“Race to Nowhere is a must-see documentary for parents, teachers and the young people we care for and work with, so that a new national dialogue can emerge around re-engineering school to meet its real purpose: to provide a supportive and nurturing environment for students to discover their passions and future without sacrificing their health, well-being, and youthfulness itself in the process.”
The potential for this device to take 30 to 40 pounds off the backs of our students is huge. I hope that K-12 publishers get going with textbooks for this and other devices.
NBC Learn – Many archive videos but also a special on “The Science of the Olympic Winter Games” on the bottom right of page http://www.nbclearn.com/portal/site/learn
I love how easily connected my students can be with the world through projects we work on. I shared the VoiceThread my students did with the Kaiser Family Foundation as I felt it mirrored the Generation M2 study they recently published. Besides adding the video to our DAILE Moodle course, I added a comment at the KFF site. I think authentic audience is incredibly important for any writer no matter their age.
Thank you for your comment on the Generation M2 study. I passed along your comment and the link to your VoiceThread project to my boss, Vicky Rideout, who is a Vice President at the Foundation and lead author of the study. She did get a chance to watch your video and found it to be fun and very interesting. Thank you for sharing your work and your interest in the Foundation’s work.
Sincerely,
Theresa Boston
_______________________________________________
THERESA BOSTON
Program Associate, Program for the Study of Media and Health
Kaiser Family Foundation
2400 Sand Hill Road | Menlo Park, CA 94025
tboston@kff.org | 650.854.9400
5th and 6th Graders have been working with me on a project called Six Words to Describe Your Online Life. Illustrate it with the pencil if you want. The project is based on the http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/participate PBS Digital Nation 6 Words on a Digital Life
Now, working in a Middle School like I do, I never have a problem with sassing. I am loving what SaaSing is doing for our school. We use Moodle as our Interactive Learning Environment platform. This has allowed us to mandate that all teachers use Moodle for their courses from grade 5-12. We have some grade 1-4 teachers piloting it this year as well since they see the benefits. The adoption of Moodle has impacted everyone connected to our learning community.
Teachers have courses with a multitude of resources to draw on from year to year. Once a course is built, it can be reset each year and added to include new tools or resources. In fact some teachers leave and new teachers inherit the last teacher’s course full of content which serves as a solid platform to begin their new career.
Students have aggregation taking place when ever they log in to Moodle. All of their current course are listed and available. Heck we even developed a Durham Academy Mobile iPhone/iPod Touch App so student could get quick access to their courses. It “only” allows them to read text, link to websites, listen to audio, or watch videos.
Parents have quick access (much like the DA Mobile App) via our QuickLook. Parents use their students PowerSchool Number and have access to all Moodle courses.
With Moodle in place we are now able to build upon this platform in other ways. This is where additional SaaS comes into play. VoiceThread put out a Moodle filter that allows us to embed them into our Moodle courses. This has allowed for teachers and students to easily utilize this technology from wherever they are in the world.
Here is a sample VoiceThread we are working on as part of our CyberSafety and Digital Citizenship course with 5th and 6th grade students. Join in if you would like.
Our next forays are with Mindmeister for online, collaborative mind mapping and Google Docs with Moodle Single Sign on. While this is still a work in progress, I plan to see it through as the benefits to the students will be huge. Checkout MoodleRooms (Log in Required) for some documentation as that is where this picture is from. We will no doubt block Gmail and Chat but leave the rest open.
I see a huge benefit to SaaS as we can eliminate the issues of platforms, software application types, and not having a strong school – home connection. So I say, go ahead and SaaS me!
Each year the 8th grade students must take a Computer Competency Exam to demonstrate they are competent users of technology. In the past this has involved using Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Last year the students also took a 21st Century Skills Assessment at Atomic Learning They did fairly poorly as they were ill prepared. I ended up not counting those scores. Instead, the bulk of the exam centered around the students following a series of tutorials and then uploading the completed product via our Moodle course. I attempted to create more of a portfolio concept as students were encouraged to upload additional artifacts that demonstrated their competency. Many uploaded podcasts we made in History and English classes. I was hopeful that the portfolio would spread to 6th and 7th grade assembling a collection so that by time the end of 8th grade rolled around, students had a strong portfolio illustrating that not only had they mastered software, but also were adept and comfortable with tools and skills of a 21st Century learner.
My idea was dealt a set back when the school decided to no longer install Microsoft Office but instead use OpenOffice and Pages. I was not opposed to the change as I used the savings to purchase a cart of iPod Touches. It did mean the Moodle course I created with linked tutorials was of no use.
Now I am trying to re-write the course/exam again keeping with the portfolio design and am finding it hard to keep my motivation. I plan to use Google Docs even though we did not follow through as a school and implement our own Google Apps for Education. I know most students have a Google account so we can get to the Documents. G-mail and Chat are blocked on campus as students must use FirstClass at school.
Anyway, I was making headway with design and inspiration, and then I found this video on the Atomic Learning Blog. My motivation changed from reworking the course/exam to writing this post.
As I finish this post, students in the lab next door are peer reviewing classmates podcasts done in their 6th Grade History course. How to connect the learning of all students?
In 2006 when I moved to the Middle School from the Lower School I requested a door to be installed where a shelf had been. I wanted the door because it would allow easier access to the printers and computers. It also allowed students to not have to interrupt a class if they needed to come in and use a computer. The request got lost in the queue, but over winter break, it was installed and has created quite the buzz. Most often I am asked if it was always there or if the shelfs were hiding it? The second most asked question is why? It only takes a minute for the person asking that question to realize the benefits.
Nice information, but why a blog post? Think about this small change that took 3.5 years to complete. I see a metaphor in how we often like to take the units we teach and put them on a shelf so we have them the next time. We do this for often more then 3.5 years. What would happen if each year we took one less unit from the tired and true shelf and instead opened a door to try something new? Comments I have heard about the door are: It looks so different, I love how I can now get my printing without disturbing a class. I would never print to those printers before.
My job, as I see it, is to open doors for teachers and students to try new learning tools and methods.
Come on in through whatever door you want to use, but please leave your shelf behind when you come.
Senor David Glass has had his students working on Spanish Comics that some how depict aspects of school life. We have used Skitch (free), Comic Life (reasonable price from Plasq) to create them. Once done the students upload them via their Moodle course assignment. We then created a VoiceThread for the students to record their comic so Mr. Glass could hear how they pronounced the words and how fluent they were becoming. The possibilities with these 3 tools are endless.
Earlier, Mrs. Williams used the cart of iPod Touches with her Language Arts Class. They used the SAT® Vocab Challenge Vol. 1, by The Princeton Review [iTunes Link] by Modality, Inc. (Full Disclosure: I know the owner and his wife is the Mrs. Williams referenced in this article). After using some of the apps, the goal was to use the tool to interact with her Moodle course where there was a discussion forum for students to share what they thought about the use of the Touch. Here are a few of the responses as for the most part the students enjoyed them. Some did struggle with the virtual keyboard at first.
These images are taken from the Moodle Discussion Forum:
Tools that connect students to their learning is what we need more of. I think the comment by Eilene is very telling: “reminds me of having fun with friends and just hanging out, so it didn’t seem like school work”. Why does school work seem so much like school work?
2. Wolfram|Alpha Step by Step Math shows the power of both the web site and the iPhone/iPod Touch application (App is on the iPod Cart’s Touches) Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone.
3. YouTube Video by a student at Gustavus Adolphus College on how to use Moodle Assignments called Steps toward a Paperless School. While we are not there yet, some of the things she talks about with students being metered is starting to happen at the US and will come to the MS at some point to cut down on waste.
