Business Plan Project--Day Three

I'm a bit behind in blogging.

Friday was the last day of the Business Plan project.

As had become very predictable on Thursday (and even to some extent on Wednesday) almost every group needed a turn on the camera.

It wasn't as bad as I had originally predicted. There were some definite conflicts, with students having nothing to do but wait while another group used the camera. I hope that some of those students made the connection that, if they had done the requirements of the project in a different order, they could have been recording on an earlier day instead of sitting around idle, waiting on a camera, and worrying about failing the project.

The largest disappointment was that hardly any students actually edited the video. One group, that had taken the initiative to stay after school and record on Thursday, was able to edit. They added some color filters, a title, and some scrolling credits. And, they were able to edit out mistakes. I was very proud of this group. But I was very disappointed that out of five classes, only one group accomplished this.

A few students with access to equipment, or who had stayed after, were completely finished at the beginning or part way through class. This was a great convenience for me, because I was able to use them as assistants to help classmates with the camera and the software. It was a shame though, that they were able to help with very little editing since no one was editing.

Most of the students did the best they could in a single take, and saved that as a movie.

I think I would approach this project slightly differently in the future. Part of the point was the put some responsibility on the students. And, from what the teacher said, this is not the first long term out of class project in which most of the students put everything off until the last few days of in class time. I think, if it were my class, I might take a page from one of the Science teacher's books. During the creek project, the science teacher left the students to do the large project outside of class time. However, about half way through, she had a check up day where all of the students had to prove some sort of progress.

These are freshman students. I am a firm believer in teaching responsibility by placing responsibility on students. I think, in my own classroom, I might take a half way approach between the Science teacher and the Social Studies teacher. In earlier long term projects, I would have check up points, either half way through or even more frequently, when students had to turn in proof of progress for a grade. As the year progressed, I would continue providing students with time lines, but have fewer check ups. This would hopefully at least give students another tool for organizing their project and managing their time, while placing gradually more responsibility on the students without the incentive of "points."

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.

Possible project--Science Presentations

While working with the Social Studies teacher on his Business Plan project, I got an email from one of the Science teachers. She was having blue tooth issues--which is unfortunately not something I'm that good at helping with.

While I was trouble shooting, we got to talking. Her students are currently working on presentations for infectious diseases. She wanted to be able to video tape all of the students and put each presentation on a CD. While we were talking, we started throwing around ideas, and got to the idea of allowing the students to edit their presentation videos in Movie Maker. That way, they could edit out long pauses or such.

I told her I was doing something similar with the Social Studies teacher, and invited her to stop down and check out how things were going if she had time. I also said that I would try to estimate, based on that project, how long she would want to give her students for editing.

She seems to like the idea. It gives another dimension to the project, and it gives the kids a chance to basically give themselves a second chance if their presentations don't go off perfectly.

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.

Presentation to 5th Grade teachers

On Tuesday, we had a district wide in-service 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 equipped 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.

PD for Social Studies.

One of the biggest challenges I have faced as a CFF coach has been a general lack of time for professional development.

Last Friday I was able to act somewhat proactively and find time with some of my teachers.

There was a scheduled in-service day on Friday. The, because of a quirk in the schedule, it was closely followed by a second in-service day the following Tuesday. I heard through the grape vine that because of this, the first day had a large amount of time allotted to department meetings. My school does not have regular department meetings, so I rarely have the opportunity to speak to a large group at once.

Taking some initiative, I sent out an email to all of the department chairs, offering to give some professional development--on any topic or program, for any length of time. I figured that being flexible would make the offer more attractive. If a department head only had fifteen minutes to fill, and was afraid I was asking for an hour, it would have been a missed chance.

I heard back from both the Math and the Social Studies departments. Math later had to cancel because they had to focus more on curriculum, and, as the department chair told me, they had a rare, engaging, and productive dialogue going on.

Social Studies offered me a two hour block in which to present whatever I wanted.

I had to sit down and give this some thought. I wanted to present something useful, and something fun that would grab their attention and help them see me as someone who can help enliven the classroom and not just someone who drone on and on about technical issues. I decided to go with Photo Story and xtranormal, and to end with a demonstration of the new ActiveInspire software that we are hopefully adding to the computer images over the summer.

Photo Story did not go well. I had originally anticipated having about a half dozen high school teachers with teacher CFF laptops. I knew that about half had Photo Story and about half did not. That was a decent mix, because I was planning on having teachers work in pairs to create a short story. I gathered pictures for me to use to make a presentation while demonstrating, and another set of pictures for them to use to make their own. That way, I we could save time but not having teachers have to search for pictures. Unfortunately, my plans were for nought. When i arrived, there were about a dozen teachers, from the middle school and the high school, and two of the teacher with Photo Story were not able to attend. So, almost everyone needed to use a student laptop, but those had been recently re-imaged and no longer had Photo Story. I did a very quick presentation, that even I knew was getting dull and boring, because no one could follow along. All they could do was watch. I kept it to about ten minutes, and showed just the very basic buttons. I also showed parts of two student generated Photo Stories as examples of what students can create in a limited time. The examples were by far the best part of the presentation, and I was glad I had thought to bring them.

I very quickly moved on to xtranormal. This was a program I chose because I knew most of the computers had updated flash, so most of the computers could run the program. Also, I know that it is always a big hit. It is fun, easy to use, and most educators can envision ways for either themselves or their students to use it in the classroom. About half the computers did not have the latest flash, so mostly everyone worked with a partner, but even that went well.

