Welcome to the IT Crowd!

Well, hello. Thank you for checking out my site. This site was created during the 4th month of the program in the Emerging Technologies in a Collaborative Culture course. You can check out my journey of discovery and see what went on in my classroom as I worked to incorporate meaningful uses of Web 2.0 tools to enhance learning. Enjoy!

BP8 - Links to comments on RILS

The RILS projects are posted and I have to say I am amazed. Check out two of my cohorts' creativity and dedication in engaging their students!

My comment on Pete's intuitive technology blog. This amazing screenshot has got to get you interested in finding out more!

You will probably want to find out why Tobin's blog is called Stoa Polkile. Find my comment on his page and spend some time discovering more.

RILS Publication

Here it is! My RILS project video. I decided to experiment with my iMovie skills and my students were more than happy to help me try out green screen!!! Yep, why not try something totally new for your final project of the month? It will either be an epic win or epic fail. You let me know what you think.

You can find the entire lesson on Educator's Studio.

Regardless of the movie quality, my students and I had a blast. This RILS certainly was a complete success in engaging and motivating the entire classroom!

PE5 - Schoology

 I have continued using Schoology in my class this week. I have been trying out different parts of the interface in preparation for my RILS.

For this next installment, I was on to investigating the assignments page. I quickly learned how to upload a file and how to embed videos! This was awesome for their homework assignment which was to view two videos and write a reflection. Because they were embedded in the assignments page, the students could easily access them and watch from home.

The videos I chose go right along with Clay Shirky's idea of "cognitive surplus".  Jane McGonigal discusses how playing games can save the world. According to Wikipedia, McGonigal is "is a game designer, games researcher, and author, specializing in pervasive gaming and alternate reality games."
Her vision is to increase the number of gamers from 500 million to 3 billion and to have each gamer play 1 hour per day for a total of 21 billion hours/week. She does not see this as a waste of time since she believes games can change the world...and her games do!!  World Without Oil, Cryptozoo, Evoke, and SuperStruct all challenged gamers to unleash their creativity and to collaborate with other gamers around the world on their quest for the "epic win". Check the games and McGonigal out next time you are looking to productively use your cognitive surplus :-)

The game I had my students play was not one of McGonigal's creations. This one was designed by the University of Washington and engages gamers in a collaborative effort to solve protein folding problems. Anyone can create an account and start folding. You need not have any science background! In a matter of days, gamers solved the  mystery of how retroviral protease might fold. This information may help in the development of a vaccine for HIV...how's that for successful crowdsourcing! So, my students got started with FoldIt and I was amazed at how quickly they learned the interface. They even discovered the chat box that allows them to chat with anyone playing the game at that time anywhere in the world! I have always tried to find ways to bring games into my class. Finding collaborative, innovative, creative, engaging games online is the ticket to getting my students hooked on learning and changing the world while tapping into some of their cognitive surplus. I can't wait to finish EMDT so I can spend some time gaming too!

So far I have to say that Schoology is a huge hit. Yes, new technology always excites the students, but I think that the interactivity, the format, and the intuitive nature of Schoology will give it some longevity as an engaging tool to use in the classroom. 

Now I am on to creating the assignment, discussion board, 

and page for students to upload their work for my RILS project. 

PE4 - Schoology

Yesterday was another day to explore Schoology. I introduced the site to my students last Friday and they had nothing but rave reviews to share. After spending quite some time setting up their profiles, we got to work actually investigating the academic features.

Their first task was to upload their product for the DNA Replication Assignment I had given them last week. They were to find an engaging way to explain the details of DNA replication. I allowed them to choose their format and I was so impressed by the results. There were Prezis, and PowerPoints, a Popplet and an iMovie, oh my! They were amazing. The students presented their product to each other and uploaded a copy to Schoology as a reference and for those who were absent to use. I really enjoyed how each group focused on a slightly different aspect in their presentation. This made the whole project extremely useful as a study tool.

We have also been talking about the world population since the beginning of the year and the students have been anxiously awaiting the birth of the 7 billionth person. Today a student mentioned that she had heard that we had surpassed 7 billion inhabitants, yet the site we had been relying on had the world at a mere 6.87 billion people. On the fly, I assigned an extra credit opportunity for each student to find a reputable source that told them how many people we had on the planet. Here is where Schoology came in...because I wanted everyone to have this opportunity, but I didn't want everyone to use the same resource, I created a discussion post. The students could post at 9:30pm (the best time determined by the class). You could earn the point if you were the first to post using a unique resource. They could easily see who had posted before them and what source they had used and find a new resource to share. You will note that the students were so excited to share what they learned (or maybe it was the use of the magic term Extra Credit) that 3 students posted at 9:30pm!

