The Field Guide

Resource of the Month: Metamorphosis

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Sam) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:45:00 -0500

Each month we will share a resource that you can use in your classroom. It may be a brand new team building activity we have developed, or a classroom learning activity; really whatever we come up with to share with you. This month we've created a worksheet designed to help you introduce or review the concept of metamorphosis. It includes a spiritual application page that uses metamorphosis as an spring board to discuss God's perspective on change and growth. The worksheet can be downloaded right here.

This resource helps meet the following state mandated academic standards:

OK PASS: Life Science Grade 2 2:1, 2:2; Grade 4 3.2
AR Cirriculum Frameworks: LS.3.1.2 - LS.3.3.3
MO Science LO 1.B. 2 a & b
KS: Science 3.1.2; 3.2.1
TX TEKS: Science 3.8 D; 4.6 A; 5.5; 5.6 C

Dowload the handout file: metamorphosis.pdf (130.12 kb)

What We’re Reading: A Faith and Culture Devotional

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Nathan) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:01:00 -0500

A Faith and Culture Devotional: Daily Readings in Art, Science, and Life by Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington

Kullberg and Arrington offer a daily guided tour through many of the paintings, laboratories, rock arenas, great books, mass movements, and private lives that have shaped the ways in which we think and live. This educational devotional will point to the wonder of God in seven subjects-theology, history, philosophy, science, literature, art, and contemporary culture through 15 weeks. Contributors include Dallas Willard, John Eldredge, Michael Behe, Frederica Matthews-Green, Darrell Bock, William Lane Craig, R. C. Sproul, Randy Alcorn and Scot McKnight just to name a few.

The Contest
Send us a picture of your class doing an activity from The Field Guide! We'll feature you on the blog and put your name in a drawing for 12 great books for educators at the end of the year. Just send your pictures to TheFieldGuide@newliferanch.com.

Critical Reflection: The Key to Future Success

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Luke) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:59:00 -0500

While most of us know that reflection is a key to helping students learn new information, many people don't have a practical model to use when facilitating reflection exercises with their students. Let's examine a 4 step learning model and how it might benefit students in any setting.

Step 1: The Experience
This could be anything. Maybe it's a test, a group project, a guest speaker, a lecture, a worksheet, or recess. Anything can be reflected upon for the sake of gaining valuable applicable insights.

Step 2: Observation (What)
As facilitators we often call this step the "what" step, because we ask a lot of questions that begin with that word. What just happened? What emotions did you feel? What was challenging about the activity? What behaviors did you notice? This is a time to observe the observable. Things like what people said to each other or how someone reacted to a rise in anxiety are excellent things to examine in this step.

Step 3: Add Meaning (So What)
People have a set of learned lenses that we use to examine life and add meaning to our experiences. In this step we take the observable data that we've talked about in step 2 and synthesize it into some conclusions about the experience. We call this step "so what" because we examine our behavior or the information gained during the experience and ask, "So what does this mean for our life, team, world, etc?" This is a key step for the facilitator to affect life change because this is where the lenses our students use when making decisions will come to the surface. The greatest degree of impact you can make in your limited interactions with students will come from challenging the lenses they see the world through. While giving information is great, changes in behavior, how they actually react to and use that information, will only come through changes in how they see their worlds.

Step 4: Application (Now What)
At NLR we tell our facilitators that if we spend an hour doing a team building exercise and don't end that time with application, we've just wasted an hour of everyone's life. What good is an experience if it is never applied in a meaningful and practical way? This step seeks to help people move toward applying new information by asking the questions, "Now that we've had our experience and discovered something meaningful about it, what should our response be? How do we live differently with this new information?" Remember that life changing application doesn't have to be the stereotypical touchy feely moment that you may think of (although there's nothing wrong with that), but that any small behavior change has large implications in daily living. Something as routine as an elementary student deciding to apply information and always begin a new sentence with a capitol letter is a big deal that will influence them for the rest of their lives.

Confucius is quoted as saying, "Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection with study is dangerous." May we, as people with influence over others, use reflection as a tool to do what we do more effectively. And for those of you who are wrapping up the summer and preparing for another long school year, use these tools yourself. What happened this year? What does that mean? What can you change in yourself to do an even more excellent job in the future?

For a more in depth look at critical reflection you can read this article: http://agelesslearner.com/intros/experiential.html

The Field Guide Five: Five Podcasts for Growth

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Sam) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:54:00 -0500

Welcome to the Field Guide Five. Each month in this section we choose a different category from which we'll share five resources. This issue we're bringing you "Five Podcasts for Growth." These and many more podcasts are found by going to iTunes or following the links listed below. Just a quick disclaimer: some of these sites do not completely reflect our worldview; however we feel there are valuable resources in each.

