Dear Edu 776: Integrating Technology Into Programming, Services, and Instruction, This is not easy for me to say, so I'm just going to come out and say it. It's over between us. Our relationship has run its course. Our Wednesday and Sunday dates have to come to an end. And I'm not Castanza-ing you, but it really isn't you, it's me.
I think our relationship is like most other relationships. At the beginning there is so much wide-eyed excitement and liveliness. We spent tons of our free time together blogging on Blogger, discussing on Wiki, learning through Prezi, presenting on Creative Commons, sharing on Lino It, tweeting on Twitter, blabbering on Blabberize, storytelling on iMovie and much more. I have learned so much from you, and for that, I'll always be grateful.
And like most couples, we've truly had our ups and downs. A relationship takes a lot of work to be successful; we knew that coming in. Did you keep me up at night? Yes. Did you stress me out at times? For certain. But was it worth it? Without a doubt. I have never been afraid of technology. I was one of two teachers at my school who first volunteered to have a Smartboard in my class. I run my class through Edmodo and have a class website. Explain Everything allows my students to create instructional videos and take assessments that allow them to explain their thinking. Kahoot is a great way to formatively assess my students, keeping them engaged. I thank you for challenging me and forcing me to not be complacent. I can honestly say that you've opened my eyes to a digital world I didn't know exist. Sure I could have spent my weekends watching hours of football or basketball, but I was exercising my mind and becoming a better teacher for it. I would love to see where this relationship go, but my wife says I have to stop typing now and change this kid's diaper.
Riley Madison Mann
Don't be sad. You'll be fine. Heck, I'm sure in no time at all you'll find someone else to spend your time with. Fare thee well, Sonny
My mom told me when I was younger that I couldn't get a tattoo because it is against my religion. While that was effective in getting me to not eat ham before I was 15, it is not the reason I have never gotten a tattoo. The question always was, "What is something I would want on my body FOREVER?" The forever part is always the factor that has prevented me from getting a tattoo.
Would barbed wire still look "cool" to me when I was 70? What if I put a girl's name on my body, and things didn't work out? At one point I thought about getting a Scooby Doo tattoo, as that would remind me of my happy childhood, but I personally think a cartoon tattoo looks a little silly on an older person. The other tattoo ideas I seriously considered when I was in my young 20's were the team emblems for either the Bulls, Bears, or Sox, a Chicago flag, as well as a picture I drew when I lived in Hawaii that resembled someone sitting on the beach staring out into the ocean.
The older I get, the less I desire getting a tattoo. If I were forced to get a tattoo (maybe a madman takes people hostage, and the only way he lets us go is if I got a tattoo), I think I would tattoo my wedding date and children's birth dates over my heart.
Digital tattoos are a different story. In short, it is your digital identity. "Just like a tattoo, your digital reputation is an expression of yourself. It is formed and added to by you and others over time. Your digital tattoo includes things like websites or blogs you’ve created, tweets, blog comments, your account or screen names and everything else you’ve left on the Internet from your online activities. Just like a real tattoo, a digital tattoo is easy to create but extremely difficult to remove. But it’s also unlike a tattoo in that it’s not always in your control, since other people have the ability to post information about you online.
There is nothing wrong with having a digital tattoo – digital tattoos are not bad or dangerous, and positive posts can actually work to enhance your reputation. Plus if there is anything negative about you, it helps to have some positive information to counterbalance it." (http://www.bpl.bc.ca/node/2874)
So while I have no real tattoos, I have hundreds or even thousands of digital tattoos. Every tweet I tweet, blog I blog, picture of me in Facebook, and video I post on YouTube, is forever out there in the digital world. My first thought to this is, "Thank god there was no social media when I was in high school or college." While I worked my butt off, I definitely had my fair share of fun along the way. Now with 2 kids, and one more almost here, most of the "fun" I have involves brushing Barbie's hair and getting jumped on.
As a teacher, I feel that there is a lot more scrutiny of your digital tattoo. With students, parents and administrators, able to see what you post online, teachers need to be a bit more selective of their identity. I have had both parents and students request to be my Facebook friend. This is always a bit awkward. For students, I always tell them that I will accept their friend requests when they turn 18. As of now, only one student has remembered and asked me to be their friend. For parents however, it puts me in the predicament of do I accept their request and allow them full access, or do I deny their request and make them feel neglected. To be honest, I have never denied a parents request.
Knowing that students, parents, and administrators can access my tweets and Facebook posts/pictures, I just make sure that my digital tattoo projects my image in a positive way. While I would say that 99% of the photos I take would never be deemed inappropriate, there is an occasional one of me from high school or college, that I would probably rather not have my students, their parents, and administrators see. To solve this problem, I just "untag" my name from the picture so my name and account are no longer attached to the picture. My wife uses this feature when someone posts a picture of her that she does not find very flattering (which happens very rarely).
As an educator and a parent, I feel there is a responsibility I have to educate my students and children about the permanence of what they put online. They need to understand that once it is out there, it will stay out there forever. Your digital tattoo is an opportunity to share your thoughts, feelings, and pictures with friends and family, but also to complete strangers, so they need to be selective of just how much they share. Additionally, I will let them know that future colleges and employers are now looking at a candidate's participation in social media. What will your digital tattoos say about you?
