Day Nine

Today was an independent work day mostly.

Tom Sayer was in the Social Studies room discussing the pitfalls and benefits of our projects. He was completely sympathetic to the problems of real-world teaching and lab use and software and all of those tech classes. He was a stud. When I got back from lunch, he was still here. He must have spent his whole day helping people. He's a bit too techy for social studies, but he talked about the same pitfalls that we all face. Sometimes I feel like the speakers or the session leaders assume that we all have access to everything we see on the screens. Which we all know isn't the case.

I am almost done with my video script. When it comes to writing. Especially something that's supposed to be creative and funny, I sweat and sweat and sweat and then eventually something shoots forth from my noggin. Which is what I'm hoping happens this time as well.

Day Eight

Today was good. We talked about web design using a free editor (which I will definitely use). I also got to offer the expertise I've built up (though modestly) over the past 14 years of my own website. I remember in the old days (1995), there was no way to indent on a webpage. No Indent! So we all learned how to add single pixel photos to the left of text which would make it look like an indent even though it was a clear pixel photo seven pixels wide. These kids today. They don't know what we used to go through.

Wiley showed us some of the simple instructional videos that he's done. Unfortunately, it was more on what he's done and less on what we might do on our own. He owns some pretty expensive software that I don't. I'm all for learning software from books (in fact that's the best way coupled with hands-on), but the purchase of both Flash and Illustrator is beyond my reach right now. We also didn't need to have Wiley prove his bona fides. We could see from his work product that he knew what he was doing. He was personable and available for questions and his stuff really is deceptively simple to view. Good as a demonstration, not so much as a learning opportunity.

It was a good day.

Video Soapbox Descripton

Although, I'm a bit behind (I'm one of those people who works a bit better when up against a deadline), I've decided to do a video for new teachers which discusses the difference between what you're friends think you do as a teacher and what you actually do. How much time they think you spend vs. how much time you'll actually spend.

Friends: you get summers off and only work seven hours a day.
Reality: available via e-mail,text,cellphone, and in classroom 18 hours a day

Just one example.

If new teachers entered the profession thinking that they'll work the contractually specified hours of 7:45 to 3:11 (at my school) they'll be in for a surprise. And teachers that are available only during those hours simply in my mind CANNOT be good teachers. That is my soapbox.

Day Seven

Plenty of free time today. Which I like. I finally figured out what I'm doing for my soapbox video. I'll try to write the script tonight. I think the topic is "a video guide for new teachers" or something about how I believe you can't be a quality teacher if you only work from 745 to 315 or whatever your union contract says. The other choice (and I may do both) is a video instruction guide for substitutes about what my rules are. This would alleviate the sub not taking responsibility and the kids couldn't pretend that "Mr. Cummins always lets us smoke in class" or something similar.

We did some sharing with grade level and then subject. The problem is that the grade level people have already heard about our projects. The subject level was actually enlightening to me as I wasn't sure what sort of social studies a 2nd grader has, for example.

The photo class was pretty cool, but again, Adobe Bridge isn't at my campus. Which makes the class a bit frustrating.

Engaged Learning

I'm in the middle of the survey and as you might expect, I have some issues with it. The instructions say "best describes your most frequent current practice". So even though I have several stellar, incredible lesson/project/simulations, since it's not as frequent as some other methods, I can't answer that way. No teacher that I've ever heard of has students choose tasks, assessments, and stay after class because they're so excited about learning. I'd like to meet these teachers of the year.

After reading about the wonderful world of meaningful engagement, my goals for next year are to continue to bring one new project/lesson to each subject I teach. I have a pretty good list going so far:

World History music appreciation
World History French Revolution simulation
World History Partition of Milpitas journal writing

USA Civil Rights simulation
USA Immigration research project

Government Legislative Bill simulation

I'm going to try the "know everything there is to know about a senator" project next year.

I'm not sure I'm behind the students creating their own evaluations. I have them grade themselves and their peers for group work, but I'm not prepared to give up the power of assessment quite yet.

Day Six

I felt sort of bad about the survey that we all filled out on Friday. I said some truthful things about instructors that weren't exactly complimentary. Today seemed to go a bit better, perhaps because of the feedback of 50 know-it-all teachers. I felt that if I was going to give constructive feedback, I would have to use my name on the survey, so I did. As usual, I worried about it all weekend.

Today's activities:

--Essential questions. I could do this all day. A book on this would be so helpful and our school should hold a mandatory in service on this. Imagine how popular that would be. Some of the superstars in my homeroom again proved to be valuable resources. I'm talking to you, Laura.

--Rushton did a primer on Photo Story 3 software, the freebie from windows that is like a poor man's iphoto. I enjoyed it. It does the "Ken Burns" move and you can add music and export it as a video file. It would take no time at all to teach kids this and they could set their slide shows to music. That would be cool.

