Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
Author: Audrey Homan
Audrey Homan is a Vermont-based digital media producer, and producer of The 21st Century Classroom podcast. She's worked in non-profit communications for more than a decade, and in her spare time writes tiny video games and mucks about with augmented reality and arduinos, ably assisted by five dogs.
Interviewing students and yelling in PHP are the best parts of her job.
Brought to you by the inimitable Susan Hennessey, who shows here how you can use the Chrome browser extension Kaizena to add record voice comments and link students to video resources on a sample writing assignment. Best part: you can assemble a library of video resources and shoot out your favorites over and over.
Anyone been looking for something along these lines?
Guest post by Lindsey Halman, facilitator at The Edge at Essex Middle School:
What is a system? How are living things organized? How do the structures of organisms contribute to life’s functions? Learners on the Edge team addressed these questions through a unit on Structure, Function and Information Processing in Living Organisms using the Next Generation Science Standards to guide their work.
To gain a clear understanding of the body systems and how these interacting subsystems work together, learners were engaged in a variety of activities. One such activity was using the team’s iPad Minis to participate in a virtual frog dissection using the app Frog Dissection. There are a growing number of interactive apps and programs that allow learners to better understand anatomy in a manner that is ethically and environmentally responsible. Using the app felt like a strong fit for our team’s philosophy on learning.
In the app, a virtual scalpel allows students to practice the same cuts they would in a live dissection with tools like pins, markers, scissors and forceps to guide their work.
What was unique about this experience was the ability to “undo” and “redo” any aspect of the dissection. This is something that can only be experienced virtually and it provided learners with a clearer and deeper understanding of the frog’s anatomy. The level of engagement was incredibly high during this activity and no one was excluded because of their moral or ethical beliefs. Therefore, using the app became an inclusive and strong learning experience for our community.
Lindsey Halman is a facilitator on The Edge team at Essex Middle School. She has previously written about her students’ investigation of the natural world outside their school for our Leading by Example: Wild City Project showcase. Images credit: Emantras Inc.
Today’s middle school teams use a wide range of technology tools to achieve six important goals: to develop their teacher team; to design effective workflows; to establish a strong team culture; to involve families; to manage technologies; and to continue learning about new technology tools.
It’s a contemplative, well thought-out look at how educators, administrators and students can all support each other in making the most of the powerful new tech in schools and classrooms.
They also swung by AMLE’s middle school chat on twitter, and fielded some questions from the twitterverse on just what teaming for tech can — and does — look like. We’ve got the Storify recap here. Enjoy!
As part of celebrating Digital Learning Day yesterday, we visited The Edge team at Essex Middle School for their annual Project Fair, where students share their learning with the community. Here’s a look at some of the amazing work on display.
“It is time that educators recognize and capitalize on the social nature of their students because their virtual interactions stretch well beyond their standard school day. Therefore, by integrating assignments and homework into social media platforms, students’ motivation, their time spent completing school assignments, and their grades will increase.”
Via interactyx and Jonathan Flegg, the answer according to the infographic below is A WHOLE LOT OF THEM. So what does that mean for educators and classrooms?
Sixth grade math educator Laura Botte explains how she’s using a simple Google form to make it easier for students to talk about what’s on their minds.
Vine is a tool where users can craft looping six-second videos for sharing globally, and other users can up-vote them, follow favored Vine-creators (some of whom have one million+ followers) and comment. It’s available for the Android, iOS and Windows platforms, and despite the nominal age-17 requirement for the platform, it’s more than likely that students in your class are more than likely Vining.
And what they’re making are awesome. Here’s why:
1. Authentic student voice
Want to know what students really think about school? Get on Vine and follow the #school hashtag.
They aren’t Vining for a grade or for any school project. This is what students really think about school. It’s not always pretty, and it’s definitely not always complimentary towards the schools in question, but what it is is startlingly honest.
And 2., this is a really fascinating digital storytelling medium.
Think about all the skills that come into play in figuring out how to tell a story in six seconds.
But it’s not just students who are using Vine.
At Orchard School in South Burlington, librarian/rock-star Donna McDonald is using Vine with her students to create a series of six-second book reviews to share for the #MockCaldecott awards. First of all, they’re epic, and second, they’re each only six seconds long, so you can easily justify watching every last one. Such as this one:
And this:
(Seriously, just go follow @OrchardVT on twitter. They share fantastic work and those #MockCaldecott Vines are this close >< to becoming their own meme.)
All of which brings up two questions: Do you Vine? And do you know what your students are Vining?
If you’re interested in hearing from Laura Botte and Katie Wyndorf about this project, they’ll be at the 7th annual Middle Grades Conference, January 11th at UVM.
My quick assessment of success in teaching this unit: Students have developed a habit of paying attention to news events. The impact of disaster became very real for some of our students following news events and the typhoon in the Philippines. The idea of disaster preparedness was no longer focused on killing zombies but saving lives.
…Preparing for a zombie apocalypse is quite similar to surviving a typhoon. Access to 2 gallons of drinking water a day, food, shelter from exposure to elements become crucial to survival.
