Author Archives: kschaefer

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LotW for 11_30_09

In sort of a take off on Gib’s Digest, I thought I would share a LotW or Link of the Week each week to share some interesting links that come to me via my Diigo feed or Google Alerts.

This link will take you to millions of Life Magazine images that are hosted by Google.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life

From the website:
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

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iTouch, iLearn

We were finally able to use the iPod Touch Cart today with Mrs. Hall’s 5th grade History class. It took some learning on my part to make sure the settings were correct to insure the students would be able to use them on our wireless network in a safe manner. Mrs. Hall had a great lesson designed that used Moodle, Dictionary, All Countries, Today in History, and Google Earth. Students found their pen pal school in Shipley UK.

This is a picture the student took of Shipley using Google Earth on the iTouch.

From Google Earth on an iPod Touch

From Google Earth on an iPod Touch

iTouch_iLearn_640.mov

We purchased the following apps: (When possible I purchased multiple copies of the application since we have 30 iPods)
SAT Princeton Review $4.99
AlgebraPrep Equations $2.99
AlgebraPrep Factoring $2.99
AlgebraPrep Graphing $2.99
AlgebraPrep Real Numbers $2.99
Lemonade Stand .99 cents
Word Warp .99 cents
JV idioms .99 cents
More Blanks $1.99
Units – Converter .99 cents
Chemical Touch .99 cents
USA Factbook and Quiz .99 cents
Today in History .99 cents
Art .99 cents

We use the following free apps:
LA
Vocab Wiz
Stanza – eBook reader
Shakespeare
Dictionary and Thesaurus
VocabDaily – Word of the Day
GrammarUp

Math
Math Drills Lite
Math Tricks Lite
Elementary Math Lite
HiCalc Lite

Science
iSeismometer
EpiCentral
Distant Suns Lite

History
Constitution
Declaration of Independence
All The Countries
Maps of the World
USA Presidents

Languages
Spanish Tutor

Other:
FirstClass
iHandy Level
GoodGuide
Pandora
Google Earth

Podcasts and iTunesU Movies
Speaking of History
Grammar Girl
WGBH Earth and Space
WGBH Physical Science
Lit2Go

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Bridging Digital and Carbon Technology

Lately I have been discussing how some of our students are struggling with managing all of the digital content in their school day. We have Moodle and FirstClass for all students and teachers. These systems are very powerful and for the most part work quite well for our learning community. As I went to my “mailbox”, it hit me that we use a dual communication system. This has to have a huge impact on efficiency and effectiveness.
Digitalmailbox

I have FirstClass for all sorts of digital communication. Even my voice mail is delivered to my Inbox. I could work with this system quite nicely as I know where to look for new items and can in fact find items from last year in my mailbox if needed.

Mailbox
But once a day I must travel back in time to my other Inbox where I am given a carbon based product that somehow I must merge into my digital system or try to maintain two systems. I now have a Fujitsu Scan Snap on my desk to bridge this divide. How much time is lost by me doing this conversion and maintainence of a dual system of communication?

Below are two images of what students must master along with Moodle and FirstClass.

Assignment Notebook: Write down all homework (also posted on Moodle with an automatic message in FirstClass if configured to)
Abook
7 Rotational Schedule for our need to make more time out of the day/week
Schedule
How do our students also maintain dual communication systems? When will we drop the one and settle on only one system? What does it take for real change to happen?

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Social Collaboration via Twitter, Ning and Voicethread for a Sharing Experience

In the past with Melissa Tredenick and I worked together with NCAIS Blended Learning Conference. She is now at The Linsly School in Wheeling, West Virginia. She posted on the Voicethread Ning how her and the 5th grade teacher had created a Voicethread to discuss their favorite scene in the book Because of Winn Dixie. We kept in touch and today our students are adding their voices with their favorite scenes. Our students created an avatar in Photobooth and then logged in to Voicethread. They did no pre-writing but recorded their favorite parts of the book – cold.

Very cool. I am including a screen grab of the Twitter direct messages that Melissa has sent me as she listened and approved the many comments.

Nice when a plan comes together.

Twitter Direct Messages
Oh, yes there is a reporter from the Herald-Sun coming last period today.

Check out the Voicethread as well.

http://voicethread.com/share/591694/

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Stack of iMacs

After waiting to make sure we had the funds to update the labs, I am happy to say that we have a stack of iMacs waiting to be installed in the computer labs starting on Friday.

Thank you Durham Academy parents and students for supporting what we do here. In addition, thank you Apple for the competitive pricing that allowed us to update the labs and the teachers laptops with MacBook Pro 13“..

Stackofmacs

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First Voicethread with Students

It has been one year since a student named Justin Straus died of Chordoma Cancer. I knew Justin since first grade when he was first diagnosed. We had many moments together as did his fellow students. We started using Ed.Voicethread this year and I realized it would be the perfect tool for students and faculty to share their memories. I am in awe of what we created and wanted to share it with anyone who is reading my blog.

Here it is and I love coming back to it to see who has added a comment. You can view it but not comment as it is protected which is the wonderful part of Ed.Voicethread. Students and teachers added either text or audio comments.

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New School Year – New Connection to Blog

I have been working to get back in the swing of the school year. I enjoyed my summer off and offline existence. Quite a change from my digital life at work. I could not connect to my blog for sometime using Ecto which is how I write my blog rather then online. Today, it worked so here I am. I even opened Twitter to discover old PLN friends tweeting away.

What has me excited for this year?

iPod Touch Cart
I am getting ready to deploy a cart of iPod Touches for use in classrooms. I have been working on setting them up so they connect to our wireless, have the apps on them I want our students to interact with and figuring out how to be legal with the purchasing of multiple copies of apps. Apple does not make it simple to do this purchasing.

Cart

Voicethread
Voicethread has gotten much of my time as we have it now for our students. I am getting ready to roll it out with students next week. I am very excited to deploy this learning tool as I see a lot of potential in all curriculum areas. The fact it can be embedded into our Moodle courses make it a natural extension.

Here is one done by students at 5th grade students at The Linsly School done with Melissa Tredenick who I know from our time together in North Carolina. Our students read the same book so I am hoping to share between our students.

Direct Link
http://voicethread.ning.com/video/5th-grade-summer-reading

Yabla
Working with a few Foreign Language teachers to integrate this resource into their Moodle courses.
http://www.yabla.com/
Moodle
The cart or container for all things we do here at school. WDIDBM (What did I do before Moodle?) – Less
I am happy to see this report on Blended Learning Environments
http://www.guide2digitallearning.com/professional_development/meta_research_k_12_online_learning_turns_little_research

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Camps going well

Good numbers of students learning Lego Mindstorms. Check out the pictures and movies at http://gallery.me.com/damiddleschool#100183 Week two is underway with pictures coming soon. Scratch and Alice camps have had smaller numbers but still working out nicely. We just showed the campers how to create a pong game with scoring. Check out our wiki, gallery and photos.

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Summer Camps and Audio Boo

I am in the middle of doing the two summer camps I started last year. Lego Mindstorms and Scratch with some Alice. Lego has been full with this week’s camp having 21 campers. Check out the wiki for more information and pictures. http://dalegoscratchcamps.wikispaces.com/

I have also started testing out Audio Boo on my iPod Touch. It is a free application for the iPod or iPhone that allows recording and posting to a web site. I think it is an interesting concept and wonder how teachers might use it with their Moodle courses. There could be an RSS of audio recorded by the teacher showing up in their Moodle course. Check mine out at DigitalKarl