At noon, the following email message was sent to our high school faculty:

As expected, it was an interesting experience. What I share next is my reflections on the experience this morning with our high school faculty:

I first want to thank your willingness to try something different during yesterdays faculty meeting. I also want to apologize for the length of this email. I feel that it is important to share my reflections and reactions to the experience we shared yesterday.

I do feel that the experience was successful for many reasons, including:

Exposure to the Flip Cameras. The opening comments were recorded using one of the Flip Cameras and tripods that we now have available for checkout in the library. If you are unfamiliar with these cameras, these cameras are low cost, small (the size of a deck of cards) cameras which will shoot up to 120 minutes of video using AA batteries. While not capable of high quality video, for many of our student projects they are sufficient enough to record and upload to YouTube, TeacherTube, Moodle, or VoiceThread. (Please see Sharon Minnoch if you want more information)

The introduction of the Chat activity of Moodle. This module allows for a group of students to have a synchronous (at the same time) conversation. Some of our teachershave used this module with some success in their Bio-Psych course in the past. This is in addition to the Chat capabilities available in our Google Applications for Education. The Google chat, however, is capable of maintaining a 1 to 1 conversation.

Your ability to access Moodle and Google Applications. It is helpful to know that you can access and utilize these tools, since they may be a large part of a strategy that you use to deal with long term absence and closure, but also as a strategy to supplement your face to face teaching environment.

We also learned that there are several areas that need further reflection and development. These include:

The changes in how voices are perceived in an online environment. Many of you found the chat environment disorienting. This is because it different than the classroom discussion model that many of you are employing during your synchronous, face to face classes. In a chat room, the power of thought is democratized. The side comment, which may be directed at one individual and shared in hushed tones in a live conversation, seems to have the same weight as the one which is on point. The rules of order that exist in a classroom environment, the fact that I wait my turn to speak until the current person is done, that I raise my hand, that I can nod and use physical gestures, like nodding in agreement or disagreement disappear when working in an environment where we cannot see each other. Rules for behavior in this environment have to be established and cultivated. Having both taught and participated in many online experiences, these behaviors canemerge over time and experience, the same way that they can in the classroom

People need direction to understand what do, since it is more difficult to ask clarifying questions. At the beginning, there seemed to be confusion about what was supposed to be included in the Google Doc, It would be better and helpful to have included directions and prompt questions included to help guide participants, so that they know what the expectations are for their participation.

In an online environment, there is going to be competition for attention. Yesterday, the competition was the desire to nosh on the great set of refreshments. In the case of an absence or closure, you or students may either be ill, be distracted by others who happen to be in the house or apartment, a great Oprah episode that on the television, or the desire to listen to music. It is important to design experiences so that they are short, simple, and meaningful and are constructed so that they can be listened to, watched, or read, and then give the student the chance to reflect and compose their reply. It is often best to allow one to post their reflections, and then have time for others to reply, and then allow the participant to come back at a later point in time. This is why forum discussions and blog posts may be better tools for this, as they are tools to allow individuals to read, reflect, and then comment, giving time for each to occur, rather than force discussion over a short period of time.

I know that for me personally, that I was getting antsy at the end of the experience. I needed to get up and move, but with the compressed time and interactive aspects of yesterday’s experience, it would have been difficult to do so. We all agree that it is difficult to sit and stare at a screen for a 40 minute period. How many of you did so? In the case of an absence or emergency closing, it will be difficult to expect a student or faculty member to be chained to their screen for a seven hour stretch. Even with more demands that expect us to sit in front of our screens (reading email, entering in grades electronically, etc.) we often get up, stretch, walk to the lounge to get coffee, go and sit and chat during lunch. These are all normal and important activities. One needs to design instruction factoring this need and desire to get up and move for a long term closure.

Old fashioned text and audio are good methods of communicating. When discussing possibilities, everyone seems to gravitate to experiences which are interactive, flashy, and video. While these are all good mediums, the oldest ones, use of audio, text, pictures, and drawings, are still powerful and oftentimes easier and better ways to communicate messages quickly. In the case of a closure, we may not have the time to develop material like Dave and I did. We may have to ramp up quicker without having the time to develop the materials that we would like to. In our discussion, we cannot forget the importance of text and audio.

