2008 MACUL Conference Blog

Gary Stager again for Digital Democracy. This blog is more of a stream of notes jotted during the session. 

Richard Dreyfuss is a proponent of civics education, and argues that our democracy is at risk unless we educate our students to participate in democracy.

Gary says his social activism is inspired by his 7th grade social studies teacher, who, every day, the students knew they might have to march on the school board so he could keep his job.

What’s possible?

• making sense of data (with tools like Google Earth, GIS Software, InspireData, TinkerPlots, Fathom, Mathematica). Use the vast amounts of data to make an inquiry of the data & look for the answers.
• mathematics of polling
• historical perspective
• propaganda creation
• effective communication

Social science applications of math that are really critical for our society.

Mathematica has access to huge databases of information.

50% of mathematics has been invented since World War II. It’s partly the social sciences demand for numbers.

Is Democracy Fair? The Mathematics of Voting and Apportionment

We need kids to be thoughtful and to be able to get answers from multiple sources. You don’t really know something until you look at it from multiple sources. The web makes it easier to look at topics from multiple sources.

We should be really careful at pointing a finger at wikipedia and the web when we’ve been allowing textbook publishers to lie by omission for so many years. The example was the whole speech of Dr. Martin Luther King. Most of us didn’t recognized it until several pages into it.

Primary sources ….
There are always controversial topics for discussion in a democracy.

Why aren’t kids taking the same raw footage and this side of the room make an ad for that person and this side of the room made an ad against that person. (or a consumer product). Every candidate has video online you can digitize and download and manipulate in this way.

One way to make informed decisions is to know how you’re being manipulated. The way to understand how your’e being manipulated is to create your own manipulations yourself.

What ways to use you to make someone look bad: slow mo, tight shows, black and white, testimony, music cut off to pay more attention, playing on emotions and ears, parody, the nostalgic autobiography,

For an example of the parodies, look at Swift Kids for Truth

Ask kids - what makes you feel positive or negative about someone? ask kids to make for & against commercials.

Political activism / citizen journalism
Kids press freedoms have eroded so far; why does it matter? how come it doesn’t occur to them to publish their own stuff?

It’s cheap and easy to worry about people far away (classroom projects for Darfur etc.), but do we care about being active in the local community?

Battleground Minnesota - Shakademic - an example of student journalism. Look at these: Media Rights News, Shakademic’s MySpace site, Get Battleground.

High school kids who have never talked to an adult - had an actual conversation - not just being talked at or bossed around.

If you send an email and ask “can you do this at your earliest convenience, people answer.” Kids can invite people someone to talk to the students - they need to learn that they can do this and how to do it.

They need to learn to interact with adults on a civil basis.

Kids could be looking at real problems in our community and trying to solve them.

“School is like an empowerment free zone for too many kids” why do kids just shrug and take it? we have to teach them they aren’t powerless, helpless and defenseless.

Another example of student work: Joey interviews a cutter:
Youth Radio Project also read more on wikipedia.

Very thought-provoking session as usual. Challenging to do these types of activities with kids, but essential to teach kids civics. 

Hall Davidson

Joe mentioned it earlier, but Hall Davidson is very entertaining to listening to and not only that, has some great ideas.  This Google presentation sounds like one he was going to do at the 2006 NECC conference in San Diego.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t do it because there was some copyright confusion with Google.  I vaguely remember how that was soon cleared up yadda yadda yadda, but not in time for his presentation.

Google Earth is one of my favorite applications…visually it’s awesome…but besides just the satellite views, there are lots of ways to add content on top of that. 

Here are Hall’s handouts.

Google Earth is a platform…one that you can add more information to…web cam, image, video, whatever.  If you’re an educator, you can get a Google Earth Pro license.  If you use it, just be aware that it is even more of a bandwidth hog than just regular old Google Earth.

Google Earth Tips

• Type N on the keyboard to put North at the top.
• Right-click on a placemark and choose Snapshot View to keep that same view each time you visit the placemark.

Hall highlighted the 3D overlays…there are tons of buildings, monuments, and landmarks available for anyone to use.  Same thing with Layers.  Most people probably use thse pre-made layers that are available for free.  In Google Earth, look down on the left and you’ll see them under Gallery: Discovery, National Geographic, NASA, and more…

Route
Use a route “drive” from placemark to placemark.  It kind of looks like driving along from a bird’s-eye view.