Lamoille Union High School is going 1:1 with iPads, and, moved by one student’s in-depth and compelling project response, Kaulbach writes, ” I can’t wait until this student receives her 1:1 iPad from our schoolwide initiative. Think how much more depth and detail could be added if she had access to her document at all times instead of the limited time I accessed for her.”
We can’t wait either, and we love it when educators are visionaries!
Over on Storify, we’re covering the amazing kick-off for the Hour of Code statewide. More than 113 Vermont schools are participating in the national initiative to provide students with at least one hour of computer coding instruction the week of Dec 9-15th.
In November, tem students from Edmunds Middle School took part in the First Lego League Robotics competition. Here, team member Cortina explains the competition process, and how the team fared at the contest.
To read more about this amazing endeavor, read robotics coach (and BSD technologist) Kevin Grace’s blog entry over at the Burlington School District’s Middle Grades eLearning blog.
A 1-minute iPad how-to from Harwood Union Middle School science educator Brian Wagner, showing you how to save augmented reality “auras” from the popular mobile app Aurasma, to Evernote.
A group of Edmunds 6th graders check out Echo’s tidepool exhibit while collecting resources to build their own ARIS video games.
ARIS stands for Augmented Reality Interactive Storytelling, and it’s an open-source platform published by the University of Wisconsin to allow K-12 students to design and create their own place-based games for the iOS mobile platform. Museums across the country are starting to incorporate augmented reality to make visitors’ experiences more in-depth and authentic; where once students might’ve simply read a plaque about the lives of fur traders at the Minnesota Historical Society, now they have a chance to play the role of one, working through some of the challenges and hardships the life presented in order to advance through the tour.
And where Minnesota has fur traders, the Echo Center has frogs.
Meet Vinnie.
Vinnie is a native Vermont bullfrog whose life and habits were drawn directly from Echo Center exhibits by Burlington School District technology information specialists and TIIE to form the short ARIS game “Frogworld”.
Students worked their way through the Frogworld game by gleaning information from plaques in Echo’s Frogworld exhibit. They also documented resources from the Echo Center exhibits for later use in their own games. Echo Center staff also got into the act. Executive director Phelan Fretz used ARIS’ Notebook feature to contribute his own frog to the Frogworld game, then spent lunch taking suggestions from students as to what kinds of behind-the-scenes information Echo could provide to support students’ own ARIS games.
Phelan Fretz, Echo Center director, used ARIS’ Notebook feature to add this commentary about one of the frogs in the Frogworld exhibit. Players can leave text, audio, image or video notes for all other players to read.
ARIS is one of a number of augmented reality platforms the Echo Center is piloting with local schools.
Edmunds is incorporating ARIS into a yearlong place-based unit examining the Lake Champlain basin through environmental, cultural, historic and opportunity lenses. The Echo Center hopes to make the local 6th graders’ ARIS games available to visitors as part of the museum tour when they’re completed.
Don’t click the link. Don’t do it. You will never get that song out of your head.
Aw.
Second, we have these students, see, who thought they were being interviewed for a graduation video. Well, they were. But what they didn’t realize is that in every interview, their teachers at Ogden High, in Ogden, Utah, were dancing up a storm behind them.
Well played, teachers.
And lastly, this chemistry teacher raps over a Rick Ross beat to get his students into stoichiometry (which I just had to go look up, so there’s another brain moved by this video).
EPIC STOICHENTATION.
So. What other things are educators getting up to on YouTube?
Following up on our intro to ARIS with geometry last Friday, this morning the 6th graders from Edmunds Middle School spent some time at the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center working through “Frogworld”, a demo ARIS game that made use of items at the Echo Center. After they played the game, they spent some time with the rest of the (non-frog) exhibits, collecting ideas for items they could incorporate into their own games.
We’re back at it tomorrow at Echo with another class of 6th graders. More news as it develops.
Pop quiz, hotshot. What do geometry, aliens and the augmented reality gaming platform all have in common?
A: All were spotted last Friday at Edmunds Middle School in Burlington.
As part of a unit on exploring place, educators Laura Botte and Katie Wyndorf are having their students work with the free iOS app ARIS, an open-source game-creation platform. To kick things off, they collaborated with Angelique Fairbrother, technology coordinator for Franklin West SU, in bringing an introductory ARIS game into Edmunds’ classrooms. And out into the hallways. Also sometimes under the desks and on top of the lockers.
The two classes of 6th graders played “Shape Invaders”, a game where aliens ask for help with geometry. Students had to locate and scan QR codes scattered around the school, using them to collect various shapes. In order to keep the aliens happy, students then calculated the perimeter and area of each shape.
Students worked in teams to solve the clues necessary to come up with the area and perimeter of each shape — skills not usually encountered in 6th grade math. With a little help and a whole lot of persistence, the aliens were appeased and the students got an introduction to the ARIS platform.
Next week, the Edmunds students will be heading to the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center to build their own ARIS games around the themes of culture, ecology, history and sustainability.
FWSU technology coordinator Angelique Fairbrothers introduces two Edmunds students how to make changes to the game in ARIS’ web-based editor.
