Creating Lifelong Learners

Here are a few new examples of classroom videomaking sites worth checking out from around the web.

Elementary

Mr. Alonso’s 4th grade classroom.  I particularly enjoyed, The Secret to the CSTs.

Mrs. McKillop’s 4th grade classroom in Elk Grove.  Here is their award-winning movie, The Power of One.

Middle School

Mr. Mayo’s Middle School Films.  I particularly enjoy the middle school brand of humor.

Mr. Hodgson’s claymation literary terms (alliteration, hyperbole, etc).

Closing

If your in the L.A. area, please take an iMovie class with me this summer at the County Office of Education.

Also check out my own classroom videomaking at Video in the Classroom.com

Earlier editions of the Video in the Classroom Carnival can be found here.

By request, I’m posting the steps to showing youtube movies in class the “low tech” way. For those with the technological know-how, I prefer using the firefox plugin “Download Helper” or a site like zamzar.com, however, this is for teachers with little tech know-how and a laptop. Of course, all of these methods are designed to get around district blocking of youtube. If youtube is not blocked in your district, there is no need for any of these.

1. Visit youtube.com from home on your laptop.

2. Load a youtube movie that you want to show in class. (You can also load multiple movies in multiple movies)

3. Make sure the movie completely loads, by watching the red bar on the bottom of the movie.

4. Close the laptop (BUT DO NOT CLOSE THE WINDOW) and that movie is now ready to show in school.

If you close the browser window, the movie is gone. However, as long as you leave that window open, and the movie has fully loaded, the movie will play in class.

In addition to subscribing to this blog via RSS or e-mail, you can find almost daily quick tips and links by following mrneedleman on Twitter, multimedia files are posted to youtube where you can subscribe and visitors who have gotten through this blog via the Open Court Resources side of the site can become a fan of Open Court Resources on Facebook.

Since my presentation, “Steal This Preso:  Copyrights, Fair Use, and Pirates in the Classroom” I’m on the lookout for classroom copyright resources to share with you.  I found these blog posts interesting:

1.  Mr. Mayo has a skype visit from professor Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, who talks about remixing and the classroom.

2.  Dan Meyer asks if it’s fair use to illegally download multimedia for classroom use.

I received the following question by e-mail:

Can you point me in the right direction or have you encountered issues regarding the sharing of classroom video with parents. A school district lawyer is arguing that sharing video with a parent of her child interacting in the classroom constitutes a violation of the FERPA rights of the other children in the tape. Seems goofy to me.

My response:

1.  I’m not a lawyer.  2. You have to do what your administrator says.
I never turn a camera on in the classroom until I have permission from every parent for their child to be videotaped.  You cannot film students with permission.  I would think that getting permission to film students interacting would avoid violating any rights.

Thank you to those of you who attended my workshop, “RTI:  A Complete Apple Workflow” at the CUE conference this weekend.   I spoke about using Apple Software to address your Response to Intervention program.  This post contains the links, resources, and ideas that I shared.  Rather than simply posting the keynote file (which is much easier) I prefer to recap and flush out some of the ideas so that it’s beneficial even to those who weren’t there.

What is RTI?

As I define it, rather than simply teaching everyone the same thing and assuming that if someone doesn’t “get it” that there’s something wrong with them, RTI assumes that there will be students who do not master a concept after whole group instruction and will need additional time and intensity (interventions) to master concepts.  This, of course, is very similar to the idea of Independent Work Time.

Alice Mercer, in her CUE presentation, also addressed RTI and went into additional detail in defining it.

Part One:  Dealing with Data

It’s very important to collect and analyze data in order to target interventions to specific student need.  ”Fluency” is to vague to be an intervention.  Focusing on short vowels, long vowels, or digraphs is a better intervention because it targets a specific student need.  Using Apple’s iWork (Pages and Numbers) or even Microsoft Word’s (Office and Excel) can help you to organize data by creating a spreadsheet, graphing data, and using the word processor’s mail merge functions to create parent reports about student data.  I much prefer iWork to Office because of its ease of use and the ability to create better looking documents.

Here’s additional information on graphing in Numbers and how to use the mail merge function.  I taught both these things in the workshop.