Ruler
Use the ruler to measure distances from point to point, or even along a route…and you can change the units on the fly.

Image Overlay
From any image on the Internet, copy and paste its URL and paste it right on top of Google Earth.  You can change its transparency, size, rotation.  It also will lay right over terrain if the Terrain layer is turned on.

There’s so much embeddable content on the web…sites like YouTube or Flickr or whatever that give you a URL…that code can be quickly copied and pasted into Google Earth.  It’s easy to make a multimedia presentation simply by adding content on top of maps.

Last resource from Hall:  Google Lit Trips.

Hall didn’t get through nearly as many items as he may have wanted to.  Remember to check out his handout.  Also, Ben Rimes is giving an 11:30 presentation entitled, “Google Earth for Tech Savvy Educators.”  Very enjoyable!

by Gary Stager. Handouts Online. Recommended article. Who Should I Vote For?

Read Kevin’s post for a nice summary overview of Gary’s points and the 10 things.

Some of my favorite lines from the presentation.

• The Pentagon approaches the Internet with all the finesse and maturity as school districts. Regarding the Pentagon blocking 11 photo and video sharing sites. What about all the new ones created?
• I’m not at all sure we like democracy. Regarding wikipedia.
• Kids are the only abundant resource we have.
• Kids are persistent, resourceful, curious, patient. When they are engaged.
• A good prompt is worth a thousand words.
• We’re really bad at articulating the rationale for what we do.

My laptop battery died, so I didn’t get as many ideas written down as I wanted to. Be sure to check out Gary Stager’s website for additional challenging thinking. Don’t just eat up the most common thoughts being presented. Hear another side. Think deeper. Ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.

I’m starting off today’s activities at Gary Stager’s presentation Ten things to Do With a Laptop. I’ve listening to Gary a number of times at various conferences…never the headliner, but as a quiet featured speaker. Some of the time I don’t agree with him, but I continue to listen to what he says because after the show is over and I’m sitting quietly by myself I can hear my brain changing, shifting, and growing. Gary Stager pushes…he kicks you out of your box.

So what are 10 Things to Do with a Laptop? Well, here are two questions…What will the world be like for your students 20 years from now? Perhaps even more importantly, what is the world like for the children who have not yet entered your school?

There are three types of laptop schools:

1. Pioneers…they want to shake things up.
2. Marketeers…they want their school in the newspaper.
3. Their neighbors…the school up the street is doing it so…

Top Ten List

1. Write a Novel
   When students have laptops they write more and better. In addition, they can write for other forms of media like podcasts.
2. What Your Knowledge
   Use sites such as Wikipedia because the information is current/instant.
3. Answer Tough Questions
   For example, “Who should I vote for?“
4. Make Sense Data
   Use software like Google Earth, GIS, Inspire Data, Tinkerplots, and Fathom
5. Design a Video Game
   Use Microworlds…Gary is very into student programming.
6. Build a Killer Robot
   Gary likes to use Legos to build and invent.
7. Lose Weight
   Keeping track of exercise…that’s not the point, but using the tools kids have to solve problems.
8. Direct a Blockbuster
   Make a movie…writing, editing, shortening is the process that matters.
9. Compose a Symphony
   Using Finale Notepad or GarageBand.
10. Change the World
    Can we aim any higher?

Thanks, Gary, for setting the bar high for using the tech that’s in our schools!

The Past, Present, and Future of Education and Technology

Jason led a pre-conference session yesterday on digital storytelling which was very well received. He’s continuing the same theme on writing and telling stories as a part of learning.

Four tech teaching tips:

• Don’t fear 10 year olds who know more than you…deputize them…
• Be kind to your techies
• Practice Zen Tech, not Zantac
• Have fun…of course!

Don’t rule by concern

• Turn concerns into goals…
• Goals allow you to aim, move with intent…

Teachers and staff need…(the same thing they needed in the first place!)

• Technology
• Tech Support
• Time
• Training

• CARE Incentives:
• Compensation
• Assistance
• Recognition
• Education

Jason’s presentation was very captivating and held a lot of
information. I haven’t done a very good job of summarizing it, he
wrapped it up and disguised his message into compelling story. I would encourage and recommend attending his session tomorrow if you have the chance!

This afternoon I’m participating in David Grapka’s workshop titled Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is Like Differentiated Instruction (DI) on Steroids!

