Quiet Little Google Features

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Google because they offer so much good stuff ... for free! So they recently rolled out a new GUI for Google Docs, no big deal, I ignore things until I have need for them. So today I notice that there's a link for "Images and Videos", I take note and click away. Google Docs has separated my few image files from the document files. But the more interesting thing is I can select "Images and Videos", "Images", or ... "Videos". Are they taking a swing at YouTube or are they just trying to become the Internet's archivist? You decide.

I can't rave enough about Gmail's Multiple Inboxes feature: you Label your incoming mail, set up which labels or filters you want to go into specific inboxes and they show up! I set up an account to use for students who don't have e-mail addresses (agbowoStudents@gmail.com then I add "+StudentName" to differentiate each student), but I have that account auto-forward to ms.agbowo@gmail.com so I'm not checking multiple accounts hourly. But the kicker is I have all those e-mails filtering and archiving to one of my Multiple Inboxes so I don't have to sift through my 1000's of messages, THEY'RE RIGHT THERE!

Then there's the Google Science Fair. Who's done that before?

Students don't have an e-mail account? Here's your solution...and other Gmail hacks

Problem: Web 2.0 tools need an e-mail address, no two ways about it, for security reasons and for password reset functions.

Problem: some of the most popular free e-mail sites do not allow people with birth years in a certain range to create accounts for certain services (ex. Google Accounts work for Gmail with parent credit card, but not at all for Blogger).

Problem: teachers encouraging students to be dishonest with registration is just morally wrong (trust me, I already went through that angst immediately after teaching Cyber Citizenship and came to that conclusion for you :).

Solution: teachers use Gmail+ to create student accounts! (courtesy of the EduBlogger)

The way it works

Step	Example
teacher has or creates a Gmail account. I recommend setting up a separate account from your regular e-mail so any student spam does not interfere with your regular messages.	anyteacher@gmail.com any.teacher@gmail.com And Gmail is even cooler because you can add dots to your account name
teacher creates students accounts by adding a plus after their e-mail account but before the at (@) symbol	anyteacher+student1@gmail.com any.teacher+studentFirst.studentLast@gmail or any combination of dots (.) and pluses (+) thereof which allows you to distinguish which service messages are coming from

That's all there is to this relatively recent and incredibly bothersome problem! I mean, I scratched my head for days and sent many protest e-mails when I couldn't find a solution, but over the break I ran across a number of resources, one of which was this Edublogs lesson on this issue and a major issue is solved.

My original solution involved petitioning and campaigning and demonstrating to get my district's tech people to quickly implement Google's FREE Apps for Schools to get student e-mail accounts, but that probably wouldn't have worked :)...ok, definitely would not have worked. Ok, I'm still going to do all of the above because I need my students to have Google Docs, but this workaround is a short term solution. And now I'm rambling so on to the next one!

Another tip comes from this article:  you actually receive accounts on 2 domains with Gmail: gmail.com and googlemail.com, so using filters you can differentiate where mail is coming from. Having debugged and de-virused many student computers, I recommend you use this tips...with an account separate from yours.

To create e-mail accounts for your blood children (as opposed to your adopted-student-children) under your Gmail account, this article suggests adding the account+ to your Gmail settings... with the first hack, I'm not sure it's necessary, the only difference being if your child wants to "send" a message with their name instead of the parent's.

Lastly, I label e-mails and sort files using numbers (ex. 0-really important stuff, 9-stuff to do when I'm bored out of my mind, in-between-numbers: prioritized stuff), but I like this suggestion to use slashes like a file system and other symbols to organize your Gmail Inbox.

Spring 2011 Curriculum Ideas

I'm thinking about what I'd like to teach my students before June (t minus 3 months) and I have so many ideas! Problem is there's so little time...basically 4 months and some weeks before the end of May, which is when the best teachers cease teaching and begin planning for the end of the year. I mean, going beyond May is torturous for your students with all the sunshine and graduation planning!

