Thank you to everyone who answered my survey for summer classes with technology. I plan to offer some basic sessions for all staff, in addition to integration sessions for teachers and administrators.
Go through the short stack of slides above to see the results of our survey.
Access all of our summer sessions! We look forward to learning with you this summer.
See you this summer!
Sugata Mitra looks at education in light of the Victorians, and the future, “in the Cloud.” Do we want to be spare parts for some great human computer?
The most important take away for me: “the Grandma Pedagogy” and the power of encouragement! Can we adopt the SOLE principle?
For over a decade, as an educator you could proclaim that there was “a ton of free content online” for use in the classroom. This is no different today, but the sheer volume of content doesn’t make using any of it, any easier! Teachers need high-quality content, and there is finally some new efforts and corralling high-quality content together.
Disclaimer: It would be impossible for me to list all the free content out there. This is a start at looking at freely-available classroom resources for use by students.
If you’re a Goochland educator and want to add to this list, leave a comment!
This afternoon I’m leading a session on using Google Earth with kids–and making it interactive! We’ll look at building content within Google Earth, Google Lit Trips as one example, and even brainstorm more.
The file available for download is my Keynote presentation and a PDF version all zipped into one. Links are embedded in both for exploring even more resources online.
Albemarle County Public Schools is hosting Breaking Traditions, a FREE Online Conference for Progressive Educators from Kindergarten Through College to Share Their Best Ideas! Breaking Traditions will take begin with an opening keynote Friday, March 22 at 5:30pm EST with concurrent sessions beginning Saturday, March 23 at 8am. It’s a virtual conference, so there is no need to travel anywhere – you can participate and even do a presentation from anywhere with a high speed Internet connection.
If you want to see examples of presentations conducted last year, visit this website.
This is a great opportunity to earn some extra recertification points from your armchair! Please get permission from your principal first if you’re interested in points.
In full disclosure, I was asked to read Reynolds’ Presentation Zen for a course I am taking on data presentation. Other texts that came recommended were those by Nathan Yau and Edward Tufte. I like the topics all three folks focus upon in their writing. Zen is probably the best to speak of, and perhaps not for the most obvious of reasons.
So, to paraphrase how the book came about, and before that, simply the idea, picture a guy riding on a train. He happens to be in Japan, where they serve food different than what you’d probably get on a train here in the U.S. (go figure). He’s had a fulfilling day, and he pulls out his bento box meal. He looks outside, and sees a majestic mountain–Mt. Fuji. So far, you can probably picture all of this: sun setting with a mountain outside, a fast-moving train, business people around him, and he pulls out his meal, a bento box. You’ve likely seen them at a Japanese restaurant.
He looks over and sees one of those business men looking at a handout (education parlance creeping in) of Power Point slides. They are chock-full of images and bulleted text, and the guy looks awful. We can’t be sure why he looks tired and upset, but Reynolds assumes its the tedium of reading through a “deck” on paper of poorly-prepared slides.
Inspiration hits. “Presentations,” it comes to Reynolds, “should be like my bento box. It’s beautiful, and everything is in its place, and it’s just enough. It won’t over-stuff you, or cause stress. Presentations need to take on the zen of the bento box.”
And that’s the gist of the book.
So, Reynolds prescribes to not do all the things I feel I shy away from doing now: using clip art, using bullets, using small text, using illegible charts and tables, etc. He also believes the presentation is the speaker. Slidware, such as Power Point or Keynote, is there to support the speaker, who ultimately, should be a story teller.
Yes. I know this, and who knows how I assimilated these ideas years ago. It probably was through Reynolds, his blog, and those who liked what he had to say.
But I got more out of this than I thought. He shares the ideas of Ben Zander, whose TED Talk I loved. To wit:
Look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you are doing it… if the eyes are not shining you have to ask yourself a question… Who am I being when I am not seeing a connection in the eyes of others?
He’s talking about engagement and when you know you have it. Reynolds talks about rows of chairs (in a lecture hall) not lending itself to engagement. Yes! He is a fan of Steve Jobs and found a reason why he was a successful speaker: you knew he believed what he was talking about. He was authentic.