Notes caveat: I didn’t really know anything about UDL before this workshop, so my notes probably reflect that!

What makes a UDL classroom? Having a welcoming environment. How do we advocate for all children? The way he modeled that is giving us his cell phone so we could text him questions!

“What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible”. Theodore Roethke

A vision of students today (scroll down) from Kansas State University. Look at their other videos too. What resonated with you most as an educator and consumer?

For the rookies on UDL: Center for Applied Special Technology is THE place to learn about UDL. These videos explain UDL. After each video, David asked us what resonated with us.

Books mentioned:

• Shaking up the Schoolhouse
• Working on the Work
• Creating Great Schools

UDL principle: Creating environments that work well for students with disabilities makes the environments work for everyone. Teachers rethink goals, methods and assessments.

From my seatmate, Cathy: Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age.

Example - a curb cut started out as an accommodation for wheelchairs, but skateboarders use it, people with strollers, luggage, etc. It helps everyone.

The handouts have a PowerPoint that compares UDL and assistive technology.

RTI: Regular Teacher Involvement; a whole school initiative

Brain Research video - three networks for learning - recognition networks (what), strategic networks (how), affective networks (why). Everybody learns differently.

UDL curriculum: multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, multiple means of engagement, flexible tools, teaching methods and assessment.

He played each video twice! It was great because you got something new the next time around.

There’s a serious disconnect between mandated state testing and new research on student learning and teaching. Tomorrow David is addressing this in his 4 p.m. session.

——

After the break we looked at TRECenter.org Practices. This is what David does in New York. These materials can help you design your own UDL lesson plans.

How is a UDL lesson different than any other lesson plan? What I noticed includes:

• The planning pyramid has “all students will…” “most students will…” “some students will…” “some other students will”
• The unit includes modifications for meeting academic diversity.

This is a template for a UDL lesson/unit plan.

We did an activity using these sites:

• UDL Solutions
• Supports List
• Learning Styles
• Windows to the Universe

Finally, look at Balancing Your Work and Play.

This post is notes and scribbles from the preconference workshop on Photoshop Elements with Leslie Fisher.

First, you need to note that these notes are for the workshop in today’s version. Leslie asked us lots of questions at the beginning to get a feel for our prior knowledge and adjusted throughout the workshop as necessary.

Adobe Bridge is great for keywords and metadata about your photos. But, wait for the next version - CS3 that comes with Elements 6.

PhotoMechanic is the tool Leslie uses for organizing photos, saving them into multiple locations at the same time, and adding metadata. It’s also required for all AP photographers.

The enhance menu has all the items for fixing photos. Leslie put the GE Reveal lights in her house to get better lighting for pictures.

“Save the pixels!” Every time you make a change, you hurt the pixels.

Principle: use layers to manipulate the photo, instead of hurting the photo directly.

Instead of fixing dark pictures by going to Brightness Contrast, go to Levels, add an adjustment layer, Levels. Drag the white triangle a bit (for dark pictures), and then if you want to adjust further, drag the mid tones (the grey triangle).

If all the info (the graph) is on the right, the picture isn’t recoverable. Pay attention to the histogram on your camera and that way you can take better pictures.

The beauty of layers is that you can now turn these adjustments on and off by “poking the eye” icon on the layer. I love how Leslie uses funny phrases to help us remember.

Did you know you can drag a layer from one picture to another? i.e. Leslie has a card example where the student is holding a card with a white, grey and black. Use Layers, Adjustment, Levels, then use the eyedroppers to fix it (white eyedropper clicks on white etc). Then drag that layer to the other picture(s). Very cool.

Let’s say you scanned three pictures crooked on a scanner (not touching). Then go to Image, Divide Scanned Photos. It splits them up! Totally awesome. Or if you have just one, Image, Rotate, Straighten and Crop. Totally cool!

Also check out Enhance, Adjust Lighting, Shadows/Highlights. Darken highlights is good for highlighting clouds and weather.

Now you have to think about it - does the picture need levels or does it need shadows/highlights?

When you sharpen the image, you lose pixels. So be careful. But it helps a picture for PowerPoint and printing. Version 6 will have a SmartSharpern option under Enhance. For now it’s under Filters.

An interesting thing in the workshop is Leslie’s obsession with saving. She saves before sharpening. Before hurting pixels. Anything that isn’t in a layer, she saves before. And always having a picture saved in “raw”.

