Lunar Eclipse

So I've been pumped for a week.  I heard about the lunar eclipse last week, and have been hardcore, nerd-style pumped to watch it unfold the whole way I was going to be driving into work this morning.  Plenty of research later, and I had my camera settings ready to get some cool pictures of it along the way.  I shared my nerdiness with my daughter all week, and she was equally pumped.
I headed outside with the camera last night to play with the camera settings a bit more and see how it would go, and I got some pretty cool pictures of the full moon rising as a bonus.
So this morning we woke up stupid early to get on the road to school so that we had enough time to find a dark spot, stop, set up the tripod, and snap a few long exposures.  Grace was giving me updates the whole way as we were driving East and I couldn't see it.  She was pretty awestruck by the whole thing, and that was as awesome to see as the eclipse itself.  The whole way to school she was chewing my ear off about everything she knows about the sun and moon from school.  Makes a teacher proud to hear that stuff and see her curiosity show through.
But anyway, we made a few stops and snapped off a few of the pictures you see below.  It was an awesome morning.  If you didn't get to see it, I hear there are two more eclipses next year, so stay tuned, and get your butt out of bed.  It's awesome to watch.

#20Time is Rolling

This year's 20% Time Projects are starting to roll in my first hour class.  Students have done some brainstorming and research and made presentations to the class about their project details such as their goal/accomplishment they wish to achieve and their plan to use class time on FLEX days to make that happen.  We are in the process of getting our blog pages set up, and once they are all set and ready to go, I will share those out to an
yone interested.
For my own students reading this, I've been in contact with Mr. Provenzano (the teacher whose student blogs you checked out earlier in the year) and we'll share our students blog links with each other so that you can follow along with their progress as well as having other students following along with what you're doing.  This should be a great year of big things happening in first hour.
For my own 20% Time project, I'll be working alongside my students on a project of my own.  I had already planned on pursuing a Google Teacher Certification this year.  A fantastic opportunity has come up from our ESD to offer support for the first portion of this journey with help in taking Google's courses and passing the exams to become a Google Educator.  Once this step is complete, my time will be focused on implementation and experimenting with more of Google's Apps and preparing an application for one of the yet to be announced Google Teacher Academy sessions next year.
Stay tuned here for reflections on my students' work as well as progress updates on my own 20% Time Project.

Listen to the Mustn'ts Child

I can't help but think that Shel Silverstein would be rolling over in his grave right now if he knew that this was the response I just got from his lawyers.  Or maybe it's that I'm way off base and over-romanticizing the author who wrote my entire childhood's reading list.  Either way, I like to think of Shel Silverstein as the type of man that would embrace creativity and promote a child's pride in it.

Awhile back my daughter's Kindergarten teacher had an awesome idea to have parents and grandparents record themselves reading and create a sort of archive to use in her class.  My daughter and I took this idea and ran with it.  We created a beautiful video of The Giving Tree.  I really wish I could share that with you, but... see below.  We photocopied pictures from the text, and I recorded video of my daughter coloring each of the pictures in order as I narrated with the text of the book.  We threw in some slow, sad (Creative Commons licensed) background music and added the text of the book as captions so students could read along.  It really is a great video.  She took great pride in her coloring, and was so excited about our final product.  I shared this video file with my daughter's teacher to use in her classroom, and my daughter came home from school that day glowing because they got to watch "her movie" in class.

In addition to this teacher, I shared the video with my parents and another teacher friend of mine.  Everyone said exactly what was in the back of my mind, "You should put that on YouTube!"  But, the technology teacher in my knew that there were copyright issues with it, so I didn't.  I thought for awhile, and then shot an email off to the copyright owner of The Giving Tree (along with access to the actual video file) to ask for permission.  "I'll use this as a great example in my class," I thought.  "There's no way anyone involved with the Great Shel Silverstein would stifle the creativity of a kindergartner and her daddy, right?  I'll just wait until they say yes."

Here is what came into my inbox today:

Talk about disappointment.  I completely understand, however, that they own this copyright, and (for the time being ;-) I'll respect that.  But for the life of me, I can't understand why someone would reject the request to post this video to YouTube.  My channel isn't monetized.  I don't get more than ten views per video because only people in my family think to watch anything of mine.  Watching my video isn't going to replace buying the book for anyone who views it.  There is absolutely no downside to them if my video was published.  The only thing that would have happened would have been instilling pride in a kindergarten girl to have something she worked on and created "published" on YouTube.

