Building Bridges to Tomorrow - FlatClassroom K-2 Project

This spring I have been working with Marypat Bowen's class and the Building Bridges to Tomorrow K-2 FlatClassroom global collaboration with 22 schools. As part of the project each school created video content about weather and seasons in their part of the world that will be compiled using WeVideo. This is the video created by the Yarmouth class to share with the others. 

4th Graders Present to Yarmouth School Committee - Nexus 7 Pilot

The Yarmouth School Committee opens the monthly meeting with a presentation about a learning setting or offering in our schools. On March 28th we shared a ten minute explanation of the Nexus 7 1:1 Pilot Project that has been part of Kate Parkin's 4th grade classroom. Since we started the project in early December, Kate and I have been exploring ways to use the Nexus 7s in her classroom for learning. In talking with the students, the biggest uses of the tablets are for researching questions and creating written work that is then saved to Google Drive for further editing on laptops. Certainly there are Math apps and some utilities that the students are finding engaging and useful. In addition to the apps we put on initially we have added VidTrim for editing videos, Comic Strip It for creating comics and a Poetry app in honor of April being Poetry Month. While we weren't able to record the student voices that added a powerful element to the slides, this is the presentation we created for the meeting:

Explain Everything, KidBlog & YouTube Channels

In working with the first grade classrooms on students recording their stories on iPads I am focusing on Explain Everything these days. There is a significant update in the app that will load if you run updates. There is a video explaining the update at: http://www.explaineverything.com/ee-showcase.html. One option is for students to draw a number sentence and then record their strategy. Another is to record photos during an activity and then have students upload the photo followed by adding voiceover. After the recording you export them to your email, then the videos can be downloaded and posted on the student blogs or classroom blog.

Kidblog: I can export student names from PowerSchool to readily set up each clasroom. Then the individual student blogs can be added to the classroom blog as a link gadget.

Also, one alternative to posting video to Posterous is to post from the iPad to a teacher YouTube channel that is part of Yarmouth Google apps. Once the video is posted, you view it on your computer, click Share, then Embed, turn off suggested videos, copy the embed code to the clipboard, go to your Blogger blog>New Post>html for the post>paste in the embed code.

First Grade Stories & Recordings

We have been talking about authentic ways to record student voices and learning on the first grade classroom blogs using the iPad. We were a bit sidetracked this month as Posterous blogs are closing down and it has been the only blog that is setup for us to email media directly to the class blog or individual student blogs. It is possible to request a backup of a Posterous blog and then move it to WordPress without cost. Unfortunately we cannot upload a video directly to a WordPress blog; you can embed a video from a YouTube channel as you would in a Blogger post.


Last week I started setting up classes in Kidblog to be added to classroom blogs as links on the side. In one class we are adding an “Addition Strategy” post in which each child draws a number sentence using Explain Everything on the iPad and then adds her/his voice describing the strategy used for a solution. The process for using Explain Everything was to have the children record and name each one as a project. When the students were done I selected each project to compile and send it via. email to a teacger. Once the projects are in email they are attachments which can be downloaded to a folder on a desktop. In Kidblog it is very easy to login as each student as the names are in a dropdown list and we used the same password for each student. The last step is to create a post and insert the video format of the Explain Everything project.

 Our goal is to put the creation of the product into student hands as much as possible. Pursuing the use of Storykit and Explain Everything as apps that students can use on their own seems like the way to go at this point.

Exploring the StoryKit app with First Graders

I worked with some students last Tuesday and recorded their descriptions of photos showing them balancing crayfish. They certainly knew how to use the word “counterweights”! I have written out the directions so that a parent who helps out during writing will be able to do the process with students. The parent who watched me this week liked the activity and wants to do it on her own.
 
(cross posted in a somewhat different form on the private "iPads in Grade One" blog.)

After exploring a number of story writing apps, we determined that our initial goal was to select an app that allowed students to be the ones creating on the iPad. Our favorite app for that at this point is Storykit. It is a free app that is actually an iPhone app that can be enlarged to work on an iPad.

I worked with students to test out this app and we were able to have two groups of 4 students take each other’s pictures, draw a background and record the “About the Author” pieces that they had asked to write to accompany their “How To” books in about an hour. We hadn’t carefully edited their writing so they will need to redo ones that included last names or addresses. We are planning to take pictures of their self-portraits to use as “avatars” instead of photos as needed. Having students assigned to an iPad can help with this as then the images are on the right iPad.

