johnhendron.net: hendron’s digest - a weblog

Cool Cat Teacher is linking to information from Tony Wagner on the importance of “rigor” in education. I know that’s an undercurrent this year for us at GHS. She also points to a good article entitled “Rigor Redefined” (link). This is great reading for our teachers.

Social Networking is becoming more mainstream each and every day. But my concern is: how many are too many?

Each day I get friend requests in Facebook. I have chosen right now not to participate in Facebook. But I do belong to several Ning groups. We even created our own Goochland Ning group. But again, have to ask: how many are too many?

I just joined a new group sponsored by ISTE. It looks like it is off to a good start. But they had a NECC Ning group, and I belong to my affiliate Ning (VSTE), and I also enjoy membership in more established groups like Classroom 2.0. 

It will be interesting to see how each of these develops. But something in the back of my head wishes that some of this stuff was more… centralized. I don’t want to have to visit 5 networks to check the pulse of what’s new and happening. I’d rather use one source.

Does that feeling seem natural to others too?

Some Saturday I’m going to have to tie up all the lose ends and provide some RSS magic to take each strand to create one big rope… maybe that’d be a good 1-hour session for others too some day.

In many discussions with teachers about G21 projects, we came up with ways for students to publish online. For others, it was a method for turning in documents as assignments.

Recently, I worked with a group at the specialty education center and they had to turn in podcast episodes to their teacher. We created a Moodle course for this purpose, and the 5th graders logged-on and uploaded their lyrics and math songs. But for other purposes, you may want a public space where students can communicate.

I’ve set up a public wiki area for use by Goochland educators and students. If you think you’d like to use it, contact me. It uses MediaWiki, the same framework used for the famous Wikipedia. 

A teacher wrote me today with a question I’ve heard a lot–so I thought I’d put my definitive answer here on my blog! This question usually comes in the form of two questions, with the same answer.

Where can I find great pictures for kids to use online?

Can we use Flickr.com?

First, yes, Flickr is a wonderful website for photographers. It’s a leading “star” in the concept of Web 2.0, not only for its huge base of avid photographers, but for its use of folksonomized tags for organizing the photos (and now videos) folks are uploading to the Yahoo-owned site.

Second, it’s a good source because millions of photos have been tagged with Creative Commons licenses, meaning the photographers are willing to share their photos with others, including use in projects that our students may undertake in school.

There are two areas where you can do the search for Creative Commons-licensed photos. First, there’s a Attribution Only license. You can use the photos, but have to link back to the source page on Flickr. This is easy to do on the Web, and in print, you can simply list the URL on a slide or in a document like a book citation. 

Second, there’s the attribution, non-commercial license, which means you can use the photos, including the provision for attribution, as long as you don’t profit from the photo’s use. Both of these seem appropriate for use within a school setting.

One caveat: while the truly gross photos folks may post are policed by the “crowd,” it is possible to find explicit photography using Flickr (just the same, really, with any mainstream search tool). So–be forewarned. Setting kids loose on Flickr isn’t always a wise proposition. My advice is, at the elementary level, search for the photos yourself and share them via iPhoto off your laptop, or via a USB stick, or CD-ROM. At the high school level, I think the searching aspect is important. Preview what comes up before class starts, and at all times, keep your eyes out for what students are doing.

Under no circumstances should pictures be dragged from the browser window at Flickr, and out onto a project (in Word, Keynote, etc.). Photos should be collected and the attribution stage should come before the photos appear within a project.

If you have further questions, let me know.

Where was this when I was in school?

Several educators have sent me e-mail about this, and of course, it’s been “a buzz” in the edu-blogosphere.

With tight budgets, consider spending some time between now and the end of October at the K-12 Online Conference, focused on pedagogy with technology.

“Conference in a website?” Sure! You can listen, read, and watch, and from what I’ve seen, it’s all high quality.

eSchool news recently came out with an article about initial investigations on how folks “conduct research” online.

Although the study notes that horizontal searching and “power browsing” aren’t confined to young internet users, its findings–and general observations about students’ internet behavior–have led to some serious reflection on the part of educators.

They identify a number of different “ways” or “techniques” people use, but so many of them rely upon a “horizontal” look instead of a deeper, or “vertical” look. The report suggests too many students skim over the breadth of information. In thinking about myself, I probably do some of the same, because there’s so much content online!

I think it’s important to focus on both “directions,” and as educators, we probably need to spend some time in the vertical orientation of what we find… when we cover research online with our students.

Studying China?

Check out IBM’s (yes, that IBM) 3-D virtual world project: Forbidden City. Immerse you and your students into a 3-D world exploring what it might have been like to walk around in, and experience, the city forbidden to all but China’s emperors.

This is not a web-based game, it’s a downloadable simulation.

Mrs. DiTerlizzi (GHS library media center) recently pointed out a new-found technique for subscribing to RSS feeds.

It’s possible now in several of our blogs to subscribe with your newsfeed to only one single category. Let’s say a teacher is putting blog posts into two categories: French 1 and French 2. You can limit your subscription to just the news from the one category that corresponds to one class.

Check out our “What is RSS?” page (bottom) to find out more on subscribing to just one category in a teacher’s blog.

