Once again this year our students in Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's English 9 Honors classes will be reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind and discussing it with each other, with many of you, and with Daniel Pink himself (read about previous years' experiences). Students will be holding in-class fishbowl discussions and live blogging chapters four through nine (Design, Story, Sympathy, Empathy and Meaning).
We again have a bunch of folks from our PLN's that will be live blogging with them, and Daniel Pink will be Skyping with them to discuss Chapter 6: Symphony. (Unfortunately due to our schedules not synching very well this year, we'll only get Mr. Pink once this year instead of twice. The good news is that he'll be discussing Symphony this time which is a chapter that we haven't been able to discuss with him before.)
You're welcome to check out the wiki to see when we'll be live blogging, and then tune in to the ustream of the in-class discussion and/or the CoverItLive live blogging on Anne's class blog (periods 2 and 5 on that schedule) or Maura's class blog (periods 3 and 4 on that schedule). We're looking forward to another great learning experience for - and with - our students.
Showing posts with label fishbowl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fishbowl. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Monday, October 26, 2009
Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor . . . Tonsils
Maura Moritz's daughter just had her tonsils out. Being the good Mom that she is, she's staying home with her until she's feeling better. Being the good teacher that she is, she didn't want her class to lose out on valuable instructional time. They were scheduled to do a fishbowl with live blogging over Fahrenheit 451, so what to do?
Well, it's a fishbowl with live blogging. The first thing she can do is participate in the live blog (period 3, period 4). The second thing she can do is Skype into class so that she can see and hear the in-class fishbowl discussion.
Just one more example of how Skype is becoming more and more valuable in a school setting. Tell me again why Skype is blocked by so many school districts?
Well, it's a fishbowl with live blogging. The first thing she can do is participate in the live blog (period 3, period 4). The second thing she can do is Skype into class so that she can see and hear the in-class fishbowl discussion.
Just one more example of how Skype is becoming more and more valuable in a school setting. Tell me again why Skype is blocked by so many school districts?
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
A Whole New Learning Experience: Take Two
I blogged last year about some of our ninth graders reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, and discussing it not only with each other, but with over 30 educators from around the world and Daniel Pink himself. Well, some of this year’s ninth graders in Anne Smith’s and Maura Moritz’s classes are going to get the opportunity to do it again.
If you’re really interested, you can read all my previous posts regarding our experiences with this project. But, in a nutshell, the students are reading the book and discussing it in class using the fishbowl method with live blogging. In addition to the students discussing face-to-face and live blogging, approximately 30 educators from around the world will be “dropping” in to live blog as well. They’ll be able to hear and see the in-class discussion via webcam (and MeBeam), and will simultaneously live blog along with the outer circle of students in the classroom (using CoverItLive this year). Twice during the project, once while discussing Chapter 4 (Design) and then again at the end of the book with the culminating discussion, the students will have the opportunity to interact with Daniel Pink via Skype.
The students will be doing a variety of activities along with the discussions, but their culminating project will again be a Wikified Research Paper. A Wikified Research Paper has all the components of a traditional research paper, but on a wiki so that it can include hyperlinks, audio, video, etc. It also contains other wiki pages with their research and related items, as well as the ability for others to give them comments and feedback along the way and on the final paper (although since it’s a wiki it’s never “final”).
If you’re really a glutton and want to know more about this, we have a video produced by Dana Levesque, one of the amazing instructional technology specialists in our district. It gives you a feel for what it looked like last year, including some short interviews with students, some longer interviews with Anne and Maura regarding their preparation for and reaction to this project, and an interview with yours truly talking about some of the technology aspects of this project.
If you’re really interested, you can read all my previous posts regarding our experiences with this project. But, in a nutshell, the students are reading the book and discussing it in class using the fishbowl method with live blogging. In addition to the students discussing face-to-face and live blogging, approximately 30 educators from around the world will be “dropping” in to live blog as well. They’ll be able to hear and see the in-class discussion via webcam (and MeBeam), and will simultaneously live blog along with the outer circle of students in the classroom (using CoverItLive this year). Twice during the project, once while discussing Chapter 4 (Design) and then again at the end of the book with the culminating discussion, the students will have the opportunity to interact with Daniel Pink via Skype.
