the perspective of “here’s the data, figure it out” but they think that I made the data up. I showed them where it came from (NASA and NOAA) and they think it is a conspiracy by the left wing to infiltrate and brainwash the American public.
The comments that followed were all incredibly helpful, with many educators supporting the science teacher’s actions of providing data from highly reputable sources. Presenting the topic from the point of view of “you figure it out” is also a brilliant move, but when students (or adults) start discounting real-world data as being “biased” it’s time to up the presentation a little.
Enter, Google Earth! The ultimate multimedia tool when presenting information about the real world, because it’s in context, and allows for information like graphs, images, and data to be embedded directly into placemarks. Which is why I was really excited when I saw that the Google Earth blog had posted a map that contains temperature data from NASA and other sources for the entire globe. Want to find out whether Chicago has been experiencing significant warming trends over the last 40 years (is has)? You can see the temperature data and graphs from hundreds of reporting stations around the world from NASA and other sources. Links to the data collecting stations are included in case you want to investigate further. Care to compare data for two major cities on opposite sides of the globe, say New York and the Royal Observa in Beijing? You can find it. You could even use the data to compare the collection habits of various stations throughout the years, as some stations have reported data for the last 40 years, while some have records going back more than 100 years!
Once again, Google Earth presents itself as a wonderful tool for taking abstract data and giving it some relevance. Whether you believe in global warming or not, this is an excellent resource to use for any discussion (in a science classroom or otherwise) about climate change in general, and giving students a concrete view of how temperatures around the globe and increased or decreased over the past few decades.
Global Temperature Trends for Google Earth via Google Earth Blog
Other Posts in my Earth Day Series:
Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Planet Green Game
On most Fridays I like to pull an interesting conversation or resource from the Forum here on the site, but there are times when a discussion or happening on another site deserves being spread around the edublogosphere a little bit more. This week, I wanted to point out the tireless work of some of my online colleagues, friends, and fellow educators.
To be fair though, this isn’t entirely my idea, as I was recently chosen to receive a Thinking Blog Award by Beth Knittle, a master educator where all things technology are concerned. I’m flattered to know that Beth keeps several of my posts in her list of favorites, and that got me thinking about the favorite blogs I read on a daily basis. Too often we as educators will borrow, beg, and steal (yes, I used that “s” word) ideas, resources, and teaching tricks without always taking the time to say “thanks.” The advent of the read/write web has made it much easier to thank colleagues for their work, and acknowledge their efforts. So it’s time I made good on thanking a few of the blogs that have sparked many an idea and internal discussions about the way I teach and use technology to enhance my classroom.
Blog to get you Thinking about HOW WE EDUCATE
Dy/Dan
For those that follow the edublogosphere closely, you may already be aware of Mr. Meyer’s completely irreverent, yet highly accurate reflections of teaching efficacy. While he occasionally pretends to blog about teaching secondary mathematics, reading just a few posts will quickly reveal that he’s an up and coming educator that I fully except to see as a headlining keynote at large educational conferences; once he figures out a way to support both the teachers who are emotionally connected to education AND the teachers that support his more logical thinking.
Blog to get you Thinking about NEW MEDIA
MediaShift
PBS launched their “guide to the digital media revolution” a few years back, and Mark Glasser, the primary blogger, has managed to explore the concepts and tools of the read/write web with an amazing journalistic depth that PBS usually provides while connecting with his readers in many personal ways. My favorite entries are the “Your Take” posts, in which he solicits honest reactions and comments about popular websites, internet culture, and how we interact with the web.
Blog to get you Thinking about WHY WE EDUCATE
BionicTeaching
Tom Woodward, and more recently Jim Coe, have been favorites of mine for some time now. Besides the terribly clever name for their shared blog, the duo have a unique flair for providing compelling anecdotes, articles, and resources that make teaching and learning with 21st century skills not just relevant, but imperative. It doesn’t hurt that Tom authored one of the most useful presentations and resource on copyright for education that I’ve ever seen.