Hardcore History podcast
In "Hardcore History" the very unconventional Dan Carlin takes his "Martian," outside-the-box way of thinking and applies it to the past. This is a difficult-to-classify show that has a rather sharp edge. It's not for everyone. But the innovative style and approach has made "Dan Carlin's Hardcore History" a New Media hit. This has quickly become Sam's favorite podcast.

Andy Stanley Leadership podcast
The Andy Stanley Leadership podcast is a conversation designed to help leaders go further faster. Andy Stanley is a pastor, communicator, author, and the founder of North Point Ministries in Alpharetta, GA.

WNYC's Radio Lab podcast
A favorite of many of the NLR staff, on Radio Lab, science meets culture and information sounds like music. Each episode of Radio Lab is an investigation - a patchwork of people, sounds, stories, and experiences centered around one big idea. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, Radio Lab is produced by WNYC public radio.

How Stuff Works podcast
This is a collection of nine podcasts covering a variety of topics from tech stuff to history and even random knowledge. Of the nine "The Stuff You Should Know" podcast is on top of Sam's list.

Ted Talks (Video) podcasts
Newly discovered by Sam this summer, but not fully explored - this podcast looks to be very interesting. According to the iTunes write up: Each year, the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference hosts some of the most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. These podcasts (also available in an audio format) capture the most extraordinary presentations delivered from the TED stage.

Resource of the Month: Photosynthes...us

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Luke) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:23:00 -0500

Each month we will will share a resource that you can use in your classroom. It may be a brand new team building activity we have developed, or a classroom learning activity; really whatever we come up with to share with you. This month we've created a worksheet designed to help you introduce or review the concept of photosynthesis. It includes a spiritual application page that uses photosynthesis as an allegory to discuss the process of receiving good things from God and turning them into blessings for the world around us. The worksheet pdf can be downloaded here.

This resource helps meet the following state mandated academic standards:

OK PASS: 5th Grade Life Science 2:2; 6th Grade Life Science 4:1; 7th Grade Life Science 4:2; H.S. Life Science 5:1, 5:2, 6:2

AR Cirriculum Frameworks: LS.2.5.8; LS.4.5.8, LS.4.5.9, LS.4.8.1

MO ME: 6th Grade 2.C.b, LO 2.B.a; 8th Grade LO 2.B.a

KS: 5th Grade Science 3.4.3; 6th Grade Science 3.3.1, 3.3.2; 7th Grade Science 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.4.3; 8-12 Life Science 1.4, 5.1, 5.2

TX TEKS: Science 5.5; 6.12; 7.8; 8.11a; HS Biology 9.B, 9.D; HS Enviromental Systems 6.

Files: photosynthesis.pdf (1.44 mb)

Join the Conversation: What type of activities would be useful to you?

What We’re Reading: Last Child in the Woods

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Sam) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:04:00 -0500

Last Child in the Woods; Saving our Children form Nature Deficit Disorder
by Richard Louv

Our team of staff loves Last Child in the Woods. This widely read book has made quite a splash, and is the guiding force behind the influential Children and Nature Network. Whatever you think of the group's politics, we love the book because it provides research to back up what we've felt in our gut for quite a while; kids today are increasingly disconnected from the Creation, and that disconnection has real developmental consequenses.

The Contest
Send us a picture of your class doing an activity from The Field Guide! We'll feature you on the blog and put your name in a drawing for 12 great books for educators at the end of the year. Just send your pictures to TheFieldGuide@newliferanch.com.

The Field Guide Five: Five Web Resources for Educators

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Nathan) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:01:00 -0500

Welcome to the Field Guide Five. Each month in this section we will be choosing a different category from which we'll share five resources. For example, this week we're bringing you "Five Web Resources for Educators." Just a quick disclaimer: some of these sites do not completely reflect our worldview, however there are valuable resources in each.

Wilderdom.com
This site is filled with information to help you and your students experience living in connection to nature, or wilderdom, as they call it. It has tons of great group games and initiatives that can be used for all sorts of creative purposes, along with plenty of other experiential learning resources. It is also filled with great ideas of how to help protect God's creation.

TheWildClassroom.com
This group of scientists have one goal; to get kids excited about science. They have dedicated their time to creating fun and fascinating videos for teachers to use in classroom. You have the option of subscribing to their video podcast on iTunes so that you receive each video they create. Or you can browse through their library and find a video on a specific topic such as pond ecosystems. Each video has an accompanying lesson plan and teaching tools.

Teachertube.com
Here is a great site that functions as a search engine for educational videos. Just type in a subject and it will bring up tons of videos related to that topic. It functions just like youTube, but helps you narrow your results so that it is easier to find something useful for the classroom.