Anyway, I've decided to ask students what they want to learn and prepare a few lessons so they can choose or rotate. Here are some topics I've come up with [will add more as students suggest or as inspiration hits]

• HTML & Web Design (web design, programming, art, communication)
• Designing and Building a [miniature] House using reused and recycled materials (architecture, engineering, design, electrical circuitry, interior decor, ecology)
• Podcasting Spring events (engineering, communications, design, recording, writing)
• Art with Digital Tools (visual arts, history, communication)
• Game Design (game design, computer programming)

Back in School: Resources for the tech teacher

I am taking a credential class, Instructional Strategies for the Adult and Adolescent Learner, and have the great honor of being a student of the NASA - Endeavor Science Teaching Certificate Project, so I will be a busy bee! Though each class has just met for the first time in the last 48 hours, I already have useful resources:

Benchmarks & Standards

• entire book! Science for All Americans: the ideal science knowledge people will have long after graduation
• entire book! National Science Education Standards: adopted in the 1980's and useful to compare to your state guidelines
• entire book! Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8: methods to make science relevant in the K-8 classroom

When was the last time you took a refresher course or participated in professional development? There are so many programs and opportunities available, especially with the abysmal ratings U.S. students have received:

• Krause Center for Innovation's MERIT Program 2011
• Krause Center for their tech in education classes: they have face-to-face classes in San Jose (?) and online classes to learn or brush up on technology skills
• U.S. National Laboratory Teacher & Student internships (high school & college)
• National Lab Day (tba) ... President's Call to Action ... community
• Edublogger Teacher Challenge: having successfully completed their Student Challenge, this is the first opportunity for teacher's to get some blogging professional development to implement in the classroom (beginner & advanced challenges)

Cartoons in the Classroom!

Found a wonder blog that features lots of lovely tools for technology in education. Not sure how I happened upon Creating Comics Online, but I'm glad I did: cartooning makes teaching storyboard design relevant, and the online tools are much easier than demonstrating my stick figure storyboards and having students draw on sheets of paper.

He ends the article with 20 Ways to Use Comics in Your Classroom and More than 100 Editorial Cartoon Lesson Plans which makes cartooning immediately relevant to the classroom.

My students have been introduced to Scratch via e-cards, our next move is to write short stories and animate them using Scratch. After that we'll move to programming in Alice. I think comic strips are a great interim step before getting into 2D and 3D animation.

Agrarian Fascination in games

What's with all the apps and games focusing in farming? This point hit home for me when attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and one of the meet-and-greet questions was whether you checked your farm before the event! At the time I had 3 farms to check so that was a box I signed for others! How can we harness this obsession in academics and computing? Planning for periods of inaccessibility (logic), most profit generated in a given period (math, estimation), artistic nature of crop placement (crop circles), and of course agricultural and geography knowledge of crops. Maybe I'll host an extra credit challenge :)  I envision a class contest with the most decorative, the most profit generating, the most green, etc.

started the trend on Facebook, people were already spending hours catching up with friends, then they spent hours maintaining their farms

iPhone app

Apple's farming contribution, which is just as engaging (if you're profit minded) but had the audacity to download an auxiliary app (Game Center) to add the social networking piece.



The theme extends to cafes, bakeries, restaurants, shopping...anything that translates to buying and selling commodities.

Beginning Programming

School is very different: I once worked with a man (not in an educational setting) who lamented the fact that schools don't teach what they did in the 1950's, which directly contributed to students and scientists' abilities to create the computer revolution: counting in bases other than 10, logic, games. Unfortunately our students are not receiving this same knowledge so before students can program we need to give them logic skills. The following are some activities that give pre-programming logic skills.

• iKnowThat Thinking Games: teach students problem solving skills with simple programming puzzles
• Pivot Stick Figure: highly addictive for students, element of story telling in addition to pre-programming
• CS Unplugged's Programming Languages lesson: introduces giving instructions in a precise order to achieve outcomes

Tech tools for class use

Ning: free Ning Mini for educators: http://about.ning.com/pearsonsponsorship/ iTeach: free website, course management, and more: iTeach.org K12 High Speed Network: free tools for educators: k12hsn.org

Thanksgiving Origami

Turkey origami courtesy of tammyyee.com

I'm not sure how this idea manifest: a combination of having students for 2 days and not wanting to begin any substantial topics that will be forgotten after the turkey stuffage, and paper being a topic as I put together my spring materials and write grant requests. Somehow my brain came up with board games (no-tech + logic), coloring (no-tech + art), then origami (low tech + logic + art).

I found a few origami crafts specifically for Thanksgiving that were available on websites. There are many more resources on YouTube, but it's blocked by the district filter. My next project will be figuring out how to transfer videos from YouTube to TeacherTube...out of sheer necessity and frustration!

Update 11.22.2010: most students enjoyed the online coloring sites and didn't try the origami on the first day. This reminds me of the coloring phase I experienced as an adult because it was relaxing. I had forgottnen that coloring was to become part of my classroom management plan :)

For the students who did make some origami, they were also engaged and completed a few projects to take home. Lesson could not have gone better!

Holiday e-Cards...Thanksgiving edition

Will have students in my after school class use Scratch to create e-cards (electronic cards) ala Hallmark e-cards. Thanksgiving edition is practice for a Christmas extravaganza!

