Blog on Respectful and Ethical Minds

Blog on Respectful and Ethical Minds

According to Gardner, the respectful mind “notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and between human groups, and tries to understand these others, and seeks to work effectively with them” (Gardner, 2006, p. 3) while the ethical mind “ponders the nature of one’s work and the needs and desires of the society in which one lives in” (p. 3).  When you take those two definitions into consideration with the kinds of projects that are described in the Julene Reed article on Global Collaboration and Learning, digital media could easily play a part in the educational process.  As mentioned in the article, “Knowledge of other cultures around the world leads students to understanding and compassion.  That, in turn, creates students who take action to make a difference in resolving problems and changing the world to be a better place.”  (Reed, 2007, p. 1)  So how can one integrate digital media into a project, activity or lesson that accomplishes this?

Via the use of a Web 2.0 site such as Animoto, students here in the USA could go ahead and create a video documenting what his/her typical school day would be like.  How does it start?  What is it like getting to school (bus, walk, taken by personal vehicle?)  How do they store/carry their materials at school?  What is a typical class period like?  What is lunch like?  Do you take a class such as physical education?  If so what is it like?  How does the school day end?  Do you go home right away or do you stay at school for extra activities?  Do you usually have homework?  If so, when/where/how long do you spend doing it each night?  If you have quizzes/tests, how do you study/prepare for them?  What do you do on the weekends for school?  What are your summers like?  Do you do anything school-related during the summer?  Snippets of each of these could be recorded using a Flip camera or other recording device and compiled into the documentary with titles being used to separate each component so that the students you are sharing with in the other country could know what each part was about.

If there is something that is deemed inappropriate or unacceptable or would never be tolerated in the country where the students are at that you are sharing with, you could take that into consideration when compiling the video and either not include that in the final product or compare it to how the same thing is handled in the other country you are sharing the video with.  That way it is clear that you are taking into consideration the ways, traditions and feelings of the individuals from the other country.  This information could easily be researched via the Internet by visiting websites and by watching videos that have been produced on the traditions and cultures of the foreign country in question.  It would also show to others that they care about other cultures and how what we do as Americans in the educational system could easy affect or be affected by foreign educational systems hence fulfilling responsibilities we have as an American citizen in our educational system.

Another thing that could be done when making the video is to take all of the same questions from two paragraphs above, do the research online about all of the same topics in the educational system of the country you are planning on corresponding with and do your best to put together the same kind of video that would be a ‘Day in the Life for a student in South America’ (or whatever the country is you are dealing with.)  This would show compassion and caring for the citizens of that country, show that you recognize and accept the fact that there are differences in societies and are willing to work within the confines of that society to make an accurate video depicting their typical day as well as accept the fact that the individual from the foreign country has a list of appropriate actions that that they are responsible and expected to follow in order to act appropriately in their culture.

So, once you have this all put together, you can then use the Animoto site to do the actual video compilation and creation.  Once you have your final product, you can then send it on to the students in the other country.

References:

Gardner, H. (2006). Five minds for the future. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, Massachusetts.

Reed, J. (2007). Global collaboration and learning. Retrieved November 27, 2012 from http://www.edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2007/09/global-collaboration-and-learning.

Reflection Blog About Glogster in the Classroom

Reflection Blog About Glogster in the Classroom

Glogster is a really neat tool that educators can use in the classroom which can easily change and transform how a student works through a project or completes an assignment for a class.  It is different and definitely adds a ‘fun’ factor to the educational process.  It also fosters creativity in our students.  Gardner states in his book that “the creating mind breaks new ground.  It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers.” (Gardner, 2006, p. 3)  I believe that the use of Glogster does just that.  It definitely is a new idea – students are working to create solutions to assignments, projects, presentations, and/or lessons that they might have in non-traditional ways.  A student who might present a project using Glogster as his/her visual piece versus one who created a poster would most definitely pique the attention of the students and teacher as thinking outside the box and being creative.  It is a new way of thinking and is one that I believe our teachers need to embrace to foster creativity in our students and to give them alternative ways to create solutions to projects and assignments.  Students want different ways to do work, assignments and projects in school.  I’ve seen it first-hand from when I was in the classroom or when I currently visit classrooms to work on technology issues.  You can see it in the faces and hear it in the voices of the students when the teacher explains to them the same kind of project with the same type of visual they’ve used time and time again.  The students want something different and I could see using Glogster to have the students create cool ‘posters’:

