What I did at school today: The last day of May, 2013

I was helping a teacher stitch together about 30 videos from an iPad into one long file. As many of you know, videos recorded on an iPad are in .mov format. This produces high quality video, but also HUGE sized files. Even with her relatively short videos, we're talking about 1,000s of MBs. At first, I converted them to .avi format, attempting to maintain quality and reduce file size.  They were still too big for our virtual environment to handle. Then, I converted them to .wmv format. This reduced them into more manageable sizes, but I was concerned about the degradation of the video. In the end, I think the quality was still decent enough, with clear video and clean audio. 

One hiccup was that she recorded most of the videos in portrait mode, so when I tried to import them into video editing software, they were sideways. I used MoviePlus, which allowed me to rotate the videos. Windows MovieMaker does this too, but in both programs, the rotated videos end up out of proportion. MoviePlus is more versatile, and I was able to use the transform feature to reshape the videos back to their original dimensions. This is an example of how sometimes a task you expect to take 10 minutes, stretches out much longer. 

Have nice weekend. 

PS It took me an extra 40 minutes to get home.  This is time that would have been better spent working later at school or spending at home with my family.  Grrrrrrrrrr.

What I did at school today: 5/30/13

I was slated to proctor part 2 of the fifth grade math SOL test today, but I requested -- and received -- a reprieve.  With our second annual film festival right around the corner, my plate is filling up quickly.  If you've been reading my postings, you know that I'm helping many teachers with their video projects.  I'm pleased to say, however, that the majority are working with little or no assistance from me.  This is a vast improvement over last year.

I pulled out my notes from last year.  I had promised myself to delegate more of the responsibilities to others.  I wish I had focused on the tasks to be done earlier because then I could have delegated better.  Here is what I'm working on:

• Getting invitations to teachers to send home.
• Getting admission tickets ready to send home.
• Getting all the decorations and then decorating.
• Buying popcorn, candy, and drinks.
• Creating the written program.
• Purchasing various assorted items (e.g. mini "Oscars")
• Uploading all the videos to YouTube and then creating Safeshare.tv links.
• Setting up a web page with links to all the videos.
• Assign people to take tickets, distribute popcorn and soda, and sell candy.
• Go over the agenda for both the matinee and the evening festivals.
• Make room assignments.
• Write welcome remarks and recognitions
• Create my own video.
• Update last minute teacher notes from last year.
• Contact custodians about clean up.

And, I'm sure I'm forgetting something.  Last year we had a phenomenal turnout.  We're hoping for more of the same this year.

What I did at school today: 5/29/13

The highlight of my day was editing a video for next week's film festival.  A fourth grade teacher had her class perform "You've Got to Have Art", a light-hearted reminder of the importance of arts education.  To the tune of "You've Got to Have Heart" from Damn Yankees, the students, dressed in matching baseball uniforms, sang, and danced their . . . hearts out.

I recorded their performance five times.  For the first two tapings, I placed the camera far enough back to capture the entire stage.  The others were close up from the left, center, and right.  I used the software Movie Plus and placed the better of the first two recordings on the video/audio track.  Then I cut pieces of the other videos, muted the audio, and inserted them on the overlay track.  The finished video alternated wide shots and close shots, but kept the original audio uncut.  We're considering rerecording the singing with just audio and replacing the audio from the video.  Anyway, it's late, and there's more work to be done, but I'm pretty proud of it so far.  Editing video is one of my favorite things to do, especially when it's challenging and involves music.

What I did at school today: 5/28/13

Prezi is a presentation application that has a nice WOW factor.  Although I've been using it for awhile, there are two factors that have made a difference for me.  First and foremost, I taught it in one our YCSD webinars, we call Tech Tuesday.  I'm not sure there is a better way to learn something than to teach it.  The second is that the people at Prezi have been working continually to make it more user-friendly and add new features.  Anyway, I spent part of my day working on a couple of presentations.

