Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
Who’s looking at your students’ data?Tarrant Institute professional development coordinator Susan Hennessey joins research fellow Mark Olofson in discussing some of the issues around corporate data-mining and how this potentially affects students and educators’ choices around edtech tools.
In case you’re just tuning in, podcasts are having something of a renaissance. People are finding themselves on treadmills or trapped in cars on their commutes back and forth to work and soccer practice or just out for a long walk with the dog after dinner. And in this do-more-be-more-right-now world, podcasts represent a great way to make use of that time by sneaking in a little PD.
Continue reading “4 edtech podcasts you should be listening to”
Fall in Vermont features two amazing local conferences for educators: VT Fest and the Rowland Foundation Conference. And at both these events, one of the hottest topics was personalized learning.
As Vermont moves to implement Act 77, Flexible pathways to secondary education completion (pdf) there ‘s a lot of discussion on the best way to implement personalized learning plans, or PLPs.
Luckily, some schools are already diving right in.
A great way to bring book covers to life with augmented reality is through the AR app Aurasma. But for some students who are shy about actually appearing in videos for book reviews or trailers can app-smash the Chatterpix app to give voice to their favorite characters from books.
It’s a great way for students to think about elements of storytelling such as point-of-view, summation, showing vs. telling
Besides, it’s just fun!
It’s super-fun to make book trailers to embed in book covers with Aurasma, but how much cooler would it be to see your friend explain *in person* why they liked that book?
You know this would rock! And be time-effective for getting a bunch of different students’ opinions embedded in your newest library display.
Absolutely doable. App-smash Touchcast with Aurasma and boom! Hear from actual, real-live people made tiny in book covers.
Let’s do this!
In this episode of The 21st Century Classroom, Tarrant Institute graduate research fellow Mark Olofson and I take a look at one of the premises of this article on the ill-fated city-wide rollout of iPads in Los Angeles classrooms, “Los Angeles schools need to think outside the iPad”.
A number of problems arose during and after the rollout that make valuable intellectual fodder for any school or district in their 1:1 planning phase, but the article’s author, Nathan Schneider raises an interesting point about how who makes the tech students use on a daily basis can shape their world-view.
So give episode #4, “Taking the lid off technology” a listen, and as always, we love to hear your feedback. This week’s music is by Chrissy Jackson, and you can find more of her Creative Commons-licensed sounds at her Soundcloud page.
You can subscribe to The 21st Century Classroom via iTunes or Soundcloud, or just keep tuning in here.
Twitter’s not just a great way to build your PLN as an educator, it’s also a powerful tool to connect students with the world around them in very unique ways. But how can you make those connections authentic learning experiences?
Let’s look at making the most of twitter in your classroom.
Continue reading “Making the most of twitter in your classroom”
Twitter is an invaluable resource for educators looking to share their successes and challenges in an asynchronous, on-demand way. It’s a low-stress entry into social media where you only have to post a little at a time to connect with educators both around the world and on the next block — sometimes as close as the next classroom away! Here’s some tips on making the most of twitter as an educator.
Continue reading “Making the most of twitter as an educator”
This past Thursday we officially welcomed Christ the King School, in Burlington, as our newest partner school. Professional development coordinator Meredith Swallow has been working with the faculty and leadership team for the past year on school transformation and technology integration, and we’re excited to be able to take this next step in the relationship.
Hear from Swallow on what we see in this school that we believe makes them such a fantastic choice for partnering:
Congratulations to Christ the King School!
As a result of the newly announced $5 million gift from the Tarrant Foundation to the University of Vermont, we’re able to continue to offer partnership slots to Vermont schools. Is your school ready to partner with us?
This morning, the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation announced that another $5 million gift to the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education, increasing their annual budget to $1.5 million. The new funding will allow the Institute to triple the number of Vermont schools they are able to serve.
“We are truly grateful to the Tarrant Foundation for providing the resources to bring this program to many more students, teachers and schools,” commented Tarrant Institute director Penny Bishop. “Middle school is often educators’ last best chance to reach kids.”
The new funding will allow the Institute to triple the number of Vermont schools they are able to serve.
Triple the schools. Triple.
So what we want to know now is: is your school ready to partner with us? Are you in need of professional development for technology?
If you and your school or district are interested in hearing more about partnering with the Tarrant Institute, check out what we’ve done with partner schools so far and get in touch.
By now, almost everyone’s familiar with QR codes, the distinctive-looking black-and-white graphics which, when scanned, take the scanner to a url. No? Not sounding familiar? Then how about:
If you have a phone, iPad or tablet with a QR-scanning app installed (we like Barcode Generator/Reader for Android, and Scan for iOS) open it up and center your cross-hairs on the image above.
QR codes can link to websites, event notices, coupons, blog-posts, podcasts — if it’s online, you can embed it. The QR code above links to a particularly compelling documentary video made by Montpelier’s U32 students, about school consolidation in Vermont, but that’s a story for another time.
But with QR codes becoming near-ubiquitous in our everyday environment, how can you make them new again?