Blog to get you Thinking about WHY LEARNERS NEED TO BE CONNECTED
Videoconferencing Out on a Lim
Janine Lim is an inspiring VC evangelist. If there’s a resource out there that will help you connect your classroom with an expert, another class halfway around the world, or just go on a virtual field trip, Janine has found it. She talks tech, instruction, and the why it’s so important to stay focused on the kids when connecting classes around the world to one another.
Blog to get you Thinking about HIPPOS
Hippapalooza
Alright, I tricked you. I included Hippapalooza not so much to make anyone think about the wrinkly-skinned African animals, but rather to get people thinking about what our students are doing at an increasingly younger age. You see, Hippapalooza is a blog that was created by one of my 5th graders. He did it on his own, without any prompting from me, but the idea came to him after starting up his own Hippo-centric wiki. The wiki wasn’t giving him the connections to other people that he wanted online, so he started the blog, and quickly recruited friends from the school and friends that he chats with online. These students aren’t even in middle school yet, and they’re already creating their own networks online. Not satisified with what’s being offered at MySpace or other social networking sites, they’ve been busy building their own with the tools that we want them to use effectively and safely. Makes you wonder if all those tech-vangelists have a point after all.
I could go on with a list of blogs that make me think, but these are the 5 that have made me ponder most recently. Have 5 blogs that you want to bestow the Thinking Blog Award upon? Here’s the rules:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post on the Thinking Blog so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
Enjoy your weekend of deep thought!
Many blogs I follow usually provide resources for special days of the year the day before, or on the special date. Which is why I thought I’d run a small series of posts over the next week focused on Earth Day so there’s plenty of time (27 days as of this posting) to prepare how best to turn your students into ecologically minded citizens.
Since ideas on how best to protect the environment can sometimes be a difficult debate both politically and personally, I’ll try to be as neutral as I can about the Planet Green Game that was created by Starbucks and Global Green USA. I played through a bit of it, and it’s a really addicting game, rewarding you with (or taking away) points based on how much carbon you put into the environment. As you start the game, it’s evident that decisions you make early on affect your score, as choosing to ride your bike around town will automatically improve your score over choosing the family sedan or SUV. I stuck with a hybrid car, and had to make a trip to the gas station to fill up. BAM! Instant negative points for using fossil fuels. But as soon as I pulled into the service station, I was asked if I wanted to tune up my car and have the emissions checked. I figured I had the time, so I pulled into the service bay and was instantly given positive points for having my car checked regularly to prevent excess carbon emissions.
While that may sound like a simplified example of how our daily decisions affect global climate (it is), the depth of the game grows the more you play it. As you travel around town you’re presented with challenges to reduce the use of energy in your home and school, and are even rewarded for watching information about more global solutions for reducing greenhouse gases. The game grew pretty addictive once I had taken a short energy reducing quiz at the school, and was immediately rewarded with a visually upgraded school building (green roof and solar panels replaced the cracked tar on top of the building). I was then given extra bonus points for reading information and looking at pictures of actual “green school” renovations and construction taking place in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Being a person that’s HUGE on having intrinsic and extrinsic rewards while playing an edugame, I loved watching my score jump, and seeing visual changes to the digital map, as I was learning how large organizations in addition to myself could help reduce energy use. Granted, the game may be so addictive that students simply play it for the points, and don’t actually glean any information presented to them, but this would make an excellent extension and or engaging way to culminate a project for Earth Day. Definitely an edutainment adventure for middle school and high school, but with it’s blatant over the top message of “reduce and re-use” without necessarily providing costs, time, and energy that has to be invested to make the changes, it would be hard to use this as THE center piece of any learning revolving around climate change. However, that shouldn’t stop any educators looking to provide a VERY well done interactive experience to introduce students to concepts of reducing our energy consumption from simple changes in our daily lives (turning of lights and unplugging chargers when not in use), to more community based action.
