Journeys In 2.0 Teaching

Design Studies Update

2012-01-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

With the semester winding down things I'm thinking about the past three months with my design studies class. More than anything, what I hope to get from this three month coup of the class is some serious learning from the students and myself. Here's a quick look at how things are going. Enthusiasm FTW! Students who are motivated in the class and are already tech savvy are rocking the Kinder

Kinder Toy Design Project

2012-01-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

In December my design studies students and I travelled to do real field research with a kindergarten class. Seeing high school students paired up with little ones was a cool experience. I had this crazy idea and I wanted it to turn into an opportunity for my students. I've also started to develop the course as we go along on my class wiki, where you will also find other "personal projects". All

Learning in Public #6- Moral and Ethical 3D Printing?

2011-11-27T19:39:00.001-08:00

My First Modelling Challenge for Myself 40 hours of work into the Makerbot obviously isn't enough. I keep coming back for more! This weekend I was able to spend some awesome time with a friend and fellow ADE Jason Sand. If you aren't following Jason on the Twitter, do it here now! Jason and I were at a Final Cut Pro X training session for two days. During this weekend of hockey and refreshments

Learning in Public Reflection #5

2011-11-22T18:42:00.001-08:00

The Makerbot is up and running in full swing. I've printed alligators, dinosaurs, moustache rings and now a moustache cookie cutter. The learning curve is fairly steep, but the work done by others is making this learning so enjoyable. What's awesome about the 3D printing community is that they are much like my Tweeps: THEY SHARE! They don't judge (too much) and will always point me in the right

Learning in Public Reflection #4- Success at Last!

2011-11-16T20:20:00.001-08:00

I've been taking a lot of videos and time lapse sequences about how I've taken on one of the largest personal learning projects I've taken on in a long time. Building a Makerbot 3D Printer. Here's a Makerbot 101 video to check out. Below is a time lapse of part of the build. All of this has been from a post by Dean Shareski who has challenged his pre-service teachers to spend 25-50

It Began With a Marshmallow

2011-11-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

Students were DQ'd if they ate their marshmallow. Some groups used permanent marker to ensure this wouldn't happen. Today was an awesome day. Hot on the heels of some great collaboration and conversations with colleagues and tweeps I started my Design Studies unit with The Marshmallow Challenge. Huge thanks to Rose Lapointe for guiding me in this way. I now realize that I was the student and

Opening Up to My Staff

2011-11-06T20:37:00.000-08:00

A few people on my staff know I blog about my class. Most don't I don't advertise a lot on staff that I tweet, read blogs, and collaborate with people outside my school more than inside my school. This really struck a chord with me recently. So, under the guise of asking for supplies for my Design Studies unit, I wrote this email to my staff tonight. I officially came out as a blogger and

Design Thinking: A New Challenge

2011-11-05T00:54:00.000-07:00

This is going to be one of those posts where I'm actually writing for me to try and make some sense of a whole bunch of ideas for the next steps in my multimedia course. Until now, the term 'multimedia' has largely been a farce because I haven't dealt with a true variety of media with students. I'm a video guy, that's where I'm comfortable so that's what we've done. Everything has been about

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? THIS IS ME SHOUTING AT HOW EXCITED I AM ABOUT THIS!

2011-10-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

KABOOM! That's how I would describe my evening tonight. It came in two parts. Part 1- Trying to Get PowerSchool to Work for Outcomes Based Reporting I was happily working out how I can get Powerschool to do outcomes based reporting and having some great discussions on Twitter and Facebook about it. Here's what I was up to: Yes I asked elementary teachers. They do standards based reporting

Hitting their stride at RTV

2011-09-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Signs of Success Today I am home with my son Jack who is sick. After a couple games of Star Wars Trouble and watching an episode of House Hunters International (you like it too) I noticed it was almost time for the RTV News at Cold Lake High School. Our school uses Ustream each day to broadcast our news show. I was pleasantly surprised to watch the anchors Kyle and Tyson present their team's

One Year Later...

2011-09-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

Note: I started this post over a year ago after listening to Brian Crosby speak. I've mulled over it, and updated much of it. What is in italics is what I wrote originally. What follows is my current situation and how I'm going to address these cold hard truths about my teaching. This is going to be a blog post with two purposes. A serious look in the mirror at how I teach multimedia, and how I

My Response To http://tinyurl.com/3rcnvy6

2011-09-25T09:39:00.000-07:00

Jared Nicholon Sep 25th, 2011@ 11:25 am: Your comment is awaiting moderation.While I do understand that principals are under enormous pressures from many different angles it seems to me that your frustrations about Facebook are from primarily negative experiences.Students who use Facebook to bully and harass others should be dealt with strongly and that is covered in your discipline policy