From this experience, I hope that you are now better aware of the challenges that may face us in the case of an emergency closure. I hope that you will continue to think and ask yourself that if faced with an emergency closure or an extended absence by yourself or your students, how will learning continue to happen?

Later in the year, the sophomores will be working on a term paper. Tim Curren (tcurren@nscds.org), our World History II teacher, wanted to create an assignment that would re-introduce students and provide students an opportunity to practice the the skills that they will need to complete for the term paper, researching, note taking using NoodleBib, and using a variety of resources, both print and electronic. Hence the genesis of this project.

In this project, Tim asked students working in groups of two, to research the voyage of one of the world’s explorers. Students were assigned either Dias, da Gama, Columbus, Magellan, Drake, Hudson, or Cartier. They were given a week to collect their data, mostly outside of class for homework.

Instead of a traditional paper, Tim and I worked with the students to create a Google Earth Tour. Using Jerome Berg’s model of creating a Google Lit Trip, students had to locate the locations of their facts and create annotated place markers for their assigned journey. The student teams then had to create the path of the journey taken by the explorer. Lastly, the students were asked to create an audio tour for each explorer. This project taught students how to organize their data and create an organized collection of points.

Attached to this post is the Explorer Hall of Fame, the research projects which were the best of the best. They are student projects and we have incorporated them as is. There may be a few spelling and grammatical errors that we left in order to acknowledge that this is student work.

Once you load the file into Google Earth, you will be able to turn on (check) or turn off (uncheck) one of the trips. Upon openingExplorer Hall of Fame the explorer’s folder, you can access each of the research points or double click on the tour to take the tour that the students created.

The most difficult part of the project was in saving. If you did not click on on the outer folder, you only saved the item which was highlighted.

Enjoy and use this as you wish.

(10 mb kmz – Google Earth file)

Earlier in the year, I helped one of our French teachers, Beatrice McKenna (bmckenna@nscds.org), and her students

Trumpet, by Sara Bjork

set up a class blogs. I cannot claim much credit for her willingness to adopt this solution, other than a willingness at our school to experiment and implement new web based tools. Last year, she began to play with Gabcast with students phoning as a way to get more student oral work accomplished throughout the year.

Late last week, I received and email from Beatrice. Here is an excerpt from the email:

You asked about the blogs the other day, and after parent-teacher conferences I thought I should get back to you in more detail – the reason being that many parents mentioned how much their children enjoy their French blogs!  Since it’s my first time doing it I didn’t really know how it was going to turn out, but after being up and running with it for 4 weeks now, it really has proven to be a positive experience.  So I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet because the students are the ones doing the work, but here are a few things you could mention if you ever want to use them as an example of how we integrate technology in the classroom:

• In French 2 we started using the blogs as a way to replace the traditionally notebook based journal entries.  Students post a blog entry every week.
• The blogs provide an extension of our French immersion environment.  Students are not allowed to post in English.  Initially, I allow the interface to be in English for setting up purposes (blogging is new to them and the setting up takes a little bit of trial and error which would be too lengthy in English only).  Next week, we are switching the interface to French for a completely French environment.  The idea is that their French skills are naturally expanded every time they use their blog as they navigate a totally French virtual environment.
• The blogs provide an interactive environment.  Each student’s blog is linked with all of his/her other classmates’ blogs (and mine), and students can either post on their blogs or they can read and respond to their classmates’ posts, depending on the assignment.  So the blogs offer a great opportunity for collaboration and peer review on our writing work which wasn’t there before with the traditional journals.  The fact that everyone else in the class can look at the blogs is also an incentive for students to post quality work.
• The blogs are easily used as an extension of class activities.  Students can use them to upload any work they want to share (projects etc …) without having to save their work on an external drive, so all their work is easily stored and accessible from their blog.  We can post links to YouTube for songs, set up feeds with French sites for news and educational/cultural material etc …
• The blogs provide an environment that the students are right at home within – it fits their own world where many things happen electronically and they respond to it with great enthusiasm.  Actually, they are the ones driving it and they are proud of their own French space as well as eager to share it.  Many take it to the next level, uploading extra information they want to share with pictures or animes etc … A couple of parents told me that they do not allow their child to have a Facebook account, so their blog is their outlet into the world of virtual communication … only in French!

