Brazil!

We´ve  made it!  After two long flights (10 hours from Toronto to Sao Paulo) we are in Brazil.  It has been fantastic to connect with the other Canadian Innovative Teachers.  I can´t wait to meet educators from all over the world.  Darlene, my project collaborator and traveler, started a voicethread about our travels.  Please comment and contribute. 

Our Canadian group also has a blog about our adventures.  http://canadainbrazil.edublogs.org

Our first adventure was in customs at the airport.  We standing around after a 10 hour flight, waiting in line, only to see Twilight stars Tyler Launter and Kristen Stewart in line.  No one was really noticing, but I knew who they were and quietly nudged and poked people to bring it to their attention. I got a lot of who are they?! Not the 15 year old girl crowd apparently.

Jodi was brave enough to ask for an autograph and Darlene snapped this photo:

Everyone was very calm and collected in the customs area and the baggage claim area, but once they stepped out into the main waiting area there was a crowd of screaming girls mobbing them.

I was just trying to get out of the way!

Darlene started a voicethread about our travels. Please comment and contribute.

We arrived to a lovely hotel and used the time to get to know everyone and their projects a bit better. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

 

October 23, 2009

One week from today I head to Brazil to attend the Microsoft Innovative Educators Teachers Forum in Salvador, Brazil.  My colleague Darlene, and I, will be presenting on our Marvin 3D animation, digital storytelling project.  Check out the project details here.  The Canadian delegation has their own blog detailing their journeys and excitement here.

I am finally letting the excitement get to me as it is only a week away.  I can’t wait to journey to the southern hemisphere and try out the GPS with an S on the screen.  We have a day layover in Sao Paulo and I’m planning on taking Darlene on her first geocaching expedition.  I’m going to take a few travel bugs with me to the south for my students to track. 

At the forum itself we are presenting and getting the opportunity to network and build connections with innovative teachers from around the planet.  We will be collaborating and building global projects to enhance the learning of our students.    I can’t wait to learn and be inspired by amazing teachers from all over the planet! 

My students are going to miss me, or at least I hope they will, but I am going to Skype back with them, blog, and leave comments on their blogs.  I want to model how technology can keep people connected, even across continents. 

Brazil, here I come!

 

October 9, 2009

My students have been immersed in the world of blogging for a month.  They are absolutely loving it! I’ve posted previously about why I started blogging and how I am going through the process of blogging with my students.  Now that I’ve been at it for a while with my students I wanted to share some of the upsides my students and I have experienced.

1) Word Processing Skills – blogging gives students an authentic platform to practice word processing skills.  Students always learn better in a real world context.  When I teach about putting two spaces after a period or how to run a post through the spell check function just using word, it doesn’t have the same effect as checking over a post that is going to be published on the internet and viewed openly.  When given an audience students have much more of a drive to learn necessary word processing skills.

2) Global Ties – our blogs have opened up the world.  In just a month we’ve received comments from all over the world.  I can tie in geography by mapping our connections and using the clustermap to see where we have had visitors from.

3) Multimedia – our blog is a great place to collect all of our class artifacts.  We post our podcasts, animoto videos, and photos.  The kids can go back to view them at any time and can easily share them with family and friends.

4) Writing – one of my students commented today – “I love blogging, but I don’t like writing.”  Hmm…you’re writing!!  The students are able to share their viewpoint and find their voice.  They are able to express themselves and share in a journal like format, but one they find much more engaging!

5) Typing Skills – My 10 year olds are struggling with typing.   Many are afraid to try to use two hands and are sticking with the “hunt and peck” method.  It is something we will keeping working on.  Blogging is giving them a reason to want to improve their typing skills.  They want to get more into their posts in the limited time we have, it’s great motivation!

Any other upsides of blogging with students that you have experienced? Please comment and share!

Our class blog with individual student blogs linked: http://jendeyenberg.edublogs.org/

 

October 1, 2009

What have I done?

I’ve created a groups of kids that rolls their eyes if I pull out a worksheet.  Ok, so I roll my eyes when I pull out a worksheet.  Generally that worksheet is tied to a project with technology.  My two worksheets of the week were to build a timeline we later created on word, and a page of notes we made mind maps out of.