Oh, and the music isn’t half bad either. I let it play in the background during one of my classes and the kids really enjoyed it!
Other Posts in my Earthday Series:
Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Google Earth & Climate Change in the Science Classroom
The technology advisory group for my building has just embarked on a most ambitious plan. It was pointed out to us last week that if we want to have the really cool tools that we know will help us deliver the digital content that our already strained resources and computer labs can’t handle, we should start with a plan. An instructional technology plan that’s focused primarily on modalities of instruction, delivery of content, and our ability to interact in a meaningful and visual way with our students.
Yes, yes, I know those sort of things are included in a district’s technology plan, but we want this to belong to us, our building, and have specific goals, outcomes, and experiences that relate to later elementary life. That leads us to tomorrow; a day long meeting of myself, our district IT Director, the administrator for our building, and at least two representatives from every content area and grade level, including special ed and other resource providing instructors within the building.
And we’d love all the help we can get. It’s not that we’re not a capable group of individuals; I’d gladly teach my way through the Sahara with any of them using nothing but a dried up expo marker and a solar-powered calculator. But I do know that there are quite a lot of really smart, and highly experienced people out there that have had some terrific success with writing these sorts of plans, and gosh darn it, we’d love to have you on our team. Metaphorically speaking that is, and from a long distance, preferably via e-mail or comments. I have lots of links ready for us with great examples of tech plans that I feel are top notch including Detroit Public Schools and Pinckney Schools. I also have lots of good resources about crafting such a plan, but to have a few extra voices of experience would really bolster our efforts.
To give you some idea of where we’re starting, here’s our starting goal:
The Later Elementary will empower every students’ right to intellect by providing best practices in current learning strategies, access to 21st Century digital learning tools, and collaborative reflective experiences. This can be accomplished through providing more integrated content across the curriculum and using differentiated teaching strategies with interactive learning environments, and digital work spaces that will create connectivity in real-time. Today’s learners are living in a visual world, with media speeding toward them from all directions. That is why we will engage the students with the interactive tools that are the reality of their future learning and work environments.
It’s a bit prosaic, and we’re currently not in love with any particular piece (except maybe the bit on connectivity in real-time), so feel free to tear into in, offer your insights, and help make our 5 year tech plan kick some serious butt!
On most Fridays I like to pull an interesting resource or discussion from the Forum on the site, or from another across the vast Internet. More often that not, there are great resources or conversations hidden just below the surface of most websites, and on this particular Friday I wanted to explore what happens when Web 2.0 or the Read/Write Web goes too far.
As I’m sure many are aware by now here in the U.S. there was a recent “freak boating accident” in which a woman from Michigan was recently killed while boating with her family off the Florida coast when a giant eagle ray leapt out of the water, striking her on the neck, and knocking her down. While it’s unclear whether it was the ray that killed her or the blow she suffered when she struck the deck of the boat, one thing is clear; people shrouded by the anonymity of the Internet are jerks!
The news was saddening to hear. I imagined my own family traveling on what I can only assume was Spring Break, and then having to return home with one of us departed, and I shuddered. Loss of a loved one, especially during a moment of enjoyment and pleasure can hit doubly hard. However, after scrolling down to read the comments on the article, expecting to find well wishes to the family and condolences, I found my blood pressure rising as I read a series of not only highly offensive and snide comments, but also comments that were completely insensitive to the families time of crisis. Below are a few excerpts that I found especially distasteful:
…THE STINGRAY WAS PROBABLY SICK OF HER UGLY *** STARING DOWN INTO THE WATER AND DECIDED TO TAKE HER OUT LOL…
…To avoid this ever happening again, we need to kill every last one of these things. Pursue them with extreme prejudice….
…It is no one’s fault. I agree that bush was a bad president , but we shouldn’t be blaming people and praying for the woman and her family!…
…With any luck, one will kill YOU. One less idiot in the world. Go die….
…One fewer tourist. High season is almost over as most slime north around easter….
