The Medieval Teacher

New focus

2011-08-05T17:57:00.001-07:00

Hello all (meaning the two or three people who occasionally read this)

With my employer Gaston County Schools moving more and more to Google Apps, we are re-vamping our tech facilitator web pages. We all have fancy new pages based on Google Sites and new, work-specific blogs.

Because of this, I'm going to split off my work blog from my this one. The new work blog, Unlearning Technology will be about ed tech stuff. Medieval Teacher will be personal musings, mainly related to my medieval stuff, but also any educational/political rants if I feel the need.

Right now I'm at the beach though and I'll get back to that.

Comic Creators

2010-11-29T12:20:00.001-08:00

Okay, here's a non-medieval ed-tech entry.

A week or so ago I had a teacher ask me about a comic strip creator tool. The one she talked about was Pixton, and she was asking if it would be worth it to pay for it. My gut reaction, of course is that everything out there has a free version somewhere that we ought to be using instead of paying for, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look into it a bit. To see a bigger version of the example comics, click on the image.

Pixton

First up is Pixton. This one is a very powerful comic creator with customizable characters and lots of options. It has a free version that works pretty well. Here’s a sample cartoon I put together. Pardon my sarcasm. I’m not picking on teachers here so much as making light of how techy and non-techy people often talk past each other:

I was able to customize the background, character look, emotions and even body positions. The speech bubbles were easy to use and I was pleased with the end result.

Now for the catch. If you are not a paying member, you are very limited in what you can do with Pixton. I was constantly being shown characters, props and other cool details that I couldn’t use because I didn’t have enough “Pixton Credits.” That’s why the guy on the right has a boring white shirt instead of the cool shirt I picked out originally. Luckily the teacher’s pearls were free. You also have to pay to download your creations, although you can view them online for free.

Pixton’s business model does seem to be focused on schools, with lots of useful tools like teacher moderation. You can watch a video here http://www.pixton.com/schools/overview for details. Their handy price calculator shows that a Pixton subscription for a 30-person class would run about $87 per year. I figure a teacher could could get basic functionality by using a free account. This could be a good trial run. Pixton might also be a good component in a writing grant.

Make Beliefs comics

Make Beliefs is a stripped down, super simple, completely free comic creator. It has 20 stock characters, each with a range of emotions. They can be flipped, resized and rotated to fit your comic. There are also 25 or so objects you can insert and move around, like pens, cell phones, etc.

Below is the same comic from above, done in Make Beliefs:

You get what you pay for. You can easily print your comics or view them online, but downloading them requires a screen capture and some cropping. There are fewer options, but that let students focus on storytelling. This one would be great for elementary students or as a free option for middle and high.

Strip Generator
Strip Generator is a simple, easy to use versatile comic generator, with lots of stylized characters, objects and easy-to-use text boxes. The interface is very user friendly, and everything is free. Here’s the comic from this one (with extra tech ninja goodness).

Unfortunately, while I love the interface and stylized characters, I can’t recommend it for schools. Strip generator is structured like a social network al la Facebook, and it seems to be populated largely by dirty-minded 12-year-olds. There are few privacy controls and no opportunity for teacher moderation. Try it at home, but avoid it at school.

Marvel Super Hero Squad

This comic creator has a decent if simple interface, and it’s totally free, but unfortunately, you have to be able to work the Incredible Hulk into your instruction. The characters in this one are from Marvel Comics, and while geared towards kids, teachers will find themselves limited by the character choices. Of course Marvel characters to lend themselves to some 12^th grade English subjects. . .

It does let you print or download your comic. One catch is that the site says it is saving the file as a pdf, but it won’t open unless you manually type the .pdf extension onto the filename when you save.

ToonDoo
ToonDoo is pretty cool. It requires you to set up a free account, and the basic features of creating, editing, saving and printing your cartoon are free. They have a pretty good array of backgrounds and characters. The characters have different emotional states and can be customized. The main flaw I found is that the text boxes are a little hard to work with. Lines of text don’t break automatically so you have to add manual returns. This allows for some flexibility, but would make it difficult for younger kids. Here's an example:

On the plus side, saved cartoons can be set to private so only you or your students can see them. They are also easy to save as a graphic file and print. I could easily see a teacher creating one classroom account and letting multiple students log on to it.

PikiStrips

Pikistrips is interesting. It doesn't have pre-generated characters and backgrounds, instead, you upload your own pictures and turn them into a comic strip. The interface is a little clunky, but it lets you add effects to the pictures to make them more cartoon-like. It also allows you to add text boxes and other comic book elements. This would be a great one to use if you had access to a few digital cameras or even a set of stock pictures. Here's an example:

Final thoughts.

In a perfect world, I would say buy Pixton subscriptions for everybody. That’s not going to happen. If you are a teacher who thinks they might use comics a great deal, I would look for a grant that would allow you to get a full Pixton subscription.

For the teacher planning a one-time project, I would suggest using one of the free resources. Make Beliefs should be good for elementary students, while ToonDoo would work better for high school.

Whatever you choose, comics are a great way for students to approach a story in a different way. From interpreting classic novels to making lab safety comics, you might be surprised at what you and your students can come up with.

Gambeson - Final Product

2010-11-25T18:57:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know it's been a while. I was going to get a good picture of the final version taken at War of the Wings, but I actually broke my arm during one of the field battles. I've been in a cast from my wrist to my armpit and I actually wouldn't fit in the sleeve. Anyway, here's the finished product. The collar is accidentally turned under on on side so you can't see it.

Gambeson - Long time coming

2010-09-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

There's a great line in Beowulf where we've just seen Beowulf kill a procession of monsters and return home triumphantly. Just as we are wondering what great things Beowulf is going to do, we get the line "A lot was to happen in later days." Suddenly it's 50 years later and Beowulf is an old man.

Yeah, that's kinda what happened with this project. I got a bit distracted by Pennsic. I actually got the gambeson done, buttons and all. I got it done by war, but I wasn't able to wear it because of issues pointing the plastic arm cops to it.

The buttons worked out well. It took a few tries to get them right, especially the buttonholes, but once you get the hang of it, it goes quickly.

Since war I've added leather tabs for pointing on my new stainless elbow cops. More on those later.

Gambeson - major assembly complete

2010-07-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

This thing is starting to rock mightily.

Both arms are on and work well. I have pretty good range of movement. If I could redo it, I might add a bit more room in the underarm, but not much.

The collar is on and I used a neat little trick where I sewed it on keeping the lining free and then hand-sewed the lining over the seam to get a nice, comfortable neckline.

I hemmed one cuff and will do the next when I get time.

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The bottom seam caused me a bit of thought. I wanted to do a scalloped dagging like the Charles VI jupon (left), but it was just going to be too difficult without using bias tape on the seam, and since I didn't use that elsewhere, I didn't think it would look quite right. Besides, the effigies and brasses from around my period in the earlier 1300s show a straight edge on the gambeson, so that's what I'm opting for.

I'm going to hem the bottom and the remaining cuff in the next day or two, along with a bit of edge near the collar. Then it's a date with my grandmother's serger to finish up the inside seams so they don't fray. I will probably work on arming points then as well.

After that, All I'll need to do is the buttons and buttonholes. I'll probably save that for our family trip to the beach since I'm going to do it all by hand. That's the week before Pennsic and it's something I can do while sitting around with the family. If it looks like I won't get it done, I can always sew on some temporary ties and do the buttons later.

Gambeson - We have sleeve!

2010-07-06T19:53:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty excited. I got the right sleeve sewed in. Let's just say it was tough enough that I'm not really looking forward to the left. More on that in a minute. First, Bask in the glory that is a one-sleeved gambeson!

Okay. Now the really cool part. I grabbed my sword and swung it around, and it actually feels good. This was really the moment of truth. If I put this thing on and it felt like my arm was wrapped in a plastic tube, I would have cried and thrown the thing in the trash. Well, okay, probably not, but still, it would have been a serious problem. But both flat snaps and wraps felt pretty good. At least no more restrictive than my current lacrosse gear. Of course there might be binding issues when the second sleeve goes on, but probably not. I think it's time for an action shot.