John Downes and Penny Bishop lead the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at UVM.
Welcome to our new twice-monthly column highlighting best practices for digital middle schools from a leadership perspective. Twice a month, Tarrant Institute director Penny Bishop and associate director John Downes will share their insight into what they’ve seen make a lasting and profound difference in technology integration with 21st century middle schools.
In this first installment of a 2-part column, they’ll address a critical but often under-addressed component of a successful digital middle school: the family.
As schools adapt to the digital age and integrate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs, interactive whiteboards, handheld devices, and 1:1 computing and learning management systems, classrooms have begun to look less and less like those in which most of today’s parents were educated. Generations of parents have struggled to support their child’s learning; today’s parents face even steeper challenges.
How can educators capitalize on the promise of technology and engage families in new and better ways? What does it mean to increase family engagement in the digital age?
Across the many increasingly hi-tech schools we’ve examined, teachers are answering these questions with exciting new family engagement strategies.
In this installment, we’ll look at two: creating “trans-parent” classrooms, and supplementary guides.
Trans-Parent Classrooms
One team we know is launching a blog to showcase technology-rich work that students post daily from the classroom. The team will ask trusted parents to seed the blog with thoughtful and supportive comments, providing students with a new and respected audience for their schoolwork and modeling constructive and civil online dialog. At the same time, the blog offers families a window into the work of a 21st century team, demystifying the novel opportunities granted by current technologies and sparking rich conversations about technology and learning.
Many teams use Google Forms or other online survey tools to probe parents about the successes and challenges of 1:1 learning at home. Teams poll families on the relative importance of various parenting issues — monitoring use of social media, encouraging healthy online identities, for instance — and can get instant feedback for analysis and integration into their lesson plans and classroom communities.
Much as the middle school movement has encouraged student voice to enhance the relevance of curriculum, teachers can use parent input to inform their family information nights, and the ongoing development of their online parent resources.
Teachers can guide parents toward helpful tools and strategies to navigate this digital age. Team newsletters, portal resources and parent events can all promote family conversations about current issues facing students in their complex online worlds.
Supplementary Guides
Some teachers link parents to ready-made resources like those hosted by Common Sense Media, such as parenting tip sheets or advice videos. But rather than flooding parents with information, skilled teams curate these resources and steer families to those that most directly address their concerns.
Some teams also provide families with templates for home media use agreements that foster parent-child conversations — and ultimately written agreements — about online safety, social media behavior and balancing media use with other aspects of life.
When families participate in take-home 1:1 programs, these agreements can dictate privacy settings, expectations for the “care and feeding” of their school-issued device, and shape when and how long a child can be online. Teams can require that students return a copy of their signed home-use agreement, along with a video interview with the family about their agreement, thereby ensuring these critical conversations take place. They may assign semi-annual updates to the home agreements, pushing families toward ongoing and constructive dialog about technology in family life. These practices acknowledge the powerful influence technology has in homes today, its centrality to powerful learning in and out of school, and the new challenges confronting the vital home-school connection.
Next time: making parents partners in teaching, and the crucial role of volunteering, as our look at 21st century family involvement continues.
—
Penny Bishop is the director of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education and a professor of middle-level education in the College of Education and Social Services at UVM. John Downes is the associate director of the Tarrant Institute and a member of the Partnership for Change board.
Each resource corresponds to an 8th grade Common Core standard, and they’d love feedback on their site, especially from any teachers who incorporate some of the resources into their classroom.
A big thank-you to the two of them for being so willing to share their work!
Julia Melloni, the Middle School Religion teacher at Mater Christi School in Burlington, worked with her students on “blending ancient Scripture with modern technology”. She used the iOS app PuppetPals2 to promote student learning, collaboration, and creativity.
From Ms. Melloni:
The lesson addressed reading comprehension of Jesus’ teachings in the Bible as well as the depth of these moral teachings. Students worked in small groups to identify a parable that they wanted to explore. A script was written by students that included citing chapter and verse and dialogue of actors. PuppetPals2 was used for the students to act out Jesus’ lessons.
All the PuppetPals2 videos were uploaded to an unlisted class YouTube account and we watched them together as a class. A parables quiz was assigned with the videos as a study guide. Students were encouraged to watch the videos which were accessed through our religion home page. Students enjoyed the comical antics of their classmates acting out scenarios from the Good Samaritan, the Two Foundations, Weed among the Wheat, and more.
The final question on the students’ quiz was to offer feedback on using the app. The resounding response was joyful!
One of the students in the class commented, “I liked it because it let us use technology…it helped me remember what we needed to learn in a short amount of time.” Another said, “I thought it was a good way to express religion through technology. It was very fun to work with my friends.”
Thank you to Ms. Melloni and her students for sharing some of their videos!
Show of hands, who’s planning on attending the EdTech Teacher iPad Summit in Boston this week? Hm?
