Featured Teacher Me! Really!

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

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!

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"

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

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

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

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

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?

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!

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.