As far as the construction goes, the sleeve matched up well, but even with cutting out the padding to the seam allowance it was bulky and awkward because I was fitting it to a tight curve. I ended up hand tacking the upper and lower seams and then machine sewing the rest, going very slowly and using a lot of pins to maintain the curve and keep the inner and outer layers wrangled together.

Time to do the next sleeve and then worry about the collar. After that will come the hem, the sleeve edges, the buttons and then arming points. Am I going to get all this done?

Gambeson - assembly begins

2010-07-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

Well, the assembly has started. I now have a really nice vest. Here's a low-res, dimly-lit web cam picture of it.

The fit seems acceptable. Trimming the excess batting under the seam allowance helped a great deal and actually made it sewable.

I also sewed the collar together, but I'm waiting to quilt it until I've pressed it and figured out exactly how it's going to attach. The mock-up collar attached well, but this one is a bit thicker.

The sleeves are up next. I've got the excess batting trimmed on one and I'll probably go ahead and pin it up tonight before I knock off.

In other news, I've decided to bite the bullet and use period cloth buttons for closure. I used some birthday money (thanks in-laws!) to purchase The Medieval Tailor's Assistant. So far, I highly recommend it. It had some good pointers on period button and button hole making, and I tried one out with some success. Following her advice, buttons from the collar to the belt, (leaving below the belt open for a riding split) would be a minimum of 17 or so buttons. That's quite a lot and might be slow to put on. Of course the gambeson that Revival Clothing sells has only 13, and that's for the whole way down. I figure I can probably get away with 10. Once I get everything assembled, I'll take a look and see.

Gambeson - moving along and a dumb mistake.

2010-06-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

Well, everything except the collar is quilted. I pinned it altogether for a quick test fit and I was underwhelmed. The arms seem very bulky. This is probably because I haven't trimmed the excess batting at the seams. That will probably help a lot.

But I did notice one problem that I really can't fix: the elbow padding. I added an extra layer over the elbow when I laid out the layers. you can see it here:

This was a great idea, and the shoulder padding feels about right. But what I failed to realize is that my elbow and my shoulder do not, in fact, bend in the same 90-degree plane. In fact, the elbow joint is about 90 degrees rotated. Duh.

this means that the extra padding doesn't exactly hit my elbow at the point, an instead, puts the padding right where I want the elbow to be more flexible. It really needed to be moved over like this:

the irritating thing is that there really is no solution short of ripping out seven or more lines of the quilting on each arm and then repositioning the padding. I don't have time for that if this thing is going to be ready by Pennsic. Overall I don't think it will be a big issue though if I leave it as is. I'll probably have enough padding anyway

On the positive side, the cuff length seems perfect.

Next step: quilt the collar (I finally figured out how it needs to be sewn). trim the excess batting off all pieces, and then move to assembly.

As far as assembly goes, I think I'm going to do it this way.

fold under and seam the cuffs
cut a simple scallop pattern on the hem, fold it under, and sew
sew the fronts to backs at the shoulder
sew each arm onto the armhole
in one stitch, sew the arm down the side to the botom
attach the collar
figure out closures (I'm leaning towards buttons again)
serge or zigzag the interior seams
attach arming points

Music and Writing

2010-06-15T07:01:00.000-07:00

A non-gambeson, non-medieval, educational topic for a change.

I'm at our local technology conference where I'm listening to Leanna Stroup talk about grant writing. I'm feeling particularly happy about it because I helped her plan and write the grant that she wrote.

Her project was particularly cool. She got two macs, some ipods and microphones. She used them to have kids write and record stories and pomes. They then recorded themselves reading their work aloud and used Garage Band to add music loops to the background. They also used m

This is so cool. The kids loved it because it they created something. They had a product, which they showed off to their parents. As she said, "It allows the kids to have some artistic ability and some creativity."

This is where I think we fail at the high school level. The brilliance of Leanna's grant is that it is cross-curricular. It combines music, writing, public speaking and presentation skills. In high school, we often look at cross-curricular things as unwanted time-killers. That's sad. Combinging different disciplines to produce real products would go a long way towards getting students more engaged. Of course, that would take away time from standardized testing. The HORROR!

Gambeson - Unforseen consequences

2010-06-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

I finished quilting the back and front sides. I decided to pin the seams together and test it because I was worried that I hadn't left enough seam allowance.

I tried it on and I was a bit surprised to find that it is way too big. I've been losing a decent amount of weight in the last few months since I started the gambeson. Nothing serious, just cutting back on portions and moving around more. Apparently it was more than I thought. The fronts wrap around me much further than I had planned. It looks like I'm going to have to take out a row of quilting and cut off the excess. On the whole, not the worst problem I could have.

I'm starting to question the closure method of ties. I would really like to do buttons, but I hate trying to make button holes. I'll need to think about that one.

On the whole, the padding feels about right. I feel like I added enough, especially on the shoulders.

Gambeson - Quilting and learning as I go

2010-05-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

I'm well into the process of quilting the layers and things are going pretty well. I'm learning to improve the process as I go. One thing I noticed to my dismay early on is that the compression of the layers by the machine tends to slide the layers apart as I quilt. This meant that as I got to the bottom, the white lining was either longer or shorter than the green top layer. I was alternating directions to stop this, but tonight I found a better solution. I started using more pins along each stitch line as I went. I also found that it works better to place the pins closer as I get further down the line. This seems to be holding everything together well.

So far I have the back and one of the front sides done. I'll start the other front next sewing session.

I hope that once school is out in June, I'll be able to wrap this up quickly. Renovations to the house are nearly done and mom will be keeping baby Lily one day a week. That's going to be project day and I have a lot more Pennsic projects to finish after this one.

Gambeson - putting the layers together

2010-04-16T05:13:00.001-07:00

Spring break meant a few days to work on the gambeson between a trip to the zoo and endless tiling in the 2nd bathroom.

Anyway, I got the batting a few weeks ago. It was much thinner than I thought it would be, maybe 1/8 inch at best. Luckily there was enough for two layers, which seems about right.

I doubled up the batting in a few places, though not exactly the ones suggested in Lady Magdalena’s article. Since I will be wearing simple elbow cops pointed directly to the gambeson I decided to add a square of padding at the elbow.

I also put padding on the front and back pieces at the shoulder, although the seam there makes it interesting. Getting hit there without armour is not pleasant. Another piece of armour to buy.

I also elected to add a thinner layer of padding over the forearms, where my new vambraces will sit. I added that in after I took this picture. What you see here are the square at the top and the elbow padding. The forearm padding goes all the way across.

The layers are assembled, and now it’s about time to start quilting. All I need to do now is lay out the quilting lines and then get started.

Gambeson: Gathering the fabric

2010-03-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

The green linen from fabrics-store.com is in and I like it.
I'm looking for 100% cotton batting now. I'm trying to decide how much to get. From what I estimate, a full might do it, but I should probably go ahead and get a queen to have some extra.

I'm also learning that it's powerful hard to find a craft store that sells sewing machine oil.

Gambeson - coming together

2010-02-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

The denim mockup is finished except for the bottom hem, which I'm going to leave unfinished for now. The fit is really good, even in thick fabric, which is why I wanted to try this version. The only think I'm not completely pleased with is the ties in the front. They are a bit thick and stiff and could also be spaced a little further apart to prevent bunching.

I also tried on a few pieces of armor. My coat of plates felt pretty good over it, even a little loose, which makes sense considering the lack of padding.

The gorget was great. It fits too loose anyway and the collar made a nice padding for it to fit snug. That's going to be nice.

I think I'm going to buy the green linen tonight. I found enough white linen for the liner I believe.

Gambeson - Denim version

2010-02-02T19:13:00.000-08:00

So I decided to take the mockup and make it in some spare denim I have lying around (the remains of an ancient futon cover). My main goal is to make sure the pattern works with thicker fabric.

It has gone very well. I laid out the patterns and cut them last night and made the collar and assembled it today. I still need to hem it, finish the closure sections and add the ties.

A test fit was pretty good, with similar movement to the mockup. It also gave me a chance to test out the collar.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this when it's finished. Since it's only one layer of denim, it won't exactly absorb any impact. I may end up using it as an emergency backup gambeson. Otherwise I plan to make it a test bed for the other thing that will eventually go on the finished arming coat, such as points for attaching armour.

Gambeson - Progress!

2010-01-31T09:27:00.000-08:00

Okay!

