Seed Packets

There's a great buy on seed packets at Marden's. I took a chance and bought about 20 packets the other day. Suppose they'll grow?

Anyhow, this is the time of year that we begin to start seedlings, the time of year that we look to a resurrection of life and hope for the future.

In this frame of mind, let me alert you to the good people at ACTEM who have resurrected the impressive work of SEED by posting the SEED packets at their site.

For more information on SEED, contact Jenifer Van Deusen, Former Chief Horticulturist

Learning Metaphors

Join the Seedlings Social Network

Gardening at LIM Resources Wiki

Troy Howard Middle School Garden Project (Belfast, Maine)

What will you be planting this Spring?

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33607658@N00/530024656/

Who Was Your Favorite K-12 Teacher?

At heart, as I suspect you already know, I stand with the philosophy of Dewey, Piaget and the progressives, in that I believe good teaching and learning happens when kids are engaged in what they are doing. I also accept the fact that their development and talents are going to be all over the map. The art of teaching is to find that "hook" that gets them excited and motivated . . . beyond just the usual carrots and sticks. Now this isn't always easy to do, but I think teachers should have the freedom to make that possible.

Teaching is a very personal thing. We all approach life differently. Back in 1960, when I was in 7th grade in the Rumford community, my teacher was Peter Mckenna, and let me tell you, he made more of a difference in my life than any test or assessment I ever took. He knew what engagement was all about and could even make diagramming sentences pure joy. Mr. McKenna read Edgar Allen Poe stories and Jack
London and Kafka's Metamorphosis, having us begging for more. We made litmus paper out of math paper and canned blueberry juice for the red strips and dipped it into the restroom liquid soap to make the blue strips. We did goofy skits and pondered philosophical questions and operated on fractions, all artfully choreographed by this teacher. Simple enough stuff, but he made it all magical. Do you believe in Magic? ;) I'm sure we all can think back to a teacher, or perhaps many, who connected with us and made learning so exciting that we were motivated to investigate even more without any thought of extrinsic rewards. Any stories?

At the same time, a teacher needs to be a pragmatist to survive. There is a lot on the plate and compromise and ingenuity are necessary if the institution is to work. It certainly is reasonable for someone with this workload to become a bit surly when being told how to do his job when he is in the middle of running helter-skelter spinning the plates.

In my 32 years as an elementary classroom teacher, I wasn't always successful in making these connections with students, but I did have the freedom to try . . . and on occasion hit the mark. At the risk of being labeled a reactionary, YES, I do want teachers to continue to have that prerogative. If we lose respect for that, then I worry for the future of public education. Top-down edicts, poorly thought out and implemented by people who are not closely connected to the local community and the classroom, is not the answer.

Which K-12 teacher(s) made a big difference in your life ?

Check out a post on Dangerously Irrelevant titled "Creativity Fatigue: Is it really possible to stop learning?"

BTW, if you want to know what life is like growing up in a Maine papermill town, check out Monica Wood's Ernie's Ark. :)

Teaching Tech: What Is A Recession?

by Nicole Ouellette

Now More Than Ever, Students Should 'Get' Economics

With the housing crisis, the stockmarket tanking (well, except the last two days), oil prices rising, many families (and their kids) have money on the brain. Teachers can either ignore this or take the opportunity to empower young people to learn more about our current economic situation. (Gee, guess what I think?) If you think about it, I bet if more of us had more substantial money management education, our current recession wouldn't be so bad.

With the advent of the internet, it is much easier to do simulations of the stock market, something I looked forward to doing in school but never got to. There are programs like this one (it's apparently free and you can do it as an individual or with your class). Stocks are a good illustration of where it can go wrong on a smaller scale; it's a little easier to understand what happened to Bear Stearns after one of the student's stocks has bit the dust.

Of course, there are government resources that our tax money pays for so might as well use them, like the National Council On Economic Education and they've got links for days of resources you can use in your classroom. Finding activities, games, and simulations to make the economy and money fun can make this period of economic uncertainty a learning opportunity rather than a wild ride we just all happen to be on. I hope some of you are up to this challenge!

Nicole will post "Teaching Tech" (formerly Tech Tuesday) about internet resources for your classroom whenever she thinks of it, which is incidentally never on a Tuesday. She doesn't teach anymore but works at a newspaper and maintains her own personal finance blog: http://www.breakingeven.typepad.com.

