Harnessing Creativity with iLife and iWork Course

Over the past 10 weeks, I have been involved in a course designed to help teachers learn more about the Apple iLife and iWork suites. The focus of the course is to help understand how the programs can promote and harness creativity in the classroom. Something I have learned along the way in being involved with this course.

• Being creative means that you purposefully make a choice to go with an element or direction in your work. If you are using technology as a tool for your work, if you do not know about those elements of the technology then it will be harder to harness creativity.
• Visual literacy should be a part of every curriculum and we should help students to understand the meaning of being creative through images.

One of the last projects was using Garageband and making a podcast. Here is my latest attempt to harness my creativity:

Emerging Technology Websites

These are some websites to locate emerging technology ideas:

http://mashable.com/
http://www.gizmag.com/
http://www.wired.com/
http://www.cnet.com/
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-tech-technology.html?mod=WSJ_topnav_tech_main
http://techland.time.com/
http://geekbeat.tv/

If you find any that you like leave a comment!

Interim in Vietnam

It is hard to believe it has already been 2 weeks since we returned from the Vietnam Blue Dragon Interim Trip.  The trip fulfilled all the outcomes and more. Students were challenged and pushed out of their comfort zones to accomplish some amazing projects for the people of Vietnam. They worked together so well. It is hard to believe what they accomplished in such a short period of time but this was because of the strong collaboration skills they all possess. The short experiences of the local vietnamese culture and history in both cities and villages provided a good chance for the students to understand Asia and the world a little better. The opportunities to share in the leadership and in the organization of the trip developed the students in ways that promoted their independence and confidence. We are so proud of these students and we both loved this trip!

See for your selves by reading the student reflections and photos posted on the web site.

https://sites.google.com/a/sas.edu.sg/blue-dragon-vietnam-service-trip-2013/home

Professional Learning Communities are great!

One area of positive change I have made in my school this year has been my involvement with the English 10 Professional Learning Community. This involvement led to one of the most generative experiences I have had as a tech coach.  The English 10 curriculum was already strong but the teachers were questioning how do students read, write, think and create differently in a digital age? Through collaboration things changed. The summer reading book talks moved to book trailers. Students narrative writing became digital storying telling projects. The unit of research involved using a site for gathering research in one place.
Why do I think that this is the best tech integration I have been a part of?

• Professional Learning communities are excellent places for Tech coaches like myself to collaborate with teachers and help them understand how to effectively integrate digital literacy skills for student learning

My professional responsibility is to support, mentor and train teachers to improve students’ digital literacy and Professional learning communities in my school offer a powerful avenue for me to accomplish this.

 This is actually my Google Teacher Video that I made in a very short period of time. I submitted and did not get accepted. I do firmly believe in the work teachers are doing in their PLC's and I am looking forward to continue that work and the work I do with numerous Google applications.

PowerSchool Summit Series - Common Core Standards and More

I spent 3 days at the Pearson Learning headquarters in Rancho Cordova, California learning about how you can use PowerTeacher and the PowerTeacher Gradebook to support the 15 Fixes for Broken Grades from Ken O'Conner's book A Repair Kit For Grading. Along the way I have been learning a lot more about the Common Core State Standards and how Singapore American School is implementing them from our Director of Assessment and expert, Jennifer Sparrow.

Ken O'Conner poses two essential questions that all educators should ask themselves about their grading practices:

• How confident are you that the grades students get in your classroom are accurate, meaningful, consistent and supportive of learning?
• How confident are you that grades you assign students accurately reflect your school's published content standards and desired learning outcomes?

In the summit, Pearson took us through an activity of a teacher having a split personality of be a "Traditional" Grader and a Standards-Based Grader. Two classes were set up and the students in the classes were given real personalities - such as Andrew Average, Gwen Gifted and Nicholas Knucklehead.(sound familiar?) I became more familiear with the 15 fixes as we went through these activities.

