Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

Due to my fear of our school “blocking” blog sites like blogger, I am relocating this blog to another site (Edublogs.org).
http://technotuesday.edublogs.org/
Update your feeds.
www.bloglines.com

Today was the last day of a six week digital photography session of Creative Explorers. My school offers these “mini” courses to students who are willing to stay after school, and I sponsored the digital photography group.  We learned many new things in our six weeks.  MY favorite was “fun” things to do with your digital photographs.  Here are three we discovered and/or worked on:

Having Fun with Pictures:

• Bubbleshare
  Visit http://www.bubbleshare.com/; set up a free account; upload selected pictures; add transitions and bubbles with text; add music.
• Windows Moviemaker (WMM)
  WMM is a free editing tool found on all Windows XP operating system computers for images and video: Start–Programs– WMM; If not there, Start–Programs–Accessories
  Import your pictures, and edit away.
  When you are finished, save your file as a movie (.wmv file). NOTE—You will need a DVD Burner to save it as a video you can share using a DVD player. WMV files will not play in a DVD player.
• Windows Photo Story 3
  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx Create slideshows using your digital photos. With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures. Add stunning special effects, soundtracks, and your own voice narration to your photo stories. Then, personalize them with titles and captions. Free music can be found at http://www.freeplaymusic.com/, though there are some copyright restrictions—read the fine print. Small file sizes make it easy to send your photo stories in an e-mail. Watch them on your TV, a computer, or a Windows Mobile–based portable device.

Next time, I am going to include “ScrapBlogs” too as something fun to do with your pictures, and share image storage sites like PhotoBucket and Flickr.

Tomorrow I will “burn” to DVDs all the pictures and final projects from my students workstations, and give them ou o be taken home and shared. This group has a blog too, and perhaps you’ll want to check it out. Perhaps I’ll post a sample of their work here when I get them off the computers.

Monday, October 30, I take myself on a field trip! I will be visiting Dutch Fork Elementary School to learn the “subscription” side of Podcasting. I am preparing a 5th grade class to create podcasts. Of course when I initially planned it, I was still fuzzy on podcasting, so their task isn’t a podcast except that it will be an audio file that will be downloaded on the Internet. Their task is to research a time period, and then record a radio broadcast where they as deejays have traveled in time to their assigned timeframe. They have to find two music selections (which we will purchase from iTunes), do a news story (which hopefully we’ll pull from StreamlineSC), and one advertisement (which they will hopefully create from scratch.)  Fot legal purpsoses, the radio broadcasts that are going to be made available for download will only contain snippets of the song selections. The students presentation to the class, though, will contain the full version. We hope the students have a lot of fun researching their time period, and selecting their pieces for the podcasts. Mrs. Byrd-Fort of DFES is going to show me how to get the RSS feed so that wew can make the subscriptions available.

At Gilbert Elementary School, I am going to see the technical side of their news program. Our schools use the same program, Visual Communicator, but I am having audio problems—the kids like to call it tunnel talk or old chinese movie talk.  I hope to bring back to my school the solution to this problem.

I have learned how to categorize postings here.  I have added several, but may add more later.

I have maintained this blog with another service, blogger.com.  But recent rumors about blocking the blogger.com or blogspot.com sites (from my school district) has made me research more educationally sound blogging sites.  From this day forward, I will use the edublog site to post my thoughts and ideas about teachers integrating technology. Before changing to edublogs, I maintained this blog on the Blogger.com site here: http://nsesphoto.blogspot.com/

Visit to see the beginnings of this brainstorm.

Mark Wagner
“Blog If You Love Learning” Video
K12 Online Conference

Download

Wow, what a great video introducing the concept of blogging and its uses in education. If you are fuzzy on what it means to blog, this video is for you. Mark especially highlights EduBlogs. TUNE IN!!

Have you wanted to create a blog where your students can safely post on their own instead of having to just comment on your posting. Introducing David Warlick’s Class Blogmeister! I haven’t fully researched it, but I am in the process of doing just that. I have several media friends who are using it, and they tell me it’s great, safe, and moderated. You create your blog, and then add the students that you want too include as being allowed to blog. Then anytime they want to post a comment or begin a new thread, they don’t have to wait. Best, you as the teacher can approve (or refuse) the postings. Think about it…students reading more… students writing more…for a real purpose. What better way to teach reading and writing?

