Motivation

I ran across this tonight and wondered if I could swap out the word motivation for discrimination.

Maxine Greene "Releasing The Imagination" page 189:
"A person does not fully see or live through the impacts of discrimination unless he or she has desires that discrimination (or poverty, or abandonment) prevents him or her from fulfilling."

In other words my thought was if a student sees no need for motivation then why would they have any. May be I as the teacher have to do something different to make sure there is a desire that provides motivation. May be all I have to do is create the desire and the rest will follow.

Functionalism And The Least Of These

There is no quick fix to the problems facing people who do not start on equal footing in this world. As someone who believes we are all neighbors, and who believes that each of us was created with something to offer the body it is essential that I try first by loving my neighbor.


I am not sure that functionalists would agree. Everything is about the individual and what the individual can achieve. Even when placed in a group the individuals status as a group member is what makes it important, not the group itself. This view of the world rings false.


People in very different spots in life from myself have offered much to me, if only I listen at accept them as my brother or sister. If I create a space people will open up to the depth that all people are created for, a depth that reflects the love that created and redeems each of us. The best I can do for my students is bring them into community with this truth as well.


How do you show students justice your context? How do you bring your students into relationship with the least of these? Do you think it important to relate your students to the broader context of the subjects you teach? As a science teacher I was taught about interacting with concepts, inquiry, experimenting. How should I apply these concepts to teaching my students about how physics should impact their treatment of everyone on Earth? Am I having the interact and explore how to me more just members of the world with their knowledge? I hope so.

Upload a Keynote Presentation

I got this question from a teacher today and thought it would make a great post as well.

Hi Jim!

I'm hoping you can help us out...

Our MS (6-7-8) Spanish team is already planning the final project for our students.   We would like students to work in pairs or individually to create a presentation (think Power Point or Keynote) about a Spanish speaking country.  Then, we want students to upload their presentations to a Posterous site so they can view their classmates presentations.

Lately, I've been working with the Google Docs version of Power Point.  I LOVE it because the presentations are SO easy to embed into blogs (Example:  http://hollandchristianfles.blogspot.com/2010/03/san-antonio.html)

Most of the students are used to working with Keynote, but when you upload a Keynote to Posterous, you just get the file that you have to download.  

Here's my question...Is there a way to "embed" a Keynote on Posterous?  (Sort of like how the Google Presentation embeds)?  I know one "easy" solution would be to have all students create a Google account and use Google docs, but 6th and 7th grade students aren't 13...so I don't think they can create accounts.

You are right about Google Docs presentation being really sweet, but I too have shied away from doing real work with it because of the inherent limitation of a web based software that I might want to put a lot of pictures and video in. I see a couple of options for you. I had the same question recently and these are the solutions that I ran across. There are links to examples of each.
  1. Export the Keynote as ppt. Posterous will display this, but movies and audio do not come through and I do not really like the format very much (very slow loading). This same thing would happen if you used OpenOffice.org to make the presentations and sent those to Posterous.
  2. You can export the Keynote as images and send them all to Posterous. If you export them to a folder, right click on the folder and choose Compress from the menu. Then just attach that zip file to the email to Posterous and Posterous turns it into a very nice gallery. The pictures display in order and can be clicked on really easily. You still do not get audio or video. I think this actually turned out the nicest of all the options I tried when getting read for my MACUL presentation.
  3. Export from Keynote as a Quicktime. You get all the audio and video. You will have to be incredibly careful about length and presentation size. I was not careful about these things and could not upload mine this way.
  4. Create the blogs on the school blog server. Keynotes upload to it and show up great.
  5. You could use Voicethread.com. The free accounts are pretty limited, 25MB, so if there is any audio or video you will probably go over.
  6. You could use slideshare.com. No audio or video with a 100 MB upload limit. They take Keynotes directly.
These are my thoughts.

Student as Contributor: The Digital Learning Farm

Title
Student as Contributor: The Digital Learning Farm
Alternate Title
I am sweet, why hasn't the world listened to me?
Presenter
Alan November, Senior Partner, November Learning
Notes
"The real revolution is information and relationships."
"We are techno lusting nerds."
If feed back on homework is not immediate then the mistakes made start to sink in and become part of the brain pathways. By 36 hours without feedback ideas are set and the homework has done more harm than good.
"All learning is social."
"Kids are more interested in listening to a child explaining something than a teacher."
'Every teacher is a learner and every learner is a teacher."
"Kids will work overtime if teacher invites them into the teaching and learning process."
"Why don't we bring kids to staff development?"
Reflection
I love Alan November's ideas. I was surprised to find out that most of the young teachers at the conference had not heard of him but felt like his message was old and tired. They said they had it all through their education classes. I was glad to hear this but also somewhat surprised, not all new teachers have caught the vision.

