Business Plan Project--Day Two

Day two of the project was very similar to day one. Out of five classes I think only two groups filmed anything. That does not bode very well for everyone finishing by the end of day three.

After day one, I was a little surprised at how little progress some students seemed to have made. I was under the impression that they had had class time on Monday to get started, and yet it seemed that a large number of groups were just starting on the background work on Wednesday when I joined the class. I was beginning to think there must have been some other part to this project that they had already done that had taken up the class time on Monday.

I asked the teacher about this because I wanted to know about any other parts of the project. It would make for a more complete blog, and probably give me ideas to help out other teachers. I was very surprised by his answer.

All the students have to do is what I was already aware of: decide what type of company they are running, name it, give it a slogan and a logo, research start up and recurring costs, write up a summary and proposal of what the business, costs, and profits are, create a floor plan, and create promotional materials including a commercial.

But, they have had a month.

The only class time they had was Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. But they have had a month. Last year, with the same project, the teacher said some student were turning in complete projects a week after it was assigned. This year, no students worked on it at all outside of class, and therefore had nothing done at all before they were given class time. Presumably, students were still debating on types of companies and names for a large part of class on Monday. They had not even done that much outside of school. The teacher attributes the change to just the overall differences of his students between last year and this year. Last years students were a bit more motivated to take initiative and work outside of class. This years students rely more heavily on having in class time.

I have a better understanding now of why he is sticking so strictly to the due date. The students could have borrowed the camera and started on the video at any time prior to this week. The students could have even more easily accomplished a lot of the other aspects of the projects and had all this week to create and edit videos. Instead, they are all trying to cram what is essentially a month long project into four days.

A lot of the business plans are actually very interesting, so it is a shame that there was so much put off to the last minute.

Mostly in class today I was helping students with programs other than Movie Maker. I helped out with a lot of Word and Excel questions.

Another lesson in this project is the very authentic and very real world concept of time management, which is something I tried very hard all day to reinforce. Students have a limited amount of time in which to accomplish several tasks. They can work over the weekend, but they will not have video equipment and they may not be able to easily meet in person. I was trying very hard all day to convince groups to work on some of the other parts of the project--figuring that researching costs and drawing floor plans can easily be done from home and easily collaborated on over the internet--and work on the video in class. I was not at all successful.

Business Plan Project--Day One

On Tuesday, we had a district wide inservice day.

I had a great opportunity to present to the fifth grade teachers. By the end of the year, each fifth grade classroom in the district will be equiped with a Promethean board and ActiveStudio.

I downloaded a good presentation from promethean planet that showcased how teachers can use ActiveStudio to create a better learning environment by making lessons interactive, adding some pop to the normal, using the board to improve classroom management, and doing neat and unexpected things. After that, I went through the basic tools on the tool bar and the power tools.

I only had 45 minutes to present (and might have gone over by about 15, actually). On one level, I was really excited, because that is the longest space I've been given to officially present ActiveStudio to any teachers. At the same time, I was a bit worried. No teachers had laptops, and I was not able to give any time for processing or practicing. I know that some of the teachers were very overwhelmed by the presentation. It was a lot of information to squeeze into just 60 minutes.

I was a little disappointed to reflect that, even though this presentation went well and was a great opportunity, I have not been able to give this level of training to the high school teachers I am supposed to be supporting. The longest I have been given for any training on ActiveStudio at the high school has been twenty minutes. I've had a few one on one opportunities to go through some of the functions, but that is generally on a teacher's planning period, where they can't really give me the full 45 minutes.

I'm hoping that the fifth grade teachers will provide positive feedback about the training. If the fifth grade teachers do more to use the boards effectively in the classroom, it will hopefully send a message that this type of training, and more, is needed even at the high school level.

I gave all of my contact information to the fifth grade teachers, and hope to hear back from some of them. Most of them do not have the program installed yet, and therefore are not needing an support for technical or integration issues. I'm planning on sending out a follow up email in the next few days, though. It is important to stay in touch with teachers, especially those who might feel that, because I am supposed to work at the high school, their questions are a bother to me.

I think that this was one of the most important professional development opportunities I have had so far at my school. Hopefully progress will come from it.

Creek Project--Update Three

This post is going up very late. I haven't had a lot of time to get to it.

Monday was the first day of presenting projects for the Creek Project. The Biology Teacher and I weren't 100% sure what to expect. The projects today were all from her honors students.

There were some very well done ones. One student recreated a salamander habitat (using craft store eyes as eggs). It was not the most engaging presentation, because the information was put on posters around the scene, but it was visually appealing. And, based on the info, it was clear that the students had learned something about the salamanders.

Students did infuse technology into their projects. One group wrote an original song. The execution was not great--the audio was poor quality (fortunately they provided a lyrics sheet for listeners to read along), and their refrain was a bit long. But, they lyrics showed a good understanding of their question, and the animations that went with it were an engaging mix of scientific and funny. One group did their project in the form of an episode of "House." In it, a fix owner brings in a fish that was harmed by pollutants in the creek, and Dr. House has to diagnose what the pollutants were, based on the fish's symptoms, in order to create a treatment to save the fish. The teacher eventually had to ask for their script because some parts the audio was good, and others it was bad. Another group did a series of sketches with a "water safetey lass" (basically a friendly eco cop) explaining to different people in different scenarios how what they were doing was having a negative effect on creek water.

