"Inservice Insanity" at Wicked Decent Learning

Yet another great podcast from Jeff n' Dan. Find Episode 13 here.



Companion WDL blog
Direct Link to Episode 13
Jeff Bailey's Maine Ideas in Education
The Wicked Good Guide to Mainah English

The Google Suite at SAD#48

Wow . . . you have to see this! Kern Kelley has posted on the Tech Curve the work of students at his school called GOOGLE: Overview of the Google Suite of Online Applications. Note that the e-book was published through ISSUU which has many interesting features indeed. I'm guessing it was created using Comic Life, but would love to have the creators comment on the process they used in developing this handy tutorial. Impressive!

Maine Community Heritage Project

Promoting Community through the Exploration of Local History

Flyer
Description
Guidelines
Application

Library of Congress Online: Teaching with Primary Sources Regional Conference

My name is Sue Wise and I am the Associate Director of the Eastern Regional Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Partnership. The Library of Congress initiated the Teaching with Primary Sources educational outreach program for the purpose of encouraging and enhancing the use of Library of Congress primary source documents across all levels of education, but particularly within K-16 classrooms. As the Eastern Regional TPS Partnership, Waynesburg University is charged with spreading the word about the TPS program throughout the states in the northeast, from Maine through West Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

You are invited to participate in this inaugural event marking the commencement of the Library of Congress' Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) national educational outreach program. As the Eastern Regional TPS partner, Waynesburg University is kicking off this expansion of the program with a conference to discuss opportunities for you to engage fellow educators to incorporate the Library's vast resources across the curriculum. We sincerely hope you can attend.

Library of Congress Online: Teaching with Primary Sources 2008 Eastern Regional Conference
http://tps.waynesburg.edu/TPS_2008_Eastern_Regional_Conference/index.htm

• May 21 and 22, 2008
• Free conference!
• Grant opportunities up to $15,000
• Travel stipend available upon application approval
• Waynesburg University (60 miles south of Pittsburgh, PA)
  http://tps.waynesburg.edu/

Learn about grant opportunities to integrate primary sources into professional development, educational outreach programs and school district curricula.
Meet Library of Congress educational outreach leaders.
Benefit from nationally-known education experts like Mary McFarland.

Questions? Interested, but unable to attend?
Call or email: 724.852.3377
Barbara Kirby, Director bkirby@waynesburg.edu
Sue Wise, Associate Director swise@waynesburg.edu

Apply today to join us for this exciting opportunity!
http://iqweb.waynesburg.edu/aam/2008_Eastern_Regional_Conference_Reg.html

Please distribute the enclosed information to fellow educators. Web posting, email, newsletter or hardcopy distribution would be helpful.

Lemon

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade and lemon pie, ... That may sound trite, yet what I mean is that when something happens that takes you down a different road than you had planned, you need to take control of the situation and turn it into something positive. What may look like a catastrophe can end up being a wonderful opportunity.”

~ Anne White

The March 2008 edition of the Maine Townsman has an article title "Small Towns Respond to Population Decline" which looks into what is happening, what the ramifications are, and what changes are being looked at to adapt to population decline in many small Maine towns.

We often hear of the virtues of growth. If the rules of supply and demand apply, might there ultimately be advantages in staying small?

Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chromecrayon/2362595325/

A Sense of Scale

How do we get a sense of how big or small something is?





Find some excellent web resources here:

Scale at LIM Resources Wiki

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdag/2300624220/
Bethel Snow Woman Set at Flickr

Innovation Fatigue

"I think there’s a larger, underlying issue here: ‘innovation fatigue.’ School districts keep rolling out new programs / paradigms that aren’t well thought out, understood, or supported. Teachers rationally get tired and skeptical after years of this. And then we outside folks roll in saying ‘here’s the next big thing!’ and their eyes begin to roll back in their heads…"

~Scott McLeod

Anyone experience this?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/desvarenne_d/2172275367/

Making Movies is easy...Producing them is harder

by Ed Latham

Way back, almost a decade ago, I had the opportunity to attend a Mac Expo and it was great fun. Of particular interest at the Expo was a very early version of iMovie. They sat us down and showed us how to make a movie by simply clicking and dragging with none of that nasty time stop or frame rate issues other programs at the time may have had. It was so much fun and it seemed young and old alike could be cranking out their own home movies with ease.

I have heard all the banter about how the recent version of iMovie is less user friendly than the version that was on the image last year. Using my MacBook and some 6th grade students I thought I would take it for a ride to find out how easy/hard it could be. It did take us some time as the interface is not as easy as some other programs. In the end we had a decent public service announcement ready to go to the local channel except that the MacBook does not have a DVD burner installed? I frantically searched help files, played with different export settings, and even tried some meditation on top of a freezing hill in the middle of a snow storm ... nothing helped me figure out how to share with the world this production created so simply.

During the production, the students and I ran into frequent compatibility issues with sound and graphic files. iMovie would take jpg files but not gif. It would take some audio files but not others. To finally end the process without the ability to crank out a DVD with the MLTI shipped computers was very frustrating. Why is iDVD on there if you can't use it without subscribing to a service or buying new hardware? Maybe I just need someone more experienced to share with me how I messed up and what I might do differently in the future.

In the meantime, I copied all the pictures and audio files from our project and brought them over to my PC. Within an hour I had the entire production recreated and was even able to use the graphic and sounds we were not able to use in iMovie. I suppose it is always easier to go with what you know, but I ask those more experienced than I...."Given the high school teacher's MLTI Macbooks, how do teachers take a movie made in iMovie, mash it through iDVD somehow to get the movie to the public without having to subscribe to some pay service or buy new hardware?" I am anxious to learn new things so please share what you know. In the meantime, I will go share our finished DVD with the kids.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

Here is the latest iteration of the 21st Century Learner vids:



David Warlick asks, "What would YOU have them say?"

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...