I've been watching this video and thinking about how I measure up as a teacher and as a learner. How many of us can truly say we value all of these skills for ourselves as teacher/learners? For how many of us have these habits of mind become a matter of do as I say, not as I do?
Well I survived another one and am now 3 courses from the end of my program -- well 4 actually because I've decided to take a course in the Online Learning program on 3D/virtual worlds and Second Life. Since I'm in what Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot calls my 'third chapter' having recently retired from classroom teaching (yes -- I actually did it), it only seems fitting to launch a second life as well.
All that aside -- what is the most remarkable thing that happened to me in 508? Aside from doing my first Google Earth tour (definitely a lot easier if you have a bit of a handle on HTML code) , it has to be coming across the remarkable video of Sugata Mitra that I used as the centerpiece for the 508 Glogster project.
[For the full sized version, you can click on this link -- http://unfossil.edu.glogster.com/no-looking-back/. you may have to login to your Discovery account to view the assessment tools built with DEN's Assignment Builder.]
I realized about the 5th time I watched Mitra's video that, although I seldom turned the control of learning over to students that way in my classes, I have been moving that very direction in my pro-d work with other teachers. I am convinced that if you put teachers into a social setting and give them intriguing tools to play with and explore, they will reconnect with their passion to learn, and they’ll experience the delight that students feel when their “creating minds” (Gardner, p. 81) are engaged. Anyway as the workshop progress, the energy grew. As happened with the children in the video, the participants began to cluster in groups around those who emerged as the leaders. These ‘leaders’ did not take over but had simply figured out certain tools first and shared with others what they had done. Again as happened in the video, the people behind them made suggestions and even though they may have watched more than they played, they left feeling the tools they’d made lots of progress.
It can be so easy for us teachers to remain frozen by our own fears about not being able to make technology tools work. I am “device-phobic”. I don’t carry a cell phone; I’ve never used an i-Pod. I’m the last in a workshop to put my finger on a SmartBoard. Others, on the other hand, are perfectly at home with hardware, but find it equally challenging to try the tools that I demonstrate. They have what they feel are good reasons for holding back, but the more we let these fears put limits on our “creating minds,” the more we put truth to students’ doubts that formal education can deliver on it’s promise to develop life-long learners.
I once had a student who told me that she was terrified of going on the roller coaster at the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) but that she feared even more being left out of all the fun and being thought a ‘wimp’ by her friends. One morning she decided she had to get over this, so she took the long bus ride from Surrey to Hastings Street and bought herself a ticket to ride.
After the 6th time around the circuit, she finally began to enjoy the excitement and the feeling of living life on the edge. It’s not always that kids are fearless in the face of new experiences. I think it’s they bring to learning that they feel is important a sense of determination which carries them through even the most difficult and frustrating moments. A student who will skip school rather than face a math test he thinks he’s going to fail will take the test for his driver’s license 3 times so he can get behind the wheel. Another who lives in terror of being asked a question in front of the class will spend countless hours in the skateboard park trying and failing at tricks and moves in the company of other boarders. When curiosity and perceived value outweigh fear and hesitation, even the least talented among us will try and keep on trying until we gain gain some mastery. From that point we can move into creativity and passionate involvement. That’s where the greatest rewards are waiting.
This is a very quick post for Wilkes IM students in taking 508 -- for which the final project is to do Google Earth tour. I have posted some resources in the Q&A Discussion of my section, but I realized that not everyone can access these.
If you're looking for some basic ideas about how to handle HTML code inside GE, Thomas will have instructions embedded in the GE tutorial information in his wikispaces links.
I am getting ready to do several presentations on using internet tools and resources at ACEC 2010 this week, and one of the tools I’ll be inviting the audience to take a look is my creativity tool pick for the week: TooDoo. My workshop partner, who could not come to Melbourne, is the ToonDoo expert in our duo, so I figured that I'd better become learn more about how to use this cartoon-making online software. Let's take a look at how the basic ToonMaker works.
ToonDoo is really 5 different tools in one:
the ToonMaker which allows students to create from 1 to 3 panel cartoons using the collection of backgrounds, characters, objects, and features provided. It's also possible to import images created in Paint or regular photos into your cartoons.
the BookMaker which turns a collection of previously made ToonDoos into an online book with pages that flip. This is a great way to compile students' work into a collection that can be posted online for parents or other classes to see. (Earth Day projects anyone?!!?)
Traitr allows you to personalize characters that can can be saved and used in other cartoons.
Imaginer is the tool for distorting the features of a photo. These can also be saved and used in other cartoons.
Doodler is the draw tool. (I assume it works with a tablet, but I haven't tried mine yet.)
There is a new educator version of ToonDoo called ToonSpaces ($), but the main functions of the program are still free. At the Learning Centre we signed up with a gmail account and create one user name. All the students make their cartoons using our account and that name so no Canadian laws regarding the storage of student information on servers outside the country are violated. Creations can be public or private -- whichever you prefer.
For people used to using other tools, ToonDoo features may seem a little constraining. However, this tool's simplicity makes it accessible to youngsters (I found one how-to video by a grade 2 student) and also means that older students have to concentrate on the product rather than becoming overly enchanted with options and effects.