I started by showing a demo video I had made. In it, a British Ninja and an Australian judge discuss how easy xtranormal is to use. I then pointing everyone to the website and had them sign up. I then walked them through selecting characters, voices, and a setting. As a group, we came up with a few lines of dialogue. I demonstrated switching between characters, adding camera angles, and adding actions. As I was doing this, everyone was able to follow along and add their own actions, angles, and lines.

When I finished the short demo, I gave an assignment. Each group had to create a movie with at least six lines, two actions, two camera angles, and, for "extra credit" two looks at the cameras, two facial expressions, and one point.

It went well. Everyone completed a movie. I don't know if everyone met every requirement, though. I really only used those as guides to encourage exploration and creativity.

And most importantly, they had fun doing it. Everyone was laughing, and sharing their movies as they worked. And they were talking about making movies for their classes, or having students do them. All in all it was a great success.

I then demonstrated tinyurl as a way to easily get a link to everyone's finished video to share with the group.

In the end, we didn't have time for the ActiveInspire demo. But I think that this was time well spent. Several teachers were exposed to a tool they didn't know they had. Several were inspired to see how easy some technology is. And, I hope, a few saw the value of working with me to show them these tools so they can use them to reach their classroom goals.

Business Plan Project

I started working with one of the Social Studies teachers last week on a video project. It was part of a larger project that, at the beginning, I didn't know much about.

The larger project was for students to create a business plan. The video part of the project is for students to create a commercial.

I began by going back and getting a better handle on movie maker. I haven't looked at it in a very long time, and I've never really used it. I felt it was my first duty to know the program in question. I took an afternoon to look at the connections, how to transfer files, what the file types were, and how to work with the video. It was pretty easy.

I next managed to find a few minutes with the teacher to go over how the program works. He didn't seem to think it was too difficult, either.

I then created a set of directions for students. I ran them by the teacher, and made a few changes. We then started talking about turning the projects in. In the past, the teacher had not known anything about video editing. Students had just had to rewind and re-shoot any mistakes. Then, the teacher simply uploaded all of the videos to his own computer. He wanted the directions to include saving to his computer, but I pointed out that that would mean having each group use his computer to edit. That would have been a large logistical nightmare.

In the end, we decided to contact the tech department and set up a teacher workspace folder for him. This is a folder that all students and the teacher can access. In this way, it pretty much fills the function of a drop box. There is less security, but I don't think most students would think of it that way. I had the teacher go through and set up a folder for each class under his workspace folder.

Now, each group will be able to record their video, edit out any mistakes without hogging the camera, edit it on their own computer, and share it with the teacher easily.

One of the important aspects about being a coach, in my opinion, is having the experience and the mind set, to be able to foresee issues, and see a way around them.

Creek Connections Symposium

I haven't been able to blog for a good long while.

A few weeks back, I went with the Science teacher to the Creek Connections Symposium. This was the culmination of the Creek Project the students have been working on.

The best projects--the ones that did the best job of asking and answering a question relating to fresh water in Western Pennsylvania--were invited to attend. The Science teacher made an observation that was a little disheartening. She mostly invited students that had done computer based projects. Of those who were invited that did not use a computer, none chose to attend. That was a little bit upsetting.

It could have simply been a matter of coincidence. Many students who were invited could not attend because of conflicting schedule (specifically a track meet that day). And, many of the students who did not use computers were more unwilling to make the suggested corrections that they needed to actually attend.

The symposium itself was a great experience. Our students, as freshmen, were amongst the oldest there. There were quite a few "billboard" projects on display. Not many of our students had turned in projects that did nothing more than list facts because of repeated warnings not to, and because of the frequent check up the teacher did to keep them on track.

There were a few excellent and interactive projects, too.

We were the only school that had any technology at all. That did not make us a better school, nor did it make our projects better. I think we were an impressive school. We were also a resource heavy school and had barely enough outlets to run all of the laptops.

I think we were also a brave school. Because of having the computers, I opted out of one of the afternoon activities to pack up and generally keep an eye on things. This was the first time we had been allowed to take the laptops out of school, and I was very invested in making sure things went well.

I did have a chance to do one of the afternoon hands on sessions. These were a series of workshops held by environmental and other science majors of the sponsoring college. It was a great way to make learning more fun. The sessions were hands on, interactive, and, best of all, outside.

Things overall went very well. Our students were well behaved, and may have taken something away from the symposium. Hopefully, they took away that a) hard work has its rewards and b) creating a more interesting project will make it more likely to generate that authentic audience that makes it all worth while.

Foreign Language Department Meeting

About an hour before the department meeting with Foreign Language, I was in a bit of a panic. The entire network was down. Suddenly, with no reason (and no later explanation since, and I'm writing this about three days after the fact) there was simply no internet.

That was problematic since I was intending to show the teachers some tools and then discuss how they might be used for instructions.

Fortunately, about fifteen minutes before the meeting, the network just as suddenly and mysteriously decided to function again.

The meeting went relatively well. In prep, I had added a page for foreign language to my wiki. I mostly used tools I was already aware of that I felt had foreign language applications. I showed the teachers my wiki, and the list of tools I thought would be of use.

I was hoping to discuss more curriculum and/or standards. But, as is often the case with tech enthused teachers, they were very focused on the tools. Even so, while looking at the various tools, they did talk about HOW they could use them. They talked about how they could replace something less functional that they already used. They talked about specific lessons where these tools would engage students. At first, I was starting these conversations, but by the end of the meeting, I was just sitting back and listening to them.