The 'Formative' Newsroom

2011-09-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

First post of the year. Welcome back y'all. There are some major changes in store for RTV. First and foremost I got my proverbial crap together and purged all my old useless resources that I had and changed my classroom into a meaner, cleaner, news making machine! But now to the good stuff. Once again, I'm turning my class upside down and starting from scratch with a totally different approach. I

"And We're Clear": RTV Finishes Year 1

2011-06-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

It's reflection time with lots of questions to ask myself and hopefully find answers before the next school year. A few people want to know the nitty gritty of the daily operations of our newscast, so here it is.Our daily newscast to our student body has come along way. We've had some pretty awesome opportunities to work with industry professionals, and do the buzzword stuff that people call '

Songs for Tsunami

2011-03-30T12:49:00.001-07:00

On Thursday, March 31, Cold Lake High School will be hosting the second instalment of Songs for Tsunami. This is a fundraiser for relief in Japan. Teachers are being sponsored by students to sing songs Karaoke style! After the first lunch hour over $480 was raised. RTV has been covering the fundraiser. A student recently interviewed Mr. Darrell McDonald about how he came to organize this great

Crowdsourcing Voiceovers

2011-03-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

Our students are working towards the final days before we produce our first TV magazine style show for our division. The first show is about health and wellness initiatives in schools. Along with a lot of leg work my Nicole Garner and myself, we have created an intro in Apple's Motion that has our division logo and mission statement before the title of the show. The show's title is going to be "

Crowdsourcing Voiceovers

2011-03-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Our students are working towards the final days before we produce our first TV magazine style show for our division. The first show is about health and wellness initiatives in our division. Along with a lot of leg work my Nicole Garner and myself, we have created an intro in Apple's Motion that has our division logo and mission statement before the title of the show. The show's title is going to

Calling All Experts

2011-03-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

My broadcasting class is getting very close to shooting their first news magazine style program. In partnership with the Board of Trustees in Northern Lights School Division we will produce a show that will be posted to the division's new Youtube channel. Where I want to go with this is for students to make connections to and learn from experts in television particularly in the area of

Producing our First Magazine Style Show

2011-03-10T15:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, and I always apologize for not blogging enough, but this time I'm not. With the flury of daily activity for RTV News, time is tight. I'm going to call this "just in time blogging". (Buzz!) We are in the final 10 days before the students will produce a magazine style show for our school division. I must thank our Communications Director Nicole Garner from Northern Lights School

Setting up for RTV News Assessment

2011-01-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

The big idea that I'm going to implement in semester 2 of RTV News is a way of students being more aware of their learning. I hope to accomplish this through a blogfolio. Students will have the major outcomes presented to them at the beginning of each two week RTV news run. While they complete the jobs required for their position at RTV they will look at essential questions related to the

RTV News: The Funding Realities

2011-01-23T10:14:00.001-08:00

Starting a broadcasting program is pricey. VERY pricey. There are basic equipment costs that have really added up fast. The overall goal of news program is to have all of the authenticity and hustle and bustle of a real newsroom. I've started to develop the jobs with help from my good friend Jim Billings from North Little Rock High School. I could not have envisioned how a broadcasting program

The REAL costs of RTV News

2011-01-23T09:06:00.000-08:00

Running a television news program at our school isn't going to be cheap. There are big ticket items that need to be purchased. This includes broadcast cameras, a video switcher, microphones, monitors, the list goes on. There are many all-in-one software solutions out there. One such program is Boinx TV. It's a great way to get into producing a TV news show, and we've used it for 3 years, but it's

40 Episodes Later...

2011-01-16T15:43:00.000-08:00

As our semester wraps up this week so many things have been great about RTV news. My last post talked about all of the great things about students' producing the news every day. This Thursday will be our 40th show. 35 or so will be found on our Youtube and 5 will be archived elsewhere because they are pretty much awful. One sad things from our wrap up episode from season 1 is that the computer

Authenticity Rules!

2010-12-15T05:42:00.000-08:00

After my long winded diatribe a couple days ago, I promised a follow up on what's so positive about my block 1 multimedia class, which has undergone a significant transformation in the past 5 weeks.So we're busy. But aren't we all busy? I don't want students to be busy, I want them to be "engaged". This is the current buzzword sweeping education this month. This idea of engagement needs to come

Trying to Assess where Curriculum Fails

2010-12-13T20:29:00.001-08:00

So here goes. Just a few things up front. I'm not an assessment specialist, I have great people who I can talk to in my school and in my PLN who had provided invaluable advice and guidance in my career. I'm also a realist andhave enjoyed throwing out complete programs in the middle of my schools year this year. The results of this purging have been pretty darn cool. One of them is our daily