 

Both of these assignments were trial runs for what I have planned for my RILS next week.
The students have really been enjoying using Schoology. I am curious to see if  this engagement and interest changes as we continue to use Schoology. Check back and see!

BP7 - What's all the buzz about?

A Site for the Millenial Generation

Here you go...the follow up commercial to my iMovie teaser posted earlier. 

If you want to read more about my process in making the video click here. 

I hope to build a library of Web 2.0 tool commercials and guides 

to share with my faculty through my AR project. 

These are the first installments.

The Teaser

The Reveal

BP6 - Aunt Siggy's Spot in the Big Blogging World

Ok, I have a soft spot for animals and kids. Auntie Siggy used the movie trailer to create a wonderful, heartwarming introduction to the life of her furry friends.

Enjoy and get ready to say, "Aahhhh!"

 

I watched and commented on most of the blogs I am following and there is some great stuff. What a creative, focused cohort we have. Everyone is so willing to give something new a try and to share it with each other and their home community. Keep up the good work, gang!

BP5 - Intuitive Technology

Here is a link to Pete's out of this world green screen adventure.

Enjoy the ride!

BP4 - Study Blue

More on Web 2.0

My Action Research project is focused on developing a collaborative environment for faculty to discuss and share ways to incorporate meaningful technology into the curriculum. Web 2.0 provides a myriad of tools which can be overwhelming. One major benefit of the blog assignments over the past two weeks has been the introduction of awesome Web 2.0 tools by my EMDT program colleagues. I love hearing about tools that they use in their classes and how I might also incorporate them into my own classes and introduce them to my colleagues at my school. I hope to provide insight into a tool or two myself.
Already I have introduced...

to my faculty. I loved that different teachers felt comfortable with different tools and eagerly found ways to incorporate them into their classes. I even had a colleague introduce me to an unfamiliar Web 2.0 tool that I can see would have great value in many classroom settings.

Study Blue is a virtual flashcard system. Students can practice studying vocabulary and content stored on the web, accessible where ever they are...even on their phones!




Different types of files can be uploaded... flashcards, notes, or other study files. There is a teacher blog that also is a collaborative sharing platform where you can learn about how other educators are using this tool in their classroom. One teacher shared how her students play "hot potato" with their iPads...basically pass the iPad and answer as many vocabulary terms as possible. When a mistake is made the iPad gets passed on to the next student. I am sure the students find this to be a fun and educational game. I can't wait to get my students connected to this tool.



 Study Blue is not only connected to the students through their phones or iPads, but they can also connect to their Evernote account and share study materials through Facebook or Twitter.

Students are also encouraged to send themselves automated reminders to study. They can send this directly to their phone or post an "I'm studying" message to their Facebook account. It's just like the teacher or parent being there to say, "Honey, are you ready for your biology quiz tomorrow?" Now that is a priceless, free Web 2.0 tool!

PE3_iMovie

WE'VE GOT THE BEAT!!!

The third part of the tutorial got very interesting. There were two things I was anxious to try that were new to me in iMovie...

green screen and...



                    snap to beats.


 
These are definitely two ways I can move past basic editing and really design a project that is creative and full of emotion. So, I headed to school to check out our TV studio's green screen. Much to my dismay, the green screen is in the middle of being upgraded. While this is an excellent improvement for Tiger TV, it meant that my foray into green screen production would have to wait until next time.

Microsoft Clipart Gallery Image

Had to go with the eco-friendly ah ha light bulb!
Microsoft Clipart Gallery Image

As has happened to me quite often in this program, what initially was viewed as a set back, inevitably led to a new discovery and a new creative spark.








With green screen and impossibility this time around, I redirected and decided to try snap to beats instead. 

My students are used to me and my projects by now and are excited to be the star in yet another Innovation Studios production. I am amazed at how comfortable they all are on video. Even the quiet students come alive. It must have to do with the fact that they are used to being on camera all the time with the ubiquitous nature of cameras on cell phones, photo booth on computers, and profile pics. What began as an iMovie experiment led to my creation of a two part commercial that also satisfies another of our required assignments. Check out the "teaser" commercial here and then check out my B4 post to see the conclusion!

 

All music used from iMovie library

 Well, that's the recap of the iMovie tutorial. Here's to a successful lesson learned!

PE2_iMovie

Dreaming of Ewoks... 

