MAC Week Two: Blog Post "Giving an A"

In reading the first four chapter of The Art of Possibility by Roz and Ben Zander, I was struck by several interesting ideas.  First, the beginning of the book appears to be about positive thinking, and the power of positive thinking.  I recognize it immediately because that is what I was taught growing up.  All you have to do is picture yourself doing....or being...or wearing...My mom was especially good at helping you channel your wants and desires into positive thoughts.  To this day, my grown children will still call her (or me) and ask us to help "think" them into (or out of) a situation.  My mother also taught me the opposite side of this coin, be careful what you ask for...you might get it!

The second thing that resonated with me is the idea of giving all of my students an A in the beginning, to break down the barriers to learning.  Several years ago I had a very diverse class, with every level of learner and every kind of student, it was a real challenge.  There was a lot of competition, both real and imagined, between the "A" students themselves, and between the "A" students and everyone else.  I was an "A" student myself, but as a teacher I've found that I have a real affinity for those students who work hard but don't ever seem to reach that "A" level of work.  So I gave my students the assignment of bringing in a 3-D cell model, made of any material they wanted to use, as long as they could properly interpret the required parts of the cell.  I gave the class three days to present the project to their classmates, and of course the "A" students signed up for the first slots.  All of their projects were elaborately done, made with purchased materials, some even commercial grade look-a-likes.  At the end of the second day, I held two of my basketball boys back and asked them if they had gotten some ideas for their project so they could present the last day.  They hemmed and hawed, it was too much money, too much work, too much time, etc.  You've all heard it.  I jokingly said, "Oh come on guys, I could buy a 99¢ hamburger from Wendy's and present it to this class as a cell model...you two have to be able to come up with something!"  Well, the next day they showed up, one with a hamburger still in the wrapper (a plant cell) and one out of the wrapper (an animal cell) and they did a perfect job explaining how they'd arranged all of the add-ons, condiments, etc. to represent the cell.  They both received A's on their project.  Now, I thought it was a fair grade, but don't for a minute think that my traditional "A" students liked it.  They thought it was cheating, or that I was playing favorites.  I tried to explain to them my reasoning for the A, but in the end I decided that it didn't have to be justified.  According to the rubric, the two boys earned an A.  In my heart, they deserved an A.

Maybe I should try giving them all an A in the beginning and see what they can create when the grade isn't the most important thing.

MAC Week One: Leadership Post

To Present? or not To Present?

That is the question! My first thought was, heck yeah! I'll present, I'm much better at that than at writing a paper.  Then I had to think about where, and when, and how to get there.  Then I was back to my original question.

To Present? or not To Present?

Of course, I've always dreamed of presenting at an NSTA conference.  My district paid for me to attend conferences for the first ten years I was a teacher at my school, that was my first introduction to the possibility of technology in the classroom.  In fact, I clearly remember making a list at one session, a "wish" list if you will, and bringing it back to my principal.  I'm pretty sure I have everything that was on that list now, and a few things that didn't even exist back then!!

www.nsta.org

 Unfortunately, all of the NSTA conferences for 2012 are closed for submission of proposals.  And the 2013 conference submissions won't open until September.  So, I guess I'll be trying to get published.  I'm going to start looking into the NSTA publications, The Science Teacher is the one that I have been reading for years.

Stay tuned!

MAC Week One: Comment to Kristen's Blog

See Kristen's entire post on Copyright here: http://kristenmckernin.blogspot.com/2012/05/wk1-blog-post-copyright.html

In her post, Kristen said: "Although I am happy to have covered this subject, again I am questioning the order of class sequence along this journey at Full Sail.  I knew what copyright was and that there were some rules, but I never really knew all that entailed until embarking on my Full Sail journey.  I was first made aware of it when I made my introduction video, Week 1 of Month 1, when I had looped the introduction to a Darius Rucker song as my background music.  I had JUST used iMovie for the first time, the music files wouldn't show because I was missing an update, and my iTunes library was nicely showing right there.  Since then, we have been been constantly reminded of the rules of using your own photographs or making your own clip art.  It wasn't until Full Sail that I was introduced to Creative Commons, a site that I now use often.  Since I have to make up ALL of my own curriculum, I used to always just do a Google search for images and use those throughout my lessons.  Now that I have been made aware, I always try Creative Commons first.  Maybe it is just me, but I think that this lesson and the lesson on iMovie would have been INCREDIBLY helpful in month 1; I had to find out with a marked down assignment."

I couldn't agree with you more, Kristen! I, too, got docked early on for using music that was my own property and then again for using music that I had mistakenly identified as royalty free.  And, it seems that some professors are more lax about deducting those points! I have to admit that I've been guilty of Google-ing images that I need for my classroom presentations as well.  That's one reason that I've never made my presentations public on a school website, I knew that getting the images straight from Google wasn't exactly kosher.  Maybe we should put in one of our evals that we would have really benefited from this class earlier in our course of study.