They expect to connect with the world everyday.  They blog with students all over the world and want to share everything they learn.  We Skype and Videoconference with classes from anywhere with timezones that match up with ours. They want to make a podcast instead of writing notes. I love it!

We are working on building wikis, communicating with other classes using Edmodo and Onenote liveshares, posting to forums on Moodle,  and using GPS to find ourselves and follow travel bugs all over the world. The map shows all of our global connections so far, and it`s only been a month, I will keep adding to it! Zoom out to see the whole world!

View Larger Map

Legend:
Red – Travel Bug Stops
Yellow – Wiki Collaborators (More to Come Very soon!)
Light Blue – Marvin Moodle Collaborators
Blue – Blog Partners
Pink – Video Conferences
Green – Travel Bug Sharing

I had to start a spreadsheet of all of my projects to try and keep everything straight.  I’m completely rewriting my year plans to match the new way I’m approaching teaching.  My entire teaching world is shifting.  Three years ago I taught in a traditional school.  I loved teaching there, but now that I’ve met, collaborated with, and learned from some amazing people my world is expanding.  This is expanding the world of my students.

I’m working away on a master’s program in Instructional Technology Leadership.  This program has led me to challenge the way I look at not only technology, but leadership, and where I want to go with my career.  My Personal Learning Network (PLN) on twitter have been an unending source of inspiration, ideas, collaboration opportunities, and resources.  I read blogs, listen to podcasts, and network with some of the best minds in technology education.  These influences are changing me, my classroom, and my world.

Bring on October!!

 

September 19, 2009

I am very fortunate to be a part of a Microsoft Innovative Educators project this school year.  We are using a program called Marvin to create a digital story.  Marvin is click and add programming environment.  The students add lines of codes or commands to develop a personal narrative.  The students can add multiple 3D characters.  The characters can move and perform actions.  They are a bit limited, but very responsive if you take the time to program the characters to move in small increments.  By building multiple lines of code, you can create complex sequences.  Marvin allows background images to be added.  You can also upload sounds, record voice, and combine all of these parts together to create movies.  You can export the final project as an .avi or .mov file.

We are using the Marvin program to create a personal narrative.  A big part of the project is developing a sense of self in the students and finding their inner voice.  We don’t just want a blow by blow story of their existence, but an understanding of their past and what makes them special.

One of the colleagues I am working with on the project developed a moodle course to guide the students through a process of self discovery.  Each moodle section has activities to complete, forums to participate in, and resources to help guide them.  The students researched the origin of their name, interviewed their parents about when they were born, and researched their family roots.  They shared their favourite memories, choose meaningful quotes, and wrote six word memoirs.    The students developed a timeline of their life, shared ideas about what they would do if they ruled the world on a live chat with students from other schools, and planned their movies using a storyboard format.

The project guides students through a process of creating a digital story using various tools.  Glogster was used to create digital posters of family roots.  The students used wordle to organize and publish their six word memoirs.  A wallwisher virtual bulletin board was used to post and share ideas.  A OneNote liveshare was an open sharing medium used to facilitate a chat among students across various school locations.  Wikis were used to compile stories of students’ most embarrassing moments, funny stories, and life lessons.

Combining useful tools with a content management system to build understanding allows students to build a self awareness and personal voice that come together to create stories using Marvin animation software.

I can really take no credit for the ideas and project development.  The credit all goes to Darlene, a grade 5/6 teacher.   I am just grateful to be part of such a powerful learning experience for children.  I wanted to share the ideas so others may benefit from the power of digital storytelling and a worthwhile collaborative project.

The project has been selected to present in Salvador, Brazil at the end of October.  Who is attending is still being worked out at this point, but my fingers are crossed!

 

September 4, 2009

Over the last two years I’ve eased my way into blogging with my grade 5 students in the classroom.  I started with a simple blog where students left comments on a particular topic.  It was more of a forum than a blog, but it was a starting point.

I then started to open the blog to comments from more than just my students, inviting other classes and educators to leave comments.  I also had my students comment on the blogs of others.

