The Evolving Classroom

Bringing Relevance to our 7th Graders’ Study of Africa

2012-01-27T14:47:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the efforts of our 7^th grade social studies teachers, Ms. Manzelli and Ms. Medla, students have been involved in many cross-team activities. One of Ms. Manzelli’s students had actually visited the African nation of Rwanda, and Ms. Manzelli arranged a visit from Andre’s father so their experience could be shared with the classes.

On January 5, 2012, Dr. Andre Sofair and his son addressed both 7^th grade teams on the topic of the presenters’ recent trip to Rwanda. Of course, one of the highlights of the presentation was the viewing of pictures of the gorillas that have a habitat in Rwanda. However, during the presentation, Dr. Sofair and Andre also told the students about their visit to Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK) where great strides have been made in increasing the wellness of the children of Rwanda. Students’ interest in helping the clinic by running a fundraiser prompted a follow-up visit.

On Tuesday, January 24, Dr. Sofair returned to visit with the social studies classes. He was joined by Dr. Emmanuel Kamanzi, of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK) in Rwanda.

Dr. Kamanzi discussed with students his education, experiences, and daily life as a medical doctor in Rwanda. It was so gratifying to hear him explain how he chose pediatrics as his specialty. Dr. Kamanzi told of how very ill infants and young children would be brought to the clinic, but as a result of treatment available, most children would be greatly improved within a few days, laughing and playing; it was like a miracle. These successes so affected Dr. Kamanzi emotionally that he just knew that helping young children was his life’s mission.

Students greatly enjoyed the presentation and did indeed hold a fundraiser for CHUK. Hopefully, the generous donations of students and teachers at BMS will help to, in the words of Ms. Manzelli, “Help the children of Rwanda see a brighter and healthier future!”
Just in – The seventh graders raised over $250 for the clinic in just four days.
We hope to stay in touch with Dr. Kamanzi through email even after his return to Rwanda.

Talented Students Create Wonderful Projects Showcasing Study of Ancient Egypt

2012-01-13T15:18:00.000-05:00

As I walked by Ms. Manzelli's classroom this afternoon, I noticed a lot of engaged students busy with an activity, so I stopped in for a moment. The students had created wonderful projects as an activity tying in with their study of Ancient Egypt. What was so great was how they were moving in rotations from one project to another, viewing the project, and critiquing each one.This helped them to really focus on other students' projects as well as their own - a collaborative activity. I asked Ms. Manzelli to write a blurb about the project, and this is what she said:
" Seventh graders on the Blue Team have been studying Ancient Egyptian culture, government, and history. As a culminating project, students were asked to create a model project which illustrated in 3D an aspect of ancient Egyptian life. Students brought in items ranging from a diorama of the Nile River Valley to the interior of King Tut’s tomb, to a bust statue of Queen Nefertiti. At their “Ancient Egypt Fair,” students rotated among projects, constructively evaluating their peers’ work and commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of other projects. In addition, the class period ended with a short discussion on the structures, people, and geography that shaped the lives of ancient Egyptians more than 3000 years ago."
There were many wonderful projects produced. Enjoy the pictures that Mrs. Manzelli captured with her iPad -I was only able to include a few in this post, but she has archived them for posterity in a folder at school. So - long after the projects have been thrown away, there will be a visual record of them. I encourage all of you to document your children's work. You never know when it might come in handy.

Windows Live Movie Maker Works Great on the New Computers in Lab 21

2012-01-10T12:39:00.000-05:00

The Life Arts Team sponsored a field trip to Sleeping Giant State Park in the fall of 2010 for all 7th graders. Mrs. Vescovi and some students captured video clips to commenmorate the day. She returned the flip camera with the video clips to me, and I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't get time to work with them until the fall of 2011. Last year we had a lot of problems trying to edit video using Windows Movie Maker. The computers had been upgraded such that we were running Windows 7 on top of the old XP operating system. Most everything worked great except for Windows Movie Maker Live, the version that came with Windows 7. Unfortunately, almost every time we'd get a project started, it would crash and all the work would be lost.
I am very pleased to announce that editing the video clips on the brand new computers in Lab 21 with native Windows 7 operating system and using Windows Live Movie Maker worked like a charm. It still took a lot of time for me to watch all the clips,edit them, put in transitions and titles, and render the final product, but it was worth it, and it went seamlessly. I look forward to working with the students this year as they produce their own videos to enhance curricular projects.
Enjoy the trip to Sleeping Giant:

Experimenting with Animoto

2012-01-09T20:47:00.000-05:00

Here is another blog post that is out of sequence. Last June, as you'll recall, we had many snow days to make up, and the teachers were in session for three days after the students were finished for the school year 2010~2011. In those remaining three days, the teachers were engaged in a number of professional development activities. The middle school teachers from both Bethany and Orange gathered at Orange Middle School for a day of sharing. While every teacher in the district has wonderful projects to share, time allowed for a select few to present, and there is a quick slide of each of the presenters in this video clip.
I have been wanting to try Animoto - a web 2.0 tool that allows you to upload a number of pictures, select music, and add text, and then the tool puts it all together for you. The free version is limited to a 30-second video, but there are pay options that allow you more features. The next step up from free is available for $5.00 per month or $30.00 per year. That's not too steep a price if you want to produce a number of these videos. You can save them to your computer, email them, share them on Facebook, etc. I requested the embed code and am pasting it into this blog post, so I can share this with you. I hope you enjoy it.

Try our video maker at Animoto.

Thanks for watching.

Creating Gingerbread Houses in Mrs. Frank's Art Club

2012-01-09T14:24:00.001-05:00

This post is a little out of order,but I wanted to include this cool activity that Mrs. Frank sponsored for our students here at BMS. You can see in the video below what a wonderful time the kids had. Except for a few sugar highs, the kids were extremely well-behaved, and they all participated in clean up which made Mrs. Frank very happy.
The iPad was used to capture the video clips, and then the iMovie app for the iPad was used to combine the clips and add the transitions and titles. Enjoy!

Quilts of Healing and Sweet Dreams

2011-12-21T12:07:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the children's book The Quilt Maker's Gift by Jeff Brumbeau, Mrs. Saisa (literacy enrichment teacher) and Mrs. Mahon (health teacher) paired up with students in their classes to create quilts and pillows to be donated to the Yale New Haven Pediatric Center. Mrs. Saisa, for a second year in a row, has spearheaded this project along with teachers and students from Bethany Community School. This community outreach project which emphasizes the importance of giving to others, is a real labor of love. Mrs. Saisa and Mrs. Mahon, with generous contributions from students and staff at Bethany Middle School, spend a great deal of personal time gathering materials and organizing this wonderful service project. This year the project generated 23 pillows, 51 pillow cases, and 89 fleece blankets which will definitely bring joy to the children who receive them. I could not include all of the photos in this post, but the ones included will give you an insight into how much joy the project also brought to the creators.

Pic Collage for iPad and iPhone is really neat

2011-12-05T20:30:00.000-05:00

I am cross-posting this entry from the entry I made on the DEN blog for CT.
Some students at my middle school had been asked to create a collage of family members as part of their Spanish unit on vocabulary having to do with the family. When they asked for help in printing their collage, I discovered they had created it on their iPads using a free app called Pic Collage. After downloading the free app, they were able to select a background and then add pictures from their pictures library, live shots from the camera, or pictures from a Facebook account. Once the pictures were added, they were easily able to size, rotate, and send them to the back or in front of other pictures in the collage. There were even simple editing tools for brightness, contrast, effects, etc. Once they were satisfied with their layout they had a number of options such as saving their masterpiece to their picture library, or uploading it to Twitter or Facebook, or emailing it to someone. Since they needed to print it out, they had mailed it to themselves at our school Google domain. Once the email was opened, the picture appeared. To facilitate printing, I had them right-click on the photo and save it to their network folder. They then opened it using Windows picture viewer – chose a size- and printed it to the color printer. The collages came out really nice. I am sure that app will be used for lots of school projects from capturing events during field trips to photographing student artwork displayed around the building and putting it together in a nice collage.
Inspired by the students, I created the collage show here using pictures I’d captured on my iPad at the Westchester Day of Discovery in White Plains, New York. Hall Davidson was the keynote speaker, but I also got shots of Cindy, Max, Whitney, and Leslie.

No School at Bethany Middle School -oh, my!

2011-11-01T23:22:00.000-04:00

I feel so bad for all those families in Bethany who had their power knocked out as a result of the freak nor'easter that hit New England this past Saturday, October 29. Because all of Bethany is without power, we have not been able to hold classes. Hopefully, power will be restored soon, and our family of learners -students, teachers, administrators, and staff- will be back and raring to go.
I imagine we will still have the judging of the best decorated lockers for Halloween. One of the students in Mrs. Habersang's Student Council group made a great poster advertising the contest.

Judging was supposed to take place on Friday, but it was changed at the last minute to Monday. Little did we know what lay in store for us.
When I left on Friday, I thought about touring around the school with my camera, but I decided to wait until Monday since some students were not finished. Little did I know that we'd not be in school on Halloween or the day after or the day after that. I did get one locker and some shots of teacher's doors, however.

Mrs. Mahon's Room

Mrs. Huitt's Room

Mrs. Kazdan's Room

I also did a poster for my door -using multiple layers in Photoshop. I think it came out pretty neat:

Finally, when I left school on Friday afternoon, I took one last picture of our fantastic, spooky tree at the end of the parking lot. It was hard to shoot because the sun was behind it, nearly blinding me. Who knew that 24 hours later, it would be covered with snow! I wish I had a picture of that!

So - a belated Happy Halloween to all. Here's hoping we'll have an easy winter - and very few snow days!!!!

Bringing Literature Alive -Examining the Scene of the Crime

2011-10-12T16:56:00.000-04:00

8th graders recently read "The Landlady" by Roald Dahl. Because Mr. Dahl leaves readers to draw their own conclusion to the ending of this "grisly" tale, the English teachers gave the students the opportunity to finish the ending. One of the teachers set the scene for her students -and gave them an additional option of examining the crime scene and writing up what they think happened from the evidence. The students really enjoyed the exercise.

The Fabulous Mural Adorning the Entrance to the Life Arts Wing

2011-09-05T17:55:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to post about this wonderful piece of art work that was in the making for the entire school year 2010~2011, but it's taken until now, the start of another school year, to get it done. Rather than recreate the wheel, I am pasting the content of the article that our own, wonderful art teacher, Mrs. Frank, wrote about the project, and then I'll put in several photos showing the progression.

Art News from Mrs. Frank

When students walk down the long hallway leading to the art room, they are greeted by a colorful and vibrant wall sized ceramic tile mural entitled

“Express Yourself.”

8th grade art elective classes recently completed work on a yearlong project. The students made clay tiles by hand and created figures. This is an activity which expresses their individuality and uniqueness. Some examples of tiles include reading, singing, playing guitar, baking, dancing, and playing sports. Some figures are ‘stepping outside the box,’ and oneis an astronaut flying in space. One student said her dream was to ‘paint the sky’ and she created her figure holding a paintbrush with swirls of paint in the night sky.

Students learned about the artist Keith Haring, and modeled their work in his style of bold lines, vivid colors and active figures in motion. Haring was known for his subway drawings, murals, and strong messages of life, love and unity.

This art work was funded by a $1,000 School Arts Mini Grant from the Jamie Hulley Arts Foundation. I would like to thank Judy Primavera for her encouragement and support throughout this project.

When I walk down the hallway to my room seeing this wall of color just makes me smile. I’m so proud of my students!

My blog is visible again!

2011-09-04T00:38:00.000-04:00

Well, that was scary. I have put a lot of time and energy into this blog even though I don't post everyday, and when I kept getting the error message that the page could not be displayed, it was disconcerting. I have learned from my son to check the forums when I'm having a problem, and that is just what I did. Come to find out there was a post from another blogger with the exact same problem. One of the responders told her to go to her layout tab in the dashboard of her blog and see if she had the blogrolling gadget because that was causing problems. I followed the advice, found the offending gadget and removed it, and Voila! my blog was visible again. So, if anyone has a problem with a piece of software or a driver for one of the devices hooked to their computers, or trouble with an online application, go to the forums and check for solutions. It is not always as easy as this fix, but it's a start.

Help. My page won't display.

2011-09-03T20:04:00.002-04:00

I don't know why, but I'm getting an error message. My page displays and then says it can't be displayed . Why?

