FV_Final Video

My video, "They're Just Playing Around," is an AR pitch.  I hope you enjoy it!

PE6_My Big Campus: The Library

BMC Home Page - Top Videos; Videos by Subject

Assignment Calendar - 4teachers.org

It’s been about 10 minutes since I opened up My Big Campus, and already I’ve signed up for an online calendar system that looks so much quicker and easier than the agenda I type on a transparency for every morning.  



And found  a video  that every teacher should seeabout the changing needs of students on a site called “The Virtual Learning Consultant.”  (I’d swear it’s a Full Sail video.  Is a guy named Jose Picardo one of ours?)

And then, there’s “Six Word Memoirs”…

And who would have believed that in the top 100 hits on iTunes EVERY WEEK (once it was #2!) we’d find “Grammar Girl”…

I have to stop!!! I’m running out of time and places to embed videos!!  MyBigCampus.com:  “Try it; you’ll like it.”

PE5_My Big Campus, Part 2

I had a really good time the last two weeks using a couple of google.doc pages to communicate with my students.  If I wanted to give them instructions, all I had to do was have them click the doc that was already on their own google.doc page, and it was accessible any time they wanted.  Well, My Big Campus is already set up to do what I was doing on my google.doc and sooo much more.  And it’s a “secure” online environment, with in-place “appropriateness” monitoring, so I don’t have to worry about things I’d otherwise need to worry about but forget sometimes when I’m all excited about teaching something.

Tutorials

In fact, all that "sooo much more" could be a little intimidating, but MBC has a fund of very clear and easy tutorials.  Everything you could want to do has a step-by step video listed right there on the "help" page.

Let’s start with “Groups,” which seem to be very quick & easy to create if the kids are in the system—but I’m not sure if our kids are already in the system, or how that works yet.  (Can’t wait for that training!)  There’s a group wall, as well as individual walls, and a group 

Group Members Page

message system (basically, a closed email—so, do I have to put all my students in the same course in the same group so they can communicate with kids from a different period?), and the teacher gets all the messages listed on her message board.  There are group discussions and activities, which can, individually, be private to the group or on public view, at the teacher’s discretion.

Grading an Assignment

Assignments look very easy to post, and you can simply upload attachments from your computer, or access items from either the teacher’s personal “Collection” or from the public “Library” (which is where I’m going for my third posting).  Assignments can then be submitted, and graded, online, with a very easy grading form.  I’m thinking I could not only limit time spent commenting as I grade, but continue using the numbered comment system I began using last year—and just have the comment list right there where the kids can access it.

Last night I was thinking about an assignment I wanted to work on, but I couldn’t, because the document I needed was on my computer at school.  Not a problem with MBC; each teacher can keep “Private Files” that can be accessed wherever you’re online!  So if you want to post an assignment with an attachment from your files, but you’re at home, you still have what you need.

Group Home Page

 I have to say, my biggest concern with a system like this has been how much time it costs to keep up.  But I spend a lot of time doing such upkeep without such a system; I think it may even out.  And I know, from my experience with my son, that having assignments posted online is really helpful for parents.  Well, I’m looking forward to trying it.

PE4_My Big Campus

“Want to engage students more? Provide differentiated

BMC Home Page

 learning? Prepare them for responsible use of 21st century tools? Or maybe create some professional learning communities?”

Well, who doesn’t?  This is the opener of the “About My Big Campus” page of a new tool made available by my district.  My Big Campus allows teachers and students to access internet stuff that might otherwise be blocked by district filters, collaborate using Web 2.0 tools, create libraries of their own stuff and access libraries created by others, upload docs for students to view, and manage classroom activities online.  My first look-through shows a wealth of tools and tutorials, as well as a very interactive entity known as  “Big Campus Bob, the deep, 

Bob's Wall

smooth, velvety,voice of My Big Campus.”  
Bob  has a wall where he answers  
questions, presently ranging from 

“Is there a way to see all of my 
 student’s [sic—and grrrr!] grades 
 at once?” to “Is Bob Campus your 
 real name?”

 

Conveniently, my district is making this available, and our Tech Queen will soon be doing training on how to make the most of it for the entire faculty.  But I don’t want to wait! The whole site looks very engaging and easy-to-use, and I am hoping it will be the effective organizational tool I’m looking for to help me efficiently manage my newly 21^st Century classroom.