• showcasing what they have learned as a review to a unit;
• as visuals for projects that they have to present to the class; and
• for an assignment that requires web resources one could create a glog with rich media sources

In Ohio, we are currently still using technology standards adopted in 2003.  We are switching in the future to the Common Core State Standards.  The use of a Glogster project could easily address several of those standards, such as the one I created for this week’s project.  Some of the content standards in technology from the state of Ohio which are addressed with creativity and the use of Glogster are:

• Evaluate a variety of creativity-enhancing techniques.
• Discuss ways that technology is linked to creativity and innovation.
• Evaluate a variety of creativity-enhancing techniques.

It’s an innovative tool for students to use, is definitely one of many differing creativity tools and techniques available to them and could easily be used when needing to evaluate different kinds of creativity tools.  Glogster is a tool that I had fun learning how to use and wish I was still in the classroom to share it with my students.

References:

Gardner, H. (2006). Five Minds for the Future. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, Massachusetts.

Ohio’s 2003 academic content standards in technology.  Retrieved November 24, 2012 from http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=1707&ContentID=1279&Content=134232.

Blog on Content Creation

Blog on Content Creation

In talking to a few students at our school about creativity, they both pretty much had the same things to say.  They believe that having more creativity type activities, lessons, etc. in the classroom would be a great way to energize their learning.  While some of the teachers that they have do some fun, engaging and hands-on activities in their high school classes – they definitely do not think that they have enough and believe that they would enjoy their time at school more if more creativity was a regular thing, not just a once-in-a-while thing.

I showed them two of the Web 2.0 sites that I’ve explored more about during this course and showed them our school’s Moodle system too.  I asked them what they thought of the sites and if they would like to see them being used more by their teachers.  They said yes to both questions.  For the Moodle, they thought that having the ability to submit materials/assignments online and/or be able to access their teacher during non-school hours was a big plus and that it would help them with their class.  They thought that having the ability to communicate with their class members (such as we do with the threaded discussions) was something really neat and cool and that it would help them to express their opinions more – something that could be very helpful to add to the creativity factor in the classroom I believe.

The other two sites I showed them were Prezi and Animoto.  They really thought that Prezi would be a great replacement to PowerPoint; they’ve done so many PowerPoint presentations over the year that while they do allow them to be somewhat creative, they truly believe that they are too commonplace and that when they are told by their teacher that they have to do another PowerPoint, they basically sigh, grin and bear it and do the PPT; they’ve gotten too complacent with that technology and I could tell that a change to Prezi would be a welcomed change for them.  I showed them the basic layout, how you could integrate the different components from the menu system into a really cool looking product.  In terms of Animoto, they thought that that would be a much valued and alternative way to do movies compared to what most of them use now (Movie Maker) that could allow them to be really creative.  I also think they like the fact that they could do their projects on either of the sites, click a few buttons and then have it available for others to see instantaneously.

They do value the current use of web technologies in the classroom.  They like doing research online and prefer it much more over going to the library and having to look things up in books.  In fact they told me that the computers in the libraries are very high in demand when they do go and that having more technology available to them while in the library would be an added bonus.  We have a lot of teachers that use YouTube kinds of sights and the students really like using that technology.  The continued use of digital medias such as video sharing sites is appreciated by the students; I could tell it’s much more worthwhile to them in their minds to see the videos online instead of reading about something in a textbook or library book.

So, all in all, if there were more opportunities for the students to engage in creative open-ended assessments/activities or ones that could be accomplished in various ways – all of which would be correct ways to do so – I think that they would be more excited about education.  They have too much of the lecturing type of classes going on and you could tell that they easily tune out too much in those classes and really don’t benefit from them.  The two students that I talked to were in a colleague’s media class (as I don’t currently teach) and they enjoy the hands-on types of activities in that class and in all classes in general.  I think that they believe that some lecturing is needed but there is too much of it going on and more could be done in a creative, engaging type fashion.  I could see either of these students doing a project in Prezi and/or Animoto and wanting to show it to their teacher and classmates to see if they could influence/change how that teacher taught to make things more ‘fun’ in their minds.