One of the big concerns was the Photo Story projects. A lot of these students had done Photo Stories for the Helen Keller 3 Days of Sight project. So, feeling comfortable with that program, used it again. However, with laptops were reimaged, and Photo Story was removed. Fortunately, the students were easily able to access non-reimaged laptops to use. However, some of them did not remember the step to convert from a Photo Story to a WMV file. It was easy enough to deal with because the teacher still had Photo Story and I was able to help students convert during the period. I am more concerned because I would like to see student retaining more of the tech skills I am trying to impart. That being said, I did see improved file management.

Another concern was that some of the projects got more caught up in trying to be impressive or interactive, and strayed from the overall idea of teaching something and answering a question. Several of the games did a good job of testing knowledge but a poor job of presenting that knowledge ahead of time. Other projects simply presented research, with no context of an overall question.

We had discussed the idea previously, and came back to it again. The Biology teacher and I both felt that, if the students had been given more structure--been responsible for first coming up with a question, and then doing research, and then being introduced to the idea of being able to display their research/learning in a way of their choosing--more of the projects would have retained focus.

It was encouraging, though, to see students being creative. A lot of them used programs that they were not formally introduced to in school. Others used programs that we had taught them, but were able to discover and use some of the more advanced functions. And, so students who did not use a lot of technology did some very creative low tech things. Next year, going about this project in a more structured way, and still allowing for that creativity, will create even better results.

Sight Project--Assessment Day One

Even though the schedule was a bit tight, the English teacher wanted to show everyone's Photo Story in Class. Monday, the first day of watching the videos, was short because of a 2 hour delay. We didn't get through as many as she would have liked. But, we both understood that it was important for the students to have an audience for this project. Part of the incentive we had given them to do well was the idea of sharing these projects with the class.

Unfortunately, we didn't make a rubric until the project was underway. We didn't even finalize it until after watching the first round of videos.

Being that this was the first time through the project, watching the videos, and critiquing them (we both took notes for later use) helped us put together a rubric.

After watching videos in all three classes, we worked through her study hall finalizing the rubric. We re-arranged some categories, and played with point values. By the end, we had a web-like drawing with numbers all over it. We then experimented with one project. We both determined what we thought the grade should be, then graded it using the rubric, and compared.

The one thing we were both most dissapointed with was that we had told students that they did not have to use music. After viewing finished projects, though, we found that some students had long stretches of video that were just pictures of friends. It was boring. But, since we had told kids that they didn't have to have music, we didn't feel that we could make "use of music" a catagory. Instead, we settled on including it as part of flow. Most stories that lacked music had less of a flow.

And even though we reminded students of it several times, some still lost focus and made stories that seemed like they were dying, not going blind. We covered that in a catagory called focus. Most students did a decent job of remembering for most of the story that this was about sight. Some just failed to explain why some of their choices would be things they wanted to see rather than do. The worst catagory for this was family and friends. Most students had an entire section about wanting to spend time with family and friends. Very few remembered to explain that they wanted to see--to rememeber what their friends looked like, or memorize mom's face. Another common area that this came up was in reading, movies, and tv shows. I think a casual observer might have thought some of these stories were about the last days of life.

At the end of study hall, we had agreed on the final catagories and points values for our rubric. The English teacher had another class, and was a bit weary of grading projects. So, she planned to type it out and let me make copies, and we would meet up again to compare the first round of coments with the rubrics, and grade the projects.

I'm hoping to be able to put some student projects up on my student project wiki. I'm not sure how many I will be able to use, though, since most of them contain pictures of friends and family, and most have student names as part of the footage. I'll have to talk with the teacher about that. For now, though, I am posting the rubric we used. Any suggestions are welcome.

Presidential My Space--Assessments

I offered to help the Social Studies teacher grade the wiki project when we were finished. I fear I wasn't that helpful. I only managed to help with a small handful. He was pretty well finished by the third day of grading, and I just wasn't moving as fast. I did get a chance to look at most of them, and even leave a few comments for him/the students.

Some of the projects turned out really well. Students were creative, and found resources online to make things more interesting.

A few students disappointed by plagiarizing. Only one went so far as to copy another student's project. No one, at least, sabotaged anyone else or defaced a page that did not belong to them.

For the most part, though, it wasn't plagiarizing as much as a lack of summarizing skills that plagued the students. As a result, the teacher even went so far as to give the plagiarizing/badly summarizing students the chance to redo the project instead of loosing credit.

So, the Social Studies teacher and I talked about the lack of summarizing skills. A lot of students think that copying and pasting an article, and removing or replacing a certain number of words, is the same as rephrasing. They also think that picking out key phrases or sentences, and copying them word for word, is summarizing. The English teacher from that team happened to stop in during this conversation and said that, although she does teach summarizing, she hasn't gotten to that part of her curriculum yet.

First of all, this made me wonder if it would be a good idea to have the teams sit down, looked at shared skills, who is teaching them, and when they are being taught. After all, it would be really good practice and reinforcement for students to learn summarizing in English, and then have a summarizing project/assignment in Social Studies the following week. And, it would save the Social Studies teacher a good deal of aggravation if he held the summarizing project until after the topic was covered in Social Studies.