Now, I’m a pretty level headed guy, most of the time. I understand that often times people use humor to defuse their own feelings of dread, sadness, and unease, but some of the comments were even worse than what I posted here. And what the heck does George Bush have anything to do with sting ray attacks?! To be fair, there were also a LARGE number of positive comments, and people leaving well wishes.
But it really begged the question; when does Web 2.0 with all of it’s wondrous read/write abilities go too far? When do we say, this news story/blog post/tragic event needs to have moderated commenting, or perhaps no ability to comment whatsoever. In the land of the Internet, where everyone can safely remain behind their curtain of anonymity (to a certain degree), when do we allow honest, helpful, and productive conversation to begin, and when do we put an end to the “crude comment free-for-all” that can often proliferate on posts of morbid interest. Perhaps that’s the wrong question. Maybe I should be asking, how do we effectively steer conversations away from snide, hurtful, and outright insensitive remarks without adopting a strict policy of banishment, censorship, and monitoring?
When a simple off-color comment could come from any one of a million keyboards around the world, how do we tell people enough is enough without just engaging them to write more that detracts from the original post? What happens if responsible communication, via any means whether it be electronic, on paper, or otherwise is not safeguarded, and even the most tragic event is turned into the play thing for lurkers, trolls, and other ne’er-do-wells?
A lot to think about in just one post, but feelings that I didn’t expect I would experience having grown up online interacting with people in immature and puerile chatboxes, video games, and forums. Maybe I’m just getting older, or more conservative (shudder!), but I hope that some teacher, somewhere can make an excellent example of the behavior posted above, and perhaps change a few students’ views on interacting and conversing online, where emotions aren’t always taken into consideration.
Why is it that the BBC always has the best edu-games? From building pyramids to exploring with the vikings, the fine folks over at BBC Schools are constantly coming up with clever, and highly addictive ways to lure me into wasting time while learning. This week’s find, Questionaut, is no exception and goes beyond the usual goodness with an eclectic “general education” quiz that is beautifully wrapped in a quirky and colorful environment.
Questionaut take the player on a journey through several floating islands in the sky. It’s a traditional “point and click” adventure similar to Myst (yes, I’m busting out the old school games), and rewards players for both their keen problem solving skills while also providing a nice assessment of general knowledge. In the couple of hours I’ve sunken into the game I’ve had questions covering square roots to how to write a proper introduction for a letter. Each level requires you to answer 5 of these type of general knowledge questions before you have enough fuel in your balloon to reach the next higher island.
As an added bonus there are small problem solving challenges to complete on each level before being given your 5 questions. My favorite challenge was a large tree filled with animals, and trying to correctly move the animals around so that a little bird could fly down and catch a worm without being attacked by a cat. Simplistic challenges, yes; but very rewarding challenges for the simple at heart.
This site would be a great challenge for 5th grade and up if you’re looking to keep a few students busy before Spring Break, or a way to provide yourself with some sanity as the students exhibit high degrees of Spring Fever!
This post comes courtesy of Kotaku (which isn’t always the safest site for work, which is why I tried it at home first).
I promised myself (secretly of course) that I wouldn’t start using the phrase “Personal Learning Network.” It’s not that I’m ashamed of being connected to such an amazing group of people online. In fact, quite often I feel as though I learn more in a single day reading through my Bloglines than I would in half a dozen graduate courses about technology in education. It’s just that I’m not a huge fan of catch phrases, buzz words, and edu-jargon (I’m talking about you, Mr. Zone-Of-Proximal-Development).
But now that I’ve gone and completely shot my credibility as an educator with any hopes of curriculum appointments, I thought I’d ask all of you wonderful people out on the Interwebs that I communicate and share with, do you have any really great Writing and/or Wiki Rubrics? I’m trying to come up with an assessment for the 5th graders for the Kidpedia project that I’ve been working on, and hadn’t settled on one that would address both technological and language arts criteria. Since I’ve based the entire project on their grade level expectations in English Language Arts, and elementary Tech Standards, I want to have them grade the individual entries on their wiki-powered encyclopedia to see how well those entries and their use of the Kidpedia matches those standards.
I know of several sites to create my own rubrics online, and there are many pre-made rubrics floating around, but I’d really love to have a rubric that’s been field tested, battle worn, and ready to go for 5th graders (in other words, not too wordy, with a focus on the presentation and quality of the writing, and a small spattering of wiki-use content like commenting and editing). I’ll start working on my ELA/Wiki Rubric this evening, but I was hoping it wasn’t too much to ask from a few hundred of my closest friends on the Internet
This is a previous post written for the MACUL Conference Blog. However, the content is quite relevent to the state of educational technology, and thought that I’d include it here as well.
I had a chance this morning to sit in on Marion Ginopolis’ presentation at the Administrator’s Breakfast. Marion is the director for the Michigan Leadership Improvement Framework Endorsement program (MI-LIFE). A long name yes, but it basically boils down to teaching today’s educational leaders to identify the right ways to help educators teach today’s students. Below are the thoughts and highlights that I took away from the presentation. You can find specific details about the presentation and a copy of it at the MI-LIFE Blog.
The World Has Changed
The world is virtual, digital, and flat. The access to information that we now possess is greater than it has eve been. Collaboration with people around the world is no longer the exception, but the norm.
Our Students Are Different
Our students are plugged in, they’re digital, and their wired. Their relevance is so far from what we as adults determine as relevant that we are at risk of disengaging them, and not providing education that is relevant to them.
Our Schools Haven’t Changed
We’re still teaching with a mostly 19th century approach to leadership and learning. Information is sacred and must be acquired through careful study, reading, and discipline. Unfortunately, that is not how today’s students are programmed to learn.
School Leaders Are The Gatekeepers Of Change
Our school leaders are gatekeeper. That means they control not just what gets blocked, but what is allowed through. Being a gatekeeper means that all leaders must be onboard with the idea of 21st century leadership, allow allow learners and educators to freely pass through those gates that we run across in education.
(5th Truth!) The Digital Divide No Longer Refers Only To Access
The students have access to more information and resources than adults. They know more about the world than we do in some instances.
The presentation finished up with a wonderful video about how institutionalized education here in the U.S. has been struggling since the late 60s to change the way information is disseminated, and how we teach children. We’re trying to move away from the 19th century model of strict hierachy and control of information to a model that is based on collaboration and widely available information. The video then went on to share a number of quite interesting facts about how students in college right now consume media and information. I found it on TeacherTube and posted it below:
I’ve been out most of this week with what I’ve learned today to be a sinus infection. Yes, I know, I’m a whimp, but when I interact with over 800 students each week, I don’t like to take risks spreading illness around the school. Regardless, I was frustrated that I couldn’t be in the classroom, as the fifth graders have been working hard on the Kidpedia project. I’ve also been missing out on getting my fourth graders started on recording their podcasts, but thankfully I’ve found a way to put myself (or rather, my online video self) into the classroom so that I can still offer my students some direction while I’m home with the chills and a fever. Below is the awesomely easy web video I created using Ustream.tv.
Yes, I know, it was awful of me to pick up my camera like that and hold it in front of my blurry monitor and expect the kids to appreciate it. And I know I stumbled a bit in my delivery (I’m much better “live”, or so I’ve been told), but in the space of 10 minutes I was able to plug in my digital video camera, record my short “intro” for the day, and then have it automatically saved as a flash movie and embedded on the website I use to teach with. Talk about incredible!
I had originally heard about uStream back in October from Jim Wenzloff, but forgot about it, until John Nugent mentioned it on MACUL Space last week. It was quite the fortuitous occurrence, as I’ve been able to quickly, and easily, record different videos every morning for each day I’ve been out this week. The amount of technical “know-how” was minimal, as the site lead me through the entire process. It was so easy (and I’m going to sound like a cheesy infommercial here) that I literally signed up for an account, recorded a video, and had it posted in less than 20 minutes. And that was with no previous experience. A nice little broadcast window popped up after I had signed in and clicked on a “Broadcast” button. It then allowed me to connect to my digital video camera via a USB cable, and saved my video as a flash movie AS I was recording, which means once I hit stop, I could embed the video right away. That’s a HUGE difference from YouTube, TeacherTube, and other video sites that have to compress and convert your uploaded videos.