Featured Teacher Me! Really!

2011-08-28T16:35:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, August 27, 2011, I was honored to be the featured teacher guest on the weekly Classroom 2.0 webinar which airs most every Saturday at noon EST. I have been corresponding with one of the founders and moderators of the site, Peggy George. She and a number of other fabulous educators (including but not limited to Kim Caise, Lorna Costantini, and Tammy Moore) host a one to one and a half hour webinar "dedicated to supporting teachers with resources and practical suggestions for incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into their teaching and learning."
Right at the end of the school year, Peggy invited me to share my story on one of the August sessions. Just a week prior, our own Megan Wilson (iPodsibilities), a special ed teacher in Orange was the special guest, and she taught the audience how to create eBooks. I was actually terrified to accept but equally terrified of passing up the chance to share my simple story of me as an evolving teacher who in small ways, combined with the rest of our wonderful teaching staff, has attempted to bring our school into 21st Century Learning. As I said in a disclaimer, there are hundreds of other technology integration teachers who are way more advanced than I am who could be telling their stories, but I would do my best to offer something of worth to other teachers. I hope I did that. Below is a screen shot of the intro about me and a link to the recording and all the wonderful links that the organizers, the participants in the chat, and I added to the blog.

http://live.classroom20.com/1/post/2011/08/featured-teacher-carolyn-stanley.html#comments

Make sure to click on the link to the LiveBinder in the resources list. There are also tabs in the Classroom 2.0 LiveBinder to previous shows - including Megan's.

Wonderful Resources on SlideShare.net

2011-08-19T16:03:00.000-04:00

If you haven't looked at the site, SlideShare.net, it's worth some investigation time. Educators find it particularly useful because they can upload a slide presentation they have created and then narrate the slides to share with other folks all over the world.
Since our district is moving to Google Apps for Education district wide- it's been piloted at the middle schools for the past 2.5 years- I thought this slideshare presentation by Liat Rothfeld would be of interest in that it gives a nice overview of Google Docs and Google presentations. In it she also covers how to set up a personal Google account -which is optional. Users of amityschools.org will have accounts already established for them.
I have copied the embed code for the presentation, so enjoy.

How to Use Google Docs - Part 1

View another webinar from lrothfeld

Discovery Education Summer School - what a resource!

2011-08-11T12:06:00.001-04:00

I can't believe it, but I actually attended every session of DEN summer school (live, interactive webinars) that ran from Monday, August 1 through Thursday, August 4. Each of the sessions was rich with resources and advice to help us become better practitioners who help students to discover the excitement of learning and the satisfaction that can be derived in telling and sharing their stories.
Of course, many of the sessions went a a breakneck pace, and I found it hard to keep up. Thankfully, the magnificent Porter Palmer kept everything on track and made sure that all of the sessions were recorded, so we (and others who missed the live presentations) could go back at our leisure and sample segments we wanted to review. The link to the archives was just posted recently: link to DE Summer School recorded sessions
Those were lovely summer days, and being tied to my laptop for 4 hours was a bit of a challenge. I even suggested to Porter that they need to build in a little time for "potty breaks." However, the new things I learned really made me excited to go back to school in a few weeks rather than dreading it. Also, the fact that I was able to set up my laptop on a table at the back of my garage, which is all screened in and looks out onto the back yard, really helped the experience.

In a future post, I intend to highlight four or five of the resources I learned about and then found the time to explore.
In the meantime, my thanks goes out to all the wonderful educators at DE for their tireless work in helping us become better teachers and learners and for offering such exciting resources for our students.
Also, thanks so much to our district for subscribing the Discovery Education so that all of our staff and students have access to thousands and thousands of exciting resources to use on personal leaning adventures.
Finally, I understand that our Middle School Science subscription (an add-on to DE paid for by the State of CT for all middle schools in CT) will be expiring in June of 2012. I know for a fact that our science teachers use this resource with their students and think it's terrific, so we all need to petition the state to extend the subscription.

The Last Day of School for Students and "The Wave"

2011-06-30T23:43:00.000-04:00

It has been a tradition for a number of years to wave the buses, carrying all of our students off to summer vacation joys, out of the parking lot. We broke with tradition this year in a couple of ways. Instead of standing on the pavement outside the lower entrance to the school, we went over to the green underneath the gigantic tree. Also, other years I had simply taken a number of still shots to commemorate the event, but the iPad makes capturing video so easy that I decided to film the event. Sara Frank kindly took some still shots. You'll see her in the video. I chose a couple of the still shots to display on our web page, but I uploaded the video from the iPad to my YouTube account, and I will embed it in my blog. I really like having the video - the sound and the motion capture the exciting yet bittersweet event far better than the still shots ever could. In all, the school year 2010~2011 was a very successful year for students and staff alike, and I heard a number of 8th graders saying how much they would miss the middle school and all of their teachers. That speaks volumes. Enjoy - and have a great summer!

Some times paper and pencil, crayons, markers, etc. can be the technology of choice

2011-06-15T17:11:00.000-04:00

The 7th grade English classes recently read Seed Folks by Paul Fleishman. Not only is the book a wonderful story of how a community garden enriches the lives of all its participants, but the book is also rich in imagery. Each year, the students are asked to pick out a favorite simile or metaphor to illustrate. I have wanted to capture some of these student creations for years, and I finally got a chance. Of course, the technology of the scanner and the blog are what enables these wonderful creations to be shared with a wider audience. Enjoy them.

and this last one is my favorite:

Perfection on Wheels - brought to Bethany MS by Character Ed Committee

2011-06-01T22:29:00.000-04:00

I am backtracking a bit, but on Friday, May 13, our Character Ed Committee with sponsorship from Woodbridge Youth Services and the Town of Bethany secured Perfection on Wheels, a BMX stunt team to perform for our students. Besides putting on a terrific show, they also included a strong message about how important it is to build good character including qualities of being truthful, trustworthy, responsible, and caring for others.
This video was captured on the iPad2, edited in iMovie on the iPad, and uploaded to our YouTube channel from the iPad. It is truly a remarkable video machine. I will tell you that it did take me a number of hours to edit down over 20 minutes of video to around 12 minutes, but I think the result is worth it. Enjoy.

A Memorial Day Observance

2011-05-27T14:34:00.000-04:00

In order to impress on students the real reason for the 3-day holiday besides the celebration of the coming of summer, an observance was planned during homeroom time. Students and staff met around the flagpole in the front of the school for a very fitting assembly. The video embedded here captured this nice moment.

The video was recorded and edited on the iPad and uploaded directly to our amsbchannel from the iPad.

Experimenting with iPad video, iMovie for iPad, and unlisted video for YouTube

2011-05-23T10:28:00.002-04:00

I recently was given the opportunity by my district to test how useful an iPad might be for educational purposes. It is an iPad2 with the video camera and still camera - an essential component for education. It was my honor to be invited by Kevin Berean into his 8th grade tech ed elective class where he was examining the topic of medical technology with his students. After going thorough a great amount of preparation, he was ready to have the kids try out a simulation of laparoscopic surgery. The iPad did a great job of capturing video - easy to hold steady - great resolution even with some backlit situations. I then downloaded the iMovie app for the iPad and edited the video clips into a movie and then uploaded it directly to our amsbchannel on YouTube.
Currently, the video is marked as "unlisted" which means only those who have the link can view it. It does not show up in a general search on YouTube. However, it is not private because the link can be shared. Still, it's not as widely available as it would be if marked "public."
I was also able to get the embed code and should be able to insert in in my blog.
This then has become a multi-leveled experiment.

Here is a special clip of one of our students assisting Dr. Dellinger.I should have spelled it laparoscopic in the title - sorry.

Think That We Can Still Teach the Same Way?

2011-04-12T16:42:00.001-04:00

It's here! It's now!
We do not have to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but we do have to incorporate new teaching tools into our everyday instruction. I took these two pictures this summer. One was at a restaurant in Southern Massachusetts. Not only was this child engaged and quiet while his parents enjoyed their meal, but so were his two siblings. I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this, but I am hoping that the parents only occasionally use this method of keeping kids "happy" while they eat in peace. You might equate this to sitting kids in front of the t.v. set and ignoring them. Does it make it better if the parents have the kids engaged in positive learning activities???????? I know I used that excuse for my kids watching Sesame Street.Many folks worry how being so engaged in these technologies takes away from interacting with family and friends. However, few object when a youngster spends a number of hours reading.

The other picture was taken at a wedding reception held at a home in CT. I am sure that after a number of hours, keeping this young man entertained while his parents continued to enjoy the party and socialize might have been tough. He doesn't look bored,however, does he? And he's learning!

Getting back to my title. I believe the pictures above emphasize that we are working with kids who are learning 24/7 but who still need guidance in how to use these tools in a responsible manner. Our students need to be prepared for the 21st century workplace. Chief among these skills is learning "how to learn."

I belong to a group called "Art Snacks" hosted by a fantastic educator by the name of Kevin Hunnicut. He invites folks to his site to add art work, photographs, instructional videos, etc - all with the intent of having folks learn from each other. Recently, he revised a song called "I Need My Teachers To Learn." While some may take issue with criticism of current teaching methods embedded therein, it's still important to watch and reflect on this video.

A Great Find!

2011-04-02T10:37:00.000-04:00

I have lot of things to do on this lovely Saturday morning, but I made the mistake of sitting down at my laptop.
I read an email from Greg Limperis of Technology Integration in Education asking me to support Glogster on the DEN March Madness Mashup, where educators from all over are voting for their favorite Web 2.0 applications. In the video presenting Glogster, I followed a link to the Digital Toolbelt Wiki.
http://toolbelt.wikispaces.com/Home
and in that wiki on their resources page, I found this Google Presentation started by Mark Clarkson on "25 Techy Tips for not so Techy Teachers" and even for those who are. The links to the applications are embedded in the presentation and clickable. I copied the embed code from the presentation and hope to share it with you here. There are really terrific resources here. I intend to play with blockposters.com soon.

Now I am going to go do something else - really - at least until noon when I intend to join the Classroom 2.0 webinar. This week the hosts are interviewing Colt Briner and Caitlin Tucker of Collaborize Classroom. I contacted Peggy George, one of the moderators a couple of weeks ago and told her I'd seen a SimpleK12 presentation with these folks and suggested she might want to get them for a webinar on her show. Lo and Behold - she did. Now she probably already had them in her radar, but it excited me to think that I might have had some small influence in this show being scheduled so soon.

An April's Fool Joke that I Can Endorse!

2011-04-01T15:59:00.000-04:00

Today is April Fool's Day. Thankfully, we got through the day without any destructive pranks being pulled. I have never really liked April Fool's Day, for I am not in favor of anything that hurts someone else's esteem. Thankfully, for the most part, April Fool's jokes are pretty harmless.
Today, however, I must admit I was fooled - royally!
One of the students brought in a beautifully frosted cake for our secretary, whose name just happens to be April. Later in the morning, I stopped by the office and commented on what a beautiful cake she had on her desk. I wondered if it was her birthday. She even invited me to have a piece, and I said, "Oh, no. I'm trying to be good -but maybe a scrid later." When she burst out laughing, I knew something was up. I'd been fooled, and so had she. When the student first presented her with the cake, she had been so pleased, and she'd thanked him profusely. He had even brought in plates and forks. However, when she went to cut into it, she got the surprise! It was a beautifully frosted roll of toilet paper! It was really a clever and harmless way to acknowledge April Fool's Day! Enjoy! (the creative prank, if not the cake).

Sometimes all you have to do is ask!

2011-03-27T11:00:00.001-04:00

I subscribe to eSchool News on-line newsletter, and they do a great job of keeping educators aware of new resources to help us engage students. They also report out on how other schools -model schools - are implementing programs to align their curriculum with the needs of their 21st Century connected students. I came across this video from a superintendent of schools in the Onslow District in North Carolina, but I could not find an embed code needed to include the video in a blog post. So I wrote to eSchool news, and received a prompt answer. Meris Standsbury, an eSchool news rep informed me that they do not include embed codes on the site for security and privacy reasons, but they usually will provide them upon request. So, let's give it a try and see if it works. This school district is certainly striving to provide the technology resources and training needed for a 21st Century Education.

