Sunday, November 22, 2009

On Being "Twitter"pated

Disney's term twitterpated brings on a whole new meaning in the 21st Century:) And you, like Thumper and the gang, may say that it's not going to happen to you. But my experience says that you will become hooked whether you're ready for it or not!

In my mind, Twitter is, by far, the best way to receive timely, ongoing, at-your-fingertips professional learning, anytime and anywhere you can connect. I use Facebook to socialize, but I use Twitter only from a Global Learning perspective. In a relatively short amount of time I've attached myself to some of the most extraordinary educational leaders from all over the world. It is quite a rush to be in contact with them. I can honestly say, I've never learned so much in so little time. AND I haven't had to travel, or spend hundreds of dollars to receive such valuable professional learning. Here is a video that exemplifies my feelings:

In order to get started:
1) Create a Twitter account


2) Know that, in authentic global learning networks (GLN), people want to know who you are so, when setting up your profile make sure you:

  • use your first name and last name - no nicknames
  • state where you are from
  • if you have a blog or website you'd like to share as being part of you, post the URL
  • state some things about yourself in the bio section

3) Once your account is set up, you will automatically have a list of people who you "follow". Delete this bunch unless you really want to follow them. Just know, they are not necessarily educators.

4) This next step is definitely a method of viral communication. Remember this "and they told two friends...and so on" method. Within each person's home page, there will be a list of people who they follow. If this person has worked hard on creating a GLN, then they will be following some pretty great people. I like to think of myself as one who has created such a realm. Follow me:) If you go to my twitter profile, you can scroll through the list of people I follow and choose to follow them too. But don't just believe me. Look at their profiles and make sure they are who you'd like to see tweeting. I always look at their profile (making sure they have followed my rules from above), and scroll down through their tweets to see if they are saying anything that intrigues me. I'm looking for people who can educate me - I don't care if they are driving on the 401, or what they are having for supper. I want to see them posting "food for thought" about education, URLs to educational sites and blogs or pics of educational value. If I had to choose one person for you to follow it'd be Steven Anderson: he tweets the most beneficial Educational PD that I've received...hands down. His motto is "Trying to Change The World, One Tweet At A Time..." He's definitely doing that!

Give yourself permission to "lurk" for awhile, but eventually you need to join the conversation. It is a little scary at first because once you've tweeted, you can't take it back. But you soon get over that. I have two rules for tweeting:
1) Learn some tweeting etiquette through a couple of websites:

2) Give them something to look at - blogs, websites, pics.

Recently, Alec Couros, during a keynote speech in Oshawa, stated that,
"Twitter is trust among educators."
This is a fantastic analogy. Historically, we educators have spent countless hours within the four walls of our classrooms and worked our behinds off, alone. In the 21st Century we need to learn to have flat classrooms. We need to get past this state of being too nervous to share because, collectively, we are an extraordinary force. As a newly hired IT Consultant, I've seen the most amazing things happening right within my district. Educators are doing the most incredible things for their kids in their classrooms, but no one else gets to see, because those four walls keep getting in the way. If there was ever a way to start peeking out from those walls, it's by connecting to others through Twitter. Believe me, you will not regret becoming Twitterpated:)

Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Wonderful World of Wordle

Wordle is the grrrrreat!

You can easily create word clouds by copying and pasting text into the space provided. Then you can change the font, the layout, and the colours to make the cloud represent your artistic intentions. The more a word occurs in the text, the larger it will be in the word cloud. It's easy and so much fun!

When I first decided to play with Wordle, my mind automatically went to Dr Seuss. After all he has the most amazing way with words. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he is somehow connected to the word "wordle"...:) I easily found a reader's theatre version of one of my favourite Seuss stories, copied and pasted it into the Create window, pressed Go and voila! Can you tell which story I chose?

Obviously someone does "not-like-them" in the Seuss cloud. I think this would be a great little exercise on identifying the main idea in a piece of text, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. The larger words help the viewer quickly and easily identify the main idea.

Guess the Wordle is a great site that you can use with your students in order to guess the topic of the Wordle. Another great strategy for practicing finding the main idea.

I recently read an ISTE magazine article, where a middle school teacher, Samantha Morra, wrote about how she uses Wordle for all sorts of great things. She spoke of having her students go to the Our Documents website (obviously American) and choosing a document from the 100 Milestone Documents on the site. Her students had the most amazing conversations about the information shown in their clouds. I wondered what that might look like and decided to find a document on the Rights of the Child - copied into the Wordle window and this is what it looked like:

Ms Morra also spoke about a student putting her book report into Wordle. When it created a cloud the word "also" appeared as the largest word. The student decided that perhaps she used that word too much. Talk about a seize-the-moment teaching opportunity!

