On Fridays I like to share a topic or resource from the forum that highlights a particular need or thought that I want to share with a wider audience. Often times I’ll pull from other forums and websites, to showcase brilliant thinkers that make my musings seem like the juvenile ramblings of a kindergartener eager to please his parents. However, this morning, I found my inspiration from the most unlikely of places, Woot.com. Several of the teachers in my building are addicted to the website, and today’s listing for a USB HD Tuner antenna for your computer included a quip about how the antenna’s ability to pull TV out of the air and turn your computer into a DVR seems an awful lot like those old AT&T advertisements from 1993 that predicted the future with the tagline “You Will”. The commercials were voiced over by every one’s favorite private detective, Magnum P.I. macho actor Tom Selleck. In the commercials, various scenes of a vaguely familiar future depicted students using the library to view books from around the world, patients carrying medical information with them on a credit-card type device, and business executives carrying on teleconferences from the beach using their laptops.

I found the ads on YouTube, and had to share them, because it got me thinking about a really awesome video project for an end of the year activity.

After swimming through the flood of memories about Freshmen year of high school that these ads brought back, I immediately started recognizing which of the “You Will” predictions have come true. Sending faxes wirelessly from a laptop on a beach? Totally possible. Video conferencing from anywhere in the world? Thank you, Skype! Viewing books from around the world? Hello, Google Books! Some of the other prognostications seem almost steam-punk scifi, particularly the video camera in a phone booth (when’s the last time you even saw a phone booth?!). But when I was done watching the ads, I got to thinking.

How great would it be to have students produce their own videos about the future of technological innovation, post them to YouTube, SchoolTube, or one of the other various video sharing sites, and then revisit them every few years! Or better yet, have your students create the videos or slide shows in elementary, and then save them in a digital portfolio to watch again when the graduate. A prediction of the way they will use technology when they leave high school would make a great video time capsule. If you don’t have the video skills, you could just have the students draw pictures or write about what they think technology will look like in the future (two projects that I’ve done with students in the past).

Or perhaps it simple works best as a reflective piece; look where we’ve been, what we thought would come to pass, and where we’re headed in the future. Are we preparing our students to enter a world in which they understand the importance of being able to search through a variety of international books online (do I even understand the importance)? Are we helping our students to better understand how the more we become connected with our devices, the more we lose the anonymity the web once gave many of us, forcing us to behave online just as we would in real life? Whatever the case may be, I can’t wait to see where technology takes us in another 15 years!

It’s difficult to find a clear focus for students as the end of the year approaches. It goes doubly so in a specials class where there are no looming final assessments or tests to prepare for. Any projects need to be highly flexible, because field trips, grand parents’ day, and a host of other end-of-the-year activities will quickly eat holes into the time you spend with your students. So with the hindsight that I’ve gathered these last 5 years of teaching, I’ve given the 4th graders a relatively simple, yet deceptively engrossing project; self portraits.

I’ve had Art Rage, a fantastic painting simulator, installed on my machines all year, but couldn’t find an engaging way to work it into a project as it requires complete attention from the user. Art Rage isn’t just some fancy version of MS Paint, it’s a full on painting simulation that lets you mix colors as though you were using a real brush and paints. It includes all manner of tools including chalk, markers, colored pencils, and paint knives. If you use it for even 5 minutes, you want to keep playing with it for another 15, and then it turns into an hour of kaleidoscopic twirling of paint. I decided a couple of weeks ago that I would let the 4th graders use it to create self portraits. So I fired up the digital camera, took pictures of them while they played with all of the digital painting tools they could figure out, and then used the digital pictures as tracing images on their screens (Art Rage has a nifty feature that makes using tracing images a snap).

What did I discover? Besides the fact that elementary students want to seem to use the paintbrushes as pencils and outline themselves and their facial features before painting (must be a developmental thing), quite a few of the boys enjoyed giving themselves facial hair. Not just any facial hair either; we’re talking handle bar mustaches, goatees, and sideburns that were dangerously long enough to braid and wrap with bows. An interesting situation, as though they were all very eager to grow up and start shaving, or rather grow up and not bother with shaving like they do now and actually have something to show for it. In either case, the portraits are coming out smashingly well, so I thought I’d share a particularly hairy fellow (check out that beard!), and point out that Art Rage is a great program for teachers that want their kids to be creative, but don’t have the art supplies, or for art teachers looking for a way to get their students into digital art without having to go the graphic design route that seems to dominate so many high schools. It does have a paid version, but the free standard version is good enough for this non-mustachioed teacher.

