#EduFave Digging Through Favorites

I was thinking about going through my Favorites list in Twitter. As the school year starts, I want to see what gems I thought were going to be useful. Sometimes when I'm on my not-Smartphone, I favorite things that won't open in the cell phone browser to look at later. I never seem to get back to things.

Shall We Play a Game?

I've decided that once a quarter I'll send a tweet asking my followers to look through their Favorites and find something they added over a month ago. Just tag it EduFave. We'll all find something we may have added to favorites a long time ago and forgot about. It will force us to look at our favorites.

My Way Back Machine Favorite

From August 26, 2008 Allanah King shared how to turn your Delicious bookmarks into a clickable HTML file.

What is one of your #EduFave tweets?

My Talented Son

My thoughts are turning to the new school year. As a result of a Skype call with Shannon Miller and attending the 2011 EdmodoCon I am filled with new ideas for the 2011-2012 school year. My son has become really talented in using The Gimp. I asked him for a tutorial on creating badges for Edmodo. It turns out Edmodo made it much easier than I realized.

Edmodo Badges

Electronic badges can be awarded to students for various teacher selected reasons. I have not yet decided on what I will award, but 100% completion of big projects, supporting another student, contributions to discussions are all possibilities. 


In order to introduce the concept, and award students who helped me test out Edmodo last year, I wanted to create a badge. I knew my son had taken The Gimp to greater heights than I have, so I asked him to teach me how to use the path tool to create a badge and add a glossy look to the top. I thought that the badge needed to be fully designed.  This is the badge Stephen designed for me. It is gorgeous! I actually like it better than what Edmodo did for me - although they make it less work in the long run.


When we uploaded it, we found out that the little edge and drop shadow beneath the image is created on the Edmodo side. So Stephen redid the badge as a simple square as you can see on the right.

Edmodo turns it into this finished image:

The image is a 55x55 pixel square. 


I don't know how to find the teacher shared badges, but if you like this badge I did make it a shared image.

Ideas From Shannon

One idea that Shannon shared with me would make a collaborative project much easier. Rather than having two teachers on the project, Shannon and her teacher-collaborator from outside the school created one teacher account. In this way, both teachers were able to communicate with all students. It became one classroom and one teacher voice. I thought that was an interesting way to approach the collaboration.


I'm not planning on a collaborative project through Edmodo at this point, but I am up for it. I can extend this idea to collaborating through a wiki.

140edu: Ideas and the Need to Reach Out

I remember hearing great feedback from people who attended the #140 Conference in New York a while back. It wasn't education related per se, but people who went we so glad they did. When I heard that there was going to be a 140edu conference in August, I signed up immediately.

My Reasons for Going

The conference was broadcast via the #140conf NYC Ustream channel. I know from experience that I don't sit down and really watch Ustream the way I attend to a live event. I'm not a city girl, but I knew that I could make it up to 92nd Street. Attending is also another way of reaching out to the educators that make up the online part of my learning network. Relationships become so much stronger when you can meet in person.

The Need to Reach Out

At the end of Kim Sivick's talk, Global Collaboration for Elementary Age Children, an audience member asked where she could find global collaborative partners. I took out a little Moo Card with my contact information and planned on giving it to her at the end of the talk. I didn't feel right standing up while the talk was still going on. Sadly, the person left the auditorium before I could reach out to her. I knew what she was wearing, but couldn't find her the rest of the day. It was something I had talked about in one of my sessions at ntcamp last Saturday. I had gathered some resources on a Google Doc and would have been happy to exchange email addresses or talk with her over the phone.

During the conference, a few of the EdCamp NYC organizers and I went out to lunch. Our next unconference is on October 1 at The School at Columbia University. The EdCamp NYC link in this post will take you to our web page where you can reserve a free ticket to the event. Katy Gartside and I wanted to brainstorm ways to bring more teachers to our unconference...specifically teachers who don't connect in online spaces. In addition to Karen Blumberg and Deven Black (from the EdCamp NYC team), we had @21stcenturychem and Michael Doyle sharing their thoughts.