Here are 5 off-beat ways to use QR codes in your classroom.
Continue reading “5 off-beat ways to use QR codes in the classroom”
Personalized learning plans, or PLPs, are non-traditional pathways by which students can navigate from entrance to graduation in a way that’s personally meaningful. By studying topics they’re passionate about, students continue to stay engaged; by collaborating on the plans with educators and family, students’ passions can be translated into real-world learning that oftentimes exceeds standards for learning.
But where do digital tools fit into this conversation?
With all schools in Vermont being required to begin implementing PLPs for grades 7-9 by 2015, let’s take a look at 4 ways personalized learning plans are already taking off in Vermont.
Continue reading “4 ways personalized learning plans are taking off in Vermont”
In this episode of our podcast, we’re going to be hearing from math educator Jared Bailey, who spent his summer vacation building a web app for his students, so they could have their homework assignments, practice drills, schedule and his contact info all in one place. As could their parents.
Bailey’s ethos was simple: he wanted it to be as simple as possible for students and their families to install the app on their mobile devices, and he didn’t want to deal with licensing issues or necessarily learn a ton of code. He just wanted his app to be convenient for students.
Continue reading “New podcast ep: Making web apps at Williston Central”
Have you guys heard of Voxer? I have, but I had never actually dug into it until last night. I saw this tweet, from @sarahdateechur (who is amazing, and I know you follow her on twitter because AMAZING):
Continue reading “Getting started with Voxer (or any other new technology)”
Last week, Essex High School threw a community launch party to celebrate the start of their STEM Academy‘s second year. But what does a STEM Academy look like on the inside? What does taking part in this program look like for students?
We were on hand for the launch party, and have all the details on this ground-breaking program that combines personalized learning, digital portfolios and community partnerships.
Continue reading “STEM Academy launches at Essex High School”
aka The Bear Trap StoryWhen was the last time you saw your district superintendent leap over a bear trap?
No, school board meetings don’t count; that’s standard and part of the price of admission. But last week, 3rd grade students at Richmond Elementary School got to see Chittenden East Supervisory Union superintendent John Alberghini (that’s him over there in the tweet to the left), along with his sisters Debbie and Gina, brave an old and rusty bear trap left in the woods.
Now, I wasn’t there for the storytelling, but thanks to Tonya Darby’s tweet, I was alerted to what I think we can all agree were some epic shenanigans in the name of learning.
Then came the podcast.
Flipboard is a free mobile app for the iOS, Android and Google Play tablets that allows you to “flip” content into self-curated magazines. Translation: you grab webpages, videos, tweets or images, and pull them together into magazines.
The magazines are the important bit. Haven’t you ever wanted to helm your own? Even if you haven’t, it’s a sure bet your students have and do. So how can you make Flipboard about learning?
Continue reading “4 ways to use Flipboard in your flipped classroom”
This past summer, we hosted another successful year of Tarrant Code Camp, where campers from all over Vermont came together to learn iOS development, website design, gaming, robotics and art.
Yes, art.
UVM Computer Science professor Robert Snapp taught campers how to code through the use of Processing, a programming language that translates code into visual and audio movement. But can students really learn to code by creating art? And what can you do with Processing after camp, anyway? We tackle those questions, along with the best way to explode a human head, in this episode of our podcast, “Code is art”.
Give it a listen.
A parent presentation video, visit a model Chromebook school, and 1:1 consulting optionsWith Fair Haven Union High School, the Leyden 1:1 Chromebooks program and a special guest from across the border…
Now that you’ve gotten started with Google+ Communities, you may be wondering how to make the most of the time you spend there.
How can you find other tech-minded educators to learn from? How can you maximize your connections and find folks who can help with your classroom questions and teach you new things about tech?
We’ve pulled together six Google+ Communities you should be part of as an educator, and be warned: that 6th one’s a game-changer.
Continue reading “Six Google+ Communities you should be part of”
Google+ communities are becoming a major way for educators to get inspired by other classrooms, get tech questions answered and make personal and professional connections.
Despite Apple releasing AirPrint waaaay back in the heady days of iOS4, printing has long been the iPad’s Achilles heel. Wireless printing in general remains a mysterious and arcane art whose magics are passed down from tech support to tech support only in oral storytelling form, or perhaps encrypted Ogham sticks. NO ONE REALLY KNOWS FOR SURE. But here’s a way to get truly painless printing from your iPad.
Flip the way you deliver content and engage students, but don’t stop there: flipping your space, your community and faculty meetings can be just as useful.
Many of you have undoubtedly heard of Thinglink’s new video service, where you can embed links, text, images, videos and audio directly into videos. We tried it out last week for our iPad case review article, and the finished product looks a little something like this.
Now let’s see how it works behind the scenes:
Easy to operate! Step 1, grab a YouTube video by the url. Step 2, hit play. Step 3, hit pause when you’re ready to add an annotation.
In a nutshell, Thinglink Video for educators:
All of these drawbacks look like they’re either bugs which will get ironed out once Thinglink Video moves out of beta, or things you’d get used to the more familiar you became with the tool.
