Using iMovie

• October
• 11

We’ve just done the first project this year where everyone was required to use imovie.  The results were generally quite good:  kids seemed to like the project, and they had very few issues using the cameras or imovie.  The finished products looked really great.  Another positive was that is felt more equitable to have everyone use the same resources than allow kids the choice, which usually means that kids with more access to technology at home make nicer, more professional-looking products on their own time.  This was clearly the first time a few kids had ever used imovie, so they had a chance to learn that skill, which is also good in terms of equity.

The downsides were that is was quite time-consuming to allow kids to film and edit using class time, and some were finished so much more quickly than others that it was hard keeping them all on the same task.  I had extra work for early finishers to do, but then the kids who took longer to do their movies had to do this work on their own outside of class to catch up.

Ensuring that the same kids had access to the same macbooks from one day to the next to access imovie was also a challenge.  In theory, kids use the same machne each time, but it practice several classes and teachers are signed up for the maccart at the same time, and technical issues arise (the cart was not charging at all one day we were working on this project), so it is difficult to ensure that the same machnines are available.  Running up and down the stairs to get the macbooks also feels onerous for me.  It was much easier to access them when I was on the same floor as the cart.  I hope we can move forward with getting something (new desktops, laptops, ipads, anything)  down here on the first floor of Newell.

using projector for class notes and updating clas page

• October
• 11

As I said before, my new classroom is more spacious and more conducive to keeping a laptop and projector permanently set up and accessible.  I have been weaning myself off chalk, and instead I am typing all my class notes in a word document which I project and then post to the class website after class.  It seems to be easier for kids to read typed notes than my handwriting.  :)  The overwhelming majority of my notes are just French and English definitions, so Josh suggested I make 2 columns and delete one column after each class so I don’t need to go back through and delete all the definitions individually.

The only limiting factor is my own slow, messy typing style and the fact that accent marks slow down typing a bit.  I like the fact that notes are available online, but I don’t imagine that a lot of kids are actually accessing them.  I would like to know how to check in google sites how many people have accessed a given page or link.  I will probably also need to find a way to reorganize my website, as individual links to each days class notes are going to make the sites’ pages look long and unwieldy.  Josh suggested just putting everything in a publicly accessible folder on google docs, but I haven’t  tackled that yet.

IPEVO Point 2 View USB Document Camera

• October
• 11

Last summer I attend the BC Calculus session of St. Johnsbury Academy’s AP Institute. The entire experience was fantastic, and in particular my instructor, Vic Levine, was an all-around all-star. One piece of technology that he used that I was impressed by was the IPEVO Point 2 View USB Document Camera, a simple document camera.

He used it to display a variety of documents. With it, he could quickly and easily show us any content generated by a student in class or that he had brought with him. Most of us in the class were not new to the technology as we’d seen Elmos in action. What was new to us was how easy the device was to use and it’s affordable price of $69.99. I came away from the experience with the full intention to try one out myself.

Two weeks ago I finally got around to ordering my own unit. After two weeks of use I can make the following observations:

1) It’s super easy to use. Install the (small) software package (from CD) that comes with the camera, plug the camera in to an open USB port, and you’re up and running. I’m currently running mine through a small USB hub and it’s working fine.

2) The stand works well and can be easily placed on a higher surface to get a wider view. The camera also comes with a clip that could be used instead of the stand if you have something to clip it to. I haven’t used the clip yet.

3) The view can easily be flipped vertically or horizontally. This means that I can have the camera base facing towards me with the camera over my hands, and the projected image is shown properly on my projector.

4) The camera’s autofocus works well — a little too well in fact. If my table was more stable, this wouldn’t be an issue, but since it moves a little bit, the camera (rightly so) tries to refocus. Sometimes it tries to refocus a little too often. So, I’ve set the mode to manual focus. In this mode I click a button and the camera focuses on the center content. I only have to do this a couple times a class.

5) The camera does a great job at focusing on things that are very close by. I used the camera yesterday to show my students how to fold some geometric shapes. Instead of constantly walking around to give each student a close up of what I was doing, I could show them, to even greater detail, all at once by folding right in front of the camera.

6) The camera can easily be used as a pretty decent web cam.

7) You can boost the exposure by a couple notches, a feature that I’ve found to be helpful in low-ish light.

8) Sometimes people like to turn off their lights when they use a projector. The problem with doing that while using this camera is that you need good light for the camera to adequately see the document. I haven’t needed to do this since my projector is bright and can be seen well with the lights turned on, but others have had issues. This problem could be solved with a directional lamp pointed at the documents. I plan on looking into cheap LED lights that I can mount to the camera itself.

9) The control program (P2V) is super easy to use. With it you can take picture, change exposure, jump to full screen, zoom, change the view, and adjust the resolution.

10) I’ve been primarily using the camera to show student work from homework assignments as well as work generated on the stop. So far it’s performed beautifully.

The bottom line is that this camera is worth every penny it’s $69.99 sticker price. If you’re in the market for a document camera, try this one out first before you fork out $500+ for an Elmo.

