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Playing with Glogster

When I'm not swimming in the turgid waters of middle school discipline as the Dean of Students, I'm wearing that other swimming cap I deal with -- Technology Integration Specialist. As I told another colleague, our students are digital natives who swim in technology with ease. They perform the backstroke, breaststroke, and crawl with the zero effort; we, on the other hand, swim as though we have a large rock tied to one foot. The trick is practice -- never stop swimming, because to stop will mean to drowned. Part of my job is exploring and experimenting with technology, so I can continue to swim with the digital natives, even if it takes me longer to swim a lap.

Today's lap involved swimming with Glogster again. I came up with this work to share. I hope people enjoy it, the actual focus was not on the content itself, but rather the experience of using the tool. Glogster allows for hours of creativity and messing around, which can be shaped into hours of educational material, if used correctly and with some teacher creativity. One of KIS's art teachers, Sarah Digges, is using it as a reflection tool in the artistic process.

Often times teachers come to me asking for advice about technology and the best advice I can and do give is "Don't be afraid to jump into the deep end of the pool with those digital natives." You will find that the laughs you hear from them are not because of your inept skills, but because of their joy in sharing and learning with you.

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Think Global School

12 trimesters, 12 different international cities, a 1:1 Mac environment -- an incredible education -- that is the Think Global School experience, or at least it will be starting in the fall of 2010. I had an amazing opportunity last night to network, brainstorm, collaborate, and interview with Aron Solomon, the CEO & Head of TGS. (He also picked up the tab on dinner; great guy, right?) TGS will take group of students and a team of teachers around the world over the course of four years. The idea is innovative; the logistics laborious; the energy exciting, but no matter what happens, it will be one amazing adventure for those who are bold enough to take the journey. There will be homesickness and culture shock on a grand scale, but there will also be truly global citizens immersed in a real global education.

Some ideas that were discussed during the meeting -- a travel magazine by young adults, for young adults. They students will be traveling to these 12 cities and can use their experiences to build a wonderful magazine targeted at their age level. Who knows better about what teens are interested in when they travel than other teens. The goal could be to publish one edition every trimester and over time, as the program grows into its full four years, different sections could focus on different cities -- surfing in Sydney and shopping in Hong Kong. After talking with Aron, my ideas really started flowing; his love of education and openness to innovation were infectious (but not in a scary H1N1 sort of way). One step further from the magazine idea, an on going podcast, or full television series, with the same travel magazine idea at the core. There must be some companies dying to advertise on a program like that, right?

Something that came to me after the meeting was the opportunity for the school to be a traveling Apple Training Center. During the first year, students could be trained and certified on Apple programs. Then they could train host-school students and teachers on iLife and iWork products while borrowing the host-school's physical structures. Talk about win-win situations and collaboration!

Cheers to Aron! Thanks again for dinner, conversation, and one gigantic, great idea about what education can/should be in the future.

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The First Post at the New Site

Many of you are aware of my long-standing feud with Edublogs.org about changing their services from free to fee services. All of the really interesting stuff, Cluster Maps and what not, became part of they pay service and unavailable to poor teachers like me. It isn't the amount of money that is the issue, it is the whole concept -- why should it be a pay service? Anyway, I have found a new home for my blog at Posterous, so welcome to my first post at the new site. I will not be posting any more of my blog at Edublogs. I'm finished with those money-grubbing guys over there; plus, Posterous comes with a very cool option -- the ability to post via email. You email your post to posterous.com with attachments and your blog is automatically uploaded, which means that my blogging can be done with my iTouch now, as long as I have a free wifi connection. I LOVE IT! This will make my life much easier.

Last week I have side tracked from blogging due to an outbreak of middle school student discipline cases. It was amazing in the middle school; like every stupid idea that could go through a middle school mind suddenly all popped all at once. Two students with no discipline records at all go in a fight. Someone thought it would be a great idea to play a computer game right in the middle of class. Another student felt yelling out the F-word in the middle of class would be fun; and the list goes on and on, so blogging didn't really happen. I did manage to post an old educational philosophy statement that I came across, but no new material.

Some cool things happening around KIS right now:

My middle school art department is trying out blogs as a tool for reflection. Check out http://kis-sculpture.blogspot.com/ To see photos of middle school art projects in sculpture class and student reflection on their classmates work and process.

In the world of middle school English, Norman Schwagler and Sheila McCord are having the 7th graders use Comic Life to retell the major plot points from Ulysses.

In the high school, Greg Israel is advising the Phoenix Film Festival Club, which is our attempt to put the student film festival in the hands of students. So far, the students have been working on promotion spots. Next month, Greg and I will give them the big list of items that need to be done before the actual film festival can occur.

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