I also worked on a teacher's video in iMovie on the iPad.  I was trying to add music and became stumped.  Sometimes when I inserted music, it was added as "background" music and played throughout the video, repeating itself until the video ended.  (You can turn off this looping feature under PROJECT SETTINGS.) Other times, it just got added as an audio clip, was placed on a separate audio track, was movable, and only played once.  I just couldn't figure out why different audio files behaved differently.  So, I went to my old friend, Google, and started searching.  I discovered that clips less than one minute are added on the audio track, while those more than a minute are added as background music.  (I'm not sure what happens if it's exactly one minute.)

I also came up with a workaround for when you don't want a longer piece of audio to be added as background music.  I opened the file in Audacity and split it into smaller chunks, each less than one minute.  Then I added these chunks one after the other into my iMovie and they didn't get added as background music.  Now, instead of just reading this, go and try it.  That should get you further up the pyramid.

What I did at school today: 5/23/13

One of the things I dealt with today was how to make a mass purchase of a paid app for my school's 31 iPads. With Apple's volume purchasing program, if you are buying 10 or more qualifying apps, they are half price.  This is a good deal, ensures that I purchase the right number legally, and makes loading them easy. The downside is I can't do this without the assistance of someone in central office. 

If I made the purchase myself, it would not only be full price (not a big issue at $1.99), but I could only legally load it on six devices. I would have to purchase a total of six copies, allowing me a maximum of 36 loads. As far as I know, the only other way to purchase 5 additional apps would be to make each purchase under a different account. That's not happening. I'll tell you, in my opinion Apple makes managing large numbers of apps complicated for an individual user. 

After having a conversation with someone at the SBO, I now understand that the afore mentioned one app/six devices is not pertinent to school iPads. It's fine with personal devices, but at school it's one app/one device. 

I know there must be a faster, more efficient way to get this app on all the iPads. I had to upload a spreadsheet with the URL and redemption code to Drobox, access it through Cloud On, and copy and paste the URL to Safari. However, in order for each one to work, I had to remove all the restrictions and reset them when I was done.   I got seven completed. That's SEVEN, not 17 or 77!

What I did at school today: 5/23/13

Today was our 7th day of SOL testing.  It was the first time I had to be assigned to proctor.  Two of our para educators were sick, and at this small school there aren't many others to fill in.  Since I can't discuss the test, this might be a good time to write about "Geek of the Week."

One of the main responsibilities of an ETF is to provide training and staff development for teachers.  This can take many forms.  Sometimes we have time set aside on teacher work days or at faculty meetings where we can present on a new piece of software or demonstrate how to use a resource like Glogster or an app like iMovie.  I try to offer other trainings before school, during planning times, and after school.  These are optional and tend to be very hit and miss.  To provide additional professional development information I began sending out a weekly "Geek of the Week" email each Wednesday.  In each one, I share a resource, describe it, offer suggestions for its use, and specify its location (website, app, on a network drive, etc.).  It's difficult to tell how often a tip gets explored and/or used, but it is worth the effort if even a single person learns something new each week.

Below are a few examples:

• Screen Chomp
• Poplet
• Prezi
• Wonderopolis
• Voice Thread
• Pixton
• Skype
• Edline
• Pixie
• Twitter
• Kidblog
• ePal
• Diigo
• Safeshare.tv
• Copyright friendly music
• Scanning on the copier

What I did at school today: 5/21/13

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of reflecting on a lesson and modifying it to make it more effective.  I'm happy to report that I retaught my second grade probability lesson using an app on the iPads rather than the SMART Notebook software, and it was a success.  The students were more engaged and were able to get a better grasp on the concepts we were covering. 

There were many more opportunities for on the spot assessment than in the original lesson.  For example, in one activity the app was set up with the following numbers on the side of a virtual die: 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4.  They were given a paper to record their results.  First, they completed the prediction section, guessing -- out of 20 rolls -- how many times they it would land on a 1, a 2, etc.  Then, they would actually do the rolling, record their results, and compare their predictions with the actual outcomes.  (They did this in pairs.)  I noticed a handful of students who had predicted they would roll a 5 or a 6 some number of times.  This gave the classroom teacher and me opportunities to clarify and reinforce the concept of "impossible".  In this particular activity, it was more likely they would roll a 1, but it was impossible to roll a 5 or 6.