Well, in the preview, the video seems to have embedded properly.
I also asked for the embed code for a video from David Pogue, who writes a technology column for the NYTimes. I've been a fan of David's for many years going back to the late 1990's when he used to speak at our MAC Users group when we met in both Norwalk and Stanford, CT. He was amazing then and still is. The way he mixes humor with good solid technology advice is pretty unique. I used to show his short video "I want an iPhone" to my encore tech classes. That video was filmed and edited by Zach Brass, when he interned for David Pogue during the summer of his junior year at Amity High School.
Here is more up-to-date take by David on how technology is impacting the culture of the next generation.

I hope you enjoy the videos and would be appreciative if you'd take the time to leave a short comment.

Hoops For Heart Fundraiser Collects $1,400 for the American Heart Association

2011-03-10T12:00:00.001-05:00

On January 14, 2011, the Life Arts Team at Bethany Middle School, along with a representative from the American Heart Association, kicked off a Hoops for Heart fundraiser. The students were encouraged to collect donations for the cause which included logging onto a website from the American Heart Association to track the donations they collected.

The actual celebration was scheduled for later in February, but due to all of the snow days, the culminating activity took place on Friday, March 4. The 8th grade assembly took place during periods 3 and 4 in the morning, and the 7th grade assembly during periods 6 and 7 in the afternoon. At the beginning of each assembly, Life Arts teachers stressed the importance for students to adopt good nutrition and adequate exercise practices in their lives. After viewing short videos on healthy heart practices, the fun began. Cheered on by the Bethany Middle School Spirit Squad, students participated in Knock Out. Every student got a chance to shoot a basket. Those who made the most baskets went into an elimination round to win prizes. Teachers also took turns trying to sink a basket - even me -

After the games, there was an additional activity. Students who were top fund raisers also got to give a "pie in the face" to faculty and administrator volunteers. Dr. Dellinger looks truly alarmed.

Oh, we cannot forget Mr. Orie's sacrifice. He was shorn and prepped for shaving (didn't happen) as his contribution to the cause.

Digital Citizenship Resources

2011-02-20T14:37:00.000-05:00

Well, barring another snow day, we return to school tomorrow, President's Day. How ironic it will be if a day chosen to be a make-up day to help with the excess number of snow days we've had to use, is itself a snow day.
Anyway, it is Sunday afternoon, and I've been getting myself prepped to go back to teaching and learning. I just read an email newsletter from Common Sense Media that had links to some very good information on internet safety, digital citizenship, and research and information literacy. I spent quite a bit of time watching the videos, and I want to share the links. They seem to be very balanced, not preachy, and offer up very good advice.
The first video is on the issue of "sexting." We could all hope this would never apply to our students/children, but the statistics show that "22% of teen girls and 20% of teen boys" have sent revealing pictures from their laptops or cell phones. Here is a link to the page with the video:
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/talking-about-sexting?utm_source=newsletter02.17.11&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=feature1-title

The following link takes you to the page with the curriculum resources for the topics I mentioned above. Some of them are available right on the pages, while other require a registration. The registration is totally free. I have an educator's account, but parents are invited to join.
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators

Finally, I found a link to the 2011 video contest where participants are invited to make a video to share "What's Your Story?" on the topics of Being a Good Citizen Online, Using a Mobile Phone Wisely, and Maintaining Your Privacy Online. The grand-prize winner could receive $10,000. Click on the tab with links to the winners of the 2010 contest. I watched all of them - only about 2 minutes each- and I thought they were all really good, well-presented, cautionary videos.
http://whatsyourstory.trendmicro.com/internet-safety/pg/the-competition
I hope others will find these resources valuable. Please leave me a comment if you saw something you found of worth.

Playing with Prezi

2011-01-31T09:54:00.000-05:00

Our 7th grade English classes are reading Call of the Wild by Jack London. Some of the kids were asked to use some technology tool (Glogster, Prezi, PowerPoint, Google Presentations, etc.) to present one of their vocabulary words. They needed the word - a definition - part of speech -antonym- context sentence - and image, if appropriate. I am always amazed at the creativity of our students - far greater than my own.
Anyway, I have played a bit with Prezi, and I decided I wanted to make a study guide for the kids with all of the words.(I only did the definitions and some images.)What's nice about Prezi is that it provides not only a link to the Prezi online but also an embed code. Here is my attempt. I just wanted to make sure I understood how to use the tool. Hopefully, I'll be able to some of the students' attempts. These tools really don't change the basics of learning vocabulary words; they just make it more fun. The ability to share with others lends engagement, as well.

vocabulary exploration -words from Call of the Wild on Prezi

Here is the permanent link they provided for this Prezi:
http://prezi.com/1pq8l2xggf3h/vocabulary-exploration-words-from-call-of-the-wild/

If you haven't looked at Prezi, go to their site. There are lots of good examples of students learning, recreating, and then sharing with other. The learning is what it is all about.

DEN SciConn 2011 - Saturday, January 22

2011-01-21T23:03:00.000-05:00

I am looking forward to meeting with other educators at the Den SciCon2011 being held in Willimantic, CT tomorrow morning. While it means getting up early and driving over an hour to get to the meeting place when I could just as easily attend by logging onto my laptop at my dining room table, I think it will be worth it to congregate with others and share in the excitement of the webinar sessions.
It promises to be clear and sunny tomorrow but very, very cold. My son went to UConn in nearby Storrs, CT, and I remember how much colder it was there than down in the New Haven area where I live. With Martin Luther King's Birthday holiday on Monday, a "ice" day on Tuesday, a delayed opening on Wednesday, a full day on Thursday, and then another snow day today, it has been a crazy week. I don't remember having this many days off in a 10-day period every before.
So, meeting and collaborating with other educators tomorrow should be a good thing, and it will be nice to generate excitement for returning to school on Monday with all kinds of new things to share.

Three Snow Days in a 7-day Period! Ouch!

2011-01-18T22:09:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm sure the kids enjoyed their time off. I do hope some of them spent some time studying and learning. I know I did. There are so many professional development resources available to us teachers if we only can find the time to listen, watch, and/or participate in them.
After watching the Golden Globes on Sunday night, Dr. Temple Grandin's presence prompted me to look up the archive of the webinar with her last spring on Discovery Education. I watched the recorded archive of the webinar which raised my awareness of things students on the autism spectrum have to deal with. Since Dr. Grandin, herself, is on the spectrum, she speaks with great authority. I highly recommend watching it, and anyone who has a log in to Discovery Education (including all of the students in our district) can access it.
http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/blog/category/webinar-archive/page/3/
You'll need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to access the recording for "The Way I See It with Dr. Temple Grandin."

I also joined a Classroom 2.0 session with Anne Mirtschin who offered up many links for teachers, like myself, who are striving to find more global collaborative opportunities for their students.
If you go to Classroom 2.0 live and click on the recording page, you will find the webinar. All of the associated links are in an application called LiveBinder.

http://live.classroom20.com/archive-and-resources.html

I also listened to another archived webinar with Jeff O'Hara, founder of Edmoto, a safe social-networking site for educators and their students. I want to learn more about that application.

Well, I am hoping that the temperatures will rise enough so we will have school tomorrow. There may be a delay, but we all need to get back into the saddle. Time for more learning adventures!

Skyping with China

2011-01-09T22:47:00.001-05:00

On Friday January 7, 2010, Ms. Wu and selected students from her Mandarin Chinese classes connected with students and teachers in Century School in China. Because there is a 13 hour time differential, it was 8:00 AM here in Connecticut, but in China, it was 9:00 PM. The Skype conference was possible because some of the students are residents at Century School. The students in China asked our students questions about how they celebrated the recent holidays, and our students had similar queries. The conference was very exciting and engaging for students in both countries, and they look forward to many more sessions of sharing. This was the second successful conference that Ms. Wu has moderated. The world is indeed flat, and these conferences are just the beginning.

Educational Podcasting in Woodland Park, Colorado

2011-01-03T15:25:00.000-05:00

I am a member of Greg Limperis' group called "Technology Integration in Education."
http://www.technologyintegrationineducation.com/

Greg is a computer technology integration specialist/facilitator for Lawrence Public Schools in Massachusetts, I believe. His profile lists his hometown as Derry, NH. Greg is tireless in sharing good ways to help teachers integrate technology to make learning more fun and engaging for students and teachers. He recently promoted this Google video from a couple of science teachers from Colorado who have turned the concept of in-class time and home work upside down. It's really an interesting concept - and one that is within the reach of nearly every educator. Take a look.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1962958416930816240&hl=en#

"The times they are a changing..." and the world of education is embracing change at a more rapid pace than every before. It's about time!!!!!!!

Wall Wisher

2011-01-03T15:11:00.000-05:00

Just before the holidays, I tried a web 2.0 tool called wall wisher with my staff. It is an application where folks asked to participate can post a short message (up to 160 characters) to a virtual wall. You can make your wall private or public, and you can moderate comments before they appear on the wall, if you wish. The owner of the wall can also delete the "sticky notes" that others have posted. I sent the link out to all faculty and staff, and I had 22 responses - about a third participated. I guess considering how busy the holiday season is, that's not bad. I got positive response from those who participated saying that it was fun to see what others were planning for the vacation time. What was really cool was the way the participants used the wall. Some just left a "sticky note." Others attached a photo, a video, or a link to a website.

The application definitely has educational applications. While I am not at liberty to share the wall that I created, here is a link to a wonderful google document showcasing lots of educational uses for wallwisher.com.

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_436f8kscmdc

I hope everyone enjoyed the first day back to school. It was wonderful to have a break, but now it's back to learning adventures.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-02T00:29:00.001-05:00

Here is a post I wrote on my Discovery Education Network blog:

Happy New Year’s Day, everyone!
It’s 1/1/11 – how neat is that! I hadn’t even realized the significance of this January 1st until someone tweeted it out.
We celebrated at the home of friends in New Jersey. The couple we visited were newly married when we all started teaching at a junior high school in CT way back in 1969. They stood up with me and my husband when we were married in 1973. We are still friends after all these years, although I am the only one of the 4 still in full-time teaching. The trip back to CT this afternoon was pretty smooth.
Christmas vacation has nearly come to an end, and it’s time to get back into school mode. I had intended to do exploring on the Discover Education site this week, but I didn’t get a lot of free time, so I’ll use some of my time this evening to scout around.

I joined Steve Dembo’s fitness challenge and hope to do well with that.

Finally, I’m looking forward to the 2nd Annual DEN SciCon scheduled for January 22, 2010. Last year the event was hosted at the CT Science Museum in Hartford, and participants, including myself, received free admission to the museum as well as the chance to network with others during the webcast. I wonder if there will be a physical meeting place this year. How fortunate we educators are to have such wonderful training available to us as part of our Discovery Streaming subscription. I am going to encourage my colleagues to tune in, even if only for one session.

Amazing Attendance at Bethany Middle School Evening Winter Concert

2010-12-10T15:33:00.000-05:00

I was blown away last evening by the number of parents, siblings, relatives and friends that attended the winter concert. There was a bit of delay at the beginning because the bleachers, usually reserved for the choir, band, and strings students (when they are not performing) were filled to capacity with folks who came out on a very chilly night to enjoy the performance. I have never seen a crowd as large as the one that attended last evening, and that is a great testiment to our wonderful music teachers' ability to be so inclusive. The numbers of students participating in band, chorus, and strings has swelled to monumental proportions. Amazing! Here is a shot of the choir. I had to go to the very back of the gymnasium in order to fit its expanse into the capacity of my wide-angle lense. Go Amity! Go Arts!

Rich DiGirolamo -- Recess at Work (from Lunch Time Leaders Podcast)

2010-12-10T11:46:00.000-05:00

One of our parents teaches social studies in Wallingford, CT. For a few years now, he and selected students have taken their lunch breaks to connect with leaders and experts in their community and beyond. What a great experienc it is for his students to prepare questions and interview such a variety of interesting individuals.
I recently listened to their latest interview with a motivational speaker. It is well worth the 20 minutes. The interviewer was well-prepared, and Mr. DiGirolamo's responses were specific, useful, and inspirational. I hope you will take a few minutes to visit the site. I'm glad I did. It would be nice it these students had a wider audience. Ted Talks are great; these interviews come close!