While you’re there, make sure to catch TIIE’s Susan Hennessey, presenting with HUMS educators on their groundbreaking work with Evernote on the iPad for e-portfolios. Proficiency-based graduation requirements have never seemed so bewitching…
Mirror, Mirror…Student Self-assessment and ePortfolios through the iPad Looking Glass
Meet Theresa White. She teaches 4th and 5th grade at Roxbury Village School, and this past summer, in preparation for her school going 1:1 with iPads, she took Susan Hennessey’s Emerging Technologies course, and as a result, shared this 5-minute lesson on getting up to speed with Google Drive on the iPad.
Bonus: she’s also shared her iPad skills checklist, for students (and teachers) to check off each new skill they master on the iPad. Thanks Mrs. White!
Peoples Academy Middle Level (PAML) educator Joe Speers returns with an explanation of how PAML uses Google Drive on iPads to arrange and organize student folders of work. It’s a fascinating video for anyone working in or considering implementing 1:1 with iPads.
Last week Dan Treinis and I each received Maker Bot Replicator 2s, underwritten by the Tarrant Institute. We are working in parallel to roll out the new technology with our middle school students at Edmunds and Hunt Middle Schools.
We began last week by introducing the technology to each of our classes with live demonstrations and a short how-it-works introduction.
Students at Edmunds Middle School examine their new 3D printer.
At the end of each class we raffled off the completed piece and the students loved it!
The Maker Bots came pre-loaded with an SD card that had several designs that we could print to test the machine. The initial setup was relatively easy so our next challenge is installing the makerware on our computers. The makerware traces the 3D models students create, then writes the code that the Maker Bot uses to precisely deposit the extruded plastic filament.
Both Dan and I are very familiar with Google Sketch Up and so are our students so we hope to use Sketch Up to create the models that we will print with the Maker Bot. So far I have been very impressed with the quality of the print and reliability of the machine.
More to come as we begin printing our own work this week!
The new 3D printer.
To put it mildly, our students are very excited about having access to
this new technology!
A close-up of some of the items that have already been printed on the 3D printer: clockwise from top left are a chain, a threaded nut and bolt, a comb, and a bracelet.
Emily Howe joined the Tarrant Institute this past summer as our first ever pre-service teacher intern. She was instrumental in pulling off Code Camp, and actively assists in our research. For her first blog post, Howe answered the question:
Describe a situation in which you feel instruction could’ve benefited from the appropriate integration of technology. Was that technology accessible?
In response, she described a watershed moment for her during her placement in a local school.
This semester, I’m in my first placement for the secondary education program here at UVM. I’m in a middle school right now, and last week I was able to sit in on a common planning time meeting amongst the teachers on the team that I am observing. As a part of their physics unit, the students are working on a project where they have to construct a functioning trebuchet or catapult. During this meeting, one of the topics being discussed was how the teachers would assess the final projects; one idea was to have the students create a video about their device.
The logistics of this type of assessment became an immediate concern.
How would the students film their catapult in action? What kind of camera would they use? Would an iPad suffice? What about editing? Are the students proficient enough in the use of these kinds of technology to execute a final product? Do the teachers know enough about it to offer adequate support? Would this just further (and perhaps unnecessarily) complicate an already difficult task?
My time in the classroom was up before a final conclusion was reached, but this conversation got me thinking about how education technology really looks and operates in practice.
While it is easy to argue for the integration of technology into the physical space of a classroom, it’s certainly harder to execute this integration into the curriculum itself.
And while I understand that it is kind of a no-brainer statement to make (I mean as with anything, it tends to be easier to talk about something than to put it into action), you could call this my lightbulb moment when it comes to education and technology.
That being said, I’d argue that my belief in the value of integrating technology at a curricular level isn’t a lofty or naive ideal.
And even if it is, I’d argue that it’s worth pursuing anyway.
In this particular classroom, laptops are frequently used to support inquiry based learning; combined with their use of a document camera and projector to display student work, it is clear that technology is an important part of how this team functions. But taking that next step towards making curricular changes that incorporate technology requires what can feel like a major leap of faith. In this specific instance, having the students make a video about their physics projects would create an opportunity for them to reflect on the learning process.
In addition to providing students with the proper technological tools, it would also be necessary to have instruction on how to film and edit videos. To do so would take time out of the classroom, require additional professional development, and necessitate access to a new set of resources, but the benefits are certainly significant.
Having this type of technology available in the classroom — and in the curriculum — would create a unique learning opportunity. Students would be able to elevate their inquiry-based learning and discover an entirely new cross-disciplinary connection between their video (the arts) and their physics projects (the sciences).
So, while it may be difficult to do, I believe this stands as an instance where the presence of technology could make a significant difference in student learning.
—
Emily Howe is pursuing a dual degree in Secondary Education and History with a minor in Special Education. She works with incoming first year students at UVM in the Honors College as a Peer Leader, and as a tutor in the UVM Writing Center. She’s also involved with Service TREK and Alternative Spring Break, and enjoys cooking, playing guitar, and going to Zumba classes in her spare time. You can reach Howe by email at ehowe2@uvm.edu.
For instance, did you know you can store webpages in iBooks with dotepub? 6th grade humanities educator Alex Bacheller explains, with the following screencast:
“An alien named Athena lives on Mars, and goes to school. Athena’s house is a spaceship. When she left to go to school, she realized she left something about half way….”