I came up with a follow-up activity on the spot to further reinforce these concepts.  One student in each pair was to set up the six sides of the dice without the other one seeing it (e.g. 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5).  Then, his partner was to roll the virtual die 20 times and try to guess what numbers were on the sides.  I think this was the favorite activity of many of the students because it put them in the role of teacher.

Today was one of my busiest days and there's much more I could share, but I promised myself to keep it short and simple.  Until tomorrow!

What I did at school today: 5/20/13

Not everything goes the way you plan. With teaching, the key isn't expecting every lesson to be a complete success. It's being able to reflect on what went well . . . and, well what went awry. Then, and most importantly, it's about making adjustments. Often, as an ETF, I teach the same lesson multiple times. Last week I taught a second grade lesson on probability that went well enough, but I felt that the students needed to be more hands on to be more engaged. 

Today, I worked on modifying that lesson. I had used the Notebook software for the SMART board but without a board. The tools had (what I thought was) a "wow" factor, and that did draw the students in.  I tried to make it relatively interactive by passing around a wireless mouse, but with only one student clicking at a time, the thrill didn't last long.

Tomorrow, I am teaching the lesson again.  Instead of using the SMART Notebook software, I'm using an app I found for the iPad.  I have enough devices to pair the students up.  They essentially will do the same a activities they did last week, but this time they will have much more control over the flipping of the virtual coins, the rolling of the virtual dice, and the spinning of the virtual spinners.  Here's hoping that the second time's the charm.

What I did at School Today: 5/16/13

Yesterday I worked with a couple of kindergarten teachers on an iMovie project.  The kids had written their own version of a Pete the Cat book.  We scanned their pages, imported the images into iMovie, and added audio of them reading their text.

One issue we discovered was that vertical pictures do not play well with iMovie.  The project by the teacher who had her kids do horizontal pictures worked out fine, but the other one wouldn't allow us to show the full vertical picture on the iMovie's horizontal screen. The fix was to import the vertical pictures into a PowerPoint and saving them as JPGs.  This produced horizontal pictures with wide borders around the original vertical image.

The one thing we couldn't do on iMovie on the iPad is use green screen technology.  We would have liked to have superimposed the students' pictures on their pages. My "work-around" is to go back to the PowerPoint, insert a small picture of each student on his or her page, and resave the slides as JPGs.  Obviously this wouldn't work if we were using video, but it serves the purpose.  Sometimes you just have to think outside the box.

What I did at school Yesterday: 5/15/13

Once again I'm a day late and a dollar short.  I spent a fair amount of time working on video projects for our Jun film festival.  That was all well and good, but here's what I want to talk about today: my ride home.

My dad used to commute for western Long Island to Jersey City every day.  His morning commute was less than an hour, but his ride home could be more than two.  I know this is not unique, but I never wanted to spend that much of my day on the road.  It takes me about a half hour to get to each of my schools in the morning and a little longer to get home.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have had traffic issues in the morning.  Driving home is another story.  I bought a GPS that provides traffic information.  I get alerts on my phone.  I listen to the traffic radio station.  Most of the time I know if there is an accident or some other event that might significantly lengthen my ride home.  I've had my fair share of smug moments driving the back roads and watching the cars crawl on the highway just a few hundred feet away.

Yesterday was not one of those days.  Somehow I missed the signs and spent a good 45 minutes or more, bumper to bumper, stop and go.  My 30 minute trip took almost an hour and a half.  When this happens there's not much you can do.  Pop in a CD and relax because fighting it is like punching a mirror.  You may break the glass but you'll just end up with a bloody fist.

But still . . .

What I did at school today: 5/14/13

When I came to York County in August of 2009, I was disappointed to learn that there was not much support for purchasing interactive whiteboards.  At the time, they were all the rage in the educational technology world, and it seemed like my new employers were letting this trend pass them by.