Register for early access to Thinglink Video here.
Check out these other great examples of how you might use Thinglink Video in the classroom:
I can’t even cope. I have to go lie down now.
What could you use Thinglink Video for?
Getting mobile devices into the hands of educators and students is the name of the game, but what happens after to keep those iPads up and running? In no small part, iPad longetivity comes down to the case.
Over the past three years, we’ve operated a lending library of 10-20 iPads for educators, which has so grown in popularity that this past year hardly a day went by when the devices were actually back at home base. They went to Danby, they went to Cabot. They went to Morrisville, and the Echo Lake Aquarium. They went to AMLE, VT Fest and the Middle Grades Institute. And all of them came back without a scratch. But this hasn’t always been the case, ha ha.
Gear up for your upcoming or ongoing 1:1 device programs this summer with these thought-provoking reads
Attention screencasters! This could save you a ton of time. For all of you using Camtasia to produce your screencasts, there’s a new app that can import your videos from an iOS or Android device directly into Camtasia.
Continue reading “How to import videos from your device directly to Camtasia”
Not all of our iPads get checked out at once, and, as a result of testing different cases* not all of our iPads take up the same amount of room in a conventional charging tray. And almost as a sidenote, those trays start around $200 for a 10-slot box with some cords and a lid. The solution? DIY!
A while back, I was researching how to print a QR code on a cake, as you do, and stumbled across this mysterious video of a QR code made of M&Ms:
Advice from the popular Nerdy Book Club on how to create authentic book clubs in the classroom, from a teacher who didn’t:
Chatterpix is a free iOS app that allows you to put tiny mouths on your photos and give them silly voices. I am not making any of this up. Here’s one of a crab explaining facts about crustaceans:
There are so many ways you could use this in an educational setting:
“Bios” could actually be recorded for just about anything that will hold still long enough: moss, trees, VW Vanagons, abacuses, graham crackers, more moss, just of a different kind. There’s something about the ability to give silly voices (along with glasses, top hats, scarves and electric guitars) to items and get into the storytelling groove that’s incredibly appealing.
In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that if I’d gotten to write dialogues for animated chemistry molecules, I’d’ve passed Chem on the first try:
As an educator, you could also record yourself giving instructions for a lesson; modeling that bio of a famous historical figure; create a map of a significant place in a book your class is reading and APP-SMASH: photos + Chatterpix + other photos + Thinglink = APP-SMASH! YES!
Or you could just record dogs talking about which strand they’re taking at this year’s Code Camp:
[touchcast url=”http://www.touchcast.com/flipsci/offspring_traits_presentation” autoplay=”0″ autoforward=”0″ dimension=”480×270″]
What does this mean for classroom settings?
Congratulations to the 8th graders transitioning from Cabot’s middle school to high school! Congratulations to Winooski’s graduating kindergarten class! Congratulations to PAML students who are stepping up this morning! Congratulations to Burlington High School class of 2014! Congratulations to Milton Middle School 8th graders, who graduated on Wednesday, and to the Milton HS class of 2014, who graduate tomorrow. Congratulations to Lyman C. Hunt Middle School’s 8th grade class, and congratulations to South Burlington High School’s class of 2014!
Continue reading “Congratulations to all of Vermont’s amazing graduates!”
Something new and different for us today: we tried podcasting! And we’re disagreeing with NPR.
I know! But listen: a couple weeks ago NPR ran a story covering this Common Sense Media study ostensibly showing that Kids These Days are reading much much less than they were in times past. Which times, you ask? ME TOO.
Cue my suspicious eyebrows.
Continue reading “About that NPR piece on kids’ reading habits…”
In fulfillment of their project-based learning research this past spring, this pair of middle school students decided to learn more about different regions of the U.S. by interviewing members of their small, rural Vermont town who had lived in those communities. They took the resulting interviews and embedded them in this Thinglink:
We recently had a chance to sit down with these students and get them to share how they pulled this amazing project together.
Continue reading “How to: showcase community interviews with digital tools”
I can’t recommend highly enough Mrs Pepe’s Google Glass Adventures. Courtney Pepe teaches high school in New Jersey, and has spent the last month plus trying out Google Glass in the classroom with her students. Her blogposts. Are. Fascinating. Like this demo of using the translate function with Glass:
Other fun entries include how Glass can integrate with other devices and apps (like Evernote!), using Glass to scan for augmented reality content with Layar, and using Glass’ compass function to set up an impromptu outdoor geometry lesson.
But, as the first installment of a new feature I like to call How Hard Is It, Really? I decided to try duplicating one of Mrs Pepe’s adventures. Specifically, the Glass and Literacy adventure. Mrs Pepe writes:
When I was working with a language arts teacher today I had a brainstorm. Google Glass can become part of a new literacy strategy to introduce a new book. The class that I was working with was reading the book The Barcode Tattoo. When I said “okay glass… Google Barcode Tattoo. I got 4 great bits of micro-information about the book 1- date of publication 2-author 3- themes and big ideas 4- sequels/prequels – wow I thought this would be a great strategy to build anticipation and excitement right before students begin reading a new novel.
