Reflecting on our student video tutorial project so far

Brenda June and I sat down last week to talk about our Room 10 Learning Chats project. It's the grant funded project I posted about previously, where students and teachers are creating learning videos. We will report about it at MACUL in early March.

I recorded our conversation and uploaded an edited version to SoundCloud. You can listen to it all or just pick the separate sections below. Each section is about five minutes long.

Summary:

• Part 1 - Overview of the project and some initial insights
• Part 2 - What we've learned as we continued working through the process
• Part 3 - Putting more motivation into the project using Prodigy and our value of watching their videos
• Part 4 - Our Learning Journey video series, thoughts on branding, growth mindset, our next steps and the positive difference it has made.

Six-Word Memoir Photos on a Chromebook

A popular assignment in our English 11 class is the Six-Word Memoir Photo project. In it, students take a picture of themselves, add six words to it that describe them, then the teacher compiles all the photos into a video slideshow.

This year I made a short tutorial that shows how students can complete the entire process on a Chromebook using Pixlr Express. Pixlr Express is my favorite app for editing photos because it works on so many devices. As I say in the video, the process is very similar if using phones or tablets as long as students download the Pixlr Express and Google Classroom mobile apps.



Here's a link to the document that we attached to the assignment in Classroom. It has the links I refer to in the video.

This project is a perfect example of how simple tools let the good ideas, personality and creativity shine through. You don't have to lose a class period dealing with the how-to of the process and students love expressing themselves in this way.

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I'm doing a challenge this month to post on one of my blogs every day. It's in preparation for my conference session, The Way of the Google Drive. Be sure to follow me on Twitter or on either blog to keep up with the "thoughts and tools to inspire". 

Click here to see all the posts from my Teaching Like an Artist blog with the tag The Way of the Google Drive.

17 Short Learning Activities for Extra Computer Time

I wrote this list of learning activities for middle school teachers so they'd have some options to give to students who finished work early in the lab. There's nothing terribly innovative here, just some open ended starting points that result in exploration and a written reflection or summary of what they learned.

What are other sites or activities come to mind for this purpose?

This is the list as a Google Document.

Complete one of the activities below.  In each case there’s an opportunity to learn something new and to sum it up.  Do not copy and paste writing from websites unless it instructs you to.  All assignments will be checked for plagiarism.

1)  Wolfram Alpha - This is a computational knowledge engine that creates knowledge by combining several sources.  Go to http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/ and see some examples.  Click on one that looks interesting.  Search for something similar and write a summary of what you find in either a Word document or a PowerPoint presentation.

2)  Wikipedia - Start with an article related to a personal interest.  In that article, find a link to another article that teaches you something you didn’t know.  Read that new article and write a summary of what you found interesting or what you learned.

3) Physics Simulator - Go to http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/by-level/middle-school  Browse and experiment with the simulator.  Summarize something you learned.

4)  Blogs - Search for a recent blog or news article about something that interests you.  Summarize the author’s points and write your response.  Be sure to quote parts of the original blog post or article in your response.

5)  Reviews - Read a review about a movie, book, music or game that you like.   Summarize the author’s opinion and write your response.  Quote parts of the original review in your response.

6)  Another Middle School - Look up a website of a middle school that you don’t already know about.  Browse the pages of their website until you have learned some things about the school.  Summarize what you find.  Here are some questions you might answer:  What appears to be the best thing about that school?  What suggestions do you have for their website that would help you learn more or make it easier to use?  What do you dislike about the school based on what you see on the site?

7)  World News - Use Google news to find a current World News event that is of interest to you.  Summarize the article and write your thoughts about it.  Be sure to quote parts of the news article you read.

8)  U.S. News - Use Google news to find a current U.S. News event that is of interest to you.  Summarize the article and write your thoughts about it.  Be sure to quote parts of the news article you read.

9)  Local News - Use http://www.mlive.com/flint/ to find a current local news event that is of interest to you.  Summarize the article and write your thoughts about it.  Be sure to quote parts of the news article you read.

10)  Khan Academy - Watch a video on any topic you don’t already know.  Summarize what you learned.

11)  Fascinating Facts - Make a PowerPoint presentation with at least five interesting facts about a topic of your choice.  Pick facts that might make anyone want to know more about your topic.  Make a slide that lists the websites you used for your information.