This year I started blogs on the second day of school.  My goal is to provide a place for students to write, grow, and express themselves.  Sometimes the topics will be very prescribed, other times they topics will be of the students own choice.

I’m using edublogs as my student blogging platform.  I choose it for the safe, more protected environment that it provides.  I blog at wordpress and at edublogs and I like both.  I’ve tried blogger and google spaces, but I like the dashboard editing environment of wordpress/edublogs.

I set up all of the student accounts ahead of time.  I used the gmail + method described here to set up accounts.  I used numbers and the school acronym as usernames instead of the students’ names to provide a more closed environment.  I set up everything a head of time so we didn’t have to go through the process of choosing usernames, email confirmation, and a general headache.

The first day of blogging was learning how to log in, picking a theme, and renaming the title of the blog.  Some students are still at this point and slowly making changes.  A few are flying and have already written several posts.  I gave them a set prompt to write from on the second day, and we all had to learn how to copy and paste from the class blog to their own.

@mswecker and @fivbert were kind enough to leave comments for my students.  I can’t wait to go back on Tuesday to see the reactions of the students who see they have comments!  They are going to be very excited.

Visit their blogs here!

 

September 1, 2009

When preparing lessons using Smart notebook, one of the great features you can incorporate is the ability to hide content and have it “appear” at an opportune moment.

The list below are your options to hide and reveal content in your lessons:

1) Flash Based Pull Tabs – In the new LAT 2.0 the pull tabs can be “pinned” to a location.   After you pull them out, you hit the arrow and they will hide again automatically.  Pull tabs in the LAT 2.0 can be pulled from the left, right, top, or bottom of the screen.  They can also be pulled out from behind other objects.  Very flexible and useful!   The tabs come in all sorts of colours to match your lesson design.

2)Simple Pull Tabs – The flash based pull tabs are great, and easy to use, but they have limitations.  The graphic based pull tabs are more flexible.  You can group an image, text, or a shape to the graphic tab and pull out the tab to reveal the attached content.  Using image transparency you can have a complete overlay attached to a tab and pull it across to fill in answers, add colour, or enhance details.

3) Question Flipper – Text/Image – a simple tile that, when pressed, flips over to reveal text or a photo.

4) Balloon Pop – click on the balloon to reveal text, graphics, or photos underneath. Great for very young kids!

5) Question Tool – click on the box to have text appear/disappear in the box.

6) Information Button/Note Reveal – Click on the Question mark to reveal information!   A nice reveal tool to use with old and young students alike.   The information button has a larger box to type in.  The note reveal is for shorter chunks of information and can appear to the left or to the right.

7) Click and Reveal Shapes – click on the shape to reveal text, graphics, or photos underneath.  The shape can be a square, star, circle, rectangle, or triangle.

 

GPS in the Classroom

GPS receivers are a useful tool to enhance learning in the classroom.  I’ve written all about geocaching in the classroom, but I wanted to share more uses for the GPS which I am exploring this year.

1) Travel Bugs – Travel Bugs, or trackables are objects or coins which move from geocache to geocache.  They are logged on the geocaching website and you can see all of the places they have been.  It is a great way to calculate distance, learn about geography in other places, and connect with other cachers.  I have sent out two with my class.  Flip, the prairie dolphin, has a goal of getting to the ocean.  He’s been all through British Columbia and up into Alaska.  Flop, Flip’s brother, is headed to Virgina.  I’ve connected with two fellow GPS enthusiasts (@elemitrt @mswecker) who have sent The Big Lick Travel Bug to Lethbridge to visit my class.  We’ll see which one gets there first.  Click on the names of the travel bugs to see where they’ve been.  The travel bug in the photo has a goal of getting to the Prime Meridan, I’m going to use it to teach my students about longitude.  Another interesting trackable is the Canadian Geocoin, which I picked up in Lethbridge and moved 5988km to Dominica, my students will watch where it goes next.

2) Tracks – When you move your GPS can record your path and produce a diagram of your movement.  There have been some neat large scale projects of creating images on a global scale – this video shows an amazing example. In the classroom, sending the students out into the school yard to create tracks for an art project or to create a given shape, such as an isosceles triangle in a geometry unit, gives a kinesthetic, hands on approach to teaching a concept.