I think this meeting was a very good start. I showed them voice thread, voki, audacity, and wordle.

Audacity was probably the least favorite, because it looks intimidating. They liked voice thread, but are a little wary of having to pay for the edu version, or of risking students stumbling across inappropriate content or comments. Also, I think trying to use the mouse to annotate images was frustrating for them. Voki was by far the favorite. The teachers were able to quickly figure it out, and saw the potential for having students be very engaged by it. They liked audacity for the idea of having students listen to themselves speaking a foreign language, but liked voki better. Students could still listen to themselves, and re-record as many times as they like. And, students could still share work with one another. But, the interface is more engaging (a talking cat is just better to look at than a big grey box) and less intimidating. The time limit of 60 seconds is also not likely to be an issues. And, as time moves on and the teachers become more comfortable with some technologies, they might be more willing to give audacity another try. I'm of the opinion that in the meantime I should look for something similar that scares people less.

They also had a chance for a better intro to the student laptops. Because they do not have teacher laptops, I decided to bring student laptops to the meeting so that everyone could have a computer. It did make trying to keep everyone on the same page a challenge. One teacher had an exceptionally hard time with the red mouse button. and, the teacher whose room we used wanted to sit at her desk, so it was harder for me to notice if she had missed something.

This was an intro--to the computers, to using technology, and to working with me--and as an intro it went very well. I think that I will have opportunities to collaborate with the foreign language department in the future.

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.

Foreign Language Dept

I finally had a meeting with the non CFF teachers today. I had been unsure if this was going to happen, but, as they are now allowed to use the laptop carts, I strongly felt it was needed.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I had a larger turnout than I'd anticipated. I was on my own--no one from admin or the tech department was able to make the meeting. Still, things went really well. I almost forgot to print a meeting agenda, but I managed to pull one together about fifteen minutes before the meeting, and I had a cart to demonstrate with. I didn't have access to the internet, which meant I wasn't able to show any of the image files I wanted (I couldn't log onto the computer because it was not connected to the network, and I don't have a local logon for the room I was using).

When I took questions at the end of the meeting, I got a lot from the two Foreign Language teachers. Since the work day was over, I eventually thanked everyone for coming and asked the FL teachers if they wanted to stick around and go over some things (I also wanted to lock the laptop cart up before its storage room was locked for the night).

They are very eager to use the laptops. Their first thought was using the laptops to access their online text books. Previously, they had had to have students do this as homework, and even that was not an ideal situation since some students did not have access to the internet. As we talked, we discussed using the laptops with headphones for listening activities. I mentioned the Audacity activity I had done for reading fluency, and they liked the idea of doing something similar. We also talked about having students make and record vokis and use muchobeets flashcards. I hope to also bring up the idea of collaborating or communicating with native speakers. This will be more difficult without student emails, but doable with tools such as blogs, wikis, nings, skype, etc.

One of the teachers I was talking to was the dept. chair. At one point, she said she wanted to share and talk about some of these ideas with other teachers in her department, and I told her that, if she wanted to have a dept. meeting, I would be more than happy to come and talk with them.

I'm glad that, even though foreign language wasn't included in CFF at my school at the beginning, I will have the chance to work with them now. I'm really looking forward to it.

White Board in the English Classroom--Peer Review

I met with one of the English teachers to work on ActivStudio today.

I learn a lot from the questions that teachers ask me. I don't always anticipate the questions, problems, or misconceptions that people have. But, I do know that a lot of them are shared.

She asked if, in order to project a Word document, she had to convert it to a flip chart file.

Again, I'm better at showing than telling. So, we turned on her projector, and I showed her how everything on the computer gets projected. That part she had already figured out, and so I realized that she wanted to know about writing on the Word document. So, like I did with the Calculus teacher, I showed her the options of using the Desktop Annotation tool, and the Word Marker tool. As I anticipated, the Marker tool met her needs better--she wanted to be able to project a student paper, and peer review it with the class while marking up suggestions and corrections. (I find it a little easier to work with Social Studies and English teachers on the White Boards because I can anticipate what they really want a little better than Science and Math.)

After that, she asked about scanning documents. This was not as easy a question to answer. She had practice PSSA essays that she wants to peer review. I think it's a great idea. However, they are in pencil. Only the freshman teachers have scanners, but we were able to use one of those. The pencil essays were very light, and took awhile to scan. We only had time to practice with one. Later, we projected the one scan on the board, and it was very hard to read from the back of the room.

The teacher is eager to use the whiteboard, because her students are eager, too. And, she doesn't like wasting paper. She really wants to do this peer review project on the board on Friday. Unfortunately, I won't even be around to help her scan, because I'll be at a training tomorrow. After some conversation, she decided to take some of the papers home and scan them there (I gave her some tricks for darkening the text), and if that doesn't work, she'll do printouts as a back up.

I hope that this activity works. Its encouraging to see teachers eager to use the technology, and success will only encourage them more.

CFF teacher Meeting

Over the past two days, I have met with the new CFF teachers.

Meeting with CFF teachers can actually be a trick at my school. Unfortunately, just because of the way we set up the program, it isn't really all that possible to bring in subs to cover classes. And, because of time issues, there's really only a 30 minute (20 minute after waiting for students to get out of the halls and teachers to pack up for the day) window after school when all teachers must be in the building. I've tried making meetings before school, but a lot of teachers don't have time--they don't show up on time, or they have to prep for the days classes. And, we can't make teachers stay any later--even offering to allow them to leave early the following day isn't much of an incentive for most. And, most of the time, meetings can't be mandatory--I don't have that authority.