So, Shel, should I listen to the mustnt's, the don'ts, and the shouldn'ts?  You told me as a child that "Anything can happen, child.  Anything can be."  Apparently you didn't plan on dealing with your own legal team.

P.S. - To SBG Law, 

Thanks for giving me permission to publish this letter in the footer of your response email.  You're swell.  Also, I realize that I didn't correctly use parenthetical citations in my text above when quoting one of my other favorite Shel Silverstein books.  Just to help me stay out of any more trouble with you, here's the A.P.A. citation:

Silverstein, S. (1974). Where the sidewalk ends: the poems & drawings of Shel Silverstein.. New York: Harper and Row.

Black Friday Omelet? To be continued... (?)

So it occurred to me this evening, being a week out from Thanksgiving, that this may be a year without my favorite new tradition... the (yet un-trademarked) "Black Friday Omelet."  I'll get back to that, because it got me thinking about also missing out on some old traditions as well.
First of all, in the bigger picture, I realized that this year's Thanksgiving is the first of many to break tradition.  My family has always gotten together as one big group, at my parents' house, for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We eat too much, drink too much, talk too loud, enjoy being together, etc., and we have always done it all together and in the same place.  Now, with the three sons all scattered around the Midwest with our own families and children, the family is increasingly hard to get all together.  Not to say we won't all be together, but, in summary, it's less "The Family Stone" than it has been in the past.
But, this isn't a sob story about that; change is good, and with my Midwestern roots sunk deep into the family tree soil, I know that we'll always find the time to get together.  This is about an omelet.
A number of years ago, on a whim, I woke up after a food coma induced Thanksgiving sleep and threw every leftover I could find into an omelet.  It was AMAZING.  Don't judge me; just try it.  If you've never had an omelet with green bean casserole in the middle, you don't know what you're missing.
Over the past few years I've been perfecting the breakfast straight from heaven.  Of course the omelet must contain green bean casserole.  You have to have cheesy potato casserole, and it absolutely has to be a good recipe made with about 3 lb. of butter, sour cream, and corn flakes on top.  Stuffing, of course, but it's a bonus if it's homemade and includes sausage.  A few years ago my Dad started having the turkey smoked - definite bonus points in omelet land.  Just a touch of gravy to finish it off and a side of sweet potatoes, and you're looking at the finest breakfast ever put on a plate.  The trick is to not overload your omelet, and this is can be difficult given the deliciousness of the stuff you're working with, but trust me, three eggs can only wrap around so much food.
This year, like I said, the whole family isn't getting together for the big, traditional dinner.  We're getting together afterward to spend time together elsewhere, and this has me worried.  You see, I'll be the only one (with my kids) eating Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house.  But, they are on a no-carb, anti-cancer, Paleo-style diet.  And, without the whole crowd to cook for, I'm in serious jeopardy of missing out on some key ingredients to this heavenly breakfast that comes but once a year.  I've got one week to figure out my plan for avoiding missing the Black Friday Omelet.
I'm writing this, however, to spread the word.  If I miss out on my favorite meal of the year, the least I can do is share my knowledge with others in hopes that the Black Friday Omelet brings you as much happiness as it has me.  I may just miss my omelet this Friday, but to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln from 150 years ago, "Now we are engaged in a great food war, testing whether this omelet, or any omelet so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."  I trust in you to make it endure.
Do yourself a favor, and give yourself the gift of a Black Friday Omelet to kick off the holiday season of gluttony the right way.

#FlipClass Experiment Series - Why Flip?

One of the questions I get a lot is, "Why would you want to flip your class?"  I have a few reasons, from my personal experience, for wanting to flip my classroom, and of course I'll share them with you.
After moving toward this method of teaching last year I found that by saving as much time as possible during class for actual work I got to do way more quality teaching than I ever did in the past.  Students were engaged and busy during class, and with me not wasting time preaching from the front of the room to a disinterested audience, I got to spend my time teaching students what they needed and wanted to know through a series of teachable moments with interested students.  I love teachable moments, and I have found that the more time you have in class for one-on-one help, the more teachable moments you seem to have.
Next, students gain a lot of understanding through the video instruction.  As opposed to a classroom lecture, students have the ability to pause me while taking notes and rewind to hear something again.  In addition to this, they like the fact that they are watching a video instead of sitting still and shutting up.  They've had enough of that, and my videos are different and therefore "cool."
I also go back to my college days and think of the lovely "Dale's Cone of Experience" and consider the implications of (a) using videos to present lecture content, (b) using class time for more active work, and (c) incorporating collaborative, project-based activities in class.  I'm moving my class further down the cone by not having them "Read Section 2.4" or sit and listen to me preach.