And he talks about stimulating curiousity in your audience. For an educator, that is your students.
the problem today in many schools is that the methods of instruction do a poor job of nurturing students’ natural curiosity. This is nothing new. Einstein said many years ago that ‘it is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiousity of inquiry.’
He goes on to say quote Kenichiro Mogi, a brain scientist in Japan. “By forgetting how to be curious we are losing something really valuable. Because curiousity is the single most important trait that brought us here today.”
Chapter 10 is the one on engagement and it opens with the photo of a classroom. Reynolds says “We praise the best teachers for being able to engage their students. With or without multimedia, engagement is key.” Reynolds goes on to suggest that emotions are the key to winning an audience’s engagement.
Finally (no not finally, there’s more good wisdom in the book than what I’m rehashing here) there’s a mention of Brenda Ueland’s book If You Want to Write which speaks of finding a way to maximize your creativity. I believe creativity is at the heart of all good education. Reynolds writes:
Harnessing this creative energy and being fully present is more of an intuitive activity, not an intellectual one. Brenda compares this kind of creativity and connection to a wonderful musical performance.
And with that, I’ll leave you with two TED Talks. The first from Benjamin Zander, which I referenced above, and the second about the importance of creativity (and I believe too, curiousity).
Why We Love Beautiful Things has a catchy title, and before you get into reading it, you probably can scratch your head and figure out the answer: because they’re beautiful. Before we get to what this means, and the gist of the article, I want to throw another idea in the spotlight first.
For one of my classes I am taking, the assigned textbook was Presentation Zen. I have followed Garr Reynolds’ website for years, and was a bit taken back to have to buy his book. After all, I do a lot of presentations and got the gist of cleaner slides without a lot of text.
This book surprised me however, with a rationale behind his style and his recommendations. Presentations should be beautiful. They can, and should, have an aesthetic quality. And then I began to think about this in the context of a teacher presenting notes to a class.
We probably never think about making those presentations beautiful. “Just the facts, ma’am. That’s all we need…” you can imagine a boy telling his teacher in a black and white TV show set in the 1950s. (He later becomes a cop in a trench coat for sure.)
So, the first article talks about beautiful things actually moving us. Studies in color, geometry, and the golden triangle are interesting. But more so was Garr’s inspiration for slides: a Japanese bento box meal. That’s where, I suspect, the simplicity comes from in the Zen reference. Nothing over-done, a nice presentation, and concentrated bits. In each smaller box is a little morsel for us to focus upon.
I won’t spoil it by saying there’s a simple formula to choose in Keynote or PowerPoint to make all you have to say beautiful. The benefit, of course, is a listener’s attention span. By amping-up your presentations with beautiful things, you’re more likely to hold attention.
And that’s not a bad thing.
But here’s the bad news: Presentation Zen isn’t about putting notes on slides for kids to copy down into notebooks. It’s about amplifying the speaker’s presentation. Which underscores, in the end, that presenting content to be copied down from slide ware is a questionable pedagogy in our schools. It may be efficient, and simply necessary from time to time, but as a mainstay, it’s showing kids how to bore others.
I no doubt will pick up on this topic in the future. Thanks for reading.
I led a new workshop with teachers this week on social media for teachers. This blog post has a number of resources they, and each of you, can use!
We talked about better blogging, Twitter, and Edmodo!
E-mail me if you need the school codes — I do not want to publish them online.
I hope you’ll be inspired to try social media. My “talk” about this is also available in the following video. Thanks for watching.
Be authentic. Most writing is a more fun read when it comes from the heart. But there’s an easy way to be authentic – pass the “pen!” Consider giving your students the opportunity to report what they’ve been learning about, what the homework assignment is, or what the class will be doing in the coming week. Students will look forward to reading, watching, and observing their own writing, their projects, and the artifacts of their learning.
As an example, I wrote here about passion and how I believe it relates to engagement. It wasn’t something I did at work; it was simply on my mind one evening before going to bed, and I took a few minutes to get my thoughts out.
It doesn’t have to be the most polished thing… it doesn’t even have to be long. (I can be long winded, so noted!) But writing with an authentic voice will sell your content, whether your 6 years old, 16, or 46.