ProjectWild.org
Project WILD is a wildlife focused conservation education program for K-12 educators and their students. Here you can find all sorts of activities that can easily be adapted to meet the learning requirements for academic disciplines ranging from science and environmental education to social studies, math, and language arts. You won't be able to get all Project Wild has to offer without attending one of their workshops, which I highly recommend, but this site is still a great resource.

ProjectWet.org
The mission of Project WET is to reach children, parents, educators, and communities of the world with water education. They are doing this by publishing materials and lesson plans for teachers, and creating a global water education delivery network designed to reach children through educators. Just like Project WILD, in order to gain access to all they have to offer you will need to attend one of their great workshops

Join the conversation! Which of these sites was the most useful to you?

Group Building Basics: Stages of Group Development

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Luke) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:59:00 -0500

At camp I often hear our staff talking about the groups that we work with, and brainstorming together to find programming solutions that work for each individual team of participants. One helpful tool we use when deciding what activity is best for a particular group is to try and determine what stage of group development they are functioning in. The experiential education community has widely used Bruce W. Tuckman's stages of group development. Published in 1965, Tuckman identified four stages small groups may pass through. Whether it is a team of church staff, a youth group, a team of professionals, or a class of students, knowing the stage that the group is functioning in is a valuable tool when deciding how to help that group grow. I'll use this article to give you a brief description of each stage, along with suggested activities that may help facilitate growth within this model. Camp professionals, because we work with so many temporary communities, have tacked on a fifth group stage that I'll also cover.

Group Stage #1: Forming
Forming is the polite stage in which students are trying to figure out the rules of the group. Initially, individuals may start to lead "silently" with body language, offhand remarks, or subtle pressure on others. The group is mostly positive in this initial stage. Usually no one has offended anyone at this point. This stage is key because a good leader can create group "rules" that are healthy and respectful to everyone, and make later learning easier. Because group members are using so much energy to understand the group's unique dynamics, there is usually difficulty teaching knowledge and skills to these students. This is normal.

Forming often includes these feelings and behaviors:

Excitement, anticipation, and optimism
A tentative attachment to the team
Suspicion and anxiety about the future of the group
Defining the tasks and how they will be accomplished
Determining acceptable group behavior

Activities that can help create positive group norms:

Group Stage #2: Storming
The honeymoon is over. As leaders clash for control of the group, others pull away from conflict and are despondent. Some students respond to the anxiety by making jokes, pretending no conflict exists, or taking sides. Individuals begin to have a less positive view of the group, and have less fun being a part of the team. The up side of storming is that the group is beginning to understand each other, which is a prerequisite to the next stage. The group leader may want to use activities to help the group progress through storming, but they must understand that storming is only navigated successfully by being comfortable with conflict, and allowing it to come to the surface to be dealt with. Remember that storming isn't always obvious. Power and identity struggles can look very polite to those outside the group.

Storming often includes these feelings and behaviors:

Resisting the tasks
Resisting suggestions made by fellow group members
Sharp fluctuations in attitude about the team and the chances of success
Arguing among members even when they agree on basics
Defensiveness, competition, and choosing sides
Questioning the wisdom of those with authority

Activities that can help groups move through storming (be ready to help facilitate healthy conflict):

Group Stage #3: Norming
The team is starting to work well together. Some groups never reach this stage, and most will bounce back and forth between storming and norming. Over time regressions will become fewer and of shorter duration. Students may start to talk highly of their group to others who aren't in the team and will be very positive about their role in the group. The natural leaders at this stage may not be the ones who were visible in earlier stages, as more balanced people tend to accumulate power over time.

This team still needs intervention and direction from people in authority, but not as much as when storming. As team members begin to work out their differences they have more energy to spend on learning. It is important to note that each group in the norming stage isn't a healthy group. Many groups have unhealthy norms that they have adopted. Whether a group of students has created outcasts, or acquiesced to an immature leader, attempts to re-create healthy group norms will require storming.

Norming often includes these feelings and behaviors:

An ability to express criticism constructively
Acceptance of membership in the team
An attempt to achieve harmony by avoiding conflict
More friendliness, confiding in each other, and sharing of personal problems
A sense of team cohesion, spirit, and goals
Establishing and maintaining team ground rules and boundaries

Activities to help the group create healthy norms:

Group Consensus Building
The Great Oklahoma Lizard Egg
Fabulous Flags (be sure to focus on the variation at the bottom of the page)

Group Stage #4: Performing
A hallmark of a performing team is it's self-direction. People with authority become less responsible for routine management of the group, and move into the role of a facilitator, helping the group ask better questions, and discover learning on their own. These groups can function well in new environments and will seldom fall back into the storming phase. Adding new individuals to the group will cause little anxiety, as the healthy group norms are so defined that they are not threatened by the arrival of new personalities.