Oh, did I mention that it’s FREE? I know there are lots of other applications for this service; student broadcasts each morning, video journaling, performing arts, etc. But for now, I’m content knowing that if I’m not going to be in school on a particular day, I can quickly sit down at my computer, and record a message that will help give the substitute teacher a helping hand in setting up the lesson and explaining some more of the technical aspects of what I teach. That, or give the students a serious complex about being “watched” while I’m at home sick. Either way, it’s a win for me
On Fridays I like to pull an interesting resource and/or topic from the Tech Savvy Ed Forum to share and discuss with a wider audience. Today’s post comes from a year and a half ago, but still remains highly valuable today as it focuses on recognizing the efforts, energy, and understanding that non-tech teachers put into their use of technology every day. They may not be the most savvy of users, but they make up the majority of teachers in the U.S. (as I’m sure they do elsewhere around the globe), and deserve every ounce of encouragement that we more tech-savvy teachers can offer them.
Rick, a member of the forum, started the conversation with these comments:
rick:
This is where I sing praises of the people I work with. When I fix a problem for a staff member I explain exactly what happened (when I can), what I did to fix it, and why it was causing them difficulty. You know, they actually do listen. Now, in many cases, before they come to me with a problem they have discussed it with one of their contemporaries, often have a theory or a comparison to give me, and I can then walk right in and get to the heart of the problem. None of this, “It doesn’t work.” I am further impressed. They have so much to do yet they take the time to listen to me and to talk to each other about the things that always occur when dealing with this new age. That is teamwork and makes everyone’s jobs a bit smoother.
Now, whether or not you agree with Rick that non tech-savvy teachers can truly change their habits given the proper encouragement and communication, you have to applaud his highly effective communication skills. Too often tech support staff (in schools or business) can effuse a sense of superiority while smugly solving your technological problem. It’s not that they don’t care, and I’ve had several positive experiences with the tech staff in my school district. Rather, it’s the lack of effective or sympathetic communication that shapes our experiences with the IT people.
But the lines of communication go both ways. It isn’t always the IT staff that’s to blame. Quite often, a tech-savvy educators’ efforts can meet with frustration from a staff member that follows the “this is broken, come fix it” mentality when address their technical support at school. This sentiment was echoed in a recent episode of Geek-Ed. The folks down in Pinckney, MI agreed that it’s much easier to work with staff that has put a modest amount of their own time and energy into solving a problem, before picking up a phone to request assistance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that every teacher needs to troubleshoot hardware and software issues before calling in tech-support. But when the techie does show up, it helps if both parties (the techie and the teacher) can have a meaningful dialogue beyond a typical exchange:
teacher: it’s broken, I have no idea why, it always does this.
teach support: move out of the way so I can fix it (and then get the heck out of here before you complain about something else)
Even taking the brief amount of time to explain to the technical staff what you’re trying to do with the software or hardware, and how you’re excited to use it with your students is enough to start a cheerful dialog. And likewise, paying attention to what the tech person is doing, possibly even asking questions about what can be done in the future to prevent the issue, can go a long way to making the techie feel as though you’re making a concerted effort to relieve their overloaded work schedule in the future. And if technical people take the time to explain why a problem occurs, and how a teacher can prevent it in the future, they’re helping to encourage and create problem solvers, not maintain a culture of problem makers. It sounds like Rick has adopted this method in his school district, for which I applaud him, because the only difference between a tech-savvy teacher and a non-tech teacher might just be a simple sympathetic ear, and a few encouraging instructions.
Supr-practical Glu for integrating technology in the classroom
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