PE3_Publishing_iMovie

Oh, my gosh, this was fun!  I kinda feel guilty, when I have so much to do; it doesn’t seem right to take 4 hours out to play with movie-making when I have grades that have to be completely inputted before I go to bed tonight, and, true to my inability to surpass the immediate needs of the day, I’ve barely started.  (Yes, they’re recorded on paper… I know it’s archaic, but my BFF’s daughter records them for me, making her money and me very easy inputting.  I know I have to go to direct input soon.  Aaaanyway…) 

I know I was supposed to push myself on this assignment, but I’m going to admit I was, well, surprised to find out I didn’t have to very much.  The transitions and title slides were generally a breeze.  More surprising, I didn’t have much trouble importing the videos from most of the various drives and CD’s the kids gave me.  It would probably be a little easier to have them be more consistent, and there were a couple—a mini-videocassette?!?!?—that didn’t match technologically, but overall I figured things out.  And I saved everything to my desktop, and, unless Tricia’s lying to me about how easy it is, I’m going to take half an hour Wednesday or Thursday and put them in a Voicethread.  That way I can have them access them at home and make comments.  It won’t havae the slides and soundtrack, though, so I’m still going to spend the fifteen minutes in class to show them the movie.

I know it’s not part of this assignment to reflect on MY assignment, but I want to record how pleased I am with the interviews.  They demonstrated a thorough understanding not only of the epic, but of the cultural ramifications of such a myth in a society.  And they struggled with the concept, too—making their success in overcoming the challenge a richly sweet reward for me.  I like this strategy! 

PE2_Growing_in_iMovie

I remember not that long ago having to watch the help video for iMovie every time I did one.  Practice isn't making perfect, but it's making faster, easier, and cooler.  The title slides are much more amazing than I had thought--you don't just stick them on an official slide at the beginning and end; they can pop up anywhere, and in different colors & fonts.  And the transitions make a simple compilation of class videos into something that looks really special (I'm particularly fond of using the "water" title slide with the "ripples" transition).  The rationale behind that isn't just that such effects are cool.  The key word is "special."  To have my students doing work and publishing it in a way that makes them feel special seems to me to be a far cry from having them write essays that make them feel stupid.  And I believe--wow, another great research topic, if only I had time--that when their work is published in a way that makes them feel special, that will transfer over into their more traditional assignments and provide the impetus for connecting with their academic work and striving to achieve in ways they hadn't thought possible before.

That's my theory, anyway.

BP12_OMM (iGoogle)

iGoogle has just about everything you could imagine for living and working and connecting in a technological world.  Here's a brief tour through some of my favorite apps.

BP11_Comment_to_Mr_Swearingen

Mr. Swearingen’s blog about “Freemind” amuses while it demonstrates another new tool I MUST use this very week!

See my comment.

BP10_Comment_to_Tricia

Tricia's work is always so beautifully designed, and always looks fun--you can tell she's enjoying it, and you're certain you will too!

See my comment.

BP9_Voicethread_Revisited

I had my administrator evaluation this week, and I decided to try out some of the stuff I’ve been learning.  It was about time to do my background lecture on the Middle Ages for Canterbury Tales, so I thought I’d try out a voicethread version.

One of my favorite sayings is a twist on something my perfectionistic dad used to say:  “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”  I tell my kids that one of the reasons I’m out there trying out technology with them when many “experienced” teachers aren’t is because I’m way past worrying about making a fool of myself.

The jurassic computers actually worked all right—maybe too all right; 30 computers all saying the same thing at almost the same time is a recipe for a major headache in a much more tolerant group than a bunch of high school seniors.  What?  There aren’t a decent set of speakers in a computer lab?  Apparently not.  It took a while, but we finally got two of them reasonably synchronized, and then muted the rest.  It wasn’t perfect; but apparently the voicethread was engaging enough that the kids quickly settled down to making the effort to hear it.  And after going through it once, I showed them how to make comments—I was hoping a couple of them would try the phone option, but typing was plenty exciting for them this time, and a few ventured out to grab the marker.  Today we did a debrief, and their ideas for enhancements—music, costumes (maybe just hats?), smoother transitions—were as satisfying as how much they enjoyed it.

I don’t know if the administrator was as happy with it as I was, but any time I can not only interest high school seniors in Medieval history but model taking a risk and trying new things out, I feel I’ve had a richly successful teaching experience!