So, after a great deal of emailing, my principal finally did make a mandatory CFF meeting for new CFF teachers. I didn't get exactly what I wanted--a meeting for all teachers, CFF and non, new and old--but life is about compromise.

The meetings were identical, but divided into two groups to make sure that a) everyone had a chance to attend and b) keep attendance small (this was when I was still expecting more teachers) so that the Tech Director and I could answer questions without them getting out of hand.

The agenda was simple: real basic intro to your laptops, whiteboards, and projectors. Laptops came first. The basic rules were, know where your cart is housed (up to six teachers are now sharing each cart, and each cart has a permanent home) keep the carts plugged in, make sure students remove and replace laptops carefully and plug them in, and report tech issue to the tech department, not the person keeping the cart. I of course also emphasized that there was to be no eating or drinking while students used the computers. The whiteboard/projector intro was equally basic: how to turn it on, open ActivStudio, plug in all the wires, shut it down, flip between computer and video. The Tech Director also emphasized not turning the projectors on and off too frequently to lengthen the life of the bulb.

So all that was lacking was...any sort of mention of integration. Again, compromise. I'd been hoping to have a longer meeting (or two--one for laptops, and one for projectors). But in a school, time is not something easily come by.

I've created a sort of sign up sheet for my teachers. In some ways, I think one on one instruction/conversation about HOW to use the technology--not just how to make it function, but how to integrate it and make it meaningful--is going to work better than large group instruction. To that end, I created and shared a google doc with all of the teachers, so they can sign up for when they want to meet with me.

I probably could have done better, and maybe even thought the entire process through a little more. Since I won't have a chance to meet with teachers face to face to introduce google docs and walk them through the set up, I emailed them directions on how to set up a google account and access the shared document. Then, all they had to do was type their name into the cell on the chart for the day/period that they wanted to meet with me. It seemed simple.

But, I forgot about the verification email that google sent out. Its sometimes hard to remember these things, when I signed up for this or that program so long ago. The verification email from google had a list of links to google apps that teachers now have access to. That tripped some up. I sent out another email that had the original link to my shared document, hoping that that would be enough to keep frustration levels low, but I fear that teachers just don't have time to be patient with a mistake like that.

For now, I'm hoping that, if I wait til Monday, and send out another email with all the directions (better directions that explain that the links in the verification email will not lead to my document) teachers will forgive and forget.

Even with the sign up issues, I've still had the chance to work with three teachers one on one so far. Working one on one allows me to go at their pace, address their questions, and gives each teacher time to use the equipment--instead of doing a one size fits all group training.

And, even though I had trouble getting folks to sign up for google docs, one of the "cart keepers" decided to create a google docs sign out sheet. I swung by to help her set it up and share it. Most of my advice revolved around giving clear instructions on how the set up process worked. I hope that she has better luck than me.

Creek Project--Update Two

I visited the Biology Class again today. The teacher was introducing the Creek Project to the non-honors students.

With the honors students, kids were introduced to the project, given ideas of what to do for the project, and then allowed to start research and planning, all on the same day. As a result, as we discussed, a lot of students were skimping on the research in favor of coming up with "great" ideas.

For the non-honors, the students were assigned to come up with a questions and do research on it in class. Then, today, after two and a half days of research, they were introduced to the project. The teacher and I went through some of the possibilities--dressing up in character to teach about your topic, creating a game, creating a Photo Story, creating a web site. Like the honors classes, these students will also be allowed to come up with their own project if they get it approved. A lot of these kids also just did the Photo Story in their English class, so this could be a chance for them to shine, by using a program they already know, and being able to make it better from having had practice (and now more time). I also showed them how to link between pages of a ppt, so that they can make clickable interactive games/presentations. Several students also decided to make wiki websites, since they already know how to use wikis from the cell "my space" pages earlier in the year.

On the back of their directions sheet was a worksheet that had to be filled out by Monday--name of partner, topic, question (all of which had already been established prior to today) and how they are going to teach about it. She asked them to be detailed, and not just say "game" or "website." At the bottom was a calendar showing the midpoint date, when they had to present evidence of their progress, and the due date. I told her it was a really good idea. She said that she got the idea from me, when I commented that a lot of the honors students didn't take this seriously yet because they think they have more time than they do--the assignment was given in February, with all the due dates being in March, making it feel like nothing had to be done for "over a month." I fear I was only able to make this observation because my mind works in similar ways at time, and my first reaction to all of the due dates was "wow, they have a long time to do this." Because I'd pointed that out, she decided to give the non-honors class a very clear visual representation (calendar) of how much time they had. It made me feel useful. She's also thinking about putting up a daily count down for the honors kids. I don't think that that's a bad idea at all.

Sight Project--Assessment Day Four

Final day of this project.

It didn't take us long to finish up the grades. We had to watch two more movies that hadn't been played in class because the creators had been absent that day.

After finishing grading, we talked a little about doing the project next year. She wants to do it again, which made me happy. Then, because its a real possibility, I asked her if the grant ran out and there was no coach next year, if she'd still do it again. She thought for a minute, but said she would. She decided the program is easy enough that she could guide kids through it, and, even though grading by herself might take longer, she could get it done. After all, next year she'd have a rubric ready to go at the beginning, and a better idea of what to expect.