3) Geotagging – Use your GPS to mark the location of local sounds, specific to your area. Freesound.org has an interactive Geotagging Map that you can explore to find sounds from all over the world and add your own local touch to.

4) Podcaching/GPS storytelling – This is like a guided tour at a tourist site.  There is more information at this site.  Students can listen to particular tracks at a marked location to learn content, get instructions to their next locations, or the guided tour can give them clues to move along a set path.  I would recommend making one yourself first, then having the students create them.  They could be wet up around a given theme, such as exploring a local pond, or they could be a story telling exercise, such as a choose your own adventure by having choices of tracks to take people various ways depending on their choice.  This can be integrated with the GPS easily as your GPS can mark locations to listen to specific tracks.

5) Seek and Spell – A neat Iphone app.  Using GPS users have to move around a field and collect letters to spell words.  It is designed to challenge other users and see who can spell the most words or longest words.  I don’t have an Iphone, and I haven’t tried this app, but I already envision adapting it to handheld GPS receivers.  If you mark 26 locations around the school yard and have a stamp or stickers of each letter at a location student can spell their own words, or given words by visiting the marked locations.

6) QR Codes – QR codes are black and white squares, similar to UPC codes that can be scanned to gain information.  The GPS can mark the location of a code, they find the code, scan it and answer the question.  You can even have audio set up for each location with an Ipod to give clues to the question.  This site has a great example of how they can be used.  This site can create QR codes.  You can decode QR codes with almost any camera phone, both Iphones can blackberries have an app.   This site has a free download which works with most camera phones.  In a high school where most students have phones – use them!  Not so much for me in an elementary school (although there are some). I’m hoping the new Itouch, which is supposed to have a built in camera will do the trick for me.

Great GPS/Geocaching Resources:

Geocaching.com – the main site for geocaching

Geocaching Wiki Glog – a great collection of ideas, resources, and links.  Join and add to it!

GPS Presentation – by @thekyleguy – a GPS enthusiast

Tina Coffey’s Blog - she uses GPS and has great integration ideas – be sure to check out pirate caching!

Dr. Alice Christie’s Geocaching/GPS guide for Educators

Unique Geocaching Containers

Geocacher University – a great resource site

 

Building a Unit in Smart Notebook

One of my goals for next year is building my individual Smart Notebook files into complete units, providing some flow, cohesiveness, and I will have all of my resources in one place, easily accessible.  Over the summer I hope to get my units done and ready to go for neat year.  I’m starting with science, grade 5, electricity and magnetism.

Here is the process I am going through to build a Smart Notebook based unit – as I try to maximize the use of my Smart Board and engage students to deepen their understanding of the concepts being taught.

1) Theme, background, and visuals – I always start with a background colour, a title, and a few visuals to create consistency.  After the title page I create a theme from the first page so that it is easy to have the same colour and title on each page following.

2) Outcomes for the unit – I build the outcomes of the unit into simple, “I Can” statements for students and link lessons to those outcomes.  I reference the actual outcomes at the end of the unit – to keep them in an easy to refer to location.

3) What do I already have – I dig through my old files to see what I already have made, and what I can incorporate and reuse.  What I don’t use I delete, I’m never one to keep old files – they just collect and I never use them, so I clean them out as I go.

4) Linking – The key to developing a unit – linking smart notebook files, pdf files, student handouts on word, assessments, and helpful external websites.

5) Visuals, Media, Videos, Flash – I love using the Smart Board for Flash activities we can do together and discuss.  I think the hands on nature of them is great reinforcement of concepts for students.  Visuals are key for visual learners, and short video clips to introduce or reinforce concepts are very engaging for students.  For a complete list of the flash activities in the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0, with examples – Click Here

6) Bringing it all together – pull together individual lesson elements, attach files and stand alone Smart Notebook lessons. Using the attachment tab you can bring in pdf, smart files, word documents, and collect all unit documents in one place. This collection makes all of your files easy to access, and easy to link so all of your lesson and unit materials are in one place.

