It is only the first step that is difficult.
- Marie De Vichy-Chaconne (1763)
So this will be a short one, it was meant to be over already. However, when i went to get a quote for the opening i realized there was too many good ones to choose from. I should say that i get these from a little book of quotes i keep and when that fails me i go to the Quotation Page.
This also should be on my personal blog not my professional one; ahhh if only life were so simple and compartmentalized (it’s there too). Besides this blog is about the journey and you can’t deny that every journey has its first step…
Like many of the blogging teachers we are off next week. Headed to the north coast for a week of relaxing, kitesurfing and not using computers, not for more then a minute or two anyway…
(its amazing how positive and happy one feels knowing that a week off starts in five hours and thirty-three minutes…)
I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people’s accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man’s failures.
- Chief Justice Earl Warren
The notion that real and tangible activities increase learning and retention is nothing new; brain based researchers have been saying and re-proving this hypothesis for many years. When i took over the high school technology program here at Carol Morgan a goal of mine was to provide real world situations and “work” opportunities for my students. So far this year we have supported programs in all three schools, designed web sites for school departments and groups but also for government agencies, student bands, local businesses and a variety of intiatives outside the walls of the Carol Morgan School, we have provided marketing for the drama department, assisted in teacher recruitment as well as documenting CMS student and teacher life. The results have been fantastic! Students are excited, engaged and motivated to provide their “clients” with the best service they possibly can. Today we began conceptualizing our biggest project yet…
We are members of the Caribbean Area International Schools Sports Association (CAISSA). This group seeks to create, promote and foster cooperation among its’ member schools by providing a forum for communication and discussion through the medium of sporting activity (from eca website). This group of schools includes Escuela Campo Allegre (Venezuela), International School of Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago), Union School (Haiti), Academia Cotopaxi (Ecuador), ourselves and special invited guest – International Schoo of Curacao (Curacao). In May we will be hosting mens’ football and womens’ basketball here in Santo Domingo. I have openly challenged some advanced tech students to grab this event and “tech it up.”
The inside the box thinking is a student created comprehensive website with team information and bios that are updated with scores, injuries, game stars, podcasted player/coach interviews, a blog for players, lots of images for the end of tournament slideshow, some custom designed and engineered music for breaks in play and in between games, a tournament DVD (joint project with film students), and now we can feel the wheels starting to turn… i am combing the web for high school tournament sites and most that I have found are professionally done (ofsaa); we are definitely up for this task! We would really appreciate it if you would write us with any ideas you have in this vein. It is pretty exciting stuff, especially for the sometimes too cool for school, high school jocks (i can say that because i was one) who see this as a dream come true.
Right now we are trying to cooridinate across the Caribbean to ensure we are respecting the policies of the schools involved, as well as adhering to studnet/parent wishes. This was a process i went through a couple of years ago in the elementary school here, and almost without exception, once parents saw what was being posted on the internet they quickly retracted their request to keep their child’s picture off of the internet. They had simply checked that box to protect their student, but didn’t see the other side of the coin. I will have to see how things work on the other side of the school…I’ll keep you posted.
i will provide links here as soon as we get things up and running.
If you are reading this and have some thoughts on libraries of the future please send me an email or post your ideas on 2cents. We are beginning construction soon and want all the ideas you have.
mine: Well, i have been sitting here hitting refresh for too long and need to venture out and make a comment. Why am i hitting refresh? because we are breaking ground on a new media centre here in the Dominican Republic as soon as this school year ends. In fact we were meeting with the Architects last week. I can’t wait to get some ideas from the responses that show up here but here is some of what we have:
MODULAR we want the ability for the library to shape and re-shape to better fit the needs of its users. small groups, big groups, literature circles, a book club…tell us your need and we will make it work.
We have a relaxed “Barnes and Noble-esque” feel to it including an outdoor reading patio. Further to this (the geography major in me loves this) it is also situated right at the heart of the campus, it is a goal to make it a place that students are, where they enjoy going to and better yet come to in their spare time.
It includes a state of the art video conferencing centre with stadium seating that has the capacity to allow for multiple classes or for staff development opportunities, well at the same time can be used for small group or one on one video conference situations.
It will be fully wireless, and the complex houses multiple computer labs. The library itself has one complete lab and areas for students to work on their Virtual High School course work.
We have tried to space carrels around so there is never one too far from where you are researching.
There has been a great deal of time spent on the aesthetics of the building and it is flooded with natural light, again our goal: a place students WANT to be.