We started out this year with a Physics Unit studying the relationships between time, distance, and speed. Students worked in partners and were given ten different speed graphs to analyze. They were also given ten different stories explaining the graphs.
Students were expected to focus in on features of the graphs such as the slope of the line indicating a faster or slower rate of speed (amount of distance in a given amount of time). They then had to match up the ten stories to the 10 graphs.
After the students completed the matching part of the project, they were assigned a single graph to analyze further. Partners were expected to take a picture of their assigned graph: this image was then inserted as a “V-App” into the TouchCast screen, present in one corner of the screen shot at all times. Now the student who was doing the filming/recording would be able to draw on the graph, explaining the different key features of the graph. The other partner would physically act out what is going on in the graph (running, walking, or stopping as indicated by the graph).
“Tom ran from his home to the bus stop and waited. He realized that he had missed the bus so he walked home.”
This technology allows students to capture motion in real time while simultaneously relating this real motion to the information encoded in the two-dimensional graph. If I could spend more time on this project, I would try to provide the students with more space to execute this task. However, in one hour class, I was able to receive TouchCasts from each of the partner pairs. I received a lot of positive feedback from students about this class, and am certain that some powerful learning connections were made!
—
Rachel Goodale teaches 8th grade science at Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morrisville, VT. Visit her class website here. You can also browse the rest of her class’ distance/time Touchcasts by opening the app and searching on “Here’s How to Read a Speed Graph”.
In a nutshell, Aurasma’s augmented reality images are called auras. You make them with Aurasma Studio, which runs in your web browser. An aura consists of two parts:
A trigger image, aka the image viewers will point their device at to trigger the content;
and an overlay, or the hidden content that will be triggered. In Aurasma studio, you lay the content over the image to make an aura.
This is an aura based off the cover of This Dark Endeavor, a prequel to Frankenstein. Point your iOS or Android device at the image below:
Here’s a brief screencast of how to create a simple aura with a video overlay.
Augmented reality apps allow users to experience a layer of additional information — usually visual or auditory — meshed with everyday objects and surroundings. Here’s a look at one of our favorites.
Aurasma is a free, powerful augmented reality app for iOS and Android devices. It allows you to embed media items — videos, links, animation, other images — in static images.
(Remember that bit in Harry Potter when they’re walking through the gallery hallway at Hogwarts, and the paintings come alive? It’s a lot like that. 🙂
3. Auras are arranged into channels, and you have to subscribe to a channel in order to view them. So for instance, to get to the Tarrant Institute channel, tap the gray “A” symbol at the bottom of your screen, then the magnifying glass, and search on “Tarrant”.
Tap the gray A…Then the magnifying glass. Search for “tarrant”.
Tap “Follow” to follow our channel and access our Aurasma content. Channels can be public or private, and are useful for grouping content by organization — like a class or school.
4. Check out some of our auras, like this one, an image of the front cover of Kenneth Oppel’s YA Frankenstein prequel, This Dark Endeavor. Point your iOS or Android device at the image below:
Next, we’ll show you how to create your own auras in Aurasma, and talk about how Aurasma’s being used by a science teacher at Harwood Union Middle School, one of our partner schools.
“I noticed something recently when I was at a workshop or a meeting or something. I was with a colleague who had to leave early and he said, ‘Keep me posted on what happens.’
So I kept tweeting all day, and what I found was I was remembering a lot more of the presentation.”
“Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.” –Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Okay, so I’m a few months early but oy, this weather, #btv.
Brought to you by AR DinoPark, a free augmented reality app that lets you plunk one solitary triceratops into your real-world location. Such as the Tarrant Institute office.
Unfortunately, that’s all it seems to do. Your triceratops makes a little squeak and does a little dance, then you can read a paragraph of info about him. But there’s no way to create your own content or interact with said triceratops, and you have to pay for additional dinosaurs. But it’s a cool party trick.
Susan Hennessey takes you through some tools educators can use to curate — rather than simply collect — compelling content for the classroom. (Dynamic Landscapes, 2012).
Westville High School senior Bailey Bruner asks viewers for help choosing a major next year.
As a follow-up to our post on how teachers are using Touchcast, here’s an example of how students are using Touchcast from Westville High School in Oklahoma: to create interactive welcome videos! Touchcast is a free iOS app where users can create interactive videos including linked websites, live polls, images and other videos. You can view and share your videos on a channel on your iOS tablet, or online with a conventional web browser.
We’re sharing the screencasting love over here at the Institute, thanks in no small part to #btv librarian-rockstar Shannon Walters (@shannonwa), who introduced us to Touchcast. This free iOS app enables users to create videos for tablet and web that let you embed linked webpage images, polls, other videos (oh the meta!) and use a whiteboard, teleprompter, commenting and titles. It’s an interesting new entry into the iPad-based video-editing market.
And how are teachers using it? Here’s a Touchcast made by the principal of Roosevelt Elementary School, in California, welcoming students for the year:
Your viewers can vote in polls on-screen without interrupting the video.