Data Visualization

Mark Spahr introduced me to Many Eyes on his Cooked on Education blog. This got me to thinking about what else is out there. The answer is that there is an increasing number of sites that are using more sophisticated graphical representations to better understand data.

Links:

Many Eyes
Swivel
Eager Eyes - A Blog about Visualization
Berkley Visualization Gallery
Gapminder
TED Talks - Hans Rosling




See earlier post called Making Sense of Data - Visualization

Generalists vs. Specialists

Our culture highly values specialists. We have promoted division of labor to an extreme whereby the boxes of expertise have become smaller and smaller. Could it be that this "mono-culture" has made us less self-reliant and less able to adapt to changes in our environment?

"Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative negative reactions since they have alternative paths to realize their plans. Specialists, people with stronger attachments to fewer ideas, should be easier to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have stronger,more sustained negative reactions because they have fewer alternative pathways to realize their plans. Generalists should be the the upbeat, positive people in the profession while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts."

~ Karl Weick

Are we becoming too specialized?

On Being a Professional

Latest Wicked Decent Learning Podcast titled "Going Pro".

Western Maine teachers, Jeff & Dan, continue their refreshingly honest and down-to-earth series of podcasts. Far too often education talk is stilted and abstract. Consider this weekly Maine show to be an antidote to high-sounding phrases and acronyms, to wishful thinking and elaborate schemes. Jeff & Dan give authentic voice to a love for teaching. They demonstrate curiosity and adventurous spirits while at the same time recognizing the pragmatism that is needed in working in classrooms and schools.

Related:

Wicked Decent Learning Podcasts
Wicked Decent Learning Blog
Maine Ideas in Education

Classroom Web Presence

I regularly check out Jim Moulton's articles on Edutopia's Spiral Notebook. Recently he posted the following: The Classroom Web Page: A Must-Have in 2008.

In it Jim argues that having a classroom web presence is important. He gives 5 reasons . . . all good points. He also gives some good places to start, including Portaportal and Google Pages.

Jim recognizes that teachers are very busy people, so that finding a workable tool for developing this web presence is important. Elaborate tools such as Studywiz and Moodle offer many options . . . and in the hands of the right person can be just the ticket . . . but I will still argue that we have to look at ease-of-use.

There really is no longer a need to use powerful, but expensive, web editors such as Dreamweaver to meet the needs of the classroom. If this kind of tool is needed, free Kompozer will suffice. But why bother?

Beyond using the great tools Jim suggested, I would also suggest using the many other possibilities, such as blogs, wikis, google apps, and other online learning environments. With a bit of searching in this very large toolbox available to us now, we can customize our presence according to our own needs. The beauty in making blogs and/or wikis the classroom vehicle is that the teacher has the freedom to decide the level of read/write collaboration needed.

My three favorite classroom web presence tools are Blogger, Wikispaces & Portaportal. I know a math teacher in the Telstar School District who swears by NiceNet. Others use some of the bookmarking sites here.

What are your favorites? Thoughts?

Photo Credit

Telstar eMINTS Session: Audio

Today we will be having our official final session of the first custom eMINTS group at Telstar School District. Any participants who have not completed the 64 hour requirement may attend the Telstar eMINTSToo group sessions or do independent work with mentor collaboration.

Tonight's Essential Question: How can audio tools be used in classrooms?

Three common tools for creating audio projects will be introduced: GarageBand, Audacity, and Sound Studio.

Freezing Morning
Experience Western Maine
Room 208 podcasts
Tech Curve Podcasts
Sound
GarageBand
Audacity
How to Podcast
Podomatic
Demo at Podomatic
MyPodcast
FreePlayMusic
Open Source Audio at Internet Archive
Classic Cat
Pandora - Music Genome Project
Sound Resources
Oral History Interview Resources
Singing Horses
Number Mind Reader
End

On Webkinz at Bit by Bit

This way to Bit by Bit Podcast -->

Topic: WebKinz

Group Work Talk at WDL

This way to Wicked Decent Learning - Episode 10 - Group-ease -->>


I've taken to doing laundry while listening to WDL. That's right after Prairie Home Companion and just before Car Talk on Sunday afternoon.

