Storytelling for the YouTube Generation: The remixed culture

During the technology update portion for our district's opening day, I spoke with staff about viewing YouTube as a genre.  This genre is viral short-form film and is embedded in the lives of each and everyone one of our YouTube generation students.  Here are a few strategies and examples as discussed during the presentation that we didn't have time to go in depth with.  

When giving students "creative briefs" like this, remember that they don't necessarily need "training" on how to do this. Try to make experiences like this as organic as possible and avoid the traditional "how-to" step by step list of directions for them.  In the end, remember you are grading them on CONTENT - not on their video skills. It's how they communicate what they know that matters. 

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Active participation in literary experience enhances the development of comprehension, oral language, and sense of story structure." 

- LM Morrow

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Stop-motion via Vine (for smart phone or tablet)

• 6 second science fair (#6secondscience on Twitter and examples on Mashable created with Vine)
• Idiom Vines (with lesson plan): http://alessonplanaday.tumblr.com/post/57158019675/using-vine-videos-for-lessons-on-idioms-by

Google Doc stories via Google Storybuilder:

Story builder with math word problem example:

Swede Videos (example from Star Wars remixed and remade)

1-minute, 1-take videos (sum up anything - i.e. sum up all the rules of football in 1 minutes or sum up a story)

1 minute 1 take video summing up Forrest Gump movie

Remixed Music for Parody videos (aka any song "goat-edition") :)

 

Paper-slide video

How-to guide for creating the paper-slide video

Newsletter 2.0

Get the kids involved! 

Example via a Principal along with students sharing weekly updates from school.

Nonfiction video voice-overs (sum up anything)

ex: Planet Earth - narrated by kids

Directions on creating a video like the one above - Taking nonfiction video and having students remake it (i.e.: strip out voice and have the students read it)

• Save/download media from DiscoveryEd or YouYube, etc.
• get something that’s like 1 minute 14 seconds (short)
• You or the students import the video into the online video editor website WeVideo
• when ready to do a voice over...
• put volume down for the main video on WeVideo screen (not on device)
• record your own video with webcam directly on WeVideo
• drag it into the timeline editor and click “edit”
• drag the scroll bar to the left to make your own video small and drop into the corner of the screen

Doing this or K-2 is so possible! Just find the clips ahead of time, cut them down to the length you'd like on WeVideo or MovieMaker and have the kids do the self-webcam video reading portion.

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District 68 Twitter Talks

I had the incredible opportunity to spend an hour after school with the staff of Murphy Elementary School yesterday to talk about the benefits of using Twitter.  As I shared the benefits for using this incredible tech tool, it wasn't so much about "how" to use Twitter as opposed to "why" educators use it.  The presentation revolved around this essential question: "How many ways can I get connected and build community by using Twitter?" Instead of just going over the basics of Twitter, I used this question to let us go deeper in our understanding.  The great thing about this type of PHAT question (pretty hard and touch) is that it allows for our brains to give us exactly what we ask for.

Take a look at the presentation slides below for my notes:

In addition, here's a link to the spreadsheet containing weekly Twitter chat dates/times, d68 staff members Twitter handler names, and recommended edutweeps/gurus to follow!

http://goo.gl/UKDnLj

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From fire to Google Glass: a technology timeline

I was privileged to spend an hour after school with a group of 2nd year teachers in our district to talk to them about strategies to promote metacognition via the design thinking model.  Before we got into the nitty-gritty of it all, we had a conversation around what the word technology really means and how a new perspective on it can impact our understanding of how to infuse technology into our instruction.  By today's standpoint, we typically think of educational technology as an electronic, computerized, online tool that can be used to enhance and engage students during our instruction.  However, if you really think of the word in the context of the definition, technology really is just something designed/built/created for the purpose of making life better/faster/more efficient.  When you think about it this way, it really opens the doors for conversation on what exactly we are implementing into our instruction because...HINT... it can definitely go beyond computerized tools.  

When you think about the use of the word over time, it makes it seem that technology did not exist before the early 1900's, but that simply cannot be the case from our mindset of what the word really means today.  If technology is anything that has been created to make life and learning more efficient, what items can you think of that belong in the gap of time where the word was virtually non-existent? 

I put the 2nd year teachers to the test (this was an activity that I picked up on in grad school and tweaked a bit).  Their quest was to create a "history of technology"... a tech-timeline if you will... that had them use post-it notes to map out what technologies have improved and directly impacted life and learning over time starting from fire and going all the way to Google Glass.  Here is a snapshot of the task (if you'd like the full lesson I used with students in the past, check it out on Google Docs here).