And here’s Winooski art teacher and Tarrant partner educator Jessica Bruce, with What I Plan To Do With the Rest of My Summer (bonus points for recording while being distracted by cat):
Touchcast lets you embed short previews of webpages in your video, and viewers can click or tap through to visit them.
If you’re reading this entry on an iOS device, you can access both Touchcasts through the app and save them to your Bookmarks, or Recast them (like retweeting) to your channel. Any other teachers want to share how they’re using Touchcast?
While we’re all over here recovering from the epic spectacle that was this year’s Code Camp, please enjoy Shelly Wright’s TEDTalk, on her journey as a teacher.
They’re all excited and they’re telling people, and texting and I’m thinking this is gonna be awesome, you know? We’ll raise a couple thousand dollars, the kids’ll feel like they’re important, this’ll be great.
And so, the next day we come back to school and my students come back to the class and they say, “Mrs. Wright, we have decided on a goal…We have decided that we want to raise ten thousand dollars.”
Inside my head I’m thinking, “Oh. My. Gosh. Do you have any idea how much money ten thousand dollars is???”
And my outside voice said, “That’s awesome! How do you propose we do that?”
Featuring social justice work, community connections, and all the cats in
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, this 15-minute video is worth every second.
From Katie Sullivan and via our own @hennesss: “Look at this cool way to use iMovie for kids to be able to introduce themselves during the first few days of school:
Each student creates one of these with a series clues and then reveals him or her self at the end. So neat!”
Anyone interested in giving this a try in your classroom this fall?
Our inaugural Code Camp is in some great company this morning over at 7Days: Ruby Course, Conference and Camp Coming Soon. It’s great to see such strong support for learning to code in the community. 21st century educations ftw!
If you haven’t signed up for Code Camp yet, you’re in luck: we opened up a new block of seats yesterday to accommodate demand. Register online here.
In September of 2009, Sarah, the 9 year-old daughter of our keynote speaker posted a 90-second YouTube response to President Obama’s speech to US students. This video “went viral” and currently has over 190,000 views. In May 2010, a 6th grader in our keynote presenter’s hometown attracted the attention of Ellen Degeneres with his YouTube remix of a Lady Gaga song. Greyson Chance is now a household name and national star with a record contract and his own manager. Join this session to discuss the issues raised by these two situations and lessons learned including Internet safety and digital citizenship responsibilities.
Very powerful reflections from 9-year-old Sarah Fryer and her father, educator and technologist Wes Fryer, on digital citizenship for students on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. This podcast captured their presentation, When Student Videos Go Viral, at the Mid-America Association for Computers in Education (MACE) 2011.
Phoebe Slater teaches 7th grade at one of our partner schools, Peoples Academy Middle Level, over on her blog, Slaterspace, she compares traditional lesson plans with those incorporating iPads:
Using Skitch, students could take a picture of their work and mark up or comment on their or someone else’s writing. Using some other PDF reading tool, students could do the same with the sample pieces provided online. Yes, it is doing the same thing that we did…just with technology. But, perhaps some kids would have been more engaged, or hands-on, or receptive to really taking time to think through the structure and ideas presented before them instead of rushing through.
Montpelier’s U32 students did an amazing job crafting this documentary about school consolidation issues in Vermont. A fantastic example of using technology to engage with community issues. Highly recommended.
Susan Hennessey, with the help of videographers from Hen House Media, sat down to talk with one of Harwood’s middle grades students about improved technology integration at the school.
Traveled down to Harwood Union Middle School in Moretown VT on Friday to interview some of the students and teachers about the work they’ve been doing this year. So inspiring to hear how excited they are, and how generously they shared their stories. Thank you, Harwood!
Out at Cabot last Friday to interview some students and teachers about their amazing Seedfolks project, I was reassured to see this sign indicating the school’s commitment to safety:
Valerie Sullivan is the director of curriculum and instruction for the Lamoille South Supervisory Union.
It’s no secret that here at the Tarrant Institute, we’re a bit batty for badges. Not just because they’re shiny and fun to sew on a sash, but because in our initial experiments with badging platforms, we’re seeing increased teacher/learner engagement and motivation. But what does that really mean? Here, guest blogger Valerie Sullivan weighs in on Badgestack, the platform we’re using:
The structure itself provides for point, levels, badges, leaderboards, etc. Certain badges promote some of the other features like “phone a friend” allows for taking turns and swapping resources. The ability to click on individual members to see their badge/ quest submissions also provides for swapping resources and includes hidden elements.
I’m a bit of a skeptic and agree with the concern about badging being an extrinsic motivator instead of an intrinsic motivator. How might this impact other learning opportunities or experiences that aren’t badge centered? If all learning used badging might its novelty and even the extrinsic reward wear off?
If saying ‘great job’ or putting an “A”, check plus, or star on the top of the page is not valid, constructive feedback and as the learning theorists suggest none of these promotes learning, editing, reflection and growth than how is a badge any different or better?
“It’s not that I feel smarter in learning, I feel smarter in everything.”