The students will be doing a variety of activities along with the discussions, but their culminating project will again be a Wikified Research Paper. A Wikified Research Paper has all the components of a traditional research paper, but on a wiki so that it can include hyperlinks, audio, video, etc. It also contains other wiki pages with their research and related items, as well as the ability for others to give them comments and feedback along the way and on the final paper (although since it’s a wiki it’s never “final”).
If you’re really a glutton and want to know more about this, we have a video produced by Dana Levesque, one of the amazing instructional technology specialists in our district. It gives you a feel for what it looked like last year, including some short interviews with students, some longer interviews with Anne and Maura regarding their preparation for and reaction to this project, and an interview with yours truly talking about some of the technology aspects of this project.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Ustreaming and Live Blogging Daniel Pink Video Conference
Update 2-28-08: Well, it looks like we pulled it off. I'll reflect on it in another post eventually, but a few quick links. First, the CoverItLive live blog is archived below. Second, thanks to Kristin Hokanson the Ustream chat is also archived. Third, the Ustream archive is in four parts, available on Ustream or on the wiki. I haven't watched through them, but I think they're all there.
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Well, I’m a little worried that we’ll look back at this and say, “We should’ve quit while we’re ahead,” but we’re going to give it a shot anyway. This Thursday is our students’ live video conference with Daniel Pink. They’ve finished A Whole New Mind and this is their chance to ask Mr. Pink some questions directly, as well as further discuss the book with their classmates. We’ll have all four classes of students (about 110 or so) in our Forum and will conduct a video Skype call with Mr. Pink. (One tech concern there – feedback. We’re asking him to wear headphones on his end, but on our end we have to broadcast the audio to the whole room, so we’re worried he’ll get a lot of feedback of his own voice when he speaks. In limited testing in-house, Skype does a fairly good job, but if anyone has any ideas we would appreciate it. Because we hope it will be conversational, it's tough to mute and unmute the microphones.)
Students will come up to the microphone one at a time and ask a question of Mr. Pink. He’ll respond and the student will have the opportunity to ask a clarifying or follow-up question if necessary. If not, then the fishbowl inner circle will have the opportunity to discuss the question if they have anything to add, with Mr. Pink a virtual participant in that inner circle. We’re hoping to get through about twenty questions or so in about ninety minutes, and then leave Mr. Pink time to reflect on this experience with the students.
Everything so far was in the original plan, but after some reasonable success with Ustream and CoverItLive last weekend for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, we’ve decided to push our luck a little bit. So, we’re going to attempt to Ustream the whole thing. We’ll point a camcorder and a microphone at the inner circle discussion and the big screen, so hopefully Ustream viewers will be able to hear the questions the students ask, Mr. Pink's response, and the inner circle discussion. We are doing this primarily so that the students’ parents can watch and listen in, but of course it will be open to all of you. Here’s the Ustream channel we will be using and we'll be broadcasting from approximately 8:30 am MST through about 10:15 am MST on Thursday, February 28th.
While we’ve attempted to allow the Ustream chat through our firewall, sometimes we get it and sometimes we don’t, so we won’t be using or monitoring the Ustream chat. Instead, some of our students will be live blogging the fishbowl discussion using CoverItLive. I will be chat-jockeying the CoverItLive blogging (embedded below) and approximately thirty of the students who aren’t in the inner circle or asking one of the twenty or so questions will be commenting. I’ll be approving the comments as fast as I can and we’ll also hopefully have the live blog up on the big screen next to the Skype window so that all the students in the Forum can see the live blog if they wish. Again, this is primarily for our students to live blog, but other folks can choose to participate if they wish – we just ask you to not dominate the discussion and to make sure you attach your name to each of your comments. (If you haven’t used CoverItLive before, there’s a line for your name and then a box for the body of your comment. Once you comment once, it seems to remember your name.)
Now, a few caveats. Our primary goal is to simply get the Skype video conference and discussion with Mr. Pink to work. If the Ustream and/or CoverItLive don’t work, I’ll briefly troubleshoot those but then let it go and simply focus on the rest. And, again, the primary purpose of the Ustream is for the students’ parents to be able to observe, and the live blog is for the students to use to discuss (and for the parents to be able to virtually watch the blog discussion). So, while we’re inviting the network in, we’re also asking the network to play nice.