The 15 Fixes for Broken Grades

1. Purpose of grades - Don’t include student behavior in grades
2. Late work - Don’t reduce marks for “work” submitted late
3. Extra credit - Don’t give points for extra credit or use bonus points
4. Cheating - Don’t punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades
5. Absences - Don’t consider attendance in grade determination
6. Group work - Don’t include group scores in grades
7. Grade report structures - Don’t organize grading by assessment methods
8. Objectives - Don’t assign grades using inappropriate or unclear standards
9. Grading on a curve - Don’t assign grades by comparing students to each other
10. Assessment quality - Don’t rely on evidence from poor-quality assessments
11. Score validity - Don’t rely simply on the mean
12. Missing work - Don’t use the zero for missing evidence or punishment
13. Timing of assessments - Don’t use formative assessments or practice in grades
14. Reflecting current mastery - Don’t summarize evidence accumulated over time
15. Involving Students - Don’t leave students out of the grading process

Here are some of the things I learned that I would like to share with faculty:

Me Drawing? No Way...

My daughter, Dominique, had 4 weeks off for her Christmas holiday and in normal fashion she wanted to make sure that her time off was productive. She wanted to take an art class and I agreed that it might be fun to do with her. Earlier I had participated in an Apple Learning Academy, that was put on by Drawing by the Right-side of the Brain here in Singapore. I knew about drawing from the right-side of the brain from one of my favorite books by Daniel Pink called "A Whole New Mind - Why Right-brainers will rule the future." In his book, Daniel Pink talks about the attributes of the right brain leading us to be more creative, and the book also gives the readers hands on ideas, such as using Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain, to help sharpen these R-brain abilities.  I really liked the instructors, Nicola and Tricia, at the Learning Academy and their focus on brain research impressed me. I felt like doing a drawing course with them would be meaningful. I have never taken an Art class before and I would consider myself before this class not even able to draw stick figures well. By day five of the class, that all changed! You will see below my attempts.

Each day began with about an hour long chat that included L-Brain and R-Brain information. Nicola and Trish tried to help us to turn off our Left brain by doing things like drawing our hand without looking at what we were drawing and turning things upside down. We needed to let go, ignore the verbal chatter, judgement and preconceived ideas, labels and symbols. I really do believe that I was able to do this and I tapped into brain processes that I did not know was there before. As you will see below with my drawings, I was able to decently make them on white drawing paper, something that I thought I could never do.

I loved doing this course over my holiday and I believe I was successful. It was a special time with my daughter and I think I have learned something new about myself. I actually feel more confident about being creative. I now have a small sketch book to carry around and have been trying to draw for 20 minutes at a time and I have done it twice this week! I would highly recommend this course to anyone who has a desire to find their R-mode. You WILL be successful. To find out more, Nicola and Trish were recently interviewed here about the course. You can also go to their website.

Day 1 - Our first self portrait

This was my first drawing with a using a grid. My HAND!

Day 2 we had to draw a chair by just looking for the negative spaces.

Day 3 we drew a corner of the Art studio by using sightings, looking for angles and proportions.

Day 4 - A profile portrait of my daughter. I am not really happy with this one but my model was being a little difficult.

Day 5 - My Self- portrait

Using Voicethread in Language Learning

For students studying a foreign language, knowing how, when and why to say what to whom is their ultimate goal. One way they achieve this in the language class is through 3 modes of communication - interpersonal, interpretive and presentational. Voicethread has come into the HS Language learning classes to help students with these goals as well as master 21st Century skills of communication. What is VoiceThread? As defined from the Voicethread Website  "A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). A VoiceThread can be shared with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too." If you would like more information about this tool visit http://ed.voicethread.com/support/resources/websites/ SAS has subscriptions available. You need to contact your Technology Coordinator if you are interested. It is also available on the iPad

Ways that HS Language students are using Voicethread:
In beginning Spanish classes the students have created a Voicethread called Quien es? In their Voicethread students speak about who they are, their favorite clothes, hobbies, family and travel. This meets the presentational mode of communication especially when they share this with others for viewing. The students then interact with each others Voicethreads through comments and then this moves into the interpersonal communication. The ability to listen, read and respond in Voicethreads will demonstrate the 3rd mode of communication - interpretive.

 

In higher level Chinese classes,  students interact in class discussions about different topics through Voicethread. One example is the topic of Chinese medicine. Students research the topics and provide information to the class via a thread. They present their opinions and respond to each other demonstrating all 3 of the modes of communication.

 

By using Voicethread for language communication skills students are using the different modes of communication. As they present, share, listen and respond they are strengthening the skills needed to become a better foreign language speaker. These are just a few examples of how some HS teachers are using Voicethread. Please comment and share any other ideas of how you might be using Voicethread.