Several creative projects are shown below as examples of ways pther teachers have used ToonDoo to give students a different way to tackle what in the past have often been pretty dry assignments. In the first a French teacher used it to get students to write and illustrate the use of French phrases. In the second, making a cartoon strip replaced writing a traditional book report. The students imported images to populate the cartoon with characters that were more in keeping with the content of the novel. Finally the Toronto teacher of an Advanced Learning Strategies course had her students create ToonBooks to illustrate effective work habits. In these examples, the teachers have given imaginitive, creative twists to old assignments and the students don't have to be "artistic" to produce satisfying results.
My favourite application is the one dreamed up by my workshop partner. She wanted her grade 10's to summarize the key causes underlying the hostility between settlers and the Metis just before the Northwest Rebellion. Prior to this the kids had done the standard "copy/delete/compile" writing of paragraphs, but the events had little meaning for them. Debra wanted to bring the emotions and tension to life, so she invited students who wanted an alternative way to meet the learning objective to create a convincing 3-frame scenario. Now they have to imagine their way into the situation and play with characterization, symbolism, and dialogue to represent the conflict.
I've also known teachers to use ToonDoo as a storyboarding tool, and I think that this creative tool has a lot of potential for helping students learn to express main ideas (often a difficult task for to do well) because it empowers them to show and reveal rather than always having to tell and explain.
Hey everyone --these tools look like loads of fun! Last fall I attended a attend a webinar about using free online software (Go!Animate, Blabberize, and Xtranormal) that was offered by ISTE/SIGMS. These are free, and as you know most everything ISTE offers has a big $$$ sign attached to it, so these are a great deal.
The presenter is Gwyneth Anne Bronwynne Jones, a teacher librarian, but lest you get the impression from her name that she's a prim and proper wallflower type --
Enter as a guest and type your first and last name.
If it's too cold or too hot for your kids to play outside and they're keen on animation, here's a free downloadable program called SqirlzMorph.
This is a little like the high tech version of what I used to see when my dad riffled through the pages of a "Big Little" book really fast and made the individual drawings on the corners of the pages dance for my little girl's eyes.
Here are two very different video examples of work done with this free program.
There are loads of tutorial videos in YouTube, and I'm going to have to take this one into school on my laptop (we're not allowed to install at school) to let my students test drive it. I'm doing some experimenting with giving them visual ways to remember times tables. These a older kids who need to pass trade tests and we're working on creating dynamic visuals that will help them stop counting because they can see the images in their minds.
Link to this week's Elluminate room: http://tinyurl.com/yhffesd Password (for speaker series only): credenda-wilkes Time: 5:30 p.m. PacificDaylight time
It's with great pleasure that I invite you to a conversation with Ian Jukes -- one of Canada's most passionate 21st century educators and self-professed education evangelist.
I first heard Ian speak about integrating computers into classroom work back in the late 80's or early 90's when he was a principal in a school in Whitehorse, Yukon,who had traveled south to tell a group of Surrey teachers how to use data bases creatively to enhance critical thinking skills in our students. Now he's away from home many weeks of the year helping educators all over the world understand why it's so vital for us to provide instruction to students in a way that will better promote their learning.
This is the second in the Tuesday group's speaker series. We haven't yet come up with a catchy name, but we meet online in Elluminate on Tuesdays to discuss our work in the Instructional media program -- to lend each other support with technical issues, to compare courses, and to challenge each other to put our learning to practical uses. If you'd like to join in and haven't yet been in a course where the link was provided, just let me know and I'll send it to you.
The time and link for the speaker series, however, are different. We'll be starting at 30 minutes early to give people in the east a chance to get to bed at a reasonable hour or to get in some last minute lesson prep (or catch the last half hour of The Biggest Loser).
This promises to be a challenging discussion. I hope you'll join us.
The next speaker coming to the Wilkes Tuesday group on April 13th (5:30 Pacific time) is Canada' own Ian Jukes, so I started this morning looking at his Committed Sardine blog. One of the contributors had posted something about Infographics which are charts, graphs, and visuals that can communicate data by turning it into information. If you like astoundingly big numbers these will grab you:
This week in 508, we've been looking at Howard Gardner's Chapter about developing the what he calls the "creating mind." Gardner has quite a narrow notion of what constitutes creativity. He writes that creativity is not a spirit or a feeling, but often grows out of synthesis and “breaks new ground” (p. 82). It is not the act of one person alone. The creating mind exerts an influence through innovations that become recognized in a particular domain (pp. 80-1). He seems to think of creativity not as a quality but as an action -- not something you are or have, but something you do that has a lasting impact on others.
I find myself often looking back at sections of the Cognition and Technology course (501) as I've been adding my replies to others' discussions. Recent neuroscience (catapulted forward by observers ability to use fMRI's to watch electrical impulses fire along people's brain's neurons) is telling us a lot about what happens in the brain when we are learning and even when we're making decisions. But what is known about how ideas develop? where they come from? what chemical and electrical signals in the brain we experience as the germination of an idea?
That took me to this piece below in an article in ISO50 about overcoming creative block by Alex Cornell. I think he's on the right track. Feeding the brain with as much thought-provoking stuff as you can must create the electro-chemical soup from which the big bangs we experience as ideas and inspiration explode.
I wonder though whether the development of the Newton Virus (or any virus for that matter) meets Gardner's criteria for creativity.
All of which take me back to Ian and one of the videos that presents some of his ideas about 21st century learners. One of his astounding statistics is that elementary teachers and parents and grandparents of the young children among us is are raising the first generation to grow up with a mouse in its hand.
Click image for expanded view.
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