Aha! So I gave it a shot. I captured the video below using Google’s Glass app for iOS along with Reflector and Camtasia. What you’re seeing is the actual footage that is displayed in your field of vision via Glass.
Initial thoughts on Glass? It’s harder to control than I thought it would be. It’s harder to everything than I thought it would be. Your brain processes the world in a certain way, based on visual input, and it’s a little startling to find new input that follows you around and does certain things (like take photos and share them to Google+) based on the way you move your head. But it gets easier after the first few minutes. The swiping back and forth can get you into trouble (I swiped myself right off of wifi twice) but once you get Glass’ attention (with a firmly voiced “Okay glass:”) it pings cheerfully to let you know it’s awaiting further instructions.
So, kinda.
Even though couldn’t find the full range of options Mrs. Pepe describes in the example above, just being able to go out to a website with more information about a book would make browsing in a library or bookstore an entirely different experience. Having instant access to additional information about objects in the world around you is undeniably cool, and as a serious history nerd, if I can hook it up to cool history facts as I’m wandering around Danby, Vermont, wondering about the genesis of their soldier-on-a-plinth monument, I’m basically never taking these things off.
In and of itself, Glass has a ton of potential for educators; check out these 30 ways Google Glass Can Innovate the Classroom:
But how will these devices change the classroom as we know it? How will it change interpersonal relations and how we react to the world around us?
Here are some other resources for Google Glass info:
How would you use Google Glass in your classroom?
It’s that magical, magical time of the year again!
No, not the end of the school year. (STOP THAT.)
I meant it’s the time of year when your students have a lot of opportunities to share out their year’s worth of learning. And here are 4 great apps for creating presentations on your iPad.
Touchcast lets students pull links, videos and even interactive polls directly into their videos, as well as letting them easily create scenes in front of a green screen. Imaginary assignment: Have your students file an on-the-spot “news report” from locations around the globe. Also underwater. And from the center of the earth. And in space.
Seriously, someone should do this. Then send us the link, and we’ll showcase your students’ work on this blog. Is that a deal or what?
Check it out: you can now make auras directly from the iPad, inside the Aurasma app. A great opportunity to app-smash: have the student video themselves with the iPad’s camera, edit it in holy of holies iMovie, then embed the resultant polished product into a real-world artifact, like their school portrait, or a painting, or a hand-illustrated map of the U.S. Get a whole class-worth’s together and create an Aurasma-powered scavenger hunt around school for parents and visitors. Aurasma’s channel feature means that you control who sees the work, too.
Boom! End-of-year project sorted! All before your second cup of coffee!
Below, this music teacher pinned sheet music up, then embedded videos of student performances in those sheets. Y’all, teachers are so. Clever.
Personally, I find Animoto the easiest app of the bunch to use when, for instance, you have a bunch of photos you just want to assemble into a montage (“Mon-tage!”) with some cheezy inspiring music laid over the top. It really is just two steps: first, tap tap tap each photo you want to include in the montage (“Mon-tage!”), then pick your music. DONE.
Here’s one I made earlier!
HaikuDeck‘s both easy to use and creates a polished, SlideShare-worthy presentation that, without audio, depends heavily on narrative and visual storytelling to engage the audience. It calls on a different set of cognitive skills and really makes students focus on the message over presentation style.
So! Those are my 4 favorites, but this educator found a whopping 15! Which ones do you use?
As part of The Cabot School‘s Exhibition of Learning earlier this spring, middle school students had a chance to share out some PBL research. Themed around the cultural landscape of the United States, the “See America” exhibit boasted a number of amazing students who showed off outstanding examples of how project-based learning can be applied to history and social sciences. Check out some of the highlights from the exhibition, below.
Continue reading ““See America”: Cabot students share their PBL research”
A huge thank you to everyone who turned out for the conference and played along with our bingotastic endnote. I made this video collage with Animoto on the iPad, and then when iTunes refused to play nicely because of Configurator, I switched to Animoto on a laptop. Platform-smash! Party!
Anyway, you guys are amazing! See you next year!
If you’re one of the many folks planning on attending Dynamic Landscapes 2014, the annual state-wide conference for Vermont’s education scene, be sure to check out these Edmunds and Essex students and educators! They’re presenting at this year’s conference.
Kathy Gallagher, Carole Renca and their students will be presenting “Creating a 21st Century School-wide Reading Community” Thursday at 1:30pm. They’ll be joined by Geoff Gevalt from the Young Writers Project.
Also Thursday morning are Eric Schoembs (Edmunds) and Dan Trenis (Lyman C. Hunt Middle School), presenting on “3D Printing: Prototype, Products, and Processes”.
Friday morning, 6th grade math educator Laura Botte and her students will be presenting Project-Based Learning with ARIS: Engaging Students by Pairing Authentic Game Creation with Real-World Learning with BSD technologists Valerie Lodish, Kevin Grace and some of us from the Tarrant Institute. This is a hands-on session, so if you’re planning on attending, please bring a laptop, netbook or Chromebook if possible.
