Welcome GCEDC members to the November 15th seminar concerning GoogleDocs and other valuable Web 2.0 tools to help enrich your teaching and inspire your students' learning.  Below this post is a survey created using GoogleDocs.  Please take a moment to answer each question.  Garth and I will show you just how easy it is to organize a survey/test and manage the answers/information collected from this type of interactive document.  You will also notice that we have include several Web 2.0 tools that we use in our 7th grade world history classroom to engage and inspire students to master curriculum and harness their creative-thinking potential. 
All of the tools below are FREE and linked to the homepage for each product.  After we discuss some of these tools we will give everyone a chance to look deeper at one, or a few of them.

Web 2.0 FREE tools:
Communication
    Skype
    Twitter
    Diigo
Blogs
    Weebly
    Wikispaces
    Blogger
Concept Mapping
    Bubbl.us
    Personal Brain
    Webspiration
Visualizers
    Voki
    GoAnimate
    Xtranormal
Word Clouds
    Wordle
    Tagxedo

This week both Mike and I were teaching about leaving positive digital footprints.  We skpyed a few times and shared ideas between the schools with great discussions on this topic.  We set up a wallwasher page inside our blog for students to post ideas, links, comment, images and so on.  We thought a few kids would post.  However, over 110 posts total on the first day, not to mention 13 post on the blog.  

The work is embedded below, but after so long it will delete the work (click the pink "Post a sticky" to open full screen). But, you can see an image to the left after day one.  Great work by kids and they found some great information on digital footprints. 

Mike and I do the same project to start the year.  It is called, "What was 7th grade like?"  This project is based on kids learning a few skills: Interviewing, researching, creating essential questions, storytelling and building a documentary.    In essence, they become historians.  Over the years, I have collect about 750 of these documentaries and this is the first one a parent has given written permission to post.  I hope you enjoy it and I am sure this 13 year old would love to read your comment of her work.  

Pay close attention to the very end.  The last minute or so is very impressive.  

I just read the eulogy written and delivered by Mona Simpson at her brother, Steve Jobs’ funeral. The ironic thing is that I came across the eulogy looking back at the days Tweets via TweetDeck.  Okay, so that is not so ironic, the real ironic part is that before I read the eulogy I read a Gallop Poll conducted over the 4 business quarters of 2010.  According to the poll, above 50% of American workers are disengaged with their job.  That means 1 out of every 2 people you see on the street are not passionate about what they create, change, influence on a daily basis.  Around Halloween people talk about zombies, but in actuality most people are just making it through the day emotionless with no clear path.  It was disheartening to read such a statistic, so I imagine the emotional impact of reading such an amazing eulogy right afterwards was heightened.  Steve’s sister is a writer and a professor.  Her words are eloquent and her love for her brother shows in every metaphor and anecdote. 

So often in the last few months the idea of inspiration and love and leading life using emotions has resonated to me: everywhere from national conferences to local workshops and now in the tender words of a sister whom lost a brother.  The arts and the humanities have, for far to long, been under-valued to science and math.  Taylor Mali speaks about seeing God and beauty in Math, “How can you teach math without speaking of God…”.  I received a wonderful email from a parent today (coincidence at this juncture in my life?) that thanked me “for all I do to engage [my] child in your class”.  I emailed back that I really want to go beyond engagement and inspire people.   

The talk about common assessment and standardization and cutting physical education and art classes makes me sick.  People are so worried to let education change for the better, but those same people are very quick to cut the things that are currently making education so great.  The National Middle School Association released their “This We Believe” statement.  It is a collection of attributes and characteristics considered “Keys” to education today’s youth.  2 of the 16 characteristics concern curriculum and assessment.  That’s 12.5% of a child’s total education.14 characteristics and 4 essential attributes speak of educating the rest of the child...the part to the left and under the focus of math and science.  The brain has two hemispheres and they are connected for a reason.  We have arms and legs and feet and feelings and stomachs and hearts and they are valuable learning and living tools.

As I see my philosophical beliefs flourishing, a personal renaissance that I am lucky enough to share with Garth, and I wonder where I can find empathy.  It rarely exists in teachers and is even more rare in administrators.  I wonder why my life has brought me to this point? I read the autobiographies of people that are creative and brave; Neil Peart, Russell Means, Jack Kerouac, Steve Jobs.  I wonder if they ever truly find fulfillment in what they do, or if it is a constant battle to impact the world. 