I visited all six classrooms on Friday and all 20 iPads have Storykit and are set up to send email. If you want to email directly to a student blog then you can use the email generated by Posterous when you set up the student spaces. If anyone else is interested in setting up individual spaces for kids I’d be glad to help you. If you give me your passwords I can do some of the setup for you.

Listening to Stories

One of the activities that early readers can do at school and at home is listen to stories as they watch the words and the pictures. We have looked at this more closely in our grade 1 & 2 classrooms this past year and we are curious about whether increased listening time will help with reading fluency. One disclaimer I should make early on is that when my young adult children were small I had some songs on tape, but I wasn't a big fan of mechanized story voices--I wanted there to be a human connection when a child was being read to and I refused to purchase the popular toys of the time (like Teddy Ruxpin) that had taped stories embedded inside their fake fur. I still believe in that human connection for reading time, but I value the option of additional time on their own for children to hear great stories and vocabulary that might be beyond their reading level.

Some of the sites that are available online are:

1. TumbleBooks if you are a Portland Library Card Holder. Phrases are highlighted.
2. Storyline Online has stories read aloud by actors.
3. Oxford Owl has many ebooks that can be read aloud.

Some of these are now configured to work around Flash issues on an iPad. If you setup a home button from Safari to go to TumbleBooks it automatically goes to the Mobile Devices page that has books that don't need Flash.

For more sites the students at YES go to our Educational Resources site for instance on the Reading and Writing page for second grade.

Volcanoes in Google Earth

We can add layers to Google Earth on our MacBooks by using this information from the Smithsonian Institute.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program data for known or inferred Holocene volcanoes are now available as a Google Earth layer, displaying a photo (when available), geographic data, and links to more detailed information from the GVP and international volcano observatories or other websites focusing on regional volcanoes. The Google Earth software must be downloaded and installed to use this placemark file.

Download Holocene Volcanoes Network Link

Download Smithsonian / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report Network Link

(From http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/globallists.cfm?listpage=googleearth).

Nexus 7 Rollout in 4th Grade

YEAH!!!! The Nexus 7s arrived in Maine on Friday afternoon and we were able to give them to students just three days later. Kate Parkin (4th grade teacher) and I had spent time preparing for the devices, exploring apps, becoming familiar with various resources like Edutecher and Android4Schools and thinking about how to bring this to her students in the most productive way. Some weekend work went into charging, updating and preparing the tablets with each student's Yarmouth Google account. We were pleased to find that there is a Content Filtering Setting that should modify any suggested apps and materials to keep them appropriate for students.

As teachers, Kate and I planned for the physical realities of having the new set of devices in her classroom. Consistent with our practice with student 1:1 laptops we ordered cases to protect the tablets. At the time we ordered they were $6.95 each and they have the added feature of putting the device to sleep or waking it on opening. We set up 4 bins in the classroom with plug strips nearby. The strips only allow 3 plugs at a time so we will be rotating overnight charging.

Once we did the planning and getting the room ready it was time to rollout the tablets. We invited parents, our building principal, Alice Barr (integrator at Yarmouth High School) and a college student who has helped us move ahead with technology since we was a student at YES. We planned an hour and a half at the end of the school day for the rollout. We started by giving each student a label to decorate so that s/he could easily identify her/his own tablet in the bins. We affixed the labels to the cases with plastic book spine labels to help them last through the year.

The slideshow above shows a set of photos from the preparation, through the labeling, to unboxing the Nexus 7s, changing the wallpaper and widgets on the devices. Once the students had done some personalizing and exploring the screens available Kate used the document camera to project her Nexus 7 onto the screen and showed students how to download and install a set of apps that we had previewed. We looked for an assortment of apps that allowed students to create simple projects, take notes and practice math facts as a start. In the slideshow you can see the students working from this list of apps.

Apps to download:

Skitch

Evernote

Free Rice

50 States

Google Drive

PopMath Lite

NASA

Space Images

Math Workout

Sudoku Plus

Math Maniac

Countries of the World

Note Everything

SimpleMind Free

Kitchen Timer

Camera Launcher

ListNote Speech to Text

This video gives a quick glimpse of the classroom once the students are exploring apps:

Many thanks to all who helped with this successful rollout and especially to Mark Wagner and the EdTechTeam for donating the devices to our school. An additional post about the arrival of the Nexus 7's is posted on Kate Parkin's classroom blog.