You can read more about the ARIS project here.
And Friday during the noon hour, students and facilitators from the Edge Academy at Essex Middle School will be talking “Engagement to Empowerment: Students at the Center of Change”. As we recently saw with the second full year of Edge’s Wild City Project, this is a truly effective and dynamic group of school game-changers. Do NOT miss this session.
Congratulations to both the educators and students for taking this opportunity to share their experiences at the state-wide level!
This is Amy Gibson’s fabulous (and brief!) tutorial video about the EasyBib Google Docs Add-On, which lets you easily create a works-cited page for any Google Doc. Now, I could’ve simply linked you all to her video and added a bunch of exclamation marks, but I wanted to point out a couple things I really like about this particular tutorial:
I’m going to tell you a secret: I have a teeny little attention span. I get easily distracted by Twitter, Pinterest, my dogs, stray gusts of wind, etc. And it’s way more engaging to watch a gesturing cartoon character narrate a screencast than a disembodied voice. Also, with a background that’s relatively fixed and um, un-dynamic, shall we say, the Tellagami provides a visual focus that makes everything more fun to look at.
EasyBib is indeed an easy way to locate, capture and format your online works cited, but Gibson mentions the all-important Check Your Source factor. Do not trust the internet. Check out what you’re citing, in case octopi don’t actually live in trees, and there’s not really an island sanctuary ruled by dogs.
Too many times when I’m watching tutorial videos do I find myself squinting at a GIANT desktop with an itty-bitty activity area. Or worse yet, the narrator will simply say “over there to the right” and I’ll squint in vain for where I’m supposed to follow along. I am old, people. Old and half-blind. Do me and all your other viewers a favor and use Skitch or Notability to add large, brightly colored arrows to your screencasts.
All in all, a terrific tutorial, but also a great example of how to create an engaging tutorial video. (And can you say “app-smash”? I can, and do. Often. App-smash!)
I’d love to see some folks try this with their students. Any takers?
We’ve been honored to partner with The Edge Academy at Essex Middle School, and a huge reason why is their compelling Wild City Project. In cooperation with the Vermont Audubon Society, the UVM Rubenstein School and other naturalists from around the state, student scientists at The Edge have been studying the fauna surrounding their school in suburban Vermont for two full years. They’ve used night cameras, GPS units and ArcGIS to film, track and study fisher cats, red foxes, wild-breasted nuthatches, coyotes, and many more.
This past March, they invited us out to Essex to present the results of the second year of the Wild City Project.
We are so grateful to everyone at The Edge for inviting us to be a part of their journey. Great work, guys!
Students and facilitators from The Edge team will be presenting at this year’s Dynamic Landscapes conference in Burlington, on Engagement to Empowerment: Students at the Center of Change.
It’s spring (unless you’re in the Antipodes) and IT HAS FINALLY STOPPED SNOWING. Yes, all those capital letters are really necessary to announce that fact. The sun is out and if you’re planning on doing some outside work with your students, here are four activity ideas for using iPads outside when there’s no access to Wifi.
Make and print some QR codes, tape them up outside, and have each code lead to an image with directions for an activity. Working on foreign language acquisition? Post the directions in the target language! Are fractions on the agenda? Have the QR codes lead to an equation whose solution equals a number found in the next location of the hunt! Vocab time? How about anagrams that unscramble to reveal the next location or a key part of the instructions! QR codes are simple, powerful and lend themselves to a ton of different activities. What would make it really powerful would be for the students themselves to create the questions…
Please note: badgers, bears, frogs or any other type of animal can be substituted for the dinosaurs, as appropriate for your curriculum.
But it just won’t be the same without all those RAR noises.
Colorado educator Anne Beninghof came up with the great idea of using the Corkulous app to let students assemble boards that feature audio, video, image and written reflections of their trek. Get creative, assign each group a different theme, area of the landscape or time period to work with. This could also work with LinoIt.
The FieldProjector app allows you to calculate the angles of objects captured with the iPad camera, as well as determining their scale in relation to other objects. Combine this with the QR codes to create a series of challenges around capturing different types of angles:
“It’s time for the annual AngleJam but sadly, no angles have shown up yet to the party! They’re too busy running wiiiiiiiiiiild. It’s up to you to go out and grab them. Head outside / to the jungle gym / to the trailhead, where you’ll find a QR code specifying how to bring in the first of your math guests.”
Bonus points for having students create the angles out of twigs, rock bridges, their arms, etc exactly like this Australian class did.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading out into this beautiful sunshine to help a stegosaurus work on using less tail-spike in its rebuttal. Have a great weekend, everyone!
*This post grew from a discussion over on the iPadEd Google+ community. Joyful thanks to Lara Jensen, Karen Redmond, Peggy Matthews, Karie Carpenter, Anne Beninghof, Robert Payne, Lee MacArthur, Laura Mahoney, Jose Luis Gutierrez and Christopher Averill for the brainstorming.