Rich DiGirolamo -- Recess at Work

A Very "Gleeful" Winter Concert

2010-12-09T17:58:00.000-05:00

I am staying late at school today in order to attend an encore performance of our middle school's holiday concert. Under the direction of Rob Fragione, band; Lisa Serio, strings; and Brennan Orie, chorus, well over 50% of the student population is involved in performing in and/or producing this wonderful, entertaining event. When I first entered the auditorium this morning to take pictures, I wondered why nearly all the folding chairs were empty. It was because most of the kids who were performing in the concert were seated on the bleachers, ready to take their places on (or in front of) the stage when called. Here is a picture to illustrate my point:

The concert was comprised of wonderful band numbers, string pieces, and choral pieces - many inspired by the hit television series "Glee." There were also short skits and a video interlude which morphed scenes from Glee into scenes shot at BMS with our own talented youngsters,

Even though I saw the performance this morning, I like to support the kids by attending the evening presentation. They are usually all dressed up and shining for their moms, dad, siblings, and other friends and relatives. It's a really festive, feel-good time, and it's worth spending over a 12-hour day at school.
I got some really good photos this morning, and while I'll take fewer this evening and mainly sit back and enjoy the concert, I know I'll be tempted to raise the camera to capture a few more.

Here is an accidental shot I took this morning. It has not been PhotoShopped at all. I was capturing the kids as they filed down to assemble in front of the stage, and just as I pressed the shutter button, someone stepped in front of the camera. It wasn't until I downloaded the pictures that I saw what an amazing picture I'd captured. Perhaps the "ghost" of Christmas past, present, or future really exists and was in attendance.

I also want to mention the talents of our wonderful faculty who participated in the concert making it even more a family affair - Brian Goldstein on drums and Cornell Bialicki on the keyboard. What great additions to our arts program. Thank goodness the Amity District offfers such strong support for the Arts.
Oh, we are also having a book fair in the media center organized by our wonderful media specialist, Faith Miller. I'll probably shoot a few pictures to capture that as well.

Another example of using "Go Animate"

2010-11-29T09:09:00.000-05:00

Well, our first grade buddies are showing up tomorrow, and the kids will be using the program to create a "get-to-know-you" dialogue between themselves and their buddies. I decided to try one more animation that might serve as a model for the kids. Since I'd already created my one free character, I had to use the two free stock characters supplied for me. I think it came out pretty well. Thanks to our media specialist for researching this web 2.0 tool and making a direction sheet for us to follow.

GoAnimate.com: exciting news by cstanley4

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving via GoAnimate

2010-11-24T07:45:00.003-05:00

Here's a lame little video I produced using GoAnimate. Mrs. Miller, our media specialist, recommended this program for the kids in the sister-school project. The selected students will be using this program next week to create a dialogue between themselves and their elementary buddies. It will be fascinating to see what they come up with.

GoAnimate.com: Happy Thanksgiving by cstanley4

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Enjoy, and have a great holiday!

Time Flies

2010-11-23T19:46:00.001-05:00

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. I am going to have to schedule a time to update this blog on a more regular basis before the number of things I want to share becomes unwieldy.
I have been playing around with an on-line video editing app called jaycut, recommended by Steve Dembo from Discovery Education. In attempting to string together some clips from a recent Taekwondo assembly at our school, I found that Windows Live Movie Maker - used with Windows 7 - just didn't work well on my classroom computer. My teaching computer is about 5 years old. It was upgraded to Windows 7 this fall, and while most applications work well, there just wasn't enough memory for Windows Live Movie Maker to do the job. In Jaycut, I got the clips assembled, but I'm still having trouble getting the transitions to show up as part of the rendered video. I also need to figure out how to add title and credit slides. The basis services on the site are free, and it does allow you to download the movies you create, so that's a plus.

Today, one of our science teachers brought her students to the lab to play with goanimate.com. Our media specialist had introduced her to the program, and she decided to have some of her students give it a try. I had heard of the program, but never played with it. Since our media specialist thought it was an easy animation program, I decided to experiment.

Our staff is adopting the practice where we don't have to know a program 100% before we give the kids the opportunity to use it. In fact, students are recommending programs, and we are listening. There are so many new web 2.0 tools available for kids to use in producing projects for their curricular courses that it's hard to keep up with them all. That's why students as well as colleagues are such valuable resource agents.

Go Animate is a really neat free program in which one can select a number of backgrounds and props, create a character, and type dialogue for the character(s) into a text area which the program then converts to speech. The kids are going to use this program to create a dialogue between each 8th grader in the program and his/her first-grade buddy from an elementary school in central CT. I am sure the kids will amaze me with their facility with animation. They always do.
Here are the programs that I'm experimenting with:
jaycut.com

goanimate.com

DEN Tech or Treat Virtual Conference-October 23, 2010

2010-10-23T23:55:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, I attended the face-to-face CECA pre-conference sponsored by Discovery Education at Smith Middle School in Glastonbury, CT. This Saturday morning, while sitting in my nightgown at my laptop, I tuned into a virtual conference. There were a number of sites (not in CT) where educators were gathered together ( some in Halloween costumes) to watch the live steam projected onto a wall, but there were also hundreds of other educators tuning in from their homes all across the world. I did not plan to stay but a few minutes, but I ended up absolutely glued to my laptop as one presenter finished, and another began. I participated in the conference from 8:30 until 11:45 a.m. Then I had to force myself to shut down the computer and go for a lovely ride with my husband through the beautiful fall scenery . We went to Lyman Orchards; my husband had a craving for apple cider donuts. Luckily, I care nothing about donuts, so I wasn't tempted to have more than a donut hole. The place was mobbed, and I was glad to see folks outside enjoying the lovely fall afternoon instead of sitting home glued to their computer or the t.v.
Anyway, getting back to the virtual conference, Steve Dembo moderated it. He is a man of amazing energy, but, as I said in an earlier post, he does not let his ego get in the way. He is a wonderful, enthusiastic educator.
The first session by Gail Lovely offered hints on "It's not the Technology, it's the Education. She went through a slew of wonderful resources. All of the sessions were recorded and will be available on the DEN site soon. That is great because I'll have to go back and watch the session again in order to digest all the great information. Of course, that is no substitute for being able to participate live in the chat, sharing your ideas and getting feedback from others in the room. Here is the address she provided with the links to her presentation uploaded to slideshare:
http://www.lovelylearning.com/den-webinar-resources.php
Next, Porter Palmer gave us "Out of the World Ideas for Showcasing Student Work."
This should be a very helpful resource to meet our goal at Amity to share more of the wonderful projects our students produce.
Finally, I was about to close the cover down when my hero, Whitney Mihoulides, our Northeast representative who encouraged me to become a DEN STAR, presented her session entitled "Digital Storytelling in a Web 2.0 World." Needless to say, she did a terrific job, and it will take me a lot of time to investigate all the wonderful resources she introduced us to. She introduced us to a brand new resource from Discovery Education on tools to help students tell their stories digitally. While it is aimed at K-5, there are many resources there which can be adapted for older students:
http://hubforteachers.com/
She also told us about Photo Peach, an online site where one can upload photos and tell a story through a web-generated slide show.
Well, it's nearly Sunday, and I'd best get to bed.
I hope someone reading this blog will find something useful. Please leave me a comment.
Thanks! and Good-Night!

Lingo: The coolest dictionary known to hombre!

2010-10-23T23:15:00.001-04:00

I participate in a lot of online webinars, and I always learn something new to bring to the classroom from other teachers and technology gurus from all over the world. I always have a Google Doc open during the webinar, and I take notes and copy links into that document to reference later. Of course, time is often an issue. Tonight, I was scanning through my notes (over a year of webinars), and something made me click on the following:
http://lingro.com/
This is an amazing tool. All you have to do is go to the site, type in any web address, and the page opens. When you click on any word in the web page, a box appears with multiple definitions for the word. As an experiment, I entered my blog address, and it was simply amazing. I got a definition - pretty accurate- for every word I clicked on. The only word I had a problem with was "fixed" and in "fixed" intelligence. It did not give me the definition to fit that context, but it did give several other definitions.
When I closed the web page and went into lingro again, it told me the history of the clicks I'd made on the page and generated a list of words I'd clicked on. That's all I had time for, but I suspect it will do much more, including translation. Give it a try. Just think, we could upload any document a student needed to read to Google Docs, and then plug the web address of that document into lingro, and the student could have an annotated copy of the text with definitions of unfamiliar words available at a click.

Discovery Education at Bethany Middle School

2010-10-23T23:03:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Warren Gohsler, all of the students in our middle schools have been uploaded to the Discovery Education Database. That means that our students have access to their Discovery Student Centers from home.There they can view any assignments or media their teachers have assigned to them. In addition, they have access to a huge database of full videos, video clips, and associated materials on a number of different topics of interest. Not only can they receive individualized instruction, but they are also free to be self-directed, independent learners. This past week, every 7th grader successfully logged into the network. They were given a few minutes to explore topics available on the site, and I was very gratified to get a "thumbs up" from most of the kids. Life-long learning rules, and it's not confined to the walls of our school. We are very fortunate to have a district that recognizes the value of putting tools for independent exploration in a safe environment into the hands of all of our students.

What a Rush the Discovery Education pre-conference for CECA was!

2010-10-16T23:41:00.002-04:00

reposted from my DEN blog-

The CECA pre-conference at Smith Middle School in Glastonbury, CT, was awesome. I learned many new things. I can hardly wait to test the Smart Board media player with a streaming video. I did not know until today's session offered by Howard Gunther and Robin Metaj that picking up one of the markers will pause a video playing in the Smart media player. You can annotate right on the still clip and save that to a Notebook 10 file by clicking on the camera icon. Next, you click on the red x to get rid of the writing, put the marker back in the tray, and the video continues. That is such a neat feature. The session by Steve Dembo on 50 ways to Spin a Digital Story was also very informative. I learned about several new tools that I had never heard of before. I am most anxious to try jaycut.com, an online video editing tool. I also got more information on Google Earth and am encouraged to learn even more. Glogster was at the conference, too, and they announced that they are starting an anti-bullying campaign on their site very soon. That message needs to be spread far and wide.
Great bagels and coffee and juice for breakfast; nice sandwich box for lunch; great prizes to end the session; and the conference was offered for free. Who could ask for more. This is the second face-to-face conference I've attended organized by Whitney Mihoulides. I understand she has organized and managed another 16 in addition to the two I attended. She is amazing. Steve Dembo, who is in charge of the whole Discovery Education Network, is also an incredible human being. He's really a celebrity, but he's real people. I didn't pick up on any ego at all- just a real belief in his product and a great enthusiasm for sharing.
Could it get any better? Yes! I won one of the prizes. I got a small DVD player, a collection of Discovery videos including one on Nefertiti, a mouse pad, and a polo shirt with a Discovery Logo. Guess what I'm wearing to the CECA conference on Monday! My hubby and I are staying at a hotel in the area, and I've plugged the DVD player into the large screen TV in our room. The video (watching one on sharks, now) is awesome on the big screen. Thanks, Discovery for a really great day.
I can hardly wait to share what I've learned with my colleagues back at my middle school.

Finally, thanks to Smith Middle School for hosting the conference. You have a gorgeous school. What a nice environment for collaborating and learning. Oh, and I can't forget to thank the Connecticut DEN Leadership Council who helped organize and run the conference. Great job, guys! Love your blog.

Learning so Much at the Discovery Education preCECA Conference

2010-10-16T14:01:00.000-04:00

It's Saturday, October 16, and I'm at Smith Middle School in Glastonbury, CT. It's a beautiful Saturday, yet I and over 100 educators are attending various workshops on Discovery Education and how it beautifully interacts with SmartBoard and dozens of Web 2.0 tools. It's an exciting day charged with excitement, and I'll report out on some of the things I learned in another post. Thanks so much to Discovery Education and the Connecticul Council for such a wonderful learning experience.

Discovery Streaming on the iPad

2010-10-13T11:37:00.000-04:00

Here is a link to the Discovery Education Streaming portal available on the iPad through the Safari browser. I really believe that having this available will inspire any students lucky enough to have access to an iPad to extend their learning outside the classroom.

http://discoveryeducation.com/ipad/

Of course, Discovery Education Streaming is also avaliable on their home computers and laptops, as well. Things are in place, and soon all of our students will have the ability to log into their own personal learning center at Discovery Education.