Here are some great examples of elementary schools using video to highlight activities in their classrooms.

   • Class Projects (http://www.schooltube.com/video/5332/This-Land-Is-Your-Land)
   • Lesson Plans: (http://www.schooltube.com/video/11314/3rd-Grade-Me-Web-Tutorial)
   • Music: (http://www.schooltube.com/video/10820/Blackbeard-Bluebeard-and-Redbeard-by-Eric-Herman)

It appears SchoolTube would be a great place to share some projects your students in elementary and middle school produce that you want to share with the world. (Thanks go to Ellen Guidry!)
 

Are you planning an installation of Moodle? Installing it on Mac OS X Server?

In the following videos, I detail my installation of Moodle on Tiger Server. I prepared this for internal documentation, but it may be of interest to others out there. Be sure to comment if you found these helpful.

• Moodle Part 1 (Preparing Server)
• Moodle Part 2 (Checking PHP and MySQL settings)
• Moodle Part 3 (Setting up MySQL Database and Users)
• Moodle Part 4 (Setting up Schema for Moodle; Installing Moodle)
• Moodle Part 5 (Database Backup + Completion)

After the process seen in the videos, you can upload users into the system and get started with tweaking settings. I set the front page to just be the login screen, and uploaded our teachers through a spreadsheet. 

One correction I’d like to make in the video: the sock location for PHP and MySQL did not match, despite my saying, eventually, it did in the video. After re-booting the server, I saw my error. I reset the location chosen by MySQL in my php.ini file.

Just a reminder to teachers:

We subscribe at all schools to Discovery Streaming! New this year for GHS, is a plus-pack, with over a thousand additional videos from the regular catalog. Be sure to check out what’s new — you can search by Virginia standards, by subject area, or through a search.

This video should cover the basics if Discovery Streaming is new. Talk to your media specialist if you need an account.

Discovery Video Streaming from John Hendron on Vimeo.

This initial version (draft, really) of a blogging style guide covers a lot of ground. At my next revision, I’ll include more examples like a typical style guide. 

I’m creating this to aid teachers with improving the power and writing of their blogs! I’m using my personal and professional experiences to guide me, not to mention some great tips I got a few years back from an excellent book by Price and Price, Hot Text.

We spoke to several teachers this year that need a wiki space for their class.

Might I recommend PeanutButter Wiki? Their current promotion for educators won’t last forever, so take advantage now of the premium services being offered for free.

A twenty-first century skill identified often in G21 plans I’ve been working on with teachers is one we’re calling “Research 2.0.” I wanted to take the time to specifically outline what this is.

First, it’s a recognition that we today have a variety of digital and non-digital resources available from sources that are both traditionally “viable” or “trustworthy” and those from other authorities. Specifically, today we’re talking about 1:1 communication with experts and friends, read/write sources (blogs, wikis), prosumer media sharing (YouTube), and “invisible” web sources (subscription databases). Never before have students had access to this amount of information, both in depth and breadth.

Second, it’s a model for searching, summarizing, and verifying content. Information found must be verified and cited. And as students approach research projects in high school, they ought to be verifying their sources by looking at who is publishing or owns the content they find online.

Third, it’s a technique for collecting information through copy-paste, summarizing, tagging, and citing digital content. This can be done electronically, or even better, using read/write tools. Keeping information students “mine” through research online can be aided through the use of a blog, a collaborative document, bookmarking sites such as Diigo, or within a course management system such as Moodle.

Lastly, Research 2.0 is focused on building infoseeking fluency. Through the practice of this system, students build their skills at choosing better keywords to begin searches. We believe to be successful in this day and beyond, not only is finding information important, but also what we make of it. This is why time management, problem-solving, and collaborative skills are important yet related twenty-first century skills.

Today I ran across some really engaging art pieces by our high school digital graphics teacher Mrs. Kim Bachmann’s students.

Check out their latest work!

With school now in full swing, teachers can take a well-deserved break from grading papers and creating lesson plans to visit Borders in Richmond for special savings opportunities, in-store events and giveaways during “Educator Appreciation Weekend,” Friday, Oct. 3 through Sunday, Oct. 5. According to a recent study by the National School Supply and Equipment Association (NSSEA), 94 percent of teachers surveyed spend their own money for school supplies, with the average teacher plunking down $395 of his or her own cash on supplies and educational materials for use in the classroom. Borders has created “Educator Appreciation Weekend” to salute educators for their tireless work and commitment to their students by giving them a 25 percent discount off regularly priced books, CDs, DVDs, gifts and stationery and cafe items for use in schools or for their personal enjoyment.

Got this news via our friend Susan Vaughan from RES about this Borders sale for educators.

The Department of Education here in Virginia recently released a new brief on cyberbullying. It’s intended more for school divisions rather than the general public, but it does include a lot of references that might be of interest to parents, teachers, or the general public.

Cyberbullying is a real problem, and involves the purposeful intimidation of others through electronic means. This can include posting to websites, blogs, instant messages, or through e-mail messages designed to intimidate others.

Goochland County Schools currently includes cyberbullying as one of several topics covered in our mandatory program of including Internet safety in our K-12 curriculum.