MAC Week1 Comment to Cynthia's Blog

See the original post in it's entirety: http://cynthiamadanski-affectingeternity.blogspot.com/p/week-one.html

"...I found the Good Copy / Bad Copy video to be very fascinating.  I think the Nigerian filmmaker summed up how copyright laws are to be followed succinctly:

“If you don’t have permission, you can’t use it.”

I learned that it is all about getting permission, not about money at all.  I often wonder about showing movies at school. I have seen schools who host family movie nights.  They rent a DVD, and project it in the gym for families to watch together.  I am hesitant to participate; are they breaking copyright laws by showing the video in a large gathering like that, with over 100 people viewing?  Most teachers reply it is OK because they are not charging for it.  I question if they have permission.

Another quote I pondered from Good Copy / Bad Copy was “We don’t want to look at this from the negative angle…copyright is not about stopping people from using your work, but getting them to use your work legally and giving you money for what they have done with your work.”

I think that makes so much sense.  I am not opposed to sharing lessons I have created with others, in fact I believe collaboration is the most crucial tool for teachers today.  However, I do want to be recognized for the work I have done in creating these lessons.  A site like TeachersPayTeachers.com allows for teachers to share lessons, be recognized as the creator, and make money for the intellectual work provided."

I couldn't agree with you more, Cindi! Our school shows AP Films every couple of weeks and I always think the same thing. I thought there was a limit to the number of people who could view a video at the same time or it violated copyright.  I have used other teacher's work before, found while scouring the internet, but I always try to include their name on the work somewhere.  Or, if I change it up to suit my class, I give them credit for the original.  I didn't think that was such a big deal when I first started teaching.  Then I went to a county-wide science teachers meeting once, and a former co-worker was there passing off one of my worksheets as her own.  After that, I put my name on all of my work!

MAC Wk1 reading: Copyright issues, parts 1 - 3: O Brother!

My mother is fond of saying: there’re no new stories…it’s all just the same story, retold.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190590/

 

I’m reminded of one of my favorite movies, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”  The movie is essentially a remake of Homer’s The Odyssey.  Of course, the copyright on The Odyssey must surely be up by now and who would own that copyright anyway?  A fellow teacher just told me that she uses “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” to teach The Odyssey. Same story. Who knew?

If it’s all just the same story, retold…then maybe it’s all just the same music, remixed? I still have my old mix tapes from the ‘80’s, in a box somewhere, and I have CD’s that my girls and I made over the years with music mixes (of our own purchased music) on them.  Things are much easier now with digital media, our iPods are just one big mixed device.  In one of the videos we watched, they blamed piracy for killing the record stores.  I think that’s a stretch.  Digital media has been a game changer for lots of industries and only those willing to change with the times are going to survive.  I still buy whole albums on iTunes, most of the time.  And I still buy real books to enjoy the total sensation of reading for pleasure. But I think that re-mixing may be here to stay, in fact, I really enjoy some of the new mixes that use some familiar 80's tunes!

Now I’m off to watch my legally purchased copy of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

More Ideas for QR Codes in the Classroom

Following up on my previous post on QR Codes in the classroom, I've done a little research.  One way we might use the QR codes in our library is to have the AP English and PSAT classes review the books they've read and post those reviews for their classmates.  Picture this: A student has to have a fiction book to read for his English class, he goes to the library and uses his phone to scan the QR codes on a poster of book titles.  Each QR code is connected to a 1-2 min. podcast of a book review done by a fellow student.  Quickly, our student is able to find a book that will interest him!  This project directly benefits the student who is looking for a good book to read, but it also indirectly benefits that upperclassman who has now created and published a book review that could potentially be available worldwide!
Another idea related to this, have QR codes linked to trailers of movies that have been published.  Not sure if you want to read that book? Watch the movie trailer first and see if it interests you.

These are ideas that I got after watching this video:

I also found this great QR code generator, that will generate a code for a variety of different sources, such as SMS messages, videos, web pages, etc.  The same person has also created a QR reader/scanner for ios devices.  It's free for the basic scanner, there is an upgrade if you would like to use your Smart device to create the code also.

http://keremerkan.net/qr-code-and-2d-code-generator/

More apps to come!!

Using QR Codes in the Classroom

I've been fascinated with QR codes for a few years now, imagining ways I would use them in the classroom with our class iPod Touches, or even with student Smartphones.  Here's a good resource if you've been thinking about using QR codes in your class.

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AclS3lrlFkCIZGhuMnZjdjVfNzY1aHNkdzV4Y3I&hl=en_GB&authkey=COX05IsF

 

45 Interesting Ways to Use QR Codes