Despite sounding like a weird potato-fruit dish, app-smashing gets your students thinking less about apps and more about tasks. Hopefully with a minimum of actual smashing.
App-smashing is when you give students a specific assignment that can best be solved using more than one app. iPads4Teachers has a fantastic overview of app-smashing here.
You got ’em!
Sylvia Duckworth, an elementary grades French teacher in Canada, created Mother’s Day video cards by taking screenshots with HaikuDeck, then importing those into iMovie to add voice and music. The result, you’ll agree, is simply smashing*!
A group of students at the Cabot School in Vermont tackled a cultural anthropology project by using iPhones to record audio interviews they did with community members, editing the audio in GarageBand, then embedding the results in a map with Thinglink. Smash!
Susan Hennessey put together the above video as part of an assignment for the MOOC Creativity: Music to My Ears. She writes:
We were tasked with picking a problem, brainstorming 100 possible solutions for how music could help solve it (on a shared Google doc) and then selecting 2 or 3 to create a novel solution. We were given 1-minute to present the problem and solution. Since we were working with middle level students, we wanted to defer to what they liked about the 100 possibilities. The two profiled by the Tellagamis are the top two selected.
Google Docs + Tellagamis + iMovie. A novel approach to the assignment, which, after all, is what app-smashing is all about.
*I’m actually obligated by law to make that pun at least once during this blogpost. True story.
It all started with a post on the iPad Ed Google+ community.
Wait, I take that back.
It really all started with the 20+ iPads we loan out to educators. Those suckers are constantly in demand and constantly in need of charging. They’re each firmly encased in Fintie Kiddie cases, which, laugh all you want, those things can stop a bullet. And they stand up. And they recline, have carrying handles and come in neon colors, perfect for locating 20+ loaned out units during the chaos of an event, but that’s a whole other blog post.
Anyway, we’ve been loaning these iPads out in tote bags, and just tossing the chargers in higgledy-piggledy. Mainly because if you have done any shopping around for charging carts you likely have needed to be resuscitated at least twice when looking at the prices. The cheapest we could find that works with our beloved Fintie cases started at $399.00, and there was no guarantee everything would fit. We’ve borrowed another department’s iPad charging tray a couple times, but a) it cost them closer to $1,000.00, b) weighed close to 25 lbs and c) had no wheels, thus entailing that their tech guy** lug it four blocks each way.
The thing about the Fintie cases is that part of their magic durability is that they surround the iPad in thick molded foam rubber — perfect for tossing in bags and bike panniers (guilty!) but problematic for trying to buy a pre-made charging cart, as the slots in those are generally cut for slimmer, uncased iPads. Plus can we get back to the whole cost thing? Are school districts really running around with so much cash? I know I’m not.
And thus, with no more rambling, I present: How to Build Your Own iPad Charging Cart Out of Office Supplies.
Materials:
Tools: a dremel with a hole saw drill bit, a metal file, protective eyeglasses (safety first!).
The way the whole thing works is by using the hard-sided magazine organizer to hold your surge protectors while simultaneously keeping the iPads snugly against the sides of the tub for transport. With the Finties, we managed to get 10 iPads in, but the resulting weight was a little surprising, so I might make two smaller charging tubs for the remainder of our iPads.
Method: Really the only thing that took methoding was drilling the holes.
You need one hole in the side of the tub to let the cords extend through. It needed to be big enough to admit, in this case, two surge protector cords and the hole saw drill bit cut through that plastic like butter. File the edges of the hole down because I managed to scratch my hand up the first time I tried to pull the cords through.
You also need a hole in the top of the magazine organizer, to pull your iPad cords through, although as you can see, they’re a little frantic-looking, so I think v2.0 will have channels leading away from the hole, so each cord has its own organizing channel. There’s definitely room for refinement here.
Uh, last step: pop the lid on and strap it to the luggage cart.
The small dog shown in the above image is included for scale and cuteness.
His name is Jeffrey.
Anyone else have a great way to build one of these? I’m definitely open to ideas. After all, I’ve still got to find a way to sync them all…
*Yes, TIIE admin Erin and I basically ran round the store measuring things and flinging them in the cart. Loudly. If the store had had an on-site dremel, we would’ve done the whole thing there, filmed it and thrown an after-party with bad 90s electronic music.
**Thanks Adam!
Want to try out writing interactive fiction and games with your students? Here are three tools that make it easy to get started.
YouTube’s recently beefed up their suite of online editing tools (including a bank of royalty-free audio clips) and made them simpler to use. By embedding text-based links in video, you can tell an interactive video-based story.
YouTube Pros:
YouTube Cons:
StoryNexus made a big splash when it was introduced via the way-too-addictive speculative steampunk game Fallen London. Players navigate through a virtual, text-based world in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure manner, but with choose-a-card activities that interject an element of chance into the proceedings.
StoryNexus Pros:
StoryNexus Cons:
(“Do it for the Twine! I ain’t gonna do–“)
Ahem.
Twine‘s a challenging little piece of software that takes a step closer to computer programming logic while you build your games. It’s a stellar introduction to the concept of global vs. local variables, for instance*.
