Scratch Day 2013 @ MIT

On Saturday, May 18, I attended the annual Scratch Day at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge.  The event was divided into 6 areas: imagine, hack, share, make, discuss, and reflect.  In the imagine area, children, parents, and teachers were introduced to the Scratch programming language, learning the basics and being exposed to the new features of Scratch 2.0, which was released on May 9.  In the hack area, people sat at computers and tinkered with the software, in a hands-on show-and-tell.  In the share area, 15 students stood up on a stage and showed off some of their projects.  One project that was shared was an interactive carnival.  In the make area, there was a makey-makey obstacle course, a 2.0 bubble project, and a collaborative add-yourself-to-the-aquarium project.  In the discuss area, members of the ScratchEd team met with educators and parents, discussing Scratch 2.0 in the elementary classroom as well as in after school settings.  Lastly, in the reflect area, scratchers shared both what they love about scratch and why they keep coming back in order to help MIT improve the software.  Common themes were making games and animations, using one's imagination, and the flexibility of the program.  Scratch users posted comments on the wall answering questions such as: what do you do when you get stuck programming?  Individuals were also interviewed by members of the scratch team.

Most importantly, I introduced my daughter to scratch, and we created our first project together.  She is interested in creating her own "TV series."  She has been asking me non-stop since the event whether she can play with scratch at home.

-Megan Haddadi

inRESONANCE training conference (May 1 - 3)

I have just returned from a three day training conference (May 1 - 3), hosted by inRESONANCE, the provider of our admissions, enrollment and registrar database products.  The training was tailored mostly for administrators who need to understand and use their Keystone, Generations and Portal products.  Like most training conferences, you have to pick and choose what you will attend, while wishing that you could be in three places at once.  I decided to focus on the Keystone product and then attended the more advanced developer classes.  I was impressed with how thorough and client centric the lessons were.  The technical classes were only moderately technical but valuable in that they demonstrated more advanced solutions applicable to real reporting questions.  I highly recommend this training for anyone who is looking for a thorough hands on introduction with moderately advanced training to help you address your evolving reporting needs. 

-Michael Hawkins

Witnessing in Action: Developing and Sustaining White Affinity Groups

On Friday, April 26th, 2013, fellow Lower School teacher Maria Barton and I attended AISNE's "Witnessing in Action: Developing and Sustaining White Affinity Groups" workshop led by Shelley Tochluk, author of "Witnessing Whiteness" at the Phillips Exeter School.  Maria and I are both members of the BB&N Lower School's diversity steering committee this year, as our faculty reads Shelly's book.

At the workshop we heard from both Shelly and Jason David.  Shelly is "the author of Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk abut Race and How to Do It, a book about why race remains an essential issue, how race affects people's daily lives and interactions, and practical steps we can take to serve racial justice. Shelly's experiences with UCLA's NCAA Division-1 All-American Track and Field 4X400 meter relay team and her elementary and middle school, inner city teaching experiences shaped her personal dedication to confront issues of race. An educator, with a background in psychology, Shelly Tochluk spent ten years as a researcher, counselor, and teacher in California's public schools. She received her Ph.D. in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2005 where she investigated how white racial identity impacts friendship relationships. She now trains teachers to work with Los Angeles' diverse school population as Chair of the Education Department at Mount St. Mary's College." Jason David is "a co-founder of the Alliance for White Anti-Racists Everywhere - Los Angeles (AWARE-LA), a white anti-racist organization that provides resources and community space for consciousness-raising, alliance-building, and movement-building. As a facilitator of monthly dialogues through AWARE-LA, he has helped to carefully construct and navigate discussions on numerous topics related to race and whiteness. He is also a high school teacher at Wildwood School in Los Angeles."

As a group of independent school teachers and administrators interested in promoting anti-racism, we discussed the development of white affinity groups at our respective schools.  "White affinity groups focus on dialogue and support the development of healthy racial identity and effective anti-racist practices, both essential for building relationships across race. This session [began] by reviewing the model of Witnessing Whiteness, a foundational approach to developing white anti-racist identity that involves building knowledge, skills, capacity, and community."  We also looked at our individual schools and considered what steps we would need to take to create support groups on our own campuses and thought about potential setbacks, particularly resistance from various community members.  We even had an opportunity to practice dialogue around resistance, as these skills need to be practiced again and again to be mastered.  We left the gathering with workshop agendas created by AWARE-LA to support the creation of white anti-racist groups and their subsequent dialogue on the development of a white anti-racist identity and practice.