Summarizing happened to come up as a topic on twitter just a few hours later, and I was able to pass this resource along. There were some interesting ideas. I also made the suggestion of giving the students an article, and having them write a "text message" to a friend explaining it. I do think most of these kids can summarize--they just don't have the skills to make a connection between how they "give the short version" to friend and what teachers want out of them in a writing assignment.

By permission of the teacher, I've copied a few of these wikis over, and removed student names from them, so I can show some samples. I picked a few at random from each class, and then copied the ones I liked best as examples. Check them out here.

Creek Project--Update One

I'm not going to track the Creek Project on a daily basis. Some days very little if anything happens with it. And some days, something happens, but not enough to prompt a blog entry.

We are closing in on the midway checkpoint. On March 9, 7 days from now, the students will have to turn "evidence" into the Biology teacher. All of them have so far turned in their project sheets--detailing their questions, and their projects.

I have only worked with a few students. I showed one group how to create a voki, or use gizmoz (which tends to work a little better on student computers). I was a little disappointed because the student computers do not all have flash up to date, so neither of these programs were running properly.

I worked with another group to show them how to remove lyrics from an MP3 using Audacity. That way, they will be able to record themselves singing their new lyrics over the music. They plan on working on this from home, though, where they have garage band. Being a PC user at home and school, I'm not as familiar with garage band, and don't know if they will be able to do the same thing. However, I am optimistic. I didn't just show them how to do it. I knew there was a tutorial on youtube, so I did a search, explaining to them what I was searching for and how. After finding the tutorial, I made the students follow it. They had to watch what was happening and read the captions. After a successful run, I made the students repeat the process without the aid of the tutorial. I feel confident that they will remember how to do it in Audacity, and will be able to figure out how to do it in another program.

Today, I touched bases with the Biology teacher again. She is in the process of introducing the project to her non-honors class this week. Yesterday she had them pick a question, and yesterday and today they worked on researching their topic. This way, they are more focused on what the purpose of the project is than on the technology or "product" part of it. Then, once they have gathered their research, she is going to introduce the project. She is still deliberating on how much in class time to give students to work on it. These students do not have a study hall like the honors students, and many of them will not have the ability to work on their projects at home. She has also decided to limit their project choices. They will be able to do a Photo Story, game, poster, or design another project (and get approval). This leaves the students free to be creative with their project design, but it also focuses students who might be overwhelmed with too many choices.

She regrets the order she did things in with the honors classes. Because she introduced the project all at once, a lot of students focused on what they were doing instead of why. Students had decided to do a Photo Story or a web site before deciding what question they were answering. Because of this, the projects might end up not fitting the objectives of the students. One example is a group of students that decided to do a website on fish--but they had no clear idea of what the purpose or function of the website was, or what information would be on it, or how to make it an interesting, engaging site that people would want to visit. I think we both agree, in the future, it would be a good idea to assign students to pick a question before introducing the project. For honors, at least, I still feel that it might be reasonable to have them responsible for doing research while putting together their projects. It would force the students to make intelligent use of their time, and redirect both the project and research based on one another.

Sight Project--Day Five

There really wasn't supposed to be a day five. But, the English teacher set aside the last twenty minutes of class for students to begin silent reading on their new novel. She decided to give students the option of using that time to finish up and save their Photo Stories since most students would have to read at home one way or the other.

The bulk of my job for the last day of this project was saving projects to my jump drive. Photo Stories take a very long time to save. They take even longer when students decide that having five or six different music tracks is a good idea. I'm curious to see some of the ones that took so long to save. I often lament at the general lack of aesthetic sense among students. I somehow imagine I will be lamenting again soon.

But, hodgepodge of poorly selected and erractic music aside, I think most students had fun with this project. We are showing them in class tomorrow. I've offered to help the teacher work on a rubric, and have sent her a link for rubistar. I don't want to step on toes or be too pushy, so I'm not going to be any more insistant that I be let in on the rubric. But I do worry. A lot of teachers are still in the "oh wow" factor when it comes to grading digital stories. I hope that she includes the use of the technology--making it flow, having good design--as part of the rubric. After all, a student essay with no flow or logical organization would not get a high grade, so why should a Photo Story?

And, that goes back to my point from my last post. If students were working with this same project on multiple projects, they would get used to it. They would get used to having an audience. And, they would get used to being an audience. The students would develop a sense of connoisseurism and would start to differentiate between what they thought was good or bad. That might help them to determine if their own stories were well put together, interesting, and well designed. And, with enough time to get past the bells and whistles, and time to figure out how long doing certain things takes, they would be able to make stronger stories.

Sight Project--Day Four

Day four was much better than day three. I was really impressed by how well the students from the class that had all of the issues got over it. I've seen in the past that if something goes wrong with a project, students can write that project off all together and adopt a very negative attitude. But, at the beginning of class, they all got out their computers and started working. This is either a resilient class, or a class that really likes this project.

There were significantly less technical issues overall. That made the creating process go much more smoothly. And, I was better prepared to deal with the few issues that did come up.