I told her how much I liked the idea of having the kids offer feedback. I don' think enough teachers do that, and I know I didn't do it enough in the classroom.

One of the ideas that they shared with CFF coaches at boot camp was the idea that conversations can lead to being able to work with teachers. And here was the progress of that. While talking with her about the feedback, I remembered, and commented on her really unresponsive 7th period class. And we talked about how it was a problem, because without feedback, she wouldn't necessarily know where to go or what the class needed. And, you could never be sure if it was a matter of kids not wanting to talk, kids being shy about talking in front of the class, kids not getting it, or kids just being lazy. So I suggested a blogging project--where kids could think out and write out their answers before sharing.

She seemed to like the idea and asked how it would work. So, I told her about the other "blog" projects I'd done. I gave her the example of the Social Studies teacher who had the kids blog outside of class, and the English teacher who blogged in class (and I was honest about how horribly that went) and the other English teacher who blogged in class and assigned kids to respond to comments by other students. She seemed to like that there were a lot of ways to go with it.

She then said there were going to be starting Greek Myths soon, and she wanted to have them do something with writing their own "journey" story. I was tempted to say they could do a Photo Story, but decided she might be ready to be done with Photo Story for a least a little while. Instead, I suggested doing something like the 1001 Flat World Tales. Then, the students could work with a partner, write their story, have a partner leave comments for editing suggestions, read and make comments on their partners' stories, and edit.

She seemed to like both ideas. And, she really liked that I could offer to show her examples of each.

Sight Project--Assessment Day Three

After viewing all of the remaining photo stories in a straight run of three classes, the English teacher called it a day.

So, we reconvened the next morning to compare our notes/rubric scores for the kids. It started going a bit faster after awhile. No more looking back to see what a certain commented had translated to grade wise on another paper--we could just remember. The same comments seemed to pop up on a majority of papers. Words like "why" and "speak up" and "don't read your captions."

I think some of my suggestions will get implemented next year. She definitely plans to start the photo/image gathering at the beginning of the play. And, I think she's thinking about having it be about what students would show Helen Keller--especially since some students had commented that they did not really see a connection between this project and "the Miracle Worker."

It was fairly tedious task, but we got most of the projects finished. We stopped with about twenty left when we ran out of rubrics.

White Board on Observation Day

One of the English teachers is being observed today. I haven't worked with her a lot, but I have had the chance to chat with her from time to time. She tends to have a lot of connection issues with her blue tooth (I am so glad that the new boards aren't blue tooth).

Yesterday, she came down to my room. She said she wanted to use the white board for the lesson she was being observed during. She wanted to project a worksheet in word and fill it in. She wanted to know the best way to do it. I'm a fan of showing rather than telling with technology, mostly because I'm not sure I tell all that well (never sure what level of terminology is going to offend or confuse, and easily travel into tangents). Besides, showing gives the learner a chance to try it for themselves right away, which helps them remember. If they don't try it until they go back to their room, they are more likely to forget, and a lot of egos won't let abide by having the same thing explained again. So, we went back to her room.

The first problem, of course, was getting the entire word document to show at once. Fortunately, I'd just figured out where that button was in Word 2007. So, I explained where to click while she did it. I did the same thing to show her how to get ActivStudio to allow her to annotate over the desktop. This seemed a better option than using the Word Marker because she didn't want to save the annotations, and, with this being an observation, I didn't want her to have to deal with the same difficulties as the Calc teacher did--learning to wait for the program to scan the annotation, and having to remember to switch back to the marker.

After walking her through it, I closed everything down and had her try again without my help. I sometimes worry that teachers might feel that this is a bit condescending, but I find it effective. I set them up for success and let them succeed. If they can't get it without help, we start over. I try to not go too many steps without a pause for practice--that isn't going to help "set them up for success." I think that's a bit difficult for someone used to searching for the button that seems to make sense and just trying it. I can get ahead of myself if I'm not careful--and that is only going to confuse and frustrate the teachers. So I try to limit it to four or five mouse clicks in a row, then practice.

So, after getting it right, I left and let the teacher practice on her own. I promised that I would swing by right before the observation and make sure she still remembered everything and see if she needed anything else. And, I assured her, that if I was there observing, too "just in case" it wouldn't seem out of place to the Principal--the coach is supposed to observe.

This morning, about an hour before I was due to visit her, the English teacher showed up in my room with another question. She said that she had everything down, but wanted to know if there was a way to have students fill out the same form, one group at a time. I think I'm also better with being shown than told. I've found (and this is going back to when I worked at the help desk in grad school) that people who are having problems with technology don't always explain it in a way that I follow, and sometimes miss details. So, to avoid frustration on both ends, I've taken to the habit of cutting to the chase and asking them to show me, before I start trying to fix the wrong problem.

So we went back to her room. What she wanted was to put up the desktop annotation screen, write on it, minimize it, bring up a new blank one, and have the students write on it, minimize it, bring up another one, and have a different group write on it. Ok. Not a question I was actually able to answer right away. So I tried it with minimizing. Didn't seem to work--when I tried to start a new one, it just brought the minimized one back up. So, I went with save, close, open a new one. That seemed to be exactly what she had in mind.

I offered again to hang around. She decided she was nervous enough with one person observing. So, I told her I'd make sure to hang around my office and, should she need me, to just send a kid. I'll catch up with her after the observation and see how it went.

