My children have led me into new uses of technology ever since they were little. It’s happened again!

The Back Story

12 years ago, when we brought my two older boys away from school for half the school year, to rural New England, we learned how to get a computer in the public library to dial up and log on to another computer at a university in our hometown (techno-babble term: telnet). My children’s classmates also had logged onto the hometown computer from their classroom, and people from the two locations typed messages which appeared at both locations, thus enabling classmates and teachers to “chat” long distance.

Years later, when we were vacationing away from home, our boys figured out they could play a role-playing game (RPG) with their friends back home, and with no long distance charges, by using the “voice chat” option in IM (techno-babble: using an “Instant Message” computer program to transmit sounds back and forth in real-time).

Now, I have one son using an online project monitoring program to coordinate collaborative efforts of a team of writers and editors–most of whom have published together before, but never met in real life.

And Now…

I’m at Autism Network International’s Autreat (a conference/retreat run by and for autistic people-read the web site for a better description) with one of my sons. People came from Japan, Canada, Israel, and the U.S. for the event. One presenter set up an informal discussion session about the future of their aims and the direction members want to pursue. He had a projector on the screen at the front of the room, and it showed the window of an IRC chat channel that had been set up for this. A typist was at the keyboard, transcribing the discussion in the room onto the chat channel. The presenter moderated, passing a microphone to people in the room, taking time now and again to read aloud the comments being posted in the chat channel from members who were not physically present, and passing along questions or comments from those physically present to those present in the chat room. The typist had her hands full from time to time, but the people in the room helped her recap, and everyone was valuing the inputs. It was a rich discussion, enhanced by those who joined via the internet–people from Britain, the Netherlands, Georgia (U.S.), and so on who could not join us physically.

It was amazing! The level of discussion, the consideration of everyone including each other in genuine discussion, the head-spinning ability to ask “so and so, what’s your experience with government regulation of this educational program in Britain?”

I had no idea what a wonderful resource IRC could be. Frankly, I’d overlooked it, assuming it would be too clunky and slow, difficult to use. Yet, here I was barely keeping up with the conversation sometimes. I am aware that it was the conversation, and the people having it, that made the session so wonderful–but their use of this tool was superb, and they used it to enhance their ability to have a genuine interaction–to connect.

And it wasn’t a fluke, there was another discussion later that evening–different topic, different moderator, same rich quality and international connections.

I’m so glad my children are educating me!

Photo: “Lead Me” courtesy Spleenboy http://www.flickr.com/photos/spleenboy/270741497/

I’ve been commiserating with my peers about the difficulty of writing curriculum for the moving target that is tech these days! I’ve found it helpful to think about how I have adapted things for my multiage groupings with a three year rotation. I’ve also found it heartening to think back about the best “performance pieces” we’ve done–because, by and large, even if the program names and the computer operating systems change, most of these pieces are STILL what I want my students to produce!

So, I have decided to give a few reports of favorite products and projects, complete with work samples, the next time I get a moment to blog. I may continue this over the summer as I look over and rethink (as I do every summer) my curriculum. I hope you find something useful, and would love if anyone wanted to share their favorites here!

I’ve been digging around for some favorite samples to share this week, and I hope to post some good things this weekend.

Thanks again for reading and sharing.

Students are really enjoying this exercise!

• Siblings have been enjoying commenting on sibling blogs (”You never tried octopus, how can you say you like all seafood?”)
• Some students find it frustrating not knowing who made a comment.
• Students are replying to comments on their “blogs” and inviting conversations.
• Students are discussing the pros and cons of keeping negative or nitpicking comments.
• Some conversations are between students who never knew they had a common passion.
• A bevy of intermediate students asked permission to head for the library to “check their blogs” during their lunch break!
• Favorites include pea soup, and root beer floats with mint chocolate chip ice-cream.

Conversations have opened up about family customs (Monday night milkshakes), ethnic foods, our diversity of taste, and body image. The body image discussion really impressed me, as one student complained that she couldn’t eat her favorite food because she was “too fat”–other students argued that she was lovely and should know that; that she shouldn’t worry about dieting if she usually made good food choices; that there were less-fat versions of her favorite; and one offered a recipe and shared that she was dieting, too.

Having the 5th grade girl and the 3rd grade boy and the 8th grade boy all learning that they share a passion for shrimp with cocktail sauce may not change their lives, but it has been a nice way to connect with each other. As we prepared to leave for Spring Break yesterday, I saw one student crushing a comment slip in a hug before replacing it on her “blog”! I am so glad we are helping these students feel the excitement of blogging in our small community, rather than online.

