I’m starting the countdown to California’s February 1 Digital Learning Day celebration and feeling very fortunate to be attending the event with three outstanding teachers from my district.

Lesley McKillop, 4th grade teacher at Prairie Elementary and Area 3 Writing Project colleague, will share how her students use filmmaking as tool for transforming their writing into social action, such as taking on the Sacramento Board of Directors to save Splash, an environmental education program. Checkout the video for an idea of the many ways Lesley takes student voices beyond the walls of the classroom.

Teresa Cheung, 4th grade teacher at David Reese Elementary, will share how her students use voice recorders, as part of the Stories from the Heart project, to interview family and community members to compare and contrast childhood experiences across generations, geographic areas, and cultures.

Terri Mills, 5th grade teacher at David Reese Elementary, will share See the Wind, a science and writing lesson in which she teams her 5th graders with 1st graders. With a little help from their big buddies, the first graders then take their writing and their voices out to the world via VoiceThread.

I’ll be sharing Digital ID, a collaborate project I’ve been working on this year with Writing Project and Merit 2011 colleague Natalie Bernasconi. But more about this project later in the week:-)

In the Sacramento region, thanks to the efforts of Digital Learning Day coordinator Jayne Marlink, the excitement is growing, along with DLDay resources.

Hope to see you there!

Digital Learning Day – what a great way for schools to head into the New Year! If your district, like mine, is experiencing the weight of PI (Program Improvement) pressures, requirements and walk-throughs sucking the creative juices right out classrooms, Digital Learning Day will provide a much-needed celebration of innovative teachers and instructional strategies.

Started by the Alliance for Learning, and in partnership with the National Writing Project, Digital Learning Day will showcase powerful work going on in the many districts and classrooms where educators are making thoughtful use of the potential of digital tools to provide students with the skills they need to succeed in college, career, and life. The ultimate goal is for the event to ignite a “digital learning movement that truly provides a quality education for every child.”

Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education (and former governor of West Virginia) speaks clearly and passionately in this video message on the commitment for Digital Learning Day to be more than a stand-alone event.

“Simply slapping a netbook on top of a textbook, however, will not necessarily lead to significant outcomes. Effective digital media combined with powerful teaching, rich content, and engaged students has the potential to take learning in the United States to a much higher level and provide all students with experiences that allow them to graduate prepared for college and a career.”

Across the nation, the Alliance for Learning and the National Writing Project (NWP) will be coordinating statewide and local Digital Learning Day events.  In California, under the direction of the California Writing Project (CWP), you have a number of opportunities showcase good things happening at your schools and districts:

•  February 1 Sacramento/Capitol Area Showcase – Writing Our Future: A Celebration of Students’ Digital Learning and Writing (4:00-6:00 pm, location TBA). CWP Director Jayne Marlink describes the event as “imagine a combination of a science fair and a gallery walk…Teams will share their approach to improving learning – the learning goals, the technological resources used, and the student work that resulted.” I am really looking forward to involving some of the amazing teachers in my district’s EETT grants and the ANU Teach 21 grant!
• February 1 (and maybe during the following week) Road Tour – A tour of schools and classrooms across the state that will open their doors to invited guests and community members, so they can see great digital teaching and learning in action. There will also be an Online Road Tour of schools and classrooms that will be visited via the CWP website. Amazing middle school teacher Natalie Bernasconi, for instance, will invite visitors in for an exploration of digital writing as a powerful way for her ELL students to find their voices and share their stories.
• Try One New Thing - Digital Learning Day is not limited to February 1! Across California and the nation, Writing Project sites will be sponsoring workshops and conferences for teachers and administrators. Educators will be encouraged to “sample an online lesson, use mobile devices in class, start a wiki, use digital storytelling, start a project-based learning unit, but above all, challenge your teaching, learning, and pedagogy and see what digital technology can do for you and the students you serve!”

A great starting point for DLD resources are the toolkits, which are “are designed to help you think about how technology may strengthen your instructional strategies.” More resources and tips to come!

Digital Learning Day is a call for action “to leverage innovative uses of technology in our nation’s schools to ensure every student experiences personalized learning with great teaching.” It’s also a great opportunity – in this time of painful budget cuts – to showcase good things happening in public school classrooms.  I hope you will join me in publicizing this event in your districts and regions!