We are going to have a couple of computer stations outfitted solely for searching the in-house collection (standing machines)
Here are some questions, we have begun talking and researching some diskless workstations. Do you have experience with these? How do you think they would function in the new library setting?
As for the ejection. I am an international teacher. Part of my life is moving. It isn’t easy, but i really do love it, what i love most is the ability, not the necesity to purge my life every few years. To answer hard questions about what needs to be kept and what does not. I see this move as an opportunity to really consider what is being used and what can be let go of. That said we are building a site with wonderful storage capacity, but just cause the space is there doesn’t mean it has to be filled.
The new media centre here at CMS is extremely exciting. I am going to be the new Academic Technology Director of the school, we have a new head of libraries and another new librarian joining the team as well. I see this construction as being perfectly timed, both myself and the new head of libraries have similar goals of deeply connecting our positions, this construction will connect our physical space a natural step. This site will become the physical center of the school and student learning here at CMS.
I will be anxiously reading the posts here for more ideas, so keep them coming…
Isn’t everyone a part of everyone else? - Budd Schulberg
Well i suppose i can. I know a huge percentage of the few people that read this blog are people who keep a blog, likely one that i read. For this majority, this post is yesterday’s news – entirely. This one is for the others; there is a lot of buzz right now about TeacherTube, and why shouldn’t there be. Video is very in. We have posted a lot of work to YouTube and to UthTV recently , TeacherTube however offers a whole new realm to us. We want to share and give back as well as take what is there. Recently I posted a staff video on Literature Circles that i have been wanting to get out for some time. Early reviews have been great, the people that made the video are incredibly excited with their new found stardom, and i am swamped with requests to help people post or to help people create their next great idea; Can you say “win-win-win?”
The video will be here as soon as it finishes uploading to a supported site (surely TeacherTube will work here soon), but if you just can’t wait click here.
However…i can’t really post on videos without a video, so here is my son cracking up on the way to a friends house Saturday, i got him laughing while we were waiting for my wife, he kept going until she arrived and then kept it up long enough for me to go back inside and get the camera, man is he funny.
Equality means giving everyone equal opportunities to learn NOT teaching everyone in exactly the same way.
- Susan Winebrenner
The quote above is the mantra of CMS’s Optimal Learning Centre. This is a school wide program that works with at risk students in a variety of different ways. The other day i tripped upon Vmath Live, it looked like a way to enhance students’ mental math in a fun competitive way while at the same time using the internet to interact with students all over the world. Two birds, one stone. Unable to find pricing on the site i arrived at its parent Voyager Expanded Learning. TheirVMath, Passport, Pasaporte and Extended Day programs are the most interesting to us at CMS. Have any of you used progams such as these to assist your at risk students? Have you used other ones, that you would like to share?
Now i am a tech facilitator; unsurprisingly i believe firmly that technology is the most powerful tool available to teachers in search of opportunities for differentiation. Whether you are looking to differentiate the content, process, product or environment – technology can provide you with a array of opportunities; an array that grows daily. There is a huge amount of reserach and writing on this, some examples:
I live a charmed life; personally and professionally. Three out of my four classes are driven by a student’s individual wants and needs. The student comes to me with a goal and ideas with how to reach that goal. I twist and tweak this to stretch the learning and together we construct assessment rubrics and timelines that are udated weekly. When done right, we have constructed a path for each individual student in my class. A path designed to maximize the student’s abilities, interests, learning needs and experiences. Yes it is a charmed life (and the position is still open for next year!).
GaDeV (Gracias a Dios es Viernes),
a very busy week here at CMS: we are continuing to move towards our transition to PowerSchool, learning scheduling “on the fly” in CenterPoint, constructing and re-constructing websites, editing and producing DVDs, filming Senior Extended Essays oral defenses (including a live onsite video feed), SumoBot Showdown is in full swing, we retained a key player in reaching our long term technology goals, ES is gone WikiWild (extra big thanks too the hard work of the teachers and facilitator Jeff Dungan) and we have begun to plan the construction of our new media center which will begin this summer and be fully functioning by September 2008. Something tells me i will be here for much of the weekend, even if i do get my work down Sunday is SpringFest here and neither myself or Oliver will want to miss it! esta es mi vida, y mi encanta.
There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.
- Will Rogers
In this video the Preisdents of the United States of America redo the first song ever to air on MuchMusic; the 1979 classic Video Killed The Radio Star (see original on YouTube).
Has video’s lust for blood left more victims behind? (Books, Podcasts, Blogs?)
This post has seriously had me tossing and turning all over the place.