Tarrant professional development coordinator Meredith Swallow learning about batch processing files from a 6th grader at Essex Middle School.
Essex Middle School’s Edge team opened their doors to the community May 16th as one of three Innovation schools in Vermont. Students and facilitators discussed some of the projects they’ve accomplished and some of the things they’ve learned as part of this unique environment.
“I’ve learned things high schools seniors don’t know,” commented 7th grader Isaac.
“Grand Theft Diamond”, a video from Flood Brook Union School’s 6th graders, shows how the popular game Minecraft can be turned into a digital storytelling platform. Check out some more of the Londonderry VT school’s Minecraft projects here.
The annual Rube Goldberg Challenge is an opportunity for students to engage in their inner creative, design-build personalities. They are tasked with completing a simple task through a complex, convoluted, over the top device that incorporates simple machine physics and creative problem solving. There are limits to their space, time, and materials (nothing banned form school for instance). The machines that are created range from functionally simplistic to extremely clever but all offer students a chance to personalize the experience. The one part of the project that has not been emphasized over the past several years is charging students with explaining their thought process as they develop, test, and redesign their design. The use of several different iPad apps were explored during this project to see how students could benefit from documenting their thinking as they went through a problem solving process.
Half of the student groups used the Explain Everything app to document via video, text, photos their thought process, while the other half used the Aurasma app to do the same. There were some challenges with the Aurasma app because our internet connectivity was poor in the Middle Gym so reaching Aurasma was difficult and the video cannot be edited prior to attaching to an Aura (trigger). The Explain Everything app appears to be better suited for this type of activity; where students could collect their thoughts on different slides or even have multiple videos on one slide.
Students were asked to reflect on the use of their app when the project was complete. Their feedback brings me back to the SAMR model and how it relates to my research question of using technology to enhance meta-cognition In this project, the Aurasma app did not fit the bill very well for allowing students to document their thinking over time. The app and the activity were not well suited; the video cannot be paused and continued, so students were unable to document their thinking over time. The Explain Everything app had both positive and negative reviews from students but with some additional practice with the app, students will be more comfortable with the potential to revisit their prior thoughts and construct new thinking. Ideally, students would have an opportunity to document their process and then be given another similar activity to complete using what they have collected on the Explain Everything app as a guide.
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Brian Wagner teaches 8th grade science at Harwood Union Middle School in Moretown VT. You can reach him on twitter: @swagsci
One of our partner educators, Brian Wagner, teaches eighth grade science at Harwood Union Middle School, in Moretown VT. This past spring, he used Aurasma with his students to bring elements of the periodic table to life in a gallery walk.
The Rube Goldberg Challenge was not a good fit for the Aurasma app as a means of documenting thinking over time, but it proved to be a good tool for students to teach each other about the periodic table.
In essence, students jig-sawed their knowledge about specific sections of the Periodic Table to create a larger perspective about the trends, patterns, and curiosities of table.
Memorizing the elements of the periodic table is a complete waste of time (a personal opinion but one generally recognized as valid).
Understanding the information stored in the table because of the way it is constructed unlocks chemistry at a deeper level. The author Sam Keane in his book The Disappearing Spoon writes that “…at its simplest level, the periodic table catalogs all the different kinds of matter in our universe, the hundred-odd characters whose headstrong personalities give rise to everything we see and touch. The shape of the table also gives scientific clues as to how those personalities mingle with one another in crowds….”
My objective for this activity is for students to begin to recognize the trends and personalities and teach each other about different sections using Augmented Reality. The assignment is presented in the attached file- The Periodic Table Assignment 2013
The students researched as per the assignment criteria and prepared a video presentation of their element group. They were allowed to create the video in whatever manner they wanted- many did not want to be onscreen but talked through their information while writing it out on paper. Some used a chalk board for added effect. Others set it up as a news cast. Each group created a simple Aura (trigger) to activate the video.
The Auras were placed around the middle school Gallery in their respective groups and an iPad was stationed at each of these areas to use for the video presentation. Students rotated throughout the gallery, watching each other’s videos and taking notes about each section. Initially I wanted each student group to prepare an annotated photo of a periodic table with the information they collected. This would act as a summarizing aspect to their learning. Unfortunately there was not enough time to go through the gallery walk and do the Skitch challenge. The following day we lost our Wi-Fi , the iPads were needed for other classes when it returned, and the opportunity was lost.
During the class time with no internet, students took a quick quiz about the periodic table. The quiz was used as a means to discuss their findings further and clear up misconceptions that arose during their research. There will be a follow-up summative quiz (using Socrative) to determine how much information has been internalized. That will be a separate post.
The use of the Aurasma app was received well by students for this activity. They saw the value in researching, outlining, and preparing a presentation that others would learn from.
Because their audience was a little bigger (the entire 8th grade) they took more time to prepare and shoot the video (many with multiple takes to get it right). Their personal creativity was valued and the questions that arose from their research made good conversations that would have been missing from a straight up lecture about the topic.