Imagine what George Lucas would have done if he had iMovie as a kid! The ease of production and user friendly interface can turn anyone into a film maker! I'm living proof since I had never even tried iMovie before the program began.

Now the second installment of the tutorial was when things got interesting. The tutorial included great information about organizing, rating, and tagging clips. These techniques were simple to do and allowed multiple videos to be easily searchable for use in projects.

Up until this point, I hadn't even explored these options. I could see the value in marking videos as they were downloaded. The main reason why I like the idea of marking video as it is downloaded is because I feel like this woman in the picture. I often don't take the time to organize things right away and then things pile up. I already have multiple events and hours worth of videos on my iPhoto. Using the marking option with iMovie will be something that I begin doing from now on.

Another cool feature is the Faces option which allows the computer to help you find people in videos. This is the same tool as the Faces tool in iPhoto which I have used only limitedly. I didn't realize you could do this with iMovie. Again, I really like how Mac has been designed to do the work for you as long as you learn the simple commands. Each task Garrick demonstrated had a shortcut usually accessed through the advanced toolbar or the command key.

Once the videos have been imported and marked/rated, the fun really begins. This section is an invaluable resource and provided content that was brand new for me.

I have already become best friends with the trailer templates in iMovie. I am hoping that they will come out with some kind of update or a way to get new templates soon to provide us with some new options. If anyone hears of anything, please let me know. I am sure once we dive into the Adobe suite, we may learn things that will help us create our own completely original templates. This sounds unimaginable, but then again I never thought I could make a movie at all. Thank you Apple for making me look like a rockstar!

PE1_iMovie

Movie Making 101

I was a die hard PC person until my school gave each of the teachers a Mac laptop about 8 years ago.


 This was the best apple this teacher had ever received and from that moment on I was hooked. Apple has an amazing way of making you look like a rockstar
with very little know how.
iMovie is no exception.

I had heard about iMovie, but I was never interested in learning how to use it. I am not sure why. I guess I was always allowing my overwhelmingly busy teaching schedule to stop me from learning how to use a technology that, at the time, I could see how to use in my class. I had never been presented with concrete example of how to incorporate the application into my lessons. I had never even opened the application until our first week in the program. The very first assignment was to create a 1 minute bio. I opened iMovie and found the magic of the trailer template. The most challenging part was finding video clips. Even though it was simple to use and learn, it still took me almost 2 hours to make my first trailer. The second trailer took 40 mins...speed much improved!

After watching the first part of the iMovie tutorial, I was left questioning why we waited until month 4 to take advantage of Lynda.com to learn this application. The lessons would have been so helpful and would have saved me hours of frustration and fumbling with learning the program on my own.

 In 30 mins, Garrick Chow had taken me through the importing of videos using various cameras and formats and introduced me to the iMovie interface. He demonstrated how to create event, add clips to a project and also showed what the toolbar icons meant. After 3 months in the program, none of this was new to me. I have come quite a long way from my first 1 minute trailer. My first feature film was created during month 2, week 2. In MLT, we were to present a classroom visit from a brain based learning expert. Yes, Eric Jensen came to my class! If you've got the time, check it out.

I was feeling completely confident with all the content Garrick had presented so far and was anxious to move along to topics that would be new to me.

BP3_Schoology and more

[Neo sees a black cat walk by them, and then a similar black cat walk by them just like the first one]
Neo: Whoa. Déjà vu.
[Everyone freezes right in their tracks]
Trinity: What did you just say?
Neo: Nothing. Just had a little déjà vu.
Trinity: What did you see?
Cypher: What happened?
Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
Trinity: How much like it? Was it the same cat?
Neo: It might have been. I'm not sure.
Trinity: A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.

Or when someone learns of an amazing Web 2.0 tool from another person's blog and falls in love so much they have to post about the same tool. Oh, Schoology, where have you been all my life?!?! Well, I should start from the very beginning, a very good place to start.

I spent some time checking out a few Web 2.0 tools this week...

Wordle...my students are beginning their unit on genetics on Monday.

iMindMap...this is a template, but would be perfect for student designed lab investigations.

Blabberize...I made this to amuse my daughters who both spent a miserable day with the flu today...my daughter might kill me if she finds out I shared this :-)

I couldn't pick. Then I read Pete's blog (Thanks for posting so early. I love overachievers!!!)  Why hadn't I ever heard of Schoology?!?!!? I checked out youtube and there are videos from tech educators from around the country describing how to use Schoology for their entire district! In fact, my school had a presentation last Monday on Moodle and the interface was a long list of assignments and information that I found difficult to read and even more difficult as a teacher to create. I was editing Jessica's lit review and she has an article that states that students want to use technology at school the way they use technology at home (Spires, Lee, Turner & Johnson, 2008). Schoology looks just like Facebook and is so intuitive!!! Check out what I did in a few short minutes...

