Goodbye, Good Parents--Final Blog Post

Dearest Parents of my dearest Students,

It is with a heavy heart and a firm sense of hope for the future that I bid University School of Nashville goodbye. Last week, I was interviewed for and accepted a position with Metro Nashville Public Schools to join a small team of educators who will craft the new Metro Nashville Virtual School into a model of its kind. Over the coming years, tens of thousands of children who for whatever reason cannot or will not attend a traditional school for a traditional learning experience will have an opportunity to become excited about learning, to learn, and to earn a high school diploma through our efforts.

Accepting the job, the "call" really, was not an easy decision. Most of all I will miss the daily interaction with your children. Over the last decade and a half, they have been at the center of my personal fulfillment, joyfully filling my days with challenges and successes. The announced plan for filling my position is to hire a capable substitute to work in the lab until a capable full-time replacement can be found.

Appropriately, this will be the final post at this blog. Whether my replacement will choose to communicate in this manner is anybody's guess. I plan to leave it up as a resource for her or him and an archive and resource for anyone in the world. That's the way the world works now, and I do hope it's helpful in some way.

If you wish to keep up with our progress in MNPS, I'll be posting, of course at http://scottmerrick.net and I will be setting up new channels of communication on the internet. I'm on Twitter and Facebook as well, and  feel free to friend/follow me there.

I wish you and your children all the best, and I leave them in the care of some of the most dedicated and capable educators I know. I'll be around, of course, only not as much. If you are in the neighborhood of the Martin Professional Development Center on Fairfax Avenue, next to Dragon Park, please feel welcome to drop in to say hi.

I just got word from NAIS that I'll still be welcome in their "Teacher of the Future" cohort for the year 2010-2011, so I'll be contributing to the resources there over the coming year as well.

Take care, and as I always told your children, "be good and have fun."

Sincerely,
Scott Merrick
Virtual Learning Curriculum Specialist,
Metro Nashville Public Schools
scott@scottmerrick.net

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:

Last Week of April, 2010

Time's flying by! Drop in for our annual International Fair from 5:30 pm to 7 pm Friday night, when 4th grader Caroline Knowles, her crew of fellow 4th graders, and I will be sharing Hopi American food, inspired by our Mesa Verde Unit in Quest Atlantis. I'll be sharing Quest Atlantis with interested attendees, too, via my laptop and a dedicated internet connection! Here's a great composite picture of two of my Questers who became virtual twins, dreadlocks and all, in Quest Atlantis!

The Short Story:

3rd Graders are creating Word cover pages for their Asia study scrapbooks

4th Graders are making graphs with the NCES Create-a-graph website

Kindergarters are making special cards with Kerpoof's "Make a Card" feature

1st Graders are looking at tutorials in Kerpoof, especially the "Make a Movie" tutorial

2nd Graders are also making graphs at the NCES site

The Long Story:

3rd Graders are creating Word cover pages for their Asia study scrapbooks by modifying Word Art on a template residing on our network. I created the template to facilitate getting the task done in the brief 30 minutes I have with the kids, and I'll be cleaning up any mis-formatting and printing them all for the students once they are all finished. In the course of the re-formatting, students open a browser and use the safe-search Google field in the Webliographer to find an image they would like to appear on their document's cover, then copy it into a text box on the template. This retains the desired sizing and makes for a good consistent cover page for all the kids' scrapbooks.

4th Graders are making graphs with the NCES Create-a-graph website. This site has been around for maybe a decade, despite the best efforts of the folks at the National Center for Economics Statistics to take it down several years ago. There was such an outcry by educators that they put it back up and it's been up and available ever since. It's easy to see why it was missed: Students can enter data, choose a style of graph, edit many design elements, and preview their work before revising it until they have just what they want. When satisfied, they can print, save, and/or email a copy of their graph to a teacher, themselves, or their favorite computer lab teacher. Here's a sample:

Kindergarters are making special (shhhhh) cards with Kerpoof's "Make a Card" feature. I'll share some of that work when it's the appropriate time to do so. With a certain holiday coming up a week from Sunday, it may be too early :-)

1st Graders are looking at tutorials in Kerpoof, especially the "Make a Movie" tutorial. This is a good introduction to the concept of tutorials, and it gives the students a source of reference once the logins and passwords go home. With luck, they will be able to use these accounts as long as they would like, since I set them up in such a manner that their usernames and passwords can travel with them up the grades through Lower School and beyond. I would really like to see what older kids could do with Kerpoof, and while introducing the Movie making interface to the 1st graders, I am struck by nothing so much as how it's kind of a nice little subtle introduction to programming. You have to see it to understand, and if you'd like to do that, click on over to the Kerpoof Tutorial page and watch Make a Movie Learn how to make a movie using Kerpoof Animation Studio.

2nd Graders are also making graphs at the NCES site. With them, however, I first demonstrate the site and then walk them through the process a step at a time. The biggest challenge is attention span and self-control in whole class, and I welcome the chance to work on that with them. The results are mostly stellar (the example above is actually one emailed me by a 2nd grader!).

See you in May!

April Proceeds Apace!

We are workingworkingworking in the Lower School Technology for Learning Lab. Here's what we're doing this week:

3rd graders continue with Keyboarding for Kids

4th graders add desktop shortcuts and continue to explore their new mobile netbooks

Kindergarteners "Make a Story" at Kerpoof.com

1st graders login to their new student accounts and Making a Story and saving it online

2nd graders finish up My Lemonade Stand

3rd graders continue with Keyboarding for Kids. Parents, I'm proud of the way many 3rd graders have pursued acquisition of this skill and I want to remind you that the K4K accounts will be "live" online all summer long. A rainy day at the beach? Pop 'em online on the laptop and have them practice for 10 or 15 minutes before they explore the Webliographer for fun, interactive, and educational links!

4th graders add desktop shortcuts and continue to explore their new mobile netbooks. This will be a real boon to our 4th grade writing program. I talked to a colleague of mine at ISTE yesterday whose child will be attending an independent school in Eugene, Oregon next year and one of the things she's most proud of is the mobile laptop cart that even Kindergarteners get to use one day a week. Is this the way of the future for our technology program? It's a possibility, as we continue to do what we've always done at USN--constantly re-evaluate our programs to do the best we can do for our students. Stay tuned! I'll be writing a detailed article about our new resource for the USN enewsletter, so stay tuned for that too!

Kindergarteners are visiting Kerpoof.com again this week to "Make a Story." This clever and powerful online art program is education standards aligned and we will be using it in the lab as just one more way to practice digital graphic literacy and in the process add to our skills banks the problem-solving and self-learning that mastering Kerpoof presents. Here's one of the Kindergartener's pics as an example:

1st graders login to their new student accounts and Making a Story and saving it online. In an upcoming class I'll show them how to open a file, save it on their computer in the My Pictures folder, then how to print that picture. If they are printing at home, do what I do in the lab, set your printer to "Draft" to save color ink!

2nd graders finish up My Lemonade Stand, the computer-resident software that I described in last week's post. This week, many more are muscling through the virtual 30 days of entrepreneurship that the program offers. Our high score for the week is as of Thursday over $3400 dollars. That's pretty good business decision making (and luck) for having started with a seed fund of only $2.00 on day one!

Four more weeks of school. But remember: Lifelong learning never ends, and online learning is ALWAYS available.