The second sleeve is on and I went ahead and sewed on some ties (I was getting tired of safety pinning the thing on every time I needed to test fit).

The fit is good and the arm does not seem to bunch up when I do the typical range of sword blows. There's a little pull in the back when I bring my sword arm all the way across my body, but honestly it's less than my current gambeson and that is an extreme move that I would rarely execute.

Overall I'm tickled. I'm only going to make a few more changes:

Length. Looking at period pictures and examples from other reconstructions, I think it needs to be longer. I'm going to add another 5-6 inches that should get it down to about two inches above my knee. This will help obsorb some impact if I eventually plan to make gamboised cuisses with floating knees. I'll make the split in the back go up to about where the bottom of the pattern comes now.
extra tie - I also think I will add one more tie below the last one.
collar - the example I'm looking at calls for a collar and I think that's a good idea. I'll add one before I start making the final pattern.

Just about time to start buying some fabric.

Gambeson - Sleeve round 2

2010-01-23T20:50:00.000-08:00

The new sleeve is much better than the old. It's very comfortable and I even swung the sword around a bit with no problems.

The length is perfect as is, but that's with a seam allowance for the cuff that I didn't sew in. I'll add a little. For the record, I had originally measured and planned for 22 inches plus 1/2 for seam. Becky said to do 23, "because you always make them too small."

Point taken, the Lady is always right.

My only concerns right now:

1. My arm swings nicely now, but that's with one sleeve attached. I'm worried it might bind more with both sleeves in place, but I can't tell without making the second sleeve for the mockup. Grr, I really don't want to do the second sleeve.

2. This works great with old bedsheet material, but will that change with two layers of linen plus cotton batting?

I suppose I should start thinking about getting some fabric.

Gambeson - Adventures in sleeving

2010-01-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Well, the body works well now. The arm is a disaster. The first mockup I tried was good for length, but not much else. I seem to have underestimated my arm size by a factor or two. Oh well, plenty of old sheets left. I'll try a slightly roomier arm tomorrow with perhaps a little more cut into the back.

Gambeson - body mock up

2010-01-20T19:11:00.001-08:00

Moving right along.

Here's the latest mockup. It's big in a lot of places.

I plan to clip the shoulders a bit and I've gathered it in the back by about an inch. I'll take that out of the back piece. The armholes are the biggest problem. They are way too big. I'm going to raise them up a bit. Once I do all that I'll be ready to add arms.

Gambeson update

2010-01-19T19:44:00.001-08:00

A quick update. I've sewn the rough front and back together. It sits well on the shoulders, but it might need to be a little smaller around the chest. I must be overestimating the size of my manly pectorals. Anyway, it's always easier to make it smaller than to make it bigger. Also I've been looking over the construction and I think I understand how it all fits together, except for the collar. I need to glance at that again. I think I may add contrasting (white) trim at the bottom hem and on the collars.

New project -

2010-01-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

Wow, okay, long time no post. These next few will focus more on the medieval than the teacher.

My SCA fighting harness is getting a bit long in the tooth. I've been fighting in pretty much the same basic armour since 2004 and many pieces are the same ones I started with in 2000 or so. It's not a bad looking kit overall, but I know a lot more now about both the function of armour and the look of actual early-mid 14th century armour than I did back then.

Here's my harness pretty much as it is now.

It's not too bad, but there are some issues. The white thing is a denim gambeson with Big Floppy Sleeves, which hide my ugly modern arm armour. The legs are oversized one leme stainless with a leather half-greave that nobody ever wore in period. My helm doesn't have an aventail and I have football shoulders sticking out from under my not too shabby coat of plates.

I plan to fix a lot of this, which I will detail later, but I decided that if I'm going to make changes, I should start at the foundation.

Now I start wear a sleevless underarmour shirt in the summer or a long-sleeved running shirt in the winter. I put the gambeson over this. The torso section of the gambeson is quilted with polyester batting made from (I kid you not) a puppy pee pad. Not exactly period and definitely not so good at removing heat and moisture. The design of the gambeson is also not period. It combines elements of a gambeson (padding) and a surcoat (Big Floppy Sleeves). Getting into it is a challenge also since it opens on the side and the sleeve openings are somewhat narrow. Watching me worm into it at Pennsic when it has about 3 days of moisture soaked into it is no doubt a spectator sport in the Sacred Stone camp.

The new foundation garment will be a padded gambeson with long fitted sleeves that ties in the front. I took most of the ideas for this from Lady Magdalena von Regensburg and her fine tutorial on making a gambeson. You can find it here. When it's done, it should similar to this.

I'm going to do mine in green linen with a white linen lining and cotton batting.
The nice thing about this is that it will replace my underarmour and at the same time, provide a foundation for pointing some of my existing arm armour as well as upgrades in the future.

I'm starting with a version of the same pattern I use for my tunics, with some slight modifications to taper at the hips and under the arms. The sleeves will also be fitted into the body a little wider to allow for better arm movement.

I've gotten a mockup of the body cut out and ready to rough sew together. I'll post more when I try it on and see how it fits. Then I can start playing with some sleeve patterns.

Cyberbullying – more than bullying with technology?

2009-05-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Okay. Stop. Take a deep breath. Let it out.
I just read a blog post on Tech and Learning about “cyberbullying.” I’m afraid it reflects the breathless, borderline hysteric attitude I see often about the “perils” of new technology. The author, Scott Meech, says that “While traditional bullying is a difficult issue, Cyberbullying is a much more difficult problem,” because cyber bullies try to remain anonymous and can reach a larger audience. I disagree. The method of bullying changes some things, but I don’t see that it is more difficult to handle. My high school experience tells me that traditional bullying is almost always done in secret, away from the eyes of teachers, and can only be proven through a he-said, she-said game that the downtrodden targets of bullying often fail at. Cyberbullying, on the other hand, leaves an electronic trail that can be chased down and dealt with. This usually makes anonymity for the bully more difficult.
Meech pulls out the example of the “Star Wars Kid,” and says that he will be forever scarred by his ordeal. Really? As a teacher, I was intensely interested in this incident when it occurred. The original students that posted the video on Kazaa were, no doubt, bullies, but the resulting online phenomena was something different. The comments on various Internet message boards were not mocking the Kid, they were empathizing and celebrating. Proud, self-described “nerds” commented one after the other that they had all grabbed a stick of some sort and turned it into a lightsaber in front of the camera at some point in their lives. People were laughing at The Star Wars Kid not to bully him, but because they saw themselves in him. Fundraisers sprang up to buy the Kid an iPod, a custom lightsaber replica and other cool toys. A petition was even signed by 83,000 people to secure the Kid a walk-on role in the final Star Wars movie. Of course all this stopped when the parents decided to get litigious and sued everyone involved.
In the final analysis, we should always work to stop bullying when we see it, but it’s difficult to stop bullying by focusing on the bullies. Instead, we need to create kids who are bully proof. A child with strong self esteem, a close and trusting relationship with parents, and consistent rules for online behavior will know how to react when they are made fun of online or offline.

improving teacher evaluations

2009-04-03T05:58:00.000-07:00

I just read this article from Edweek about Education Secretary Arne Duncan talking about how states need to improve teacher evaluations. I posted this response:

A lot needs to be done to improve teacher evaluations. I agree with Secretary Duncan on that. What does worry me is that it seems the way he wants to "improve" evaluations is to tie them to standardized tests.

All this will do is show you which teachers are best at teaching kids how to score well on a memorize-and-regurgitate, one-shot multiple-choice test. That's a recipe for disaster.

If you want to know what skills will be needed for future jobs, ask someone from Google what they think of multiple-choice tests.

What we need is an evaluation system where we look at how teachers interact with their students, how well their students can reason and solve problems, and how much improvement a child makes from the time they enter a teacher's class until the time they leave. This kind of evaluation system will require multiple, in-depth, unannounced observations by administrators and other master teachers. It will also require reflective analysis by the teacher being observed. It may require technology, such video blogs where students film themselves reading aloud and monitoring their improvement over the year. It will also require a willingness on the part of unions to recognize that many of our teachers are very good at what they do, but that many others are not. The teachers that aren't getting the job done need help to get better, or need a way to exit gracefully.