While I believe that it is possible for adolescent students to achieve a performing group, it is most often groups of emotionally mature, self-directing adults who reach this stage. Don't give up the dream, though, as students who are encouraged to do the work of reaching this level of performance as adolescents are more equipped to be members of effective teams later in life. Helping students reach the performing stage is not an easy or quick task. Expect months of intentional work. You'll know you've reached this stage when the group starts to work for everyone (helping lower performers taste success), and you don't have to use authority or coercion to pressure the group towards it's goals.

Performing often includes these feelings and behaviors:

Members have insights into personal and group processes, and better understanding of each other's strengths and weakness
Constructive self-change
Ability to prevent or work through group problems
Close attachment to the team

Activities to help groups attain and maintain high performance:

Group Stage #5: Adjourning
All groups adjourn at some point. For some teams adjourning is a breath of relief, but we're hoping that your groups of students will experience a sense of bittersweet accomplishment on that last day of the school year. Often high performing teams have a reluctance to say good-bye, and many relationships continue long after the group disbands. The key to good adjourning is to look back and learn from a positive group experience. This is a time that students can discover why things worked so well and how they can take responsibility to help replicate their experience in the future.
Adjourning often includes these feelings and behaviors:

The group idealizes and romanticizes their experience with stories and memories

A sense of accomplishment
A bittersweet reluctance to let go of the group
An excitement about what is coming next for the individuals
A look back to discover what worked to make the team successful

Activities to help groups learn through adjourning:

How to Create Customized Reflection Activities

Remember that each group is as unique as the individuals in it, and as a leader, you've never been a part of a group exactly like the one you're responsible for now. I hope that you'll try looking at your students through the lens of group stages, and try out an activity or two. If you'd like to talk about your group give me a call. Whether it's re-writing an activity for a specific age group, or brainstorming creative ways to reach difficult groups of students, we at New Life Ranch are excited to be a resource for you. Good luck, and enjoy the journey!

Join the Conversation! Which activities work for you?

Welcome to The Field Guide!

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Sam) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:13:00 -0500

Sometimes working with students feels like being in a dense forest. You are surrounded by magnificent and beautiful creations of God, but you can just barely make out the trail that got you there, and you don't quite know which direction to go. That's why we created The Field Guide. This online resource is designed to give you some tools to help you strike down the path God has for you and your students.

Take a few moments to look through this first edition and let us know what you think. We love hearing from you and look forward to seeing many of you at New Life Ranch this year. If you want to receive future monthly editions of The Field Guide by email use the link below to subscribe. We are excited to see what we can all learn together!

Join our FREE Email Mailing List

Welcome to BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Admin) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:00:00 -0500

If you see this post it means that BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5 is running and the hard part of creating your own blog is done. There is only a few things left to do.

Write Permissions

To be able to log in to the blog and writing posts, you need to enable write permissions on the App_Data folder. If you’re blog is hosted at a hosting provider, you can either log into your account’s admin page or call the support. You need write permissions on the App_Data folder because all posts, comments, and blog attachments are saved as XML files and placed in the App_Data folder.

If you wish to use a database to to store your blog data, we still encourage you to enable this write access for an images you may wish to store for your blog posts. If you are interested in using Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, VistaDB, or other databases, please see the BlogEngine wiki to get started.

Security

When you've got write permissions to the App_Data folder, you need to change the username and password. Find the sign-in link located either at the bottom or top of the page depending on your current theme and click it. Now enter "admin" in both the username and password fields and click the button. You will now see an admin menu appear. It has a link to the "Users" admin page. From there you can change the username and password. Passwords are hashed by default so if you lose your password, please see the BlogEngine wiki for information on recovery.

Configuration and Profile

Now that you have your blog secured, take a look through the settings and give your new blog a title. BlogEngine.NET 1.4 is set up to take full advantage of of many semantic formats and technologies such as FOAF, SIOC and APML. It means that the content stored in your BlogEngine.NET installation will be fully portable and auto-discoverable. Be sure to fill in your author profile to take better advantage of this.

Themes and Widgets

One last thing to consider is customizing the look of your blog. We have a few themes available right out of the box including two fully setup to use our new widget framework. The widget framework allows drop and drag placement on your side bar as well as editing and configuration right in the widget while you are logged in. Be sure to check out our home page for more theme choices and downloadable widgets to add to your blog.

On the web

You can find BlogEngine.NET on the official website. Here you'll find tutorials, documentation, tips and tricks and much more. The ongoing development of BlogEngine.NET can be followed at CodePlex where the daily builds will be published for anyone to download.

Good luck and happy writing.

The BlogEngine.NET team