Virtual Field Trips

• October
• 10

Just wanted to share that I have started to incorporate virtual field trips in my lesson designs as a means of providing additional schema and background for my students.  I am finding that many of the students I work with have minimal experiences and exposure to particular content/topics.  Virtual field trips seem to provide them with an authentic means of making real connections.  I just had my Essential English 11 class take a virtual field trip to the U.S. Holocaust museum.  They were given a personal identification card and traveled through the museum as the person listed on the I.D. card.  They were truly able to relate to the person on the card and their views of the holocaust were vastly affected by their journey.  They completed a range of tasks at the museum and their culminating activity was to create a mobile highlighting key information about the individual listed on their I.D card.  This certainly was far more meaningful than reading about the holocaust in a book. I am wondering if anyone knows of any site that lists optimal virtual field trips in one site?  I often search for them based on particular need or content, but was thinking a collective site of virtual field trips would be ideal.

Tech Integration Update

• October
• 10

A $250 grant will be awarded to a St. Johnsbury Academy faculty member to purchase educational technology and/or technology training. The grant application is due by Wednesday, 10/19 at 6pm. The application form is online at https://bitly.com/stja-fall-grant.

Here are the slides for the presentation I gave at this afternoon’s faculty meeting.

Art Department Portal and GoogleDocs Training

• October
• 10

During last week’s NECAP Schedule morning meetings I worked with the Art Department faculty on some basic portal functions, such as creating calendars and uploading resources. I also helped those Visual Art faculty who were unfamiliar with GoogleDocs explore the possibilities that it offers, and we began to organize the ways in which we can use the students’ accounts and the Art Department’s Archive account to store and share student portfolios, both for department use and for students’ use in preparing art portfolios for college applications.

Zotero

• October
• 10

I’ve decided to focus on zotero as my tutorial. Noodletools is great – but it’s been a struggle to get it to load quickly on campus. Zotero is a Firefox add-on that some of the Capstone teachers have been using. My thought is that if I can get my department up to speed on it, Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors will have some experience with it before Capstone. I’ll definitely try it out with my Freshman as we start our first big essay!

STJLabs Google Voice

• October
• 3

You can sign up for Google Voice with your STJLabs account information!

Google Voice gives you more control over your phone calls. With Google Voice, you get one number for all your phones, cheap international calls, voicemail like email, and more, for free! (US only). You can watch a video about Google Voice right here.

Sign up right here: www.google.com/voice. Tip: When you sign up, put in your classroom phone number as your forwarding number, and then turn off call forwarding if you don’t want to forward any of your Google Voice calls.

Once you get set up, here are some things you can do to get started with Google Voice:

1. Read transcriptions of voicemails. Watch a video »
2. Customize which phones ring. Watch a video »
3. Personalize greetings for different callers. Watch a video »
4. Make cheap international calls. Watch a video »
5. Forward SMS to email. Watch a video »
6. Share voicemails with friends. Watch a video »
7. Block unwanted callers. Watch a video »
8. Screen callers before answering. Watch a video »
9. Access the mobile app on your phone. Watch a video »
10. Conference call with co-workers. Watch a video »

Educational Technology Survey

• September
• 29

Hello everyone,

In an effort to best serve the Academy community, the Academic Technology Team has created an online survey that we are asking all faculty to complete.  We are hoping to use this data to help guide us in some technology decisions and help begin the process of creating a roadmap of where the Academy is heading in regards to technology use. Please take time to complete the survey. Thank you so much!

We know how busy everyone is at this stage of the academic calendar.  We were hoping this online format would be simple and quick, yet provide us with the data we need. The survey shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. Again, thank you!

The survey is online right here: [Link sent out to all Academy email addresses.]

As always, you can read all about Academy academic technology integration on the STJLabs blog located at www.STJLabs.com.

- Karen, Denise, John, Kendra, Josh, Jeff, Kim, Sandra

Fine Arts Department Student Portfolios

• September
• 26

Documenting student artwork and storing it in an organized, retreivable and editable way is a challenge that the Fine Arts department has been struggling with for some time. The digital images that need to be stored, edited and organized with useful file names – and in a resolution high enough to allow for reproduction of the work – come from various sources, but mostly from art department scanners and digital cameras. Sometimes students have images that they have made themselves or that have been made professionally of their work that need to be added to their portfolios. Until recently, it seemed that we would need to purchase a large external hard drive and physically store the files here. Then, with advancing possibilities for purchasing online storage, an online image vault seemed to be the way to go. However, since all students and faculty members all have STJLabs Google Docs accounts, and each account has 1GB of storage (and for a small annual fee more storage can be purchased), it recently dawned on me that we should be able to do all of our storage right there in STJLabs Google Docs. Josh has set up a Fine Arts Department Google Docs Account for which we can purchase 20G of storage for (I think he said) $5 per year, and more as we need it – all at a very reasonable price. Images can be uploaded to that account and shared with a student, who can then access the images for editing, resizing and naming to the specifications of a particular school or competition. With Josh’s help, I’m working out the details of the workflow. I have a number of students coming in to work with me on college application portfolios, so they will be the guinea pigs.

One advantage of this way of storing images is that through file sharing, guidance counselors could have access to students application portfolios and stay up-to-date with students’ progress toward getting portfolios assembled. More complete sharing of information between art faculty and guidance about Fine Arts students’ application process should help to demystify the application process for all involved, and help keep students on top of their deadlines.