By the way, I’ve been embedding cool pictures into these posts through Flickr. I am using Creative-Commons licensed photos, and the “Share” capability to simply copy-paste the code into my blog.
Keep it legal. Copyright law isn’t something to mess with. Be sure you have the right to publish and use the content you’re sharing on your blog. In short, if you haven’t created “it” yourself, beware! We do not have the right to re-publish or “host” another person’s content without permission.
If you’re hosting something we own but we do not have the right to re-publish, consider placing it elsewhere or using the password-protected post feature.
Two options for publishing content under the spirit of the TEACH Act are to place it in a restrictive environment like Edmodo or Moodle, or use the password feature in WordPress.
Make it useful. Some blog posts might not have an awesome photo, a critical PDF, or the most exciting information. But think about the purpose behind publishing. If the post isn’t useful to someone, why publish?
To find purpose in your blog posts, consider if you’d take the time to go over what’s there with students. Is it a tool you and your students regularly rely upon? If not, why not?
Consider this example blog post (you can click on it to see it full size):
There are multiple audiences being referenced here, but you can see how a teacher might introduce the actual assignment through the display of this blog post for students. It’s also communicating to parents what the assignment is, for their reference, and is telling everyone what the weekend’s homework is all about, with context. By tagging it with “G21,” the teacher has made it easy for everyone to be able to find the references to her G21 projects through the tags.
Use metadata to organize your blog. This includes using the categories and tags to organize posts. The consistent use of these features makes content easier to find.
For instance, I’ve been tagging each one of these blog tips with two tags: blog, and blogging. If you were to click these as they appear above or below your blog post (depending upon which template you have chosen) then you’ll see the entire “collection” of blog posts about… blogs.
I think of categories as audience gates… your categories as a teacher could be:
Parents can come and instantly blow away all the posts that don’t directly relate to them. Students can do the same. This is not the way you have to use them, but I think it’s a good general rule.
You can also have multiple categories applied to one blog post.
I therefore use tags to identify content-specific keywords. There’s no set limit; but I try to use consistent tags over time.
If you’re embedding a video, an image, or even a PDF file, tell us what the media is about. Media takes extra time to download, and visitors would like to know if it’s worth their time–especially if they’re on dial-up. Providing a description also helps with your media file being found in a Google search.
This is important if the media is considered “content.” If the media is simply “window dressing” or you consider it an “icon,” I don’t feel this is as necessary.
Regardless, any time you insert a picture, you should always fill out the alternate text text box. This is what will appear if the image becomes unavailable, and what search engines use to identify the media. Blind or low-vision visitors can have this text read to them with appropriate software, like Apple’s Universal Access.
Link out. You help raise the status of your writing by linking to more content. It may help “anchor” your position, providing supporting evidence, or help connect your ideas to those of others. If you mention your school, link its webpage to its name. If you mention another teacher, link to their blog. Creating webs within your posts can give authority to your writing and provide a nice service readers to expand their interaction through more reading.
And a tip for folks who are embedding links: don’t use text like “Click Here” for text chosen for the actual links! First, it’s discouraged by web usability experts. Second, the reader may not be reading on a computer (and no, don’t write “Tap or Click here!”). Third, “Click Here” stands out, but it doesn’t help your content stand out. Instead, it’s best practice to link the beginning or ending of sentences with more than one word.
Consider these three examples:
The first one makes sense. The important “keyword” or phrase is the product name. It makes sense that if you click on the title of a webpage, you’ll go to the webpage.
The second example does good to highlight the title of the website in bold text, but then the second part with the “Click me” is unnecessary.
The third example is an alternative… it’s less clear if you’re going to go to Google Reader, or maybe learn about “collecting and reading” feeds. The strength behind the third example is that it is an easier target to click or tap, because it uses more text. Like the first example, it’s strong too because the link came at the end (or beginning) of the sentence.
Provide interaction!
Some posts can be interactive. Allow us to interact with your ideas through conversation. Turn the comments on to invite participation by parents or even students. You can even collect comments from students that won’t be published, to check for understanding as a quick and informal formative assessment strategy.