So I noticed that you can make a Wordle out of your blog feed. I decided to create one with my blog to see what it would look like:

Guess I use the word "just" too much??? Hmmmm...

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

"Flip" Over Extreme Makeover Home Edition

When I was in Erie, PA earlier this summer I found out that, none other than, Extreme Makeover Home Edition had chosen a local home with which to perform their magic. I was VERY excited about this as I often spend Sunday evenings cozied up on the couch with my dog curled up in my legs (and some kleenex) to watch this heartwarming show. My hubby never concedes to watching, but I think that's because he minds the crying a little more than I:)

I did a little research and found that Ty and the crew were helping out a local "angel" named Clara Ward. She is the founder of the Youth Development Center in Erie, PA where she teaches children who have been abused and neglected. She often uses her own money to provide for the needs of these children. Clara is wheelchair bound due to a rare degenerative muscular disease and lives with her daughter.

It just so happened that my dear friends the "Hubbles" had gone to see the site a few days earlier and thought it was so neat that they kindly took me back to the site when they heard my relentless enthusiasm about it. This is what it looked like during their earlier visit:

The day they took me, the builders had completed building the house and the moving trucks were unloading furniture and medical technology. "Little Hubbet" took pics of the celebs and I was faced with the perfect opportunity to try out my new video technology called a Flip.

As you can see below, Paige is walking out from the house to meet the truck. She is just as beautiful in real life as she is on TV. I LOVE her pink construction attire!!

"Little Hubbet" caught Ty and Pauly jumping from the truck in this pic. I just happened to see Pauly downtown that evening while dancing my feet off to the M-80's (a fabulous band if you're into 80s music like me:)


The following is the movie I made with my new toy:

We were told that this episode will be second in the new season this fall. I know I'm going to be looking for it!

I tell you I LOVE MY FLIP!! It's compact, it's easy to use, you can create movies lickety split and you can pick one up for only about $145 at your local Walmart. You simply turn it on and push the red button: then you're recording. Push it again when you're done. Once you've created all your footage, you click the switch on the side and out "flips" a usb connection that, once plugged into your computer, automatically launches its own movie maker program.

First you save your raw footage into albums, second you make your movie and third you share them.



Upgrade to FlipShare and you have even more options. What a great little invention!

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Sky is the Limit!

I recently had the most AMAZING adventure I've EVER had in my whole life. I was sky high...literally!! I finally went skydiving! I have wanted to do this for years, but never found anyone who would do it with me. Who would have thought it would be my crazy hair stylist that finally got the opportunity to push me out of a plane? "A perfectly good plane," my husband keeps reminding me.

My friend came to pick me up bright and early on what seems to be the only day of this summer that it hasn't rained. It was a clear and sunny day, so it was definitely meant to be. Fortunately he was the one who was driving or it may have been the more dangerous travel method of the day. We arrived at the Niagara Skydive Centre in good time where I proceeded to attempt to read a consent form, signed on the dotted line, watched a video (don't really remember that either) and was then led into the hangar where I was to show the instructor, who soon proved to be my videographer, how I could arch and get myself out of an airplane...did I mention my husband reminding me that it was a perfectly good plane?

A flight suit was chosen for me and I, of course, chose meaningful and colour-matching head gear and goggles to go with it.

I was introduced to Tandem Tim, a great person: very experienced (10 years and over 4000 jumps worth), calm, and much to my delight somewhat crazy!! I guess we kind of have to be...also something my husband tends to remind me of frequently. And the fun began! I don't know what else to write at this point, as you just have to watch the video to see how much fun I really had. Please note the open mouth, as I will be the first one to admit that I'm a screamer:) I was told that I could be heard back at the airport - good grief. Anyway, enjoy the flick:

It was the most amazing experience I've ever had in my life. I know I've already said this, but I just don't know how else to describe it while staying somewhat professional if you know what I mean:)