12)  Found Poem - Read this article about how to write a found poem:  

http://www.creative-writing-now.com/found-poetry.html  

After reading it, find any webpage that you want to use and create a found poem from it.  Write your poem and list the URL for the webpage that you used.  Write a sentence or two explaining why you picked the words and phrases that you did for your poem.  

13)  Suggestion for Class - Find a website, game or online program that you wish a teacher would use in class.  Write the URL of the resource and explain why you think a teacher should use it and how they could use it.

14)  Computer Terms - Find definitions for 10 of these computer terms.  Copy and paste the definition you find online, include the address of the site where you found it and then rewrite the definition in your own words.

Hard Drive Monitor VGA Cable Processor Speed RAM PDF Desktop CPU

USB IP Address HTML URL PNG Intranet Internet GIF

Browser Search Engine mp3 Open Source Blog Virus GUI Router

15)  Make a Timeline - Use this online tool to make a timeline with at least 6 events from start to end.  It can be about your life (from birth or maybe just a single season of life) or it can be about some famous person or event(s).

http://www.softschools.com/teacher_resources/timeline_maker/

Get a screen capture and paste it into Word.  If it’s too long to fit on the screen, copy it in parts.

16) 100 Word Challenge - Go to http://100wc.net/ .  On that blog you will see many prompts and some links to responses that other students wrote.  The object is to write 100 words based on the prompt.  Pick a prompt you like.  You might have to do a lot of scrolling and go to other pages to find one.  Write 100 words as a response.  You can read some sample ones first if you need to get an idea of how these should look.

17)  Career Research - Do some research online and find information about a job that you would like to have.  Summarize information about the career and explain why you think it would be a good career for you.  Also copy and paste the address to the website(s) you used for your research.

What I Learned about Ed-Tech in 2011

This has been an incredible year for learning for me. I want to highlight some of the most important thoughts, and I'm not talking tech tips! Also, I will end with some of the most important questions that linger in my mind as we head into 2012.

What I learned...

I finished my graduate courses in August, then in early September I started co-teaching at the middle school level. I taught a Digital Media class and a Computer Literacy class, each for about nine weeks. While finishing up those graduate courses over the summer, I became rather idealistic. But it didn’t take long for middle school to snap me back to reality! This was an amazing opportunity to work out a balance between those extremes.

Now that we’re almost done with the first semester, I can see just how much I still have to learn. I have picked up a number of skills for creating meaningful lessons that most of the students will attempt. I have a few students in my mind (some by name and some by their general characteristics) that I simply have not been able to reach, but at least I can see what it will take.

The best example I can offer that speaks to my learning is a holiday slide assignment that I gave the class just before we left for break. I based it on the popular high school game project that I referred to in my last post. For the middle school students we used PowerPoint. Many of the aspects of the project were the same, but I made one very important improvement when I started the project with them.

See, I jumped into the game project with the high school students without setting it in context. I was starting to assume that the creativity alone would be motivating. That doesn't work for students who have been in a more conventional education system for so long. While I and their teacher considered the activity a success, we were not happy with the negative attitudes of some of the students who felt they would not use the skills that they perceived (graphic design and game design, specifically).

In response, I shared these lists below with those students and I think it addressed our concerns. When I started the project with the middle school students, I used the lists right from the beginning. It made a significant difference to put the project in this light.

Important skills addressed in this project:

• Learn new software
• Present with text and graphics
• Research and cite sources
• Be creative within requirements
• Process written information
• Produce quality results

I shared with them how I look for these skills when I work with students. I also used to emphasize these skills in a high school course about success.

Important qualities of any good employee:

• Maintain a positive attitude
• Adapt to changes - Flexibility
• Do what it takes

Last of all, I encouraged them to form habits that increase their opportunities for success.

These skills, traits and habits will be a focus for me in all future projects.

Big questions that I have at the end of the year...

Are we going to get there fast enough?
Speaking of that balance that I mentioned above, small steps toward the goal are required as we work within budget constraints and conventional systems of public education. The students, at least the ones in the district where I work, are not prepared for a big jump to higher thinking skills. I have had to learn patience as I want to rush toward the ideal. But is there time for such a patient approach?

And another question has lingered in my mind since early 2011. With gaming being so popular for students and with some very promising results of using computer games in the classroom, I feel the urge to use more of it. But I can’t help but wonder, why does it always have to be fun? This actually brings several questions to mind:

• Why are so many students seemingly only motivated by play?
• Even if, through play, we can teach them the curriculum, are we doing them favors?
• Will they really step up to the challenges of adult life when the only road to success is the way of hard work with no fun?