"Create"-ivity

The more I become immersed in technology...as if I wasn't already...the more I am understanding the importance and depth of the ability to "create".  I am latching on to this magical word as my mantra when working with classes, teachers and my own children.

It's easy to consume and regurgitate...information, rote skills, memorized facts...but it is not necessarily easy to "create" from what we learn or know.  I am not an artist or painter like my dad is (and he's gifted), but I can create some pretty wonderful things with a computer, an iPad, my Razr Maxx phone and some simple software.  

During my CESA 6 coordinator's meeting yesterday, the "boss" shared this video by DeWitt Jones with us.

Powerful.  Powerful concepts for educators.  Powerful ideas for students.  Powerful motivation for everyone, involving simple skills and ideas:

Fall in love with the world

Bring out your passions

Use your creativity everday to make your life extraordinary

How can we be creative everyday?  How can we encourage our students to be creative everyday?

• Use iPads or iPhones with iMovie and create a video log/documentary of the year
• Blog...my "creative" outlet
• Create digital photostories
• Use ePortfolios in class instead of assignments
• Use what you love, your passion in the classroom
• Let your students design the day's agenda
• Find time, even short periods, to encourage students to follow their interests

Sir Ken Robinson speaks to me in this video and I am curious what you have to say about it.

And then we release them to...what?

Being a librarian by heart, a techno-nut by choice and an information specialist by profession, I look critically at every library I enter.  Can't help it, part of the DNA.  Here's my story... (Law and Order theme song, please)

After "working" this summer for the first time in a long time..."working" meaning attending conferences, giving presentations, networking and all sorts of other things I have not ever been able to do before...I truly appreciate the hard work and effort that you all have put into your own knowledge and practice.  Times, they are a-changing fast, and we need to keep up.  Be proud of yourself.  Pat yourself on the back.  Pat a co-worker on the back in the most non-threatening, non-harassment, anti-bullying, celebratory manner you can.

We work hard to prepare our students for future educational endeavors, the workplace and successful life experiences in a time of rapidly changing...everything.  Huge responsibility in a world of no perfect answers.

Last week, while working in my office at UW-Oshkosh I decided to peruse the stacks at the library looking to see how universities are adapting to the changing needs of our students and society.  The Polk Library, if you haven't been, really is a nice university library.  Doesn't compare to UW-Madison libraries, but not much does.  (Go Badgers!)



My trip through the stacks began in the education section as a teaching profession is wont to do.  (Yes, I just used the word "wont".)  Here's what I found.  The Spurs to Creative Teaching.  Inspired for more creative approaches to my practice, I picked it up.

Being an avid admirer of the work of Ken Robinson, the first chapter starts out promising:

I quickly checked the copyright date and headed back to Chapter 1.  Several pages in, I returned to the copyright...1964.  What?  1964!  I slammed the book back onto the shelf in disgust.  The poor, studying UW students looked at me shushing my tirade like old school marms.  You have got to be kidding me...1964.

I felt let down, like when you eat anise candy thinking it's a rootbeer barrel.  There were more of the same all up and down the shelves.  Mumbling some 3-letter text-pletives and dejected, I returned to the CMC.

To be honest, the Polk is steadily remaking itself by changing how it operates in a digital world...robust wireless, awesome cafe style study areas, coffee IN the library, BYOD, and more digital librarians.  I still find this unacceptable, however.  From speaking with professors and attending classes, it seems to be characteristic of universities, however.

The students we send out into the world are tech-savvy, high-end brokers of information and technology.  The post-secondary education they receive needs to reflect their future needs as workers and professionals...doctors, lawyers, business people...TEACHERS.  Leaders.  

Here's for the "trickle up" theory.  Keep up the great work.

The F&P of Searching (Tip)

I generally take searching online for granted.

• Keyword "strings"... the old-school Boolean
• Google makes life pretty easy on spelling, Boolean operators (+,-), etc...
• Results are fast and ranked reliably

The one consideration I overlook much of the time is reading level.  The question I need to ask myself when working with students on research or searching behavior is "can you read this?"  Are the results, as awesome as I think they might be, understandable to a second grader, fourth grader, even a high school student?