While Beatrice is not willing to “blow her own trumpet”, I am more than willing to do so. You can access the complete set of Beatrice’s French 2 class  on one of my public NetVibes pages (www.netvibes.com/vvrotny#US_French_2)  if you are interested.

As technology directors, we have to allow for inspiration and growth and it often comes at us in unexpected ways.

In this presentation, danah talks about how society has changed from one which children have the opportunity to roam with others out in the neighborhood to one which children are isolated, occasionally socializing in organized play-dates, organized sports, and often over-scheduled. Children just want to connect and socialize with each other. Into this void, youth are increasingly turning to electronic communication, via text messaging and internet based communication (IM, Facebook, mySpace) to provide an opportunity to replace these lost opportunities. danah explores how youth use social networks in a way and helps decode what students are doing.

danah boyd – Social Media and Youth Culture (October 7, 2009) [right-click to download]

Notes on the production of this podcast, the audio was captured on an 2nd Generation iPod Touch using Griffin’s iTalk app ($1.99). It was then downloaded using the Griffin’s iTalk Sync software, and then edited it using Audacity. Fina

My live-blog notes were posted on Wednesday evening.

Technorati Tags: danah boyd youth culture danah boyd social media facebook myspace twitter

The beginning the week of December 7th and December 14th, there will be 51 different presenters from around the world who will be making their presentations available for viewing. The complete list of presenters can be accessed on the K12 Online Conference web site.

This year’s conference will have a presentation which I will be helping with, To Those Who Want to Rock, Compose Don’t Suppose which is being created by Carol Broos and my wife, Carol Vrotny. While I am biased, I am really excited about what they have to share.

All of the previous 120+ from the 2006 – 2008 K12 Online Conferences can be viewed on the conference web site.

New: Sports Calendars

As a sports fan, I was intrigued. Clicking on the link, I found that I could access calendars for baseball, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, rugby, and soccer. Selecting these links, I found not only did they include the US based leagues, but included leagues from around the world. From their, you can choose your favorite team.

Going back to my Google for Education calendar, I clicked on the link to add calendars selecting the browse interesting calendars choice. Yup, there it was, the link to access sports calendars the same way I could add them to my regular gmail account.

I have added my favorite sports teams. Not only does it list the upcoming games, but includes the scores for previous games.

Now, if Google would only provide more colors in the palate to designate different calendars.

At this point, we are asking our Middle School and Upper School teachers to share their assignment sheets and syllabi at a minimum. Some teachers are uploading Word docs, PDFs, or using the assignment feature of Moodle to accomplish this. In addition, some teachers are posting handouts and other worksheets, class notes and access to audio and video files to supplement and support their teaching.

Moodle will allow students and teachers to keep in touch in the case of illness or any absenses (both planned and unplanned). One of the byproducts of integrating Moodle into the classroom experience is that parents now want access to Moodle. With our upgrade to Moodle version 1.9, we have been able to create a Parent user role and have parents register to use Moodle. If one of our Middle School Parents are interested in an account, we ask them to fill in a simple Google Form to register. Then using Moodle’s documentation on how to create a Parent Role, we then register parents into classes. Rather than following the example provided by Google, we allow parents the ability register for classes. We allow parents access into the course and to be able to download files and view assignments (but not turn them in). We are not allowing them access to view their student’s blog entries (we really aren’t using this yet) or forum posts, because we want students to feel comfortable sharing with the class and the teacher without their parents “intrusion” into their school life.

Philosophically, we do not register parents for Moodle accounts at this point, because we want students to begin to own their own learning. We do allow parents to access our Test and Major Projects calendar.

This does not mean that I have been devoid of ideas. On the contrary, I have had many great ideas that I have started to write that are still sitting in my drafts folder.

I hope that I can regain the discipline that Jim Heynderickx (K12Converge.com) has shown this year and that Richard Kassisseih (Kassblog.com) and Arvind Grover (21Apples.org) have promised. We will wait to see.

From looking at my Google Analytics, that at least the spammers have not left the site.