The view was spectacular and meant so much to me, having boated on Lake Erie for pretty much all of my life. To my east, I could see the mouth of the Niagara River and the States side of the lake for what seemed as far as my favourite home away from home: Erie, PA. To my west I could see the "stacks" in Nanticoke and just make out Long Point...fantastic! When the pilot reached over and opened the door to the plane, the rush of air and the rush in my mind and body were equal in power. There was no turning back then! And out we flew, head first with that familiar feeling of amusement park rides, but that is the only second that felt of the carnival sort. Once we leveled out, it was the most surreal feeling - not of falling, for there was nothing with which to gauge descent. The land forms seemed to stay the same size for quite some time. It was just an influx of air, that probably would have helped me breath if I hadn't been screaming right back at it! Then BOOM and we had stopped abruptly, right in midair, as the shoot opened. You really need to pay attention to the video to see what actually happened. I'm not going to write about it, but let's just say that it was a very spiritual experience for me - it was definitely not my day to go to the greater beyond - I was high enough. From then on it was the most calming silence I've ever had the privilege of hearing. I took my goggles off and tried to decide how I was feeling. There was a lump of emotion in my throat and a smile that never faded from my face as I floated, for what seemed like ages, back to reality. This is truly an experience that can't be understood unless it's undertaken by the individual. I'm so glad I did it and thank those who made it what it was. Thanks to Kevin, Tim, Sven, Shane and the pilot with the smile that would make anyone happy:)

Technology:
For those of you who aren't real interested in the Technology PD I've chosen to build into this blog site, feel free to stop reading now:) For those of you who would like to know about DVD conversion read on:

I had no idea how difficult it would be to convert an "already-made" DVD to video files that could be uploaded to my blog. Blogspot allows many forms of video, such as AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media and has a restriction of 100 MB maximum in size. But this obviously doesn't include the DVD format with which I was provided. Once I did some research I saw that my DVD was divided up into three files that represented the different parts it takes to run the video:

  • .IFO files, which contains menus and other information about the video and audio.

  • .BUP files, which are backup copies of the .IFO file.

  • and .VOB files (for DVD-Video) and .AOB file (for DVD-Audio) are MPEG-2 program streams with additional packets containing navigation and search information. Since a .VOB file is just a specialized MPEG-2 file, most MPEG-2 decoders and players can play them. You may need to change the extension from .VOB to .MPG. However, any special features such as angles or branching will cause strange effects. The best way to play a .VOB file is to use a DVD player application to play the entire volume (or to open the VIDEO_TS.IFO file), since this will make sure all the DVD-Video features are used properly.

  • **this information was found at http://allformp3.com/dvd-faqs/410.htm

I haven't had much luck via internet searches...of course I want something free. I did find a few freeware apps, but the quality wasn't the greatest (I was reminded of those old Japanese movies where the mouths certainly didn't match the voices) or there was a logo stamped in the middle of the video because I was using a trial version.
These sites offer "free downloads" but in the end they are just a trial version and you need to buy the full software for them to work properly:

Here is a forum that offers all sorts of advice regarding video conversion software:

Adobe Premiere Elements proclaims to have video conversion built in and it is the newest OESS software to Grand Erie and other Ontario boards (therefore free), but it is not the most intuitive and also burns up HUGE amounts of RAM and therefore often crashes your computer.

As you may well guess, I was getting more frustrated as time went on and...well time was moving on! I wanted this video uploaded NOW!! I was excited to share. So I resorted to going to my hubby who has some pillaging qualities to him if you know what I mean...Aaaargh Matey! He had some software on his Mac that he claims is called "Video Converter" and is for Macs only. If you have watched the clip, you will see that, it too, is the not the best of quality. But it will have to do for now.

I have a fuzzy recollection of going through this same kind of troubleshooting when I was involved with Virtual GrandE. If memory serves correctly it is all in the initial upload from the camera that makes things easier to manage in the end...Mr. P what do you think?
If anyone has any knowledge, thoughts or other comments for this DVD video editing conundrum please feel free to add them to this blog.

Monday, July 6, 2009

International Celebrations

Man, do I enjoy fireworks! I am a fortunate person in that I usually get to celebrate Canada Day, then head over to our "home across the pond" and celebrate Independence Day with our fantastic friends using their various methods and means. I tell you, I love my homeland, but those Americans sure do know how to put on some fireworks displays! This year we hit the jackpot and were invited to the exclusive "pyro-mortician's" home party, where I witnessed a display that compared to none other than Disney itself. It was OUT OF THIS WORLD!!

It was not only the best I've seen, but after this work of art, we got a chance to talk to the "pyro-mortician" and his team. They explained, with great enthusiasm, all the "behind the scenes" physics- and chemistry-like details and the preparation for the event. I had no idea what was involved. They actually have pyrotechnician licenses! They sit and sift through catalogues, plan colours and reactions, then make their order. The day of the event they go out onto the vast amount of front lawn and set up each and every piece. (I'm still kicking myself that I didn't bring my camera!) Then once the sun has set and darkness falls upon their party, they gear up in their pyro-uniforms and work like "mad dogs", knowing just how each rocket is going to lift off and what it is going to do, for the duration of the event. It was just as interesting for me to watch them perform, in rhythm, a dance of fire like I've never witnessed. I don't know if they realize how amazing they looked as they worked in perfect sync with each other to create such a thing of beauty! I now understand the origin of the word "pyrotechnician": a performer capable of dazzling virtuosity; ...in the art of fire. They truly were artists in my mind.