How are you multitasking while listening to Jeff & Dan's weekly program on education in Maine?

Related Resources:

Cooperative Learning at LIM Resources Wiki (Feel free to join in order to edit by adding, deleting, modifying, etc.)

Jigsaw Method
WebQuest Resources
Graphic Organizers
Concept Mapping
Process Skills

Because Teachers Are Funny People

by Nicole Ouellette

From my favorite news source, The Onion:

UNIONTOWN, PA—Most educators view multiple-choice exams as an opportunity to couch the correct answer amidst three or four other plausible alternatives. Not so for Uniontown High School teacher Tom Campbell. Campbell, 47, who has taught freshman history at the school for the past 11 years, uses the popular test format not only to instruct but also to delight his students with his quirky sense of humor.

"What was the Great Awakening?" a question from one of Campbell's most recent tests reads. "(a) Coffee and a bagel, (b) The name given to FDR's evening radio addresses, (c) 'C'mon, Mom! Let me sleep five more minutes!' or (d) A dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American history."

"The answer is D," said Campbell, holding back a wry smile. "Giving them the option of 'Coffee and a bagel.' Get it?"

Read the entire "article" here...

In Praise of Play

Where Do the Children Play?

Old-Fashioned Play Building Serious Skills, Alix Spiegel, NPR, 2/21/08

Taking Play Seriously, New York Times, 2/17/2008

Alliance for Childhood

Tech Tonic: Towards a New Literacy of Technology


Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood

The Playground and the Conflict Resolution

Children - Play and Learning

"It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them."

~ Leo F. Buscaglia

Digital Photography Notes from Missouri

Written by Martha Thibodeau

Hi Ya'll from St. Louis!

Becky, Anne and I are at the eMINTS Winter Conference. Here's some notes from a workshop I went to called "Digital Photography in the Classroom

Rod Kissinger, a retired middle school social studies teacher, talked to us about taking better digital pictures. The handouts for the session are part of a webquest written for 4th grade students, but can be altered for higher levels.

Depth of field is one way to blur the background, if you can not find the background that you want. The bigger the fstop, the higher the depth of field. “Higher is Deeper” The sport setting has a faster shutter speed, so it has a narrower depth of field and will blur the background.


Use a flash outdoors, and know the range of your flash. Cloudy days are often the best days for pictures because it doesn't wash out the colors. Red eye reduction can be a setting on your camera or if you have the group look at a light and then look back to you just before you take the picture. For painting out the red eye, choose a brush with a feathered image so that it will blend in, and then use the smudge tool to smudge what you just painted in with the brush.

Move in close since studies show that people look at the eyes of a subject first. Use the optical zoom, since the digital zoom is a software based zoom. Sneaker zoom, walking closer to the subject, is another option. :)

Move the image from the middle of your frame. The rule of thirds describes where items in the photography should be placed. When taking a picture of a moving image, give the object someplace to move into. When you take a moving image, follow the subject with your camera and continue to move the camera after you finish...otherwise you will stop and the object will blur. Remember that you can hold the shutter down half way to lock the focus, then you can move the camera organize the shot and then take the picture. In the case of the runner, lock the focus on the ground where the runner is going to be when you take the picture...remember to keep the camera moving on the runner as he/she goes by, and click the shutter the rest of the way when he/she reaches the point that you locked the focus on.

Set up glasses every two feet and take a picture with your flash on. You will be able to see the reflection of the flash out to the range of your flash.

Mornings and evenings are best times to take pictures outside. The light is gentle.

Take vertical pictures. Some cameras will automatically flip them for you.

Be a good picture director, don't be afraid to put kids in poses. Make the photograph interesting. Lay on the floor and have the kids huddle over you or have them lay on the floor and take a picture down on them.

Get a tripod. A move of 1/16th of an inch at the camera turns into a much larger move where the subject is located. Brand name of gorilla...tripod that you can bend the legs.


Online purchasing of digital equipment:

onecall.com

bandkphoto.com Observe the sabbath so no purchasing during that time

Online purchasing of pictures:

personalizationmall.com

shutterfly.com

mpix.com

TelstarToo Session: Learning Models & Graphics

TelstarToo Group will be meeting today at the Crescent Park School in Bethel to investigate learning models and to work with graphics.