After some consideration, I came to agree with their reasoning that these boards just did not offer enough bank for its sizable buck.  It wasn't long after that the era of personal mobile devices came along, and there's no arguing that we are way ahead of the curve when it comes to BYOT.

Having said that, one of my schools has a single SMARTboard located in a preschool classroom.  Because we own that board, we all have access to the SMART notebook software.  Today, for the first time in almost four years, I taught a lesson using the tools in SMART notebook.  I planned a lesson for all the second grade classes on probability.  Using the coins, spinners, and dice tools, we tallied the outcomes of various configurations of these tools.  We started with equally likely (heads or tails), more likely/less likely/unlikely (spinners divided differently), and certain/uncertain.  Overall, I was pleased with the lesson, but before I teach it again, I'd like to tweak it to make it a little more interactive.  To make up for the fact that we did not have a SMARTboard, I passed around the wireless mouse.  I wonder if there's an app that will communicate with my SMART software so that the students can be more involved.

What I did in school today: 5/13/13

A belated Happy Mothers Day to all the moms and moms-to-be out there.  I'm fortunate to still have my mom around, and at 87, she is still relatively healthy and independent.  (My father just turned 90 last month!)  My wife and I spent the day with our son at Colonial Williamsburg, where he works.  Our other son lives out of town, but we got to see him earlier in the week.

So, today was the first day of SOL testing.  We had no incidents that involved computer malfunctions or user error that led to computer malfunctions.  Testing was the main focus of the day, so there is nothing particularly interesting to share.  I had one lesson planned for today, but I rescheduled it for tomorrow in anticipation of being needed to solve computer issues, which as it turns out was not necessary.  Actually, there was one small issue (that happened twice).  On the online version of these tests, occasionally the screen will be completely gray.  The solution is to move the mouse around, which erases parts of the gray, and when the PREVIOUS button reappears, go back and then return to that question.  The gray will be gone.  I guess that's not exactly heavy lifting, but it's what I did in school today.

What I did in school last Thursday

I didn't get a chance to post at the end of last week, so here's my highlight from last Thursday.  As I have posted previously, in March I co-presented an optional, evening webinar for interested county teachers ("Tech Tuesday") on Skype in the Classroom.  While presenting the webinar, I posted a lesson idea.  It received a great deal of interest, and I decided to use it for my formal observation.  Here is part of a post from last week.

The lesson I am planning is one I created for Skype in the Classroom.  It's called "Animals in Our World and Yours".  In this lesson, two classes complete a Venn diagram showing the differences and similarities of the animal wildlife in their regions.  We'll be Skyping with a 1st/2nd grade combined class in Burlington, ON.  The last time I did this lesson it was with a class in Kentucky, and we found our animal life not very different.  I'm hoping that the nearly 600 miles (mostly north, a little west) that separate Williamsburg, VA and Burlington will result in a more interesting Venn diagram.

The lesson:
Show PowerPoint of animal pictures.  Have students silently signal whether each animal is found in VA or not.

• Explain the purpose of the Skype call.
• Show students a map on Google Maps (or Earth) and route the trip from Williamsburg to Burlington.
• Show students Prezi of Venn diagram and explain how it will be completed.
• Brainstorm list of animals that live in VA.  Have master list at hand and use internet search tools to check accuracy.
• Place or receive Skype call.
• Collaboratively complete Venn diagram, taking turns.
• Closure: TBA.

I taught the lesson on Thursday, and it went really well.  The teacher on the other end did an excellent job of elaborating, explaining, and elevating (exceptional alliteration) the experience.  Clearly, she is comfortable with Skype and technology in general.  Although Burlington, ON is almost 600 miles north of us, we found that there was not a tremendous difference in our animal life.  I actually thought discovering that was a valuable outcome of the lesson.

What I did in school today: May 8, 2013

This year, as a member of the YCSD Discovery Education (DE) cohort, I received my very own iPad.  Teachers who are part of this cohort were required to complete student projects, creating videos that contained both original video and  and content from the DE website.  Even though I am not a teacher, per se, I had an idea for a project, but of course I did not have a class of my own (as opposed to having no class).