What other ways can we make your blog interactive? Don’t forget you can embed content into a blog. Post a video. Embed a form to collect information. I can probably think about a lot of instructional examples, which is great for using your blog with students, but I think this tip is equally important for all stakeholders, including parents and our peers in teaching.
Instructionally, you can use the blog comments or an embedded Google form to:
If you need tips on embedding Google forms, check out this tutorial.
Reading takes more time than processing imagery. Photographs beat “clip art.” Including even a small thumbnail image of something you’re writing about can help the reader. Images draw us in, and images help us see what you’re discussing.
Images also help with scanning (tip #2). The visual image can immediately alert the reader whether or not the content of your post is something of interest to them.
In fact, I support the use of “image icons” which are images you’d use over and over again, from your Media Library in WordPress. These small images (100-300 pixels in size) could be used to denote posts that deal with:
Images can make your blog posts… delicious!
Good blog posts can be scanned with the eyes. In order to make this possible, use bold text to make the important content stick out. Make things like dates, times, and people appear in bold type. When a reader is scanning over the content, this important text helps them decide if the content is worth slowing down for.
Changing colors is discouraged. For some visitors, this can make reading the blog more difficult. Stick to standard ornamentation to text by using boldface and italics to emphasize important points.
If you have a really long blog post, consider using headings to break up sections. You’ll find the tool for adding headings in the Visual (expanded) toolbar in WordPress.
We have two Google Earth classes this winter/spring and I’m always amazed to learn more teachers aren’t using this tool!
It’s great for:
I’ve made a 11-ish minute video on just getting your feet wet with Google Earth. I hope if you have never tried it, it won’t scare you away. For me personally, Google Earth is a lot of fun to play with and to explore our planet with, and I think it would be that way for any curious student!
So where to begin after you start to play? We’ve compiled a great list of online resources both for learning what more you can do with Google Earth, and how you can use it at a variety of grade levels and in a variety of subject areas.
I hope you’ll join us at one of our sessions soon – on January 31, 2013 at GES with Krystle Demas and on March 13th with me, location TBD!
Great TED Talk from Professor Mitch Resnick from MIT, whom I’ve had the pleasure to meet.
This is the first of a series of ten new blog posts on making a better blog. Today’s is about choosing a great title.
Great blogs are made up of great blog posts. More often than not, great blogs have more frequently-updated content, as opposed to long blog posts. Some folks like to think in daily units, some in weekly. But don’t feel you have to maintain a schedule. Good blogs deliver fresh news, when it’s fresh.
What makes a blog post delicious? If we think of a blog as a smorgasbord or type of edible buffet, then each blog post is a different type of food. Posts people want to read, we could say, are delicious. What’s the recipe?
It starts with a good title.
The title should relate to something mentioned in the blog post. It’s easy enough to list a week or a date and to cram everything going on that you’ve planned into that blog post. But over time, the dates aren’t so important. In fact, the blogging software is time- and date-stamping each and every post. Instead, what stands out? If you have too many things going on within one post, then maybe you need to split them up.
A good title will draw people in. And it can also help them stay away. If the content isn’t relevant to your audience, they’ll thank you for saving them time.
Above all else, something in the title of your blog post should relate to something unique about the post.
As with each of these tips, I am leaving comments open in case other readers have examples or additional insight to share!
On Thursday, I attended the 6th annual STEM Summit at Longwood University, sponsored by the ITTIP wing of the university. This was my second time. This year, Mr. Watson brought several Goochland teachers.
Among the speakers for the day was Sammie Marquez, a Maggie Walker High School junior who has been conducting biomedical research for several years, and already has several patent applications filed in her name. She had a powerful message to share, aside from her genuine enthusiasm for science. She described herself as curious, which I think is a great quality to have, and one as children that we seem to lose all too soon as we grow into adulthood. She thanked her mentors and her teachers. She really believes that teachers have the capacity to be innovators. She said:
Leadership is not about ability, it’s about responsibility… the responsibility to inspire students to continue on…
She sees the role of educators as one to identify opportunities, and to exercise our own creative learning. “Knowledge and wisdom,” she said, “are completely different.”
Tim Owens from Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg and a VSTE colleague of mine, presented on several pieces of inexpensive technology that are a part of the university’s informal “makerspace.”