Fall Apps for First Grade Learning

Apps that we have purchased for the first grade classrooms this fall:

• ABC Spelling Magic (Short Vowel Sounds) - free
• ABC Spelling Magic 2 (Consonant Blends) - free
• ABC Spelling Magic 3 (Blends & Syllables) - free
• All My High Frequency Words
• Cimo Spelling (Lite)
• DoodleBuddy
• DraftPad
• Futaba- Word games for kids
• iKids Puzzle
• Google Earth
• Know your Math Facts
• iBooks
• LetterSchool
• Little Patterns
• Mathwise - free
• Math Bingo
• Montessori Approach to Addition Charts
• Montessori Approach 100 to 200
• Montessori Approach to 100 Board
• Montessori Crosswords
• Motion Math - Hungry Fish
• Pocket Charts! Beginning Letter Sounds 
• Pocket Charts! Long and Short Sounds
• PopMath Maths Plus
• PuppetPals
• Scribble Press - free
• Sight Words by Photo Touch - free
• Storykit - free 
• Sushi Monster - free
• Tell Time Little Matchups - free
• Telling Time Photo Touch  

We added some apps specifically for teachers. The apps that were free are on all 20 iPads, the few paid apps are only on one iPad per classroom:

• Dragon Dictation - free
• Educreations - free
• Explain Everything
• Pages
• Puffin Browser - free
• Quickvoice Recorder - free
• Show Me Interactive Whiteboard - free
• Skype - free
• The Weather Channel - free 

Most of the apps were available for volume purchase so we bought 20 copies of those for the price of 10. So far we have introduced LetterSchool, Little Patterns, iKids Puzzle and MathWise in classrooms. It is working well to assign five students to each iPad and store any saved games for them when they return. The next challenge is to figure out flexible grouping based on student needs and then appropriately managing the settings for each group.

Educational Passages

Update: October 8, 2012 from the project Newsletter:

5 Maine Maritime Launches

The “State of Maine” training ship launched 5 mini-boats approximately 250 miles north of the Bahamas on May 11^th.  Within 10 days these boats got “battered” off the Carolinas by tropical storms Alberto and Beryll which blew all 5 boats across the Gulf Stream and on to the Carolina beaches.  A charter fishing boat captain told us in his 46 years he had never seen the seas so rough.  One of our boats was found by surfers on Cape Hatteras, two ended up on uninhabited islands and another went ashore on Myrtle Beach.  The 5^th boat stopped reporting several miles off the beach and probably founded coming ashore.  Four of the five boats were recovered undamaged with their rigs intact attesting to their solid construction and their ability to transit our world’s oceans.

        

Two boats were taken to Charleston, South Carolina and put back aboard the “State of Maine” to be re-launched off Cape Hatteras, another boat was re-launched by surfers, and the 4^th boat was released by the School of Coastal Studies on Cape Hatteras.  These 4 boats traveled up our east coast to Newfoundland where 2 made landfall and are currently being repaired and readied for re-launching in early October and the other 2 appear to be on their way to Europe.  All these boats can be monitored at http://www.ne fsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_ep_2012_1.html.

June 3, 2012

A group of 4th graders who are in the Communications and Math Lab groups with Molly Smith (Talents grades 3-8) have taken on the task of following one of five drifting miniboats that were launched this spring. The boat was launched Saturday, May 12 by the crew of the State of Maine (Maine Maritime). The kids are in contact with the captain and they are working on latitude, longitude, rate of speed and some of the other concepts of navigation.

Based on a workshop session at a conference on Science and Literacy held at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute a few months ago we decided to look for a way for our students to participate in a "miniboat expedition". For more about this project, see the website and articles below:

• http://www.educationalpassages.com
• http://bangordailynews.com/2011/04/15/news/hancock/students-to-launch-tiny-sailboats-from-mma-ship/?ref=relatedBox
• http://bangordailynews.com/2010/07/26/news/miniature-boat-from-maine-completes-extraordinary-journey/?ref=relatedBox
• http://www.pointseast.com/template.shtml?id=EkllZkuEAyqFSjcWAp&style=story

This project costs about $1500 a boat, but the volunteers who run it (Dick Baldwin, sailor; Lyman-Morse Boats; Maine Maritime Academy; Midcoast School of Technology, etc.) do all the work for free and the cost to our school is $350 for the GPS unit that travels on the boat and a monthly fee to monitor it. There will be opportunities at YES and HMS for that small group of students to share the project with others as it connects to curricula, we bring in guest speakers, etc.

