Last Post for 2009-2010

It's been a good year, and as I write this we are sneaking up on the last hour of the last full day of the 2009-2010 school year. Since this blog is specifically for communicating what is going on in the computer lab, I'll lay it to rest for the summer with this post. THE SHORT STORY is that we are at each grade level exploring Free Choice Options, as they are amply documented in earlier blog posts. So many class parties and field trips are making class attendance in the lab so hit or miss that I believe that's the best course. The party's over, ya'll.

So what am I up to this summer? What follows should serve to inform:

I am a "Core Volunteer" at the International Society for Technology in Education, having become acquainted with that now 100,000+ member organization the summer of 2000 as I attended my first "National Educational Computing Conference, its annual convention, in Atlanta, Georgia. Since then I've attended nearly every year, presented multiple times for groups as large as 300, and gotten involved in their innovative "virtual environment" community in Second Life. Last year, I was motivated to create an official "Special Interest Group" for Virtual Environments, and that was recognized and instituted (as one of the only 20 SIGS) in October of 2009 with me as the chair, president, leader, or, as I have designated the role, "Poobah." It's fascinating work and it takes up a great deal of my discretionary time, though I am always mindful to keep that work secondary to my work as Technology Coordinator.

That said, I have benefited greatly from interactions with educators of like mind, many of whom believe that the education of the past, while it offers elements we must not discard out of hand, is no longer meaningful and that we we must look to the world of the future, and beyond reform to revolution. "Innovation is hard," says Sir Kenneth Robinson in a Ted.com talk just released this week, "because it means doing something that people don't find very easy for the most part. It means challenging what we take for granted, things that we think are obvious." My work with ISTE led me to Quest Atlantis and Scratch, and to my use of those tools with our kids. Recently, this work along with other contributions resulted in my being honored by the National Association of Independent Schools as a "Teacher of the Future."

This summer I will lead a group of those like-minded educators in activities designed to help others understand the potentials of 3 dimensional virtual environments for learning and teaching. This will take place in Denver, Colorado from June 25 to June 30 at the ISTE 2010 Conference and Exposition. I'll frame that effort with several days before it and a week after with my extended family, vacation with loved ones and fun in Colorado.

I also hope to spend a few days in Boston at the end of July, at the Apple Learning Institute for educators that is part of the Teacher of the Future program award.

Finally, I learned just yesterday that my grant proposal for USN's Quaker Hill professional development grant won me the funding for self-designed travel to "exemplary and comparable schools" to observe K-4 technology program curricula in other locations. Though I am pleased with what I do in the computer lab, I feel that it could be more tightly and intentionally designed and less reliant on my own sometimes whimsical and playful approach to learning. Out of obligation to my students, your children, I am seeking ideas that will inform redesign of our technology curriculum to bring it even more in line with best practices, as demonstrated in programs that profess to "get it." Wish me luck. It's going to take some sorting out. I'll report back in the fall.

A few housekeeping notes:

• I have had to remove Boowa and Kwala from the Webliographer. This is a long story but basically the new owner (no longer my friend Jason in Mauritus) refused to respond to my request that they remove inappropriate advertising from the non-login site. I regret this, as the blue bear and his lovely little koala buddy have been staples of my work in the lab for years. I feel it is the appropriate response, though. I'm good with it.
• Keyboarding for Kids accounts will remain open all summer. If your child should finish all 64 lessons during the summer, please email me and I'll set up a new account for them so that they can keep up their practice and improve even more. PLEASE make sure that they are practicing with home row key position, using the correct fingers for the correct keys.
• Quest Atlantis accounts will also be kept alive during the summer. I'll check in at least weekly. I have some questing to do myself, and it's incumbent upon me to fulfill my duties as mentor all summer long. If you have questions for me, don't hesitate to email. smerrick @ email.usn.org is the address.
• 1st grade Kerpoof accounts will remain open for rising 2nd graders. The login "Nickname" is the child's first name (duplicates in the grade level have the first two letters of the last name added, as in "SarahJo") and it is capitalized conventionally. The Password is 10r13 for the student in Ms. Roth's class sitting at computer 13 (the 10 is for the year 2010), and the Class Name is K747. I sent home login slips but if you've lost those you can also email me.
• If your child is using Google Buzz, I highly encourage you to help them disable it. Go to your gmail "Settings," click on the Buzz tab, and disable Buzz. 'nuff said.
• Keep your child's computer use public and monitor the browser history once a week. That works.

Have a safe and fun family summer, ya'll. I'll see you and your wonderful kids in the fall of 2010.

Second Week in May

With so few school days left, we are scrambling to get every bit of learning value from our time in the lab.

The Short Story:
3rd and 4th graders are taking a 1 minute typing test so that I can gather data about their progress in Keyboarding for Kids.
Kindergarteners are choosing between drawing a picture in Drawing for Children or completing an activity at Kerpoof.
1st graders are choosing from that same set of options with the addition of the Creative Games portion of uptoten.com's Boowa and Kwala premium website.
2nd graders are visiting AuntLee.com for games that help them become more fluent with a computer keyboard.