And the fact that I serendipitously discovered, looking for a suitable map, that my English ancestors were certainly descended from guys who came over the channel with Billy the Bastard—it’s the next-to-last slide; I could NOT make this up!—well, that just made this one of the coolest educational experiences I’ve had in my life!!!!

PE1_Playing_with_iMovie

Comfortable.  Now there’s a word I don’t hear very often these days.  And when I do, it’s really more like the candy house out in the woods, luring the lost and starving traveler into a life of unending labor, than a refuge from the dark.  So it makes me really nervous to say I think I’m getting a little comfortable with iMovie.  Theeeeerefore, I’ve gotten proactive in my comfort, stretching a little bit more each time I use it.  A few weeks ago, I added title slides at beginning and end; the next time I added some music; last week, after the Admirable Anne told me she’d made her OMM without talking (a proposition utterly antithetical to my natural bent), I added titles as captions over the different sections of my video.  So this week, I’m going to work on adding transitions.  Which is something I had planned to do last week—in fact, I’d made some wordles I was going to try to work in as part of them—but it turns out one minute is an infinitesimal smidge of time!  I couldn’t cut my content down one more millisecond!   So adding transitions was a luxury I didn’t have.

So, this makes it sound like iMovie isn’t going to be much of a challenge this week.  Well, first:  Bwaaahahahahaha!  (I refer you to the Hansel and Gretel allusion above.)  Second:  I have to do an iMovie for two of my classes this weekend.  You see, some time last month—around the time I was beginning to realize that cell phones would be fitting into my AR project in some way—I conceived the notion of doing instant video interviews to check for understanding of literature.  Well, I developed that, with help from our inimitable Tom, into an assignment to create an interview with a character from Beowulf.  Well, mid-semester grades are due after this weekend (no, I don’t imagine I’m going to eke out even my now-usual five hours of sleep nightly), so I HAVE to do something with those videos in order to grade them—and putting them together into a class iMovie, thereby killing two birds with one stone (with apologies to PETA), seems a productive strategy. 

Alas, I have a feeling that combining 15 videos, from various programs, on various media, is going to end up being more of a challenge than merely adding transitions between them.  I think I’d better get my resource page done first.

What do you call a person who sees the candy house, but knows the arduous outcome of partaking of its delicacies, and breaks off a big old hunk anyway?

BP8_OMM_Voicethread

Technogals Visit Voicethread

Enjoy!
My Viddler link is:  http://www.viddler.com/explore/debraatherton/videos/6/

BP7_Comment to Regina

    
Regina is always coming 

up with great ways to do 

things and to keep them 
organized.  I think this tool 

may save my life!


See my comment

                                            

BP6_Comment_to_Anne

It's always a pleasure 
to see Anne's work--as 
long as you're not the 
envious type; I personally 
am content merely to 
bask in her greatness!


See my comment

BP5_Voicethread

A Visit to Voicethread

Voicethread allows you to take “stuff”—and I use a wide-open term because it’s a wide-open tool!—and post it. One thing I really like is their specific education application, ed.voicethread.com. Its info site promotes it as “the absolute simplest and richest tool” for K-12 learners. Focusing on security, accountability, and autonomy, it encourages students to publish their work publicly while restricting comments to educators and educatees, and within that environment to develop their own PLE.

I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about VoiceThread at first glance; the video I started with looked complicated and was very wordy.  And I think “wordy” may be a bit of a downside to this tool—it takes a long time to listen to all those words!  Of course, the upside is kids producing all those words ([*sigh*] I just need a clone, and I could be such a great teacher.)  I have to say, that video—the first one I saw; it’s down at the bottom of the homepage—is the only one I encountered that wasn’t very clear and easy to understand.  And there are also a couple of very easy-to-understand, step-by-step "How to Get Started" links:

http://voicethread.com/media/misc/getting_started_educator_mpb.pdf

http://voicethread.com/media/misc/getting_started_in_the_classroom.pdf

 Another great thing is you can put anything from the web or from your computer into this tool very easily.  It also includes, under “Media Sources,” a wide range of stuff from the New York Public library, where I found some terrific images about the Middle Ages and about Chaucer that would make good introductory stuff for Canterbury Tales next week.  The kids are making websites; they could include a voicethread link!  Or could they embed their whole websites into voicethread?