Part Two:  Prescriptions for Success ways of using Apple technology to address student needs

Fluency

• Use Garageband to record students doing Reader’s Theater and then add photos via iMovie or Final Cut Pro

Find free Reader’s Theater scripts here

See two of my projects done this way…The City Mouse and the Country Mouse and Tales from the Yard

• Use iPods with Voice Recorders to have students record their voices or have students record their voices directly into Garageband.

Find a voice recorder

Find out more about these techniques through Escondido Unified’s iRead Project

Comprehension

• iMovie projects which focus on unit themes and non-linguistic representations (as per Marzano’s Classroom Instruction That Works)

See our example for the Look Again Camouflage Unit

Read about how vocabulary is scaffolded for such projects

Behavior

While behavior tracking software is popular among schools with large behavior problems.  I saw office referrals eliminated in my classroom simply through working on these movie projects.  I gave the example of Joseph, a student who I knew would not be quiet if I was to call “Quiet on the Set.”  Instead of playing through that scenario and getting annoyed at Joseph ruining other students’ projects, I decided to make Joseph the engineer.  He called out “Quiet on the Set!” and he pushed the red Garageband button.  The rest of the class was dead quiet and Joseph experienced being a successful and productive member of our class rather than being the one who wrecked everything.  This is a behavioral intervention…intervening to improve student behavior rather than punishing students for bad behavior.

Evidence

Here are two slides that show some evidence that these techniques are producing gains although I am the first to admit that we need to continue collecting data on the subject.

In my classroom, I saw an 18% increase in the number of students reading at benchmark 12 weeks after working on the Reader’s Theater script, The City Mouse and the Country Mouse:

In Escondido Unified, they saw average gains of about 40 words per minute after six weeks of reading with iPods whereas normal gains are about 10 words per minute:

Bonus

Here are some incidental things I mentioned in my presentation.

HandBrake for ripping movies from commercial DVDs  you own for storing on iPod.

PWN Youtube and other ways of downloading Youtube movies.

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OK, I don’t like the name (iTablet or iSlate are much cooler sounding) but I think the iPad bashers have got it wrong and that this new device has the potential to change education.  While many journalists are complaining about the $499 price tag, I keep thinking wow, only $499, that’s half the price of laptops!

Reasonable Expectations/ Reasonable Price Tag

First, you need to understand that the iPad is not a laptop.  You will need a traditional laptop if you want all the functionality of a laptop.  The iPad is a cross between an iPod touch and a laptop lite.  The iPad is sufficient for 90% of classrooms who need a computer only to do word processing and internet browsing.  In a perfect world, classrooms will still have at least one MacBook or iMac somewhere in the room but at $499 you can put more Apple computers in the hands of students at the half the price of what it would have cost you yesterday (the entry level iBook is about $999).

Advantages In Addition to Cost

1.  Battery life is much longer than existing laptops and more akin to the iPod battery life.

2.  Many of the shortcomings that analysts point to in terms of lack of complexity in the operating system are advantages in the classroom.  Unlike a traditional computer, the iPad should require very little setup, troubleshooting, maintenance.  Like your iPhone, the iPad should just run.  In classrooms without tech support, this is fantastic.

3.  Tactile computing.   Students now just touch need to touch the screen to select what they want.  This is intuitive and satisfying.  It would be as easy to touch an English Language Learner or my grandmother as it would be to teach a computer scientist.

The Future

There are some features missing that are already on my iPad wishlist.  This is a typical 1.0 version of the iPad.  Remember when the iPhone came out it didn’t have third party apps, voice activation, or turn by turn navigation.  I didn’t get an iPhone until version 3.  I’m not really an early adopter.  I personally would wait for future versions of the iPad before jumping in.  However, if you’re ready, none of the missing features are a deal breaker for the classroom.

No camera?  Does every student need a camera at his/her desk?  Would every student be videoconferencing simultaneously?

No multi-tasking?  Do students really work on two assignments at once?  Applications like Safari do save your place when you switch out of them and then come back for purposes of research.  People who have never used the iPhone don’t understand how you can live without multi-tasking, but trust me, you can.