Way cool use of a game

2009-03-05T13:25:00.001-08:00

I'm watching another presentation. This one is really cool. The teachers had kids studying animal adaptations. They started by using the free version of Spore, the creature creator. The students created a creature and then had to describe how it works. If it has big eyes, it was nocturnal. How does it defend itself? What is it's habitat?

After this, they used model magic clay to build and color their creatures.

What a great idea.

They planned to use the tech4learning program "frames" to make stop motion videos of their creatures, complete with cardboard painted backgrounds.

I googled "free stop motion software" and found a few other alternatives, so in theory, you could do this for free.

Another thing they did that was cool was to take screen shots of the creatures and then put them into a card template on publisher. This made collectible cards for the kids, which should be popular.

One thing they would need to do was ask the students "can you make that?"

This is cool. We should do it. They will be putting up details on the conference wiki.

Liveblogging David Warlick at NCTIES

2009-03-05T11:54:00.000-08:00

I'm at NCTIES in Raleigh and im about to start a session by David Warlick on "A Foundational Structure for Web 2.0" We'll be getting started shortly.

STarts with a cool quote
"I'm a learner. I try to be a master learner."

Teachers should be master learners and should exemplify that in their classrooms every day.

This gives you permission to learn from your students, your experiences, your world.

He says this will be an odd session and it's the first time he has given it.

What are the qualities of the native information experience and what does this mean for the classroom

- is responsive
- measures accomplishment
- values safely made mistakes
- demands personal investment
- values personal experience and identiy
- rewards with audience and attention
- provokes communication
- is fuled by questions

By the way, he is using a fantastic presentation tool called prezi.com It has everything on one page and zooms in to the area you are working on.

Safely made mistakes. "It's like art."

"These kids want to invest themselves in their information experiences." The value of these experiences is cumulative.

He describes a conversation he overheard his son and friends have where they had an in-depth discussion about the plot and character development. He remarked that this is the conversation that English teachers try and fail to get their students to have about Shakespeare. The message? Kids are accustomed to being together, to having an audience. Audience is a commodity.

He described dropping his son off at college. He kept texting his friends. He carries his friends with him.

Fueled by questions. Searching for "How do I" on twitter reveals tons of stuff.

Teachers who have their students blog realize that it quickly stops being a writing assignment and becomes a communication exercise. Students write expecting feedback.

"It's not technology to them."
"Technology is anything that was invented after you were born."

The technology will not bring them in. Collaboration, communication will bring them in.

Projects alone won't do it. We need to find out why projects get students engaged and why it connects with what they are enjoying outside of class.

Software review - WebcamMax

2008-12-23T19:27:00.001-08:00

With time off for the baby, I’ve got some time to look at new software packages.

A few months ago I started looking for something to help out one of my schools. They want to do a student news broadcast, but they have very little infrastructure. Unlike a lot of my schools they don’t have a central broadcast system that will broadcast over the school TVs. Luckily they do have a lot of LCD projectors hooked up to classroom computers. I decided one way to try a broadcast would be to use a service like Ustream that allows you to live broadcast to a specific URL. This means that all teachers would have to do is crank up their projector and tune in to the proper URL. The teachers liked the idea, but the only problem is that they wanted to record the show ahead of time and edit it for broadcast.

Enter WebcamMax. I found this neat little application and realized it would do exactly what I wanted and more. It allows you to essentially flip your web cam backwards and broadcast anything you want through it. WebcamMax allows you to stream a picture of your monitor or a video off your machine. It also has some other neat features that kids and teachers might find useful. One feature allows the user to superimpose a graphic over their face. The picture, usually a face, follows you as you move. I could easily see kids doing a report on Abe Lincoln or Rosa Parks while “wearing” their face. A built-in recording feature means that teachers can record the news show in WebcamMax without worrying about using another program.

The only problems I found when using WebcamMax is that my machine sometimes got confused as to which web cam software it should be using. The software I installed with the camera sometimes took over, leading WebcamMax to give me a “main source error.” Overall, this wasn’t a big problem to overcome, and I’m sure if I uninstall the other web cam software, the problem would go away. It wasn’t really needed anymore as WebcamMax does everything that software did and more.

I plan to recommend WebcamMax to any of my schools that want to do a news broadcast or do any simple video projects. The lifetime license of $49.95 is very reasonable. Schools that aren’t sure if they want it forever can opt for cheaper licenses that last six months to two years. In fact, the thing that struck me the most is that with this software and a decent webcam, schools can broadcast globally for an investment of under $100.

Overall, it’s a great product and I look forward to finding plenty of uses for it.

To try the product and learn more, go to WebcamMax.

Note: Full disclosure. By doing this review I will get a free copy of the software. Still, it’s well worth it and I honestly recommend it.

Baby!

2008-12-23T19:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's official. I have reproduced!

Lilith Maybelle Reavis-Goodson was born Nov. 21!

Election Day

2008-11-04T12:27:00.000-08:00

I'm suffering through more NCwise training. Again, not the fault of the trainers, but its a lot of information to cover that is not all particulary relevant to me. Add to that my chair is very hard and my rear is getting numb.

Anyway, it's election day and that means I can finally stop fretting about my signs. Since the primary campaign I have had at least 15 Obama signs stolen. I say "at least" because I lost count at 15.

Most of the signs have been stolen from my front yard, usually at night. That's a comforting thought. Even after I added a few other Democratic signs they still only kept stealing the Obama signs. Take that for what you will.

Ironically, the signs are not free. In fact, my wife and I donated a few bucks per sign. Which means that every idiot that stole a sign was actually causing me to donate money to Obama. Oh well.

On the night before election day, we had a few extras, so I scattered them across the medians and polling places in Pumpkin Center. One was stolen within about 3 hours. The others all seem to still be there. I suppose people didn't see them until daybreak and felt some slight concern about stealing them in broad daylight. Maybe they have just given up.

Anyway, we'll see if it worked tonight.

God help me. I'm being trained!!!!!!

2008-11-03T07:45:00.000-08:00

Me here, reporting from NCWise training. The training lasts all week this week from 8:30 to 4:30 and I'm already about to gnaw my arms off.

Don't get me wrong, the trainer is very nice and the information is stuff I really need to know, but it's very dry. The last 45 minutes was going over a "vocabulary" section that was not vocabulary so much as a menagerie of acronyms. For example, I found out that the CCB reports to the ESC, which is made up of members of the LEAs. By the way, both the CCB and the ESC meet at NCDPI.

All of this is accompanied by helpful powerpoints. Here's an example of some bullet points.

::Gnaw, Gnaw, Gnaw.::

In other news, I finished the latest play. I had a small, but fun part and did tech for the rest of it. It was tough selling tickets, probably because the economy is so bad.

The baby is only one month away. We are getting excited. The baby room is nearly complete. We need to put in a closet organizer, but that's about it. I plan on taking the rest of the month easy.

Anyway, back to training. If I survive this, I may blog again.

Paying attention in class

2008-10-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting/irritating conversation in class today. Our professors are apparently peeved that our cohort is constantly looking down at our laptops. They made the comment that we should not look at our laptops during our group presentations and many of my classmates reacted . . . poorly.

More later.

haircut

2008-09-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hair management issues. I got suckered into A Few Good Men when my buddy the director couldn't find a Pfc. Downey (if you've trying to remember the movie, he's the dim one who's accused of murder). I agreed and started learning the play in two weeks.
Acutally, it's not been too bad, other than gumming up my schedule grad school and a pregnant wife.
The oddest thing about it is the haircut. I had to shave off the goatee and get a high and tight. The sides of my head are now pretty much perpetually cold.
Anyway, on with the show.

Kids and Googling

2008-08-25T07:30:00.000-07:00

A neat tidbit from Patrick Crispen's blog Warning: squirrels (love that name).

Basically it talks about research (.pdf) that backs up my assertion that kids today are not born with the innate ability to do good research online. I often tell teachers that research has changed completely from the "good ole" days of card catalogs and green reader's guides to periodical literature. The emphasis has changed from finding resources to evaluating them. The sad part is that kids (and many adults) are pretty horrible at evaluating things. The study revealed that kids find things quickly online, but that they don't take the time to evaluate them. In fact, they barely take the time to read them.