“To fulfill the promise of digital citizenship, Americans must acquire multimedia communication skills that include the ability to compose messages using language, graphic design, images, and sound, and know how to use these skills to engage in the civic life of their communities.” ~Renee Hobbs

As we head into the New Year, it is exciting to see a number of great video competitions open to students.  From our regional spring SEVAs competition to NextVista’s national and international events, students can hone their 21st century skill set (critical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration, (digital) citizenship) – as they build their ePortfolios and digital footprints.

It is also exciting to see a growing number of free online tools and tips to help student filmmakers through the process of taking a message and transforming it into a media gem. For example:

Pre-production:

Storyboards – From printable storyboards to Mathew Needleman’s more organic approach to storyboarding, storyboarding is a starting point for creating a powerful PSA.

Script writing – PSA Scripting Template – Thank you, Bill Ferriter, for this excellent resource!

Production:

Camera shots:

• Rule of Thirds – This basic camera rule/practice will rock your world – and your students – if you’re not already familiar with it.  Here’s a great video by Kids in Action on everything you need to know about the rule of thirds. Once you’re aware of the rule of thirds, it will change how you view videos – such as this trailer from High School Musical (thanks again to Mathew Needleman for sharing this one).

• Wide-Medium-Tight Shots – I had another big ah ha moment, right up there with learning about the rule of thirds, when I attended SECC’s SEVA Training session with News 10′s multimedia journalist Nick Monacelli.  I recommend watching the entire 40-minute session on Building a News Story. But if you’re short on time, move the play head  about 15 minutes into the presentation and watch Nick explain the importance of taking B-roll footage. It’s B-roll tight shots – not transitions – that “professionals” use to quickly and smoothly move a story along.

And the big ah ha?  Hey, until hearing Nick’s presentation, I had not considered that almost never in a news story will you see transitions used.  Aside from the rare dissolve transition, used to show a flashback or change in time, transitions are  not part of an award-winning newscast. But, oh my, do students, especially elementary students, love to use transitions! Nick’s presentation could be just the tip students need to rethink the use of star wipes, for instance, in transitioning their viewers from one scene to the next.

• Jump cuts – In less than 2 minutes, the Grammar of Video Editing Tutorial: Jump Cuts, will demonstrate how jump cuts, using tight shots, quickly and smoothly move the story along.

Post-production:

Audio/Music:

• UJam – I am no longer envious of Mac users’ access to Garageband (I teach in a PC district), thanks to UJam, a free, web-based program for creating music – even if you (like me) are music-challenged. UJam was one of my favorite take-aways from last summer’s Merit program.
• ccMixter – ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.  I learned about CCMixter in Silvia Tolisano’s wonderful Digital Storytelling How to Guide for Educators.
• Jamendo – A rapidly-growing community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses.
•  Audacity -  A free, cross-platform program for creating and editing audio. Here’s a link to my favorite Audacity tutorial: Audacity Basics

Video editing – Although I’m still grieving the loss of cloud-based JayCut, such an awesome freebie that even included green screen options – and allowed editing from both Mac and PC, eliminating all kinds of school-to-home/home-to-school issues – I continue to be grateful for iMovie, Movie Maker, and PhotoStory3 (one of my favorite digital storytelling tools!).  And I look forward in the New Year to exploring free smartphone apps for filmmaking.

I think one of the most important things we can do for students is to support and promote their efforts at becoming effective multimedia writers. Providing tools and tips is one way – along with providing authentic audiences.  Over the next month, I’d like to gather a comprehensive list of student video competitions.  If you know of any, please jump in and leave a comment.

“The great films have not been made yet. The ones who will make them are out there, though, riding a skateboard.” ~Robert Altman

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining my fellow California K12 High Speed Network Advisory Committee members down at the Capitol for a meeting with our State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson. Our purpose was to talk about ways to promote new learning environments in California.

Ironically, California, the home of Silicon Valley, is hardly a leader in implementing eLearning opportunities in its public schools (yikes, we’re ranked 47th in the nation on technology integration in our classrooms) – until now. The framework, the initiatives, and momentum needed to transform the “No Child Left Off Line” mantra from a vision to a reality are now available:

• California eLearning Framework – The California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA) and the Evergreen Education Group have developed and posted this guide to help school districts and schools plan (build, buy, license, or remix?) and implement online and blended learning opportunities for students.

• The California Student Bill of Rights Act- The Riverside Unified School District is leading the charge in California’s “no child left off line” movement, with a commitment to eliminating zip code as a determining factor in the quality of education all California students have access to. The proposed law stems from the vision of two Riverside Unified School District administrators: Superintendent Rick Miller (who also serves on the K12 HSN Advisory Committee) and David Haglund, principal of Riverside Virtual School, the largest district-run online school in the state.