It isn’t about success and failure.  It isn’t about being remembered.  It isn’t about awards.  It isn’t about being the best.  It isn’t about being the favorite.  It’s about changing the world.  Nothing more and never, never anything less.

I have been looking for several years for a way to better communicate with parents and students.  I came across Class-Pariot, a free texting based software.   It allows anyone (students and parents) to send one text message to a number with a subscribe message.  Then you can send one text and everyone who signed up will get it.  As the educator, you can choose to turn off responses or allow anyone who gets it to text you back.  I am using it now without students/parents having the ability to response to me. 


I think this has huge implications for education.  Parents often don't have time to read the classroom blog, or school newsletters, etc.  This can provide them with details right on their personal handheld.  Let us know your thought.  

See other ideas for cellphones in your classroom. 

I just saw an update in my Facebook account about a new FB feature.  FaceBook has created "Timeline", a multimedia add-on to your FB profile.  This new feature allows you to catalog everything in your life on a digital timeline.  You can upload pictures, videos, sync with apps like Nike+ & Netflix, even leave maps and location information.  The first thing that came to my mind was, "wow now I can organize all of my pictures".  Then, the teacher in me took over on this Sunday afternoon and saw the learning potential.

Imagine if a students could keep a complete digital timeline of everything they accomplish/learn throughout a school year.  They can add links to their blog entries, videos of learning experiences, maps of important places they visited, podcasts, digital photos, etc and create a living personal history.   How better to help a student understand history than to allow them to create their own.  Think of the discussions on bias and embellishment as students reflect on how they are creating their personal history as they study others timelines.  Create FB pages for historical figures and have students create timelines for them.  Link timelines in online textbooks for millions of people to learn from each day.

This powerful tool can help connect students to the study of history and create a living document for them to take with them.  Imagine if your students applied to college or interviewed for a job and they could open an entire education/work history in multimedia format.  The add-on is not currently available, but if you follow the link below you can watch a short video and sign up for notification when it becomes available.

FaceBook Timeline

-Mike

Usually our blog posts are about philosophy or tech tools, but today a little something different.  I couldn't help but write a blog about an awesome project that is currently being shared with me.  Please read and comment

I am sitting in an all-day conference hosted by IdeaStream and WVIZ.  I decided to stop by and listen to the "Observing Animal Needs First Hand" session.  The two Kindergarten teachers, Melanie Watts and Anne Ferlito, leveraged technology to inspire learning, involve families and give students an amazing experience.

These two great teachers got it right!  They started with the curriculum, and then they began to reflect and think about how to really connect learning with students' lives.  It all started with a question, "How do we really connect our living animals standards with students?"  The answer was family pets.  So Melanie and Anne decided to send a letter home to parents asking if they had family pets, if those pets could come visit, if they could FlipCam the pets at home, or even skype in a pet visit.

Anne was fortunate enough to have several live animal visits.  Melanie, after attending a tech workshop, decided to send home flip cams with her kindergarteners.  These 5-year-old students were given the opportunity to record something relevant to their lives, their pets, and share that with their classmates to learn curriculum!  During their session, we got to watch some examples of the videos shot by the students.  You could almost feel the pride and excitement of the students as they shared their lives with their classmates.  There were also several skype sessions that allowed students to see animals "live" in their natural habitat.

Garth and I presented at NAPSA's national conference yesterday in Cincinnati; this meant 8 hours in a car to reflect and brainstorm.  We talked a lot about inspiring students, not just engaging them with learning.  As I am sitting and watching the parts of this project come together, I can tell that Melanie and Anne are truly passionate about what they do.  The time and creativity that went into this project is amazing.  I find it ironic that they both have said (multiple times) that it isn't really anything exciting.  Great teachers seldom realize just what a difference they are making in students' lives, and even less-often are great teachers told that they are great.