Twine games are browser-based, which means you can practice your HTML and CSS skills while you sort out what kind of tea the yeti usually drinks. Yes, I made that game**. It was not entirely easy but the things that were complicated didn’t make me tear my hair out. They were fun to figure out, and as a fan of interactive fiction, I enjoy the pace of the finished product.
Twine Pros:
Twine Cons:
Do you:
Let the games… begin!
*If that sentence didn’t make sense to you, get in touch. Let’s get you a seat at this summer’s Code Camp.
**And yes, it’s not finished, because I also have to write many fine blog posts each week, such as this one. You will cope.
How one class of 8th grade scientists at Harwood Union Middle School used Google Docs, Schoology, and iPads to capture long-form essays about Rube Goldberg. Featuring everyone’s favorite tech-tastic science educator, Brian Wagner. As HUMS principal Amy Rex commented, “Exemplar teaching and learning — narrow the field and provide rapid feedback :)”
You’ve captured some amazing in-classroom video footage with your trusty iPad — a compelling student presentation or a display of truly superb educating, maybe just a lesson you wanted to re-watch and dwell on later — but when you try to move the video off your iPad, your wireless solution makes a weird choking noise, lays down on the floor and dies, because that video is way. too. huge.
Continue reading “Use Image Capture to harvest videos off iOS devices”
Rachel Goodale’s 8th grade science class at Peoples Academy Middle Level was honored yesterday for their series of speed graph Touchcasts by the makers of the app. The EduCast Pioneer award honors outstanding implementations of the Touchcast iOS app in the classroom.
Goodale’s students worked in partner-teams, and were given 10 different graphs depicting relative speeds, and 10 different stories explaining them. The students had to figure out which graph went with which story. They were then assigned a graph-and-story combo to act out and, using Touchcast on iPads, one half of the pair filmed while the other acted.
Goodale blogged about how she put the speed graph lesson together here, where you can download a .pdf of the speed graph lesson plan and also find links to the students’ finished works.
Touchcast has created the EduCast channel and award specifically for educators to post Touchcasts they and their students create as part of a classroom curriculum. They’ve also released an exhaustive guide to ways the app can be integrated in education, with lesson plans arranged by content area, tips for getting started, and using iPads in groups.
A huge congratulations to Rachel Goodale and her 8th graders at PAML for being so willing to share their work!
Here’s a great way to dip your toes in the digital credentialing waters: DIY.org.
Geared for kids 8 and up, DIY.org features dozens of digital badges heavily geared towards doing and making. To earn a badge, students choose to complete 2 or 3 challenges from an array of 7 or 8, and get credit for their learning by sharing the result with everyone on the site. Other users can then like and comment the shared artifacts. There’s a high degree of support, camaraderie and cheering that occurs in comments, with users all in the same skill area remixing and resharing what others have previously created, and being quick to ask for help. It’s an outstanding example of students showing digital citizenship savvy, maybe because part of the site’s Community Guidelines include a guide to “Being Awesome”. (Hint: it involves the phrase “Don’t be a jerk” 🙂
The site also features guides for parents to get and stay involved in their students’ growing skill-set, without doing the embarrassing hovering thing (oy), and there’s a section with suggestions for how educators can integrate DIY.org activities into the classroom. DIY is partnering with the National Writing Foundation and Mozilla to publish a guide to aligning various badges with Common Core Standards, and as an educator, you can sign up to get notified of new lesson plans.
With so many of the skills and challenges having both an easy entrypoint and a clear focus on getting students to use their time outside the classroom for individualized learning, this site might be perfect for educators looking at flipped classrooms and/or personalized learning plans. While we’re huge fans of Mozilla’s Open Badges and Learning Times’ BadgeOS, both those systems require some educator overhead in terms of setup and implementation — this is a turnkey system, requiring only that students register for an account. And yes, like almost everything else out there online, students under 13 need parent approval for their accounts.
It also comes in iOS flavor, for all your 1:1, BYOD or general running around needs.
Anyone using this site in their classroom?
As you can see from the video below, users care, creators care, this class of 6th graders from Hunt Middle School cares, and they’ll tell you why you should care too. A big thank you to Kathy Hevey and her students for being willing to share their work.
We promise to cite you appropriately, every single time.
A great reminder about respecting copyright while remixing source materials in the classroom. This video was originally created in partnership with local public access station RETN.
From our tumblr, an unusual iPad management situation with one educator who confiscated a student’s iPad during class and added a math problem before giving it back:
What do you think? Was this educator in the right? What do you think the student learned from this experience?
What would you have done?
Leave us an answer in the comments below to be entered into a drawing for a Hammerhead 12W Dual Port Adapter, for charging your iPad, iPhone and iPod.
Back in November, a group of educators from Harwood Middle School, in Mooretown VT, headed down to the iPad Summit in Boston, to talk about how Harwood has revolutionized ePortfolios, by making their production part of graduation requirements. They’re asking students to document their artifacts using Evernote. Use of the app in this way allows each student to graduate with a fully annotated, personalized digital portfolio, demonstrating what they’ve learned and how it satisfies Harwood’s graduation requirements.