Creativity In The Classroom

Creativity in the Classroom

Are our schools killing the creativity minds in our students?  I think that the answer is partially yes and partially no.  The way our schools are designed and the way that a lot of instruction takes place is still in the mindset of why our current educational system was designed; to prepare our students for the industrial age.  (Robinson, 2006).  Robinson states that our system is designed so that the most useful subjects needed for work are at the top of the educational hierarchy and that academic ability is crucial as that is how we view intelligence.  (Robinson, 2006).  Until many of the teachers, guidance counselors, principals and other administrators who truly believe that that is what is important in the world today change their mindsets, yes, we are going to squander creativity in our students and not give them the opportunity to express themselves, or take chances and think outside of the box.  In many aspects, our educational system is broke and we cannot teach our students the way that we as educators were taught when we were in public schools.  If we continue to do so, we take the chance of producing students who are not competitive in a world that is constantly in flux.

However, for those teachers who do not totally believe that any more – the ones that foster creativity and allow their students to think outside of the box or come up with something new and original or who are open to alternative answers – then in those cases, we are not killing the creativity in our students.  As educational training progresses and changes at the collegiate level and existing educators see that bucking the trends of the past are the right way to educate our students then the amount of creativity we see in our students is going to increase dramatically.  As Robinson concludes in his video speech is that education needs to change, “And the only way we’ll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are.  And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future.” (Robinson, 2006)  The educators that continue down this path will produce students who have been very creative in the classroom.  These are the kinds of teachers that use group activities, collaborate, address Gardner’s five minds and also utilize high level thinking skills as well as integrate highly engaging Web 2.0 activities into their teachings.

So how can one use digital media to spark creativity in the classroom?  So many of the Web 2.0 technologies as well as other digital medias that are available today (and I’m sure to come down the road) have flexibility built into them.  Students can create a project, presentation, etc. online and while they may all successfully get from point A to point B, they will do it differently and thus creatively.  They will be able to think outside of the box and come up with multiple solutions to the same problem or even create a solution that wasn’t even though of as being possible or accepted previously.  They will be able to use their imaginations – just as we did with our Prezi assignment as well as with how we determine is the solution for answering a question in one of our blogs or by our upcoming use of Glogster.  Or, if they were using the digital media outlet of Animoto and making their own videos to present a project - imaging the multiple ways that one of those could be created!  These solutions foster creativity in our students quite extensively.  Digital medias just open up opportunities for our students to explore unknown possibilities that you would never see if he/she were in a traditional classroom where it was the sage on the stage type of atmosphere.  As Robinson states in his talk, we need to “start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity.  Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity.  And for the future, it won’t serve us.”  (Robinson, 2006)  Using digital media will accomplish this with our students and we need to start literally as soon as yesterday (if we could) to make the use of digital media a necessity in the classroom to continue to foster creativity in our students and prepare them for their futures.

Gardner, H. (2006). Five Minds for the Future. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, Massachusetts.

Robinson, K. 2006. Do schools kill creativity. Retrieved November 13, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY.

Media-Infused Presentations and the Disciplined and Synthesizing Minds

Media-infused Presentations

A media-infused presentation such as the one created with Prezi for storyboarding can help foster the disciplined and synthesizing minds.  One of the things that it does is gives the students a quick and easy way to not only see the media that you’ve selected for them online but by the usage of Discovery Education and YouTube videos, they can easily see other links to videos that are relevant to the topic at hand that they could view which could greatly enhance and add to their overall knowledge base for the discipline that you are having them learn about.  The more access to knowledge on storyboarding that a student can view and process the more he/she can “work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding” (Gardner, 2006, p. 3) which is a crucial aspect of the disciplined mind.  With so many students in the classroom having different kinds of learning styles that we need to take into consideration for as educators, the Prezi also gives you that way to connect to everyone.  You can easily incorporate text, audio, photos and videos which helps to individualize the instruction for your students.  Each student learns differently and at different paces; having this media-infused tool available for your students will help each one to learn more about a discipline becoming more and more knowledgeable, honing his/her skills on that topic and becoming more of a disciplined mind individual.