 

Web 2.0 – Teaching in the Caribbean

Over the past two weeks I’ve had the tremendous privilege to teach and learn in Dominica. I think it went amazingly well.  Walking into a new lab was certainly a surprise.  They are installing new computers and labs with mounted projectors in a number of locations.  A few places are even getting smartboards.  I worked for the two weeks on convincing our ministry contact Luguay that they should be mounted low. so that the students can use them.  They didn’t envision student using the boards, but after I demonstrated how they work and had a few of the children teachers brought with them up there using it, he was convinced ( I hope!).

IT for Dominica Trip Blog – http://deyenberg5.edublogs.org

Everyone in the course seemed to enjoy and work with the Web 2.0 materials we covered, but they didn’t see the value right away, and some never did.  Many of the older teachers only wanted to learn Microsoft Word and Excel and were only worried about using the computers themselves, not how they would use them with the kids.  I kept hearing – the IT teacher uses computers, I don’t need to, I only want to learn this so I can type and keep marks.  It was frustrating for me to see the teachers not realize how important it is to use and integrate computers into teaching.  Even with one machine, there is so much they can do.  A focus next year would be how to use one or two machines effectively.  They should look at how to use technology in all subjects, not just in IT class.  The teachers were always focused on the entire class in a lab, instead of using the computer as a station, working together on a project, or having the students use the “teacher” machine at all.  Perhaps it is the traditional nature of education on the island, but I know I convinced a few of the value of collaborating and connecting with the world, so hopefully it will spread. (my personal biases don’t show up at all!)

I did take time to show excel and help them set up mark spreadsheets, as this is a definite need.  We also showed typing tutors, and more traditional researching on the internet, which are important uses of technology.

The best part of the two weeks was on Monday of the second week.  I set up a Skype session with Rocky back in Canada to show the power of video conferencing to connect with classes and experts around the world.  I used Skype to show a free medium that is commonly used.  After Rocky told us about some of the ways he has seen video conferencing used, I connected with Zoe Branigan-Pipe.  She’s a teacher in Hamilton who I skype with on a regular basis.  We use skype as teachers to share ideas and resources, but our classes also skype together once a week to learn about other parts of Canada, collaborate on a wiki about Ancient Rome, reflect and video comment on blog posts we left each other, and judge crazy hair day styles.  When Zoe and I talked about the things we had done, and shared just how easy it was, the teachers in Dominica were very excited. I’ve already got Dominica teachers on my Skype contact list – so I’m excited to have some Canada/Dominica connections this year.

Another huge hit was Google Earth when I showed how to navigate, create pinpoint tours, and record right within google earth.  The teachers loved it and played with it whenever they got a chance.  After we VC’d with Canada and I used Google Earth to show where in the world we connected with, and how far apart Lethbridge and Hamilton were they loved to see the two tools used together to learn more about the world.

With most of the time spent on Web 2.0, we covered many tools, especially in my higher class.  To my class I showed, and gave time to use:

Blogs – Edublogs

Wikis – Wetpaint

Interactive Posters – Glogster

Talking Avatars – Voki

Movie, Poster, Painting – Kerpoof

Jigsaw Puzzles – National Geographic Map Puzzles Make Your Own Jigsaw

Art Websites – 8 Great Sites

Interactive Sticky Note Bulletin Board – Wallwisher

Word Cloud – Wordle

Math – The Math Worksheet Site

Typing Tutors – Bruce’s Typing Tutor BBC Dance Mat

Search/Crossword Puzzles – Puzzle Maker

Problem Solving Game – Factory Balls

Problem Solving Game – Factory Balls 2

Make Your Own Game – ClassTools

Language Arts – Grammar Ninja

Interactive Math – Math 5 Live

Language Arts and Reading – Read Write Think

Thinking Games – Brain Games

Photo Storage – Flickr

Photo Editing – Picnik

Photo Search – Tag Galaxy

Micro Blogging/Status Updating – Twitter

Math Manipulatives – Interactives

Turning Images into a Video – Animoto

Turning Text Into a Movie – XtraNormal

Online Comic Generator – Make Beliefs Comics Strip Generator

Mind Map – Bubble Us Mind Meister

3D Planet, Moon, Mars, Ocean, and Sky – Google Earth