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/

Playing with the iPad

2010-10-10T17:28:00.003-04:00

Edited on October 16, 2010. Duh! iPad has a built-in microphone - I should have known that. I played with an app on the iPad where I talked to an animal, and he repeated what I said. Cute - but useful??? Then, our media specialist showed me a free app - dragon dictation - you click on the red record button and speak, and when you hit done, what you said is translated into text which you can edit - and then email, tweet, blog, etc. Now, that is very exciting and very useful! I could almost live without the camera.

I am so excited.I got to borrow an iPad for the weekend. Previous to this opportunity, I wasn't too keen on the iPad. It didn't support Adobe Flash.I was disappointed that I couldn't view my live webinars from Classroom 2.0, which are delivered through the wonderful Elluminate platform. That kind of soured me. However, after playing with all the other wonderful features, I'm becoming a convert. First of all, I found that some of the archived sessions of Classroom 2.0 webinars have been recorded and are available in Vimeo. The clarity of the chat and slides was great. I just read that Discovery Streaming is adapting so delivery of content on iPad will be possible. I was able to stream NPR live as well as listen to archived sessions. I looked at some of my videos I uploaded to YouTube, and the clarity full-screen was awesome. The iPad is very easy to hold. I love the keypad-so much easier than my iPhone. Google apps editing is coming. The fact that I can sit in my backyard and update my blog is awesome!Finally,I can't believe how great the battery life is. Is this going to revolutionize education? It is certainly going to help.It's a natural for kids. Actually, they do great on the small screens of iPods and iPhones. If the new generation of iPad gives me a microphone and a camera so I can participate in conversations online and take and store pictures,I'll definitely find a way to get one. With G3 I'd give up my iPhone and use the pad.

Labor Day 2010

2010-09-06T20:14:00.000-04:00

Well, Labor Day is nearly over, and it's been a very nice weekend. We have been back to school for an entire week, if you count the professional day on Monday. It seems as if we never left. Everything went quite smoothly, and we are fired up for another leaning adventure.
Anyway, I was looking at some of my favorite blogs this evening and happened to click on Bob Sprankle's blog. He is a computer technology integration specialist at the elementary school in Wells, Maine. He was one of the main motivators I had for getting involved in developing a Personal Learning Network through webcasts, Twitter, and blogs.
His most recent post was about his "Summer at Yale." He hadn't actually been in New Haven, but he had found a whole course offered free from iTunesU on the Civil War taught by Yale Professor David Blight. Bob had downloaded the lectures and was able to listen to them at his convenience. Bob blogs: " All summer long, I mowed the grass with Prof. Blight. Took long walks with Prof. Blight. Went jogging with Prof. Blight. Drove to the beach with Prof. Blight. Most of the time, when one hour’s program ended, I went right into the next lecture, not having to wait for days as his students had to do when it unfolded in “real time.”

Bob offered a workshop on podcasting at a conference this summer, and he said most of the attendees of his session said their best "take-away" was the information on iTunesU.
Hence, I decided to share it in my blog. I hope someone discovers or revisits this resource as a result of this post. Happy Learning!!!!!
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

It's All in the Mindset

2010-08-19T23:40:00.000-04:00

Blogging is not easy for me. I read other educator's blogs, and I'm impressed by their deep and philosophical posts. Compared to them, my posts are rather shallow. I tend to report on things I've learned from those other teachers instead of waxing eloquent with my own thoughts. Oh, well - that's not my style. I do hope that the links I mention in my blog are helpful to others. Not many people leave comments, and it gets kind of discouraging thinking I'm writing for an audience of one - me. However, I do have a traffic reporter, and I know that at least 20 or 30 people are looking in a week's or maybe a month's time. I guess I'll have to be content with that. I am of the growth mindset, so I'm willing to take a chance and keep this blog going, if for no other reason than to stretch my own learning. That leads into the title of this post.
This evening I tuned into the Classroom 2.0-Future of Education webinar series. At least once a week Steve Hargadon interviews a person of note who has written a book on the changing face (or not) of our educational system. Tonight he spoke with Carol Dweck - Stanford University professor and social psychologist. Her book, Mindset-The New Psychology of Success - speaks to the "fixed theory of intelligence" and contrasts it with the "growth or incremental" theory of intelligence.
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Basically, she is putting forth advice to parents and teachers to praise kids not because they are so "smart" but because they have worked so hard on whatever project they've completed which is receiving praise. According to Carol Dweck, those folks who have the fixed theory don't do well with failure and are hesitant to take chances. On the other hand, folks who've developed the growth theory deal better with failure and "are likely to continue working hard despite setbacks." There is no harm in praising our children/students as long as we phrase it correctly.
I am embedding a slide share that outlines Ms. Dweck's research findings.

Effort Does Lead To Success (2)

View more presentations from George Hobson.

Here is a link (dropped into the chat during the webinar) to an article in New York Magazine entitled "The Power(and Peril) of Praise. The article is interesting in and of itself, but it is also important to read through the dozens of comments from folks responding to the text. This is truly a collaborative world we live in, and I often learn much more from the commentary as I do from the article.
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

If you haven't participated in any of the Classroom 2.0 webinars, I highly recommend them. They are a great source of professional development.
Hope everyone enjoys the last remaining days of summer vacation when we have time and energy to engage in these professional development offerings.
Here is the link to the Classroom 2.0 archived webinars:
http://www.learncentral.org/browse/recordings

Experimenting with Glogster EDU

2010-08-05T12:48:00.001-04:00

One of the sessions I attended at the Discovery Education Spring Conference in May of 2010 was on using Glogster -an online poster creation tool. It offers both free and subscription plans for educators. Many teachers have had their students create posters in Glogster as alternative web-based projects for topics they are studying in school. Glogster provides a number of tools. Students can add graphics from the site or upload pictures from their local computers. They can add videos from YouTube or upload videos they have created. There are all kinds of fancy boxes where students can type information. There is even a application which allows you to capture your picture and voice (or just audio) from your webcam. You can also attach any type of file which will open in a separate window. There is a paperclip in the bottom-right hand corner of the glog that is the access to uploaded files. I took the embed code from Glogster and will paste it into this post. My glog is just an experiment to showcase some of the options available in creating a poster.

I did have a few problems. When I recorded audio using my webcam, the recorded segment cut off some of my comments. Also, somehow I had marked the glog as private, and I can't seem to find a way to change it to public.

Well, that didn't work so well. The Glog is too wide for the blog. If anyone knows how to fix this, I'd appreciate a comment. I'll paste the web address below, so you can view the blog on the web.

http://carolynstanley.edu.glogster.com/mrs-stanleys-experimental-glog/

Thanks to Paul Bogush- a fellow educator and blogger supreme

2010-07-29T23:01:00.000-04:00

I met Paul Bogush through twitter. He is an amazing educator who waxes eloquent on his blog. My posts are much more mundane, but I certainly enjoy reading his blog, and his posts certainly make me think. I saw the word matching gadget from Free Dictionary on one of his classroom blogs and decided to add it to mine.
Here is the link to his main blog:
http://blogush.edublogs.org/

Enjoy

We educators are so lucky to have the opportunity to reach out and share with other educators. So often, teachers are isolated in their classrooms, locked into 42 to 50 minute periods, with hardly a free moment in the day to connect with other educators in their own schools. Now we have the ability to not only connect with our colleagues in our own school but with dedicated teachers from all over the world. What a great way to learn, be inspired, and reflect on how we can become better teachers ourselves.

Mrs. Miller's Bethany Book Blog

2010-07-25T17:59:00.000-04:00

Summer vacation is nearly half over, and I haven't done as much reading as I would like.
I am anxiously awaiting the publication of the third book in the Hunger Games Series, Mockingjay.
I was just looking at Mrs. Miller's book blog, and she had added a couple of new posts. If you are looking for some good titles, read her current posts, and don't forget to click on older posts. She has an intriguing selection of books reviewed there. I hope to read a couple of them, myself.
Hope everyone is enjoying vacation!

http://amitybooktalk.blogspot.com/

Discovery Educator Network Blog-Den Summer School 2010

2010-07-07T00:36:00.000-04:00

The wonders of our Discovery Education Streaming subscription just keep getting better and better.

Want some free professional development? This is copied from the DEN site:
"Who ever said summer school isn’t fun? Get ready for your school year with an amazing series of free professional development sessions from the Discovery Educator Network (DEN)!
DEN Summer School begins August 2. Click on any of the session titles below for more information and to register. All sessions start at 11AM ET."
Here is the link: (You may have to log in; I am not sure.)
http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/

Backyard Wonders

2010-07-07T00:14:00.000-04:00

It's summer, and I am so grateful to have time to enjoy my backyard. The raspberry bushes started producing berries about 3 weeks earlier than usual, and I picked several quarts of them this season. Now, with the heat, they are pretty dried up. The birds are enjoying raiding the remaining berries, and we've enjoyed such a bounty of fruit that I don't even mind.
Speaking of birds, we have a family of blue-jays in our yard again this year. One of the fledglings either was pushed or fell out of its nest the other day. While she was learning to use her wings, I had the opportunity to get a number of pictures of her. And now, it seems she has a brother. Here is a picture my husband captured of the siblings getting a drink from the waterfall by my pond:

Their parents were not far away, and they were keeping a close eye on their offspring. Isn't this just a wonderful picture? What a treat!

On another note, I have to praise my iPhone and stress how this mobile device enabled me to share an ode to my backyard with my local newspaper. Jim Shelton, a reporter for the New Haven Register, has called on folks to report on "a handful of summer." I had ripped the invite with his email out of the paper, and it was sitting on the table in my garage. I was viewing the backyard through the screens on the back of the garage, and I got inspired and jotted down a quick description of how my backyard represents my own personal "handful of summer." If I had had to go into the house, boot up my laptop, and write my message, it might never have happened. However, since I had my iPhone right there, I logged into my gmail account, went to compose mail, added the address from the register, typed my blurb, and hit "send." I heard the familiar whoosh, and it was on its way.
On Monday, I taught a professional development session on the wonders of using our Discovery Education subscription, and while I was at school, my husband told me a man had come pounding on our door asking for Carolyn Stanley. It seems that Jim showed up with a small camera and asked to go into our yard. He filmed a video which made the electronic edition of the paper along with the piece I had written. How exciting to share and be recognized. That's the power of 21st century leaning offered to our kids. That's what will keep education engaging for them.
Here is a link to the article at the New Haven Register online. You'll have to scroll down to see the link to the video and even further down in the article to see the piece that I wrote. Enjoy.
I hope you'll leave me a comment if you like it.

http://www.newhavenregister.com/articles/2010/07/04/life/doc4c2fe9aea5528092727157.txt

Happy Summer - I'm up late and had better get to bed.
This has been an exciting evening of learning and sharing.

So Many Blog Posts Floating in My Brain

2010-07-06T23:50:00.000-04:00

Oh, my.
I feel terrible. I have so many posts floating about in my brain that I never got posted into the blog. I especially want to add a belated post about my experience at the Discovery Education Network Spring Conference that I attended in Massachusetts in May. Watch for it.
So - just to get back into the swing of things, I am reporting on a webinar I attended tonight hosted by Steve Hargadon of FutureofEducation.com. He interviewed Heidi Hayes Jacobs about her new book Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World
Lately, I have not participated in as many webinars as previously, and I've really missed the collaboration in the chat with other educators around the nation and world. I had heard Heidi speak at a professional development session, but I did not get nearly as much out of that as I did listening to her in a video window in Elluminate and being able to comment on what she was saying in the chat. That made the experience much more immediate and engaging. This is really an aspect of education that we need to offer to kids. NASA does some webinars for students during the school day. It will be exciting if we can get our school signed up to participate in one. Ideally, we'll have each student at a computer, logged into the webinar, and able to participate in the chat.
The Classroom2.0 webinars as well as the Future of Education webinars are archived for later viewing, so they are a great professional development resource.
Here is a link to the archive page:
http://www.futureofeducation.com/notes/Past_Interviews

I hope everyone is having a great summer. What a wonderful time to refresh, renew, and have time to connect with other educators in preparation for another school year that will be here sooner than we can imagine.

By the way, I am keeping a daily diary of my summer 2010, just so it won't slip through my fingers.