And if that’s not enough to entice you, there’s 8th grade science educator Brian Wagner dressed as the Wicked Witch from Snow White. FOR PEDAGOGY.
I sat down this afternoon to brainstorm a list of video editing, creation and mashup apps that could be useful for educators. Above you’ll find the nine I came up with off the top of my head, all of which I’ve either used or seen used in the classroom. But I know I’m missing some.
Here are some sample lesson plans or how-to’s for each of the video apps above:
And this educator handed over the iPad to her own kids, asked for a stop-motion video and was astonished by how many apps they wound up using to create their magnum opus, Invasion:
What video creation / editing / mashup / squish / bash / remix tools are you and your students using?
Tarrant Institute professional development coordinator Susan Hennessey discusses the current and future possibilities of digital badging, e-portfolios and alternative credentialing, with such tools as Badgestack and BadgeOS.
As part of their celebration of Digital Learning Day, students at Edmunds Middle School hosted a “speed-geeking” session: they each had six minutes to explain a tech tool and how they’re using it in school. Here, one student explains how she’s using a Google form with lexile reading scores to keep a multi-level reading log for middle school.
Adam Provost, Burlington High School tech integrationist and Partnership for Change Fellow, talks about how to talk to students about potentially dangerous or illegal technologies, and what use of those technologies can mean in terms of privacy and digital citizenship.
“I do teach kids what torrents are… how they are used illegally and also — as an example — how I’ve used them in a college course with students. I also show them anonymous proxies — the good the bad and the ugly — so students understand them. The advanced IT kids, anyway, have that chance.
There’s a lot of ground to cover in those discussions.
Engaging students in discussions of ethics, morality, copyright, law, etc along the way is key to success.
We test the limitations and configurations of devices, configurations, and systems. Most often technology isn’t the issue… it’s how you use it. Just like a car ; )
I think kids need to see all that up close and not just in theory.
Seeing devices as programmable tools… and the advantages and disadvantages of those decisions therein is educational — much more so than denial of service or avoidance. If all you’d jailbreak a device for is to download illegal apps then you’re missing the point, potential and the richness of the discussion.
Of course there are limits to experimenting live… RFID as an example.
Now, I wouldn’t go the route of building a scanner (like the one in the video) with kids… but, showing them this as a security issue and exploring strategies to conduct digital commerce more safely has value; i.e. searching for credit cards with security features to check transactions (as in what cards offer what services… theft coverage etc and which strategy might be most effective), learning to monitor your bill more than once a month… it’s the new version of teaching people how to be aware of pickpockets.
All important stuff to know. Commerce is going to get a lot cooler.. and a lot more challenging.
Now building a scanner and having access to more conventional scanners and cards to test… and trying to build a card with more security features… that”d be fun to explore with students.
It’s outside the realm of most high school programs though… more likely a cool task for a collegiate (endowment funded) digital forensics program.
I get concerned with a 
lot ‘digital citizenship’ work in schools.
More often than not I find it’s a one and done style presentation usually with references to something like ‘don’t bully, protect your password/s, and don’t post controversial things online…’ then it’s back to teaching ‘the curriculum…’ at least until a problem / incident surfaces and then it’s discussed again.
There’s a lot more to this… and ‘Tech Courses,’ especially in high schools, could be considerably more advanced.
More students doing things than just listening is required I think. This all goes far beyond teaching kids to type, emailing, learning to build presentations, trying collaborative editing in Google Docs, and setting up a Twitter account to post in once a week during class… and watching a movie about bullying. Sarcastic, yes a bit… but true.
I think ‘Digital Citizenship’ discussions need to evolve.
I was working with a school recently in MA and discussing their tech curriculum. I asked “how many students get out of high school without learning how to make their home wi-fi secure? Is that as valuable as say… learning to type? Learning to give a presentation? How about learning to memorize all the US Presidents?” Some sat there looking blankly at me, and others nodded. I asked… “for those of you looking blankly at me… how many of you are concerned that you know nothing about your home wi-fi network?” A lot of hands went up ; )
If schools evolve their discussions on devices toward exploring the creative capacity and testing limitations, configuration and use (legal, ethical, and moral) then we’ll get further.
Insert some intensity and exploration.
There’s lots to discuss.
Adam Provost just signed on at Burlington High School in the Technology Integration and Partnership for Change Initiative. He recently took a seven month Rowland Sabbatical and visited seven countries to study innovative student programs and school leadership and systems that foster that culture. For over 20+ years he has served as a Computer Lab Aide, Network Administrator, Technology Coordinator, and full-time classroom teacher for eight years at Burr and Burton Academy in the innovative rLab classroom. Over this span he’s created many courses, innovative project-based learning environments, student-centered professional development, technology support, and internship programs. He currently serves as President of VITA-Learn, on the Board of Directors for the Vermont Baseball Coaches Association, and as Executive Director of the 643DP Foundation and blogs at creativeStir.blogspot.com.