Straighten Tool. You can draw a line for what should be straight and it will adjust. Then use the crop tool to fix it. You can also set the size (if you need a 5×7) etc.

Extra photo shooting tips throughout the workshop. The trick to being a good photographer is to take thousands of pictures and have a really long lens.

72 pix per inch on a 5 megapixel camera will have a huge picture that prints on a bunch of pages. 180-200 pix per inch will give a smaller picture but that’s better quality. The more megapixels you have, the bigger pictures you can take and the more you can crop and get away with it. The more you crop tho’, the less you have to print. So bigger megapixel cameras are good for sports and paparazzi so you can get a picture from far away and throw away as many pixels as you want.

Printing photos - 180, 200, 220 pixels per inch. SLR cameras let you make changes. Check what the setting your camera has. Set it to the biggest size possible (small, medium, fine etc.) - this setting changes the size, not the resolution.

If you’re changing the resolution on your picture, Image, Resize, Image Size. Make sure the resample is unchecked.

This is why the Walmart/Walgreens/Target etc. little photo booths (or online services) sometimes say that this picture can’t be printed.

Another cool thing: File, New, PhotoMerge Panorama, and then it merges the pictures into a long panorama. Really neat. It figures out where to join them. I need to run this on our Yellowstone pics. To take these pics, stabilize the camera and hold as close to you as possible. 30% overlap or go by “big bulky things”. Check out this 13 picture panorama Leslie did. What you’re not getting in my notes are all the great stories that go along with these tips!

Layers, Adjustment Layer, Hue & Saturation. This changes overall color and brightness of that color in the image. Play with the sliders. Colorize is the easiest way to overlay a color of the whole image. Good for collages or text.

Nice tip, with the brush - the left and right brackets [] make the brush bigger and smaller. (any adobe application).

Principle: Layer masks. If you paint black on the layer you can mask the effect you did with Hue & Saturation. Paint in black to hide the effect and white to bring it back. Then you can add another layer and fix another color (blues, then whites). Look at the layer to see where you’re painting. You would use this to fix a few things or bring out a few colors. You black out the things you don’t want as part of the change.

Layer masks are really cool. Instead of using the eraser and paintbrush, you add a layer mask and paint in black and white to turn it on and off in different parts of the picture.

Another really cool thing: getting rid of a white (or solid color) background. Hold & click the eraser, choose Magic Eraser, click the background. Viola! To keep the transparency when switching to PowerPoint. File, Save for Web. Save as PNG to keep the transparency, plus the quality. (GIF loses quality this way).

Healing brush (under Spot Healing Brush). To get rid of wrinkles, choose the Healing brush. Then hold down alt/option to sample. Make sure you sample from the right place. (Make sure you’re doing this on a duplicated layer). Then brush the fixes. For wrinkles, it’s good to change the opacity to 60%ish to leave a little wrinkle but not too much. This would be a great lesson on advertising. Then Diane Zoellmer next to me shared this link for the Dove Commercial. Check it out.

Red Eye: just click the red eye tool, click in the middle of the red eye. Voila. Just for kicks, try it on a tongue or smile.

File, Picture Package, for creating some 5×7s or a bunch of wallet size, etc. This would be great to use with Marilyn Western’s idea of printing a bunch of pics of your students and then using them in their drawings about habits, careers, etc. I’m teaching Technology in the Early Elementary Classroom right now and the ideas in that class are all by Marilyn Western.

File, Web Photo Gallery to make a set of web pages with themes for your pictures.

File, Process Multiple Files to rename, add the date to the filename. Leslie doesn’t like the autocorrect & resize because it’s messing with those precious pixels!

Finally Leslie closed with a quick demo of version 6. For all my years at MACUL, this is the first one of Leslie’s preconference workshops I’ve had time to attend. It was definitely worth the time! Before this workshop all I did in Photoshop was pretty much resize and crop pictures. Now I have a much better understanding of how I can tweak with my pictures! Thanks Leslie!! Also thanks to Diane Zoellmer for contributing the photo from the workshop.

I’ve been excited about Steve Dembo’s work ever since I saw his New Permanent Record presentation a few years back while attending a conference in Holland. He has an amazing amount of energy, and presents from a very enlightening, and encouraging point of view; that the technology students bring into our schools isn’t going to go away, so why not put it to good use? His presentations range from cool and engaging uses for all of those gadgets kids have to why it’s important that we educate our students now about how their appropriate (and innappropriate) use of social networking sites will create a record that will follow them through all their lives and careers.

