John Davitt Visits

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="335" caption="John Davitt - image from www.newtools.org"][/caption]

We were fortunate to have John Davitt, a writer, broadcaster and digital tool maker, be our school's special guest the past two days. Previously I was inspired by John's presentations as a keynote speaker and workshop leader at a conference and wrote about that experience on my blog. John met with different groups such as the librarians, administrators and IT specialists, spoke to the middle school students at an assembly, and guest-taught a number of classes in the elementary, middle and upper schools utilizing his Learning Event Generator and some outdoor learning (similar to this one) . He presented “How Technology can Fit and Enhance Learning” to a mixed audience of students, teachers, and parents. These past two days were filled with a multitude of learning opportunities. If I were to go into detail about each profound thought that came from these two days, this post would go on and on.  Instead,  I'll offer just a few personal reflections:

• Teachers need to become better at letting go and letting students own the learning.


• Let students demonstrate their knowledge in different ways - some they are comfortable with, and some they are not.


• In group work, students might go off in the wrong direction, but there is learning happening as they correct their course - learning that the teacher could not have planned for.


• The power of group learning is underrated - Groups of students can achieve greater heights than individuals.


• Given a problem with very little direction on how to solve it students will amaze you with their problem solving skills, often utilizing tools and techniques that the teacher might not have thought of.


• There are many different approaches to powerful learning and as teachers we need to be offering our diverse learners different ways of learning and demonstrating learning.


• There is a struggle (that enhances and consolidates learning) when you have to demonstrate learning in a way that you are not comfortable with.

Lastly, I would like to thank John Davitt for his thoughtful insights, his energy and generosity (he is leaving us with some copies of the Learning Score, which I will write more about later)  .  I would encourage any school out there to bring John to your campus if you have a chance.  You can learn more about John Davitt at his blog, his website or on twitter.

[caption id="attachment_106" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="Outdoor Learning Adventure"][/caption]

Facebook Friend Map in Social Studies

A colleague recently sent me a link to this article about how a Facebook intern mapped out the relationships of ten million pairs of friends.  My first reaction was to note its beauty.  But then I started thinking about how it might be used in a Geography or other social studies class.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="550" caption="Facebook Friend Visualization Map"][/caption]

There are actually quite a few things you can learn about geography, population and even politics from looking at this. Depending on the age of your students, you could put this image in front of them and have them come up with observations and/or questions for further exploration.  Or, maybe you have to give them some prompts such as: What does this image tell us about the geography of Canada or Australia? Where did China go? etc.  I'm sure there are plenty of educational uses for this image that I'm not thinking of.  If you have an idea, please share your thoughts in a comment on this post.  For a larger-than-full-screen view check out this post on Gizmodo, and for more about the process and data visualization check out this page on Facebook.

Quizlet Flashcards Now Embeddable

Quizlet, the popular online flashcard creation site, now allows you to embed your flashcards onto your blog or website. This is a really nice enhancement for an already useful technology. I've embedded a sample below, which I need to study. Perhaps by putting it on my blog I might actually find myself learning all the European capitals; one can hope.

Choose a Study ModeScatterLearnFlashcards

Study these flash cards | Study geography flash cards

Finding Images to Use in Multi-Media Projects

This post was originally created for use with students responsible for creating a digital story, and was cross posted at blogs.isp.cz/usit Technology Integrators, please feel free to use as you see fit (according to the CC license on this site).

As soon as you take a photo you own the copyright to that photo. The same is true for when you write a poem, or an essay, record a song or create a piece of art. You own the copyright to that work and no one else can use it without your permission.

The same is true for images on the internet: somebody owns the copyright and you cannot use the image unless you have permission.

There are images that are free to use that fall under Public Domain, which means that the copyright has been forfeited or the copyright has expired, but we won’t be addressing these at this time.

The other type of image that you can use are Creative Commons licensed images where the author has already given you permission to use their work. The author/or creator uses a CC license to give you this permission, however you must follow the rules they set out for you. Often all that they require is that you give them credit by name and share your work with the same license that they used.

Google’s advanced image search allows you to narrow your results to images where the author has given you permission to reuse the work in your multimedia project.

1. Go to Google – Images – Advanced Search.

2. Enter the keyword(s)

3. Set any of the parameters (I only use “photos”)

4. Set Usage Rights to “labeled for reuse with modification”

5. Click Google Search

6. Browse the search results and click on the photo of your choice. You are taken to the original page (this is the page you will use for a citation).