I could be talking about email, or mobile networking, or IM-ing, or online gaming, or blogging. Pick whichever.

It’s widely available to most of my students, and quite popular.
Therefore, most of my students will learn to use it–whether or not I show them.

What about the other students, who don’t have access? What about the students who do have access but don’t have tech-savvy parents hovering over them and teaching them online safety and savvy?

I devised a safe-chat game on paper, which I posted a little about earlier, to give all of the students in Grade 3 through 5 a chance to practice how to chat online, spot safety issues, and avoid some traps. That practice made me feel good about how the social skills of students transferred easily to the online simulation, so that my youngest and most inexperienced (no access at home) students were very successful in spotting and politely extricating themselves from conversations they should avoid.

I know that it’s good to anticipate, and practice, using any new skill–but I want to do more. I want to give these students lots of successful and confidence-building experiences. Especially the students without access at home. I don’t want those students to feel unprepared and disadvantaged in the online world of their peers. I am keeping my eye out for more “practice on paper” for this young age group. I’ve come across a one paper exercise that I think will transfer well to the students in the Intermediate and Middle School levels:

To provide a hands-on, interactive explanation of (mo)blogging, and the way that blogs can be used in education as powerful learning tools.

Mobile Learning » Workshop Activity: Paper Blogs

(mo) blogging refers to using a mobile device to post your blogs, I believe.

I’m going to try this on paper with the Intermediates, but I think I’ll be trying it in a word-processor with the Middle School level. I want the Middle School students to be thinking about how they compose visual space this week. If it works well, I may try and have the Intermediate students try it on the word processor, too, at a later date.

I will take advantage of the opportunity to have a conversation about passions and learning communities, on-line and in person, too!

1. I ask students to think about what point they want to make before beginning. Examine the data, decide your message, pick an image. It doesn’t have to be a bunch of camera tricks. I like Sony’s Bravia commercial, which  makes the simple point “Color like no other” without any computer trickery. Here’s the link:

In order to capture the vibrant reality of the balls and the way they moved, every single frame was shot on camera – computer graphics weren’t used at all.

Sony : The BRAVIA ‘bouncy balls’ commercial : United Kingdom

It is a beautiful video that my students enjoy. They also enjoy the “making of” explanations linked here next, where they show how they blasted balls out of cannons, were ready with many cameras to catch the quick action, and broke windows in the making…

Behind the scenes How we did it

Sony : The BRAVIA ‘bouncy balls’ commercial : United Kingdom

2. A fun spoof of the Bravia commercial and related website that an ad firm put together, using fruit instead of balls (they have a link on the web page that shows you the “commercial” they are complaining about).

Swansea North Residents Association website

Swansea North Residents Association – Welcome

We are a non-profit organisation that meets every Sunday, around about tea time, to discuss the needs and views of Swansea North residents.

3. Next, here’s a link to a Bravia spoof created as machinima (having “Avatars” in a game or other online world operated by people who arrange to go online to the already existing scenery provided by the game world and meet and act out scenes using their avatars. Having one or more avatars act as the “camera” stationed to observe the mayhem, the action is captured and can be shared). Warning, this is filmed with battlefield avatars, and each character is military, and carries a weapon as part of the gameworld design.

Circulating only throughout the internet, a video filmed by a clan features 64 players simultaneously hopping down a slope and over HMMWVs on the Sharqi Peninsula, a map in Battlefield 2. Instead of “BRAVIA – Color like no other” at the end of the original Bouncy Balls commercial, the clan’s video read “Bunny Hopping – Like no other”

BRAVIA – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an overhead shot from another spoof video/in-game melange. It doesn’t have the Bravia reference (it does include references to the seagulls in “Finding Nemo” (Mine), Monty Python, and CNN news coverage of Iraq). This was also done by the same group, dubbed “Snoken,”as the machinima above. Each avatar on the screen is operated by a different person, and they have coordinated quite a bit to accomplish this. Again, warning, the characters are armed, and in this one, there are some other challenges, like explosions.

Notice that the color is washed out at the beginning and the end? His introduction and conclusion are quite faint. The topic label, and the three informational paragraphs in the middle, are each their own, much brighter color.

Speculation: To this internet-savvy student, color is used to highlight important information and links. Since web pages are frequently a non-linear and uniquely individualized experience (different people will click around the links in their own way), this use of color makes more sense than the linear use of headings and outlines.

