2008: The Year in Review for Tech Integration

2008 has been a great year for tech-enhanced learning experiences in Buhler USD 313! 

Recently I asked our secondary teachers to share some of the exciting opportunities they have provided for their students, and I am including their responses here.  In fact, these are just a few of the many, many digital learning projects that Buhler teachers have developed in 2008. 

BHS Communication Arts teacher Holly Kimble has modified her American Literature class structure to enhance student engagement this year.  Using a thematic approach rather than the traditional chronological one, Holly has developed a meaningful way for her junior students to interact with the works they are studying.  In the fall they focused on war themes in literature, and students completed podcasts about family members' experiences with war. She provided a script for students to follow, with each student required to ask five open-ended questions, and the resulting podcasts were very meaningful as well as engaging for the students. Now she is developing a thematic unit on the theme of tolerance, and it will include a class wiki as well as Wordle and VoiceThread projects. In addition, Holly's senior students recently created modern videos of The Canterbury Tales, many of which have been posted on YouTube.

Prairie Hills Middle School science teacher Teresa Poulseen also engages her students in learning through technology integration. She has led our district in the use of Gizmos from ExploreLearning for both instruction and assessment (pre and post-instruction). This amazing software allows the students to experience science-related situations that cannot be created in a classroom, including building atoms and viewing the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. To organize student assignments and resources, Teresa has created a class wiki and a PortaPortal, and she recently has added a WebQuest to her webpage for students to use when they study energy this spring. In her Japanese enrichment class Teresa's students listen to music and the language, quiz themselves on kanji recognition, and take virtual lessons on Japanese houses, flower arranging, and sumo wrestling. Google Images and Google Earth provide engaging and real-life information about Japan for these students.

The traditional "report" on an important person in history has become much more engaging in Trish Unruh's World History classes. As part of a competition for "the world's worst dictator," Trish's students research evil leaders from the present and the past, then create movies which include photos, video clips, and music. All classes watch the movies on a DVD created from the projects.  In addition, while learning about important figures in the scientific revolution, students make business cards using slideshow software. 

Communication Arts teacher Carol Johnson has developed unique and interesting ways for students to share what they have learned as part of their final exams. Last year she allowed students to create GarageBand audio projects as their semester final, and recently she had students develop videos to demonstrate their knowledge of the narrative structure they had studied all semester. These movies were much easier to manage this year because of the set of flip video cameras now available for secondary teachers to use. In addition, Carol's students have used Comic Life to develop a short research project, and she has used Google Earth to present information that ties in with the stories read in class.

As Curtis Morgan's biology classes have worked on their projects based on genetic diseases, he has offered them much more choice than he has in the past. In fact, his students have created Comic Life  posters, digital presentations through Keynote or PowerPoint, brochures, movies, and radio informercials to share what they have learned. Curtis explains the results in glowing terms: "I feel that by giving the students the option of choosing what they want to turn in, they get more excited about the topic at hand. I get better quality work out of students, and those students that don't normally engage themselves fully into projects or work are fully devoted to accomplishing the task at hand because I let them choose."

To engage his students in learning world history, Dave Schroeder recently used VoiceThread to create an activity in which students research and create short video "podcasts" to explain various aspects of the French Revolution. Dave's students truly enjoyed these media projects! Our new subscription to the educational version of VoiceThread has made it an easy project to manage, and Dave has created foolproof instructions for both students and teachers that he is willing to share. View some of these student VoiceThread projects on Dave's web page.

BHS Communication Arts department chair John Knapp has developed an innovative way for his AP English students to interact with him, with each other, and with the texts they are studying. Using Facebook, our students' preferred social networking resource, John created a "Group" and invited the students to be his "Friends."  He then set up a "Discussion" and posted a series of questions that students were required to respond to.  As John explains, "Their responses to the questions were often works in process. In other words, they were postulating theories about what they were reading so that their peers could comment on what they were thinking. More than once, I watched as they guided each other's understanding of the social issues addressed in [the text]. They did all of the plot summary, character analysis, English-teacher-stuff that I had traditionally [wanted], only they did it in context and it seemed to have meaning to them. I also watched as they figured many of the important thematic issues and actually placed them into contexts that had meaning to them--imagine that. In fact, the fun part was, I got to join into the conversation over the summer so that when class started I already knew these kids."