In a classic win-win situation, I struck a deal with a teacher who was planning to go on maternity leave.  She needed to produce a video with her class for our annual film festival and I had an idea but needed a class.  We decided that after she left -- which she has -- I would work with her class to help them make their video.  Their project would essentially be my DE project.

Each group (3-4 students) is writing, recording, and editing a short newscast as if it took place during an event in Virginia history.  For example, one group is reporting on the high death rate at colonial Jamestown while another is reporting on the effect of Martin Luther King's march on Washington on civil rights in America.  The groups are formed, the topics are chosen, and the DE video content has been downloaded.  Today was all about editing the video segments so that just the content we want was retained and the length is between 45-90 seconds.  Done!  Next . . . work on the storyboards and scripts.

What I did in school today: 5/7/13

Today was the first crunch day for my eToy project.  (See old post to learn more about eToy or read below*.)  At the close of school yesterday, bidding ended for week 1.  Originally, weeks were going to run from Monday to Friday, but then I realized I'd be spending my weekends dealing with this.  Instead a bidding week begins on Wednesday, ends on Monday, and I give myself Tuesday to catch up.  Luckily, today I was able to catch up quickly, so bidding has resumed.

• First, I had to hide the link to the eToy store so that no one tried bidding while I was working on it.
• Then, I had to check all my Google Drive links to see who the high bidders were.  Also, I had to make sure that bidding was done properly (e.g. bid must be higher than the previous bid, no bidding on two items at the same time, no bidding against yourself).
• Next, I had to record who the high bidders were, their teachers' names, what toys they were buying, the amounts of their bids, and from whose class the toys came from.
• I had to remove the old toys from the website and replace them with new ones.
• For each Google form I had to duplicate each worksheet, rename it (to week 1), go back to the main worksheet, delete all the previous bids, change the names of the toys (easier than creating 30 more forms), and then edit the names of the forms.  It sounds like a lot of work, but once you get rolling, it's not so bad.
• Finally, I had to unhide the eToy link.

*I thought that it were me, I probably wouldnt go to the link, so here's a description of eToy from the earlier post.

My colleague, June Jones, turned me on to this idea several years ago.  Modeled after eBay, eToy is a project/website where students can earn money and bid on gently used toys.  Originally, she used a database created by someone else.  I wanted to do my own thing, so I created forms in Google Docs (now Google Drive) for the students to make bids.  These forms are connected to a spreadsheet.  Students first check the online spreadsheet to see what the current high bid is for any given toy and then go to the form to make a bid. 

What I did in school YESTERDAY: 5/6/13

Yesterday was another day that I mostly spent prepping a room for SOL testing.  At WMES, I had a parent and one of the IT guys help move computers, and to some extent, set them up.  The rest was up to me.  I had the foresight to wear jeans and a t-shirt, as I knew I'd be crawling around the floor.  I did have several students ask me where my tie was.

The highlight of my day was probably scheduling and planning a lesson I will be teaching on Thursday.  My AP discovered neither she nor the principal had observed me this year, so I had to find a teacher willing to allow me to work with her and her class.  I found a second grade teacher who I have worked with many, many times before. 

The lesson I am planning is one I created for Skype in the Classroom.  It's called "Animals in Our World and Yours".  In this lesson, two classes complete a Venn diagram showing the differences and similarities of the animal wildlife in their regions.  We'll be Skyping with a 1st/2nd grade combined class in Burlington, ON.  The last time I did this lesson it was with a class in Kentucky, and we found our animal life not very different.  I'm hoping that the nearly 600 miles (mostly north, a little west) that separate Williamsburg, VA and Burlington will result in a more interesting Venn diagram.