In terms of the synthesizing mind, I think that having a resource available such as Prezi that allows you to choose the different media that you want to put into it can be very valuable.  You can present multiple sources or kinds of contents to the students – content that they probably haven’t seen before – and then ask them to take all of the resources and see how they can be put together or determine what might be similarities and differences and to help them process and problem solve.  When they do this they are synthesizing as they “put it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons.” (Gardner, 2006, p.3)  From there, students could indeed find additional material that is new to them, process it and figure out how to put it all together.  Being able to put it all together and see the big picture with the use of multiple sources and resources helps to create the synthesizing mind that our students need to be successful in their post K-12 education.  They are going to continue to be exposed to all kinds of materials in different formats (text, audio, video and photos) as the world continues to explode with so much information (as mentioned in this week’s class discussions.)  The more we can infuse this information into our students on a daily basis, the more prepared they will be to deal with these kinds of situations on a regular basis and thus be able to synthesize.  Prezi is awesome tool for developing both minds we’ve discussed!

Here is a link to my Prezi on Storyboarding.

Gardner, H. (2006). Five minds for the future. Harvard Business School Press.

Blog on the Synthesizing Mind

Blog on the Synthesizing Mind

A resource that I would use if I were currently teaching in the classroom is Animoto, which is found at www.animoto.com.  Animoto is a Web 2.0 technology that allows anyone to easily create videos which incorporate templates, or styles that you can select from the website along with using either your own, and/or pre-made music, videos and music.  The fact that it is web-based and thus doesn’t require any software to install and works cross-platform (i.e. Windows and Macintosh computers) makes it so that anyone can use it.  Best of all it is totally free to educators (you can sign up for an educator account which allows you to create a class of up to fifty students using a code that you are given upon sign up).

I signed up for an educator’s account, was approved almost instantaneously, was given my code for students to use to create the 50 free additional accounts for six months and then was quickly on my way to making a professional looking video.  You can start with a title slide (what they call a text slide) and from there you have an easy-to-use interface to change the style (i.e. template for the video), incorporate stock music or add your own music and then also add in stock photos/videos or your own photos/videos.  All the objects that you choose to integrated into your video are then placed on a timeline in the order you put them in your video project.  If you don’t like the order of the components of your video, it isn’t a problem; you simply drag them around with the mouse to re-order them.  If you have a photo that isn’t in the right orientation, you simply click on it once to highlight it and then use a rotate button to put it in the right orientation.  A duplicate button allows you to easily make a second copy of a component of your video.  If you have a photo or video you want to show extra emphasis to, you simply select it and then choose the spotlight option.

Once you’ve got a video put together, you can save it and then easily click on a button entitled ‘Preview Video’ to see what it looks like on the screen.  If you need to make alterations, additions, deletions to your video, you simply do so via the timeline and a series of buttons on the right-hand side of the screen.  Once done, you can save your video, and then post a link to the video so that it can be accessed by others online.  I think what impressed me the most about this Web 2.0 resource is that it is so incredibly easy to use and you really don’t need any kind of video editing and creation experience at all to use it.  They’ve definitely made the service so easy that anyone can be up and running and creating high quality videos in a matter of minutes.

How would one use this resource to foster the synthesizing mind in our students?  I would say that you could use Animoto to animate or illustrate research that you’ve had your students do on a particular topic or subject.  After the students have researched how to explain the process of how something is created or maybe explain how two or more unrelated items can be incorporated into one or even possibly use a video to (re)tell a story or process of how something is done or created in their own words, Animoto could be used to tie all of that together.  If we remember, the definition of synthesis from our readings is: “The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons.” (Gardner, 2006, p. 3)  So students are doing just that – they are taking multiple sources of information that are from different sources, taking all of that information, thinking about it and then putting it together from its different sources in to one item, a video, in way that not only could they the researchers understand it but it could also be understand by their teacher, classmates and anyone else that views the video.