Lastly, from a more practical and less theoretical viewpoint, I am teaching my students much more than just the Algebra I content expectations.  They are picking up an invaluable life lesson in their taking ownership of their own education.  They are learning a lot about knowing what they do and don't know as well as options they have to do something about it.  They are learning, through the use of Khan Academy, that education is valuable and becoming increasingly more available and free for those who thirst for knowledge.  And, they are learning to learn through the use of some 21st century tools that are becoming the norm in higher education.

I feel like I could ramble forever on this topic, and it is one that I love, but these are my big reasons for flipping my class.  Hopefully my enthusiasm continues to rub off on my students as the year progresses out of the first marking period.

Image By Jeffrey Anderson [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

#FlipClass Experiment Series - Flip What?

As I've been writing a few posts about flipping my Algebra I class, it occurred to me that some in my audience might be a little lost on what a flipped classroom actually is, so let's break this down.  In a flipped class, students use classroom time to complete what used to be homework and time outside of class to receive instruction in the form of what used to be a classroom lecture.  The passive stuff, like lectures, are completed independently at home while classroom time is devoted to more active tasks like project-based learning, practice assignments, group work, etc.
My classroom operates in the following format:

• Lectures are delivered in the form of streaming videos that I link to from a couple of sources.  I use a mix of videos from Khan Academy and my own screencast recordings explaining different concepts.  Students are expected to view these videos either at home or outside of our regular meeting times, and they are responsible for the content presented in much the way students are responsible for reading material from a text.
• We start each Quarter with all assignments for the Quarter up front (see image below), and students can work through the material and assignments at their pace (with deadlines).  Assignments vary from completion of Khan Academy modules to paper and pencil assignments to collaborative problem solving activities to larger scale, long-term projects to Chapter Tests.

• Class time is used predominantly for working through assignments while leaving loads of time for one-on-one help where students get stuck.  On any given day in my classroom, I may have students working on various Khan Academy Modules with a few taking their Chapter Test while another group is working on a project together in the corner.  It can seem chaotic at times, but you can feel the learning happening.

#FlipClass Experiment Series - Access

Since this whole idea of flipping a classroom is fairly new in education, of course there are going to be plenty of issues and growing pains that come up along the way.  The biggest concern I have had raised in my work in flipping my class is access.  I have had questions raised from everyone from administrators to parents to students to other teachers looking to flip their classrooms, and every single group has raised the issue of access.  For some school districts this won't be as much of a concern, but teaching in a rural area means I have to be aware of and sensitive to the fact that not everyone has access to a high speed internet connection when they leave the school building.  I have found the following in my experience:

• The issue of access to high speed internet is not as prevalent as some might make it out to be.  I teach in a district that is designated as a low-income district, and I thought this was going to be a huge hurdle, but it wasn't.  While I do have some students without internet at home, there are not as many as I thought there would be.  High-speed internet is becoming the norm, even in rural areas.  You'll still need to account for this, but lack of access is definitely becoming the exception, not the rule.
• Some students without internet access still have a computer in the home.  I have a few students for whom I download classroom videos to a flash drive and send the videos home that way.  If students have a computer, just no internet... no problem.  They can still receive the content.
• Keeping the computer lab open at school as much as possible is mandatory.  I arrive at least 30 minutes before the school day kicks off each day and usually around an hour after school to allow students to have time with internet access if they need it.
• Surprisingly, a growing number of students with no high speed internet at home have access to mobile devices that will work over a wi-fi network.  Our school is working on an open wi-fi network to allow students to bring their own devices, and many students will hit up the McDonald's with their smartphone to get the access that they need.

Requiring access to a high speed internet connection can be a tricky move, and if not done with tact, can definitely ruffle some feathers.  If you're thinking about flipping your class, make sure you plan ahead and are prepared for this issue to come up... because it will.