On most Fridays I like to pull an interesting topic from the forum and share it with a wider audience. Quite often, there are many interesting discussions elsewhere on the Internet, and I found one earlier this week that hits home. We’ve been in the planning stages at my school to implement the first round of interactive white boards and document cameras throughout the building. So it was with great interest that I read Richard Kass’s post on whether or not document cameras were for everyone. Richard is a technology director (officially titled the director of information services) for what appears to be an elite private K-12 school in Oregon. Despite the obvious resources that a prominent private district could wield in purchasing new tools for their teachers, Richard plays devil’s advocate with his response to an article entitled “Today’s Teachers Thrive with ELMOs in the Classroom“.

The article is a fantastic read, and gives examples of how educators throughout K-12 and across the curriculum spectrum are using document cameras (a.k.a digital presenters). Ideas about using the zoom features to explore fine details of objects and raise awareness of observational skills to the convenience of being able to magnify and display any type of document or object at a moment’s notice, without the need to run a copy, make a transparency, or copy to the board. Based on the article, Richard made his own list of pros and cons to consider before making document cameras ubiquitous in our schools. I enjoyed reading his take on the article, but I thought I would add my own thoughts and revise Richard’s to better fit my philosophy.

“Magnification: in classes that work frequently with very small objects, a document camera may show more detail/be more convenient than simply passing the object around the class. Sharing student work: in classes that frequently share student handwritten/drawn work, a document camera may increase the convenience of making the work of an individual student visible to the entire group.”

I couldn’t agree more. Instead of passing around delicate or small objects, a document camera would allow a teacher to show in fine detail what an object looks like without the danger of it being mishandled. Artifacts brought in to study local history, or student created projects in an art room would be great examples. Math manipulatives and scientific instruments or measuring implements would be much easier to model for the classroom. Sharing written work would be much simpler to just place under the camera, instead of having to copy it on the board, and provide immediate feedback rather than having to wait until a planning period to go make a transparency. The immediacy and often frequent “teachable moments” could be greatly capitalized on.

Playing Devil’s advocate, Richard makes a few more statements:

“The class shares objects of larger size (can be easily seen or too large to fit under the camera). Holding the object, not just seeing it, has high pedagogical value. Students complete work to share with small groups, the teacher, parents, or themselves, not the entire class at once. The teacher doesn’t spend much time teaching from the front of the class. The teacher prioritizes aural or text-based instruction over visual. The class is primarily organized around student-led projects. The depth of the object is important (3D vs. 2D). The classroom is physically organized around “activity centers.”

To be fair, I’m cheery picking certain comments so as to make this post flow better, but I’ve tried to pick a few comments that I both agree with and disagree. Yes, holding physical objects like rocks, minerals, artifacts, and manipulatives for math or science are much more powerful than simply viewing them. However, I’ve seen many teachers using those giant rulers, protractors, and massive compasses during math classes and thought it would be much simpler to just use a normal sized tool (in a normal manner and not holding them in awkward positions up on the board). And to say that every single piece of student writing, or object would go under the camera is a bit extreme. Like any other tool, document cameras are best used for the most appropriate situation. If students are working in small groups, then you don’t necessarily have to show the entire class a particular piece of writing to help 5 or 6 students in one writing group. However, if you noticed that several groups were having problems with a particular writing mechanic, you could easily interrupt and show the entire class a good student example and then quickly return them to their work without having to make a copy for each group. That goes double for making transparencies, as the cost of making copies is usually more when turned into plastic film for traditional overhead projectors.

In my opinion, document cameras would be successful in both teacher and student led classrooms, especially in a classroom where the teacher is constantly moving about the room, and is rarely at the head of the room. Calling on a student to share their work by simply placing it under the camera is a no-brainer, and would even encourage the teacher to circulate more around the room rather than root themselves as they do to traditional overheads. Without the mess of overhead markers and cleaning fluids/spray bottles, I would probably be more encouraged to let small groups of students use the document camera to display work to both their own groups and the entire class. In a way, I see document cameras as the next necessary evolution of visual presentation, and would strongly argue that a document camera greatly enhances many forms of teaching in ways that a light blub-powered overhead projector can’t do.