Picasa as a Photo and Video Editing Tool

2010-05-17T11:51:00.002-04:00

This weekend I bought my husband and me a new toy - a Toshiba netbook. It has 3 USB ports, a 250Gb hard drive, 3Gb of memory, and a built in webcam and microphone. I recorded a short (28second) video of myself with the web cam. The file saved as a .avi file - about 828Mb in size. I absoulutely did not want to take up that kind of space on my hard drive, so I remembered that I'd read in another educator's blog post -about PICASA - a free picture editing tool from Google that also works to convert video files from one format to another.
I downloaded the application from the web:
http://picasa.google.com/
After I installed it, I saw some movie editing tools. I was just experimenting, so I clicked on a film clip icon, navigated to where that webcam video was stored, and clicked on export. It exported to a .wmv file - a format that plays nice with Windows free Movie Maker software, and it was only 28MB in size. When I played the clip in Windows Media Player, I did not notice any degradation in quality from the .avi clip.
I also played with some of the photo editing tools. Picasa is not PhotoShop, but for a free application, it give you some pretty neat options.
I will be experimenting with how Picasa works with other video file formats. Hopefully, it will be another tool in our arsenal for helping kids to download and work with video.

Oh, I figured out where I got the info about Picasa. It is on the Connecticut Blog for Discover Education Network. The folks who blog on that site offer a wealth of hints and information:
http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/connecticut/

Be sure to check it out!!!!

Bethany Middle School enters the New Haven Register's "Decorate the Box" contest

2010-05-03T11:54:00.001-04:00

Sara Frank's art classes have been busy designing the outside of a New Haven Register newspaper vending box. We would like everyone to vote for Bethany's fabulous design. Click on the link below, look through the entries, and vote for Amity Middle School.

If you are not registered with New Haven Register, you will have to register to vote by creating a username and password. Sorry! Sara and her students appreciate you going to the trouble to do this to make us a winning school.

Reading Is Magic!!!

2010-04-26T10:34:00.002-04:00

Danny Magic is coming!

Mrs. Kazdan challenged Bethany Middle School students and teachers to read 1,000 books between March and April of 2010. As of April 26, we have read 1,308 books. The assemblies with Danny Magic will take place this Thursday, April 29. Congratulations to all. Watch for another post highlighting the presentation.

Here are a few of the "Reading is Magic because...." slogans the homerooms came up with:

Reading is magic because it opens a whole new universe in your head.
Reading is magic because it takes you to a magical place.
Reading is magic because it can take you ANYWHERE!
Reading is magic because it makes you smarter.
Reading is magic because you can live in someone else's footsteps.
Reading is magic because even when there aren't pictures, you can create a film in your imagination.
Reading is magic because it enlivens a dull day.
Reading is magic because it makes the world around you disappear.

Keep Reading, Bethany Students! You Rule!

Blogging From a Live Event

2010-03-10T15:12:00.010-05:00

I am not very good at it, I guess, but I did give it a try at the Celebration Of Teaching and Learning in NYC on March 5, 2010. See previous blog post. I did not lug my laptop with me, so the post I entered was from my iPhone, and I find it a bit laborious to type a lengthy entry from that communication tool. In addition, the whole debate on multi-tasking and whether or not we can really do it well was debated in the audience. I know I have a difficult time, when participating in webinars, to really attend to the speaker while I am contributing in the chat. I honestly don’t think kids can attend to a “lecture” from a professor while they are checking email, facebook, etc. as seems to be the practice at MIT.Obviously, I had trouble blogging while attending the live session.

It was a real thrill to see and listen to Rachel Dretzin and Doug Rushkoff in person. I even got to speak with Rachel personally after the session. I want to revisit the video, which can be viewed live, at the following site:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/

I hope to make a video of my own and upload it to the site.

My superintendant asked me how I enjoyed the session, and I will paste some of my response to him here in this post. I would love for others to comment on what they think about the issues raised in the documentary.

I think we need to really evaluate the debate about the need for memorization –and how important it is to today’s students, most of whom have some sort of web-enabled phone at hand. Although some educational technologists dismiss the need to memorize, I feel we short change our students if we do not help them to exercise that ability to memorize (not for rote but for connection purposes).

In addition, the authors of the documentary focused on the segment where a student proclaims that he’s never read a book but gets the overview from Sparks notes online. I think even the most forward-thinking educational technologists would agree that a synopsis is not replacement for experiencing the original piece of literature. Then again, norms are changing! I don’t really know where I sit on this issue. Every school has differing opinions of which “classics” to read. I think student need to experience literature – even if they are forced to read a particular book by the curriculum for their class. Of course, how students discuss the book can be enhanced by technology. A teacher-led discussion should not be the only option. Using book groups, nings, shared reviews on line, fan-fiction blogs, etc. are just a few of many options available.

Finally, on the issue of digital citizenship, the presenters showed the clip of kids in Korea being taught (indoctrinated) in cyber ethics (top down) from the time they are very small. Doug Rushkoff questioned in the documentary whether this “top-down” method would work in the United States. It is clear that we need to teach this from a very early age. I haven’t had time to investigate, but I understand Carnegie Mellon has just made a curriculum aimed at k-12 available. Digital Citizenship most definitely needs to be an essential part of our curriculum from the earliest years of school right through and including higher education.

I have not even touched upon the whole issue of gaming and virtual environments that comprised a significant portion of the documentary, but that will have to wait for another post.

Frontline's digital Nation

2010-03-05T11:24:00.002-05:00

I am at the Celebration right now listening to Doug Ruskoff and co-presenter right now. I am having a great time and have already made a lot of new contacts.

Celebration of Teaching and Learning

2010-03-04T22:11:00.003-05:00

I'm excited. Well, I'm not really excited about having to get up before 5:00AM in order to get there on time, but I am excited about having received a free admission to attend the 2010 Celebration of Teaching and Learning at the Hilton Hotel in New York City. There are so many featured speakers and workshops, I'm having a hard time trying to pick and choose. I also love to visit the vendors - and maybe get freebies for my classroom.
I participated in the Seedlings webcast this evening on EdTechTalk, and Cheryl Oakes suggested I blog from the conference. I'll have my iPhone with me, so maybe I'll give it a try. I should take my laptop, but I'm just not into lugging it around with me all day. Anyway, I'll try to report out on some of the exciting things I learn.

The Pleasure of Meeting Lihongyan

2010-01-29T13:47:00.003-05:00

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting Lihongyan, a teacher of English in China, who has been visiting our school in Connecticut. She is a gracious,lovely lady, and we hope to be able to continue communication with her even after she returns to China.
She says that she has enjoyed her visit here and has learned a lot. She had a very good time and felt the staff helped her a lot. She would like to share her experience with the teachers in China. From here, she will be visiting New York City and then on to Washington D.C. before returning to China. I hope the weather moderates a bit so she does not freeze to death while sightseeing. The picture above is of Lihongyan, Bo Wu, and Sara Frank.

Exciting Video Projects at Bethany Middle School

2010-01-28T15:30:00.002-05:00

Here is just one example of a claymation PSA project the students in Mrs. Saisa's classes are producing. I think this one is awesome, and the message is so important.
I hope to feature more great student productions on this blog in the coming weeks.

Google Shared Documents

2010-01-13T16:31:00.003-05:00

I had three young ladies in my lab this afternoon. They had come in to work on a script for one of their classes, and I watched as each opened a separate Word document. I suggested that they might like to log on to their amitybethany accounts and share one document. One of the girls had had more experience with using Google docs than the other two, so she initiated the document and shared it with them. They were sitting side by side, each editing the document and were quite pleased to see the document update as each saved a new entry. One of the young ladies asked if they could still work on this at home from their individual computers, and I said, "That's the whole purpose of Google docs." They were all pleased with what they accomplished and are going to let me interview them tomorrow on how it went when they collaborated from their home computers.

Even more exciting is the news that users can upload Word documents from their computers to Google docs - even files larger than 578kb, which was the size limitation previously. Now documents can be uploaded and shared even with a number of pictures embedded in the document.

It seems to get better and better. I hope we will not be disappointed in the future.

Discovery Time Starts Again

2010-01-02T21:26:00.004-05:00

After quite a few days away from the computer, I opened my email this evening and started following links. I found my way to a blog by Michael Zimmer, a technology integration specialist at Hopkins Country School District in Madisonville, Kentucky. I followed a link in his blog to PicLits.com which he said English teachers were using with their students.
I created a quick PicLit and then joined in order to embed it here. It's kind of fun playing with pictures and words, and I'm sure the students will come up with much more creative products than mine:

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

We'll be back to school in a brand new year on Monday. Let's hope our increasing use of technology in the classrooms will engage and inspire our students to produce wonderful work.

Google Goggles -

2009-12-09T12:04:00.004-05:00

Oh, my Gosh,
In my previous post, I included a video on Google Wave.
I was going to shut down my computer lid and go do some holiday baking, but I followed another link and found this brand new app from Google called "Google Goggles". It allows you to take a picture on your cell phone and Google will search on the picture for you - no typing or voice. Thankfully, they will not do a search, YET!, on a picture of a person because of privacy issues.
Anyway, take a look at this. I like the fact that in the future you can take a picture of a tree leaf or a flower, and Google may be able to identify it for you.I never can remember names of plants that I see and would like to get for my backyard perennial garden.

Now I really am going to go do something else besides stare into this computer screen. I need more balance in my life!
I hope you enjoyed learning about these Google apps. It also makes me a bit afraid!

The Google Wave is Here!

2009-12-09T11:40:00.006-05:00

Whether we like it or not, Google Wave, a sort of real-time collaborative email program, is here and catching on. On Twitter, I saw several educators begging to be invited. I was not one of them. I have all I can handle with getting Google Apps for Education set up and getting kids and teachers used to using it.
However, it is important to be aware of these tsunami technological trends.
I got a message in my email that John Sowash, the Electric Educator, was now following me on Twitter. I am flattered; John is a Google certified educator as well as a technology guru at his high school in Southfield, Michigan. While scanning through his very excellent blog located at:
http://electriceducator.blogspot.com/
I came across this video he embedded in his blog explaining Google Wave. I decided to follow his example and include it in my blog. It takes about 7 minutes to view, and it's packed with info, but it's a starting point. I hope you enjoy it. Right now, I think you still need an invitation to be part of "the wave". I'm sure it will be more widely available in the near future, so get ready. Even if we don't use it, you can bet our students will be.

Well, it's our first snow day. I think I'll shut down this computer lid and go do some baking for the holidays.

Little Book of Leadership Powerpoint

2009-11-16T21:26:00.002-05:00

I joined a webinar tonight sponsored by LearnCentral.org. Ruston Hurley moderated the on-line presentation by Mr. Jon Corippo, a media production, English, and instructional technology teacher from Minarets High School, part of Chawanakee Unified School District in North Fork, California. This school is on the cutting edge of technology and believes all students need to use technology in school to learn 21st century skills they need to succeed. On the mission statement page of their website, http://minaretsmustangs.wikispaces.com/, I found a link to the presentation embedded below. It is well worth a read and even a reread.
Enjoy.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Little Book of Leadership Powerpoint

View more presentations from PhilDourado.

Learn.org and Classroom2.0 offer many free webinars using Elluminate; Here is a link to their archive page where you can listen to recorded streams of sessions of interest. It's great fun to participate live and participate in the chat, but having the recorded sessions to listen to is also a tremendous resource.
http://live.classroom20.com/archive-and-resources.html

Creative Commons Attribution-an experiment

2009-10-12T22:41:00.006-04:00

I found this "wordle" on the topic of Google Docs pasted in the a blog by Matt Montagne called the "Digital Down Low". The image is by Nedral. When I decided to use the image in documents I am preparing for parents and staff on our Google Apps for Education roll-out, I clicked on the Creative Commons licensing for the image, and found it was o.k. to use provided I gave attribution to the author. There was also some .html to copy and paste. I tried pasting it into a Google doc, and just the .html pasted, so I knew I needed to put it into a vehicle which would translate .html, so I decided to experiment in my blog. What happened was the .html code actually translated into a link to the wordle's creator's Photo Stream on Flicker. I previewed it, and everything seems appropriate, so I am leaving the link in my blog. There is also a link to an overview of Creative Commons licensing.
I am determined to learn more about using photos, videos, etc. under the Creative Commons licensing in order to use them for educational purposes and follow the copyright guidelines of the creator of the content.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nedrai/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Alan November - "Who Owns the Learning"

2009-10-05T22:47:00.002-04:00

In my web wanderings this evening - actually, I picked up this link from a tweet by demacisaac, a elementary teacher on P.E.I. in Canada.
The video by Alan November doesn't give us answers but leaves us with lots of questions. Take six minutes to watch it; it's worth it. It reminds me a little of a book by Mel Levine Ready or Not, Here Life Comes. Just as in the video by Mr. November, Mel questions how we can prepare our kids to live lives independent of their parents once the kids come of age.