 I first created 3 courses. I am currently teaching Honors Biology and AP Biology. My third course is called Teacher Tech.

On Schoology, I can post assignments, upload files and videos (I uploaded my EMDT Bio video from week 1 to see how it worked and it was brilliant!).

I can begin blog style discussions and allow members to join in the fun. For my Teacher Tech course, I can allow the teachers to initiate discussions and post assignments they have created. They can ask questions, solicit recommendations, provide feedback for one another...Schoology provides a learning management system coupled with the interactivity and support of a social network!

 My AR project is focused on teaching my colleagues about Web 2.0 tools that they can use immediately in their classrooms. I actually don't just want to show them the tools, I want to teach them how to integrate the technology into their curriculum. I want to provide opportunities for us to work together to inspire and motivate each other as we navigate the ever changing world of Web 2.0 and soon to be Web 3.0. What better way to do this than by creating a course using Schoology to "teach" my colleagues?!?! I am certain, in the long run, that I will learn far more than I could ever hope to teach.

Spires, H., Lee, J., Turner, K., & Johnson, J. (2008). Having our say: Middle grade student perspectives on school, technologies, and academic engagement. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40(4), 497-515. Retrieved from ERIC database.

 

BP2_iGoogle Screenshots

A place for everything and everything in its place...

Check it out! I've got a PLE! The second video by Drexler and Drexler was fascinating. The whole time I was thinking about how I could incorporate some of the skills and techniques presented. I have always been fascinated by how the brain learns, in particular teenage brains. I find that too often, parents, teachers, and employers do not give teenagers the credit they deserve. Sure teens are flighty, moody, irrational, and selfish sometimes, but they are also compassionate, loyal, and creative. I try to encourage the positive traits and remember that I used to be a capricious teenager too...even though it was quite a while ago!

We set up the original iGoogle page in month one and I have to admit that I never used it. I didn't see the value in the page. I hadn't quite figured out how to use my iGoogle page as a way to really organize my tech clutter. It took a bit of time to figure out the lay of the land, but once I started going, it was difficult to stop. I found myself checking out the Gadgets and adding a couple that just make me smile. This will come in handy when I am spending hours on the computer. If I need to smile, I can check out my flying pigs and my little hamster :-)

In designing my own PLE, I quickly began to realize how powerful this kind of tool could be for my students. It would be incredible to design this as a freshman and watch it grow and mature throughout high school. The development of a learning network would provide the opportunity for my students to investigate how they learn and also how to connect with others to deepen their learning.

One challenge, not all of my students have Google accounts. Does anyone know if there is a similar tool for those who are not Googlites?
Well, I am off to check out some Web 2.0 tools. I've got my eye on a couple possibilities...check back to see which lucky ones get picked :-)

BP1_Welcome to my blog

The human brain...the most powerful machine on the planet. It is capable of amazing feats of creativity and flexibility. This mass of grey and white matter composes about 2% of a human's body mass. It sets humans apart from all the rest in the animal kingdom, yet, so little is understood about how the brain works.

As a teacher, everyday I affect the brains of my students. My goal is always to help them grow, develop, mature, learn, create, and understand. I do not take this job lightly. I know that each experience in my room leaves an impression, one that may have a lasting effect long after they have left my class and moved on to college and beyond. They may not remember the particulars of the reactions of photosynthesis or be able to diagram the process of protein synthesis, but I know that their brains will be changed forever, for better or worse. Knowing this pushes me to learn more about the brain, to find out how to engage my students in meaningful daily exercises, to unlock the natural desire in my students' brains to inquire, question, solve, and discover.

I share this as my beginning so that you can learn a bit about me, what drives me, what inspires me, why, like you, I would undertake this accelerated masters program. This journey has already been fast and furious. I have to remind myself to take a breath and slow down long enough to notice the changes that have occurred since starting EMDT. These are changes in the choices I have made in my classes for assignments, activities, presentations, communications and more. Not only have these changes impacted my students, but they have changed me. As I continue on my quest to engage and motivate my students, I find that I am becoming more engaged in the process. My brain is alive with creative ideas that are bound to leave a lasting impression on all those who join me on this adventure...maybe even you...