The lesson:

• Show PowerPoint of animal pictures.  Have students silently signal whether each animal is found in VA or not.
• Explain the purpose of the Skype call.
• Show students a map on Google Maps (or Earth) and route the trip from Williamsburg to Burlington.
• Show students Prezi of Venn diagram and explain how it will be completed.
• Brainstorm list of animals that live in VA.  Have master list at hand and use internet search tools to check accuracy.
• Place or receive Skype call.
• Collaboratively complete Venn diagram, taking turns.
• Closure: TBA.

What I did in school YESTERDAY 5/3/13

I could write about how today was one of those days where I started at one school and ended at the other.  I could write about how today was dedicated to the physical task of breaking down my laptop labs and preparing them for testing.  I could write about the differences between what this looks like at each school.  I could, but I won't.

Instead, I'll write about how I helped a kindergarten teacher with her students' mystery stories.  Mrs. M. guides her students in small groups to write mystery stories.  She's been doing this for years.  Although I'm not privvy to the actual writing process, the final products are impressive.  This year there was "The President Goes Bowling" and "The Pool Mystery", among others.  In the past, I have videotaped each student reading his or her page in front of a green screen.  The finished video shows the students reading with their pages looming large behind them.  I suggested we try this with iMovie on the iPad this year.  I knew we wouldn't be able to include video of the children reading, but I love the one-stop-shopping aspect of iMovie, and frankly, when it comes to kinders, it's a whole lot easier dealing with just audio. 

Now that we can scan on the copier, it was a breeze to digitalize the students' written (and illustrated) pages.  I learned in an earlier project that the full page view of a scanned 9x12 page does not work on iMovie.  It requires starting on one part of the page and panning to another.  My workaround was to put the images into a PowerPoint, reducing the dimensions enough to display a sizable white border around them.  Then, I saved the PP slides as JPGs and used those image files in the movie.  At that point, all I had to do was pull each child to read over the still picture of their page.  It was an incredible timesaver.  When they were finished, I saved the movies to the camera roll, copied them to my PC, compressed them, and uploaded them to my YouTube channel.  A 2-3 day project took about an hour.

What I did in school yesterday: 5/2/13

Happy Birthday to my friend and colleague, Mrs. Lubrano.  And Happy Birthday to my longtime friend and colleague, Mrs. Shinske.

Yesterday marked the beginning of testing season.  At the end of the day, I made the short drive from WMES to MES to prepare for what is coming over the next 4 to 5 weeks.  A group of high school students will be visiting this morning to help move classroom student computers to the lab and library.  My room will be transformed from a wireless laptop lab to a hard-wired desktop lab.  I'm not sure this was the highlight of my day yesterday, but as soon as the last class at MES left the lab, I unplugged all the laptops and returned them to the cart for mobile use.  Then, I boxed up all the mice, headphones, and power cords.  This morning, I'll do a little cleaning and supervise the transformation of my work space.  It's amazing how much manpower goes into this endeavor, which takes place at most of the schools in my county.  And, it goes without saying that leaving classrooms without student computers for about 10% of the school year is unfortunate, to say the least.

What I did in school today: 5/1/13

It's amazing that it's May already.  In many states, this means that school will be over before the end of the month.  In Virginia, most schools cannot open until after Labor Day, so we don't close our doors until sometime in June.  Our last student day is June 13 this year, which is somewhat early.  Rumor has it that there are 30 school days.  I haven't counted, but I'll take it on faith that the day-counters are accurate.  Besides, my last day isn't until June 20th.

I'm juggling several video projects, so that's the theme for today.  I began with an old project that never got finished.  I worked with a first grade class on a retelling project.  We read and reread and rereread and rerereread The Mitten by Jan Brett.  After several retelling/revising/editing sessions, I "chunked" the writing so that there would be enough pages for each student.  The students illustrated their page, and I scanned their illustrations.  Next, we videotaped each student reading his page in front of a green screen.  The finished product will show each page with a student superimposed in the corner, reading it.  Today I videotaped two students who were absent before, and now I'm editing the project.  I hope to have it finished and shared by the end of today.  I'll describe the other videos at another time.  These will be entries for our annual film festival, so I know I'll be posting about that soon.