I applaud Riverside USD in their efforts to address what Superintentent Torlakson refers to as “the ground swell of public impatience with the lack of online learning opportunities.” I also very much appreciate having access to their district technology plan: Vision 20/20 Plan, a document (and road map) many districts will find insightful as they update their own tech plans.

• What If the Story Changed? – David Jakes’ recent presentation for the 2011 K12 Online Conference is a wonderful piece “to challenge your thinking about traditional perspectives on education, and offer insights on how we might rethink these.” 32 very worthwhile minutes, I promise!

• Online Education: Is it right for you? How about an infographic to illustrate a few online learning facts and figures:

Via: Online PhD Programs Blog

One of my personal goals for the New Year is to join a cohort of Sacramento colleagues for CTAP3′s Online Learning Teacher Certification Course via Leading Edge. Probably can’t commit to the program till this summer, but I’m already looking forward to being a part of California’s 4 A’s (Any time, Any place, Any path, Any pace) movement .

From websites to newspapers and magazines to museums, pretty much anywhere I look, I see QR codes popping up. So one of my goals this school year is to organize by grade level and subject area ideas for extending teaching and learning  with QR codes success stories.

My interest in QR codes started when one of my Merit colleagues mentioned an algebra teacher at her site, who compensates for outdated textbooks by pasting on selected pages notes with QR codes that take her students to dynamic websites to elaborate on and extend a particular algebraic concept. And a recent blog post from the Calgary Science School on Showcasing Student work with QR Codes really has me thinking about the possibilities.

For the past year, I’ve been hanging out virtually with National Writing Project (NWP) teachers in the Know ELLs ning. This talented, dedicated group helped prepare me for the CTEL exam and continues to keep me thinking about best practices for teaching English as a second language. So my focus this month will be on finding examples of how QR codes are increasing teaching and learning opportunities for all levels of ELLs.

A Google search on QR codes ELLs  (which yielded over 120,000 results!) brought up some good sites for background information, such as:

• 7 Things You Should Know about QR Codes – From Educause, QR codes in a nutshell
• QR Code Implementation Guide – Wonderful guide and tips from the wonderful Vicki Davis
• Using QR Codes in the Classroom – Shelley Terrell’s YouTube webinar on QR use her classroom, with students as content creators

Leave it to the awesome Tom Barrett to come up with 40 interesting ways to use QR codes in the classroom:

Through my Google search, I did find a couple of useful resources for ELLs, such as this ELL Resources and Vocabulary PDF with QR codes for various ELL organizations, but what I haven’t yet found are tried-and-true ELL classroom stories of QR code successes, suggestions, etc.  Although I can certainly think of a few ideas where QR codes could make lessons more accessible to ELLs, what I’m looking for are actual “from the trenches” examples.  So please leave a comment if you can point  me to some!

Traveling to Chicago for the 2011 Annual National Writing Project (NWP) and National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) Conferences was not in my budget this year, so I was delighted by the opportunity to attend three  four sessions virtually:

• Andrea Zellner’s NWP Hackjam session – Thanks to tweets from Paul Oh and others and an excellent blog post by Lindy Johnson, I too look forward to more shared discussions around “designing meaningful digital literacy learning experiences” for students.
• Linda Darling-Hammond’s Friday NCTE Keynote Address – Thanks to Google Docs and Andrea Zellner’s lightning fast typing, I really felt as though I were sitting in the General Session.
• Reports from Cyberspace – Thanks to all resources being posted to the session wiki, including the slideshow and a live recording to this session, I was able to join Troy Hicks, Sara Kjader, and Bud Hunt (“three of the biggest ‘cyberspace superheroes’” ever) from start to finish, with the option of hitting the reply button:-)

Whoohoo, just found/attended a 4th great NCTE session, thanks to a link from Paul Allison:

• NcTE 2011 Open Education, Digital Resources, Sharing, and New Literacies – I’ll be adding the link to this well-organized, content-rich Conference wiki to resources I’m collecting for a digital citizenship project. If you don’t go any farther than watching Karen Fasimpaur’s slideshow below, you’ll already have gleaned a gem. And she has a ton of more OER resources organized in her OER LiveBinder.