The GPS unit on our boat connects to a company that will show the track of the boats in the project (at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/drifter/drift_ep_2012_1.html). We don't know how many months to expect the boat to be en route, one boat arrived in Ireland after 5 months, another one took a year to travel from Puerto Rico to Portugal. The hope is that if a boat makes it to Europe the students can connect with the school that retrieves the boat.

As of May 30th the miniboats have been moved by hurricane winds are are all beached on the Carolina coasts. Today there was an article in the Hatteras newspaper about the people who found the Yarmouth boat on the beach and the next steps for getting it back out onto the ocean.

http://islandfreepress.org/2012Archives/05.29.2012-MaineStudentsSailboatIsLostAndThenFoundOnHatteras.html

Resources: Educational Passages Endeavor Wiki

cross posted at:

http://showcase.yarmouthschools.org/2012/05/educational-passages-miniboat-project.html

 

Getting started with a new Nexus 7 Tablet

This past summer I was a presenter and participant at the first Maine Google Apps Summit held here in Yarmouth, ME. The days were information filled and I learned from every presentation and conversation. This is a great model of professional development is being offered in locations all over the world by EdTechTeam in collaboration with Google Apps for Education.

At the end of the three days Mark Wagner invited participants to submit applications for implementing classroom set of Google Nexus 7 Tablets into a K-12 setting. I wrote a statement of purpose for their use in a fourth grade classroom and was asked to write in more detail as a finalist. In September I was notified that we would be receiving a set of 25 devices to pursue the goals I had outlined.

The delivery of the devices has been delayed by supply issues, but last week I purchased my own so that I could begin to become familiar with the options it will offer in the classroom when they arrive. I was pleased to find that most of the productivity apps are free from the Google Play store. I currently have the following apps (some of which were pre-installed):

• 50 States
• Adobe Reader
• Amazon Kindle
• Audioboo
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Chrome
• Clock
• Cloud Print
• ColorNote
• Countries of the World
• Currents
• Dropbox
• Earth
• Edmodo
• Email
• Evernote
• Gallery
• Gmail
• Google 
• Local
• Maps
• Math Bingo (pd)
• Math Mate
• Messenger
• Milion Moments
• Navigation
• OneNote
• People
• Play Books
• Play Magazines
• Play Movies & TV
• Play Music
• Play Store
• Pocket
• PowerVocab
• Puffin Free
• Settings
• Skitch
• Socrative
• Talk
• TED Talks
• Voice Search
• Voice Search Advanced
• Wallet
• Words Words Words
• YouTube

I am looking for more educational apps that can be used to develop Math, Writing and Reading skills with fourth graders, but my biggest focus will be on the productivity apps of searching, notetaking, recording voices and the various ways we can access ebooks. Richard Byrne's Android for Schools blog is a good resource and I appreciate that he is out there checking out apps and learning options

I will be purchasing cases for the Nexus 7s as we have a practice of providing cases for any student 1:1 devices. One question we will need to resolve is setting up individual accounts for students that allow for some form of institutional purchases of apps if we determine that we want some for all students that are not free.

I was looking for apps that would read books aloud and I have found Blio and a voice for the text to speech. The app is free and the voice is $2.99. I downloaded a few books and this has potential for guided reading books for students to use at home and in the classroom.

The fourth grade classroom has been selected and I have been meeting with the teacher to plan for the tablets, but the students and parents do not yet know about this exciting opportunity.

Maine Forests Teacher Tour Adventure

This summer I joined fifteen educators on the Northern Forests Teacher Tour sponsored by the Maine Tree Foundation. I had looked at this option several times over the years and the tour that was based in at Leen's Lodge on the shore of West Grand Lake worked into my summer. We were warmly greeted by Pat Maloney who is the state coordinator of Maine Project Learning Tree, the state forester for Washington County and Project Learning Tree Facilitators who immersed us in activities of creating a forest plot, perusing the Project Learning Tree K-12 guides and practicing lessons using computer access to GIS to view worldwide data.

Early the second morning we traveled to the 100,000+ acre Baskahegan forest that is owned an managed by the Milliken Family. This forest has been certified to follow sustainability and biodiversity practices that show exemplary stewardship. The foresters explained the complex management tools that are used to harvest stands and guarantee the ongoing availability of mature trees. A forester walks each stand of the forest, mapping the types of trees, the health of each one, the deer or wildlife activity and records everything on a GPS device. The information recorded is then uploaded to GIS so that in an office setting a team can click anywhere on a map and see the specific information about a particular stand. 

