Open Letter to Young Adults

iMovie '09 Multiple Effects

Hi Katie! This is Audrey Farmer from Little River. I attended several of your sessions a few weeks back. Good news is .... I've already put a TON of things you shared to work. Bad news is ... I've run into a snag! We are doing a green screen project right now where one person is interviewing another about a specific occupation. Their background is that of a newscast.

One of my students is actually reporting on the job of the president and wanted to be interviewed on location (The White House). I thought it was a GREAT idea, but don't think it's possible to do picture-in-picture over a green screen project. Can you shed some light?!?

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!
Audrey

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Hi Audrey,
How exciting!
This is what you need to do as a work-a-round to make your project work. Do the green screen part first... mix it all together and everything.. and then export that much out of iMovie. (Share > Export using Quicktime, most likely). Then start a new iMovie project, import the recently exported clip (File > Import > Movies) and add the picture-in-picture effect. It kind of stinks that you can't do both at once, but with a little extra time you can at least make it work. I can't wait to see your student's final project. Make sure you share it, if you can!
Thanks for the email,
Katie

Going Mobile

While I may be a little slow to get in the iPod touch/iPhone in education movement, I can clearly recognize the value of putting the devices into students' hands. A number of recent events have sparked my gaining enthusiasm for promoting their use in our classrooms here at OHS. First was the purchase of a lab set of iPod touch devices (20 plus a Bretford charging/syncing cart). It is true that many students have access to these devices at home, however to truly expect educational outcomes, it is imperative to provide equitable access to all kids. Secondly, updating to the 3.0 OS with the ability to record audio through an add-on mic. This feature which enables students to create content, not just consume it on the iPod touch, has opened my opinions of the mobile devices immensely.

These events, along with attending recent Apple education seminars and working with a great team of Apple Distinguished Educators to create an "iPod in Education" exhibit on the Apple Learning Interchange, have led to an increased amount of time discovering, exploring, and applying ideas about learning on these mobile devices. I have started a collaborative blog specifically for teachers using the iPod touch lab in their classrooms to visit links, integration ideas, and apps suggestions all in one place. It can be found at: http://ops.esu8.org/users/ipodtouchlab/. As the teachers make their own discoveries and find successes with students, they too can post to the blog.

In addition, I received the following question via email today and so I am posting my response to share with all interested.

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I was looking at your explanation for creating flashcards for the iPod
Touch through iPhoto.
http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/story.php?itemID=16472&version=7722&pageID=19360

Is there a way to export so that you can hear the sound from the Keynote?
Can links on a Keynote be made active?
I'm really interested in having students "create" using the iPod Touch.

Thanks! Your website is also amazing!
Jan

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Jan,
Thank you for the compliment and the questions! You could export a Keynote file as a Quicktime movie and it would include sound on the iPod as well. You would just add it to iTunes and sync and it would be in your Movies on the iPod. Clickable links I'm not so sure of. I haven't tried it, but don't think it would work with a Quicktime movie export, anyway. You may be able to open the actual Keynote file on the iPod touch with some other app, but that is a really great question!

It should be noted that both of the above situations where kids are creating content for iPods are where the kids create on computers and then transfer to iPod (as opposed to actually creating on the iPod touch). There are several cool apps for actually creating on the iPod touch itself; my favorite is a recent find that I love called Sonic Pics. My own kids went crazy creating little enhanced podcasts after I showed it to them one time. As of today the app is $2.99, but what you get is a simple, clean interface to add photos to a project and then record your voice narrating them. For the images you could use photos from the web, synced from your iPhoto library, or screenshots you captured right on the iPod itself! I'm looking forward to trying out this app with students for projects like digital scavenger hunts, vocabulary development, book talks, school tours, technology tutorials, etc

If you discover any additional apps or ideas for using them with kids, please share! Thanks again for the email,
Katie

O'Neill hosts Apple LLI event

http://edseminars.apple.com/o'neill

O'Neill High School hosted its second "21st Century Learning Leadership Institute" on November 11-12, 2009 sponsored by Apple. Teams of leaders from over a half-dozen area schools listened to presentations from OHS teachers, administrators, and students and got the opportunity to witness 24/7 Learning in action. Some of the resources from this year's institute are linked to the site below:

http://sites.google.com/site/llinov09/

Google Squared

Google Squared

A really interesting concept that, to me, seems to have tremendous educational potential!

Read more about Google Squared on this blog post.

Then try it out for yourself. I entered dSLRs to start, tried search engines, and had to try "parts of speech" for my English teaching background as well. Each search provided numerous cells of useful comparison and contrasting information as well as some irrelevant info, too. Column headings can be edited to fit different needs. What a great lesson for students on using ANY search engine! Multiple sources, keywords and categories, and most especially- sifting through the useless to find the useful!


I can see introducing categories of new topics to the classroom using a Google Square and would also envision challenging kids to create their own BEFORE using the Google tool... and then comparing and contrasting what it brings up automatically. The possibilities are endless. Thank you, Google, for another simple but effective educational tool.

Search. Learn. Share.

Iron Teacher - "A Separate Peace"

Tom’s Bionic Teaching blog and my good friend Michelle's blog have inspired me to attempt this first of hopefully many "Iron Teacher" Challenges. This challenge is as follows:

The Audience: 2 classes of 10th grade General Level Literature students.