--I left before he started the Premiere Elements class. I don't have that software and some day when I get it I'll buy a book to help me through it. I get a bit frustrated when others are trying to figure out how to import photos or install the programs. I sort of which there were classes that you had to qualify for by producing a short slide show, or something.

--There was work time and then a session on assessment. I began to feel overwhelmed which is where I am right now. Since I'm in a group, we need to have some individual assessments as well as some overall, connected assessments. Thu is working hard and finishing early while Frank and I are struggling to catch up. Plus, the soapbox video is officially due tomorrow and I don't really know what I'm doing on that. I'll stay late tomorrow to continue working.

--Plus I have to buy a new laptop, because the one I've been using is going back to its department. It takes me hours and hours of research to make a purchase of this amount. I spent two hours after class running from store to store touching different laptops. I'm not even sure I'm going PC or Mac. Macs are about 1300 and good PCs are about 800.

Woe is me.

Copyright and Fair Use

1. What copyright issues surprised you?

--you can only use 10% of a song for any reason.
--you can only keep a broadcast tv show for 10 school days.
Both of these limits seem so arbitrary. With Beethoven's 9th, you could listen to the best 7:40, but with a Ramones song, it'd be more like 20 seconds.

On the other hand, you may use a purchased movie for instructional purposes as long as you want to. This was a load off my mind because I use around ten films in my US History class. They are incredibly valuable resources. The kids hate me by the end because I'm the king of the pause button.

2. How will you make sure your projects do not violate copyright laws?

--I've bookmarked the two charts that were assigned for us to read. And I'll continue to keep up to date on this as the rules are bound to change re tech in the classroom.

3. How will you teach your students about copyright (appropriate to your grade level). State your grade level.

11th and 12th grade. For some reason, just about every kid thinks they can use any photo, song, film clip, or paragraph, as long as they credit the author in the credits. The fair use websites that we've learned about will be permanent links on my webpage. I will have to add a portion of my rubric to reflect fair use items. Right now, most of them just say "photos are properly sourced."

Day Four

Today started spectacularly.

We were given flip cameras. For free. Easy flash video cameras with three buttons. They have been the top sellers at Amazon since they were introduced last year.

Then we were sent filming each other for nursery rhymes. Which we would edit and make into a short film using whatever software came with our platform.

I wanted to do the preamble, but decided instead to have my team list the united states. My grand dream would be to switch off from one to the next to the next using an edit. But then it became the following:

me: alabama alaska
them: alabama alaska

And it became a bit tedious. Also, my voice preceded each of their lines, so I had to edit myself out. In retrospect, I should have simply done a nursery rhyme and been done in half an hour.

Unfortunately, I had to edit myself out and edit each speaker into an alphabetical list of all the states. To add insult to injury, I also had trouble with the rudimentary task of removing clips of film. So even though I selected the beginning and ending of each clip, I simply couldn't get the editing to do what I wanted. This turned to frustration.

And then I developed a work-around. I would "split" my video files each time I wanted to edit and then simply erase the part of the split that I no longer wanted. While this can't be the best way, it was the only way I could get this to work.

I had some time pressures and then I realized that I had some serious editing issues to do. Had I had more time, I would have explored MovieMaker in much more detail. I might even take the tutorial. I'm one of those people who RTFM as we used to say.

Day Three

It's Wednesday and the high today is supposed to be 101 degrees.

We watched a tech integration video from the SCCOE which was helpful and realistic, which is not something we deal with much here. The fact that we don't have computers for every student at our school. We have four run-down and slow labs. This video by Chris Walsh reminds us that the result is the most important, not how much tech you use.

We discussed our projects and looked at prior ones.

We then spent way too long on the program "Inspiration" which I've been exposed to for four years now and still don't believe that it is useful to me and I'm not confident that my students would find it useful either.

Day Two

The sessions included "systematic change" re using tech in a school that might not be ready for it. Also, a history of tech advances and how they were accepted or rejected in their time.

My review of this session: This was a 15 minute talk stretched into 90 minutes. We know if we're early adopters. We know that we may come up against resistance to our new tech ideas when we get back to our schools in the fall.

The other one was the start of the copyright project whereby we make a podcast about copyright law. This was informative and actually relates to our classrooms. We all use films that we might not be exactly "legal" for us to use. So getting a definite ruling on the law (or at least as much as it's been ruled upon) was a great and useful thing for us to do. We actually ran out of time while we were brainstorming podcast ideas. I liked this one much better.

First Post

First day of class. It is July 7th. It is 95 degrees outside. I am still tired from my trip to Michigan. Maybe I'm on Eastern time.

What I did today:

--set up almost an entire classroom website here