I was impressed by students awareness of one another. After it was clear that some students were beginning to record, everyone automatically switched in to careful whisper mode without being told. A few students preferred to be out in the hallway to record (probably more from being embarrassed about talking to themselves in class than concerned about background noise.) And I was pleased to see students helping one another out. A few kids did figure out some parts of the program I hadn't shown them and, not only did they use them, they helped other students figure them out as well.

There were varying degrees of planning for narration. A few of them used the notes section on the recording page to plan out their narration. Some of them wrote scripts. A few decided to ignore all advice and wing it. I am curious to see how the presentations compare.

And that idea also ties in with something I overheard later in the day. I'll come back to that.

This was the last time the students had inclass time to work on their projects. As a result, a lot of extra kids showed up to the study hall later in the day. It was so packed that kids were sitting on the floor. Quite a few students even elected to stay afterschool to work on the program.

The teacher and I both stayed about a half hour past our contract hours. I don't know if this was something she was upset about or if she was okay with it. She didn't seem particularly put out, though. I was very tired by the end of the day, but more than happy to stay and help the kids out. I knew that, to some extent, they didn't get enough class time for the project. If I knew that all of the kids had access to Photo Story at home, and could have planned out their narration while watching their videos, even if they couldn't record, I would feel differently. But, I know that for most students, they weren't able to work on it at all outside of class. So I was happy to stay and give them the extra time they needed.

I was a little dissapointed by one comment I overheard. A student had just finished the narration for one slide--describing what she would do with her very last day of sight--and turned to the girl beside her and said, "not that I'd actually do that." I felt that she had missed a large part of the point. This project was supposed to be about her, and she just made it about the pictures she happened to have on her camera at the time.

In the future, I would like to introduce this project to students earlier, and give them time, outside of class, to collect pictures of things they would miss if they went blind. I might start having them do this at then beggining of readin "The Miracle Worker." That way, they would have time to think about what was important to them, and to find pictures of it. I might even start encouraging them to find and download internet pictures of things they couldn't acutally take pictures of. That way, studnets would be better prepared for the project, and it would have more of a connection with Helen Keller.

Another interesting twist might be to have them collecting these photos and images while reading the play, but with a different objective. Instead of collecting what they would want to see with three days of sight, they could collect what they would want to show Helen if she got her three days to see. That way, the students would not only have a personal connection with the project, but with the play, and would have to reflect on themselves in a different way. I'll have to share that thought with the teacher. The idea of more prep work ahead of time will probably appeal to her. I'm not sure how she'll feel about alterin the purpose of the project though.

And now back to the comment I over heard. This was either afterschool or in study hall--for some reason I can't remember which. One student basically said that the had really disliked this project, but now thought Photo Story was really cool. He wants to use it for a project he's doing in his bio class.

The reason seems fairly simple. Students don't know how to use these programs. They get frustrated. They want someone to take them by the hand and give them all the answers. But, if forced to figure some things out--or led through some problem solving--they will slowly get it. Once they get it, then they can focus on the project and not the tech.

I've been eager to get teachers to use tech in an appropriate way--in a way that supports their learning goals. I'm rethinking. I shouldn't focus on "which tech can achieve this for you" but on "how can the tech your students are familiar with achieve this for you." I would like to see teachers doing more projects, using the tech more frequently. If they started the year with an easier project--a learning goal that was simpler for students to achieve--the students could focus on learning the tech without loosing sight of the context of the project. As it stands, some students lost this project while trying to make Photo Story work.

For the rest of the year, and next year, I will beging talking with my teachers about this idea. I hope that they will see it and understand. I think it will also help with the teachers learning the tech. As much as I enjoy being in the classroom with the students, I know that the teachers are not becoming as comfortable with the tech as I want them to be. I we focused on one or two programs, and made them fit the learning goals, then the students and the teacher would have time to learn the programs and become comfortable with them. Then, by the time harder projects came around, the teacher wouldn't even need me any more.

Hmmm...a very smart man once said to me that his goal was to be obsolete. Funny. Guess it took me this long to really understand what he was saying. We had different learning objectives for our students, but the same goal for ourselves.

Sight Project--Day Three

I think yesterday might have been one of the most hectic in classroom days I've had in a while. It just felt like everything that could go wrong did. But really, it was only one class out of three.

The first and third classes went fine. There were a few issues here and there, but nothing major. The middle class was a nightmare.

In all of the classes, the students were left to their own devices to continue working on the project. The teacher went back on her plan and told them at the beginning of class they would have one more day to finish. This hurt the hoped for sense of urgency. But, students still did work continuously for the most part. Some wasted valuable class time trying to edit music to add to the stories. Some who did not construct a good plan were still hunting up images. But most kids were working on editing and arranging images. A few tried out recording themselves, but very few had anything keepable by the end of class.

The middle class had its fair share of problems throughout. An inexplicably high number of students had to keep restarting because they could not connect to their student drives. This took up a lot of valuable work time. Then, several students were having trouble saving their work. It didn't take me long to realize it was students who had imported images straight from memory sticks or jump drives. The easy fix was to make sure the sources was in the computer before saving, so the file could be accessed. However, this was a problem for students who used multiple memory sticks--since only one could be in the computer at a time. I had to have kids drag and drop the images to a folder in their personal drive, delete the images, and then reimport them. This was horrible, because I had to walk each kid through it one by one. It was one of those days when it seems that the students just didn't have the ability to follow directions without me over their shoulders. And I was sympathetic. I think for most people this would be considered a complicated problem.