After lunch, Katy and I had the pleasure of speaking with Mo Krochmal (@Krochmal). He had been filming and taking photos during the day and stopped to share the fact that I could find a video of our impromptu Zumba session on the Social Media News NY Facebook page. Incidentally, videos of the #140edu talks are on that Facebook page, as well.


Mo was so interesting to talk to. He has had a varied career including education. He shared the idea of putting a post up on the Social Media News Facebook page to ask for ideas on getting the word about EdCamp NYC out to the teacher on the street. I hope we have the pleasure of seeing him on October 1st.

Reaching Out in Other Online Spaces

As I was thinking about the #140edu conference, I kept coming back to the educator who asked how to find global collaborative partners. As I was thinking, I noticed a few requests to connect on LinkedIn and remembered that I had created a LinkedIn group for ntcamp and EdCamp NYC. As I was tweeting out a link to the ntcamp group, I started thinking about LinkedIn groups as a potential way to help connect people who may not choose to participate in Twitter but have been to events such as the #140edu conference.

Remembering the Lessons Taught in School

I am an organizer of EdCamp NYC so I had no problem creating it's LinkedIn group. I asked the ntcamp organizers before I created that group. Jeff Pulver and Chris Lehmann were extraordinary hosts at the #140edu conference. Jeff really "owns" the 140 brand and I didn't want to do anything with a LinkedIn group without his knowledge. Before the conference, Jeff must have followed all the people registered for the conference, so it was easy enough to send him a Direct Message via Twitter. I let him know what I wanted to do and asked permission to use the 140 logo for the group. He said it was fine as long as I listed him as a "co-host" of the group.


I am always trying to teach my students respect for other people's work. This is another example for me to share at school. If you reach out, and let people know what you are trying to do, they are often very gracious in helping you out and giving you permission. Jeff was very generous in quickly replying so I could get the group started.

#140edu LinkedIn Group

Now there is a LinkedIn group for the conference. I am not sure who will or won't join. It is another way to try to reach out into the community. More and more people are joining LinkedIn and Facebook. By having groups in those places, we may be able to help those people in the audience who don't know how to start a global collaboration or find a connection to someone they'd like to talk more with after a live event.

My Other Takeaways

The 92nd Street Y was really easy to get to. I did not brave the subway, but it was an easy taxi ride from Penn Station. I sat in the auditorium for almost every talk and took detailed notes in a Google Doc for Tuesday and Wednesday. Feel free to take a look. A wonderful stranger (or maybe someone I knew) in the audience was editing the document with me. They weren't signed in to Google, so I really don't know who it was. Thank you, whoever you are, for adding links and a table of contents!


I have so many ideas and thoughts that will continue to circle in my mind my. I will be going back through the documents and reviewing the videos. I'll probably eventually post some thoughts here over time. 


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Image Citation:
Ann Oro http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6140/6004086766_524e4d66d3.jpg Creative Commons Attribution

New Teacher Camp 2011 (ntcamp)

I enjoyed the trip into Philadelphia for New Teacher Camp. One of the things I really like about ntcamp is the smaller size of the group of attendees. I met many new people today and enjoyed discussions with several folks in my online network. Gerald Aungst was a wonderful host. The event was held at WHYY Studios at Independence Mall. For a person who does not relish travel it was really easy to get to by car. I found a great $5 for the day parking garage a short walk from the station. It all got me in a great mental frame of mind arriving at the event.

Sessions I Attended

I chose to post sessions I would lead for later in the day since the schedule was fairly empty after lunch. I first met @Cybraryman1, Jerry Blumengarten,  at ntcamp in 2010, but we never really spoke. He reached out to me the day before, online, to share a resource I wanted for my presentation. I made sure to stop by, introduce myself, and chat a bit. I decided to sit in on his session, Expect the Unexpected. I had no idea what the session would be about, but I remember his energy from last year and knew I'd be happy I attended.


He led us through a series of photos documenting his time as a teacher and told stories about incidents in his teaching life and the stories of running into those students years later. My takeaway from the time with Jerry is that we will never really know the impact we may have had on children through specific lessons we teach until many years later. While I know this is true, it was a pleasure seeing it from his perspective as a retired teacher.