In a traditional paper, the titles and headings are used to alert the reader to what important point will be made in the reading which follows directly after. In a traditional paper, the introduction encapsulates the entire argument (this is what I will prove….) and the conclusion often rehashes the argument. Thus, in a traditional paper, the introduction and conclusion carry weight. (And, the author hopes you’ll read the whole thing, but at least she expects you to read the introduction, headings, and conclusion.)

In this student’s more non-linear world, he expects his reader to want to skip what he considers fluff and zero in on his factual information. That’s what his color use is signaling…and all of the other middle school students I asked about the color use got it immediately…”here’s the important bit.”

Transmutation isn’t quite the word for it. Neither is transformation. Nor evolution. I settled for “Generations.” We don’t discard older formats when we add a new one to our story-telling heritage.

Now, the power of story is transformed again, as the storyteller incorporates virtual reality.

Virtual Setting. The creating of avatars that live a virtual life can be used as a powerful form of story-telling. Think of the possibilities! Places like Second Life allow many people to create a landscape together. Landscapes (the setting for a story) can create a personal reality, jointly imagined. The look of a virtual landscape can be precisely engineered to give the viewer a sense of place. Newer processors allow cleverly rendered images and sound systems that immerse the reader in “3-d”. Virtual reality can be rendered so well they give participants who move too quickly in it motion sickness. Individual blades of grass, the speed of the clouds scudding across the sky, and the shadows they cast, can be programmed to respond to the “apparent breeze.” You may not notice the subtle changes in cloud shadows on the tree trunks and such, but I’ll bet they have a subliminal effect which adds to the sense of “reality” of the place. In fact, things can seem too real. I remember that the designers of Fiona in the original Shrek said they took a step back from looking too realistic, in order to make it “fit” their sense of a fairy tale story (I got this from the DVD I bought, it came with added features that explained some of the rendering work).

Character. Here’s another place where the story can be jointly imagined. In a virtual reality, your avatar is a character. People usually only helm one avatar at a time. Now with common meeting grounds like Second Life, you can bring as much of yourself to the landscape as you might as an author. You might choose to don a persona, like a traditional author dons a pseudonym.

Point of View. Jointly imagined. Or not. I suppose it is possible to render a world, and a story, completely, and then invite others to bring their avatars to come live it. Avatars entering the story can have their actions completely “scripted” by the person who created the story. Or, they can make some decisions on their own. Think of the new take on “choose your own adventure” type stories! The story would be communicated through an “avatar’s eye view.” Talk about a new point of view!

In my next post, I plan to list links to some videos I use to talk about traditional video, digital editing, story creation, the impact of web20, and machinima with my students. If you know of anything “avatar’s-eye view” that I can add, let me know.

A book wins the prestigious Newbery Medal award. It is “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron.

It becomes controversial because it uses an anatomically correct word. This word use is fitting with a theme of the book.

And one of the themes of the book is that Lucky is preparing herself to be a grown-up, Ms. Patron said. Learning about language and body parts, then, is very important to her.

With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar – New York Times

This word is used as a descriptor between boys (and overheard by a girl) about the location of a dog’s snakebite. By 9 or 12 years of age, I hope that boys understand that there is another word for their private areas other than “family jewels” or “crotch”–if only so that they can talk with their doctors about jock itch, concerns about development, and what not. I expect that knowing the terms for various anatomical parts well enough to describe a dog’s snake bite will not cause the spontaneous spread of immorality. The boy explained to his friend that his dog was bit on the scrotum. The girl, overhearing, wonders about the word. I’ll bet that a similar book, aimed at the same age group, would be quite acceptable in mentioning that a pup nursed at it’s mother’s teat, or found a nipple to suckle.

“The people who are reacting to that word are not reading the book as a whole,” she said. “That’s what censors do — they pick out words and don’t look at the total merit of the book.”

With One Word, Children’s Book Sets Off Uproar – New York Times

By the way, all three of my sons know that there are seven continents, and my sons know the terms urinate, bowel movements, and scrotums. They don’t often mention these things in conversation, but if they did, it wouldn’t be for titillation effect–just for factual information.

Read the book. Then decide.

We’re enjoying having Rand Whipple, master mind behind Box of Light Theatre, spending mornings with us for two weeks as “artist in residence” at our K-8 school, supporting our all school thematic study.  Our thematic study this year builds on our previous year’s thematic study, and reflects our diversity initiative (there is a whoooole lot of blogging potential there, in how to meet the challenge of seeking out the diversity within the local and larger world that our school faces, including our challenge of being in a small, rural community that is not very diverse). Last’s year’s thematic study was “This is Who We Are” and this year’s is “The Power of Our Stories.”  I can’t help but love that title!  ( I am a fan of Jane Yolen, who advocates teaching classic cultural tales, myths and fairy tales, in her book Touch Magic.)