To make matters even worse, at the end of class, some students suddenly lost their network connections and couldn't save to their student drives. Once again I attempted to give general directions for this: save to your desktop, restart, move to your personal drive. But, I kept getting students raising their hands with the same question. I was becoming frustrated with the technology, my inability to effectively address all of the students at once (students who didn't yet realize they had this problem were still working and not paying any attention despite my telling everyone that I had something very important to say), and the impatience of students who seemed to think they took precidence over someone I was already helping because they were suddenly having problems, too. Massive problems in the last five minutes of class are exponentially more frustrating than massive problems at any other time.

Needless to say, I started the last class of the day explaining, once again, to save frequently. Saving frequently will not only prevent the loss of ALL work in the case of some failure, but it will also alert students to network issues earlier. I explained that, in the last five minutes of class I would not be able to help everyone, so if everyone had an issue at then end of class, most of them would lose work. It was not the best or most helpful tone to take, and it was largely colored by my multiple frustrations from earlier.

Many students do not have basic trouble shooting, or problem solving skills when it comes to technology. They encounter a problem, and thier first and only reaction is to shout to anyone who knows how to use computers. (I eventually told students that those politely raising their hands would probably get my attention sooner than those shouting my name). They do not have the ability to assess the causes or work through possible solutions to a problem. Quite a few needed help saving to their own jump drives. I'm not entirely sure that they weren't capable of doing it. After all, they had saved images to the drive to bring them to school. But, at school, they only saved to their personal drives. I fear that yesterday, in my frustration, I fell back into the trap of enabling learned helplessness.

I was very focused on technical issues yesterday. My reflection doesn't seem to have anything but them. That's a shame.

Presidential My Space--Day Three

Last day of the project.

Projects are not due til the following day, so students can work on them from home, or stay after school.

One of the benefits of this project was that students could easily access their work from anywhere. There was no saving of files involved. At the same time, it was not a public web space, so student privacy was maintained. This is probably the #1 reason I'm such a big fan of wikis.

I was in and out of the class today, because I was starting a project with another teacher. For the most part, students made good use of their time, and worked throughout.

One thing I saw was that honors students, who had to follow the general rubric, as well as extra directions that were posted on their class page, were forgetting the extra directions. In the past, when a teacher has divided a wiki into classes, I have them post all of the directions on each classes' page. Its redundant, but I think it helps the students stay organized. I think in this case especially, it would have been a very good idea.

As the project went on, and, as is common, a lot of student were more concerned with how things looked than the content, the teacher and I came up with the idea of using the directions/rubric as a check sheet. We suggested to students to print it out, and check off requirements as they were met. Quite a few students took the suggestion. I think I'll remember that for similar projects in the future, and encourage teachers to either do directions in more of list form, or to have a list version of the directions. Its easier to check off items on a list than in a paragraph.

Towards the end of one of the classes, I asked the teacher about grading the project. He seemed pleased to have someone to help him grade, and suggested that I go through the projects, make grade suggestions, and he'd either take the suggestions or not. Part of me regrets the offer, because its more work. Most of me knows that I haven't assessed anything in a long time. It will be good to get back into it. Also, being useful to teachers helps build those relationships. If another teacher asks me to help put together a project for the simple reason that he/she thinks I'll do all the grading, than that is a great opportunity to introduce yet another teacher to using tech in the classroom.

The projects look very good. It seems that most of the students included most of the required content. I don't know how many students went outside of their comfort zone and had fun being creative, though. I probably won't get to assessing anything today. I'll have to update on how the finished projects are, once I've been through some of them--I even got permission to post some examples once I remove student names.

Presidential My Space--Day One

Yesterday we started the Presidential My Space Pages.

One of the common complaints, of course, is that we aren't using real My Space pages. I should probably rethink/rename this project so that kids are not left thinking that they would rather do real My Space pages.

For the most part, the teacher went through directions with students. As a time saver, he went through how to navigate through the page to the student pages while kids were still booting up their laptops. Since the student laptops do take so long, I agreed with this decsion. However, a lot of students didn't pay attention. It led to problems later. I had to help about half the students 1-on-1 to find their pages. I had to explain to many students that there was already a page, and not to create one. And, one students edited the front page, and another deleted and edited over the rubric.

The rubric is fairly simple:

For this project, you will create a mock 'My Space' page for one of the former Presidents. You may choose any former President you wish. Barack Obama is not a former President. You will create this page as if you are that President, living today. That means you should write in the first person, using 'I' instead of 'George Washington said...'. The page should contain mainly biographical information about that President. You should include at least the following sections:

Title: 'George Washington's page' The title should include the name of the President. (3 pts.)

Pictures: Include at least two pictures of the President on the main page. (2 pts.)

Background: Include Dates of birth and death, and dates the President served. Include place of birth. (5 pts.)