Student Cell Phones in Learning

Title
Student Cell Phones in Learning
Alternate Title
Lot Of Interesting Things To Do With Cell Phones
Presenter
Liz Kolb, Lecturer, University of Michigan, and Adjunct Professor, Madonna University

Presentation

Notes
Liz thinks very creatively about how to use cell phones in learning. What I appreciate most about her is she think way outside the box on how to use tools, which I also like to do. 
Jumbli.com - online word game. no control but could be a fun bell ringer.
contxt.com - online business cards. Could also be used to build scavenger hunts.
dailybooth.com - public place to send pictures to from cell phones, like a twitter for cell phone cameras.
It is time for me to figure out google voice.
She showed off scvngr.com which I love but is a big deal to get ready.
Reflection
Liz was off her game today.

Getting Teachers to Adopt Technology: What to and not to Do

Title
Getting Teachers to Adopt Technology: What to and not to Do
Alternate Title
This guys gets it.
Presenter
Rushton Hurley, Executive Director, Next Vista for Learning, and Teacher, Santa Clara Unified School District, CA
Presentation
Notes
Two things technology must do for him to use it
  1. Save him time.
  2. Teach kids better.
Six Don'ts and Dos
  1. Don't require teachers to be experts in technology. Do remind them of their expertise.
  2. Don't tie everything to standards. Do show them something fun.
  3. Don't sit everyone in a lab for training. Do allow for regular and short sharing time.
  4. Don't limit technology to labs. Do showcase what can be done outside the lab. This ones is a little less important int our 1 to 1 environment.
  5. Don't buy expensive software a teacher has not used. Do learn what is freely available.
  6. Don't blanket the school with expensive hardware. Do use targeted spending to focus purchases. No matter what you do you are going to tick someone off. Do not shoot for equity shoot for putting stuff in rooms where it will get used. If the people who do not get the technology a mad and they do something about it, great. If they are mad and they don't change give more stuff to the people do stuff. If you flip this around the people who get mad are the people doing stuff, and you want to encourage them not discourage them.

Storytelling for the YouTube Generation

Title
Storytelling for the YouTube Generation
Presenter
Steve Dembo, Online Community Manager, Discovery Educator Network, Discovery Education
Alternate Title
Kids tell stories in thousands of new and different ways, let them!
Presentation
Notes
"I do not give assignments, I give creative briefs."
You can make interactive choose your own adventure videos on YouTube.
Reflection
Step 1: Watch all the videos linked in the presentation in class.
Step 2: Give kids a topic.
Step 3: Give kids a due date.
Step 4: Watch awesome material on your topic.

Seems simple doesn't it?

Steve's main point: let your learners have the freedom to create. They will. And they will get better if you keep letting them.

My laptop has a webcam, now what?

Title

My laptop has a webcam, now what?
Actual Title
So many teachers and student use these things around here, I wonder if other people need to know the power?
or
It was the catchiest title I could come up with and I am working on a theory that catchy titles are the key to presenting.
Presenter
Me.
Presentation
See attached photos of slides. They will not be of much value since they each need the story and the slides do not have video. Sorry no audio. I wish I had the ability to remember to record myself at these things.
Reflection
I love presenting. It forces me to reflect on my teaching and tech coordinating and bring out in front of people what good is happening around me. I tried out two specific new things this year that I think may have helped.

First, I spent a lot of time on my title. It may not seem like it but I did. The title above is the best I have ever had. I liked that it was current: many PC people are new to having a webcam. I liked that there was no mistaking what the presentation was going to be about. I thought it communicated that there would be stuff in here to try out on Monday (a way teachers often decide what to do at conferences) while I knew I would get at picture theories of education during the whole thing. I wanted more than my current average at MACUL of 15 people in the room.

Second, I think I realized that there are three tiers of presenting at conferences. First tier is the true story tellers with a big philosophical point. Dan Meyer, Alan November, Will Richardson, David Warlick, Gary Stager all weave stories and presentations to make you think big thoughts. Second tier presenters show you a lot of things that you can do and try to weaver their big picture stuff into that. I think this is second tier because I might only get a few nuggets out and I will probably have to find them myself a little. Plus it is easier to make these presentations. Line up 25 good ideas and go. There is another tier but I would like to stay positive. 

If you look at the slides, my presentation was essentially 21 good ideas about using webcams. I weaved through that some good rules of teaching, and how to use other devices than webcams that you may have around to achieve some of the same goals. I was really happy with how it came together.

I think my title worked. I had about 50 or 75 people at the presentation. The room was pretty big, so it was not full, but close. Aside from my title I was in the room that on the program had me right below all the headliners. That probably helped. The room I was in was literally the farthest room from anything, which might have hurt. I was very happy with the turnout. And I think no one left, which is another good sign for my title. I got a lot of positive feedback from the people who stayed after as well.

I could do some things better. 
  • I need to put my slides up before the show so that my sharetabs.com link includes a link to the slides. 
  • I need to make my sharetabs.com before the morning of the event.
  • I need to be ready to present 20 minutes early so I can greet them at the the door. By ten minutes left when I was ready to meet people at the door the room was half full. By the way, greeting people at the door is an essential and under utilized presentation technique. 
  • I should consider the whole presentation being websites, although with all the videos that are of unknown copy write status, I really could not.
  • I should have short Google Form for evaluation that people can go to for feedback.
Overall I was really happy. The audience really tracked and seemed to enjoy it. I was very comfortable. I am glad MACUL sees fit to continue to allow me to present. Now I just have to think of a topic.