I have copied the embed code for the video. Hopefully, it will paste successfully below.

Mrs. Miller's Fabulous Bethany Book Blog

2009-10-05T21:01:00.003-04:00

Lots of wonderful things going on at Bethany. We had a great assembly with Len Cabral who returned to instruct and entertain Bethany students with his wonderful stories. Everyone has a story to tell, and Mr. Cabral got some of our 7th graders involved in telling their own stories - very cool.
Speaking of stories, if you haven't checked it out for a while, you must visit Mrs. Miller's Bethany Book Blog. She has been reading up a storm and producing wonderful reviews of books she's read hoping to entice others to enjoy the books. It's also a great place for you to share your opinion of the books listed there that you have read.
So please, click on the link, read some of the reviews, grab a book, and start reading.
I am going to read Laurie Halse Anderson's Chains before the snow flies, I hope.

http://amitybooktalk.blogspot.com/

Back To School 2009-2010

2009-09-05T15:50:00.003-04:00

Welcome back, everyone, to a new school year.
The summer flew by. Thank goodness I had the motivation of the calendar feature on my iPhone to journal, at least a little, of the events of every day.
As for this woefully, neglected blog, now that the new school year is here, I hope to document new things I'm learning that I feel are worth sharing with my colleagues and students alike.
In fact, I downloaded a Seedlings podcast to my iPhone today from February of 2009. Bob Sprankle was interviewing the owner of http://pixton.com, a site set up where people who are drawing challenged can still create cartoons. The site is free, but the owners, a husband and wife team, offer a subscription service to schools where teachers can have kids use the tools and share their cartoons in a safe, walled environment. It is offered by the month and fee per student, so you are not locked into an expensive contract.

It was a smooth start to the new year. Let's hope for wonderful achievements from our students.

My new iPhoneG3s

2009-07-06T21:58:00.003-04:00

Wow! I just figured out that I could add a new post to my blog from my iPhone.
Very cool! It will be nice when I'm traveling, and I don't have Internet for my laptop, but one finger typing gets a bit tedious.

A very interesting take on new digital media by Howard Gardner

2009-06-27T00:40:00.014-04:00

I was navigating around the Digital Generation Project on the Edutopia website, and I decided to watch this video from Howard Gardner. With all the enthusiasm about multitudinous tools available to our students to produce multimedia projects, it is important to temper that with legitimate cautions of educators. Kids certainly are adept at using these tools and at social networking, but may lack judgement in what they are producing and sharing with the world. While Mr. Gardner is certainly not opposed to this new wave in education, he makes an important points of how educators are still needed to help students navigate and make sense of this vast wealth of resources available at the click of a mouse or the touch of a finger.
Watch the video, and please comment on what you think about the topic.

Here is the link:
http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-howard-gardner-video

I tried to embed the video, but the embed code they gave me was not accepted by blogger. I will have to ask someone who knows more about html than I do to help me fix it.

Thanks, Carolyn

A Nice Example of using Skype in the Classroom

2009-06-12T09:34:00.004-04:00

ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) has been running a contest for teachers to upload videos showing innovative ways they are using technology in the classroom. In the video embedded below, you will see an example of kids connecting with an author. Sean Capelle authored this video which shows kids using Skype to ask question of Patrick Carmen, author of Skeleton Creek, a book the 5th graders had read. I caught some reference to the book having an element of technology embedded in it, as well. The video shows a realistic setting and is an inspiration for us to try something like this next year.

Annotation on Sept. 5, 2009
I just noticed that the embedded video was not in the post. I am editing the post in the .html view currently, and deleted the embedded code. I will now try to put in a direct link to the video so you can view it.
http://www.istevision.org/watch.php?vid=5616d271788a52a1dc35198186f202a986cb18fb
Let me know if you are interested in trying to set up something like this.

Fantastic 8th Grade Interteam, Interdisciplinary Project

2009-06-05T16:50:00.003-04:00

Our eighth graders have been involved in a week long interteam, interdisciplinary experiment where they have been working in collaborative teams to produce projects with technology as an underlying tool to facilitate their learning. The students created propaganda videos about the American Revolutionary War and also did experiments on how music has an effect on mood or ability to recall information or heart rate. More on that later.

I was inspired to write this blog post when I came across this video which won an award from ISTE (International Society of Technology Education), and I thought it mirrored a lot of what went on at our school this week. Maybe we can use it as an inspiration and make a mash-up video of our own.

Here is the link to the video on the ISTE site:
http://www.istevision.org/watch.php?vid=d04f32b7af250b9a542b05b32c9b25ba4619555e
I loved the part where it questioned "Do we still get report cards?"

Options Available in Embed Code for a YouTube Video

2009-05-20T15:32:00.003-04:00

I have one last post. When I first embedded the video in the post below, it came in with links running along the bottom to other videos. I did not want that. I went back into the video options on YouTube, and I pressed the little cog icon beside the embed code. That gave me "customize" options, and I unchecked the box that said "include related videos". That's a good feature.

Students Lead the Way

2009-05-20T14:38:00.008-04:00

As teachers we are often reticent to post anything with recognizable student faces and names attached, but the kids feel no such reticence. While we have to be diligent in helping kids understand how important it is to be careful of what they post, posting online is here to stay. I had taped a similar video with my VadoHD camera of Sarah's rendition of "My Funny Valentine", but had no intention of posting it. However, Sarah's dad shot a video of the same performance (much better than mine, I must add), and she edited it and posted it on YouTube herself. I asked her permission to embed it on my blog, and she was happy to have me do so. Enjoy.

I am still uncomfortable with all the information made available to the public in her description, but hopefully, only good things will come of it.

Twitter

2009-05-20T12:34:00.008-04:00

I thought Twitter was really stupid and a real time waster at first, but I am now following a select number of educators who are technology leaders such as Will Richardson, Chery Lemke, Bob Sprankle, Kathy Schrock, Clarence Fischer,Vicki Davis, and several others. I find their "tweets" to be very relevant to the job I try to do, and following their links leads me to many areas of new learning. I recently followed a link and ended up on a blog by Matt, an instructional technology coordinator in Centralia, Missouri. He recently facilitated a classroom communication with a soldier in Iraq via Skype. What a wonderful experience for the students in that classroom. Here is a link to his blog:

http://www.etsreflectingpool.blogspot.com/

He also had some interviews with teachers just starting to get comfortable with technology and how it is changing their role in the classrooms. To date, I have not been able to load a sound file on my blog. I have been able to upload a video, but I didn't see any option for a .mp3 file. I intend to get in touch with Matt and have him help me. No one person has a handle on all the wonderful tools available out there for communication, collaboration and learning. "It's all about the conversation." If you haven't been following blogs or participating in online conversations such as those at http://www.edtechtalk.com/, I encourage you to do so. It' takes a little extra time, but the benefits are worth it.

Spring Concert and Art and Tech Display

2009-05-08T15:37:00.008-04:00

The annual Spring Concert by the chorus and band was presented to the whole student body on Thursday morning. There was an evening performance for parents and students at 7:00. The concert was absolutely amazing. We have such wonderful multi-talented students here at our middle school. Also wonderful were the displays of art projects and tech projects. Such creativity is fostered by our district, and for that we are grateful. Let's never forget how important a role the arts play in our curriculum.

Here is my pond video again.

2009-05-06T22:38:00.002-04:00

You know, I am trying very hard to embrace new technologies and have other teachers incorporate them into their curriculums, hopefully to add to student learning and engagement. It's sad that some individuals feel it is better to destroy than to build. Who ever hacked into my blog, well, please don't do it again. You have proved your point.

Here is the pond video again. I need the relaxation.

Happy May Day

2009-05-01T16:24:00.007-04:00

One last post on this rainy Friday afternoon. Hopefully, these left-over April showers will bring May flowers.
I have finally set up a YouTube account. I haven't uploaded many videos, but I intend to add to the knowledge base with some of the digital tutorials I have created. There is ugly stuff on YouTube, to be sure, but there are so many more great resources that it's time we use the tool to our advantage. I don't know what to do about the bad stuff except just avoid it and not watch it.
Anyway, yesterday I was talking about going home to sit by my pond and decompress, and Warren asked me to upload a video so he could see what I was talking about. I recorded this with my HD Vado from Creative using the HD+ setting as opposed to the low-quality setting I used to create the lab video experiment a few posts ago. It took quite a while to upload to YouTube, but it was easy. Here is the link. Enjoy.

I will upload Pond movie again. Some one hacked into my blog and put up a Brittney Spears video. So - nothing is safe.

There is a frog hiding in the green grass clump, but he's so well camouflaged that it is hard to spot him.

Every Day is Earth Day

2009-05-01T15:59:00.004-04:00

Last Friday Amity students celebrated Earth Day in a variety of ways. Led by the Student Council, several students participated in a clean-up of a nearby roadway. Some students got involved electronically. Matt Montagne put up a Voice Thread where people from all over the world could share how they were helping to conserve energy and be good stewards of our environment. I was actually the first one to leave a message after Matt's introduction. It was very exciting to have some of Mrs. Habersang's students participate in the thread as well. I will embed it here:

While I think it is worthwhile to listen to all of the threads, I know that would take a long time. To hear those contributions from Bethany, click on me, second icon, then go to the navigation panel in the bottom center and click on the "more" button twice. Look in the right hand panel and find the "hourglass" icon. That will be Mrs. Habersang's recording. Next, click the large white arrow on the bottom right. Chick on the hourglass icon on the bottom right named "Tom" and you will hear a series of different students explaining how they are observing earth day.

Voice Thread is a powerful collaboration tool. Let me know if any of you are using it.

What a Great Video Find!

2009-04-28T20:40:00.003-04:00

Well, folks,
I mentioned in an earlier post that I am following a few folks on Twitter. Kathy Schrock, a technology coordinator from Cape Cod in MA, who has become very famous, has allowed me to follow her. I clicked on one of her links in Twitter and was taken to a video-sharing site (much like the one Warren has introduced us to at Fliggo) called Vimeo. Here Kathy has mounted an interview she had with her superintendent over 10 years ago on the topic of technology and web sites. At this time, the recommendation was given for any parents who wanted the web address to call the school. The superintendent even asks her, "What is a website?" as if he did not know. Of course, this might have been staged so Kathy could frame her response. It is amazing how far we've come in just a decade. It's worth a look. I copied the embed code (html) and will paste it here, so you can watch the interview.

A 1997 Glimpse of Educational Technology from Kathy Schrock on Vimeo.
Kathy's site -just search on "Kathy Schrock" is a wonderful collection of resources, and you should take a look. Kathy also provides wonderful resources for teachers who want to learn more about incorporating Web2.0 technologies into their curriculum projects.
Enjoy and join the conversation.

Participating in Live Collaborative Web Casts

2009-04-16T22:27:00.004-04:00

It's hard to believe that it's Thursday, and we've been on vacation for nearly a whole week. My foray into participating in the live webcasting community began last Thursday evening. I followed a "tweet" from Twitter to the Ed Tech Talk site, and I logged into a live discussion forum. I wasn't connected by voice, but I participated in the chat window and was blown away when the folks who were speaking started to respond to my comments in the sidebar chat panel. I am beginning to understand the whole concept of being connected with others of similar interests and collaborating on how to do our jobs - engaging our students in learning - better.
I joined in again this evening, and was welcomed warmly. In fact, one of the moderators called me on my cell phone, and I was participating live -Everyone logged in could hear what I was saying. It was a little scarey, but really engaging.

One of the topics of the show tonight concerned the live webcast that will take place on Earth Day 09. There is also a Voice Thread set up which I had contributed to last Thursday. When I typed about my participation into the chat, they immediately found my audio response and broadcast it. Amazing. I hope we can get some of our kids to add their voices to the "thread" on Earth Day next week.

Here is the link:

http://earthbridges.wikispaces.com/

Check it out!

Here is the link to the Ed Tech Talk show:

http://www.edtechtalk.com/

On Tuesday nights, there is a great show - Women of Web 2.0.