For example, I used to teach our school’s TV Studio/Media class and as a part of that class, we used the AFI Door Scene (http://www.unitedstreaming.com/videos/42845/D2B15956-1279-3B00-CD01B9EA8FD93498.pdf) and also talked about the storyboarding process and the different kinds of shots one can take along with discussing how integrating sounds to a video can create an overall effect or emotion.  Students could easily create their own version of the Door Scene using Animoto to share with their classmates.  They could then critique their projects amongst their peers, as a class or as a school to see how they did and if they indeed did incorporate all the components needed for the Door Scene.  I think that this would be a great way to use this Web 2.0 resource to foster the synthesizing mind in our students.

Gardner, H. (2006). Five Minds for the Future. Harvard Business School Press. Boston, Massachusetts.

Blog on Digital Media

While I no longer teach class, when I last did, it was our TV Studio/Multimedia class.  One of the units that we worked on in that class was Digital Storytelling; a unit of which the students ultimately had a lot of fun with and enjoyed.  When I taught it, I used information solely from the textbook for the class, but, on the Discovery Education website, I found this video about introducing Digital Storytelling (Templates for Digital Storytelling).  I could easily see myself using this in the class should I still be teaching it.  The Prezi-created video talks about templates and what they are and then shows five different templates for Digital Storytelling – each template describing in detail how one can use different shots to produce the following kinds of stories:

• Five Shots
• Commercial
• News Report
• Movie Trailer
• PSA (Public Service Announcement) - they even parody the 'priceless' VISA commercials in demonstrating how to do a PSA

They take the time to tell the five different kinds of shots that need to be incorporated in to each of the Digital Storytelling video processes.  It is fun, upbeat, has great music to it and is a type of activity that I think would get the students much more interested in Digital Storytelling and in fact engages them as they see how another set of students did their version of a digital storytelling project in a method that they can relate to.  (I suspect that the bulk of the high school students have seen the VISA ‘Priceless’ commercials on TV as they relate them to topics that they are interested in – such as sports or the Olympics just to name a few.)

The video does a great job of showing the students live action and the actual process of making a storytelling video.  This would be much more appealing and would grab their attention more than just reading about it in a textbook or by listening to a lecture about Digital Storytelling; it would be a great spring-boarding or attention-gaining activity.  It also helps address different learning styles as some students are much more audio and video learners instead of just reading about how to do something in a book.  If I were a student and saw the digital asset mentioned above, I would be much more inclined to want to put together a story, especially one that is a PSA because of the fact that I saw one in action instead of just reading about it in the book.  The video even goes further to have the students browse the Discovery Education site, look up AFI and utilize the different videos that they have on the site that go in to extreme details about videography and the story making process.  (These are videos that I’ve used in other Wilkes classes and I know how much more I was able to understand the concepts that I was learning about in those classes versus just reading from the assigned chapters in the textbooks for the classes).  The videos (both the AFI and the Storytelling) provide a hands-on experience for the students.  It presents the information in a fun manner and shows the students that the video process is exciting and that you can produce fun, yet very informative results.

I would also think that by utilizing the AFI videos from the website, students would get great tutorials on how to fill out the AFI sheets that go through how you shoot each shot for storyboarding, which is definitely a part of the storytelling process.  Some students will learn much better if they have concrete examples of completed storyboards in front of them to reference, hence addressing the difference in learning styles that all students have.

The video I used for this blog, along with the other videos from AFI and videos that I came across and viewed that were about using Movie Maker would be a great set of tools for teachers to utilize in order to get student interested and highly motivated in the video production process.  I think that they would even be good examples for the students to go by if they themselves were going to be producing videos for classmates and peers to view explaining and/or introducing the storytelling process to them.

Palmer, P. (2010). Templates for digital storytelling. Retrieved October 31, 2012 from http://mediashare.discoveryeducation.com/mediashare/index.cfm?event=showMedia&guidAssetId=3EA09B72-1CC4-4143-6A62-7194512AEA6E