Resource Room teacher Denice Thompson uses technology to meet the needs of her special education students. They have created multimedia slide shows about the Holocaust and Wordle collages as get-acquainted activities. As a followup to the Kansas Career Pipeline assessment results for personality, career strengths, and learning modalities, Denice's students have researched careers that fit their interests and aptitudes. In fact, one student is taking an independent biology class on the computer as he takes notes, does the daily work, and takes all tests online. Denice definitely has discovered that technology can "level the playing field" for her students.

Remember, these classroom activities are just a few examples of the many engaging and "out of the ordinary" experiences our teachers have provided for the digital learners in their classrooms this year. This list could go on and on....

Thanks to everyone who helped make 2008 GREAT for our students. Now let's make 2009 SHINE!

Rosemary and Mary's Excellent Adventure in Washington, DC

Co-Starring and Directed by Dayna Richardson

What a whirlwind week we have had in Washington, DC at the National Staff Development Conference!  In fact, it was an "L" of a week as we listened, laughed, and learned, all while attending workshops and sharing ideas with colleagues from around the country. 

We also enjoyed a night bus tour of the major sites, a comedy performance of the Capitol Steps political satire troupe, a performance of A Christmas Carol, trips on the water taxi ferry and the Metro, lots of taxi rides, and many stunningly beautiful Christmas decorations.  Our visits to the historical monuments, the U.S. Capitol, and the White House were especially meaningful. Actually, in the photo above Mary and I are standing at the front gate of the White House, near the place where the Presidential inauguration will occur in just a few weeks. We truly felt that we were at a special place at a special time in history, as we viewed monuments to the past alongside the preparations for the inauguration which gave us a glimpse into the future.

In a sense, our district is at an equally significant moment in its history, a pivotal point that will bridge the past and the future as we endeavor to embed 21st-century skills and tools into our students' learning experiences. As we are inspired by national monuments and inaugurations, we should be equally inspired by the symbols of our own past and future struggles and accomplishments.  

Marilyn Bolton's Digital Classroom

Marilyn Bolton's Spanish III classes truly have moved into the 21st century.

Recently named the 2008 Kansas World Language Association Teacher of the Year, Marilyn proves daily that the teacher is the most crucial element in a meaningful learning environment.  

With her typical self-deprecating humor, Marilyn admits to being "low tech" herself, but she knows that her students are digital learners who thrive when provided with digital learning opportunities.  She also knows that students can be self-directed with technology, so she does not have to "know everything" in order to create content- and technology-rich lessons for her 21st-century learners. Finally, she knows that Mary Frazier and I are available to brainstorm ideas, plan projects, and help in the classroom to ensure that projects go well.

Let's take a quick tour of Marilyn Bolton's Spanish classroom:

Exhibit A:  On her blog entitled Conversacíon Española, Marilyn posts a new topic each week, with students writing their responses in Spanish.

Exhibit B:  BHS Spanish students are creating podcasts on different topics using their cell phones.  For example, these poetry readings are amazing!

Exhibit C:  Marilyn's Spanish students are communicating and collaborating with a class in Argentina.  They "met" this group of students through ePals, which is now available on the KanEd desktop.  In fact, since all of our Buhler students already have KanEd ePals accounts set up by the media specialists, it is easy to find a classroom for communication and collaboration. 

Exhibit D:  After deciding that most of the YouTube videos on Spanish grammar were "boring," BHS Spanish III students created their own videos and posted them to YouTube. Their "Hammer on the Grammar" videos on the present subjunctive tense are included below and also are available here as the first two on the list. (Note:  If you are reading this in one of our school buildings, you will need to authenticate to view these YouTube videos.)

This ends today's inspirational tour of Marilyn Bolton's classroom. In future posts I will be featuring other Buhler teachers who are making a difference. And of course, I would love to help you move forward in creating a digital classroom for our 21st-century learners!  

The Power of Photos

Photographs have the power to stir emotions, pique curiosity, make a statement, or tell a story. Many online photo resources are available for use in our classrooms and provide us with ways to develop visual literacy and create meaning for our students.  Last week I discovered a new photo resource that we can use for all these purposes.

Google's LIFE Photo Archive presents images from the decades when LIFE magazine was publishing amazing photos in each issue.  In fact, the entire collection, with a total of more than 10 million images, is now online, and 97% of the photos never have been seen before by the public.  

The collection includes pictures from photojournalists such as Margaret Bourke-White and Gordon Parks.   In addition, the LIFE Photo Archive includes the Zapruder film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Hugo Jaeger's pictures of Nazi-era Germany.