Last Tuesday a letter to the headmaster from a colleague started a chain of events that had me reconsidering our schools’ policy on YouTube (blocked across the board). This is an argument i had been preparing for awhile – i had a folder full of data from other schools, recent news articles, professional journals, emails from teachers, parents and students; i was ready. Then i spent the majority of the weekend searching Time’s “invention of the year” for useful teaching videos. When multiple requests for specific YouTube videos wanted/needed for the classroom yielded no results – i paused. Then there was the horrific video a friend sent me late on Saturday, of course with two clicks on the selection of related videos i was in an even worse place; somewhere i didn’t want to be – of course with every click it got worse.
Yes, education is there; then again isn’t it everywhere?
For now we will continue to post student and staff work on YouTube, but we aren’t ready to change our policy quite yet. A lot of the “good stuff” on YouTube can be found elsewhere, and for the stuff that can’t their are tools such as Oyoom and KeepVid (ahistoryteacher).
Teachers, i had much better success when searching google video using the following search string for literature circles: “genre: educational literature circles”; then i had on other sites. Further more initiatives like The Literacy Project are more inline educationally speaking then what i found searching within YouTube.
This weekend’s research also led me to UthTV; the work and opportunities that its crew and managers are working on are very impressive. Many artistic opportunities created, presented by and for youths can be found here.
This decision, like so many things today, is definitely not written in stone. When our school is ready to make a change we will, until then we will take advantage of the aspects of YouTube we like (its audienc) and use similar sites for searching for staff and student videos.
I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.
- Groucho Marx
So i found this through a friend that i have recently re-connected with through the wonderful time vortex: Facebook. I have to admit that the technology behind this little piece i find really amazing.
My advanced tech students have never blogged with such fervor. We took head shots, ran the utilitiy, posted to our blogs and then commented on the results and talked a little about how we thought the program was working.
This group is currently completing a SumoBot rotation and was in need of a “break” before getting “into the ring” next week.
The most frustrating part of the process is the way that learnerblogs is up, down and all over the place for student entries. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t; sometimes it works on one computer and not on the one next to it; and perhaps worst of all sometimes it appears to be working right up until it is time to post, then it dumps us. I didn’t have these problems during first semester and technical stumbles like this are the kind of things that drive me crazy. In my classes as well as while doing integrated tech projects, they can kill an excited motivated group of students in no time at all.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
- Carl Jung
I got in today to find these two articles waiting for me: “Game over for China’s net addicts” and “Stop Surfing, Make Friends, Indian Students Told“. Thanks Yahoo.
Honestly, it did make me start thinking of my students, myself and my son though. What does this new world have in store for me/us/them? At what point do the incredible opportunities made available by the internet become liabilities? Surely we all have our individual tipping point. As an example take this weekend, i started messing with Facebook (to get a better idea of what my students were doing when they got home each night). In what seemed like no time to me i had killed a couple hours. Then i started thinking of a co-worker’s sons, they routinely drive three hours to go to an incredible beach; he spends the entire weekend in their wireless hotel room “connecting.”
Is that just a rite of passage or is there a cause for alarm? Is this him rebelling and being a teenager or is there something else going on?
Personally i grew up without video games in my house and as much as i hated it at the time i am very thankful for it now. The world has changed however and i actually heard a college recruiter say this fall: “parents who don’t allow their children to play video games are doing them a disservice.” My mother would have keeled over had she heard it.
In my first year at Queen’s i could (and did on many an occasion) spend all night in the world of Doom. There, eyes staring, with whoever felt like procrastinating for just a few more hours. I noticed then, and do now, that my demeanor changes with too much time in front of the computer. I am not wired for the insanely long sessions mentioned in these articles. Besides that Doom was a different place; the game did not have (or promote) the interaction that today’s web does.
I want my students blogging, i want them interacting with people they know and safely with people they don’t, i want my teachers to fully integrate technology into their curriculum but i don’t want to aid in creating sedentary students who are addicted to the intenet. I completely believe that these are realistic expectations, like so many things in life finding a balance is the key; i was just thinking about it today.
Ironically i ran into this somewhere on the weekend and passed it on to our E-club (i apologize for not being able to site it, as i found it and moved on before i thought of this post):
img 1: http://tonova.typepad.com/thesuddencurve/images/internet_addiction.jpg
img 2: http://www.boilingpoint.com/~jasonyu/cs240/images/doom.jpg
img 3: unsited with apologies to Toles
Seems Im not alone in being alone
A hundred billion castaways
Looking for a home
- Sting
I will be sending out a legitimate S.O.S. when my wife finds out how much i spent on Police tickets this summer, but that is another story…
The following is an email i recieved today. It is from one of the best teachers i have ever worked with, they integrate technology daily and are a tech facilitator’s dream.