One of the drawbacks to the app was having to hold the iPad over the Aura while watching the video. However, one student figured out that by double tapping on the video while it was playing would take the video to full screen and allow it continue playing in any position. iMovie would also be a preferred video tool for making the videos more polished.
Unfortunately iMovie is not on our iPads yet, although one student convinced me to download it for him, where he proceeded to take three individual videos his group made into one smooth presentation.
He’s an 8th grade science teacher at Woodstock Union Middle School, a UVM doctoral student and tweets under the handle @PhySci8. He and his students use twitter in their classroom, and they’re wondering how many other science teachers do the same.
“I’m very interested in how technology, and the web, can be leveraged to provide new opportunities for students to explore, experience and share science. Twitter has proven to be a tremendously versatile tool: For more information on his project, you can reach Ryan at rbecker@wcsu.netit enables students to follow real science, and real scientists, based on personal interests; it provides students with an expanded and authentic audience; it provides students with opportunities to practice embedded forms of literacy (both traditional and new literacies); it allows students to practice and discuss digital citizenship in an authentic manner; lastly, it can be used in surprisingly diverse ways as a formative assessment tool. Moreover, Twitter is dynamic, occurs in real-time, is multi-modal and, perhaps best of all, it’s free!
For my upcoming dissertation research at UVM, I am specifically interested in learning more about how social media is being used by others in science classrooms for teaching and learning. I am reaching out to folks who are currently using social media in their science classrooms. My hope is that feedback from these teachers will help me develop research questions, as well as consider potential study participants, methodologies and types of data, in a more informed way.
Thank you to partner educator Amanda Bickford for sharing this video about how technology’s being integrated into the Manchester Elementary Middle School classroom, in Manchester VT.
It’s gratifying to hear directly from educators the difference our support is making in their classroom.
Over on Storify, a brief recap of how our first annual iPad play-day went this past weekend. With more than 70 educators from two states, 13 workshops and more live-tweeting than an aviary, we had a BLAST.
The chaotic, high-energy hacker-space challenges, featuring Skitch, Strip Designer and Haiku Deck, were one of the most popular sessions of the day.
A guest post by one of our partner educators, Jacki McCarty.
McCarty is an educator at Harwood Union Middle School, in Moretown VT.
“The resource I wish to share is THE STUDENTS and MY COLLEAGUES. Through encouragement by my colleagues I have taken risks with technology and found that the students can run with technology and use each other as resources. I, the teacher, can use them as resources. Here is what happened.
Jodie Curran and Jon Potts had told me about QR codes last year, but I never fully understood what they were until I did a treasure hunt with QR codes at a class last summer. I thought they were interesting, but never found a natural fit for integration into my curriculum.
While we were brainstorming about the Poetry Recitation project and iTraining, Sarah Ibson and I came up with the idea of having students record themselves reading poems (with images to compliment the poems also embedded in the iMovie) and make QR codes to put on their Recitation Poem Posters.
The poem posters consist of a handwritten version of the poem, and typed analysis of the poem, as well as an image that represents the poem. These posters will line the hallways at the final poetry recitation performance — the HUMS Celebration of Learning on May 2.
Here is a link to a student performance (they gave permission to share it and I used it as an example in my classes) which was made in Sarah Ibson’s iTraining class prior to my class project. The iTraining students acted as mentors during the recording and uploading experience — which was essential since I myself did not yet know exactly how to perform these actions.
One way I know for sure an app has potential to transform classroom practice is when, with minimal introduction and little prep time, a whole team of teachers adopts it and launches its use.
On February 11th, Edmunds Middle School opened their doors to the community and invited them to see what technology integration looks like in a 21st century Vermont school.
Whitney Kaulbach is a social studies educator at Lamoille Union High School, and over on her blog, she’s written a compelling and well thought out post on how she used the zombie apocalypse with her students in a unit on disaster preparedness.
A 1-minute iPad how-to from Harwood Union Middle School science educator Brian Wagner, showing you how to save augmented reality “auras” from the popular mobile app Aurasma, to Evernote.
Following up on our intro to ARIS with geometry last Friday, this morning the 6th graders from Edmunds Middle School spent some time at the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center working through “Frogworld”, a demo ARIS game that made use of items at the Echo Center. After they played the game, they spent some time with the rest of the (non-frog) exhibits, collecting ideas for items they could incorporate into their own games.
eams use Google Forms or other online survey tools to probe parents about the successes and challenges of 1:1 learning at home. Teams poll families on the relative importance of various parenting issues — monitoring use of social media, encouraging healthy online identities, for instance — and can get instant feedback for analysis and integration into their lesson plans and classroom communities.
spects of life.
Our inaugural Code Camp is in some great company this morning over at 7Days: Ruby Course, Conference and Camp Coming Soon. It’s great to see such strong support for learning to code in the community. 21st century educations ftw! 
whatever manner they wanted- many did not want to be onscreen but talked through their information while writing it out on paper. Some used a chalk board for added effect. Others set it up as a news cast. Each group created a simple Aura (trigger) to activate the video.
with multiple takes to get it right). Their personal creativity was valued and the questions that arose from their research made good conversations that would have been missing from a straight up lecture about the topic.
