Edina Digital Age Learning

Wendy Wolfe from Totino-Grace spoke about integrating Web 2.0 in a K-12 environment. She talked about students wanting to be "entertained", but maybe a better word would be "engaged". "For some reason they want to teach us stuff that any fool can look up in a book." -Calvin Educating the Net Generation - Majority of secondary classes-15 seconds or fewer are devoted to group discussion. 85% of instruction is Teacher centered. Trend- with high stakes testing, instruction is becoming more teacher centered, not less. New Blooms taxonomy -Creating has replaced Evaluation at the top. Wiki's and Blogs allow students to create and to publish. She shared information about the wiki she created for her classes. She saw wikis as a tool for virtually everything she does on the Web. One of the projects had the students creating a video with Animoto . Here is a video that Jen Buckley from South View created using this tool. Comic Generators She then talked about car...

Heather Wells from TIES presented on creating a common vocabulary for digital storytelling. She started by defining digital storytelling as one that incorporates media and visual images. Story Beginning Middle End Digital Story Content, storyline, soundtrack, narration, editing, plot, ... Most important: Visual Literacy References : She used some of the writings of Dr. Anne Bamford Partnership for 21st Century Skills Framework -Part III discusses this. Visual Literacy Toolbox has some good info. Syntax-Examples Light and Shaddow Color Scale Symbolism Balance-Symetrical and Asymetrical Context-Who created it?, In what context is it seen? Intended Audience Elements of Media Arts Image Sound Space-Rule of Thirds Time Motion Sequence Copyright- Use Creative Commons guidelines for images and video. In order to use an image from say, " Flickr ", there are 3 types of licensing- Copyright, Creative Commons-which allows for varied levels of sharing capability, and Public Domain. U...

This session focused on different Virtual 3-D environments that may impact education. Second Life Everything created in Second Life is the property of Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life. MNSCU Island is MNSCU's presence in SL. Sun-Project Wonderland MPK20 Sun's Virtual Workspace Sun is using this for collaborative, business interaction which allows people to interact in a business environment. This mimics the real world more than Second Life does, but you can also include live video interaction combining the real with the virtual. Currently, Wonderland is a bit rough. In fact, Sun still uses Second Life for their virtual conferences. Wonderland is free, open source and Java based. Croquet Julie Sykes, a Spanish instructor at the U of M and Liz Wendlund, developed Croquet, which allows you to pull in open source content for 3-D simulation. The simulations are task based, meaning they are monitored and assessed as you move through the simulation. The next step is to have st...

Dr. Michael Wesch was the keynote speaker at the e-Learning Summit at Normandale Community College. Dr. Wesch produced the "The Machine is Us/ing us" video with his cheap little laptop in the basement of his house in Kansas. He discussed the cultural revolution occuring, that is more than the technology. He has spent a great deal of time in New Guinea to study people in one of the last isolated cultures in the world. The worst form of culture shock is the loss of self and inability to define yourself. Identities in the New Guinea culture used to be defined by their relationships. It shaped their identity. In the last 8 years they have developed a language, and they have torn down their houses, which used to face the doors toward people they related to. Now they have a census and have reorganized their homes and have defined names. "We shape our tools and thearafter our tools shape us."- Marshall McLuhan The video he created was in response to his work in New Guinea...

On Saturday at the Scratch workshop I attended at TIES , I convinced Troy Cherry, the presenter, to give Twitter a try. This morning, he created an account and started following me. Later he "tweeted", "I'm a huge fan of del.icio.us . I may become a bigger fan of Diigo ." Having no clue what Diigo was, I went to check it out. Here is what I found: Wow! It's like Del.icio.us on Steroids! As we look at teaching kids about research and reading online, here is a tool that can pull it together, with the added bonus of collaboration with others researching the same thing! Here's the thing... If I hadn't talked to Troy about Twitter , I may have found Diigo somewhere else, but perhaps not. Sometimes Twitter is a time sucking machine sorting through people sharing information about their golf game and other matters. But quite often, a nugget like Diigo comes along that makes it worth following people. It's my own Personal Learning Network that allows m...

Scratch is a programing language developed by MIT to allow students as young as 8 to create interactive stories, animations, games, music and art. You can download the program for free from the Scratch Site, and there are versions for Windows and Mac. Using Scratch, students can learn: Coordinate Graphing Problem Solving Logical/Sequential process Artistic/Creative Development Game Design: Roles, Rules, Success Visual Design, not language intensive-Great for Special Ed or ELL students! Following directions Cause and Effect The programming utilizes blocks similar to the Lego Mindstorms software used in Lego League . Here's a simple example that I made by modifying a " Scratch Card ". Scratch Cards are a great place to start learning how to use the program. They contain simple code scripts that you can duplicate in Scratch to get your "sprite" or character to change in different ways. Once you've created your animation in Scratch, you upload the file to you...