What does this have to do with technology in education? Well I am on vacation...and it is my blog:) But if I had to make a educational connection I would definitely see a place for the art of fireworks in Grade 4 Light and Sound. And one could link it to art, physics and chemistry courses alike. And of course I need to say that I definitely would NOT promote pyrotechnic creation in schools:) There are some pretty neat websites surrounding the history of pyrotechnics. Here are a couple:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fireworks/

http://cc.oulu.fi/~kempmp/pyro.html


This blog post is dedicated to my Friends from Across the Pond. You are a wonderful bunch and we truly value your friendship and all the things you do for us to make us feel at home.

Thank you for your endless and thoughtful hospitality. There is nothing like it. Here's to homemade strawberry jam, lobster cookouts, fresh out of the oven brownies doused with homemade - yes, again, homemade - vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce (to hell with Brewsters!), driving here, driving there, putting up with a wet dog, loaned cars, boat tune-ups, doggie ladder fix-ups, the best wings in the world, driving here, driving there, putting up with a wet dog, boat ride invitations, block parties, sloppy duck eighties bands, Extreme Home Makeover sightings, deck parties, driving here, driving there, putting up with a wet dog, elk ears and most of all the stories told and made.
Love ya!
Lynda, Will and the Keela-Monster

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Canada and Sand

I just found a fantastic website for visual art and design while reading one of my favourite blogs written by James Hollis. You have to visit http://thisissand.com/. But before you do, make sure you have some time. At first it seems as if the site is blank, but there is this little square at the top left of the window. Once you click on it, it becomes clear how easy it is to use. Just follow the instructions and look what can come out of it!This picture, created through the site, instantly reminded me of one of my favourite artists, Ted Harrison. When I taught junior grades I used to integrate a Ted Harrison study into my Canadian units. Among the typical Canada and World Connections strands of Social Studies, I would also introduce some literacy connections, in particular, "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew." Although these choices my seem macabre to some at first thought, there was a method to my madness. Both of these poems were not only written by the famous poet, Robert Service, who has been labelled the "Bard of the Yukon," but they have been recently reintroduced to our generation of kids through some picture books, brightly illustrated by none other than Ted Harrison himself.

Once I had read these poems to my students we would embark on the journey of exploring Ted Harrison's artistic style. When we felt we had a grasp of it, we would begin to paint the most wonderful, colourful pieces of work. The painting to the left was produced by Brandon, one of my Grade 6 students. He could spend hours on his artwork and I would imagine he would continue to be inspired through http://thisissand.com/.

If you want your younger students to become mesmerized by this sand experience, connect to the link via your SMART Board. Kids can use their finger to drop the sand and the onscreen keyboard to change colours. Gradient colours can be set up by dragging between two colours in the clicker. Through some experimentation, I found out if you double click, the sand magically falls continuously without having to touch the board. It's quite a soothing sound and display and could actually be used as a calming effect for those times when it is most needed...rainy days after indoor recess come to mind...



Explore! Create! Enjoy!

Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Ultimate in Collaboration

We have a great love of music in our family. Both of Will's sons play guitar and sing and when our family gathers there is always a jam session. It is fantastic and we always look forward to this kind of "collaboration".

I just recently stumbled upon a different kind of musical collaboration. It exemplifies the kind of connections one can have in the world these days...with a little broadband and some creativity. It brought goosebumps to my skin and an emotional lump in my throat. I will definitely be looking into signing my family up and attempting to "play for change". Can you imagine the engagement of our students if we were to set up a collaboration of this sort?!?!
Hope you enjoy the clip as much as I did:)

Friday, February 27, 2009

Engaging Digital Natives Through Blogging

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Expanding Our Boundaries


I just think that I have a handle on the digital world and it shifts on me again. It is both overwhelming and invigourating. To be in the mind of a digital native would be quite a trip for me, the immigrant that I am. It's a shift in how you spend your time reading, communicating, teaching and learning. Teachers can breath a sigh of relief though because, and I quote, "natives need immigrants". This is, in my mind, to say that kids may know the technology inside out and backwards, but we still need to show them how to use it responsibly.