Gobble, Gobble (to the tune of Master P "Drop it, Drop it"
Gobble, Gobble
Shake 'n' Bake it
Cooking dumplings / Hushing puppies
Ate it, ate it!

Turkey images

• http://dclips.fundraw.com/zobo500dir/pollo_architetto_frances_01.jpg
• http://www.thethanksgivingideas.com/images/thanksgiving_clipart_06.gif
• http://www.kenilworthschools.com/kenilworth/Harding%20Elementary%20School/Classes/Fifth%20Grade/Mrs%20Jernigan/___zumuhead.html_files/thanksgiving_turkey2.gif

Shake n Bake

• http://www.addictedtosaving.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/shake-n-bake.jpg

Cooking dumplings / hush puppies

• http://gastrogirls.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/prosperity_cooking-the-dumplings.jpg
• http://www.epicurious.com/images/recipesmenus/2008/2008_january/241202.jpg
• http://www.fotobank.ru/img/SF06-0041.jpg?size=l

Ate it, ate it

Robotics are the new Computer Science

At the Grace Hopper Conference 2010 I attended a workshop on getting girls in grades 4-12 excited about computing, and 2 of the 4 technologies featured used robotics of some sort.

Scratch & Alice are programming languages, and allow students to make incredible animations (2D and 3D respectively) limited only by their imaginations.There are lots of programming challenges for students to participate in throughout the year to really flex their programming muscles.


Pico Cricket & Pleo Dinosaur kits were passed around for us to program and play with...total fun! During a meeting with my peer computer teachers I also learned about Pico Boards, which are like Pico Cricket connections but powered by Scratch...totally awesome...gotta get a few!!!



Then this article about a robotics lesson plan came in my e-mail and I now know that robotics are the next big thing in student computing. Of course it makes sense: artificial intelligence has remained behind the scenes in computing, we have a number of domestic robots (the vacuumers and floor cleaners, and toys) that make us more comfortable with independently operating machines. So the next wave of computers is to develop programmers who are comfortable and familiar with robotics. This means we technology teachers have to step our game up!

Adding Interactive Lessons

I now have to practice what I preach: I have a severely learning disabled student in my class for whom I CANNOT give text-based lessons. In addition we read an article in our staff meeting about the purpose of homework and types and length of assignments we should give students. All of this coalesced in my looking for interactive lessons on cyber safety.

• BBC WonderWebWorld
  Impressed by Dance Mat Typing I Google'd "bbc internet safety" and found this site.
• TEA - Internet Safety - Activities and Lessons
  Texas once again leading the way with links to really great resources
• Teachers First
  Haven't reviewed because the first few were already on TEA site
• DMOZ
  Really came through on interactive sites
  
  

We increasingly discuss students who grew up in a multimedia, multi-modal world, yet because we teachers grew up in the text age and are comfortable in the text age, we tend to give students...text. The test will be if students retain the internet safety lessons better through an interactive module than with reading through.

Teaching Logic Using Board Games

Today I had the privilege of fore knowledge of a planned network outage so I brought in some board games and cards that had been used in an outreach 10 years ago to keep students occupied. My 7th and 8th graders were mystified by Kerplunk, a game that came before their 1999 birth years lol! It got me thinking that it's possible to teach logical thinking "unplugged" using certain board games that promote logical thinking:

• Kerplunk: modern version of Pick Up Sticks where marbles fall through a column, winner has fewest number of marbles in receptacle
• Mancala: strategy game that requires counting, and quickly or your opponents confuse you
• Ludo, Parcheesi or Sorry: game of chance and strategy as you try to get all your pieces "home" while keeping your opponents from reaching "home" first
• Dominoes:
• Uno:
• Go:
• Monopoly:

The thing is these games may be old fashioned to us because we are of the "7 channel"-"do homework every night"-"play board games or play outside" because "there was nothing else to do" generation. These games are not familiar to our students because they are about 100 generations away from ours, their teachers. So for your next fundng cycle, be sure to invest in a few board games to take your logic-teaching lessons offline and to a whole new level.

CS Unplugged

I have been using CS Unplugged to reinforce computer science concepts after teaching technical skills that have been abstracted. CS Unplugged is a great curriculum for teaching computer science concepts to students without being plugged to a computer. I've found students are able to complete the worksheet activities with little to no assistance, though I have class discussions to ensure students take away the main point of the activities. I expect that for students younger than 7th grade may require more guided discussions in addition to an ending discussion to ensure the main concept is taken away.