Sight Project--Assessment Day Two

Day two went a little more smoothly for me at least.

I checked in with the teacher at the beginning of the day, and she hadn't been happy with any of the grids she'd typed up, even though we had the rubric more or less finished. I offered to type it up for her and make copies. We then used the new grid to revisit our notes from watching the videos.

It was slow going at first, with a lot of second guessing. The teacher was unhappy that the students hadn't had a rubric to begin with. It was a big problem. It wasn't an oversight--we both knew at the beginning that not having a rubric was not a good idea--so much as planning/logistic/experience issue. In the end, we decided to grade the projects according to the rubric, and then give a 2% curve.

As far as the experience issue here, I think it would be good for both the teacher and the students to have experience. Of course, experience with projects, not just the same project multiple years, will help the teacher feel more confident in making a rubric ahead of time, and give her a better idea of what to look for. And, it will give the students more time to get better with the tech so that the tech is not detracting from the skills and content of the class. And it will help them to know how they are going to be graded--not just because they'll have a rubric, but they will be used to having this teacher grade them with similar rubrics (and used to having their classmates as an audience).

After getting through most of the already viewed stories, I decided to bring up some of the ideas that I'd had. For some reason I'm always nervous about that part of working with teachers. I don't want them to feel that I'm being pushy, or criticizing. And I don't want to step on toes.

I started by suggesting she introduce the background work for the project sooner--have students collecting pictures for the length of the unit. This would give them more in class time to work with the videos, and make it more likely that they would take time to find images that interested them, and not just images they had on hand. She definitely liked that idea. Then I suggested that since they would be doing it during the play, she could tie it more to the play by having it be about what students would show Helen Keller, and why, instead of just what they wanted to see. I couldn't tell how she felt about that, though.

The bell schedule was normal for day two. We watched the videos with rubrics in hand. I used the back to take notes to compare with the teacher later. I then circled what I felt were appropriate scores in each category. I'd say the hardest part was quickly getting student names on the papers so I would know which comments went with which students.

I saw a lot of the same patterns that had emerged on the first viewing day. Students often felt like they missed or lost the point of "sight" vs. dying. There were long meaningless stretches of photos with no narration, no captions, no explanation, and no music. And, several stories had sections that just felt insincere. I really believed that some students wanted to see Paris. Others, I had a hard time buying that they would ever go to Italy to see Venice "and other sighs." For the most part, though, everyone had several good elements to their story.

At the end of each class she did something that I wasn't expecting, but was really pleased to see. She just asked for feedback on the project. Apparently she does this for every project. I did this from time to time when I taught, but not nearly enough. It was very informal, too. She just asked, and kids raised their hands to comment.

Fortunately, I happened to have my computer on me and just took notes (for my own reflective benefit, and for this blog). (The computer is a good thing because I type faster than I can write neatly).

Predictably, the conversation took a pretty similar course in all of her classes. The first two offered their comments with little extra prodding. The last class was hesitant to speak at all, though. They did come to many of the same conclusions as the first too, but it took some leading questions to get them anywhere. It reminded me of the first day I'd been in that class and, as this group of girls came through the door talking a mile a minute, the teacher told me "if you ask them to talk, you get stares. If you let them talk, they won't shut up."

The most common comment from students was that they needed more time. Going a long with that, several agreed that if they had been able to work on it from home it wouldn't have been so bad. Or, they would have been able to work more efficiently (my word) if they had had more time ahead of time to learn and get used to the program. (It makes me feel like I'm doing a decent job of reflecting that I was able to anticipate this before hearing the student feedback). Some other criticism were that a lot of the projects were too similar to one another and not enough were original; the computers themselves froze or didn't connect properly which wasted a lot of in-class work time for some students; some people didn't have access to cameras so they didn't have access to personal pictures; some people had so many pictures they didn't know how to fit them all in or what to do with them; the background noise of the class made recording hard; they were embarrassed to show them; and some students (mostly the same that had been making this complain since day one) didn't see a point in having to record themselves talk. One student said she didn't see a point to the project at all, and another said she didn't really see how it was related to Helen Keller.

A lot of these problems could actually be fixed with more time, more explanation in the beginnig, and now having a few projects to show as examples. More time will let them learn the program, give them more time to plan out thier story, allow us teachers to make accomodations for small groups to record outside of the classroom, and give students time to really fine tune their projects for a better finished product. I would say that, using the analogy of an essay assignment, students did some prewriting and a first draft, but some didn't have time for much, if any, editing.

One thing I didn't anticipate was the a lot of students didn't know how (or didn't want) to limit their pictures of friends. They wanted to use every picture on their camera. Next time when I explain about not over using transitions and making the story flow and using music that makes sense, I will a) better explain what I mean about music making sense and b) explain that sometimes less is more and using too many pictures that have nothing new to add to the story will bore the audience. I would also like to add an audience grade component to the project. I don't know how many teachers would be willing to use this as part of the grade, or how heavily they would weigh it, but I think allowing students to critique one another, with their feedback being worth something, it would encourage them to a) do better on their own projects, b) feel a little empowered in class, and c) if they were allowed to critique their own projects, too, help them learn to be more reflective.