My second session was with Lyn Hilt, Make Your PLN Work For You - Get What You Need From Social Media. I have become familiar with Lyn's work via her work with Connected Principals and online interactions. It was great to listen to her. I tried to keep track of my notes as I listened in this Google Doc. While I've been building a Personal Learning Network for several years now, I am always eager to hear tips that I can pass on to others just starting out.

Lunch

For a travel adverse person, I was really happy that Gerald had offered lunch delivery for the day. I sat and enjoyed the company of several educators - some I only met today. It was very leisurely. I sat and chatted for over an hour, then I went to set up for the two sessions I posted on the board.


I had planned on using a protocol on the National School Reform Faculty web site called The Multiple Perspectives Protocol. If you haven't heard of the web site take a look. It is a set of methods that can be used to help lead discussions, review of text, and other tasks with groups of educators (and older students).


As I looked at the protocol the first step calls for asking the attendees to "define" themselves. I decided on a few categories that could be used to define people in both sessions and set up an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the responses.


The room did not have a projector, but it had two dry erase boards. In addition to listing the categories on the board, I added the guiding questions I had thought of in advance as bullet points.

Primary and Elementary Collaborations

The first session I offered was titled Primary and Elementary Collaborations. My schedule was opposite the ever popular Web Smackdown, Lyn's Digital Storytelling, and Socrative - Visual Thinking. 


One wonderful attendee spent an hour with me. I had prepared this Google Doc as an electronic handout and outline. Since there was only one person I didn't use the protocol. It was a pleasure sharing ideas with someone just getting ready to do student teaching in a first grade classroom. I am happy she felt she got several useful ideas. This is the whole point of the unconference model.

Digital Citizenship and Education (ISTE NETS*T 4)

This session was really for me. I am very interested in how to present the concepts in the NETS for Teachers Digital Citizenship strand to teachers. I had three attendees. I explained that I wanted to try a protocol for the first time and asked that they'd be my guinea pig. I have to get back to everyone and get their take on what we did.


My categories for introducing ourselves were: grade Levels in the school, how much thought have they given in advance to this topic, and which of the four subcategories in the standard most interested them.


Next we got into the second part of the protocol in which the presenter chooses a question to focus the whole group. Unfortunately, we all had a different focus, so I asked everyone to take a couple of minutes and write down their thoughts and concerns in their area of interest.


Afterward, one person at a time shared their thoughts in having heard the points of view what they could share. 


I had prepared this Google Doc in advanced and tied the thoughts I had coming into the session after each person provided their concerns, questions, and insights. In some instances, ideas had come up that I hadn't considered and I added them to the document as we worked.


It was a very good hour for me...and I believe the attendees, too.

All's Well That Ends Well

I am so glad I took the time to travel down to New Teacher Camp today. Thanks to all three organizers!

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Image Citation:
Ann Oro. http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6026/5993662469_9211540448.jpg Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial

Scratch and Pen Commands

This year, the sixth grade students are exploring Scratch and pen commands. It is Logo-like in application. My goals are to give the students more exposure to the Scratch program while making visual shapes and explore the mathematics of geometric shapes.

Setting the Stage

The students have created several other projects with Scratch in earlier grades. The projects revolved around moving sprites and programming a simple dress up game. 

Thinking About Shapes

We walked through steps to create a square using the pen commands. I have laid out the lesson on this wiki page. Once they had an idea of how the commands worked, they really enjoyed experimenting with the handout (also on wiki) and seeing how changes to the command blocks changed the shapes drawn on the screen.

Exploring Multiple Repeats

Once basic shapes are mastered, the students will explore creating spirals by embedding shapes in repeat statements and modifying the angle at which the sprite starts. They will extend those spirals by changing the pen color and pen size. The lesson handout is on this wiki page.

Further Extensions

I am in the process of creating a few more handouts for students who work through these first two projects. All of the previous concepts work on the basis of 360 degree turns to complete a regular shape such as a square, pentagon, or octagon.