-Megan Haddadi

Al Coons Attends TI Calculator Convention

I attended the 25th TI - "T^3" Convention in Philadelphia Friday and Saturday.  Below is what I learned.

Overview

T^3 was again a very well run, accesible conference.  I would continue to rate it as among the top 3 yearly conferences along with Exeter and NCSSM.  Many of the most innovative and powerful thinkers/creators in secondary mathematics present.

 It has relatively few high school offerings but there was always enough to find something interesting.  I usually had to select between two or three sessions I wanted to see in each time slot.  

It serves both TI-84 and NSpire users, although there is increasing emphasis on Nspire.

What's New

• Nspire for the iPad.  A lot of excitement here.  Consensus is that TI did a great job for a first implementation of software on a new device.  Unless you are a developer, there is not too much missing and it seems stable.  As I wrote to you last week, I find it better than the HH (hand held) version and often equal or better than the computer version as a result of it good use the iPad interaction metaphor.  

• 3-D Plotting
• There were multiple sessions on using the 3-D plotting features:
•  I enjoyed two wonderful college teachers from Columbia who spoke almost no English present the basics of 3-D plotting and controlling it with sliders.  Made me think of the "Proof Without Words" section of the MAA Magazine.  
• An incredible session with a university teacher from BC Columbia who used CAS and 3-D plotting to compute and visualize (plot) solutions (intersections) of function of multiple inputs.

• In a recent Department Meeting I suggested teaching plotting in 3-D should begin with plotting individual points.  This can easily be done in parametric mode.  However, a point is displayed as an individual pixel in Nspire and so it is very hard to see.  In Mac grapher, an individual points is enlarged so it can be seen.  There are many requests for this to be done in the Nspire.

• CAS
• Not new, but lots of sessions on "How to Implement/Use CAS in the Classroom"

• Creating Nspire Documents (Apps)
• There were multiple sessions on how to create more advanced Nspire documents (apps) using the commands which are part of the Nspire OS.  Many of the best apps use these features.  For examples see:
•  Math Inspired at http://education.ti.com/calculators/timathnspired/
• John Hannas page at http://www.johnhanna.us/TI-nspire.htm
• This was the year of Lua.  Lua is a generic, object oriented scripting language for many computers and handheld devices. It lets authors make much more powerful apps on the Nspire OS by letting the author control all aspects of calculators and create any kind of object.
• Click here for an example:  http://education.ti.com/calculators/tisciencenspired/US/Activities/Detail?sa=5029&id=17888
• For an explanation of LUA see
• http://www.johnhanna.us/nspire/Lua_4_All_Teachers.pdf
• http://compasstech.com.au/TNS_Authoring/Scripting/index.html

• Availability of Nspire Documents/Apps

Personal Comment:  There are more and more great pre-made apps.  I believe Nspire does a great job (as do some other software) at supporting the goal to show the three approaches (analytical, tabular/data, and dynamic visualization) of given problems.  There are many great apps available, but like all technology we have to spend the time to find and share them.  Two great places to start are:

•  Math Inspired at http://education.ti.com/calculators/timathnspired/
• John Hannas page at http://www.johnhanna.us/TI-nspire.htm

-Al Coons

EdTech Teacher iPad Summit 2012

I attended the EdTech Teacher iPad Summit on November 6-8th at the Harvard Conference Center, and WOW! there was a lot to learn! The pre-conference session was a great way to get myself into the right mindset and learn about how to think about iPads in the Elementary Classroom. The speaker, Tony Perez, created an agenda using the C-R-C-D Framework from Ben Scheiderman’s book, Leonardo’s Laptop.

• Collect: gather and research information
• Relate: make connections and collaborate to solve problems
• Create: construct content and demonstrate understanding
• Donate: contribute to the class or a broader community

A common theme during the whole conventions was that as educators we should not find apps to teach our students, but focus on the learning objective we want the kids to understand, and then adding technology into the lesson to help re-enforce the objective.

Apps for Collecting & Relating Information: The iPad is changing so fast, how do you keep up? How can you keep track of everything that your students create?

Everynote

Apps for Creating Information

Educreations

ScreenChomp

ExplainEverything

        

Screencasting apps are becoming more popular in education around the globe. Screenchomp, ExplainEverything, and Educreations are a few of the more popular apps of their kind. Screencasting apps allow you to make a video and audio recording on the iPad, while you draw move and erase with your finger! I have already begun to brainstorm about how my students can storytell and narrate using screencasting apps, and I hope to document their learning throughout the year.