With a timer of 2 minutes on the board (via eg.gtimer.com), the results were extremely creative and thoughtful as the activity pushed the teachers to think differently on how they viewed technology.  There were post-it's that included...

• slate
• hieroglyphics/development of language
• heater
• toilet
• shoes
• printing press
• ink
• wheel
• dry erase

...and the list went on - it was amazing to see all that could be conjured up within 2 minutes! We stopped our activity with the Tech Timeline there, but if you'd like to do this with students there are definitely numerous talking-points to tie into this to make it something larger (see earlier link for activity on Google Docs).

How can you use this in your classroom?  How can you use this with staff in your building to create a mindset shift on the purpose for integrating technology?

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New Teacher Mentoring on Choosing Instructional Web Tools

Second year teachers attending today's after school workshop on Web 2.0 tools, please open the link to our shared Google Presentation sent to you via email or by clicking here.  After we're done, you also have this slide show here for your records.

To anyone else - feel free to browse this slideshow!  

Topic: 

Implementing the right Web 2.0 tools into instruction

Guiding Question:

Is it filter failure or information overload?

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Principal Coffee Presentation: Engaging Experiences at JJHS!

At tonight's Principal Coffee meeting, the parents of JJHS students will get to see many examples of engaging real world learning experiences that their children have encountered during the first unit of the school year.  I am so impressed with the incredible talent that our staff and students have! With the wonderful content created by Bill Schmidt and the teachers at JJHS, I placed the material onto the website Projeqt. Take a look at the slide show to see who really owns the learning!

Don't know what Projeqt is?  Take a look here:

What is Projeqt?

Projeqt from TBWA\Chiat\Day New York on Vimeo.

Creating Your First Projeqt

Creating your first projeqt from Pilot on Vimeo.

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Web Tool of the Week: Google Forms

Each week, I will highlight a website or web 2.0 edtech tool based on our initial needs within FOCUS, and Google Forms may be the tool that hits every single part of the acronym!  This application through Google Drive can be used in so many different ways, but teachers can use it daily as an entry or exit slip, or a quick assessment/survey tool.

A great way to take Google Forms a step further is to use a FormEmailer - this allows you to send individual results AND your feedback to student email addresses - or even parents! Click on the video below to view my screencast video on how to use Google Forms.  It's about 15 minutes long, so if you'd like to skip ahead to view the tutorial on FormEmailer within Google Forms, skip ahead to the 8:12 minute mark - BE SURE TO WATCH IT IN HD on the Vimeo Site otherwise it may be pretty blurry. 

GoogleFormsScreencast from Tarah Tesmer on Vimeo.

Click through this slideshow to view 80 interesting ways to use Google Forms in the classroom!

79 interesting ways_to_use_google_forms_in_the from GrahamAttwell

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Skyward Training

For those of you attending any Skyward training with me during the month of September, here is the information on how to find the presentation and media that will be used.  Even if you are not attending any Skyward refresher courses, please feel free to look at my documents which contain roughly 17 silent screen casts embedded into a slideshow of notes.  Covered in the notes are the following topics:

Skyward Training Topics
Logging On	New Layout/Widgets	Secondary vs. Standards Grading
Message Center	Taking Attendance	Lunch Survey
Creating Seating Charts w/Photos of Students	Grid/Reports Printing	Adding Assignments/Events
Adding Online Assessments	Scoring/Grading	Deleting Assignments
Posting Grades	Posting Comments	Category Maintenance
Display Options	Charts	Discipline
Gathering Student Information	Cloning the Gradebook

Here's a few places where items can be found:

1. Your District's Computer
• To find the PowerPoint, click on Computer, Staff Share, District Share, Skyward Redbook, Presentations
• Please SAVE AS a copy for yourself to be placed on your own H-Drive.  Be sure not to edit any material inside of the PowerPoint at the District Share location.
• All videos embedded into the PowerPoint are actually linked to an external page - all videos are hosted on Dropbox and are playable throughout the school day.
2. On Google Drive
• On my blog page, go to Presentations and Workshops, and click on the image corresponding with the Skyward presentation - it is linked to a Google Presentation
• All videos are embedded into the presentation via YouTube and can only be played at school after 3:00 pm (great resources to use if needing assistance from home).
3. My Video Container on Blendspace
• Blendspace is a great tool to bookmark materials for others to see whether they are websites, images, quizzes, directions, video clips, etc.  I've used it to place all of my screen-cast videos from YouTube into one container so you don't have to search for them. Use this if you just want the video and no notes.  The blendspace is embedded below for you to scroll through:

Note: since these videos require streaming via YouTube, please only access after 3pm or at home.

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