And the interactiveness is just a hoot.  While you’re viewing each slide, you can respond in six different ways: voice recording, video recording, text, audio upload from your computer, doodling on the slide, or, my favorite, call in your response!  Yes, that’s right, you put your phone number in a little box, and the program calls you & you can just give your response over your phone.  Now, I was playing with this at school yesterday, and you would not believe the group crowded around the computer wanting to comment on their phones!  And this was after the bell had rung on Friday afternoon!  The downside—to the disappointment of my students—is they only give you 3 free calls, & then it costs a dime for each one (assuming they stay under a minute).

To give you a little demonstration, the Technogals put together a little voicethread showing some ideas on how the tool could be used (as well as highlighting some of our past glories).  You’ll enjoy it—and all the buttons are active, so you are welcome to leave some comments of your own!

 

BP4_Google.docs_Web2.0Tool

I love Google.docs

        Getting students to collaborate instead of socialize has always been a bee in my bonnet—it was my tenet that of course they should have fun, but it should be the fun of creating together, by golly!  So when I read Brain-Based Learning and saw the connections between creating and having fun and productive thinking, it was enlightening.  But it wasn’t until my adventure into Google.docs that it became an epiphany!

        Google.docs creates a forum for developing all aspects of a project, from “Here’s our job,” through initial (and possibly confused or uninspired) musings, into generating possibilities, then shaping ideas and resources into a goal and eventual plan, forming it into a preliminary product, then negotiating the final result.  Its group-wide accessibility makes asynchronous collaborating a proverbial breeze, and its easy color-coding allows contributors to see instantly which input is coming from whom.

      But the real magic seems to happen working synchronously.  I’m a very verbal thinker—one of my mantras is “Think with your Ink”—so I’m used to processing and synthesizing info and ideas by writing.  One night another group member (three time zones away) came on while I was fiddling with content, and we began interacting—some-times on task, but sometimes going off into left field and kidding around—next thing we knew, we had the beginning of a truly wonderful project.

        And it’s not just verbal thinkers google.docs is good for.  It’s easy to import pictures and graphics; now we know (kind of—I still need practice) how to embed video; and the color option is fun AND visually stimulating.  And let us not forget that writing—typing—is a strongly kinesthetic experience.

        Another crucial element of google is that it’s actually accessible at my technological antique of a school.  I will be able to take the kids to the computer lab and get them started—once they create their own accounts at home.  (Or the public library or a friend’s house.)

        Next week, my regular senior English kids will jump into Canterbury Tales.  Previously, I had them start with a short pair research presentation on some aspect of life in the Middle Ages—which did require a visual, but I wouldn’t even let them use powerpoint (because I didn’t know how to use it).  This year, we’re going to make google.sites.  We’ll start on google.docs and do some research, and then construct sites with their research, probably an interview video, connections to a character in CT, maybe a storyboard of one of the “Tales,” and connections to their lives today.  Unfortunately, you’re not going to see a site more than barely started today, or the great screenflow I’m going to make for this project, because yesterday I spent six hours with help, tutorials, youtube (a great suggestion from my 13-year-old son), and even a bit of swearing (Forgive me, Lord), and I still couldn’t figure out how to make the darn site work.  I’m used to the user-friendliness of iWeb!  And apparently they change google.sites every two minutes, because none of the youtube videos I found had the same set up as the site before me!   Fortunately, I have a non-critical friend who’s a google.maven, and she’s going to come tutor me this weekend.

 

        Last week I happened to mention google.docs before a very tiny pair project, and the next day one of my special ed kids came in sparkling.  “We used google.docs to write our poem!” she laughed.  “I showed my dad; he couldn’t believe it!”  From writing poems to creating businesses, collaborative, media-based thinking is connec-ting people with their friends, their partners, their present, their past, their future.  Google.docs is an easy way to be a part of that.

Here's the link to Mrs. A's CT Google.doc (under construction!):

          https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=19P6rFoBDLh0W16yLVsTj-

          Pl2Qh_9LGIjRnAu9dEExxI&hl=en&authkey=CPuJ_cIC

BP3_DiigoGroup

Well, with many thanks to Jazmin for letting us know how to add the diiglet, I think I'm on my way here; I added my articles last night by hand as bookmarks, and it will be a lot easier to use the bookmark on my tool bar!  I think this is going to be a wonderful tool, and I look forward to a future when my students will not only have access to this site, and technology to use it, but the desire and motivation to use it to find out how to make their world a better place.