Friday (October 20, 2006) there was a letter to the editor regarding the students’ pictures from Castle Heights Middle School. Here’s a link if you missed it. http://www.heraldonline.com/124/story/8038.html
I respond to this because many of us knew some of the kids featured and even interviewed for the story that I believe ran Wednesday or Thursday. Here’s that article link:
http://dwb.heraldonline.com/local/story/6172635p-5398993c.html

I have to respond to this because I know some of you know very well some of the students who were featured in the pictures and interviewed for the article. (Several are fromer Northside kids.) It became abundantly clear to me that the students are most definitely learning, and in a most authentic way. Leonard Hayes, a current sixth grader, responded that he was pleased with the nutritional changes of lunch, saying he wants to lose some weight anyway and be “buff” for football. (His word–I promise!) The letter to the paper implied that kids are not learning today because of the observed droopy-eyed students, ones who lounge in class as if in a recliner, and the lack of organization because books and belongings appeared scattered around a desk rather than in it. The author seems to think bringing strong discipline back into the classroom can fix these things.

Well, sorry, but I do not agree. We are challenged daily by what our students bring into the classroom from home. And we must compete wih ipods, mp3 players, cell phones, video games, and late night TV everyday of the week. I do not believe we reach our students and make them smarter through discipline. Students learn when their school work is valued because its authentic, and they are engaged in a lesson. They see significance in what they are learning, and make lifelong and world wide connections to learning. It is not about being messy (which I would wager they do at school because it happens at home), but instead about feeling comfortable enough to relax and soak in their education! Leonard showed me just from his comments that someone has taken the time to help him understand the changes in the cafeteria entres, and that he will be a better person for those changes that have been made. So essentially, somewhere along the way to implelmenting the nutrional changes at Castle Heights, a lesson involving authentic discussion, a comparison of nutritional data, and relevant lessons impacted him so he could understnd and accept the new guidelines without question. Someone over there did a great job!

Read the articles. Tell me what you think! Your technology tidbit here, I guess, is writing a response in a blog. I really want to hear from someone. Help me let others know that learning in the 21st century offers many new challenges, and will look dramatically different from days of old.

Rock Hill Herald Rock Hill K12 Learning

Today some of our fourth and fifth grade teachers (as well as me!) were invited to attend a Science and Literacy Workshop presented by Merry Southgate of Charlseton, SC. She was invited by Dr. Jawarowski, Associate Supt. of Instruction who took over the department formerly led by Dr. Kodad. Dr. Jawarowski had hosted Merry Southgate at the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center at USC-Aiken several years ago (roughly seven) and I was lucky enough to see this same presentation then (when I lived and worked in Aiken County.) Here is the website for the Agnes Pflumm series. I will be posting it on the Northside school’s website and on my RHSD3 Media Specialist Blog. Merry Southgate has also attended and presented at the state school library annual conference (SCASL) before, so I’d even had an opportunity to hear her there. If you did not get to attend today, there is a second meeting planned a the district office that will cater to the artsy side of her presentation, and this time fourth and fifth grade teachers will be invited along with the arts specialists from the district schools. I for one am going to request to be allowed to attend since Northside is an Arts Based Curriculum (ABC) school and an identified “Distinguished Arts Program” award recipient. I would love to see that part of the presentation, and apparently she has expanded and built on her presentation to have an increased emphasis on arts integraion, which I have not seen or heard before. She has also added two books to her series. I hope my principal can garner me this invitation. The site has lesson plans and downloadable activities to go with the books we received oday. Enjoy!

http://k12onlineconference.org/ It’s MUST SEE and MUST hear info. What a novel idea! An online conference (virtual in every aspect of the word) where you can actively participate through blogging, podcasting, videos, and wikis, or you can be a passive observer, and just soak up the information. You can even apply for renewal credits.

DavidWarlick’s opening Keynote address was yesterday, and last evening he participated in a Firelight Chat (using Elluminate) that was incredible. It was called a “firelight” chat because we would all be illuminated by the glow from our computer screens!! This goes on for two more weeks, and is chocked full of experts and more, all sharing about Web 2.0 in education. And BEST, I was afraid it would cater to the experts and experienced, but no, it is for even the most uncomfortable beginners. Might want to check it out.
K12onlineconference