Doodlecast Pro – Creativity

Doodlecast Pro ($2.99) is a fun iPad digital tool for teachers and students. With it, you can create learning media, such as this lesson genetics assignment by Grades 7 and 9 science teacher Jenn Corron. With the program, you and your students can share ideas, review curricular content, and create reports and projects. The app records automatically what you draw and what you say. It comes with a variety of backgrounds, but you can add your own photos and illustrations and put them where you want on your screen. Your Keynote files can be added to your Doodlecast videos, and Doodle pages can be saved within the program and/or shared in email, on YouTube or through your Dropbox. Watch the video to learn more about this easy-to-use tool.

Transforming Education with Digital Resources

Grade 6 teacher Jody Cohen says that the use of digital media makes her feel like a brand new teacher. It’s given her the opportunity to move away from textbooks and worksheets and enter a world her students understand. According to Cohen, the technological resources available to teachers today give them an abundance of ways to help their students learn. Cohen is especially pleased that her students have the ability to review content, as needed, and to find content that fits their needs. “We are very fortunate,” this veteran teacher says, to have digital media available to us. When asked whether she would like to return to textbooks and worksheets, Cohen gives an emphatic “no”, saying that they can be very boring.

Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

Check out Samantha Morra’s “8 Steps to Great Digital Stories” in order to get ideas for integration of oral storytelling into your classroom. The author believes that digital storytelling is the “21^st Century version of the age-old art of storytelling.” The difference is that today students can share their stories via video and the Internet worldwide.  Students, however, need a plan of action to help them tell their stories. Morra provides one as she suggests you lead your students through a series of steps that includes thinking of ideas, developing storyboards, gathering input, creating products, and getting feedback. She also notes that great digital stories are usually personal and concise, follow a script, use available materials, involve collaboration, and are based on universal story elements.

A Look at Ed-Tech Tools of the Past

It hasn’t been that long since we used filmstrip projectors, overhead projectors, 16 mm projectors, and cassette recorders in our classrooms.  Some of us may even remember the old mimeograph machines we used for making copies of worksheets. eSchool News offers us a backward glance to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to see how far we’ve come with ed-tech resources in just over 40 years. 

Take yourself back to the days of Lemonade Stand and Oregon Trail to see the forerunners of today’s digital games, and to floppy disks, Nano Pets, and the search engines, “Ask Jeeves” and “Ask Jeeves for Kids.”  Younger teachers may not have heard of the popular devices and software of the past, but as we enjoy our interactive whiteboards, educational apps, and mobile technologies, it’s good to remember that not that many years ago, we were working with games that were animated with little squares put together to resemble pictures.  Maybe we don’t have all the educational tech tools we want, but at least we don’t have to struggle with broken film when showing a 16 mm movie, fighting mimeograph machines in an effort to print out decent copies, or breathing in the dust from chalkboards and dry erase boards.

TED Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing

Take the tour of TED Ed to see how you can use videos that are on the Internet to create super lessons.  On the site, you can also look at lessons others have created, and if you think you can use them in your courses, you can change them to fit your students and your curriculum. Lessons are listed by category such as mathematics, health, literature and language, social studies, and science and technology. Some of those that are called “Best Flips” or exceptional lessons featured are: Atoms from A to Easy!, Pi with Pies, The Secret to Rising Sea Levels, The Dawn of Art, and What is Nano?

Free, Shareable Resources from Open Course Library

Eighty-one courses are now available from Open Course Library. The Library, funded by the Washington State Legislature and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, features courses for four-year and community colleges. Many of these courses, such as those in mathematics, science, social studies, and foreign language, include shareable materials, which could be used or adjusted for high school student learning. These are not online courses, such as those available through Coursera, but instead materials and ideas you can use to enhance your own courses. An Open Course Library (OCL) How-to Guide is available to help you with downloading pdf versions of the courses.

Google Glasses in Schools?

In a few years just about everyone will probably have Web-connected watches and Google Glasses.  Students are already bringing mobile devices to school that can capture images and actions in our schools, but as “wearable technologies” become more popular, teachers and administrators will need to place additional emphasis on privacy and etiquette issues. Questions such as —Where will the devices be allowed?, How will teachers know if students are using the devices if all it takes to take a picture or start a video is the literal wink of an eye?, What information must be added to digital citizenship programs?, How might the devices be used to enhance the curriculum?, and What educational apps are available for reality-augmented devices?—will need to be addressed.

Digital Storytelling with Multimedia Tools

Mind/Shift recommends what it calls cool, new, and easy-to-use multimedia tools for students.  Meograph (with teacher licenses beginning at $19.99) helps students create multimedia stories with “Meograph Moments” that may feature video, audio, timelines, text, images, maps, links, and student narration about their moments. Zeega, free to individual users, lets students make their own interactive Web stories as they capture content available in the cloud. Zeega stories developed by students may be viewed by others who “click their way through each story, one webpage leading to another. . .  WeVideo, with free and for pay versions, is a video-editing collaboration tool that your students can use to upload media clips and edit them.  A group of students can work on a project at the same time, and projects can be stored in WeVideo’s Google Drive App.

If you are interested in digital storytelling, you’ll want to take a look at the handy Mind/Shift chart that compares the following video editing tools: Windows Live Movie Makers, iMovie11, WeVideo, Zeega, and Meograph.

Lighthouse Coalition

The Coalition of Lighthouse Schools is a group of educators, school administrators, and IT professionals who are working together to implement one-to-one digital learning in their schools. Coalition members, mostly from charter and independent schools, are integrating Apple mobile devices into their school curricula and are eager to collaborate with others who are also integrating 1-1 programs in their schools.  The networked educators work with Apple Computer representatives in order to better prepare their students for the future. The group is hosting its iSummit, July 24-25, in Atlanta.

Attracting Girls to the STEM Careers

The Scientific American piece, To Attract More Girls to STEM, Bring More Storytelling to Science, by teachers Jonathan Olsen and Sarah Gross, says that integration of the arts and sciences is the key to getting girls into STEM careers. The authors suggest that teachers of STEM courses include fiction books like Vonnegut’s Player Piano, artwork such as that by M. C. Escher, and information about the story behind the HeLa cells in their courses. As storytelling activates brain cells, enjoying real-life stories such as that of Henrietta Lacks (see photo) and those called “polymaths” such as Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci, will do more to motivate girls toward STEM careers than will, according to Olsen and Gross, “a pink microscope.”