Biography: This should be 2-3 paragraphs about the President's life, from birth until they became President. You can include information from 'Background' instead of making a separate section for it. Be throrough. Include educational background, military experience, and any previous political experience. Talk about why these experiences prepared the man for the Presidency. (15 pts.)

Presidency: Include 2-3 paragraphs about what happened while this person was President. Include any important events, wars, scandals, etc. You can talk about what life in America was like during this Presidency. Remember, write as if you are this person. If something negative happened, try to explain why. Include at least 2 events and how the President handled that problem. (15 pts.)

Retirement: Include a brief description of the President's life after the Presidency. (5 pts.)

Creativity: A more creative page will receive additional points. (5 pts.)

Total points: 50

When picking your President, be careful to look at when they served. Picking a President who died after 2 days in office is a bad idea. You don't have to pick a famous President, like Washington or Lincoln, but skim through the bios to find someone who did something interesting, or served during an interesting period of history. Remember to make this a first person account, and use your own words. DO NOT COPY AND PASTE. That is plagarism, and will result in a zero for the entire project. This project is due Tuesday, February 24.

Most students didn't have much trouble navigating to their pages. A few got confused because, although I had provided links, they still had to click on a "create page" button after clicking the link. Many students immediately went to the "create a page" button from the home page, and started creating and editing pages there were not linked from anywhere. It was pretty easy to find and correct those students (they would loose their pages, since they weren't linked from the home page) and have them copy and paste their work onto the appropriate page. In later classes, I made every watch as showed the difference between the "create page" and "create a page" buttons. I think this should have been a more predictable problem.

The teacher has even provided three approved web sources for researching info (although a small handful of students went directly to google anyways.)

Students only worked on the project for about half of class for the first day. Everyone had picked a president, and most had a picture and a little bit of info by the end of class. Some only had a picture.

There is definately a large varience of comfort and ability when doing web based projects. Some students understood right away when I suggested they open the rubric in a seperate tab or window, so they didn't have to keep using the back arrow. Others were very confused and needed to be shown multiple times. Others needed to be shown only once before catching on.
And some students have trouble just navigating a single web page.

I was able to teach students the short cut key for pasting (ctrl + v) because the right click they are used to doesn't work in a pb wiki. One thing almost all students seemed very good at was finding a google image.

Sight Project

Another new English Project.

I always complain about my "office" having the only printer on the hall. I should stop complaining about that. I think this is the third project I've gotten by talking to a teacher who was waiting for something to print.

I was just making small talk, and the teacher was leaving. But, I had been working on a wiki that was up on my screen. She actually started to leave, and then said that she wanted to ask me something.

Her kids have been reading about Helen Keller. One of the things the read was what Keller said she would want to see if she could have three days of sight. The teacher than was going to have the students put together a poster/scrap book page about what they would want to see if they only had three days of sight left. She wanted to know if there were any programs like that.

Of course I instantly thought of glogster. But, I wasn't 100% sure about if students could make their glogs private. And, I think we were both a little leary about having the kids have to give the teacher permission to see the project. And, the teacher was not that comfortable with putting pictures of students online (most will likely use pictures of family as part of this project.)

I then thought of Photo Story as a possible offline option. I explained that it was very easy to use. Also, I had just made printable directions at the request of another teacher. She decided that Photo Story fit her needs well.

The students will bring in photos and/or search for photos online. I will show the class the basics of using Photo Story. Students will then create Photo Stories using their pictures, describing them, and explaining why they are significant things and why they would want to see these things if they only had three days of sight left. This allows students to work at their own pace. Those who learn Photo Story more quickly will have the oppurtunity to use more advanced features, or use photo editing software to make their stories more visually interesting. At the end of the project, students will share their projects with the class.

I like this project because it allows students to connect with the class content in a meaningful way. They will also have chance to not only be creative, but show something about themselves. I believe that students do want to feel like they matter as people in school. This project gives them the chance to show who they are to their teacher and their classmates. It will also force them into self reflection. They won't have to write a formal reflection, but they will have to consider what is important to them and why, and what life would be like without sight.

Reading Project--End

I haven't had a chance to update on this project.

With snow days, conferences, and trainings, I was out of the building for the very end of the project. The Reading teacher told me that she had very little trouble finishing up the recordings. She had a few absent kids that she had to record after the official end of the project. She had one student who refused to read in front of the class, but agreed to be recorded after school.

We had some time to discuss the assessment for the project. Most of that was decided early on, because she had to give the students a rubric. The whole project was 75 points, with 5 points each given for meeting deadlines along the way. Twenty points were given for creativity in selecting the article and modifying it for speaking. And, 15 points each were given for accuracy, pace, and emotion. So, the bulk of what was assessed was the three main goals that she had for the read aloud. We were a little worried about having so many points for the creativity with the assignment, but it did end up being a large part of the WORK involved. The teacher took notes while the students read live, and then used the recordings to be able to revisit and look at specifics. So even grading this assignment turned into a large time commitment for her.