One of the main speakers was veteran presenter David Warlick who talked about our over-saturation of information and how to take the culture surrounding this information exchange into schools. He says that teaching needs to mimic these flexible, active spaces by becoming more responsive. He provided us with a few examples, like supporting a backchannel during a lecture, student blogging, or Scratch.
One of his most compelling examples was a collaborative animation project between three grade levels (2nd, 4th, and 10th) supported through direct chats between these different age groups. The results were clearly collaborative.
He shared two online tools:
We also learned about a tool in development for searching and collecting education content online called Gooru Learning. I’ll have more to say about this once it leaves beta development.
But the most powerful portion of the day for me was having fellow Goochland teachers there – to see and hear about their reactions. The informal discussions we had and the sharing of opportunities to improve our practice (either generally or within a STEM framework) is a powerful opportunity. I was really happy and impressed in talking with some of our Goochland crew (it helped that we carpooled). We have some awesome teachers which isn’t news to many, but seeing the soak up these new ideas like sponges was both refreshing and exciting. I can’t wait to help bring some of this excitement to our classrooms.
I’m proud to be a member of VSTE and have served as one of their directors since 2008. Today, Liz Kuhns also serves on their board. Feel free to ask either one of us about some of their free learning opportunities.
The Virginia DOE is interested in learning about blended learning here and around Virginia. They’re using a model proposed by the Innosight Institute to define or classify blended learning along four scenarios.
These models are important as requirements come to Virginia divisions around offering online learning experiences, which can include blended models.
The first model is likely what we’ve traditionally seen in our schools. I know the flex model is used in one teacher’s classes at the high school, and has been for at least 8 years. We’ve also had the self-blended model used with offerings online through Virtual Virginia and our Blue Ridge Virtual Governor’s School.
As we have access to tools such as Moodle and Edmodo, think about how you can vary instruction using one of these virtual approaches!
I have received easily over a hundred e-mails over the past 3 years from teachers regarding e-mail received that is fraudulent. We typically class messages like these as “spam,” but I wanted to take the time to re-visit this in light of recent questions.
When we are sent a message, and it arrives in our inbox, one of the following is true:
Most of our e-mail falls under #1. You get an e-mail from John Hendron, and you trust it. Unless I seem crazy from what I’ve sent you, you don’t fall into #3… if it looks like every other message I’ve sent, and you recognize my name, then our minds lean towards trusting that message.
Numbers 2 and 4 are the ones we are concerned with here. We are likely to trust a message from an unknown sender for a number of reasons:
a. they say something that seems legitimate; b. on the surface, they look legitimate; c. they promise something that emotionally we connect with, and we want to believe the message.
Despite all of this, it’s relatively easy to spoof e-mail. It’s so open and un-protected that it’s likely laughable just how many e-mails we actually do trust.
Behind the scenes, there are ways to check-up on the legitimacy of e-mail. If an e-mail doesn’t pass the “sniff” test, then start looking before you click on links, provide information, or or linger with the message.
If the message seems too good to be true, then it is. I.e., no one wins the lottery through e-mail.
Things to check.
To check details, with a selected message, in Mail, go to View > Message > All Headers, or “Raw Source.” Two things in this message “stink”:
supportcenter@aiasoft.it Received: from s3.pdg.pl ([91.205.75.118])
.it domain extension in e-mail, and .pl mail server domain extension. These point to Italy and Poland. And the e-mail address may not even be legitimate. Similar e-mails have come from Mexico.
Receiving spam is not hazardous, usually, unless you click on links to fraudulent websites. It’s annoying, yes. Just delete these messages and if you’re suspicious, just delete spammy e-mail.
I’d like for the Goochland teaching community to make a video for students on thinking before posting to digital media. I was inspired by a billboard Jennifer Bocrie photographed yesterday in another school, which reminded students to THINK.
A digital dossier is a concept of your collection of everything about you – your digital trail – online. You can help me make a video in just a few minutes!
I hope to release the video next week by editing these 49 short little videos together. Thank you for your support!
Bonus: like this idea? If you want to try this with students at your school, let me know–I’d love to help. We can use the same script, or have them come up with one in a spreadsheet too!