Only one comment really bothered me. One student said that she didn't see a point in using the computers for the project. She liked the idea of what they were doing, but would have prefered to just make a scrap book. I know that this particular students had a good deal of trouble with getting the laptop to boot up properly and connect to the network. And, she missed a day, and therefore missed in class time to work. I think perhaps we need to do a better job of explaining to students that they need to learn how to figure out how to do things. I hope that, even though she was complaining in class, she actually did get something out of the project, even if she doesn't realize it yet. I hope that she didn't just learn a little about Photo Story, but that she was able to reflect on herself, and to pick up a few tricks about learning something new.

There were some good comments too. I just like saving the posititves for last. Students called the project unique. Some said that, given more time, they could have really gotten into it ("I could have talked for days about what I really wanted to see.) Some enjoyed working on the project, and even used the word fun. And, my favorite comments, were the students who wanted to do it again, and felt that they could do so much better next time.

Fortunately, a lot of these same students are working on the bio project, and will have the chance, if they choose, to use a Photo Story for the creek project.

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.

Promethean Boards and ActivStudio--Calculus Classroom

A few days ago, one of the new CFF teachers, a calculus teacher, got his equipment installed. He was very eager to get started.

His first question was how he could use the board to fill out a worksheet in MS Word in a way that, when he scrolled thought the document, the new drawings would move with the board. I went down to visit his classroom. I showed him how to use the Word Marker. He practiced a lot while I was there.

What he wants to do is use this to give students notes. I believe he is going to give the worksheet to students, and then fill it in with them--for their notes. There were pros and cons to using the board this way. Ultimately, it did what he wanted. It wasn't text recognition, which worked better--it allowed the students to clearly see the different between the pre-printed worksheet and the added notes. However, he found in very annoying that, once he paused in annotating, he had to wait for the program to scan his notes as images. Then, he was frustrated that he had to reselected the pen tool. And, we found out the hard way that trying to use the pen for anything while the program was trying to scan the annotations was a bad idea.

However, with practice, he got used to the steps he had to take. He later told me that he started using the board with classes that very day.

Yesterday, I got an email from him about ActivStudio again. This time, he was recording his flip charts and wanted to post them to his websites for students to review. However, he was concerned that students without ActivStudio at home would not be able to view the flipcharts. His fear was correct. I looked into the recordings, and at first recommended that he export them as swf files. I planned to see him at the beginning of the day today to show him how.

By the time I got there, he had not only figured it out for himself, but had also found that they wree not posting correctly to his website. When he clicked on the swf files, they didn't do anything. I was about to start trouble shooting, when he saw that he could export them as ppt. Since he was not concerned with the students following each pen stroke as an action, but was more interested in them being able to see the end product, this worked very well for him.

I was really impressed with this teacher for taking initiative, and learning by doing. This is the sort of skill that we want students to have. I think this teacher could be among the leaders in the school moving towards 21st century education.

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.

Sight Project--Day Two

Day two was a very productive work day for the kids.

A few kids needed some technical help. A few kids have decided to make collages in paint and transfer them into Photo Story. Some students still needed help with figuring out how to save files to a specific place, figuring out why they couldn't just paste a picture into the insert picture dialogue box, or selecting multiple pictures at once. For the most part students worked diligently throughout the class period finding and importing pictures. No one has started narrating yet.

I am a little worried about the three day timeline. Students were not given any set limit to how many or how few pictures they need, and so some have about thirty. I wouldn't be as concerned if the program was internet based. As it is, though, we gave students the url where they could download Photo Story, but not everyone has internet access, and not every parent is going to let kids randomly install software.

I talked with the teacher about the time. She asked my opinion. I told her that the kids were making good use of the time (better on day two than on day one), and that I didn't think most of them would get finished in time. The projects are due Friday, so they will have two days to work on them outside of class, but not everyone will have access to the software at home (and most probably don't have microphones). She agreed. She decided to continue telling students that they only have one more work day, but to give them a fourth day. That way, the will continue to work during day three, believing its their last chance, but they will have the needed fourth day.

Most students are still in the process of finding and importing pictures. Some have started to plan or put their actual stories together--thinking about what they want to say. I find that they want to get instant feed back before committing to anything. But they aren't looking for teacher feed back. They are looking for peer feedback. Its been a noisy project, but most of the conversations are about what they picked and why. I don't think most of them realize that these conversations are part of the planning process. By explaining what and why to classmates, they are preparing to record those same thoughts.

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.

Sight Project--Day One

The sight project got off to a slightly rocky start. The teacher and I weren't on exactly the same page about the path the project was going to take.

Students have to decide what things that want to see with their last three days of sight. I was under the impression that students had already been told to start gathering pictures (bringing them from home) and thinking about what they wanted. The teacher was under the impression that students would start planning out their projects on the first day in class.

Basically, the first class was instructed on how to use Photo Story, and then told to start planning things out before going on a hodge podge truck through google images, searching for anything that popped into their minds. So, they rather predictably put aside paper and pencil that were meant for planning, and started going searching and saving, and importing photos. During class, I wrote an "order of operations" for the project on the board:

1. Plan
2. Find
3. Import
4. Create

I can't say that I'm 100% satisfied with that order of operations. Again, though, it comes down to not necessarily knowing the class as well as I would like. For some students, especially less organized students, this is probably great structure. For others, its going to be restrictive. I don't think kids need to find ALL pictures before importing, but it might help them stay organized. I don't think that all students need to import ALL pictures before creating--creating covering all aspects of using the program, including scripting, ordering, etc. I think for some kids, it would be good if they felt that they could do a little--write a note or a caption, befor they forget some good idea they had.