Throughout this assignment, we've talked about changes that we would like to make for next year. After having started the recordings, I was made aware that several teachers have actual video cameras, so I would like to use those next year. Also, we talked about using monologues that would be performance ready, to cut down on the prep time and frustration for students, and allow the project to be more clearly focused on reading out loud. I think this year, the students could very easily come away from this project feeling like it was an internet search and writing project. We are still not in agreement about having the same reading being used for the initial recording/reflection and the second recording, or having part of the grade based on the improvements listed in the reflection. i think it is important for me to try to be practical. These are not my classes, and I am not ultimately responsible for grading their assignments. Partly, I think this might be a matter of not having high expectations--the Reading teacher does not feel that the students are able to write good reflections and therefore to get much out of them. My main goal for next year will be to get the teacher to model writing a good reflection. If the reflections improve, perhaps she will see value in adding that as an assessment component in the future.

All in all I think this project was successful. The students all had to read aloud in front of the class, focusing on accuracy, pace, and emotion. There are aspect of the assignment that can, and hopefully will, be improved upon to allow the students to learn more from it in the future.

Social Studies Project--Presidential Wikis

A Social Studies teacher approached me and wanted some ideas on a few lessons he is covering. He wanted to slightly alter some of what he is doing.

One suggestion that I gave, that I don't think he took, was for the presidential cabinets. He usually has students work in groups to research one cabinet office, and then do a round robin to share the info. I suggested having the groups create poems/song lyrics/raps, etc. I figured it would be more engaging, and easier to remember. I'm not sure if he went with that or not. He seemed to like the idea, but he was covering the lesson in the very near future. I hope that either he, or someone else, can use that idea for some topic.

He also has the students do a project every year where each student researches one President. They usually do a poster or a powerpoint. This year, I suggested, he does the projects in the "my space" wiki format. He really liked the idea.

He's not the sort that wants a great deal of help. He's very confident with the technology. So, I showed him how to set up the wiki. He, unlike a lot of teachers, was more comfortable with doing multiple layers of links and not having everything linked from a list on the side. Most teachers were overwhelmed at the concept, and therefore set up multiple pages--one per class per project. This Social Studies Teacher was happier with the idea of one massive wiki--knowing he could keep track of the links--thank managing multiple wikis. I have to say that I'm of the same opinion.

We discussed having the students sign up during class, or manually creating accounts. He decided not to waste class time with students signing up, and had them create user names and passwords for homework. I showed him how to input those, and did several of them to save him some time (its tedious).

Other than help with the mechanics, he does not want any help in the classroom. Once in awhile he will send a student and a laptop down to me with a specific issue, but he does not want to have me in the room on hand "just in case." It does worry me that this is the attitude of shutting the door that we want to break down with expanding learning beyond the classroom. But, it could just be a sense of wanting me to be more available to help teachers who are less confident with the technology. Either way, I think it is important to allow teachers to move at their own pace. If he is not ready to have another teacher in his space, then I won't push. If I do, he might never be willing.

Reading Project--Day Ten

We started recording on Monday. It was not the most oppurtune day to begin recording. We had a two hour delay because of the Super Bowl.

Because of the shortened time, we only managed to record two groups in the first class and one group in the second class.

This did not go as well as planned. In the first class, I did not properly start the camera, and missed a significant chunk of the student presentation. I will say that this might have been at least partly because we started, stopped, and restarted several times. One of the students was struggling with a mixture of stage fright and a lack of practice with the teleprompter. Since this was the very first student to read, we allowed him to restart once. The second time, he happened to want to restart right after another teacher walked in front of the camera and made a lot of noise, so I let them restart again.

Other than that, there we no problems with recording. However, upon going back to the room, the Reading teacher and I looked at the videos. The sound quality is abysmal. We plan to place the camera much closer to the students in the future.

Reading Project--Day Nine

Once again, I'm blogging late about this.

On Friday, we made good progress in all of the classes.

In the first class, all of the students have printed a rough draft. Most of the students received that draft back with teacher recommendations and made adjustments. In the second class, everyone is on target and has finished making teacher recommended adjustments and is ready to record. On Monday (today) students will begin recording. At the very beginning of class, everyone will practice reading aloud together (even though they are reading different things) as a warm-up. Then, then will be recorded reading one at a time or with a partner. Those with partner will sit together in front of the class, and transition to one another during the report, but everyone has to read his or her report alone.

In the third class, the last period of the day, we are a bit further behind. However, it is not that far behind considering how much class time has been missed over the last two weeks. By the end of class, everyone had printed a first draft. Next class, they will get them back with comments and will have to finish the final copy by the end of class. We will begin recording on Tuesday.

The Reading teacher and I have been discussing how this project has dragged. A few things came to mind. One, the Reading teacher seems to have decided to not do any more long term projects in the middle of January. She's not against long term projects, she just doesn't want them to be made longer by snow days and snow delays. Also, we talked about having the kids have something to read that did not need to be modified.

After doing some searching, we both decided that using news transcripts would not work for this project because they include too many people talking (which does not translate well into the teleprompter) and they include too many references to videos and images. I did a little more thinking and searching, and found a site with teen monologues. They are a great length, and would shorten the process of this project significantly. Students would be able to choose a reading quickly because they will not have to find one. Also, they will not have to modify it, which is something they did not necessarily understand how to do (many of them do not make a regular habit of watching news, and therefore don't know what types of things reporters say to transition or end a report). I think using the monologues would take a lot of pressure off of the students, and remove a lot of stress from the teacher.