As much as I would have loved to have joined these three  four sessions in real time, I really appreciated having access to the next best thing: virtual attendance. And, of course, the upside is that I woke up this morning, already home, ready to start the Thanksgiving prep routine, minus the usual NWP/NCTE conference jet lag;-).

2011 NWP~NCTE Annual Conference – one more huge thing to be thankful for!

In a time of continued budget cuts, I would argue that schools should not drop:

Image from http://tattoartistmagazine.files

1. Spelling – Students need to recognize when spelling is important (as the image above illustrates) and to have the confidence to question the spellchecker:

2. Cursive writing – I get that the Common Core State Standard’s technology-based approach calls for students to use

Image licensed for reuse by http://2.bp.blogspot.com

Internet-based tools to produce and publish writing, but why is that at the expense of cursive writing? The National Archives director of education, Lee Ann Potter, has captured my thinking on the value of teaching cursive writing in her recent Point/Counterpoint piece. Yes, cursive is about handwriting, but it’s also about reading. I treasure a stack of letters my grandmother saved from my grandfather, who died when my father was only five.  These primary sources provide a window into events in two small California towns prior to World War I.  They also are a direct connection to my heritage and to a grandfather I never met. I can read these time capsules without a translator, and so can my children, who both learned cursive writing in 3rd grade.  But I can already see that the “writing is on the wall,” and that, most likely, the teaching of cursive will disappear from Title I schools (but remain part of private school curriculum – as one more dividing line).

3. Librarians – I stand back in awe of the talent, commitment, and impact of my district’s librarians.  I’ve been joining their monthly after-school meetings, and each time have left inspired by the powerful ways they help teachers and students extend learning through technology integration (Glogster for a history assignment, Animoto for book trailers, QR codes to provide student-read intros to new books, etc.) My long-time hero Jamie McKenzie sums up my observations in his Why We Still Need Libraries and Librarians article.

Crossing my fingers that January does not bring worse news and realities into California schools!

A local TV station kicked off the Veterans Day weekend with a showing of Tora! Tora! Tora! With an all-star cast, I certainly do not question why this 1970′s portrayal of the bombing of Pearl Harbor deserves recognition as an American classic. A number of lines from the movie, however, reminded me of the importance of providing students with access to a broad collection of primary sources for learning about World War II.

It is often through snippets of first-hand accounts of a historical event, that students begin to question information – such as the accounts provided by textbooks. As I listened to one of the American officers in Tora! Tora! Tora! explain that the real danger was the hundreds of Japanese living in Hawaii, I thought about a government propaganda clip, Japanese Relocation, that explained (justified) the need to remove thousands of U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage from the West Coast. This government clip provides insight into the political climate of the war years.

But history is all about who is telling the story.  In working on the Time of Remembrance Oral Histories Project, a project I’ve been involved in for that last six years, I find that with each new interview, my understanding of the internment experience deepens, as does my appreciation for war time complexities.

I recently added ten new interviews to the Time of Remembrance collection. Each story is a reminder of what can happen if we allow the loss of rights to any group of people to go unchallenged. Each story is also a reminder that history happens one story at a time.

The additions to the  Interview Archives include first-hand accounts from:

• Jack Dairiki – Born in Sacramento, Jack recounts his trip to Japan in 1941, being caught there, and surviving the bombing of Hiroshima.
• Jim Tanimoto – I met Jim last spring during an annual Pilgrimage to Manzanar. Jim’s story is the first in our collection from a No-No boy, a term for resisters. No-No boys answered “No” to questions 27 and 28 on the Loyalty Oath they were required to take.
• Gary Shiota – Gary explains the issues of the Loyalty Oath.
• Jim Tanaka – Jim provides a window into the 442nd experience and the experience of the 100th battalion from Hawaii.
• Roy Sato – Roy shares experiences of signing up for draft and being classified as “4C” – an “enemy alien.”
• Marion Kanemoto – One of the most powerful stories in the TOR collection, Marion tells of being sent to Japan as part of a prisoner exchange. In later years, with a little help from her law student son, she literally changes history.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll also be uploading a set of powerful lessons created by 12 teachers in my district.  This incredibly talented panel is making available to you grade-level (grades 5-12), standards-aligned lessons that weave in the TOR interview segments. You are free to download, share, and tweak these lessons in anyway that works best for you and your students.