No 16X9.  This is a bummer if your watching a lot of high def movies but in the classroom, who cares?

No Adobe flash when visiting web sites.  This is too bad but there’s no Flash on the iPhone and it hasn’t really bothered me.  I suspect it’s coming to Apple’s mobile devices if you can be patient.  Most sites will run fine without Flash.

If you need any of those things then you still have the option of getting a laptop.  Again, temper your expectations, this is a netbook and not a full-fledged computer.

If money and lack of tech support have been holding your school back from adopting technology.  This is a great first step in a positive direction.

Your Thoughts

What do you think of the new iPad and its potential in your classroom?

Here is a typical district/principal purchase that undermines the case for spending money on technology in schools.  This is an anecdote from an actual school that I am not affiliated with but will not name.

Elementary principal knows she wants to integrate technology in her school (and also needs for teachers to be able to take online attendance).

Principal decides to buy each teacher a laptop and buys the best…Mac Book Pros for everyone! (MacBook Pros are about twice as much as MacBooks and are more powerful than most teachers would need).

First instructions from principal are, “Do not let students use these laptops.”

Laptop comes in box but school does not purchase laptop bags for teachers.  Laptops are either unprotected when transported or left in their box because it’s too much trouble to take it out and put it back in.

Laptop comes locked as per district policy.  Teachers cannot install software, change settings (even things like brightness and contrast), update software, or customize the computer in any way without an administrator password.  The administrator password is only held by administrators.  This particularly bothers me because it makes the experience of using a MacBook Pro (which is extremely easy and intuitive) and makes it frustrating and unintuitive.

Schools don’t need to spend more than they need to.  They need to make it convenient for teachers to use their laptops.  At some point we need to hand the technology over to students.  Unless we do these things, how are we improving education by introducing fancy technology into our schools?

What are the worst technology purchases you’ve seen in schools?

My presentation for this year’s K12Online Conference, Steal This Preso: Copyrights, Fair Use, and Pirates in the Classroom!, is now live and viewable below.  I’ve also included links to my favorite royalty free media sites and additional resources below.

The Presentation

BlipTV direct link to download video file
use this to download to your iPod or if DotSub is blocked in your district

BlipTV audio file
use this if you want only the audio portion of the presentation (not as fun)

Additional Information

Barely Legal Radio Program (available as podcast)
I’ve learned tons about copyrights and fair use from listening to Joe Escalante’s show.  It’s entertaining as well as educational.   I’ve recommended this before and it’s never caught on with other educators but if you are really interested in this topic, do check it out.

Public Domain Slider
Helps you identify if a work is in the public domain.  Very cool.  However, note that most work is not in the public domain.

Code of Best Practices in Media Literacy Education
I found this thanks to Joyce Valenza’s K12 Online presentation.  It supports what I’m saying and expands upon it.

Lawrence Lessig’s Book, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
There are ways that current copyright law has not kept up with digital technologies.  Lawrence Lessig explores this in his book.  I recorded a section of this preso in which I talked about this but ultimately deleted for time and clarity.

Additional Relevant Information from my blog

Royalty Free Resources

Please see these posts:

Royalty Free Images, Movies, and Music Part I

Royalty Free Images Part 2

The K12Online Conference has started today with its opening keynote by Kim Cofino.

The K12 Conference is entirely free and online.  You don’t need to register to “attend” and once presentations go live they are available forever.  You can never “miss” a presentation because you can always go back and see them.

Teachers attend the conference all around the world.  Unfortunately, since the conference is free, there’s no money for publicity and in many districts including my own, K12Online remains a big secret. Particularly when money to attend conferences is scarce, a free conference seems awfully appealing.  If you’re not involved in the blogosphere, trust me when I saw that some of the great minds in educational technology are presenting here for free.

Check it out, you have nothing to lose. My own presentation, Steal This Preso:  Copyrights, Fair Use, and Pirates in the Classroom! goes live on the very last day of the conference.

Here’s a downloadable flyer to share.  View this year’s presentations here and check out the upcoming schedule (as each presentation comes online, the link to the presentation will become active).