Anytime-Anywhere Learning

It's 11pm on a Wednesday evening, final email check, lo and behold there are changes to the class wiki. Students are working on the class project, sharing resources by commenting on each others' pages...isn't this the learning we educators want to see? I thought students would only work during class time...I go to sleep happy that they are enjoying the activity enough to show off at home :)

Oh So Connected!

Reflecting on today's classes and I feel...Oh So Connected! Using Web 2.0 tools, my students have created blogs and are now using wikis. Having covered internet research (search engines), depending on how much they remember, they're now equipped to find information on any subject for school.

I will not be able to cover word processing before time ends with 2 classes, but I am confident that the Web 2.0 tools and cloud computing are what this generation needs to learn...even Microsoft is getting in line with online office productivity and smartphone apps.

Class Blogging as a Computing Activity

Image © 2010 M.Agbowo

Blogging is a Web 2.0 tool, meaning users can contribute to online discourse without knowing how to manually code (WYSIWYG-What You See Is What You Get). I had students create their own and write in wikis daily as a computing activity for the following reasons:

• technology exercise: to wrestle with setting up the blog as a means of reading and following directions, and the experience of setting up an online account
• writing exercise: students can always more time for language production and idea generation, so blogs allow a space for free writing
• communication exercise: blogs allow students to read and comment on other student's thoughts, and collaborate on ideas, all remotely, which is a 21st century skill

All in all, except for a few students who just missed the idea, I am satisfied that students understood a bit of technology and a lot of writing and idea generation.

We started off with Edublogs, which seemed so simple. Well, we really started off with trying to sign up for Google's Blogger and some of the other common blogs, but students were not allowed due to their correct years of birth. And some students did not have e-mail accounts so there was no possibility. Edublogs was to accommodate students without e-mail accounts, but there were networking issues where we could not always access the site.

Though Edublogs did not work out for us at this time, the site is very robust in student and class blogging, with lots of ideas and resources for the innovative teacher, and a blogging contest for students. In fact, I ran across a 9-step how-to guide for class blogging.

Some students started blogs through Webs, TypePad (not sure about age restriction), WordPress (Edublogs is the education version of WordPress; not sure about age restriction), and students with existing e-mail accounts were able to create Blogger blogs.

After some research I ran across KidBlog, which seems promising, because everyone is linked through a class page, where I or each student can create student accounts and a list of blogs is generated for the class. More to come on this :)

Teaching Standards are a good thing

I have the privilege of being evaluated since I'm a new teacher. My rubric will be the California Standards for the Teaching Profession (full document), which have to do with students, curriculum and learning, and growing as an educator.

I like to multi-task, kill two birds with one stone, so I will also infuse my technology standards via ISTE NETS for Teachers concurrently, which luckily are similar.

There is a lot of dialog about teacher quality, merit pay for student test scores, and a whole new industry on professional development classes, teacher testing, etc. All I wish to add is that when teachers honestly meet the standards and are happy in their jobs, you've got great, motivated employees. When something is amiss, not so great.

Internet & Web Design Unit

Today was *almost* the last day and I realized something: instead of reviewing students' work I could have had them e-mail me their code!

I compiled resources from all over the web, special thanks to Dave Site for providing great tutorials about the Internet's origins, beginner's HTML (have to accept ads for free stuff!).

Sequence (all resources are available at my class website):

1. History of the Internet: timeline of events, how the Internet is connected, various Internet communications
2. Search engines & Web directories: searching for information, using booleans, most common search engines & web directories, history of Internet search, techniques for effective searches
3. Evaluating search engine results: systems to evaluate validity of information obtained, practice evaluating hoax sites for validity
4. Research tools: to confirm information obtained, as a starting point for school projects
   
5. History of social networking: provides relevance to students' lives today
   Focus question: what internet technology can you envision for your generation in the future.
6. Beginning web design & HTML: Dave Site Chapters 1-16 except
   Ch. 10: FTP section, Copyright section is relevant, should prompt discussion on plagiarism.
   Ch. 14: Frames are still used but new standard is to use CSS for page design
   Ch. 17: I consider forms and mailto forms as intermediate

The class site also features links to make students' pages more colorful and interesting.

Some online code sites so students can view their code without being on a host:

• Dave Site: the "Try it Yourself!" allows students to code and view their pages immediately
• W3Schools: has great editors that show code and page side-by-side, except codes in the header do not show
  

That's what I'm talking about!

This article demonstrates the drive, innovation, initiative required by teachers to bring technology to students. These people persevered through theft, indifference, lack of compensation, and (from personal experience) an inattentive and insensitive technical staff to impart technical knowledge to their students! Kudos to them!!!!!!