BP2_iGoogleScreenShots

These are the tabs on my iGoogle page. 

 I wish they had the themes organized

 more conveniently so I didn't spend 

so much time playing with them!

BP1_Google Reader

Are you feeling overwhelmed?  Drowning in the vast sea of wonderful information flooding in on us from all sides?  Me too.  So GoogleReader is the new toy for us!  Here’s a sample of the five feeds I’ve started with…

FROM TOY TO TOOL:  CELL PHONES IN LEARNING

      http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/

My AR project has narrowed down to using cell phones in the classroom to enhance connection to literature, and this was the most directed and academic of the sites my search turned up addressing this topic.   I had seen it at the beginning of the year when I assigned my students to research using cell phones in our classroom (this was before I thought of doing it for my AR, I swear!) and been impressed by its suggestions for activities, its links to other resources, its reviews of related technology, and its advice on how to approach administrators (even though that’s something I—praise God fasting!—don’t have to worry about, as my principal is totally of the “we-can’t-beat-‘em-we-better-join-‘em” persuasion).

TEDTalks                                                          

     http://www.ted.com/talks/browse

The basic rationale here is clear:  who doesn’t love a site where we can access the finest speakers and ideas, condensed and concentrated, in one place?  I’ll just give the wonderful example of Fabian Hemmert’s “The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone”—focusing on the evolving nature of cell technology.  Evolving, that is, from even the complex technological marvel it is today into something more intuitive, something—as Hemmert says—“More human.”   While I think a device that replicates emotions, like getting excited if you’ve got a call from your sweetie (I’ll leave you to imagine) and settling down when you pet it, might be too distracting for the classroom , ya gotta love the concept.  And the great thing about this site:  Who said our whole intellectual life has to be “useful”?

COOL CAT TEACHER BLOG                                    

    http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

To be honest, this is my trial site—but of course, as we know from our own experiences, when the instructor gives a model, it’s going to be something that rocks & rolls on multiple levels; it not only shows you how to do something, but teaches you a bunch of other stuff into the bargain!  The blog subtitle is “Teaching students with new tools, enthusiasm, and belief that teaching is a noble calling,” and if I was picking a subtitle for my life, that’d be on the top three list.  This blog covers students spearheading energy-consumption (5 rationales) and the importance of conversation for administrators of any large production plant (that’s schools, isn’t it?) just on the home page—both with explicit instructions for how to implement—and that’s gotta be the most important part of all the vast info overload we’re wading through.

FACULTY FOCUS                                                       

     http://www.facultyfocus.com/

            This site is designed for college-level faculty, but I found everything I read to be utterly applicable to my classroom, and not just because my seniors should pretty basically be operating at that level.  There was a great entry on marking papers that I’m going to use… as soon as I finish enough of my week’s assignments to get back to grading my kids’ papers!  And other articles covered almost as valuable topics—like plagiarism (as committed by careless instructors—mea culpa, I’m afraid) and creating online learning situations that (going back to brain-based learning!) engage emotions to enhance learning.  You know, I discovered it when I went from pre-school to high school: there’s just not much difference between different levels of learners….

MY BIG CAMPUS                                                

     feed://www.mybigcampus.com/items.rss

So I’m reading my school email last night, and our Tech Queen has sent out this message:  “Great New Tech Tool!”  To quote the kids, “OMG!”  There’s a million resources, including a library, “rich” media, blogging, collaborative tools, groups for students, teachers, classes, etc., etc., etc.  There’s a Facebook-type wall, professional communities (intra- & inter-school), and access to YouTube (which of course is otherwise blocked at school).  Aaaand, it’s linked to our district filtering system.  (Is that good, or bad?)  My feed is just their library, where yesterday’s menu included several videos of science teacher singing such classics as “The Periodic Table Song”!!  I started last week, when I assigned my kids to video an interview with a character from Beowulf, to look into getting them into Google.docs (which I am in love with and hope to marry), and then this week, especially after viewing Hunter’s “7^th Grade PLE” I’m thinking, “Why AM I grading papers?  Why aren’t they just blogging?”  I think this site could make it happen—even with only 3 antique computers in my classroom!