The actual piece of equipment (called a Processor/Harvester) used to harvest trees costs $200,000-$400,000 and has the capacity to select trees, cut them down, strip the branches and pile them up by size and type. I took this video with my phone:

From the forest we traveled to the Stinson Wind Farm to see some of the windmills that were built on logging roads by First Wind. The 80 foot towers are equipped with anemometers and mini-weather stations that feed information to computers that automatically adjust the turbines or they can be managed offsite from remote computers. 

The second day we traveled to a large investor partnership landholding (600,000+ acres) managed by Wagner Forest Management Company. There we saw more large, sophisticated equipment that selected, cut and piled trees so that the next machine could strip the branches and stack the trees for loading on lumber trucks. Here are photos and videos of a Feller/Buncher and a Delimber at work.

One of the many new learnings for me as we toured these forested roads was how much attention is being paid to the importance of creating culverts under the logging roads that will allow the passage of salmon, brook trout and other water dwellers. Some of the culverts are taller than a person and cost over $20,000 to build. The engineers talked about the efforts being made to develop designs and materials that will make culverts easier to build and more affordable. As teachers we started talking about how we could use this real issue as a design challenge in the classroom setting.

We then went to the Domtar Paper Mill which is owned by Chinese interests. Every few minutes a truck full of logs would pull into the yard, huge sets of logs would be unloaded by some of the world's largest cranes to be processed into chips and then sheets of pulp. The sheets of pulp are stacked and wrapped in a warehouse, trucked to Eastport, ME and loaded into the holds of ships that take them to China. Once in China, the pulp sheets are finished into paper.

Some of the participants on the tour were members of the Downeast Lakes Land Trust which works closely with businesses and residents of this part of Maine. As individuals and a group they work to educate people about the need to preserve shoreline and watersheds for the protection of water, recreation pursuits and the overall health of the environment.

I look forward to connecting what I learned to the 4th grade unit on Trees, Plants and Forest Ecology and other environmental education opportunities in our school.

USM EPC 508 - Summer 2012

In mid-July I spent a week working with a group of 14 teachers from various districts in southern Maine at USM. The course has carried the title "Integrating Technology into the Classroom: Mac" for many years, but I have been able to vary the content and update the syllabus each year. I created this site for the course: https://sites.google.com/a/yarmouthschools.org/usmepc508 and we used a Posterous blog: http://usmepc508-2012.posterous.com/ as our collaboration tool. It's always stimulating to hear from and work with a varied group of teachers who represent an array of grade levels, curriculum areas and backgrounds. I enjoy the opportunity to teach this course and the teachers are usually experiencing working closely with an integrator in a way that is not available in their home district.

Exploring the Ocean through Science & Children's Literature Course

I was fortunate to join a group of educators at SMCC for three days in late June to explore the many opportunities of using hands-on science activities and children's literature to learn about the ocean. This curriculum has been developed by Mary Cerullo and others at the Friends of Casco Bay.

We were immersed in the science of monitoring temperature, nitrogen influx (which causes acidification) and the overall health of the waters of  Casco Bay. Mary has written many books about science topics that are wonderful resources for any age group. From her newest book on Giant Squid through her collaborations with undersea photographers on Sea Soup, Shipwrecks and City Fish, Country Fish Mary's books create a unique library of inviting collections of text, images and photographs on these engaging topics.

These days were a tremendous opportunity for me to revisit my interests in science, place-based education, environmental activism an the power of those who work on important causes like the health of our oceans. My friend and colleague Cheryl Oakes from Wells, Maine created this Animoto video of our trip on the Lucky Catch with lobsterman Tom and crew: http://animoto.com/play/O7ARLW2Jc6drYhaxZ11u2g.

Yarmouth Summer/Fall Technology Course 2012

Registrations are building for this years summer/fall technology course for K12 faculty. The site is at: https://sites.google.com/a/yarmouthschools.org/summer-2012-tech. Dates: June 19, 20 & 21 8:00-3:30, September 22 8:00-12:00, October 27 8:00-3:30 at YHS.


Teachers will learn and practice expanded uses of media for teaching and learning around these questions:

1. How will student demonstrations of learning be more innovative in my classroom?
2. How will I as a teacher move toward more choices for students to demonstrate learning?
3. How can I share or celebrate my students’ work?

As we develop the progression of topics and assignments the site will be expanded beyond the syllabus, dates and times.