The Secret Ingredient: The novel “A Separate Peace”

The Challenge (as defined by the teacher): Students are beginning a book discussion of the novel “A Separate Peace.” These particular students struggle to demonstrate understanding of content through writing, but have recently become more motivated to read and respond to literature as their teacher has incorporated audio books and modern literature into the curriculum.

The teacher shares that the class performs better when asked to discuss personal experiences and would like to incorporate the book themes of envy/conformity into the book discussions. These students in particular are not easily motivated to participate in class activities. Their teacher is looking for an original and fun way to have the students discuss and share while demonstrating understanding in a way that goes beyond writing an essay or taking a multiple choice test.

Here’s my submission to the challenge.

BIG IDEA: Sacrifice

Essential Question: How does human sacrifice intensify during times of conflict?

or How does sacrifice affect our world during times of conflict?

When the Devon students return to school in the Fall, they are appalled at the idea of having no housekeeping services, along with many additional changes, due to the war. Sacrifice in "A Separate Peace" ranges from this minor discomfort to Gene's self-deprivation of sports while Finney is away, to the highest sacrifice one can offer: service to one's country during times of war.

Students in the 10th grade literature classes would start by brainstorming the examples of sacrifice in the story, along with the motivation and the result of each. Then, while applying ideas of parallelism, they would be in charge of searching for examples of human sacrifice in the world around them-- either from people's memories of historical conflicts or resulting from current political, cultural, or additional categories of conflict.

Motivate the students with a challenge of their own....

CHALLENGE Statement: Strengthen intergenerational connections by sharing stories of human sacrifice collected from around the world.

To collect and share others' stories of sacrifice during times of conflict.

Students could (in teams or individually) set out to find others' stories of sacrifices and bring them back to the class. The possibilities for collection methods are endless, but here are a few:

• Cell phone calls
• Audio recordings
• Digital cameras - still pictures and/or video
• Written transcripts of conversations
• iSight camera video capture
• Record an iChat or a Skype call
• Emails
• Creating a VoiceThread and collecting comments
  

A time limit (somewhat short to make it more challenging) should be imposed from the beginning.

This could even be fashioned as a "scavenger hunt" type activity with different point values assigned for varying degrees of complexity, for example...

Bonus pts for:

• Someone from a different state
• Someone from a different country
• Story from more than 40 years ago
• Collection of the story with video, as opposed to just audio or taking notes from a conversation
  

Once they have captured their examples of sacrifice, there is so much that students or student teams could do to compile the stories. Some ideas I considered include:

• Creating a digital "scrapbook" of sacrifices
• Organizing the stories in a "living timeline"
• Using Glogster to link the stories to one main webpage in a "digital poster" format
• Creating an iMovie video montage, slideshow presentation, or a podcast highlighting the stories

A Step Further....
To encourage narrative writing, students could be asked to choose ONE example of sacrifice and turn it into a longer piece of writing. Including references to the historical background of the story, would incorporate research writing skills as well as narrative writing skills for the students.

The Iron Why: What’s the justification for this challenge solution?

Open-endedness and student choice is at the core of my lesson. Students need practice in the interpersonal skills of interviewing, listening, and storytelling. Parallelism as well as compare and contrast comes through when analyzing the idea of sacrifice in the novel as compared to real-life sacrifices. Hopefully empathy is being developed by the students as they search for the stories to bring back to the class in this project.

Teachers' Note:

While fine details and procedural writing are not my forte, I truly enjoy thinking of ideas to engage my students. Working with another teacher to hammer out the smaller details, any challenge of this type could be much improved. No matter what, I did truly enjoy the experience of reading a great new piece of adolescent literature: "A Separate Peace."

Challenge Based Learning... the message is spreading!

Challenge Based Learning
Momentum is gaining for a innovative approach to K-12 education and evidence of its positive effects on learners was witnessed this past weekend in Nebraska. The NETA (Nebraska Educational Technology) 2009 Conference featured keynote speaker Stephanie Hamilton of Apple Computers who predecessed her of Challenge Based Learning with years of research, references, and examples of why change is needed in education. I had the privilege of sharing my involvement in Challenge Based Learning in two breakout sessions. The first, with fellow ADEs Joanna Seymour, Ross Abels, and Therese Laux, overviewed the ACOT2 Initiative and our involvement in the curriculum development team as well as a call to action for schools to begin using the widely scalable CBL framework. In the second, fellow teacher Deb Barelmann co-presented with me to share the story of the CBL pilot at O'Neill Public Schools as our students took on the challenge of apathy in our school community.

Saturday, April 25 was the date for the annual "Digies" Student Media Awards. In addition to promoting excellent student projects from across the state of Nebraska, announcements were made for changes to the contest for next year. Instead of focusing on specific media types (digital photo, informational movie, etc.), the contest will use Challenge Based Learning as a framework for all student projects. Students are encouraged to find a challenge in their school or community, form teams, and work together find an actionable solution to that challenge. Digital Media projects could highlight the process or the solution itself or both! Age divisions will be K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 and up to five smaller film festivals will be held across the state in communities that have the most entries. This exciting announcement for Nebraska education shows the scalability and adaptability of the Challenge Based Learning model and should definitely help promote some positive practices in K-12 education.