So, wish us luck, and here’s the CoverItLive blog (if things go swimmingly, it will go live at about 8:30 am MST on Thursday).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I’m a little worried that we’ll look back at this and say, “We should’ve quit while we’re ahead,” but we’re going to give it a shot anyway. This Thursday is our students’ live video conference with Daniel Pink. They’ve finished A Whole New Mind and this is their chance to ask Mr. Pink some questions directly, as well as further discuss the book with their classmates. We’ll have all four classes of students (about 110 or so) in our Forum and will conduct a video Skype call with Mr. Pink. (One tech concern there – feedback. We’re asking him to wear headphones on his end, but on our end we have to broadcast the audio to the whole room, so we’re worried he’ll get a lot of feedback of his own voice when he speaks. In limited testing in-house, Skype does a fairly good job, but if anyone has any ideas we would appreciate it. Because we hope it will be conversational, it's tough to mute and unmute the microphones.)
Students will come up to the microphone one at a time and ask a question of Mr. Pink. He’ll respond and the student will have the opportunity to ask a clarifying or follow-up question if necessary. If not, then the fishbowl inner circle will have the opportunity to discuss the question if they have anything to add, with Mr. Pink a virtual participant in that inner circle. We’re hoping to get through about twenty questions or so in about ninety minutes, and then leave Mr. Pink time to reflect on this experience with the students.
Everything so far was in the original plan, but after some reasonable success with Ustream and CoverItLive last weekend for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, we’ve decided to push our luck a little bit. So, we’re going to attempt to Ustream the whole thing. We’ll point a camcorder and a microphone at the inner circle discussion and the big screen, so hopefully Ustream viewers will be able to hear the questions the students ask, Mr. Pink's response, and the inner circle discussion. We are doing this primarily so that the students’ parents can watch and listen in, but of course it will be open to all of you. Here’s the Ustream channel we will be using and we'll be broadcasting from approximately 8:30 am MST through about 10:15 am MST on Thursday, February 28th.
While we’ve attempted to allow the Ustream chat through our firewall, sometimes we get it and sometimes we don’t, so we won’t be using or monitoring the Ustream chat. Instead, some of our students will be live blogging the fishbowl discussion using CoverItLive. I will be chat-jockeying the CoverItLive blogging (embedded below) and approximately thirty of the students who aren’t in the inner circle or asking one of the twenty or so questions will be commenting. I’ll be approving the comments as fast as I can and we’ll also hopefully have the live blog up on the big screen next to the Skype window so that all the students in the Forum can see the live blog if they wish. Again, this is primarily for our students to live blog, but other folks can choose to participate if they wish – we just ask you to not dominate the discussion and to make sure you attach your name to each of your comments. (If you haven’t used CoverItLive before, there’s a line for your name and then a box for the body of your comment. Once you comment once, it seems to remember your name.)
Now, a few caveats. Our primary goal is to simply get the Skype video conference and discussion with Mr. Pink to work. If the Ustream and/or CoverItLive don’t work, I’ll briefly troubleshoot those but then let it go and simply focus on the rest. And, again, the primary purpose of the Ustream is for the students’ parents to be able to observe, and the live blog is for the students to use to discuss (and for the parents to be able to virtually watch the blog discussion). So, while we’re inviting the network in, we’re also asking the network to play nice.
So, wish us luck, and here’s the CoverItLive blog (if things go swimmingly, it will go live at about 8:30 am MST on Thursday).
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Blogging: In Their Own Words
At the end of the school year we were asked to try to get a video together about blogging to show at a conference for administrators in our state. The idea was that we were going to introduce them to live blogging and then actually have some folks in the audience live blog the keynote, with the keynote speaker being occasionally fed questions/thoughts/ideas from the blog. The details were a little fuzzy but, nice guys that we are, we scrambled to try to get something together.
So, about two days before finals, we hurriedly videotaped some students and teachers talking about blogging and then tried to figure out when we'd have time to put this together before June 13th (the first day of the conference), not to mention how to setup the live blogging, make sure they had enough info for it to work smoothly, get the wireless working, etc.