Science writer Carl Sagan argued that we humans have a built-in mechanism for picking out patterns. This is great for spotting a sabre-tooth tiger hiding in the grass getting ready to eat you, but it leads us to some stupid conclusions when we try to think critically about things. Sagan argued for a baloney detection kit; essentially a series of ideas to guide our thinking when evaluating something. I used this with my students back when I taught English and was shocked at how vehemently opposed to ideas of critical thinking they sometimes were. I think we want to be believe things, we want to be uncritcal. This is something we need to address as teachers and learners.

So next time you have your kids in the computer lab doing research, remember that just because they can google faster, it doesn't mean they can google better.

Long Time, no blog

2008-08-23T07:44:00.001-07:00

Summer has come and gone with no blog. Sorry!

The summer was mainly filled with household projects and helping my pregnant wife as she slowly grows larger.

One thing related with all things medieval and educational is a project I have planned. I've been wanting to do some sort of A&S (Arts and Sciences) project for the SCA, taking pictures as I go and putting up the results on a wiki. I think it would be good both for others and for me to practice digitizing a project. I had planned to enter the "newcomer garb" contest at Flight of the Falcon today, but I got busy with painting and work. Now I'm going to instead do a reversible hood and have it ready by baronial birthday next week. It might be a tight squeeze, but I think I can make it. I just have to remember to take pictures!

Speaking of medieval wikis, I just found a thread on Armour Archive that follows along the same lines. Someone wants to start up a wiki on basics ofheavy fighting. It seems some people have often done it. This would be a neat project with videos, ect.

Beginning Blogs

2008-06-12T19:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Cybercollege and the world of blogging! Blogs are a great classroom tool because they promote writing and can be worked on at school or at home. You can put links to cool web sites in your blog to promote discussion like this one. You can also insert pictures.

And even Video!

Bad PowerPoint

2008-05-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

I'm getting ready for a workshop on the "art" of PowerPoint and I'm finding that there are a lot of people out there with opinions on why most PowerPoints suck. There are also a lot of "rules" for making them better. Here's one presentation that has some nice ideas.

| View | Upload your own

A strange but cool moment . . .

2008-04-03T08:10:00.001-07:00

I did a presentation on my Space Camp adventure at an elementary school yesterday. It was pretty fun overall. I wore my flight suit and showed some of my videos. The kids loved it.

The strange part though was that as I looked out over the class, I noticed two Flip Video Cameras, held by two very serious third grade videographers. They were recording every moment of my presentation. How cool!

It seems that my advocacy for these little cameras is paying off. I just love the way that this is technology that ended up in the hands of the students. That's where it needs to be.

Guess Who!

2008-03-29T06:10:00.001-07:00

Today, my group is presenting in our Leadership class. We just presented a review exercise designed to implement deductive reasoning skills using character traits. Post your thought below on how you might use this activity in your classroom.

The Strangeness of Instant Global Communication

2008-03-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I was surfing the net and suddenly found myself on the forefront of global diplomacy. Such are the strange ways of our modern flat world. An article on slashdot about China blocking Youtube led me to a Youtube video made by a Chinese man angry over what he perceived as violent Tibetan separatists attacking innocent Chinese. The next thing I knew I was entering comments in the Youtube feedback and having a discussion, almost in real time, with people from China.

While many of the comments flying from all sides were noxious and obnoxious, and even hateful at times, some were thoughtful. I was forced to do some really quick research on the Tibet situation to keep up. It was 21st century learning. The collaboration with others was forcing me to keep up and learn fast.

Did we solve the problem? No. But I hope we at least opened a dialogue for a few minutes and tried to find things in common.

Flash in the Classroom

2008-03-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

I’m in a presentation on teaching flash to middle school students by NC Haischer.
She said that students of all levels enjoy it. She usually grades by rubrics and says that it is very easy.

She suggested books by DK essentials for learning or teaching flash. She focuses on project-based learning.

Wow! She just showed one student project that was fantastic. He had an incredibly good grasp of camera angles and storytelling.

She starts with storyboarding and planning on pen and paper. She mentioned that it works to teach them sequencing as well.

Reinforces planning ahead
Teaches sequencing
Gives kids a voice
Great career path
Students LOVE it

It’s good for:
Good for tutorials
Classroom procedures (hang up the headphones)
Quizzes
A few neat points. First she says that she never writes down the instructions. The kids just don’t read it. Instead she demos it for them. Interesting! The students realize that the best way to learn is by doing. She also stresses the “We’re all in this together,” aspect.

Also, she stresses use of open source music and images. Good idea. She introduced me to a new royalty free music and sound site partners in ryhme. Also, you should grade on the elements they were supposed to include, not the content (quality of art).

Great presentation

Video in the Classroom

2008-03-13T11:20:00.001-07:00

A neat session from Marty Sharpe of Catawba County. His argument for video in the classroom.

media literature
higher-order thinking skills
project based learning

But mostly, he talked about how in forces student to work on communicating their original ideas and in listening to others. In essence, they are learning to work together. This is a critical 21st century skill. This is especially important as manufacturing jobs leave and creative jobs become more important.

He also discussed screencasting with screenflow, Jing project and cam studio. Screenflow is particularly nice, although it is Mac only. It lets you add video, zoom in and out, spotlight, etc. I should've gotten a Mac!

He showed an example of a student news show with a DV camera, sound mixer, video mixer and PC. He discussed wirecast. It lets you mix video (live?) through software. It is PC and Mac. It costs about $400 but that is cheaper than a $600 mixing board. It allows live mixing, live titles, etc. This lets you webcast it. Think about being able to webcast school board meetings, sports events, etc. You can host it on your on site and or even Ustream.

Someone in the chat mentioned that visual communicator will do the same thing for cheaper. It runs $150

He mentioned Joost (cool) and also voicethread. Voicethread also has an "educator" setting that locks out wierdos. Voicethread allows you to add text, sound, webcam video, music and even doodles to pictures. At the end you link to it. You can also embed on your webpage. This would be great for our presentation coming up in class. One great example he showed up was an intepretation of "the Outsiders." It's a lot like photo story, but collaborative.

Wow, great presentation.

Opening Keynote and Wi-fi Dependency

2008-03-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

The speaker for the opening keynote here at NCAECT was very interesting. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach spoke about the need to re-think how we approach education. The most interesting thing I found was that she has added a new level to Bloom’s taxonomy – Creation. I love it. The idea is that we need to have student make things. This forces them to synthesize what they have learned but it also gets at their passions. Makes sense to me.

In my first concurrent session, I realized how addicted to the net I was when the connection went down. I felt pretty useless.

changing social conventions

2008-03-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

An interesting converstation going on here in David Warlick's workshop on collaborative learning about texting, technology and changing conventions of what is appropriate and what is not. For example, adults often get offended when teens text in front of them or look down at their cell phone. I'm interested in looking into this further. Do we need to teach kids "our way" of doing things, or do we need to adapt our social rules to fit the new technologies. Warlick says that we need to think about balance and "need to respect the wisdom of the crowd." while trying to respect the old way of doing things.

It sort of reminds me of the "no hats in school" rule. This one just seems archaic to me. I've been told that its about "respect." . . . . Respect for what? the ceiling? To people my age, hats are an optional thing. I think the hat/respect rule comes from the days when men wore hats when outside because it was socially expected. This was very true in the middle ages. In the 14th century, men and women were rarely seen outside without head coverings of some sort. A person without a hat was considered not fully dressed. In America, this changed in the late 50s and early 60s, but the legacy lives on in school rules. If the hat rule sounds odd to a 35-year-old, think of what kids think about our rules.

Blogging David Warlick

2008-03-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

Today I'm at NCAECT in Concord. We are working on the "collaborative web" as a personal learning network. It should be interesting. Warlick always shows me about 20 different tools that I have never seen before. More later.

Flipping Camera . . . .

2008-02-27T07:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, that test didn't go so well, here's another couple of formats

Video is cool

2008-02-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

Here's another test. I've got this really cool flip video camera that I'm preparing to take to Space Camp next week. For more on that, see the seperate, teacher-and-student blog I've set up here.

But first, I need to make sure the videos will work once I upload them to the blog. The Flip camera has a strange little codec that has to be installed before it will run. So here it goes. I hope I can see this!

Rock Band!

2008-01-26T05:35:00.001-08:00

It's been a while. Time to post.