A Special Role for Middle School Students

All of our students are excited and looking forward to being part of this project. Our middle school students are being the technical staff and assistants for Rand.  A team of middle schoolers is helping each lower school class to tell their stories. The middle school students are also planning on telling a story of their own.  They are eager to learn how to use Rand’s programs to record, morph, “goo,” and otherwise manipulate images, and to eventually produce a dvd.

Working Within Their Own, and Society’s, Limits

They are learning, along the way, that when a group of middle school students accompanies primary students on a field trip to record their stories on videotape, someone should remember to bring along a video camera!  Luckily, Rand thought to check before the bus left… Ah, the challenges of the middle school brain!   They are also learning the frustration of having filmed an event and later discovering that every single shot included a person they did not have permission to record.  Issues of copyright and attribution have also been thoroughly discussed.  I think the middle school students are learning that they have to work within societal and organizational constraints, even during this most creative of exercises–if they are going to be able to share their work.

It has brought to my mind Ilsa Aichinger’s story, The Bound Man.  That might be a good story to use as part of a debriefing when this work has concluded.  These students are certainly beginning to learn how to work within their bonds, and that both limitations and opportunities come with them.

Posting Work in Progress

Instant feedback is wonderful, and it is gratifying for the students to see how their work is coming out.  Rand asked if we had a spot, or if we wanted to use his website, for students to post clips that they have edited and compressed with Rand’s help.  I made a page available on the free wikispace that came with this blog, and it was a learning experience for me!  Since the wiki “insert video image” called for a web location for the image, I checked out free online places. I went with Google Video, since Odeo inserts a watermark and Google did not, plus Google Video allows you to make the file private.  If anyone knows of a better way for me to have done this, please let me know!

The first clip is up, and it is a special story from an interview of our Intermediate team teacher, Audra.  Please take a look–it is at http://matter.wikispaces.com/telling+stories+in+school

May your stories be hopeful ones.

I’ve found this wonderful link to a series of “pictures that lie.” (I’ve been getting a feed on the newly added bookmarks of del.icio.us user LibrarianEdge and this site was added by LibrarianEdge today–Thanks!). I’m extremely excited, because I was looking for a way to broaden the wonderful message of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (see my earlier post, here) and help it cross over to the male students I have. When I checked out the site, though, it addressed much more than body image issues.

It addressed censorship, political exigencies, propaganda, critical thinking, editing, feminism, media, photoshop ethics, and more (Oh, My!)! It helps place the information media awareness I want students to cultivate, the critical thinking skills they need to harness to be savvy on the web, into a perspective that includes a long history of media manipulation:

Before the invention of the digital image, the Soviets removed Trotsky from News Photos and archives when he fell out of favor and American farmers were shown with truck-sized crickets on their farm equipment. — See images 14 and 17.

The website makes it clear that image manipulation (lies, deceitful lies!) is not something only from the past, as it includes modern day images (Cover photos from Newsweek, Time, and TV Guide; modern icons such as Oprah, Katie Couric, and Martha Stewart).

My students don’t have to feel I am shining a spotlight on them as potentially gullible–these photos were aimed at a wide readership. It will be up to me to help the students realize that they can value Katie Couric and Oprah without being manipulated into putting them onto a “body image” pedestal that really isn’t them (isn’t means, in this case, that their heads were pasted onto model’s bodies for those cover shots). It will be up to the students, actually, but this should help them realize they need to look critically at EVERY image they see. Who put it there, who does it serve, is it touting a political point of view or reinforcing a powerful entity (political or corporate)…or just selling more TV Guides?

In earlier grades, I had students explore a wonderful webquest where they develop their own rubric to “rate” a website using information they researched (about authority, currency, etc.) and then they test their rubric by evaluating a pair of websites: one fake, one real. Students found the fake sights could fool some of them, some of the time…and they were not happy with that! I added additional “fake or fantastic” websites and we explored them as a group followup.

Now, I hope to help my students see how pervasive, and how easily accomplished, are “images that lie.” And that those images aren’t just aimed at fooling them–but at all of us. I’ll tell them that old saw:

Fool me once…

And I’ll mean, ME, too. I’m in there with them.