I do think, however, that some students will do things in their own order despite what was on the board. So, again, I think that the organization will help some students, and I hope that it won't hinder others. I do agree with the teacher that having kids plan out WHAT they want before beginning an image search will prevent them from being wasteful with their time. However, I hope that students who have an idea or two know that they can still go back and add it, even if the've moved on to import or create.

For the rest of the classes, I went through the "order of operations," as I for some reason insisted on calling it, before showing them how to use Photo Story.

I was rather pleased with how my intro went. I think Photo Story is very easy to use, and most students could have picked up on it without much help. However, I took the opurtunity to go over some other computer basics. I stressed the importance of checking for network drives before beginning any work. I don't know if it is a laptop issue or a wireless issue, but frequently, students cannot connect to their network drives. They work half the class, and then can't save. Sometimes they end up saving to the desktop without telling anyone, and lose their work. So I stressed that, if they do work, they deserve to have something to show for it.

Then, when going over saving photos, I went over file organization. I talked about putting things in folders, putting things where you will remember them, and naming things with some amount of logic. I'm sure a few kids already knew what I was talking about, but my experience tells me that most of them didn't. I think we live in a world where kids have always had the latest technology, and we assume they can use it. Largely that is true. But that doesn't mean that we don't have to take a minute to teach them old time skills like organization. Most teachers know student folders end up a mess, with papers sticking out, for a majority of students. I don't think its safe to assume their computer folders look any different. I probably didn't win any converts to the cause of hyper organization, but I think I opened a few eyes to the idea that they don't have to have one giant folder full of files they can't recognize.

I also focused on the idea of this being a story telling project. I talked about how, if they scripted themselves, they would sound better. I talked about giving the narration some interest. I tend to get a little sarcastic in front of classes. So to demonstrate what I wanted, I demonstrated what I didn't want. I started with "this is a...um...a picture of my friend Janet. I would want to see her...uh...be-uh-cause...she's my friend...and, uh, yeh...that would be good to see." Then, in a monotone: "This is the ocean. It's pretty. This is a flower. It's pretty. This is my mom. She's pretty." The kids laughed--which was the point--but I think they got it. Modeling is important. A lot of times things seem obvious to teachers, and we are frustrated by students who "don't have any motivation." But, I've found that modeling will improve student outcomes significantly. Just because its obvious to a teacher, doesn't mean its as obvious to a 14 year old who is going to be a bit less self aware. And, humor sticks with people better. I think just showing them a well put together example would have been good, if I'd had one (this is the first time doing this project, so I don't), but showing them what not to do--and making it funny--is also helpful in terms of modeling.

After going through the intro, I let students get started on the project. A few kids have photobucket accounts and were looking through them for photos. Others pulled out cameras. Many went straight to google images.

I did see a few lists started. The teacher instructed students to break their project into 3 days, since it is the last three days of sight. They have to specify what they will see on day one, day two, and day three. For the most part, I saw lists for day one. This is not exactly the amount of planning the teacher wanted--she wanted full lists that could be divided by days later--but at least it is something.

One thing I noticed during class was that a few students had lists that made it look like they were going to die, not go blind. I told the teacher, who laughed, and said she'd make a small announcement tomorrow.

Since the students didn't have a full day to work, most of them focused on pictures that came easily to mind--friends and family. I'm curious what they will think of after they get past the familiar.

Presidential My Space--Day Two

Day two had a lot more work get done.

The first class of the day was the honors class. I was very disappointed with some of the students by the end of class. Most did not make very good or wise use of their time. Very little in the way of content was added. A lot of students spent class making their text look better, or trying to edit the background, or coming up with cute or funny comments to put on the pages. A few did get work done. Many started working in word--they seemed to have an easier time working with text in word (makes sense). So, even those who did a lot of work don't have much to show on the wikis.

The rest of the classes made much better use of time. This did surprise me, since they were non honors classes. A lot of students started having fun with it. The teacher was very good about allowing students to use "slang" and phrasing that would get them kicked out of an English class. He told me its hard for him to read Lincoln saying "yo yo yo, I like country cause we didn have none a dat hippity hop", but he's letting the kids do it anyways. And I'm very glad he is. The kids, despite their word choices, are using accurate info. It did occur to me part way through the day that kids who are being very conservative and straight laced with the language are having a much harder time putting it in their own words. Kids who are "my spacing it up" are actually having an easier time summarizing (that is something I will have to remember).

Also, kids who are having more fun with the language are having more fun with the project, and putting more work into it. The teacher commented more than once that a few kids surprised him. Students who don't usually do well because they are not strong academically--or because they are not motivated to put in effort--are doing well (not all of them, but quite a few). And, again, even though George Washington would roll over in his grave at the way he's now "talking," he's not saying anything that's not true.

A few students didn't make the best use of their time. And a few are still having trouble navigating pages, or dealing with going back and forth between multiple pages. However, its getting better. That makes me happy. I'm glad we did a project that requires a skill that a lot of students lack. It has been a little frustrating for all involved, but the students are getting stronger at a skill that everyone will expect them to have.

And I think the teacher is seeing the value in creativity. Because the kids are able to enjoy the project--and let themselves show through the project--they are doing better. Its not true of all kids. And some are more interested in how things look and being funny than in being accurate (or even substantial). But by letting go of something like standard English (as a Social Studies teacher myself, I can sympathize, but as someone younger, I'm taking it better) he's allowing students to be more engaged. Some students even worked on the projects from home, and have done some amazing things with layout, and using different internet tools.