When I first saw an Infographic, I immediately thought it would be great for my math class. The illustrations reminded me of a book I love using with my class called The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math: 24 Death-Defying Challenges for Young Mathematicians, by Sean Connolly (not James Bond).
The book has a series of stories that requires you to solve a problem to save the day. I love how it incorporates reading into math problems. With this in mind, I decided to create a little story involving money for my Infographic using the web tool Piktochart. I chose the format "The Startup Way" because it could function as a timeline for my story.
I found it to be not very problematic creating a Piktochart. I was a big fan of how easy it was to search for images/graphics and add text. I believe that students would be able to figure out how to use this Web 2.0 tool after a bit of exposure and practice.
Next for me was writing the story. I decided upon creating a word problem involving money. The protagonist would go through the timeline both making and spending money, and the reader had to keep track of the balance. To add to the difficulty level, I included events where students would have find fractions and percents of whole numbers. At the very end, the reader would have to know how much money the protagonist has.
Does this picture look familiar? If it does, then you must have read my last blog where I created a Wordle. I decided to make a Wordle that would list all the prime numbers under 100. I was pleased with my creation, but wondered how I could enhance it even more.
Enter Blabberize!!! "Blabberize is a photo editing tool that creates talking animations from a photo or other image. Browse the ready-made blabbers or create."(www.teachersfirst.com)
Ok, I'll be honest, one of my colleagues told me that this web tool was one of the easier ones to understand and did not take that long to create your own.
When I researched the web tool, I quickly saw the appeal. It is doesn't take long to do, is easy to create.
Step 1: Pick an image to import
Step 2: Make a mouth that moves and place it where you'd like on the image
Step 3: Add audio
As always, I was looking for creating something that was practical, and since I had already created a Wordle on Prime Numbers, I decided I would add audio to go along with it, so now students weren't only exposed to the visual, they had access to audio, which provided them with a definition of prime numbers, composite numbers, and how the number 1 is neither prime nor composite. The fact that the message is coming from a "talking" elephant only adds to the engagement level. This an easy-to use web tool that teachers and students should be able to create with little difficulty.
I was excited to try my first Wordle. "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to your own desktop to use as you wish." (www.wordle.com)
My first thought was to create a Wordle that centralized Howard Gardener's Multiple Intelligences. I always like to talk about this at the beginning of the year. I tell my students that why I feel really strongly about some of my intelligences, there are definitely areas of weakness. I then ask them to reflect on their own selves and try to identify areas of strength and weakness.
I wanted my Wordle to have "I Have Skills" in the largest font. From there, I wanted to include a plethora of action verbs that illustrated how we all have skills, even if it's not always linguistic or mathematical. When I hit "Go" I was surprised how hard it was to get I Have Skills to line up horizontally. Another surprise, was how little space all of the text I copied and pasted actually took up. It was tiny! Dissatisfied, I was determined to start again.
Being a math teacher, I wanted my Wordle to be not only math related, but something that was useful as well. I thought about what math concepts would work well with Wordle and finally decided on "Prime Numbers". I decided to copy and paste "Prime Numbers" a ridiculous amount of times so it showed up largest. From there, I did the smallest prime numbers the next amount (3,5,7,11,13,17,19...) The larger the prime number, the less I copy and pasted (71,73,79...)
After hitting "Go" and changing the Format a few times, I finally settled on Wordle that you see at the top of this screen. I was satisfied with the size of "Prime Numbers" as well as all of the examples from 2-97. I'm happy that I have created a Wordle that is aesthetically pleasing and informational at the same time. This Web 2.0 Tool is very user friendly, so students should have no problem creating their own. Now, if only there was a way to add audio to it...(tune in next time for Blabberize).
When I was assigned to create a digital story for my Integrating Technology class, I at first was very excited. I have always loved creative writing, yet find that with a teaching career and two young children, I rarely have time for anything creative, with the exception of how to get my children to put their clothes on in less than an hour or to stop fighting over the same toy.
My first thought for a digital story was "Saturday". It would start with me waking up, brushing my teeth, making my kids breakfast, and then going to play basketball. I must admit, I did get teased by my friends when I asked one of them to record me for a movie I was making. While I'm proud to say there were a few personal highlights recorded, I started to realize it was going to take a really long time to edit this digital story. Unfortunately, time is not something I had a lot of.
Guess who made the game winner!
I started brainstorming again. Maybe I would write an ode to my lovely wife Jen. Certainly I had enough pictures of her, and it never hurts to put your wife on a pedestal. Since I already wrote her a song for our wedding and many notes of affection, I decided to go a different route. (Side note: It's amusing how few pictures my wife and I have been in the last 5 years, and of those, 95% are with our kids).
She's stealing my pose!
My next thought was I would make a digital story about my son Trevor. I was thinking that I would talk about what it's like to have a son who dressed up as Elsa for Halloween last year, loves playing with Barbies, and whose favorite show is "Sofia the First". My message would be one that preaches loving your child unconditionally and allowing them to be who they are, no matter what others think. In the end, I decided against it, predominantly because I knew my 2 year old daughter Olivia would flip out that I didn't make a movie about her.