Steve is the community manager for the Discovery Educator Network, and does a fantastic job of connecting teachers with resources that they can immediately use in their classroom, as well as thinking about the bigger picture. As a former Kindergarten teacher, Steve has a very relaxing presentational style, and is hands down my favorite presenter when it comes to chatting with him after the session. His presentations are never too commercialized, and help teachers that are new to MACUL or using technology understand that the rapidly changing pace of technology isn’t scary, but wonderful opportunities for new ways to engage students. I’m looking forward to sitting in on his “10 Best Web 2.0 Sites” presentation this year, and get some more great resources to use in my classroom.

Who are you excited to listen to or see at MACUL this year? I’m sure some of the other conference bloggers will be sharing in the coming weeks leading up to the conference, but in the meantime, check out the Featured Speakers page on macul.org to see who will be there.

I see that Patrick Crispen’s previous presentation was covered well by Joe, Jim, and Melissa.  I’m eager to hear how he’ll continue his coverage of Google in this session, “Keeping Up with the Googlebots: What’s New at Google.“

Well…Patrick says we’re skipping PP and just doing the presentation live.  Hooray!

By clicking on Advanced Search you can choose the type of Usage Rights as one of the search criteria for a particular resource.  That’s a good thing for teachers to know…you don’t have to ask permission for the stuff you use.  This takes into account copyright laws and ensures you’re not breaking the law!

To help your searching, Google very quietly has started to incorporate “Ask Jeeves” type answers to their search queries.  Meaning…you can type a question directly into Google…Google Question and Answers is the name of this trick.  Watch for this to become more popular.

Besides the map and satellite views in Google Maps, you can get live traffic data from at least 25 major U.S. cities.  The data is basically live and in real time.  Detroit is included so take a look before you head home today!

If you yourself want to keep track of what Google is up to, check out Google Labs for the latest and greatest new tools.  For example, Google Music Trends displays what people are listening to right now on their computers.  Why?  I’m not sure, but many times these “labs” ideas become mainstream tools.

What else is Google doing?  If you find a business, you can type your phone number into your browser and Google will call the company for you.  Why?  In order to make the company think they’re getting a call from Google, instead of taking down your contact information.  Thanks, Google.  Patrick reminded us that Google’s #1 rule is “Don’t be evil.”

What can be done with Google in the classroom?
Google Book Search  Allows you to search inside of books.  You can’t read the whole book, but if they’re not under copyright you can download the book in its entirety.

Hand in hand with Google Book Search is Google Scholar.  This service searches journal articles…you’ll get the article’s abstract.  You’ll still have to get it from your local or university library, but it goes way beyond ERIC.

Google Notebook is their answer to the 3 x 5 cards you used to use for research.  (You have to have a Google Account in order to use it.)  Google Notebook allows users to take information from a web page and “click it” into their Google Notebook.  Besides just the information, the notebook entry includes the URL where the information originated.  It doesn’t give the date and time, but you can add that yourself by editing the entry.  Another cool thing is that the Notebook can be shared…meaning it can be shared among a group of students collaborating on a project.  Having used Google Notebook a bit myself, this is a great tool!  Definitely try it out!

Patrick is showing us Google Docs, which includes a free online word processor and spreadsheet application.  You can save the documents in a number of formats, including MS Word.  In addition, you can upload your own MS Word document to Google Docs and share it with any number of users.  It’s a great collaborative tool…it can be edited live and in real time by all collaborators.

The audience, in a very full room, really enjoyed Patrick’s presentation.  Who doesn’t like to see a new idea that can be used in the classroom?  Patrick reminds us that all his presentations  (there are a lot) are available online and should be stolen used by everyone.

Patrick Crispen has a gift for us. Even if you did not attend this interesting session you can see his powerpoint presentation through his page at net squirrel. The beginning of this session was his interperetation of how google works and how we can make the search engine work for us. It’s important to note Crispen does not actually work for Google, he is an instructional technology coordinator for a university in Southern California. Lots of good information. One tip that sticks out was to use archive.com to see web pages from previous years, also how to search google’s cache when the page you’re in the lab trying to share with kids is not working. Use google to define words, solve math problems, check the weather, or type in your zip code:movies to find out the shows in your area. Enjoy and check out his handout at netsquirrel.com