Game Based Learning

I do try to be more collaborative than didactic in our sessions, but you HAVE to read this article on Game Based Learning.  Maybe it is just the Geek in me, or having sons who are dedicated gamers, but I do think we need to be open to the changes in the way children are learning. 

Some folks have been concerned about my introducing WolfQuest to the Cos Cob Afters class, which spread like wildfire to every grade level.  Even if we do not personally "get" the appeal of these games and groups, we have to try them in order to guide our students in appropriate choices.

Collaboration

I loved the synergy of our group yesterday.  You all brought such dynamic knowledge and serious inquiry that we created something much greater than a mere how-to session could have generated.  Jeannine, I am looking forward to seeing your class' final products.  Chris and Curtis, you have a great project in mind that would be ground-breaking for Greenwich, at the very least.  Let's begin capturing some video right away.  Send me your lesson schedules so I can get down to get us started.  Thanks all for educating me!

Our Next iLife PLP is Wednesday, April 29th

We will be going over the iPhoto '08 element of the iLife suite.  Please bring some digital pictures to work with (camera, disk or jump drive).  

These sessions are so short; it would help if you could view this short introduction to improving photos on the Apple website .  This way, we can jump right into iPhoto, address the questions you have, do some photo editing and create a slide show.  Given the time of year, you might like to create a sort of 'year in review' to share with your students.

If you have a digital camera, bring it with you and we can make sure the settings are appropriate for the way you use it.  Send me the camera model via email and I will download the user manual to be sure I can handle it :)

iMovie HD versus iMovie '08 versus iMovie '09

We've considered the differences between the oldie but goodie iMovie HD and the newer versions under the iLife suites.  Because Apple still has enough users hanging on to the older version, you can still download it for free and integrate it into the '08 version.  While we'll be looking primarily at the '08 version on Wednesday, there is an excellent resource for information on the original, thanks to the author of the main book we are using, The Macintosh iLife '08 in the Classroom by Jim Heid.   Here you can download free his original chapter on iMovie, and the site also includes some online tutorials. 

Scale

I ran into a parent I worked with when I was at Riverside School ... a Renaissance woman, who studied to be a veterinarian, is raising a family and immersed herself in jewelry design.  Marcella would have "trunk shows" for the staff at Riverside, with alluring gems and graceful lines ... this to fill in the time between chauffeuring children, volunteering at school, cooking dinner, ad infinitum.

We had talked in those days about creating a website for her talents.  In catching up today, I sensed that her idea of a website was the sort of online catalogue image most of us think of when we turn to the Internet.  But one of the key trends of 21st Century skills is that the Internet is about networking.  A presence on the World Wide Web is not just about marketing, or sales, or production, or results.  Marcella is not looking to mass-produce her pieces.  Each one is a personal statement.  And sharing that statement is as easy as sending an email to our personally selected list.

It made me think of our group, and about avoiding the "Speilburg Syndrome."  Let's not suppose that any entreé into cyberspace needs to be an Academy Award Winning production.  Let's think of our place in the Universe, and scale proportionately.  A small and graceful, clean and technologically accessible piece is more rewarding to us and our students and our community than anything we could spend weeks working on and have crash our servers!

  

Our Final iLife PLP is on Wednesday, March 18th

We'll meet for our last iLife PLP from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m. at Eastern Middle School on Wednesday, March 18th. We will be looking at iMovie, and here is a wonderful example from Greenwich's very own Chris Harris, the MTA at Hamilton Avenue. I asked Chris about how he did it and he explained:

Linda Swenson writes: Chris, I loved it. May I link it to my blog for the PLA iLife participants?

YES

What did you do to change the song?

We had to go to a choose a song by an independent artist, who has open an copyright permission. The original song was a Song By Stone Sour. The record company gave permission to use in the school but could not put in internet, so we went to macjams.com and found a song by a independent artist who wants their music to be used.

What kind of video camera do you have? Did you use iMovie (which version)?

I used an old Canon Mini Digital Camcorder, it eats tapes, but has a firewire connection, so we connected directly to a laptop and recorded directly to iMovie.

And this with everything else going on with Ham Ave! Wow!

Thanks!

Check out Chris' post:

HAS Kids Against Bullying

Apple iLife ’09 - Review of the Apple iLife ’09

Apple iLife ’09 - Review of the Apple iLife ’09


Posted using ShareThis

A Vision of Students Today (mwesch)

A Vision of Students Today (mwesch)

Our Next iLife PLP is Wednesday, February 18th

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn."

Alvin Toffler

All I needed was a day or two off so I could put together this blog for our class. Typical, right? We want to use technology in our classrooms or media centers, but it takes days to piece it together, and I'm talking uninterrupted time here! There is little opportunity in the school day for learning, creating and troubleshooting. So, what I'll try to do for our sessions is roll out a few basic projects that we can do immediately. That will be our jumping-off point, and then we can look at some examples from other schools to pique our interest and plan our next class. The next class on February 18th we will start with iPhoto, so try to bring a disk or portable drive with 12-15 photos.

The books I mentioned in the first session are posted on my book shelf to the bottom right of this page. I added one I did not show you in class, SLIDE:OLOGY by Nancy Duarte. While it is written with Powerpoint in mind, the principles apply to any visual presentation and I found it helped free my thinking from producing text-reliant projects.