On Thursday nights Seedlings is on, usually hosted by Bob Sprankle and Cheryl Oakes, two famous educators from southern Maine. Tonight's show was on Google educators. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. EST. All of the shows are archived, both the audio and the chat.

At 9:00 p.m. EST is EdTech Brainstorm, which is the one I spoke on live.

So much to learn; so little time.

Enjoy the rest of your vacation.

Typographical Error in Movie Title

2009-04-02T22:07:00.002-04:00

Oops! I just realized I have a typo in the title of the movie posted below- meant to type "with"- I was tired and careless. At least the experiment worked.

Playing with my Vado Hi Definition Pocket Cam

2009-04-02T18:28:00.004-04:00

I am still at school, and it's 6:30PM. I am a crazy lady. I recently purchased a Vado high-definition pocket camcorder. It is a great little tool, and it fits comfortably in my purse. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any program other than the one that came with it to edit my movies. I really wanted to use the recorder for class projects that could be edited in Windows Movie Maker by the kids. So, I did some research on the web and figured out how to record at a lower VGA resolution of 640x480. I did a test movie, and was able to import it into Windows Movie Maker. I am psyched. Now it will be easy to capture video clips and put them together for kids projects.

Classroom Blogging-a nice presentation from a team of experts -includes a slide on students' acceptable use of tools

2009-03-31T21:31:00.002-04:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Classroom Blogging

View more presentations from Michael Walker.

Professional Development Day at Amity

2009-03-23T21:24:00.002-04:00

There were lots of technology offerings for our Professional Development Day.
Because I was teaching the Smart Board Notebook 10 software offering, I didn't get to hear about some of the other technology workshops.
Please comment here. Share what workshop you participated in and something valuable you learned at the workshop you can share with our community.

Besides the workshops, I had also signed up for a webinar from Discovery Streaming at 7:00 this evening. The featured speaker was Don Tapscott, the author of Growing Up Digital, written about 12 years ago. He has recently published Grown up Digital, about these digital natives who have now entered the workforce.
While there were some glitches in the audio, it was a pretty interesting session. There was also a team of experts on hand answering questions and responding to messages sent from participants in the "live chat" window.
Vicki Davis, who runs the "coolcatteacher" blog was on hand. She is also one of the teachers who set up the now world-famous wiki - Flat Earth Project. She responded personally to 2 or 3 of my posts to the chat - very exciting.
I must admit, I did have a hard time paying attention to the speaker and his presentation and following the chat at the same time. Others didn't seem to have the same problem; they were also on Twitter.

Anyway, go to Don's blog, "NetgenEd,grownupdigital" for more information.

http://netgened.grownupdigital.com/

Good Night!

SmartBoard Use in the Classroom is Transforming Education

2009-03-23T06:40:00.006-04:00

I am offering a professional development workshop this morning featuring how to use Notebook10 software. There is so much to learn about this wonderful tool. I have only begun to scratch the surface of what it can do to make the classroom a more engaging place in which our students can learn.

Here are some important links for teachers to use when they need to review how to use this software.

Here is where you go to download the software. It is a free application for any teacher or student whose school uses SmartBoards:

http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Products/SMART+Board+software/default.htm

In the training center, you can watch short videos on various aspects of using SmartBoards:

http://smarttech.com/trainingcenter/tutorials.asp

Here is a hub where you can access thousands of lessons created in Notebook10 from teachers all over the world:

http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+activities/Notebook+Activities/

As you experiment with creating lessons using SmartNotebook10 software today, please leave comments on this blog post to share your learning experience with others.

I will also set up a folder on our shared "Y" drive for teachers to share the lessons they have created.

All of the training materials for this session are located in that drive, as well.

Time Flies

2009-03-20T10:58:00.002-04:00

I cannot believe I haven't posted since January of 2009. Many exciting technology integration things have been happening at Bethany. I wanted to post something quick just to get back to the blog.
I will make a comment on the previous post. Once I removed the toolbar with "next blog", my place to sign in to edit the blog also disappeared. I had to go to blogger.com and sign in in order to access the blog. It's worth it, I guess.

Removing the "Next Element" in Blogger

2009-01-27T09:40:00.007-05:00

I recently participated in a webinar hosted by EdTech. The presenter was Tim Chase, a middle school teacher who teaches reading and technology. The title of the webinar was "Tim Chase - Xtreme Teamwork-Communication and Collaboration in Your Classroom and Mine." In the webinar he talked about a number of Web 2.0 tools he'd been using with his students, Blogger among them. He expressed concern about the "next blog" tab on the blogs meant for student use and how they randomly lead to other blogs that might not be appropriate. He told us he had directions on one of his blogs on how to remove the "next element" feature.
Here is the link:
http://blog.edtech2020.com/2008/01/removing-next-blog-element-in-blogger.html
I tried this in one of my older blogs that has been neglected:

http://bethanymscomputerlab.blogspot.com/

Now I will try to eliminate it from this blog.

YES! It worked.

Students Participate in Speak-Up Survey to be Shared with President Obama

2009-01-17T22:13:00.005-05:00

The team from Project Tomorrow recently sponsored the Net Day Speak-Up Survey for 2008. They decided to add a "Special Inauguration Survey" for students only. It will be open until Tuesday, January 20. The students were asked to provide a response to the following topic:

"Imagine you are the President of the United States (or the leader of your country) and your #1 education goal is to make sure every student is prepared for the jobs and careers of the future. What is the one thing you would do to improve schools to ensure that all students receive the education and skills they need to be successful in life?"

I asked the students to copy their responses before submitting them to the survey and paste them into a word document, so I could have a printed copy. I then read through all the responses and wrote down all the responses putting checks beside similar ideas.

What was interesting was the overwhelming response asking for more career education in the schools. Here are some of the responses dealing with that issue: (Over 25 of the 100 kids polled felt that career education should be an important part of school curriculum.)

More career education
More career days
Have students take tests to determine what career is best for them
Go on field trips to see people working in various careers
Expand curriculum to include course in learning about careers
More mentoring by people working in different careers
Workshops once a week hosted by people from different careers and occupations

And then there are these responses with a variety of suggestions:

more scholarships so students can attend college
allowances for special needs students to get a college education
qualified teachers sent to educate children in 3rd world countries
fund city schools so they can offer students the same educational advantages as surbaban schools
train teachers to increase interest in subjects they teach
students have more choice in courses they take (several responses)
later start time for school to ensure students get enough sleep (several responses)
more classes in life skills such a home economics ad managing money
more tutors in schools and more opportunity for individualized help
more courseware offered on computers so students could work at their own pace
fund more after-school programs
fund more field trips and provide more real-life experiences
more assemblies
teach through hands-on projects
Add more access to technology such as computers and Smart Boards (several responses)
computers for every student
more hands-on construction projects - so students know how to build things for their homes
learning how to work cross platform on Macs and PCs
provide more one-on-one help for struggling students
build more schools and equip them with books and supplies
create interactive games to help students learn subject matter (several responses)
more programs for special-needs students so they can be educated in regular schools and not be sent to other schools
provide more guidance counselors who have time to give individualized attention to all students
more time after school to complete homework so no work has to be take home
recess for all students mandantory to help avoid obesity
physical activity for all students every day
make it mandatory that students learn how to work in small groups on projects
offer more foreign language classes as well as cultural awareness classes
smaller classes so students can get more individualized attention

We can hope that President Obama listens to our young people and makes sure that funding education is one of his top priorities.

Faith is experimenting with Wordle

2009-01-13T12:16:00.002-05:00

Faith is experimenting with Wordle with her student library advisory board. They will be creating "word clouds" using Wordle.

She wanted a way to get their creations from the web page into her blog.

I tried one. Let's see how it looks.

Faith likes it! I am so pleased.

A Newer, Broader Definition of Copyright and Fair Use

2008-12-08T12:54:00.005-05:00

Last year a long and involved document called "The High Cost of Copyright Confusion" was published by the Media Education Lab of Temple University. They are funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Fortunately, in November of 2008, the center released new, more liberal guidelines which will empower students and teachers to use copyrighted materials for "transformative" applications under the "fair use" provisions.

Here are some links that will explain the new guidelines:

http://www.slideshare.net/reneehobbs/finally-the-end-to-copyright-confusion-has-arrived-presentation?type=powerpoint

http://wwwdev.ncte.org/positions/statements/fairusemedialiteracy

http://www.mediaeducationlab.com/index.php?page=293

This is really an exciting triumph for educators and students. Please take a look at the links. So many of the existing guidelines for teachers on copyright use are very restrictive, and these new guidlines should help to reduce anxiety.

A very inspirational video - Benjamin Zander speaking at TED

2008-12-08T12:29:00.006-05:00

I came across this video presentation last Friday night into early Saturday morning. I should have gone to bed, but I was researching on the web, and we all know how one link leads to another. Actually, I was looking at a wiki that Toby had sent me, and somehow I ended up on a blog entitled "Learning in Maine" written by Jim Burke Here is the link to his blog:

http://learninginmaine.blogspot.com/

On his blog, I was fascinated reading about twitter, watching the tutorial on how to use "Google Docs", reading the cartoons, scrolling down, and then I came to the post entitled "Leaders Empower Others". There were two videos from YouTube of Benjamin Zander, an orchestra conductor, speaking at the TED conference where the finest, most creative minds from all over the world gather to share their insights. The first selection runs 10 minutes and is worth watching, but it is the 2nd selection which runs 20 minutes that is a must. It was already 1:00am when I clicked on the video. I figured I'd look at it for a couple of minutes and then give up and go to bed. Well, I was so captivated that I watched the whole thing and have since watched it again. When it ended at 1:30am or so, I had tears running down my cheeks, and I was applauding loudly with the rest of the audience. It's a good thing my husband was sound asleep in the bedroom, for he surely would have wondered what was going on.
Please take the time to watch this video.
Here it the direct link to it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LCwI5iErE

Enjoy! Please leave me a comment on this blog.
Carolyn

Daisy the Pig helps Bethany Middle School Celebrate Reading Achievement

2008-12-04T21:51:00.002-05:00

The presentation by Farmer Minor and his companion, Daisy the Pig, was exceptional. Everyone had a good time. What a nice way to celebrate our students' reading accomplishment!

Using a Cluster Map to See Locations of Visitors to Your Site

2008-11-12T22:17:00.003-05:00

Here I go again, experimenting.
I listened to the recording of a webinar from Edutopia with Will Richardson on Making Global Connections and on how the web is changing our lives and opening up our world.
He showed how one young girl's blog has reached out to audiences world wide. When her grandfather died in Dec. of 2007, she decided to make a difference in her community for each of 25 days. Then she decided, with her mother's permission and guidance, to blog about it. Her project has grown into nearly 365 days of making a difference in her community and has touched and inspired others all over the world to do the same.
Here is the address of her blog:
http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com

I looked at her cluster map and decided to try on for my blog. I doubt I'll have the coverage she does. The site gave me .html code to paste into my blog to get the map. So here goes. Hope it works:

Links to teacher blogs

2008-11-06T18:48:00.008-05:00

At the PTO meeting on November 6, 2008, I want to have easy access to the blogs I'd like to show the parents. So.....I am putting them in my blog. Now they are all in one place and accessible.

Mrs. Miller's blog:
http://amitybooktalk.blogspot.com/
Mr. Norton's blog:
http://www.tominct.blogspot.com/
Mr. Fragione's blog:
http://amsb.wordpress.com/
Mr. Doyle's website:
http://www.amityregion5.org/tdoyle/
Dr. Dellinger's blog:
http://dellingerblog.blogspot.com/

A Link from Kathy Schrock

2008-11-06T14:20:00.002-05:00

At NECC (National Educators' Computer Convention) 2007 in Atlanta, Kathy Shrock was a featured speaker on the topic of Web 2.0 tools. Here is a link she provided to educators to help them do further research on how these tools can be used to increase student engagement and achievement.
http://kathyschrock.net/web20/

These tools can be really fun to use. Start small. Experiment with just one, and share what you learn and how you'd like to use it.

Halloween

2008-10-30T22:20:00.002-04:00

It is hard to believer that tomorrow is Halloween, and I haven't posted since August.
Lots of exciting projects have been going on at school, and we are integrating technology more than ever before to make our lessons even more engaging for kids.
I took pictures of all the lockers decorated for Halloween this afternoon and will try to post the winners here tomorow.