As an example, I search for "evaporation".  The first site listed as a result is the first one listed under almost every search...Wikipedia.

Just skimming the test, I can grasp the idea...my fourth grader (way above average reader, btw) is stifled.

There are certainly some good search engines for kids (listed below), but we can still use my favorite tool...Google...to modify the results with some extra clicks.

Using the advanced search tool, I can limit the results by reading level (basic, intermediate, advanced) and find sites that are much more suitable to the level of my students.  In the case of "evaporation", the first site listed using the "basic reading level" is Chem4Kids.

Amazing difference.

DIY Searching

1. Enter your search term in Google
2. On the results page, click on the "cog" on the right side of the screen.
3. Select "Advanced Search".
4. There are LOTS of options on the advanced search screen.  For reading level, scroll down to "Reading Level" and select what looks appropriate for your students.  Since this is not straight Fountas and Pinnell levels, you might have to experiment.

Search Engines for Kids

• KidRex is a Google search tool for kids.
• YahooKids
• KidsClick, by Kent State University School of Library and Information Science
• Boolify is a fun, visual way to teach Boolean searching to kids.

A HUGE thanks to Marsha Primeau at Oakfield Elementary for this tip.

Googlize Your Newsletter (Tip of the Week)

Funny thing happened on the way to school this morning.  I received an email update from my children's school.

Since they haven't emailed me before, I thought the worst might have happened...school bus accident, fire...something that would involve me rushing to get my kids.

It was the school newsletter.  I read it on my phone.  Thank you!

Using Blogger and about 15 minutes to set up your very own blog, it is possible to create a whole new dynamic for your personal, classroom newsletter that can include pictures/slideshows, videos, attachments, notes and other thoughts.

Blogger is a Google product included with your school district (or personal) Google account.  You can find it along the black bar on top of your Google mail under "More" and then "Even More".

WWIB...Why Would I Blog?

• Posting (adding an entry) takes only as long as it takes you to write the post.
• It's an awesome and timely way to share assignments, send homework reminders, attach worksheets or forms, etc... Here's a sample.
• You can Post multiple times, as events happen...you don't need to do a once a month blog, printed out and put in a students take-home folder.
• Immediate connection with parents through email or RSS feeds (I get feeds sent to my iPad for reading)...MY FAVORITE
• Think of the multimedia power of field trips, school events, etc...when you can add slideshows, actual videos and real-time results.
• If you're adventurous, you can blog on-site.
• Blogging gives you more control than other social media (i.e. Facebook)
• Save trees
• Professionally cathartic

Teacher Blogs

Ms. Cassidy

Science Fix

Cool Cat Teacher Blog

More

Musings on an Autumn Day

Welcome to Fall! Or Autumn! Or Harvest! Or whatever we choose to call it.  With so many names, how could it not be your favorite time of the year?

My lovely wife, bless her heart, tells me that I am not the most positive person at times...I like to say I am "particular", but po-tay-toes/po-tah-toes.

Oddly enough, Autumn is the time of year to which I actually look forward and I thought I would share some of that joy.


Harvest

Robert Frost has always been one of my favorite poets (along with Whitman, Browning and William Carlos Williams).  He speaks to the seasons like no other writer:

GATHERING LEAVES

 

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

Every school year starts the same...we try to put together all the good ideas, memories, things that didn't work so well last year, new initiatives...all the "leaves"...into a our practices for this year.  This summer seemed particularly overwhelming.  Frost's poem really reflects the whimsical, unending, hysteria of organizing our professional lives as educators..."the mountains I raise/elude my embrace."

Every Leaf is Gold

Jim Bishop speaks to our "leaf piles" much better:

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.”  

Look back over your spring and summer in which I know all of you worked...at school, at home, at conferences and workshops...you have collected more gold, more value than you may yet realize.   These nuggets of wisdom, knowledge or skills pay dividends in the months to come.   

Now that we are one month in to the year, the kids have settled down and we are starting to "hunker" down to the long road ahead, please don't forget the importance of our fall harvest:

“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.”  

Finally, I think this piece of Autumnal wisdom might be the most important for working with kids in schools, sports or at home.