But this project is great.  These students were given the opportunity to really connect learning to their lives and share something that is usually lost from the educational experience.  We need to allow students the opportunity to bring their personal lives into the classroom and the teaching/learning experience.  I couldn't help but smile watching the videos.  I also can't help but think about how this project would be just as useful/relevant in my middle school science classes.  Hopefully these two wonderful, inspiring, hard-working teachers will give Garth and I the opportunity to Skype with them in the Spring so that they can share their animals with our students.

-Mike 

Below are the 24 questions our students created after several days of discussion on Essential Questions (click here to see the post on the build up to these questions).  The questions are ALL student created and we hope to use their ideas and desire to understand pave the way for learning this year.  

1. How do art and music affect how people live?
2. Why did civilizations start where they did?
3. How have past leaders affected the modern day?
4. How has U.S. culture changed the world?
5. How did people live before philosophy and science/how did the world change when it was discovered?
6. How has war changed the world for better or worse?
7. Why do people have religion/why are there different religions?
8. Why do people separate themselves based on differences?
9. How does war affect society?
10. Why is trade important?
11. How does music affect/influence people in different societies?
12. How does architecture evolve?
13. How do the choices you make affect the world?
14. What does it mean to have power?
15. Why is there conflict between societies?
16. How has war evolved throughout time?
17. How does the institutionalization of education effect societies?
18. Why do you think women have almost never had equal rights?
19. Why do people in some countries suffer for things that are basic human rights?
20.  Why do we fear what we don’t know.
21. How did the Europeans Explore t he World when have no modern technology?
22 What would have happened if Jesus was never born?
23. Why are some people free and others not?
24. Why is education unequal?
25. How do we know what we know is real?

Our students put a great deal of effort into making this list.  We hope you will comment on this post, so we can share with them your favorites and maybe even your own essential questions.   By the way, one of my favorites is #25, Thanks 8 period. 

To learn more about essential questions see my diigo account(GarthHolman) 

Sir Ken Robinson once stated (paraphrase), “If you were to visit education as an alien and say, “what’s it for?” The only possible answer you could produce would be to create university professors”.

Howard Zinn is noted for stating, “Students should be encourage to go into history in order to come out of it, and should be discouraged from going into history and getting lost in it, as some historians do.”

We understand that throughout our teaching careers, and the possible 17,000 students that we may teach, if we are lucky if a few of them will themselves become historians/teachers.  That is to say that education will still exist in thirty five years (or even in ten) and that professions such as history will still be completed by people and not machines; Watson has showed that memorization and recall of facts can easily be handle by machine.  So where does this leave Math, Language Arts, History, Science, Physical Education and the Fine Arts?  Teachers often teach their subjects as if they exist in a place void of any other learning or knowledge.  We lead our students to believe novels only exist in English class, or that formulas are only written during math lectures.  An Ohio State University commercial in essence used student-athletes to highlight the connection between playing sports in college and the education that goes along with it.  The commercial basically has student-athletes claiming that they may not “go pro in athletics”, but they will “go pro in something”.  We need to understand that most students will be going pro as moms and dads that are hard working in some job we don’t even know exist yet. 

School didn’t teach us how to change our oil, rebuild a Harley transmission, fix a table leg, sooth a crying baby or politic for fundamental rights (either for myself, my family or my students).  To this end, we are attempting to completely shift our teaching from one of outcomes, to a method that promotes/stabilizes/creates/enhances the process.  In 7th grade language; teaching kids how to learn.

Each year we start with Essential Questions (sometimes called wondering or Big questions).  Not just about our content, but about the world around them and how these questions connect their understanding of the world we live in.  We want our students to be inquisitive, wonder, question and dream.  After several days of discussion, we focus on our discipline’s (world history) essential questions.  Students create wondering questions they have about history and we use those student-generated questions to guide our courses.  Our next blog will provide you with the 24 questions they created and are most curious about (classes of 2011-2012) and these are the questions that will help motivate, better yet drive their passion for learning this school year. 

-Mike & Garth

The picture is from the home page of Apple.com.  Steven Jobs' death was just announced moments ago.  Definitely one of the leading thinkers of my life time.  His contributions to technology and Apple's on-going commitment to education is commendable.  Garth is fortunate to teach in an apple 1-to-1 school.  We need more creative, driven people like Mr. Jobs in the world.  I hope that Apple continues to create and push the boundaries of technology integration.




"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary." -Jobs