As it turns out, they decided to not go with this idea, which I think was a good thing given the compressed timeline - I think there's a good chance it would've been a disaster. They are considering doing it again for their next conference in August, which would be cool since the keynote speaker is supposed to be Daniel Pink, although I still worry about all the setup issues.
In any event, we had all this footage sitting around and I wanted to do something with it. I spent a little time editing and came up with the following. Please keep in mind a few things. As I mentioned, we hurriedly filmed about two days before finals, so we were only able to grab kids from a couple of classes and a few teachers that were available. So we don't have as wide of a selection of folks as I would like, and the quality of some of the video/audio isn't the best. (We had a wireless lapel microphone, but it didn't always work - meaning a good portion of the audio was just from the built-in camcorder microphone. You may have to manually raise and lower the volume sometimes to hear.) Obviously, I decided to post it anyway, so I guess it comes under the category of "good enough to criticize." I hope that - despite some of its shortcomings - some of you might find it useful.
Also, keep in mind that we've only been blogging for about a year and a half in my school, and many folks really only in the past six months or so, so we're still learning. We're pretty much still in the stage of moving and extending traditional classroom activities online, which I think can add value and enhance the learning when done well, but our next step is really to help our students develop their own personal learning networks through blogs and various other Web 2.0 tools. I hope that we will make some progress with that next school year.
I'm posting two versions, the long version, which is 15:30 (I have a hard time cutting students when they say such thoughtful things), and a shorter version (where I slashed - it was painful for me). I'm embedding the Google Video versions below, but you can also download Quicktime versions of both of them (320 by 240).
Long Version (Quicktime, 15:30, 67.3 MB)
Short Version (Quicktime, 8:16, 38.1 MB)
Part of the video talks about the fishbowl discussion technique (no relation to me!) used in conjunction with live blogging, you can learn more at these posts (1, 2 and 3).
Google Video Long Version (15:30)
Google Video Short Version (8:16)
So, about two days before finals, we hurriedly videotaped some students and teachers talking about blogging and then tried to figure out when we'd have time to put this together before June 13th (the first day of the conference), not to mention how to setup the live blogging, make sure they had enough info for it to work smoothly, get the wireless working, etc.
As it turns out, they decided to not go with this idea, which I think was a good thing given the compressed timeline - I think there's a good chance it would've been a disaster. They are considering doing it again for their next conference in August, which would be cool since the keynote speaker is supposed to be Daniel Pink, although I still worry about all the setup issues.
In any event, we had all this footage sitting around and I wanted to do something with it. I spent a little time editing and came up with the following. Please keep in mind a few things. As I mentioned, we hurriedly filmed about two days before finals, so we were only able to grab kids from a couple of classes and a few teachers that were available. So we don't have as wide of a selection of folks as I would like, and the quality of some of the video/audio isn't the best. (We had a wireless lapel microphone, but it didn't always work - meaning a good portion of the audio was just from the built-in camcorder microphone. You may have to manually raise and lower the volume sometimes to hear.) Obviously, I decided to post it anyway, so I guess it comes under the category of "good enough to criticize." I hope that - despite some of its shortcomings - some of you might find it useful.
Also, keep in mind that we've only been blogging for about a year and a half in my school, and many folks really only in the past six months or so, so we're still learning. We're pretty much still in the stage of moving and extending traditional classroom activities online, which I think can add value and enhance the learning when done well, but our next step is really to help our students develop their own personal learning networks through blogs and various other Web 2.0 tools. I hope that we will make some progress with that next school year.
I'm posting two versions, the long version, which is 15:30 (I have a hard time cutting students when they say such thoughtful things), and a shorter version (where I slashed - it was painful for me). I'm embedding the Google Video versions below, but you can also download Quicktime versions of both of them (320 by 240).
Long Version (Quicktime, 15:30, 67.3 MB)
Short Version (Quicktime, 8:16, 38.1 MB)
Part of the video talks about the fishbowl discussion technique (no relation to me!) used in conjunction with live blogging, you can learn more at these posts (1, 2 and 3).
Google Video Long Version (15:30)
Google Video Short Version (8:16)
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