Agenda:

Sign-in, Connectivity

Visual Thesaurus
Gliffy
Online Whiteboard



Activity: Save Fred

Culture Wars: Ideology and Education

eMINTS Constructivism Resources
Constructivism Resources
Instructivism Resources
Inquiry Resources
Six Principles of Constructivism
Constructivism in the Technology Classroom
Instructivism vs. Constructivism at Learning in Maine
Constructivism, Instructivism, and Related Sites

Technology Standards

ISTE NETS
Grappling's Technology & Learning Spectrum
Maine's Roadmap

Graphics

Clipart Links at LIM Resources Wiki
Photo Resources at Resources for Maine Teachers
Vector vs. Bitmap
Vector vs. Bitmap - An Introductory Guide
Appleworks Drawing vs. Painting
Inkscape vs. Gimp (Open-source Applications), Seashore
Photoshop vs Illustrator
OS X Pages
Tux Paint

Closing

Being Part of the Solution

"Ultimately, your leadership in a culture of change will be judged effective or ineffective not by who you are as a leader but by what leadership you produce in others.

~Michael Fullan, Leadership in a Culture of Change

Catalyst: Episode 9 Podcast on Change at Wicked Decent Learning Blog

Related Links:

21st Century Collaborative
PLCs
Capacity Building and Michael Fullan

Finding Latest Information on the Maine Outdoors

Need to find timely information about what is going on in Maine in hunting, fishing and more? Tom Remington of Bethel has over the years developed a rich network of sites relating to this Maine perspective. It is an excellent example of what new technologies allow even small-town people in Maine to create in terms of outstanding online communities and resources. A good starting point for Tom's work is Maine Outdoors Today. Note the wonderful outdoor photography and down-to-earth articles by Greenwood's Milt Inman.

Adult Ed Project Learning at Sanford

I spent Wednesday afternoon with Margie Genereux and her advanced applications adult education class. Students had already developed skills in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Paint, and a number of other applications. In this advanced class, they were collaboratively working on developing the groundwork for a Sports Bar/Recreation Facility, making use of the tools they had learned, sharing and helping one another in pushing those skills to a higher level using the project as a focus. The motivation, energy and enthusiasm that comes through working in real-world projects was obvious. Love it!

We will be publishing their work here when it is completed. It involves floor plans, brochures, award certificates, emergency information, buying spreadsheets, job applications, menus, schedules, daycare information, a website, etc.

Margie explained that the adult ed teachers at SCAE (Sanford Community Adult Education) were involved in a PLC that is focusing on a more constructivist approach in working with adult learners. She introduced me to Best Practice: Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools by Zemelman, Daniels and Hyde. The book is now on my must-buy list. It is about education in general, not just applying to adult education needs. I highly recommend it for groups involved in this kind of work.

Margie expertly introduced new possibilies to the class as the need occurred. Optional tools for those who could not afford Office: StarOffice, OpenOffice, Google Apps.

I loved one of Margie's quotes regarding using instructivism alone: "It's like following someone to a wedding . . . you'll never be able to get there again!"

Related links:

Constructivism
Instructivism
Constructivism vs Instructivism
Project-based Learning
Inquiry Learning
Essential Questions
Jim Moulton's Wiki on Project-based Learning
Educational Games Research: Constructivism vs Instructivism

Keeping Up with the News

At Humanities in Maine there is a post on using news resources on the web called "Keeping Up with the News."

Related Resources

Growing Up Online

This way to FRONTLINE episodes ---->

Telstar Wiki Session

Today we will:

• Review Smartboards and sharing tools & uses.

• Focus on adding a favorite topic/theme/lesson/link to the LIM Resources Wiki (come with a topic in mind . . . perhaps something that you've used over the years). Create our own wiki sites.

• Continue ongoing work on individual projects of interest.

Related Resources:

Wikipedia
Curriki
More Info about wikis
Jim Moulton's wiki at Wikispaces on project-based learning.
Gulf of Maine Activities at Wikispaces
NNELL (National Network for Early Language Learning) at Wikispaces
Blue Algebra Wikispace (Lewiston)

Smartboard 2-Minute Tutorials
Smartboard Information
More on Smartboards

Essential Questions
Bloom's Taxonomy
Universal Design

Arts, Innovation & Creativity