Virtual School is Going to Take a Jump in Enrollment

I'm sitting here at GaETC 2009 listening to Michael Horn, coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, is projecting online learning will take a jump among high school students.

We are looking at the non-consumption markets in education. Examples would include the following:

• credit recovery
• drop-outs
• AP
• scheduling conflicts
• home-schooled and homebound students
• small, rural and urban schools
• unit recovery
• disaster preparedness
• tutoring
• professional development
• Pre-K
• after school
• incarcerated youth
• in-school suspension
• school bus commute
• summer school

These markets will bring forth the value of technology in education.

Wiki for Mapping

Someone started a wiki on all the various types of organizational maps, visual maps, or graphic organizers---whatever you call it, WikIT has it. When you find the type of map you want, click the Interactive PDF or the Interactive Flash to open and enter info.

Using Video in History

Check out these notes from the National Education Computing Conference on video in history.

Movies in Social Studies Classroom

• “I’m watching TV”
• “Watch this!”
• “Let’s watch this video” – this is passive, mindless, cognitive background is always an indicator for students to go to sleep or put the shade down.

Here’s what we should do before showing video:

1. We want students to contextualize (frame and/or re-cap)
2. · Engage (elicit input, questions
3. · Coordinate; supplement other media (maybe text-based)
4. · Identify learning purposes upfront
5. · Specify student behaviors

During the video:

1. Analyze: Use this video as an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf8Ig2M3Zq0
2. Use these questions:

· Where was this?

· When was this? (team of people)

· Summarize what you saw.

Show 2^nd video and ask: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScexNfYbBQ&feature=related

· What is the same?

· Is anything different? (driver gets off and is waiting and then a little push to get everyone on).

Different years, bigger train? More trains? OHHHHhhhh….the country offered flex time for workers. Small social change impacts HUGE impact on Japanese life.

Teacher can’t just get kids to watch this without questioning, etc.

Different approach to Analyze:

Hollywood movie: Midway shows the shift in Japanese American Life – last of classic WWII movies made. Just showing the trailer showing the sub plot of an American soldier who falls in love with Japanese American woman (in the movie she was arrested for her parents having literature). Charlton Hesston intervenes in the arrest, so his son can be with his girlfriend, because he believes in the relationship. Then show flashback of 20 years to US internment camps for Japanese (45 minute movie shown by the War department). Years later Hollywood’s interpretation and public sentiment for the issue.

Creating Video

Various software:

Primary[DS2] Access (free) – movie lives on the web, put students don’t own the copyright license for the images in the movie, so every time the movie gets played, it assembles it from where those images sit on the web; add voice over the images while they play.

VoiceThread - same thing

Use mainly still images, not video because it just becomes so time consuming.

Technology Stuff

· Age verification on youtube for some videos with controversial videos – you have to sign in again.

· Use Zamzar to download youtube videos at home.

· If you twitter, type in the hashtag for the event. In this case it was iranelection.

· Here is a site with all the hashtags on twitter as they come up: http://hashtags.org/

Sample videos:

-1936 (Depression Era – Episodic messages) Chaplin modern times; socialist message, industrialize, anti-drug message you can’t show this all the way.

-Revolutionary Guard – video footage of protesters in IRAN; ban on foreign media

· Because it was an event that had over 50 tweets per minute, people will use a code RT (retweet) to post something someone said again so more people can see it, getting the message out.

Resource for more information on this topic.

• Use our ning (social community to share info) to add comments about this presentation.
• Title: Teaching Digital History
• Web address: Teachingdigitalhistory.ning.com (http://teachingdigitalhistory.ning.com/)
• Speaker: John hammond@lehigh.edu

Reminder: VoiceThread.com

http://voicethread.com/#home

Put the image on voicethread and set up 10 debates at the same time. The kids can make comments on an image and hear each other's comments all on the internet. Voicethread is now charging to download the final product. You can always link a video created.

Twittering? or Tweet?

Twitter is starting to catch on.  Twitter is like a status update to people you know.  I was first inspired to create a Twitter account when NPR utilized it to have people report their status in the voting lines.  Once you create an account, you go look for your friends or colleagues.  In my case I keep up with the latest and greatest from the various headliner speakers at my educational technology conferences.  They are traveling the country and in some cases--the globe, and there is always new information to report.  Some teachers or professors are twittering their homework assignments.

Very plainly put--it is a communication tool.  If you could round robin call 20, 30, 40 people you knew--what would you say?