Reading Project--Day Seven

Its so easy to let this blog slip on a snow day, and we've now had two. Day seven was actually Monday, and I neglected to post at the end of the day.

I think one of the down sides of this project specifically is the deadlines. Because the students can't easily send files home, and we cannot assume that even most students have access to computers or internet at home, we have to allow class time. It really isn't realistic to say, "If you don't finish part one today in class, do it for homework." As a result, we have different kids at different points. I think it gives the students who get ahead more downtime. It also gives this project a sense of dragging. This is a problem in general that needs to be addressed. It is hard to be a CFF school, or to have teachers try to infuse technology, or to try to take school outside of the classroom walls, when students are limited by lack of access. However, that is a battle for another day. For now, part of my job, as I see it, is to help teachers to plan projects in such a way as to work around that barrier instead of giving up and being limited by it.

Another problem is with engagement. We had students pick articles that we hoped would interest them and therefore lend themselves to engagement. However, the skill being addressed by this project is reading out loud. That requires practice. Based on the construct of the class, we are working with students who are not strong in this area. Like all students, when they are not strong at something, they don't want to do it over and over again, even though that is a great way to build up a skill.

As a result, students do not want to practice their readings. We encourage them and provide time. We've provided incentive in the form of having something interesting to read, and having to read it in front of an audience. However, those incentives do not seem to be enough for some of the students.

Something I need to reflect further on is how to engage students and make them want to practice doing something when they know that they are not strong at it. I know that most un-athletic kids won't practice football drills over and over because they feel they won't ever be good at football, and don't see a point. Perhaps this project needed more emphasis on a point--why do these students need to be adept at reading out loud. Also, going back to the idea of assessing them on improvement, I think many of them would benefit from a concrete goal. Its hard to be motivated by just "doing well." I think "doing better than last time in a measurable way" would work better.

I've finally had a chance to read through the reflections that the students wrote. I see what the Reading teacher meant by vague. Many of the comments are along the lines of "my pace was good" or "my pace was medium" or "I messed up a few words" or "I will improve by reading through the report next time."

At first I was inclined, as past posts indicate, to say that students were not taking advantage of this reflection. However, after reading the reflections, I don't really think that is the whole case. Once again, I've fallen into the "well they should know how to do that" mind frame. They are freshmen. They don't really know how to reflect, and they don't know how to self evaluate. In the future, I would like to see this project being with the class doing a group reflection. The teacher could play back an anonymous reading. Then, the whole class could critique it, point out what was done well, what needed work, and how the reader could improve. The teacher could record comments on the board, move them into categories, and then have students discuss if they are specific enough and how to improve the comments for a reflective paper.

Edit: 3:00 pm 1/29
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcn3kbwp_19dmzfcrcn
I've transferred three student reflections into a google document as an example

Reading Project--Day Six

Today was the due date for all students to have selected an article to read off of the teleprompter.

After finding an article, they have to modify it. They have to include a greeting, a sign off, and change around any words or wording that don't work for a spoken report. I have a few concerns.

Some of the students who finished early didn't want to take the extra time to practice. They will have in class practice time. But, they could have started practicing today. Some did. Others decided it was free "play on the internet time."

I see two possibilities for improving this in the future. 1) Give the students a chance to record and here themselves read this article. Either have the first recording be after finding and modifying an article, or tell students who finish early to record this in Audacity. That way, students could hear this article. They would have a better grasp on words they don't know how to pronounce, or awkward phrasing. 2) Put more of a premium on improvement. If students could use their reflections as a sort of check list, their practice would be more focused than just "read well." It would be "read so that you can work on these three specific things."

Another concern is that students are not even silently reading the articles. Many are. Some are skimming or picking articles with interesting topics. I think that for some, they will not fully read the article until the in class practice day. On the one hand, it will hopefully give them some concept of consequences for slacking. On the other, it will possibly hurt their confidence. I'm expecting some reactions of "this is too hard," or "this is pointless" from some students, not because its too hard, but because they did not take the steps to make it doable.

I came to the conclusion of not reading based on some things I saw. A few students did paste their articles into the teleprompter, making the text large enough for me to read from behind them. Some of the things I saw were phrases in parenthesis that made for awkward sentences, and large, often technical words.

Now that I think of it, some of that does come from a lack of thorough reading. Some of it probably comes form a lack of comprehension. Its not that the students are slacking (not all of them) and not trying to read. It is that they are so focused on reading aloud that they are missing meaning. They don't realize that something sounds awkward because they don't realize how it sounds at all. It is a string of words, and their goal is to get all of the words, not the sentence.

I talked to the Reading teacher about adding a component to the grade that reflected improvement on the specifics that students put in the reflection. She agreed that it was a good idea. However, she commented that most of the reflections are still very vague. They don't have specifics that students could work on. Also, she said that the things that students would need to be working on are often the things that they just don't do--perhaps things that they don't even realize they need to work on.

So, the students, by the sound of it, did not necessarily take full advantage of the reflection assignment. For me, the next thing I want to reflect on, is how to get students to take fuller advantage of that--in this or any other class.