Once you’ve located an image, you need to do the following:

1. Verify that the licensing does allow you to use the image (usually by clicking on the license information).

2. Take down the author, title of work, website link, and CC license for citation purposes. Also, there may be information on how the author/creator wants you to attribute the work.

3. Download the photo

4. Use the photo in your multimedia project

5. Include the citation in your project.

Note: If the license required you to “share-alike” then you’ll need to license the final product when you post it on the web.

For more information, watch the video tutorial below.

Microlending Embedded in School Culture

There are some great students at my school doing some really cool things that are improving our school and the world.  Today, a group of students is trying to get micro-lending to be ingrained in the culture of ISP.  They approached the Student Council about funding each advisory (homeroom) with 25 dollars as seed money for lending on Kiva.org.  Advisories could just use the 25 dollars, or they could contribute from their own pockets and do even more good. Each advisory then searched through Kiva to choose the beneficiary that they most wanted to assist, and loaned them the money.  When the beneficiary pays back the loan, the group of student will repeat the process and choose another beneficiary.  After 4 years, when the students in an advisory graduate, they will pass the account onto a freshman advisory to continue the legacy, and to continue to fund loans for individuals or groups that otherwise don't have access to money to improve their lives.

There were some interesting discussions, "aha moments", and plenty of learning as advisories went about choosing beneficiaries.  The thing that I took away from this is how exciting it is to be a part of an organization where students are encouraged to lead, and make a global impact. 

If you'd like to know more about micro-lending, check out http://www.kiva.org/

If you'd like to see how these innovative and mildly thespian students went about introducing this program to our school, watch the video below.

QR Codes in Maths Class

I've been working with a fantastic math teacher, Anne F., on how we might use QR codes in the classroom to engage students in a new way. It took her all of twelve seconds to come up with an idea:  Each group of math students has a problem to solve as an introduction to the mensuration, space and shape unit.  They solve the problem and post their answer to their blog.  Then, they create a QR code that will direct people to the blog post and we post that QR code in the hallway.  The hallway will be full of math questions like:



The next day, we'll send students around the halls with their mobile phones equipped with QR code readers. Their task will be to search for a question that interests or intrigues them, anticipate how the group may have solved it, view the group's blog post and then leave a comment.

Will QR codes improve student learning? In this case, we are anticipating that the novelty of it will at the very least engage them. Additionally, having the codes posted around the school will draw some attention to QR codes and hopefully might generate some interest among teachers in finding ways to leverage them for learning.

I'll write a post about how this activity works out later, but for now, here is the information that we will share with the students.

Order of Operations for students:

1. Solve the problem in your group and document your answer (text, audio, video, etc. or any combination of those).


2. Post your answer to your blog.


3. Find the url (web address) of this specific blog post (clicking on the title of your blog post will take you there)


4. Paste the url into Google's URL Shortner http://goo.gl/ (you have to have a Google account if you want create the code)


5. Then click on "details" to see your QR code


6. Save the image of your QR code to your desktop


7. Create a document including your problem, and your QR code (following the example above) for posting in the hallway.

QR Code Readers

There are a lot of readers for iPhone, Android etc.  Here is just a quick reference of links:

iPhone - I tried three and read the reviews of seven.  Red Laser is the free one I chose and it works well for me.

Android - try QuickMark (thanks, Jeff)

Other Phones - Try here: http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-software/

Mac OSX (and Windows and Linux) -Your Mac can read QR codes using the built-in iSight camera.   QReader is the only App that I found that isn't in Japanese (which I can't read).  You also have to have Adobe Air downloaded.

Learning Event Generator

One of the best things I saw at the European Laptop Institute 2010 (Twitter hash tag:  #eurolap10) was John Davitt's Learning Event Generator.  In one of John's sessions he actually used it to get the participants involved.  You can check out the Learning Event Generator here, but the basic point is to get students demonstrating their learning in non-traditional ways. Putting students in these situations encourages them to create, collaborate, problem solve and communicate. You get some really crazy permutations which quite possibly will help the learning stick even better.   Here are a few examples:

DO how a light works AS a blues song

DO what we know about the brain AS a dot to dot activity

DO what the Magna Carta meant AS a mini opera

My group had "DO how a periscope works AS an animation."  We had fifteen minutes and we came up with the video below.  I enjoyed being involved in a creative group process, but more importantly the process made the learning stick - it has been four days since the conference and I'm still thinking about the Learning Event Generator.