The Mann kids
Moving forward, I considered a digital story about my dad who passed away 5 years ago. I was thinking about reading the eulogy I wrote, as the basis of the story with a montage of pictures. When I read the eulogy again, I realized that I didn't have enough pictures that would match with what I wrote about.
After all this time spent brainstorming, I had nothing to show for it. With the deadline quickly approaching, I needed to decide on something. While doing some organizing in our house, I came across a story I had written while living in Hawaii. It was called "Dolce Vita" which means the sweet life in Italian.
It was story about a simple fisherman named Willy, who loved his simple life. He would board his little ship, the Dolce Vita, every morning and see the most beautiful sunrises. After returning to the market and selling fish tacos, he would play music with his friends, go home and dance with his kids, and then enjoy a romantic evening with his wife.
One day a rich man comes to Willy's stand and is delighted by the wonderful taste of the tacos. He proceeds to tell Willy that if he works longer hours, buys more boats, and focuses on making bags full of money, he would be able to retire to somewhere beautiful in 30 years, and spend quality time with his friends and family. The story ended with Willy laughing to himself, because he was already living this sweet life.
I find it funny that I wrote this as a wifeless, childless, 22-year-old. Even back then, I knew that I would never define my personal success by what job I had, or how much money I had in my bank account. I guess I have always understood that it is the people who you love and who love you back that make you rich.
Reading this story for the first time in a decade put a huge smile on my face. While I'm not living on a beautiful island, I do have a job I love, a group of amazing friends who keep me young at heart, and a family that makes that heart of mine grow bigger and bigger. It reaffirmed that I do in fact have a Dolce Vita.
After combining pictures of Hawaii I have taken over the years with some images artists have drawn, I had the visual component of my story covered. Next came the sound track, which I wanted to feel "islandy", which is why I went with Bob Marley and Jack Johnson. After adding narration, my digital story was complete. If you have the time, I hope you get the chance to listen and watch it, and may you too have a sweet life.
To be completely honest, my least favorite part of Facebook for years, was the postings. It seemed odd to me that people would share so much, from the mundane, “Today went grocery shopping”, to the extremely intimate, “Got cancer again”, to the over-opinionated, “Don’t get your children vaccinated or your they will die,” posted right above, “Get your children vaccinated or they will die.”
When I heard there was an app, Twitter, that was only the posts part of Facebook, I thought, “There’s one app I’m sure to use…never.” A few years ago, the tech specialist at our school made a big push to set-up Twitter accounts. Not being one to say no to people who have always said yes to me, I set up my account…and then literally posted nothing…ever.
It wasn’t until I was assigned to introduce myself to the Twitterverse in my Integrating Technology graduate class, that I really started seeing Twitter as a resource for teachers. After participating in an ICE Chat, I realized that there were teachers not only talking about their effective teaching strategies, but also sharing their resources. Videos, articles, quotes, projects and printables were all available on Twitter.
First up, ollow 20 people/organizations that are involved with education. The first few were easy. Friends of mine who are educators, the tech specialists in our district, and a few Professional Learning Networks like ICE and Edmodo. The rest came via searching with #’s (#math or #5thgrade). Even after all of this, I still found I needed a handful more to follow. This would become much more manageable after I participated in my first twitter chat through ICE’s Personal Learning online discussion called an "Ice Chat".
The Chat
I was a little nervous going into it. How would I know if people saw my responses? What if my responses suggested I had no clue what I was talking about? Would I remember to tag #edu776nz?
When the chat began, I felt like things were happening at blazing speeds. By the time I read a tweet and hit “Live” there were 5 more tweets that I had to read. I wanted to contribute to the conversation, so I decided I would answer the first of eight questions chatters were responding to. I quickly learned I had to paraphrase as best as possible to be able to get my message across. It made me wonder if in general I talk too much. Probably.
By the end of the chat I felt like my neurons were firing. The questions posed led to introspective thinking of best practices. This metacognition I feel leads to some of my best personal development. The chat also proved useful in finding other people to follow. I was able to recognize that there were some members of the chat who had experience executing personalized learning and could provide insight on how to achieve it. I also found that if there is a person you follow who you find resourceful, chances are they follow people who also are resourceful too.
Do you know Hardik Parikh? Neither did I until he started following me on twitter. Turns out that he co-founded a tool called PracTutor. PracTutor is a program that customizes learning for each student based on individual skills and empowers them to master every concept of the Common Core Standards in grades 1 through 8. They claim, “All kids - whether they need intervention, accelerated learning or career and college readiness, can achieve their goals.” While I can’t say that I have used the program, I do like the concept behind it, and like how it addresses personalized learning. While I wouldn’t use this as my only curriculum, I think it would be beneficial to supplement with this tool and use it as a Tier II intervention you could progress monitor with. Another bonus is that the format mirrors PARCC questions so students could get exposure and practice to the types of questions they will see on their state assessments.
Not only does Practutor seem like a useful program, I also appreciate how they tweet articles and videos that are thought provoking and very relevant to the teaching profession.