It is my hope that the primary sources provided through the Time of Remembrance site will engage students in “doing history” as opposed to just “studying history.”  Whatever the historical event, all students should have opportunities to construct knowledge and exam differing points of view, and, in the process, gain a sense of what it was like to live through events from the past. The Common Core State Standards support the integration of primary sources into the curriculum because reading through first-hand accounts of any event invites the development of critical thinking and helps students to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.”

As for Tora! Tora! Tora!, it just seems that 70 years later, a movie trailer might be appropriate – one that makes clear that actually not a single Japanese-American citizen was ever found guilty of espionage or traitorous activities.

Wishing everyone a restful, reflective Veterans Day:-)

Yahoo Safely Digital Citizenship Summit

Besides the really cool Yahoo book bag and equally cool Yahoo lunch bag, what else was great about the 5th Annual Digital Citizenship Summit? Everything, including:

• The panel of speakers: Experts from Project Cornerstone, Reachout.com, Common Sense Media, iKeepSafe, NetSmartz, Connect Safely, and attorney Charles Leitch. Throughout the day, this outstanding team guided whole group and small group discussions on how to successfully implement the elements of the “Five Building Blocks for Digital Citizenship:”
  1. Build a culture of ethics and safety
  2. Implement a network of support and leadership
  3. Align policies and procedures
  4. Provide professional development
  5. Integrate student curriculum for safety and ethics
• The highly enthusiastic, participatory group of participants
• Yahool headquarters

The speakers, panel discussions, and breakout sessions affirmed much of the digital citizenship work I’ve been doing over the past few years through my district’s Internet Safety Task Force. But one speaker caused me to rethink our approach to teaching about cyberbullying.  Larry Magid highly suggested, and backed it with the research, that we approach cyberbullying as a problem rather than an epidemic. Larry is co-director of ConnectSafely.org and founder of SafeKids.com.  He is also the technology analyst for CBS News and writes for CNET News, Huffington Post and the San Jose Mercury News. Along with Anne Collier, he is co-author of A Parents’ Guide to Facebook and MySpace Unraveled.

Much like the “stranger danger” predator panic of 2004-2006, the media is now hyping big time incidents of cyberbullying.  The reality is that far more kids are bullied offline than online.  Larry pointed out the dangers of exaggeration, which can destroy credibility, can cause “boomeranger effect,”  and can cause people to believe that behaviors are “normal.”  His recommendation is to stop the  “fear messaging” and to emphasize the positive.

People, especially youth, can benefit from positive images and role models. Creating a culture of respect actually can lead to respect. Respectful behavior truly is normal.  Most kids do not bully.

Use ‘positive norming,’ such as the Craig, Perkins 2008 – Strength in Numbers report – 80% of Crystal Lake 6-8^th grade students say students should not tease in a mean way, call others hurtful names, or spread unkind stories about other students.”

I’m hoping to go live with Larry’s “positive norming” concept at several of our middle schools by having students participate in Nancy Willard’s Cyberbullying Survey. But that’s a topic for another post;-)

I’ll end this post with a huge thank you to the Yahoo Safely team for hosting the Digital Citizenship Summit and to Diana Paradise for being the guiding light of the event – and with a closing question: What if districts approached the topic of cyberbullying as a problem, not and epidemic?

Getting to spend Saturday with Rushton Hurley and the Merit 2011 team was worth getting up at 4:00 a.m. to make the 3 1/2 hour trip from Placerville down to Foothill College in Los Altos, knowing I would leave inspired and with a few new resources in my teacher’s toolkit.

Miguel Guhlin was our opening speaker, joining us virtually from San Antonio, TX. Miguel is one of the first bloggers I added way back to my Bloglines reader. Then and now, he continues to amaze me at the quantity and quality of his Around the Corner blog posts. His presentation answered the question Why blog? Of the tips Miguel shared, my favorite is

Tip 1 – Write or Speak – If you’re not a writer, be a podcaster or videocaster – you’re always a work in progress. You can checkout Miguel’s favorite blogging tools on his Blog Your World site.”

 

Nicole Dalesio led the afternoon Creativity with Image Editing session. Between her Photoshop tutorial on Scratch Art (which gave me a whole new understanding of the power of “layers” in a photo editing program) and her invitation to explore her awesome Free Online Tools to Spark Creativity wiki (which included Ransom Note Generator, the tool I used to create my Inspiration and Resources graphics), I think we all finished the day re-energized, inspired, and ready to “go out and do good things for students.”

I’m already looking forward to our November 5 session, which will include an exploration of best practices for using (IWBs) interactive whiteboards.