Are they worth the expense then? Perhaps not with the currently dominant modalities of teaching. But as more and more educators become accustomed to visual learning styles, something which I believe most elementary teachers have been doing successfully for decades, you’ll see a greater and greater push for document cameras, digital projectors, and other tools that take visual learning one step closer to becoming ubiquitous.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nextspace/571719680/

I’m a very project-based educator. I like to give students all of the pieces of a learning puzzle, show them how some pieces can be arranged to fit with others, and then let them see what they create. I very rarely give examples of what I want their finished work to look like, because I don’t want students to have some pre-conceived notion of what is “good” or “bad”. Instead, I like to work from rubrics or level of engagement. If a student isn’t engaged with a project, I’ll try to find a way to tailor the assignment for him or her. Likewise, modifying assignments for students that are struggling is a constant as well.

So after 3 weeks of the 3rd graders conducting research on the Native Americans and Early Michigan Settlers of the 1800s (remember, I only have about 25 usable minutes each week after typing time), the kids were getting really discouraged with the work. It was slow, tedious, time-consuming, and was really starting to bum me out. Which is why I decided to make a really nice worksheet with graphics and text bubbles for them to fill out….which really got me depressed got me even more bummed out. Here I am in the 21st century creating a “prettier” worksheet and expect them to be engaged by it?

Instead, I fired up Kidspiration, downloaded a dozen or so pictures depicting early settler and Native American life, and let them roll with it. I asked them a few questions about “Little House on the Prairie”, and why it was such an interesting story. After talking about how Laura Ingalls Wilder managed to mix historical accounts of daily life with an interesting story, I showed them the pictures I had gathered in Kidspiration, and encouraged them to get creative. Instead of just writing down the information on a piece of paper, which they had been doing, I encouraged them to create a little story, as if they were actually a Native American or an early settler, and use the pictures to create “visual notes”. The end result was that the students had a lot of fun making their worksheets to suit their learning tastes. Some students focused on creating humorous lines to explain their life 200 years ago, while others were very serious and staight forward about describing the pictures. Many even started using other pictures that I hadn’t downloaded to help them better explain facts from the past.

Sure, they were still worksheets, but instead of fill in the blanks by searching for information, they were creating a personal story that they could alter, edit, and show to other people instead of just reading it. You could easily accomplish the same thing using Microsoft Word and inserting images, or fire up a painting program and have the kids draw the pictures themselves with their notes. These are a few that I thought were particularly nice. Just click on them to see a larger version.

As Earth Week 2008 wraps up around the globe and corporate promotions come to an end, it’s important to help our students understand that caring for our environment and practicing what we’ve learned on Earth Day should be everyday, not just a few days in April. Over the last month I’ve been sharing a few websites and ideas for encouraging environmental education throughout the year, so I thought I’d end my series of posts with a few ways to make Earth Day Everyday. Whether you’re a kindergarten teacher, or a high school environmental studies instructor, there are simple ways to incorporate environmentally friendly activities, videos, and resources on the web in your classroom throughout the year. Below are just a few to get you started.

Earth Day, Everyday at Wilderness.org

The Wilderness Society has put together a really nice collection of teacher resources in their Teacher’s Lounge that emphasize making everyday a day to respect the Earth. Lots of links to Earth day sites, environmental organizations, and downloadable lesson plans are just a few of the teacher resources. Interactive adventures, photo treks, and recommendations for off line reading help round out the resources for students from kindergarten through high school.

National Geographic’s Earth Day

Always providing the most in depth and immersive resources on the environment, National Geographic does a fantastic job of blending the latest environmental news with timely in depth articles and interactive activities. The Earth day page of National Geographic’s website is well suited for middle school and high school classes, though an elementary teacher could “cheery pick” resources. Daily environmental news updates make the site a MUST for any environmental studies classes, interactive virtual habitats on the Earth Pulse section of the website were always a must when I taught middle school science, and topical issues like fresh water conservation are a great resource for secondary classrooms.

Earth 911 for Students

Earth 911 is a great resource for starting your own grassroots recycling and ecological efforts. Club Earth 911 lays out simple plans for starting your own school wide recycling program, including logos to print and tips for spreading the word. The teacher’s page includes the ABCs of simple steps to help the environment, a fun resource for early elementary students. Or you can check out the latest news of national contests that are available to students who want to show off their “green-ness”.

Other posts in my Earth day series:

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Planet Green Game

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Google Earth & Climate Change in the Science Classroom

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - SimCity, Eat Your Heart Out!