A great feature of this Google image archive is that you can access its photographs directly from Google Images by typing the search term followed by the words source:life.  This indicates that you want to search only for images within the LIFE Photo Archive.  For example, you could enter this search phrase in Google Images:  joe lewis source:life.  Be sure to include the colon between the words source and life.  This will search only the LIFE Photo Archive, directly from the main Google Images page.

These LIFE photographs capture forever the pivotal events and characters in our history, all through the lenses of incredibly talented photographers.  Bring these images into your classroom to make learning "out of the ordinary."

Converting a PDF to Word

A Little PDF PD

On Mary Frazier's blog, A Chat with Mary, she explains how easy it is to create a PDF version of any document we create.  I have always wanted to reverse this process and convert a PDF back to Microsoft Word, but I didn't want to spend money on software designed to do this. The great news is that now we can convert PDF files to Word at the PDFtoWORD web page.  Wow!  It works! And it's free!

To use this tool, go to the PDFtoWORD web page, click on Choose File to upload your PDF, then click on Convert to Word and wait for the magic to happen. The new Word document will be emailed to you shortly!

I converted several PDFs to Word using PDFtoWORD, and, amazingly, the new Word documents maintained the formatting, charts, and photos. It takes a few minutes to convert the PDF to Word when the document includes photos or special formatting, but the results are worth the wait!  

That's the latest PD on PDFs!  Please share PDFtoWORD with someone else who could use this awesome tool.

Headlines Around the World: An Online Newseum

When important events such as a Presidential election occur, we can observe and read about their impact around the world through awesome Internet resources such as the Newseum front page gallery.  On this web page you can view the front pages of newspapers around the world on a given day.  In order to enlarge the front page of a newspaper for ease in reading, just click to load the pdf version.  

Here you see the front page of a European newspaper that foreign language students could read in Spanish.  Of course, social studies students could study global perspectives on a given event as well. When current events relate to any of our content areas or specific units, newspaper front pages from around the world can help our students develop a global perspective for the 21st century.  

Although the Today's Front Pages online exhibit doesn't keep all front pages from past dates, events of historical significance are kept in a front-page archive.  Other historical resources also are available on the main Newseum web page, which is an online version of the actual museum in Washington, D.C.  The Newseum site presents online exhibits and interactive materials related to historical news events and the relationship of journalism and the press to these events.  One of the current online exhibits involves Gmen and Journalists, with special information about the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover.  

Check out Today's Front Pages and the other online exhibits of the Newseum in Washington, D.C., then take your students on an online field trip soon!

Bonus Tip:  Watch this cool video about all the election headlines that poured into the Newseum right after the election.  

The Power of the Projector

Sometimes simple things can be the most powerful, and this is definitely the case with the new Dell projectors that many Buhler secondary teachers received recently. Of course, these projectors cannot engage students and enhance learning until we turn on the power and use them! Here are some simple ways to project learning this week in your classroom:

1. We Project Videos - Search for videos related to your lesson or unit at Discovery Streaming, YouTube, SchoolTube, or TeacherTube. If you need help logging on or downloading videos, let me know!
2. We Project Presentations - Our new versions of PowerPoint and Keynote are awesome tools for developing presentations that are engaging for students. You can easily place videos on slides, add music, and even record your narration. I would LOVE to show you how all this works!
3. We Project Web Resources - All those wonderful Internet pages that you've bookmarked or kept in an email folder can be used on the big screen in your classroom to project learning. Many educational web sites are interactive and engaging. Just ask me for ideas!
4. We Project Student Products - Project models of best student work, use the projected image of a student essay for discussion or evaluation, or show the multimedia projects which students have created. If students can create it, you can project it!
5. We Project Polls and Quizzes - Using web tools such as Poll Everywhere, your students can participate in polls and quizzes using their cell phones, and the results can be projected for everyone to see. It's amazingly simple. Could I show you sometime soon?
6. We Project Our Community and the World - Help your students see beyond the classroom and learn about the community, both local and global. Google Earth and Skype are available on your computer, and ePals is now set up for you on Kan-Ed. Ask me for help with Google Earth and Skype, and see your media specialist for your students' ePals account information. You can project the world to your students!

Take an ordinary projector and make something "out of the ordinary" this week. Just plug it in, turn it on, and project learning with your students! Please share your ideas by commenting here.