More Creating Apps

Skitch

Fotobabble

Scribble

iMovie

Apps for Donating Information

"Think about how you could use the photos, audio recording, and note taking features of Evernote to collect and assess student work. Students can also have all of their iPad projects organized into Evernote by emailing to their specific Notebook." (Tony Perez)

Evernote

ipad Summit (by EdTechTeacher)

Three days of ipad summit (put on by EdTechTeacher) was awesome! One of the best conferences I've attended in the long time. Here are my takeaways.

Keynote take aways: 

• With all things tech, first ask “Why?” This was kind of a theme
• It's not about the iPad or apps We have heard that allot
• "There’s no app for good teaching" Tom Daccord
• "How can I put students in creative learning environment?" Was a question on everyone's mind
• "Innovation is a team sport" Doug Kiang
• Consume, Curate, Create and Share This was another theme

What is the most impactful and significant aspect of iPads?

• The iPad simplifies the technology This came up a lot
• iPad as a digital organizer But saving to the cloud is a fundamental change
• It’s not always about the apps It's often about the workflow
• The Camera Roll is King I agree with Beth Holland
• 

Apps take aways

Consume

• Step back in time with What Was There
• FlipBoards allows you to browse tons of web content as if you were flipping through a newspaper
• Puffin Web Browser allows you to use Flash-based content on the iPad

Curate

• Notability allows you take notes and annotate PDF
• iBooks allows you to mark up and highlight text inside of PDF’s or e-textbooks
• Socrative allows you to quickly poll your students. Students can use Student Clicker and PIN code to join your room
• You can use QR Reader to read OR Codes
• You can generate QR Codes for free at this site
• Check out this poster with embedded videos you can red with QR Reader!
• Print Friendly allows you to convert web pages into PDF’s that you can annotate
• iPad X Macbeth interesting integration of an ipad in english classroom

Create

• Haiku Deck allows you to create beautiful slideshows with Creative Commons images automatically
• Create a screencast with photos with FotoBabble
• Create and narrate a series of images with VoiceThread
• Create screencasts with Explain Everything
• NearPod allows you to broadcast and control slideshows on individual iPads
• imovie puts everything you need to tell your story at your fingertips.
• GarageBand turns your iPad into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio
• Experience the power of Visualize with Viz
• The easiest and fastest way to make cartoons on your iPad. Cut anything out of your photos and move it on the screen. PhotoPuppet HD will record everything you do.

Share

• Evernote allows you to share and organize notes
• Google Drive syncs and organizes files from your Google Apps account

Teaching Students How to Cross the Information Street Independently

Google Apps For Education November 3-4

Listening to Jamie Casap's Keynote, I couldn't help but get excited about helping students and teachers learn how to curate the information around them. Jamie discussed 21st Century Learning  learning in this century, and how kids and adults are accessing new information everyday.

 Jamie brought up some really interesting questions such as, What will work look like for our graduates in 2037? How do we prepare kids for jobs we don’t know what they look like? Jamie believes Americans will be working high-technology jobs that entail communication, collaboration, curating information, teaching, and networking.

Here are a few top take aways I had during the keynote:

Preparing our students cross the information street today, so they are ready for tomorrow.

I   Check out the skills and tools we can use (as teachers) to prepare our students for future jobs.

The image above is called an Inforgraphic, and was created in easel.ly.

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information. 

Keynote Thoughts That Inspired Me:

Curating
 [We need to]“Teach kids how to think, so we don’t need to teach them how to memorize.”

"The web is not a fad, and we need to teach our students how to be digital citizens and leaders. Teach them how to cross the street."


"Making sense of all the information, building search skills, teaching kids which videos are worth the time and energy to watch."

Collaboration 
What would Plato or Einstein think if they saw kids having to hide their cell phone in school? “What do you mean you make them check that thing at the door, you have the world’s information at your fingertips!?”

"Learning happens any place and anytime"

Networking

“You don’t have to know everything, just get good at something that you want to know, and utilize each other.”

Photos From Jamie's Keynote:

• Technology is not new if you are born into it. For a 5 or 6 year old the iPad 1 will be the worst technology they see in their lives.

Jamie's son uses his netbook to watch a YouTube video and learns how to beat a level in his video game. "Learning happens any place any time"