Seriously, I think that kids have the perception that technology changes the rules of academic honesty. For example, I think that in their mind if they copy someone’s labwork and simply change some fonts and type it in themselves that this gives them ownership of the work I have this argument with at least 3 kids on every assignment. They don’t understand that its their ideas that give them ownership not simply how nicely its layed out in a document. I think technology ethics is a huge deal, especially in a school where students’ ethical boundaries can be fuzzy when it comes to academics. I fear that the more technology I integrate into my lessons, the less some students are actually learning because they are always looking for ways to cheat the system, and most times technology makes it easier for them to get away with it. Its actually got me questioning Webassign, which I have loved the last 7 years I have used it. Its not worth the expense to the school if the kids are going to abuse it and cheat.
I know this email was written out of frustration; the teacher and i have talked at length, but i think his concerns were worth posting and would love to hear any thoughts with respect to this.
Here at CMS we are developing a Student-run Honour Council. This council will deal with issues of academic honesty as well as attendance and tardiness problems that have developed in recent years. It is our hope that giving this responsibility back to the students will improve the overall academic integrity of our institution. A small group just returned from researching this in Virginia and are working hard to put this into action (podcast – coming soon).
I am in the process of re-working an ethics rotation for my advanced technology classes and (as always) am open to thoughts and suggestions that you may have.
There are no speed limits on the road to excellence.
- David W. Johnson
I threw out a Spaceballs reference the other day (ludicrious speed) while talking with Chris and couldn’t resist the opportunity to do it agiain. It does feel like we are moving at a speed never before realized, especially today. I had an idea of what i wanted to write here today on my way in, then i see all the new posts on my netvibes site (essentially my blogroll). After i read them and i have more to say then i can possibly write. Here’s one thought; the vast majority are being banked for future reference.
the thinking stick – again i think you are bang on. Jeff Dungan, myself and the entire CMS technology team are working tirelessly to develop the trust you speak to; its coming. I see the role of CMS tech facilitators as motivators who continue to push our collegues to the possibilities of technology. We need to continue to push, sometimes hard, confident in the product we are selling.
We are winning over teachers in all sections of the school and i agree one hundred percent that getting the good news out is what we need to do. We publish everything we can in student showrooms, and i really do feel the wind beginning to shift.
Like Jeff U. and Justin I believe vehemently that the best thing for education is for me to become unemployed; when my position becomes obsolete and technology is inherently integrated in everything done then i can return to my true calling, Mexican wrestling.
Tools.
I have found and used some tools that have been really great up here in the lab and wanted to share a couple with you in case you are looking:
Wink – debug mode
This tool is incredible. Last year’s high school facilitator had students create a word document at the end of each rotation. These documents included screen captures outlining the new skill they learned or problem they overcame. These were saved for future reference. I loved this cognitive reflection. This year we have upped the ante a little by having students create flash videos of exactly how they overcame problems during a rotation. Students love it and the end result is better and more useable then a huge database of word documents.
Limitation: files are HUGE.
Audacity – SourceForge
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
I have to be honest here they had me at free. Students who out grow Audacity’s capabilities can move to another piece of software but for basic (and lab-wide) sound recording and editing it works wonderfully.
Videora ipod Converter
Nothing makes me happier as a teacher then when students want to take their work out and share it. It is one thing for us to be proud of what they have done but when they are that proud of it…now that ’s the good stuff.
When what they have created is a great video and they want it on their ipod, this tool will help you-help them get it there.
MP4Cam2AVI – SourceForge
A teacher came to me with a year’s worth of QuickTime videos that he couldn’t compile in WindowsMovieMaker. This tool helped him convert the files.
nd need to venture out and make a comment. Why am i hitting refresh? because we are breaking ground on a new media centre here in the Dominican Republic as soon as this school year ends. In fact we were meeting with the Architects last week. I can’t wait to get some ideas from the responses that show up here but here is some of what we have:
and why shouldn’t there be. Video is very in. We have posted a lot of work to 
program that works with at risk students in a variety of different ways. The other day i tripped upon 
ed Learning
ting and re-constructing websites, editing and producing DVDs, filming Senior Extended Essays oral defenses (including a live onsite video feed), 
and “
in the world of 
one hundred percent that getting the good news out is what we need to do. We publish everything we can in 