I got a great Christmas present. My mom got me an X-box 360 and other relatives got me $100 or so in Best Buy gift cards. After about 2 minutes of deliberation I bought Rock Band.

Wow.

Others have spoken about how cool this game is. Simply put, it makes you feel like you are in a band. with guitar, drum and microphone controllers. The most interesting aspect for me though is my wife.

Becky really doesn't like video games. She pretty much mastered Ms. Pac Man back in the 1980s and then called it quits. I've tried a number of times to get her interested, but nothing worked. This time, something was different. After about two days of rock band, she was better than me. A month later, she is kicking my butt. I love it.

The big question, is why? Why is Rock Band so addictive to someone who is not attracted to games at all. Part of it may be that the game appeals to Becky's inner perfectionist. She basks in the glow of a 100% score on a solo.

It may also be that the genre is so different from the typical "blow something up" or "kill those guys." That really turns Becky off.

Whatever it is, I'm going to keep looking. I love to see what grabs and keeps peoples' interests.

This is a test.

2007-12-07T11:21:00.000-08:00

I'm taking the Intel Teach program this week. It's great by the way and I recommend it to all teachers. It focuses not only on the technoloby, but on using that technology in a sound pedagogical way.

Anyway, what I like most about Intel is that it encourages teachers to get out of their comfort zone and try new things. I just had a teacher ask me whether you could insert a United Streaming video into a blog. Great question! Let's find out.

linky

Of course you could always download the video and embed it in your blog like so.

I love experimenting!

Death to the Textbook Companies!

2007-11-29T07:22:00.000-08:00

Get out the pitchforks, warm up the torches and stir up the angry mob. It's time to go after the textbook companies.

Okay, I'm being a bit hyperbolic here but the last two workshops I've been to have touched on this. First, I went to a presentation by the tech director at Mooresville City Schools where they are implementing a 1:1 laptop program. One way they are going to pay for it is to stop doing textbook adoptions.

I'll repeat that and let it sink in a bit.

No new textbook adoptions.

That means they think they can come up with enough content to display on the laptops to make up for textbooks. I'm inclined to agree. There is just so much out there and so many ways for creative teachers to share their work.

The second session was by Karen Fasimpaur of K12 Handhelds. She discussed a number of tools and content sites. Things like Curriki and wikibooks might someday replace the textbooks that we all hate to have to buy. The free-reading project has even been recommended for adoption by Florida.

I feel good about the possibilities of this because teachers are well-known for sharing resources that they find and create. All we need to do is to get them to start sharing to a wider audience.

Now if any of you out there are muttering things about "Godless commies" and worrying about the death of capitalism, don't worry. Fasimpaur, along with many others, say that agile businesses will move to providing support and consultation services instead of software and content. Capitalism is safe still.

Alan November

2007-11-28T10:49:00.000-08:00

Alan November is a great speaker. I saw him once a number of years ago and remember now why I liked him so much. His theory is that the World is Flat, but U.S. Kids no longer an integral part of society. We need to make them important again. He laid out some possible jobs for students.

1. Tutorial design team - Screencasting - students create porportion problems that other students can access. Who benefits the most? The first student. But others want to do it too.

2. Curriculum review team - they do a podcast reviewing last weeks academic highlights.

3.Daily Researcher - This student sits at the computer and looks up all fact related questions.

4. Global communication team - Students get a global perspective, set up debates, etc.

5. Official Scribe - This student meets with the teacher each day to discuss the lesson and review and improve the notes. The student will also go on the web and find some extra tutorials.

Great presentation. Here are some quotes.

"We need to create a culture of learning where our kids are demanding to compete."
"By the time we're done with this model the kids own the learning."
"We have underestimated what the kids can do."
"But your kids don't have e-mail. . . . In China they do."
"You can enhance teaching all day long without enhancing learning."

Open Source and Money

2007-11-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

I've tinkered around with the idea of switching to open-source or open-standard software for schools, But Lee Sartain from NC state has a great example of why me might want to do it. A system using Microsoft products will probably upgrade 4 times during the time a typical student in in K-12. The cost of that for 3,500 students then that is $700,000. That could be turned into any of the following.

875 laptops
200 interactive classrooms (interactive whiteboard, projector, etc.)
Pay a technician I for 15 years

That puts an interesting spin on it.

Video Games as Learning Engines

2007-11-28T07:40:00.000-08:00

A great workshop from David Warlick on Games and education. Here are some random thoughts.

I love the Glenn Wiese - games are "exceptionally tasty patterns of reality." This really explains why games keep getting more complicated. The technology allows us to make games more tasty.

The education arcade - Revolution. A 3rd-person adventure based on the American Revolution. Interesting idea. But do you get to walk around and observe, or do you get to take part.

Can we teach with games or can we just learn? That's an interesting question. If we are talking about simulations such as Roller Coaster Tycoon or Sim City, I think we can definitely set up the a situation where students "could" learn certain curricular facts or skills. The students may learn things you didn't plan for, but they will learn some things that you DO want them to.

Games like Food Force and Peacemaker seem interesting, but they will just not attract as many kids as commercial games. The problem is that most games are based on conflict and educators are afraid of conflict. Does this mean that we should use ultra-violent games in the classroom? Of course not. But we also should not be afraid to include some conflict in games. We should at least be able to include games with conflict and violence equal to things like football and wrestling that we already sponsor.

Machinema is so cool. The idea of being able to use a game to make a movie is incredible. I actually had a student group come up with an idea to create a Macbeth project using Wii Boxing. It was great.

I've got to get the name of that Halo talkshow!

qualities of gamers

work in responsive environments
communicate
sharing personal experience and identity
form and participate in communities
ask questions
accomplish
invest themself
safely make mistakes
earn attention

Sounds like qualities of good learners to me.

overheads suck

2007-11-27T06:28:00.000-08:00

We have a crafty presenter here. She started a lesson on rocks by starting out with an overhead projectory and a stereotypically bad transparency on rocks, complete with a mind-numbing worksheet. Of course she then went over to the Promethean board and did the lesson in a much more interactive and interesting way.

Also, during the introductions I was shocked at how many districts either already have a large number of boards or plan to buy them.

On the way to NCETC

2007-11-27T05:59:00.000-08:00

I decided to drive up to Greensboro early this morning instead of coming up last night. Of course this decision virtually assured that I would blow out a tire on the other side of Salisbury. With my little goofy spare tire in place I headed on to Greensboro where I'm going to a half-day workshop sponsored by Promethean. I really like the idea of interactive whiteboards. I'm finding that teachers are really adopting them, even teachers who are not very tech savy. I don't have a bias yet over which company's board I like the best so this should be interesting.

Teaching "Computer Skills"

2007-11-19T07:31:00.000-08:00

Tied to the wire

We need to do more to put technology into the hands of teachers and students. Too much of what we do now requires teachers to "go somewhere" to get access to technology. If a teacher wants to use technology in a lesson they have to schedule time to go to the lab or to "track down" an interactive whiteboard. These may see like small things, but in the hectic schedule of the typical classroom teachers, these things can be the difference between using the technology and not using the technology.

I sometimes compare our present situation to the old days when blackboards and chalk were new technology and you could only afford one per school. Soon, I hope we will be past those days and we can work to get more technology INTEGRATED into the classrooms where it will become not something special, but an everyday tool, just like a pencil.

A Ray of Hope

2007-11-15T17:58:00.000-08:00

What a great afternoon. I did an afterschool workshop at one of my elementary schools with three teachers. We were learning how to use their student response devices, which are a great way to use tech to streamline grading and get lots of good feedback from students.

The great thing about it was how enthusiastic these veteran teachers were. There was no complaining, no grading of papers while I taught, no eye-rolling. It was all genuine interest and hard work.

I was so happy I offered to go back tomorrow and watch them use it in class.

Using what you have

2007-11-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

Whew, I just got done installing a program for the kindergarten teachers on the lab computers at one of our schools.

It

was

really

slow.

I shouldn't be surprised. Most of the computers in the lab are old Dell 4300s running Win XP. I'm guessing they are about 4-5 years old. Their tortise-like qualities come from their almost total lack of RAM. They all have a single 128 MB chip. The result, is that it takes about 4 second from the time you click the "start" button to the time that the start menu actually appears.

Why is this important, other than giving me an excuse to share my pain? Because most schools I know of would probably get rid of the things and buy new ones.

Big mistake.

The sad truth? My machine at home is actually a little older than these machines and it still does everything I need it to, up to and including video editing. The difference is that I have actually upgraded it a few times by adding new RAM and a video card. We checked with our vendors and found that these machines would only take about $25 a pop to upgrade the RAM with an additional 256 MB and keep the machines useful for a few more years.

It makes me wonder wether we buy too much too often for too much money. We need to look closely at what we have, how we use it, and how we can keep it running.

The Joys of Networking

2007-10-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

It's class again and we're talking nuts and bolts of networking. I thing a lot of people are very lost.

We are talking about control on networks and what should be blocked or not. The consensus seems to be that filtering is usually pointless.

Patrick says that all security policy is very location specific. This means that security should fall back on the organization's core values. Unfortunately, the decisions on what to block often gets made by an individual or small group that is not "plugged in" to the core values. I think this is the biggest problem in schools with blocking software and network security.

A quote from professor Bronack "the most effective security is the one that people choose to buy into."

We discussed student honor codes and how effective they are. This idea really relates.

Another great Bronack quote "The school systems don't exist to give someone an excuse to have pristine networks."

So I think this means that the technology task force in Lincoln County should look at the blocking software and how restrictive it is. Also, since we are talking about getting to our core values, we should look into having a few students on this task force.

live music

2007-09-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

Ban the CD players. Throw out the ipods. Everyone should have to listen to their music live.
Okay, that's a bit extreme, but it would still be a good idea. As you can probably guess, I went to a concert last night. It was a band most people have never heard of, Everything After from Columbia.
There's nothing like a small venue and a live band to make you realize that music today has morphed into a mutated, zombielike shell of what it probably was 100 years ago. I read an essay by Douglas Adams a few years ago where he muses that entertainment in the 20th century is largely an artificial process because you can't interact with a movie or CD. He's right.
Last night I spent a few minutes before the show talking to the band. We talked about the opening act, joked about people's haircuts and generally chatted. It was a normal conversation.
Then they went on stage and everything changed.
Whether it's the music, the stage, the lights, or the beer, live music changes something. Phrases, movements and facial expressions that would get you laughed at in any other social settings make you a god onstage. For some reason, a drummer pantomiming licking his drumstick before a particularly climactic moment in the music just makes sense. And there is a palpable connection between the artist and the audience. The reaction of the crowd changes the performance.
Then, the show is over, the band comes offstage and the moment is gone. Even when you get a chance to talk to the band afterwards, it's just a different dynamic. In fact, it makes that time onstage even more unique.
Now compare this to the big money artists. Everyone is criticizing Britney Spears's choice of sequined bikini, but they all just off-handedly mention that her lip-syncing could have been bettter. Umm . . . what? It's fake, it's slick, it's overproduced. It's all calculated to sell, not to create a spontaneous experience. probably why the music industry is crashing. So go find some starving local band and go see them every few weeks. Or find a band you used to like and see them live. You might be surprised.

telecommunication

2007-09-08T06:49:00.000-07:00

Well, class again. Time to blog.

This is telecommunication in education or something like that.

We are talking about what "telecommunications" is and whether the Internet is telecommunications.

I said that "Internet" and "phone" are simple words we use for complex systems

isopraxis - Steve's word. I'm going to go look that up. I love learning new words. He says the "internet" is a language that allows communication. Sounds interesting.

We've slid into a discussion about e-mail and which is confidential and which is not. Daniel asked a questions about gaggle and whether we have to archive all of it. Time to buy stock in a hard drive company.

Things that don't often get used in classrooms:
chat
msg boards

Sony Home seems interesting. Does it have any educational applications?

Steve agrees that teachers who don't want to learn computers are scared of change, scared of being learners. He says the challenge is how to reach these people. He says look for "I've worked with teachers who have taught 10 years. I've also taught with teachers who have taught 1 year ten times."

That's enough for now.

Class blogging . . . again

2007-08-25T06:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm getting lazy. It seems like I am only blogging when I'm in class. This probably says less about the quality of my class than it says about my attention span.

Anyway, I'm now in Connecting learners to the curriculum. It should be useful, especially since I really need to start learning the elementary curriculum so that I can actually help elementary teachers integrate technology into said curriculum.

Speaking of the job, it's going well. I'm logging a lot of miles while meeting with pricipals, but the meetings are positive.

Well, I had to run the avatar for our teacher so not much of an entry. The class seems very structured. Should be nice.

More later.

Class Blogging III - the prequel

2007-07-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's not a prequel. I think this is the lasts group.
Technically insane group has done a great job making a web page with resources on podcasting. They have also used camstudio. They also use podomatic, which not only lets you podcast, but gives you some statistics to follow. Unfortunately, there may be some inappropriate ad content.

Time for Miranda and Jennifer. Polynomials and factoring, blech. Sorry, not a math guy. They are doing a ppt with good links and animated gifs.

The backrow gang is doing a few things. Apparently, Burke is going to wikispaces for teacher web pages. I need to contact their IT people. Now I'm recording me typing here in my blog to test something with camstudio. That should be enough.

Patrick is up, his partner is also at the beach. Seems to be a theme. He is doing a tutorial using openoffice. Patrick loves openoffice. They are acutally using openoffice to do web pages but there are some problems in the conversion. It seems though that he got it working. Go open source!

Last group!
Leslie and Heather are doing a new version of the Zews newsletter. One great thing is that they have added a blog for the cohorts. Nice.

That's it, pretty good presentations considering the ups and downs of the class.

Class Blogging II - Electric Boogaloo

2007-07-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the title, but That has to be the best tagline on a sequel ever.

Next project. An all mac school (Lucky devils) They are doing multimedia projects with iphoto, imovie, ieverything. Why can't Darth Gates get the picture and realize that having all those applications actually working together seamlessly is what people want. Grrrrr. /rant.
Anyway, they are using web.mac to host student pages. Unfortunately, they might not be able to us it because teachers can't have individual web pages.

Okay, we did our presentation, it went pretty well.

The next group is the CVCC group. They did video tutorials and put them on blackboard. They used camstudio to record them. They used Swishzone to do flash-style animation. This is the second group to use Swish. I need to check this out.

The next group are the CVCC blackboard admins, they are talking about the e-portfolio plug-in for blackboard. I wonder if moodle has one?
Okay, that's all for now, I'm adding twitter to the blog so I want to check and see if it is up.

Blogging from class

2007-07-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

It's presentation day in my hypermedia in education class and I'm going to liveblog the presentations. We just watched the first one where the group did a neat cross-school project. One group member had his students prepare media for students at the other teacher's school.

Now a presentation on Internet safety. They made a website. It's starting off with the ususal about predators stalking online. One neat thing was a link to an online netlingo dictionary. Also a model "Internet contract" for parents and kids. They also included a video of an SBI agent talking to their class about safety. Pretty good job. They used a number of new tools.

On to the Mountain Girls. Their project is geared towards 3-4 grade. They did the solar system(cool). It's a supplemental resource. This reminds me. I need to do a county wide solar system model. How big would they be? Hmm. That needs a second post. Okay, very busy powerpoint with lots of things moving. They tried the powerpoint out on one of their kids, cool.

Next group.

Emily Nestor's team is in the other cohort and is meeting us online in the AETzone. They are talking about casenex a series of online case studies. Sounds neat. This is cool, they made a virtual school in the zone to watch the case studies in audio and video. This reminds me a lot of the Virtual school program I saw at NECC. Funny, they made their initials out of the flowers in the schoolyard. Dr. Bronack said some interesting things at the end of this about how this is really in the proof of concept phase and that there are interesting future options on how this might be used to train teachers in a simulation-type way.

Next group - Teaching about the five kingdoms in biology. They tried to make a powerpoint that was more like a web site with lots of links and lots of choices. Looks like we are about to go so I'm going to finish off this post.

One to One computing

2007-06-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

I'm in a session now on 1:1 computing. The researchers followed two districts. The results? Teachers and studnets learned to be more authentic and seemed to change their thinking to be more real-world. A lot of entrenched teaching styles need to be changed.

The problem? Old-style testing doesn't pick up the improvements. But if the improvements don't pick up on testing the politicians won't support them. I wonder if we're going to need to wait until laptops are as cheap as dirt until we can do this.

Games and sims for teaching and learning

2007-06-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

I love games. Why do most other educators hate them so much?

So far in this session I have heard about several games, and not only do they seem cool, they have a lot of research attached to them. With all this reasearch, you would think games would be more accepted in the classroom. It's a bit strange. It would be easy to shrug it all off as "people don't thinks games belong in school." But that's an oversimplification. Schools are hip deep in football and other sports. They are games that are not connected closely to learning, but they are welcomed whole-heartedly.

Perhaps time is a factor. Games tend to take a while, but a few of the things we saw in this session, such as Palmagatchi, seek to correct that. Palmagatchi imitates the virtual pets of the mid 90s, except played on handhelds and simulating evolution. Students play this game in small bursts in their free time. Seems neat.

New Tools, New schools

2007-06-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Lots of good ideas in this session, but it almsot feels like the choir preaching to itself. It's frustrating hearing people talk about getting teachers to use web 2.0 applications when I have teachers who manually enter grades in their paper gradebooks, calculate them by hand and then enter them into their electronic gradebook.

So how do we reorganize schools? As one of the panelists just said. "We're having the smae conversation we've been having for the past 20 years, only the tools are different." It's going to be hard to get people to change. I don't know if we can do it.

As another panelist put it, It's like diet and exercise. If you don't need to fit into a new outfit or avoid a heart attack, it's not something you push yourself to do. As a tech facilitator, I'm going to need to force people to do mental crunches.

I'm excited but I'm already frustrated.

NECC and British romantic poetry

2007-06-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

Odd as it may see, Wordsworth and NECC have a little in common.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

I'm thinking of this as I look from the gallery windows out over the vendor exhibit hall here at NECC. Don't get me wrong, I love wandering throught there looking at, for lack of a better word . . . stuff.

But it's sad that a lot of the stuff down there is either derivative, poorly thought out, or entirelly too expensive. I've only been about halfway throught the exhibit hall and I've seen at least 15 different companies offering student response devices. Now these things are great, but they all do about the same thing but cost wildly different prices. Worse yet are all the expensive software products that have open-source equivalents.

Well, enough of the bad, now for the good.

Multimedia Fusion - Uses a drop-and-drag programming language to let student (and teachers) design their own games and share them as executables.
Customized flash drives - they engrave them with your school name and logo. Great for fundrasing or identifiying school flash drives vs. private ones.
Dimension M - software from Tabula Digital. A game that tests math skills. Not too exciting as a description, but the graphics are on par with commercial first-person-shooters, a sure fire way to attract kids.
GBX interactive - vocaulary, SAT prep and more designed as games for Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance. Nuff said.

Okay, I just got nabbed for a few moments to do an on-camera interview with someone. I'm not really clear on what it was. Hmm. Oh, and there was a pirate going on after me.

2007-06-25T08:31:00.001-07:00

Wow!

As usual, I’m having NECC overload. I went first to a workshop on open-source software and I was surprised that I didn’t know all of the software. There were some great apps dealing with web photo albums, science and math software and more.

I got through the first 3 isle of the vendors and found a great game development software package that allows students (and teachers) to design and share their own games using a menu-driven programming language. It not only speaks to student interest, but builds familiarity with programming. I hope it doesn’t cost too much.

Now I’m in the AFI screen education session. They are trying to build a network of teachers who can learn about film and teach others to use it. This is great because I’m already doing this. What a resource! Now I need to find and go to one of their workshops.

More later.

NECC

2007-06-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

For the next few days I'll be at NECC, the National Educational Computing Conference, in Atlanta.

I'm in the middle of the opening keynote now, listening to the president of ISTE. She talked about technology equity early on. We may be connected at school, but we need to get the kids connected at home. I'm thinking this might be a theme here this year.

More later.

Control and Teacher Web Pages

2007-04-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today my FDN 5220 class is making project presentations and a common element keeps coming up. The students all teach in various school districts around the region, and apparently, every district seems to have a draconian policy on how and where teachers can create and host their class web pages. One district requires teachers to use schoolnotes and nothing else. Another shelled out lots of cash for Firstclass, a web design suite, and won't let teachers use anything else.
The overall theme: control. One teacher even talked about how county officials searched the web to find rouge teacher home pages and sent nasty warnings about how pages had to be "approved." My own district did the same two years ago, banning all web pages except for those approved by an official "web mentor" and hosted on district web servers.
It's all about control. Usually such "medieval" control of teacher-produced content is spurred by a single incident. In my district's case, a teacher posted a link from their class web page to a survey that had a question about sexual orientation. Boneheaded move.
Unfortunately, this really doesn't solve much. Even though all these districts have "official" web page controls they still will find it tough to keep a teacher from posting something stupid, or even saying something stupid in the classroom. The real problem is professionalism when it comes to technology and you can only fix that by educating teachers.
Another thing that interests me is that so many districts seem to select a web creation/hosting suite that costs too much money and is sometimes poorly designed, or optimized for business instead of education. Why is this? I think these companies may be using scare tactics to take advantage of skittish district administrators. It would be easy to make a pitch about the horrible things teachers are doing out there on their "uncontrolled" web pages. They may even throw the word "myspace" in to really amp up the fear factor before pitching their own product as a cure all.
Again, what's the solution? Education and common sense.

The pitfalls of multitasking

2007-03-05T18:34:00.000-08:00

I love technology and the ability it gives us to simplify complex tasks. But unfortunately it's given rise to a soul-killing phenomenon called multi-tasking. I see it every day. Students are convinced that they can do 12 things at once as efficiently as if they were doing one thing at a time. Modern computers allow us to do this, but that doesn't make it faster. In fact, research has shown that the opposite is actually true. Switching between tasks costs a little bit of brain power and time. Overall, it slows us down.

If I ever needed proof, I got it tonight. In the frantic rush of final practices for Fiddler on the Roof I was doing the following: working with a student to to program 52 lighting cues into our lightboard, reading my script and placing stickies where said light cues go, calling out actual lighting instructions as the show went on, calling out cues to two stage managers on a headset and listening for their cues, dealing with sound complaints from the conductor, giving instructions over headset to the spotlight operator and taking notes on which actors need a wireless mic.

After a few minutes of this, I realized it wasn't working. I told my crew to ignore 3 out of 4 major problems and solve one thing at a time. It worked. We solved several sound problems and got the light board (mostly) programmed.

Only 6 more days until the show is over!

Running the light board

2007-03-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

So why am I writing the blog anyway? I would like to say it is my lifelong dream and desire to share my thoughts with the world. In reality, I'm in a graduate program in educational technolgy and starting a blog was a good way to explore this technology for my first class. Sadly, I tend to be a "lurker" online. I sit around and enjoy the great stuff others come up with, but I rarely contribute. So perhaps this is what I need to start making this connection a two-way affair.

This week I am helping our drama department with their production of "Fiddler on the Roof." I oversee the sound and lighting. Our school is relatively new and is blessed with a high-end lighting and sound system that, unfortunately, few of us really know how to operate. But with the help of a few of my students who have volunteered their time, we have things running pretty smoothly. It all seems so much more natural to have students learn by doing instead of by sitting in a classroom listening to how it is done. I had 10th graders figuring out complicated equipment the way they knew best, by experiment and hands-on practice. Along the way I was able to offer suggestions and gently guide instead of being the only source of knowledge in the room. I think I got more teaching done in three hours after school than I did during the entire school day. It really makes me wish I could get the kids out of the classroom more.

The infamous first post

2007-03-01T18:31:00.000-08:00

"He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not
increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to
reach that endless life where all shall be made clear." - Alfred the Great 849-899
I love the Middle Ages. It was a time of so many beautiful contradictions. Lofty cathedrals and dowtrodden peasants, great ideas and religious intolerance, gallant knights and senseless slaughter. In many ways, the Middle Ages were a lot like today.
The "Medieval Teacher" is a metaphor for what I hope to accomplish in this blog. As a high school teacher, I mix technology, chivalry, student-centered learning, games and some old-fashioned fun to try to prepare my kids to be 21st century citizens. If all goes well (and I have time) I'll post about everything from my humble ideas on teaching to my pastime as a weekend medieval warrior.
Enough for now, more tomorrow