Welcome back to an exciting new school year! New staff, new students, new computers, new attitudes, new learning for everyone!

Apple Briefing Links

Springfield, Illinois projects

Apple Learning Interchange - The Apple Learning Interchange (ALI) is a social network for educators. Find a wealth of content ranging from simple lesson ideas to in-depth curriculum units for K-12 educators.
And viewing content is just the beginning. Create your free account and gain access to an environment for publishing and collaboration rich with movies, images and sounds.

Mac tips and tricks:

1. Expose' - Use F9, F10, and F11 keys to display all open windows as thumbnails, view windows of the current application or hide all windows to quickly locate a file on your desktop.

2. Grapher - free mathematical graphing program with examples and animations to try

3. Zoom in to a certain area of your screen - hold ctrl key and use 2 fingers on track pad

1-1 Classroom Management article and discussion

The new NETS (National Educational Technology Standards) for students are here! NETS for students - new and much improved!

Scaffolding

Hurricane Activity

Woolfolk (2004) defines scaffolding as: "clues, reminders, encouragement, breaking a problem down into smaller steps, providing an example, or anything that allows the student to grow in independence as a learner."

8 Characteristics of a Learning Scaffold:
1.Provides clear directions
2.Clarifies purpose
3.Keeps students on task
4.Offers assessment to clarify expectations
5.Points students to worthy sources
6.Reduces uncertainty, surprise and disappointment
7.Delivers efficiency
8.Creates momentum

Build a scaffold for your students

Ideas for Tasks

• Production Scaffolds


• Transformation Scaffolds


• Reception Scaffolds

Examples:

Webquest Search - find your subject and grade level - look at the tasks and processes (scaffolding) set up for each one

Book Burning: It's not just science fiction - lots of scaffolding provided to students in this lesson!

Look at the following and discuss the scaffolding that you see with your study team:
Art Through the Ages Webquest

Voices of the Holocaust

Mass Extinctions


When designing your lessons this year, be sure to include scaffolding for your students to help them keep on task and be successful.

Last class...

Our Multimedia class is coming to an end, but hopefully your learning of and use of multimedia to raise rigor, relevance and engagement with your students is never ending...

ISTE's draft of new National Educational Tech Standards for Students has been updated to include many of the 21st Century skills "What students should know and be able to do to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world." Your comments...

Video Production Resources:
Adobe Digital Kids Club - The Making of a Movie
Making Awesome iMovies - preproduction, production, post production, delivery - excellent resource!
Digital Video Project Ideas: Social concerns, biographies, career profiles, community history, curriculum in your community, documentary, How To, Introduction or Orientation, Investigative, News and Special Events, Skits and Spoofs, Television commercial, travel and tourism, public service announcements.
Storyboard template

When students are creating mulitmedia products, make sure that you scaffold their work. What steps do they need to complete? What's their timeline? What is due day to day? How do you score student-created multimedia products? Here is a great resource for creating rubrics - Rubistar.
Here is a great example rubric from the University of Wisconsin-Stout for video projects.

Evaluation link:
Thanks for taking the class survey for the AEA. We will use your comments and suggestions as we plan for next year's professional development. http://www.aea13.org/programs_services/surveys/aea13/profdev.htm
Course ID #9002
Semester Code 2

Engaging Learners

Marc Prensky, author of "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" also wrote an article titled: "Engage Me or Enrage Me: What Today's Learners Demand" Technology is very engaging for us and for our students. Just a caveat... Mr. Prensky is very much an advocate for educational video games - his company is Games2train. However, what he has to say about today's kids and their need for engagement is right on! Are we adults any different? Have you been to any staff development in the last few years where you felt "disengaged"? How did that make you feel? What are your thoughts about this article? Please comment...

Read through these virtues and challenges of video when considering whether or not to have students create video products to demonstrate their learning...

Between tonight's class and the next class on April 2nd, work on your projects. In addition, if you are taking this class for credit, review the lesson plan rubric and write (rewrite) your lesson plan. On April 2nd, please plan to share your projects and/or lessons with the class.

Video

Grass Born to be Stepped On - historical documentary
What media are students required to use?
What makes it a rigorous lesson/assignment?
What about it is relevant? Engaging?

Sources for videos for your classroom:

Unitedstreaming videos now on MediaNet - search for videos to order from the AEA or find them on Unitedstreaming

Sources of videos on the net:
You will need an account to save and/or share these videos. You can also upload videos to some of these accounts to share with others - which can be a good or a bad thing. Some schools block all of these sites because content can be questionable.

YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video and more...

Most of the major news channels now offer videos of current news events.
FoxNews

What are the advantages/disadvantages of using video in your classroom? How engaging is video as opposed to text for you as a person? For your students as learners?

Student-produced videos lets students "show what they know." Here's a great article about how to make good videos - Shooting Good Video.

Differentiating Instruction with Technology

Technology can help you meet the needs of all students by allowing you to change:

• content


• input


• output

Technology Tips for Differentiated Instruction - great ideas for all! Software and technologies that you already have access to and are FREE.

Images

According to research by 3M Corporation, humans process visuals 66,000 times faster than text!

According to enGauge 21st C. Skills:
Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, use, appreciate, and create images and video using both conventional and 21st century media in ways that advance thinking, decision making, communication, and learning."

Are you a visual learner?? Most people are and kids even more so than adults! Students need lots of visuals to help them learn/remember.

Check out the examples of visual literacy on my digital camera page...
- Idioms of the Day
- Gettysburg
- Math Problem Pictures

Here are some great sources of visuals online:

AEA Online Resources - clipart.com, AP Multimedia, and Unitedstreaming all have digital images that you and your students can use in your content area to teach and to learn/remember.

Apple Learning Interchange 2007 - iPhoto ideas by grade and content area

Pics4Learning - great ideas and lesson plans for content areas to use digital images

What to do with a digital camera - more ideas and lesson plans specific to content area also Using a digital camera in the classroom

Digital cameras make it so easy to capture images and add them to your classroom content - and if you hand cameras to students - stand back and watch the amazing results!

iPhoto is Apple's application for importing, organizing and doing some simple editing of digitial images. With this program, you can then make calendars, books, slideshows (with music), cards and more.

How can you use more digital images to enhance your teaching and your students' learning? Post a comment...

Audio on the Internet

When searching for audio for use in education - free and copyright free are the two words to keep in mind!
Here are some sources of free and copyright free music for projects:
www.freeplaymusic.com - lots of genres and lots of songs
Digital History - music for social studies and history projects
Unitedstreaming has audio files/songs that can be used in multimedia projects.
Find many sound effects at schools.clipart.com
Audio recordings from American Memory (primary source documents)
Use GarageBand to create your own music!

Copyright "rules":
1. up to 10%, but no more than 30 seconds
2. can make alterations if it supports and instructional objective (note that a change was made)
3. don't change the basic melody or the fundamental character of the work