The Short Story:
3rd and 4th graders are taking a 1 minute typing test so that I can gather data about their progress in Keyboarding for Kids. We do that at a website appropriately named TypingTest.com. Each child repeats the "Tigers in the Wild" 1 minute timed test as many times as we have time for, then I manually take down WordsPerMinute, Number of Errors, and AdjustedScore for entry into a MS Excel spreadsheet that will inform teachers so that they can include each child's progress in the discussions they will hold with parents at the end of the year. The accounts at Keyboarding for Kids will be available to students all summer long, and I HIGHLY suggest parents encourage practice. As I tell the kids, this skill is one that will make their entry into middle school immeasurably easier.

I'm so proud of the 4th grade team for all the support and encouragement they've given their classes this year. Our 4th graders' performance this year by far exceeds that of previous years and we feel like we're making progress in the program. More to come.

Kindergarteners are choosing between drawing a picture in Drawing for Children or completing an activity at Kerpoof. I save them all and I'll create a slideshow for each classroom's webpage as well as printing them for your refrigerators.

Here's one example of each platform's output. First, from Kerpoof.com's "Make a Picture" activity:

and then from Drawing for Children:

1st graders are choosing from that same set of options with the addition of the Creative Games portion of uptoten.com's Boowa and Kwala premium website.

2nd graders (who are not producing PowerPoint "About Me" slideshows in a quick intro to PowerPoint) are visiting the BBC Typing website for computer games they can revisit during the summer to help them begin to easily locate keys on the computer keyboard.

Keyboarding is an essential skill, and these students will begin their formal touch-typing program at the very beginning of the next school year as 3rd graders.

After the Mayday Floods

Hi all,

I hope you're all safe and well after the recent deluge. I gather that many of our families suffered loss or damage and I'm thankful that no lives have been lost.

I at first was dubious about getting back to school so quickly and I do miss the opportunities to volunteer that are so needed in our community, but after a couple of days with your children just being around them has done so much for my own state of mind and emotions that I am glad we're back at work.

Here's the skimmy on what we are doing:

The Short Story:
3rd graders finish and print their Asia Scrapbook covers
4th graders re-enter Quest Atlantis to make progress before the end of the school year
Kindergarteners revisit Kerpoof to "Make a Doodle"
1st graders revisit Kerpoof to learn more about how to "Make a Movie"
2nd graders make and print a new graph at the NCES Create a Graph site

The Long Story:
3rd graders finish and print their Asia Scrapbook covers from a Microsoft Word template. It's easy to do but getting it done with all 18 students in a class in our allotted 25 minutes is quite fun and chaotic. Here's one example of the results:

4th graders re-enter Quest Atlantis to make progress before the end of the school year. I am introducing the 5th graders to this marvelous, safe, interesting platform this week (re-introducing most of them, as we quested to positive effect for much of last year in their 4th grade) and I'm hoping that our new collaboration with the Middle School will turn into something good for all of us--for the students, the technology team, and the families. Stay tuned!

Kindergarteners revisit Kerpoof to "Make a Doodle." This is Kerpoof's simple but fun painting/drawing tool, and Kindergarteners discover this week how to draw a shape--triangle, square, even star--and as long as they carefully end where they began it, Kerpoof straightens and evens out all the lines to make a "perfect" shape! We're printing these for refrigerators but not saving them.

1st graders revisit Kerpoof to learn more about how to "Make a Movie" there. This is a pretty powerful feature of Kerpoof. I have set the kids up with their own accounts and logins, the benefit of which is that they can save projects and revisit/extend them at future logins. I'm working on a little book with the "Make a Story" feature myself and I'll share it out here when it's complete. It's about an alien who trips over his tongue all the time...

2nd graders make and print a new graph at the NCES Create a Graph site. We did so last week and I'm pleased to see most 2nd graders able to complete the exercise this week, emerging with a graph displaying data taken by quick voice poll on a topic we choose at the moment. Actually, the 2nd grade has split focus to some degree this week, and two classes are involved in other activities--Ms. Pitt's class is finishing "All About Me" style PowerPoints, and Ms. Darr's students enjoy the first third of a movie that Lillian brought in to share. "MicroCosmos" is an absolutely stunning G-rated film distributed by Miramax that makes use of very high tech photography techniques to share the lives of insects in real life. Not an animated movie, you can read more about it and see a trailer at the Miramax MicroCosmos website!

Stay safe!

Slideshow from International Fair

4th grader Caroline Knowles organized classmates to put up a little display about Quest Atlantis and the Hopi American culture, and her mom cooked corn stew and hominy to serve. A good time was had by all!

USN International Fair

Comments for Mr. Merrick?

For my students: