Making it Interesting

Vow Of Silence

2011-12-13T12:28:00.000-06:00

Cross posted at Embracing Citizenship

Free the Children have an annual awareness campaign called The Vow of Silence.

The main goal for the Grade 8 Teaching team at Sargent Park was to make our students aware of why it is important to stand in solidarity with the millions of child labourers in the world.

The Students in our school need to know that they do not need to stand by while children are subjected to exploitation, poverty and the denial of their basic rights.

The Vow of Silence is a way to make them aware. So on November 30th this year all of the Grade 8 students and many of their classmates went silent for a day. In the school teachers did not talk, annoucments were not read and silence reigned over all. It was amazing. For a loonie or a toonie the students were allowed and encouraged not to talk, use cellphones, text, connect on the internet for a day. Many passed the test. Hallways were silent during classtime, during class change and even during lunch. Ordering lunch was difficult when you do not have a voice but students managed to communicate even without a voice.

The Grade 8 team passed out information for other teachers to use in their classes. Articles talking about the exploitation of children around the world were used as language arts and social studies lessons. As a school we became more aware.

At the end of the day when it was all over students and staff were more aware of what was going on around the world. We had also raised over $300 for Free the Children.

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Did you take the Vow of Silence this year? It is never to late.
Here is what our day sounded and looked like.

I Will Statements

2011-12-13T12:26:00.000-06:00

Cross Posted at Embracing Citizenship

In preparation for their citizenship unit this year we got the students to come up with I will statements. We had them watch Spencer West and the Kielburgers from previous We Day Events. Following the videos we brainstormed, did some group work and allowed the students to come up with statements of I Will... Each of these statements were supposed to be large and transformative for them. All of the statements did not end up being as grand as we planned. I think this works in our favour. It will allow us to revisit them in the future, see which statements were weak or easily accomplished and which ones withstood time and are still ongoing.

Here is the video we produced with their I will statements.

We Day 2011 Wrap up

2011-11-28T21:27:00.000-06:00

This is a post is also found at my Embracing Citizenship blog.

It is just under a week ago that 45 of us from Sargent Park School attended We Day in Winnipeg. What a wonderful event. If your city does not have a We Day I highly recommend becoming a Free the Children School and traveling to the closest city that has one. It is a life changing event for many students.
Starting early in the morning the students arrived at school and prepared to go to the MTS Centre.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

We decided to go by transit bus due to the ease of getting to and from downtown. This proved to be the right decision. The bus picked us up right out side the school and had us at We Day in under 15 minutes. Yeah bring on We Day.

Before the concert the students went to the various t shirt outlets and souvenir kiosks and purchased many items to remember We Day. These souvenirs would go with the We Day shirts we created at school. Being dressed as a team was a gave us that togetherness feeling.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
It should be noted that other divisions bought tshirts for their entire crew that went to We Day. These florescent yellow shirts really glowed in the black light of the arena and would be standing out on TV and the simulcast.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
We Day then started in earnest. This concert was designed for youth. It was amazing. You had 5 to 6 minutes of high energy music and dancing followed by a short video and then a speaker. This kept the attention of all those in the audience. Amazing messages were soaked in by all the students in the audience.

Memorable speakers were The Honorable Paul Martin, Mia Farrow, Hannah Taylor, and Rick Hansen. But it was Spencer West and the Kielburger Brothers. The ability of these speakers to stir emotions inside todays teens and make them want to be agents of change shows the power of the day.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
Kids walked out of the Arena wanting to do more. Asking questions about how they were going to change things at school, in their community and around the globe.

Arriving back at the school we had a debriefing session and started with the next stage of this process. The Vow of Silence.

This will take place on November 30. Our goal, to silence our school, raise $500 and stand in solidarity with those who do not have a voice around the world.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
Updates to follow!

Halloween for Hunger... The Results

2011-11-01T21:26:00.002-05:00

Today is November 1st and the students have returned from Halloween for Hunger. Over half of the students participated. I am very impressed. These students decided to forgo candy at houses to ask for donations to Winnipeg Harvest. We have great kids. One of their comments this morning was...
"The people in the neighborhood were all saying WE LOVE Sargent Park Kids". Well so do I.

I set the bar high when I asked these students to participate. I asked them to try to get 1400 items for harvest. They almost made this goal. They brought in 1281 items for Winnipeg Harvest. It is all sitting in my computer lab. Tomorrow we will package it up and send it up the street to the food bank.

Way to go Sargent Park. You are truly amazing. Great group of kids and fantastic team of teachers pushing you to bigger and better things. Keep it up... soon we will be doing more great things.

Here is a movie of the students creating a wall with 1300 items of food.

New Year New Citizenship Curriculum

2011-10-29T12:24:00.001-05:00

Well it is the end of October, the temperature is cooling off here in Manitoba but it is rising inside the Grade 8 classes at Sargent Park School. We are embarking on our fourth year of Teaching Citizenship and we have added a few new twists.

One of the first twists is that we have asked the students to participate in an activity called Halloween for Hunger.

We have had 3 meetings with the students so far. Of the 140 that we teach between 60 and 70 are willing to do this activity. Wow if each student brings in 10 items for our food bank that would be over 700 items. Our class food drives have been successful so far and we have brought in between 100 and 200 items. I am proud of our students. Great cause too. Helping hunger at Halloween instead of helping tooth decay.

This year we are a We School. This means that we get to participate in We Day in Winnipeg and do activities for Free the Children. This has opened up many opportunities for our students to see the power of youth in action. We get to take 45 students to this event. So they are showing us actions they are doing to be chosen. Sadly there will be lots of competition. and not enough seats. The rest of the rooms will watch the simulcast on Much Music back at the school.

Here is what we have done so far....

To inspire the students about the power of humanity we showed this X-Factor Australia clip. If you have not seen it you need to. Warning you will need some kleenex at the end. Powerful stuff. When showing this to your students stop it at the 50 second mark. Talk about what they have seen then play the rest of the video. (The crafting of this video by X-factor is also worth noting. For a film class it is amazing how powerful the soundtrack and editing is)

Our first We Day activities focused around Spencer West and Craig Keilburger. Spencer is a motivational speaker for a group called Me to We. It is affiliated with Free the Children and pushes youth to become active in their community and around the world. We showed a video of Spencer

Following that we had the kids read a biography of Spencer we had found online. The students read the biography and highlighted the key words. We are going to have them put all the words into a Word splash like a Wordle.

Once the students complete this task they are doing a few different activities, found on the second page of the document. Most importantly we want the kids to go from I COULD to I WILL statements. Following the I WILL statements we will take a photo of the students eyes and I WILL statement over their mouths. This will be made into a movie and photo mosaic like the one found at this Ewan McIntosh post. Instead of hands we will use our I WILL statements. It should be powerful.

http://yfrog.com/kljbhxuj

We also introduced the students to Craig Keilburger. In my opinion one of the most important Canadians of all time. At such a young age Craig is the founder and spark behind the Free the Children Organization. This is a group he started when he was but.... 11 years old.

As we were studying and learning about Craig the idea was to draw parallels between his life and the lives of my students. We used a 3 column approach to attack this issue. I found a biography of Craig online and the students read and watched the video to find out key characteristics about Craig's life and passions. It was interesting to see all the interest in what he had accomplished and to see them struggle to see similarities between what their lives are like and what his has been. Once the students had done this note taking we asked them to choose 4 character traits they admire in Craig and write a few sentences explaining why they had chosen them.

Lots of work for a morning but it was amazing. I had two classes in my room. That is 70 students. All of them were on task and talking about what we were doing and the people they had just met on video and print.

We will continue this lesson on Monday morning. Following this we will show Pay It Forward and inspire the students to do Random Acts of Kindness!! Wow they will really start to change soon!!

October Updates and a Citizenship Curriculum?

2011-10-10T12:45:00.000-05:00

Keeping a internal promise I made this summer I am trying to blog more this year. One of the things I will do is to do monthly updates on my pedagogy and goings on at school. Welcome to the end of my first month.

In math we started a collaborative project with two schools in Ontario. My posts were all under the Mantario Running tag at the Sargent Park Mathzone. I am grateful to my two Ontario schools who also participated. I need to apologize about my fizzling out at the end. We managed to incorporate a good deal of a ratio, rate and proportion unit around our cross country seasons. Now that cross country season is over I hope to connect with Andy and Heather's classes in eluminate and do some creative problem solving.

Speaking of running. Did you know that my Cross Country team won all four categories eligable to us this year. Fantastic running and they trained over 3500 kms collectively. Great job runners! Here is our map.

View Mantario Running in a larger map

Our next Math Unit will be on graphing. I have found two great lessons from NCTM that fit into our Citizenship Project this year. I am looking forward to pushing my students to learn graphing and learn about world issues at the same time. Amazing how things fall into our laps sometimes.

Speaking of Citizenship, Sargent Park, is part of WeDay this year.

This is so exciting. If you are interested in teaching responsibility and citizenship to your students their website is where you need to go. I am amazed by what the Free the Children organization presents to teachers and students. We still will be doing our old favorites to build citizenship this year. Pay it Forward, 25 Cents a Day and 2 Minutes to Make a Difference. But we are adding more fabulous things this year. We will do a Halloween Foodbank Drive. Instead of going out and asking for candy students will have a choice to go to their neighbours and ask for donations of canned goods to take to a foodbank.

Amazingly enough October was our foodbank drive month. Kismit again!! In November we will do the Vow of Silence that is to educate the students about children who are subjected to exploitation, poverty and the denial of their basic rights.

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It seems like so much to do in so little time but with a team effort we can build the leaders of tomorrow and teach the curriculum too. With that in mind I have started a new blog. Very much in its infancy but a place for my students to go when they are trying to make a difference. Titled Embracing Citizenship it will be a hub and information stop for this new Citizenship Curriculum my team and I are creating at Sargent Park School. Wow all of that in September.... so much time still to go and we are filled to the rim with goodness. Looking forward to October and November.

Hard Drive Failure

2011-10-02T16:10:00.000-05:00

cc licensed flickr photo shared by hindesite

I never thought I would say this but.... please back up your backup!! A few weeks ago I had a catastrophic hard drive meltdown. Not on my aging MBP but on my brand new Lacie External Hard Drive. Here is how it unfolded.

I was sitting in my working spot uploading photos to my Aperture Libraries when my Lacie fell over on the carpet. It did not fall off a table, or even 6 cms nope it just fell over onto the carpet. I was not all that worried till I heard the tell tale sound of clicking.... OMG you have to be kidding me.

I tried to recover anything from the drive, took it into the shop but was told it was a HD failure. On that drive were 2 years of photos:(

Such a simple accident can ruin so many memories. Not everything was lost. I had most photos on flickr so I used photo grabbr to get most of them back to a new HD. What I could not find on flickr I found on my Time Machine backup in the basement. Out of 5000+ photos I only lost about 250 but that is 250 to many. I recommend that all of us who use external drives find other drives to back up all photos on.

I am now putting my raw masters onto a different usb hard drive after putting them onto the Lacie. I really do not want to relive that weekend over again.

Why Connections Matter

2011-08-26T14:38:00.000-05:00

As many of you know already a fantastic event happened in the beginning of August.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

Unplug'd was a summit of Canadian Educators who came together because ________ Matters. We got together, networked, talked and were a group for three intensive days. What came out of it was a terrific document and more importantly were connections.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

Every week the connections and people we met at The Edge in Ontario get stronger and stronger. We read each others material, we chat in twitter and Google+ and find new ways to collaborate and make our pedagogy stronger. Already new collaborations are on my horizon with @aforgave, @hdurninand @alanahcallan!!

Being part of the ds106 broadcast and lurking in on Google+ it was fun to see the personalities of Allanah (Her Smile and boat distractions) and Gulia how was working the board from behind the scenes with a Cheshire cat grin on her face. I love all of you.

Why do you have to have Conferences, meetings, meet-ups with collegues who give a damn..... it is because we are not alone. We are connected. It is fun and great to share ideas and collaborate with each other.

~~Unplug'd Rocked.~~ Correction Unplug'd is still Rockin!!

Running for a Purpose

2011-08-26T08:38:00.001-05:00

have been an athlete for many years. I started swimming when I was 12 and continued until I was 20. The following years were a combination of trying out different sports. I ran, ran the Timex Road Racing Series in Winnipeg and even tried triathlons.... but it wasn't until last year where I hooked up with a trainer/friend and started training for marathons. My first real training since I was a swimmer. It felt great and I love training again. But wait this is not why I am writing this post.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

Part of my training regiment for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon is to run a Half Marathon on September 5th. No big deal I have run dozens of half marathons. It is the cause that got my attention. Most half marathons have a cause that you can fundraise for. Normally I shy away from this and use my entry fee as my donation. This half marathon is different. The cause is Diabetes. Normally that wouldn't do much for me until May of this year.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

During the month of May one of my twins Colin started to have headaches and wetting the bed frequently. We took him to the doctor and we were sent immediately to the Endocrinologist. We informed that he had Type 1 Diabetes. Colin had lost the lottery and was the one in 600 kid that had a bad pancreas. It just stopped working. Colin took it stride, we as parents learned how to give him insulin, and life moved on. New routines new challenges but life moved on

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

Interestingly enough soon after Colin was diagnosed lots of stories in the news was talking about new advancements in Diabetes Research. It was most promising. Perhaps in Colin's lifetime he will be cured of this disease.

I have friends with Type 1 Diabeties, @cogdog has run many a marathon to raise funds for diabetes. Now it is my turn to ask for help. You too can play a part in curing this disease.

Link to>>> Sponsoring my run....<<<<

will provide funds to search for a cure for diabetes. I know there are many of you out there. If we all do a little it is amazing how those "littles" become so much. Thank you in advance. I will keep you posted on the fundraising and the result!

My Unplug'd Experience

2011-08-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

The Unplug'd Participantscc licensed flickr photo shared by unplugd

From August 5 to 7th 2011 forty Canadian Educators got together to spend time talking about "Why ________ Matters!". It was a truly Canadian experience. Why had we gotten together and were would this be leading us too? These are questions I still wrestle with today when explaining to people what we accomplished that weekend. Perhaps the Unplug'd website would help. Here is what it said:

UnPlug’d brings together Canadian educational change agents to share peer-reviewed success stories; to deepen relationships among participants; to publish the collective vision of the group. Grassroots educators will share their first-hand experiences, collectively considering modern approaches to learning. The summit will culminate with the release a publication that communicates a vision for the future of K-12 education in Canada.

Forty educators, 40 stories made for passionate discussions. It was the discussion that was so special about Unplugd. Most of us were familiar with each other from our online PLN. We had talked, chatted in 140 characters or less but never sat down and looked each other in the eyes and had conversations. It is always fascinating to meet people in our online network and family F2F. Things change and we start to hear the passion behind the words that we read so often. This is one of the reasons why Unplug'd worked. We did deepen relationships with other participants such a powerful experience.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
We were able to unhook ourselves from the network. Have a F2F network of people all gathered around a table, canoe, dock, lake, cabin, meal anywhere you could sit or be with someone conversations were happening. Real conversations. This was so rich.

All of us came with our homework completed. An essay of 250 to 400 words. Something you were passionate about. We were grouped into small pods or chapter groups with a loose connection between us. What was amazing is that when we all shared our stories and essays it was obvious that we were meant to be in that specific group. The Organizers had grouped us based on title alone. As we read, shared and became a team you could see the threads holding us together. As the organizers said in their introduction

to publish the collective vision of the group. Grassroots educators will share their first-hand experiences, collectively considering modern approaches to learning.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

When I walked into this project it would be fair that my batteries were on low. I had gotten through the year, had great students, used tech to capture their imagination and allow them to be producers of learning but still felt empty. I had not done something new, not found anything to push my envelope of learning. Unplug'd changed all of that. Personally I am recharged and have done 2 blog posts in a week. Reflecting, thinking and sharing thoughts. Wow! It is fun to write again. All of this would not have happened if it was not for that weekend.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10
But where do we go. The book has been published. The Introduction and Chapter 1 are available now and the next chapters will be published every week. This allows for discussion, debate and conversations in manageable chunks. I hope you all read the book and soak in the messages that were shared. Something will resonate with you. Take that thought, that bit of knowledge and use it to recharge your batteries.

This was a bit of a rambling post but hey I got it done. There will be more posts to come. Just like a sunrise:)

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

London Riots

2011-08-11T10:11:00.000-05:00

Before I begin to unpack the fantastic adventure I had with the #unplugd11 crew out in Ontario a new post popped into my head yesterday. Yes a new post. Been a while. Since April. Bad Blogging.... but here it is.

As I was driving to pick up my son at his camp the CBC news came on and they were talking about the Riots in London and why they were happening. One thing mentioned was the disenfranchised youth. Kids that have been forgotten by social programs, can't find work, or do not want to find work, who are using social media to gather and loot and riot.

Image from London

cc licensed flickr photo shared by tgeasland

This was disturbing in many ways. The riots in Vancouver show that this is not just a London problem. Youth these days see it as OK to go on a rampage and destroy things.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Charles de Jesus
Look around you at the litter on the streets and the malaise with so many 20 somethings. I deal with 13 and 14 year olds. Most of them keen on life still and less than 20% would be susceptible to joining these RIOTS just because they could do mayhem. So where does it break down. How do we go from happy kids to ..... lets go break things and be "bad".

This brings me back to the CBC report yesterday. They interviewed a youth in his 20's in Manchester. What struck me about his interview were the following statements (paraphrasing from memory sorry)

Are you not afraid you are going to be caught? Nah I go out all the time till late in the morning. Never been caught. How many have they caught anyways 3 or 4 maybe 10 they won't get me.
What will happen when you get home? No one cares there. Are they going to ground me? Yell at me. Whatever.

Here is a youtube video (language warning) not the interview I heard but similar

The tone of the interviewee was so nonchalant, almost I am doing this because I am bored. That is the scarey part for me. Just because I am bored I am going to wreck a city and cause lots of damage and hurt people. Yep I have nothing better to do.

I hope we can find a way to improve peoples way of life. Give them something to look forward to. Allow them to find a passion that is something other than looting, violence and mayhem. Perhaps we can all do our part.

Explain to our kids, tell them what is going on in England. Why it started and how it is able to maintain its intensity. After we have dealt with our family we then need to figure a way to use this in school to explain to our students the COST of what is happening. Instant riot leads to long term pain for so many people.

It is a bit of a rant I know but we need to take action now before that youth malaise settles in here and floods over onto the street. The world is going through a rocky rough time right now. We all need to do our part.

Just thinking out loud.

Why you need to control your digital footprint

2011-04-29T10:50:00.000-05:00

I tell students to be wary and cautious about their digital footprint. Yikes now there is even more proof to be cautious.

Courtesy of: Schools.com

Make them aware of the perils of acting out on line. Like an elephant the internet does not forget many things.

Teaching Citizenship Part 3 25 Cents a Day

2011-04-29T10:32:00.001-05:00

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Royal_Rivers

Welcome to 25 Cents a day.

This project was inspired by a email I received from Brian Metcalfe.

http://twentyfivedays.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/it-doesnt-matter-if-youre-6-or-26-or-106/#comment-2550

He had run across this post from 2008. All about one youth and 25 days to try to create change.
I challenged everyone who read my blog to TRY to do something every single day during the holiday season to make a SMALL difference in his or her world. I explained that whoever made the “most difference” in December would win a $25.00 donation to the charity of his or her choice on Christmas night. I SAVED ALL OF MY ALLOWANCE ($25) FOR THE MONTH OF DECEMBER, AND I WAS REALLY SURPRISED AND EXCITED WHEN SEVERAL PEOPLE GENEROUSLY OFFERED TO MATCH MY DONATION (OR MORE)!

At Sargent Park we do many things over the holiday months. We have done

This year it was time for the Grade 8 Students to do something different.

What happens when you challenge students to give up something for a prolonged period of time. You get many groans and moans. If you keep it simple enough the groans turn to cheers and hope. 25 cents a day asked students to donate THEIR OWN MONEY so that we could give it to charity. The goal of this project was to empower students to learn how to give. Over the 3 weeks of the project the goal was to raise up to $600. 140 students at .25 a day means $35 a day and over the 15 days that would mean about $525. Of this money half would go to a local charity and the remaining would be donated to Kiva.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by charbeck10

The students were asked to bring in a quarter every day. A quarter of their own $$ not to ask their parents for it. The quarter symbolized giving up something for someone else. It was not a large sum of money but perhaps 1 less chocolate milk a week so that the could help out others in need.

Can you do without something. Something small but can you sacrifice for the common good of all. Students were at different levels of giving. Some struggled to bring in the quarter while others donated $5 more than once during the campaign.

One might ask did all students participate equally. The answer would be no. Just like with society some gave more than others. I will say this that all students did participate. All gave at least $1 and felt good about it.

Does this fit here?
Not surprisingly, people who belong to online communities having to do with local matters are more likely to say that the Internet has gotten them more involved with their cities or towns. One in seven members (14%) of local online groups say the Internet has helped them become more involved in their local community. Nearly one in five (19%) of people who joined local online groups after first having Internet contact with them say the Internet has increased their involvement with their community.
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2001/Online-Communities/Part-5/1-Introduction.aspx

I sent out a tweet and asked if other schools wanted to participate. I received 4 responses. 2 of them did not pan out because of their own school policies. I did get a positive hit from Karl Fisch. He is an Algebra Teacher at Arapahoe High School in Colorado. He challenged his students to participate and they raised $ 77 in two weeks. He then had his father and a friend from Afghanistan join in to top it off at $300. Having a global connection during this project spurred my students on more. They started to dig deeper into their pockets and donate even more. Not exorbitant amounts but they did bring in more in.

The hardest part of this project for me was to remember to pass the hat around every class. The students however would remind me and continue to donate. In the end we raised $519. That is close to our goal of $600. I donated some extra to Agape Table on their behalf and topped up the Kiva fund.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by charbeck10

Here is the twist. When I introduced the students to Kiva they became even more attentive. On the last day of school I had them all in my room and we were watching the Smartboard. At Kiva we started to choose the recipients for our donations. The kids really were interested in the small write ups about each recipient. We would read a possible recipient and the class would erupt in cheers of yes fun him or her. It started to become contageous. By the time it ended we had funded 12 micro loans. Each being $25. Here are some profiles from Kiva of people we helped.

Alex is from the village of Rizal West San Isidro. He is 46 years old. Alex is single. To make a living, Alex owns and operates a business venture in the agriculture sector raising livestock. While not the only means for generating revenue, the main source of income for the business comes primarily from raising chicken for sale. Alex has been engaged in his business for more than two years and earns approximately 2,000 PHP a month for these activities.

Dominique owns a business that sells soft drinks. She is 40 years old, married and has five children who are between four months and eighteen years old. Her husband is a driver.
Dominique has been selling soft drinks for sixteen years. Her loan will be used to buy more milk, bread, mineral water, and juice to sell.

She hopes to use the new profits from her business to buy living room furniture. She dreams to have a supermarket in the future.


Gungaabuu Ulziibat, 35 years old, lives with his wife and four children in the Bayanhongor province of Mongolia. The family lives together in a ger, a traditional Mongolian nomadic tent, in his brother's enclosure. All of his four children attend a local school and his wife is currently unemployed. Gungaabuu supports his entire family by operating a taxi service in his town. At first, he started a coal and firewood sales business in 2006 and stopped in 2009 due to bad sales. Since May 2010, he has been managing a taxi service after purchasing a car. For the future, he hopes to buy his own enclosure and grocery shop. He is requesting a 300,000 MNT loan in order to purchase necessary tools and parts, such as 4 tires, for his car.


Kiva is a site where you can donate and create microloans for people in around the world. Once you invest in Kiva and your loan is paid back you get to reinvest the origional donation with other groups and individuals. Here is more information about what Kiva does.

Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva was born of the following beliefs:

People are by nature generous, and will help others if given the opportunity to do so in a transparent, accountable way.
The poor are highly motivated and can be very successful when given an opportunity.
By connecting people we can create relationships beyond financial transactions, and build a global community expressing support and encouragement of one another.

Kiva promotes:

Dignity: Kiva encourages partnership relationships as opposed to benefactor relationships. Partnership relationships are characterized by mutual dignity and respect.
Accountability: Loans encourage more accountability than donations where repayment is not expected.
Transparency: The Kiva website is an open platform where communication can flow freely around the world.

As of November 2009, Kiva has facilitated over $100 million in loans.
http://www.kiva.org/about

When we do 25 cents a Day next year I will show the faces of the people we could be helping and share their simple stories. Stories of people wanting a loan so that they can make their lives better. We will use last years money to start the program off. This will show the faces of the people we have helped and encourage the donations to start coming in.

To take this project school wide I plan to include the Grade 7 team. They study Developing Countries. They will choose a country and go to Kiva to find a possible recipient of their fundraising. The site and profile of the recipient will give great background information about the country and of the people who live there.

So as I presented to a crowd of educators I mentioned the following stats....

500 of us in this room teaching approximately 15 000 students. If each one of them brought in $5 over the campaign we would have raised $75 000 dollars. If half of that goes to local charities and the other half goes to Kiva $37 500 becomes 1 500 micro-loans of $25. Pretty powerful math.

Now I challenge the online community. There are just as many of your reading this post and what could you and your students do? Kiva is a fantastic chance to take student philanthropy to the next level. Through the use of Social Media we now have the ability to help people with a click of a mouse. Using microloans allows kids to take control. $25 makes a difference, Contact me and we can create a movement that will change peoples lives.

Teaching Citizenship Part 2 Pay It Forward

2011-04-06T20:55:00.000-05:00

Part 1 Pay it Forward (what can you do to make someones life better, Random act of Kindness)
How important is a single act of kindness? For most teens it can be the first step to becoming a better citizen. How can we teach this and why should we bother?
Inspired by a teacher.... this is important. We need to be real not just standing on a stage. Powerful actions come from leaders who inspire. The events of kindness will start small but once one kid realizes what can happen they all start to join in.
How many of you have seen the movie?
Read the book?
Pay it forward was a 2000 Movie starring

Helen Hunt
Kevin Spacey
Haley Joel Osment

The story was about a young teen boy who takes a Social Studies assignment to Heart. His teacher Mr. St. Clair put this up on the Board THINK OF AN IDEA FOR WORLD CHANGE, AND PUT IT INTO ACTION.
When confronted by Trevor’s mother in the movie he describes the project this way...
"First of all, it's a voluntary assignment. For extra credit. If a student finds the idea overwhelming, he or she need not participate. Second of all, what I want is for the students to re-examine their role in the world, and think of ways one person can make a difference. It's a very healthy exercise."
http://www.payitforwardfoundation.org/exerpt-older.html

Trevor’s idea was as follows

"You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how

they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward...to three more people. Each. So, nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven." He turned on the calculator, punched in a few numbers. "Then it sort of spreads out, see, to eighty-one, then two hundred forty-three, then seven hundred twenty-nine, then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven. See how big it gets?"

This is how I start to imprint citizenship on my Grade 8 Students. In November before the winter holiday season we as a group (140) students sit and watch Pay It Forward. In the 3 years that we have been doing this at Sargent Park the movie still pulls at my heart. Students watch the movie, brainstorm ideas that can be their random acts of kindness.

140 x 1 is 140 acts of kindness if people kept on doing or thinking about these acts over a period of time they would be sustained. (Not exponentially like in the movie but increased non the less) Students have 2 weeks to complete their act of kindness. They are expected to write about it at their blogs and to document their act somehow;

picture
movie
note

Every set of students provides a different set of solutions to this assignment. The first year we did this was the year of the snow storm over the Winter break. 1 out of 3 students decided that shoveling the snow was their act of kindness, not someone else’s walk or driveway but their own. Disappointing yes but still a first step. In the next years students chose to do more interesting acts of kindness. They searched out opportunities to do work in the community to make lives better. Students chose to

work at a soup kitchen
donate clothes and other items of their own to Salvation Army
Create a mini food drive for Winnipeg harvest
A group of students collect their own $$ and create packages for children at Childrens hospital
Write to soldiers overseas
Bake cookies for seniors

In the two years that have followed less students have done the babysitting/chore tasks and looked for larger ones. Every year it continues to get better. this year we had one group of girls go and sing carols at a local supermarket. It was amazing. The girls caroling raised $210 in 90 minutes

The girls did an amazing job. When we took them to Siloam they were welcomed and admired by the adults who run the shelter. The girls were gracious and enjoyed their trip. Yet on the car ride home the conversation they were having demonstrated to me that they still "did not get it". The larger picture of poverty and why we were doing this assignment had not yet sunk in. They are amazing kids, and are on the road to being a better citizen but still have a distance to go.

During this assignment I was interviewd on the radio. The local public broadcaster CBC was having a Pay It Forward Day. They asked me questions about the project and why we do it. Here is the interview.

Some things I remember from the interview are being asked do other teachers do this? I answered... I am not sure? I do know this our parents are proud of their children doing these acts of kindness. Lets just imagine some numbers. In my school division there are:

2307 grade 7 students in the Winnipeg School Division
2295 grade 8 students in Winnipeg School Division (Sargent Park is only 6%)
4602 both in the Winnipeg School Division
2535 grade 9 in the Winnipeg School Division

That is approximately 7000 for 3 grades in one division. If one out of every 10 students or 10% were to do a “Pay it forward” act of kindness that would be 700 students for one division alone. If you factor in the Province there are 180 000 students. If 1% did this project that would be 1800 students doing Random Acts of Kindness!.
In the audience at the conference where I gave this keynote there were 500 teachers and each with at least 30 students each. That is 15000 students... imagine if .....you get the picture.

If we could plan to do Pay it forward in December 2011 that would really bring to light the notion of Citizenship and the potential of you to the public eye. If you are interested in doing this next year email me and I will start a wiki where we can collect all the stories of kids making a difference in their communities. If you want more information about Pay It Forward you can go to these two websites.

Pay it forward Movement http://www.payitforwardmovement.org/
Pay it forward foundation http://www.payitforwardfoundation.org/

This is a great project for teachers to promote the goodness of teens. Teens can be helpful, fantastic and amazing. These are the stories we need to get out not the ones the news shows often of teens violence and apathy.

This is the first step. The students get into the “Mood” by doing this act of Kindness. This is the first responsibility that brings about better citizenship. Doing good things just BECAUSE. Not for money or attention just because it is right to help others who need help. This activity bridges nicely into the second project.... 25 cents a day.

Teaching Citizenship Part 1 The WHY....

2011-04-06T20:26:00.000-05:00

This is an attempt to recreate my keynote from Byte 2011. I really want to get across why it is important to teach citizenship or to model being a good citizen. It is in all of our best interests.

I am not going to lie to you. I am a lucky person. I love my job, I love my students and I do not have any problem going to work every day. I teach in a rather large Nursery to Grade 9 school in the west end of Winnipeg. Sargent Park School has a population of about 1000 students of which the 140 grade 8 students are all mine. The majority of them are kind courteous and kids you would bring home to meet your family.

So why am I so concerned about teaching Citizenship to students. Think about the news lately. What is the dominating theme in popular media...

Facebook is bad. Bad Bad Bad? Yet..

Yet around the world things are happening because of Social Media... but it is bad please remember that!!
Youtube gets cute kids noticed.

Kids should not be on the computer just learning reading writing and writhmatic.

If you were to ask my parents who live across from Ecole Robert H Smith (a large elementary school and popular teen late night hangout) they might describe teens this way:

“Hanging out late in public places”, 7/11, play structures
lazy just give me the answer please
naive fragile unique
Not go getter's “do I have too?”

Not the most flattering light to see the next generation of leaders in is it?

On the other hand

Teachers see:

Self-absorbed; indulged; multi-tasking
decent, grounded and optimistic
entitled, distracted, perplexed
impulsive, impatient, collaborative.
hopeful, restless, connected
connected, curious, social

Let's Define Citizenship.

"Active citizenship" is the philosophy that citizens should work towards the betterment of their community through economic participation, public , volunteer work, and other such efforts to improve life for all citizens.
Citizenship was equated by Virginia Leary (1999) as connoting "a bundle of rights

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship

But lets look at this another way. Perhaps citizenship is not a bundle of rights but a bundle of responsibilities. Kids especially teens do not just wake up and understand these bundles of responsibilities. They have a hard enough time waking up!!

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Ollie Crafoord

I think that the vast majority of teens are trying to find themselves. They need a push them to go in positive directions. A favorite analogy of mine is that teens are clay creatures that have been molded into who they are by their previous experiences but the clay is not cured yet. We still have time to mold some important imprinting into these creatures before it is set.

Teens have a hard time seeing past their out-stretched hand. Their world view is only as far as their hand can reach to the next french fry or meal. (Imagine Linda Carter and Wonder Woman).

These students will be adults soon and need to be shown how they can become better citizens, to do their part in making life better for others.

As educators we all need young adults to wrestle with these ideas or responsibilities before they take their rightful place as leaders in our communities and our world.

I think you can create better citizens by empowering students to become better people. At Sargent Park we do three projects a year in Grade 8:

Part 1 Pay it Forward (Individual Random act of Kindness)
Part 2 25¢ a day (the power of the click. In just one click you can help people from all over the world. Now local is global)
Part 3 2 Minutes to Make a Difference (Student initiated go out and make a difference video)

When do we have time to do all of this.... Creative time-tabling and homework kids WANT to do:) Believe it or not there are lots of curricular connections to all of these projects. I will point them out to you during this brief talk.

How about an Online Multiple Choice Experience

2011-01-23T15:02:00.000-06:00

Here are three question that I created in a matter of minutes at a site called Flisti. It is really easy and if the embed code works pretty catchy and student friendly.

Would you use this tool in your class?

Motivation, Daniel Pink and a White Board HMMM

2011-01-02T10:55:00.001-06:00

With almost 4 million views at youtube I think some of you have seen this video. As I watched it today it made me think about how I teach. The reward system we offer students for completed work and what we have to do to foster "REAL" thinking. My brain is still coming up with ideas Daniel Pink mentioned in his talk.

Drive The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us.

The way this artist renders the talk into cartoon ideas is so intriguing. I have many talented students in my class and oodles of white board space. Perhaps this style of movie will be motivating to my students or yours.

Please leave a reply with your thoughts on this video.

Thanks

So How did the $0.25 a day work out??

2010-12-23T13:02:00.000-06:00

Our winter campaign of charity has finished and I have some tremendous results to share with you. For the readers of this blog you will have read this post. In it I describe the 3 week plus 3 day push to have students contribute $0.25 of their own money everyday. They were to give up something small once a week and contribute THEIR money and not their parents to raise money for some holiday charities. I blogged about this, put it out on twitter to try to get other schools to participate. I even created a wiki to house all of this information.

In the end I had one other school participate. Karl Fisch and his fantastic math students at AHS in Colorado participated. Here is an excerpt from Karl's post;

Our goal was a quarter a day per student for the remaining ten days we had of class, which worked out to $62.50 for the twenty-five students in my class. We ended up at $77.26. (Including one student who chased me down in the cafeteria on the last day before break – which is three days after the last day my class meets – to hand me 85 cents.) I said I would match up to $100, so I’ll be matching with $77.26. My Dad apparently still reads my blog and he said he’d match at 50% of what I matched, so that’s another $38.63. And then Rob in Afghanistan, who I’ve blogged about before, sent me an email letting me know he would be sending me a $100 check as well.

So that works out to $293.15 (okay, I’m gonna chip in another $6.85 to make that $300). Now, I know that’s not a huge amount of money, and I didn’t take advantage of the full educational possibilities here (see some of Bill Ferriter’s excellent work with Kiva), but it will still make a difference for the entrepreneur(s) we fund with this (and, of course, when it gets paid back I’ll re-loan it again and again – that’s part of the beauty of Kiva).

Thank you Karl for giving us at Sargent Park someone else to look at during this project. It is hard sometimes to do things on your own.

So how did we do at Sargent Park. Over the 3 week 3 day period we raised $519. This is increadable. If the students all had brought in $0.25 we would have been at approximately $650. I am impressed and awestruck. Thank you Sargent Park Grade 8 Students. Your generosity is appreciated.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

On the last day of school we had a movie morning to celebrate the completion of our work. When the movie was over I told the students that instead of buying the treats or candy this year I was donating to Agape Table. In front of them I pulled up the web donate and proceeded to donate $150 to this worthy charity. I did this with a purpose. I had to show them that adults donate too and I wanted them to see the power of donating. This was further amplified when we started donating their charity donations.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

This is how it broke down. We gave $300 to 1HopeWinnipeg. This local charity operates 5 different shelters around the city. $300 will help out tremendously. The rest of their charitable donations went to Kiva. This is also where things got really fun. Imagine if you will over 100 students in a classroom. Looking at a Smartboard with the Kiva Site up. I now explain what Kiva does and how it works. As a group now we start reading the stories on the Kiva site and choosing recipients. The kids ate this up. They were cheering and whooping at every donation that we made. In total we made 11 donations to Kiva helping finance Micro loans around the world.

I have to admit the power of the group being there when we made all of these donations is now a key element in this project. Kids donated the money they have to see it at work.

Where do we go from here? I would like to get more schools around the globe participating in this project. Have them find a way for kids to donate money and see the power of philanthropy. Already the Grade 7 team in my building is incorporating this idea into their study of the Developing World and will do a smaller but similar campaign in the new year. I still would like to see it develop more. There are many 13 year olds in school across the city. If more of them participated we could really make a difference. With that said there are many school children all over the globe. Imagine if we harnessed that power. Wow that would make another good post and a great story. Thanks for listening and best of the season to all of you out there.

Once Again I have Amazing Kids... Pay it Forward

2010-12-20T20:17:00.001-06:00

We start of our 2 Minutes to Make a Difference Project every year with Pay it Forward. We get the students to watch the movie, reflect on the ideas expressed in the movie and then have them go out and do a Random Act of Kindness.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by mtsofan

It all started three years ago when my new teaching team mate Michele was first introduced to the 2 minutes project. She said that for a few years she had been doing a Pay it Forward unit with her students. The two ideas meshed perfectly with each other. Here is an excerpt from the movie...

^{"You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how}

^{they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward...to three more people. Each. So, nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven." He turned on the calculator, punched in a few numbers. "Then it sort of spreads out, see, to eighty-one, then two hundred forty-three, then seven hundred twenty-nine, then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven. See how big it gets?"}

The first year students were a bit perplexed with the whole idea of doing a random act of kindness. They went and babysat younger siblings for free, shoveled walks and did chores. While these were altruistic and doing a good deed they were weak in the "Random Act" and helping aspects of the Pay it Forward Movement. Still when the goal is to awaken a feeling of giving and citizenship in 13 year old kids it was somewhat of a success.

The next year we started off the same way as in the past. One small change occurred the students talked about all of the possible activities they could do right after the movie. They were excited and almost egging each other on to do bigger and better deeds. This time the students donated toys to hospitals, volunteered at daycares and sent pillows to soldiers overseas. The students really understood what was needed to do a Pay it Forward activity. The best examples was Elijah and her group. They pooled their own money and created gift baskets for the Children's Hospital.

Which brings us to this year. I was skeptical of what could be accomplished. Last years crew had done a great job and I was extremely hopeful that this years crew would be similar. I was not disappointed. The students did a great job. We had boys delivering toys to churches, writing letters to soldiers overseas, and caroling outside of a supermarket to raise funds for a homeless shelter and taking toys to the Childrens Hospital.

Here are all of the projects. Please leave comments behind for the students they would appreciate that.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by jillallyn

In an interesting twist I was interviewed by the local CBC with a student about Pay it Forward.

Listen!

They had been talking about it all day on the station. People had called in talking about buying coffee for strangers and purchasing their parking... I emailed the station and told them about the students and their projects. They interviewed myself and a student. I guess they now know what a "Pay it forward" can look like. 140 students doing random acts of kindness really ROCKS. I have great students.

Would your students donate $0.25 a day?

2010-11-26T12:25:00.000-06:00

So once again Brian Metcalfe has given me an ideas that well.... I have decided to run with. It is a simple premise but holds a huge potential. I am asking all of my students (140) to bring in a donation of $0.25 a day. We will continue to do this up till the Winter Break on December 23.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by elycefeliz

Every year the Grade 8 students have found a Christmas Charity to help out. It is the start to our Citizenship Project 2 minutes to make a Difference. We are still doing that. We have chosen 1 Hope Winnipeg this year as our major charity. Half of all money raised will go to 1 Hope Winnipeg. The other money raised will be donated to charities that the students will choose. This is why it is so powerful. We are putting the power in their hands. They donated the money and they get to choose who to give it to.

So how do you get students to donate 25 cents a day. I have not figured that out yet. I know that each teacher is going to have to work hard at keeping this idea going. Students will forget and decide that they do not want to participate. Teachers can keep the flame alive though and I am adding a global touch. Through my network on twitter and my readership here I hope to have other schools across Canada and around the world participate. I have created a wiki to keep track of the schools and what they have raised. The wiki will be open and each participating school will be able to do whatever they want. Seeing kids from around the globe doing this event with them could spur them on.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Icky Pic

It is important that students do not get this money from their parents. They have to earn it or give up something to make the donation. We are sending a note home to parents so that they understand that this is supposed to be a student project not a parent project. Most of our students spend money at our canteen or local restaurants at lunch. Giving up a quarter for most of them will not be a deal breaker. THEY just have to understand the sacrifice that is needed. I hope it works. If it does the students at the school will have raised $1800 in a short 4 weeks. Powerful stuff.

Now for the important question. Who is going to join? Please email me and join the wiki.

chris (dot) harbeck (at) gmail.com

Life Long Learner

2010-10-28T15:20:00.000-05:00

I have some people who have influenced my teaching as mentors. The first is Darren Kuropatwa who introduced me to this wonderful world of online learning and PLN's. The other is Brian Metcalfe. Brian was a tech mentor in our division. From my first days teaching elementary classes to my current job of teaching Grade 8 Brian was always learning.

He would be the mentor that would find out new things and SHARE them with the masses. He created an online and paper newsletter showcasing all that he was learning. Brian retired a few years ago but....

Brian continues to learn. He attends every meeting of significance in the province. He attends conferences routinely and was the reason why I met Dr. Tim Tyson and started the 2 Minutes to Make a Difference Project with the Grade 8's at school.

Brian in retirement learns more everyday then most of the teachers I work with in my division. Why is that. Why does a guy who is away from the school setting still want to learn and be part of the mix? Why is he watching K12 Online when the rest of the tech mentors who are still working are not, or are not telling people about it!! You might have to ask Brian Metcalfe over at his blog. Brian was so kind after my recent presentation.

2minutes spreading our roots

View more presentations from charbeck1. Here is the ustream.

Brian emailed my admin and told them about the presentation and how it was an enjoyable experience. It is nice to have a fan like Brian.

I want to be a life long learner. Thanks for pushing me to do more and be a better teacher. We all can learn from Brian

At Home Sick

2010-10-28T14:55:00.000-05:00

Drat one of those 1000 kids I am in contact with everyday has infected me with a virus... I am not really super sick but I have lost my voice. A teacher without a voice is not effective so I stayed home today.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by D'Arcy Norman

One of the luxuries of having a blog is being connected to your students all the time. If I need to say something to them outside of school hours there is always a way to do it.

Today I left the sub plans on the class blog. Here the students could see what was expected of them. I also was in the Math Help Chat box. Kids would see in real time me typing away answering questions if they needed help.

I was at home with no voice but in the room as loud as ever using a keyboard. Cool. Connectiveness. I like it:)

Why we use Social Media

2010-10-17T19:21:00.001-05:00

In my last post I talked about my newest project Sesame Street Video Mashups... We filmed on Friday and the kids are busy creating posts explaining the ideas of Ratio Rate and Proportional Reasoning.
814
816
817
873

It is amazing how after doing a few weeks of hard work and learning concepts kids need to release some energy. When I first introduced this project they were excited. Seeing them sing, make puppets, and create these videos was so exciting.

For many years I have been using these culminating projects to build excitement and bridge into the next unit. If you are willing to let your students go wild and be creative for a bit you can reap the rewards. Math is a subject that can be boring a dull. By infusing it with some fun you can make even the quietest student incredible.

I have one student that amazed me for this project. Kids had a chance to work with in up to a group of three. This student chose to work alone. She is a student who is very bright but never makes eye contact or never volunteers answers in class. You would not characterize her as a problem child but she is uber-shy. On Friday she absolutely blew my mind.

We entered class and she pulled out these homemade puppets. She had a homemade background and was ready to film. I wondered how a quiet student could make a video. She set up her camera and started to film with these puppets. The room was a bit noisy so I asked if she wanted to stay for a few minutes after class and film. I held the camera and she did the rest of the work. She was loud, clear and her information was terrific. I was amazed at how well she did in the acting and how excited she was. Her video reminded me of my childhood watching Sesame Street.

This is why using 21stC tools is so important to students. They all have a voice and gain confidence in their work. Kids using keyboards to speak loud, creating movies to show understanding are commonplace in some classrooms. WE need to let these kids shine.

I am glad that I am challenging myself to use what kids like to bring out their understanding in math in new and different ways. We are doing Pythagoras next and since they like the video project so much we are going to do a different Video Mashup....

I am sure if you have kids you will recognize the following cartoon, if you have never watched it before you should but I warn you it is addicting... so here is the next big movie production (hey we used Flip cameras and they worked great!!)

Kids love this show. It seems to be a no brainer. So wait till next month when they make their new videos.

Update

The videos are done. The kids had a hoot and are in the process of writing about ratio, rate and proportion. The energy level was off the scale and most had the video done on time.

Building Audience

2010-10-11T20:02:00.000-05:00

Over the past few years I have noticed a growing phenomenon. Kids are getting into commenting.

My students start to comment from the first posts of the year. I have just had them do a math profile. How do you see yourself as a math student etc. I asked that they comment and they have. But how did they get there? I am lucky that the Grade 7 teacher uses blogs too. Together we create quite a team. He and I give the Grade seven students the basics and by the time they hit Grade 8 they are ready to really do some spectacular things.

But still how do you get them to comment. At first you entice them with the possibilities of getting marks for commenting. You need to build a routine for the students to follow. I follow the "Whose line is it Anyways" approach. You will get one gazillion marks if you...

The points were just there. They did not mean much. Kids in my classes get marked for blog work. Posts and assignments are one category and comments are another. The students think they are worth "lots" of marks but in reality they are not. It does not matter however. Soon after the first term is over and they have a routine of reading the blog regularly and have been trained at giving great comments the work other students produce improves. Kids that get blog post comments create better posts than kids that do not. All blog posts are being commented on so ALL posts are done better. Some of the advice in the comments are amazing. On average posts are receiving 4 comments each. Some are getting over 10. After the first term the students do not ask about "comment marks" anymore. They just leave comments. When they get to Grade 9 and are in their third year of commenting they are truly an audience of peers who help each other.

Kids are amazing. Train them and teach them to be a community of learners and they will take themselves places together they could not get to alone.

I am one lucky teacher... really I am. You can be too. Get the kids to comment. Get them to blog. You will be glad that you did.

Taking the next step... Sesame Street

2010-10-07T10:24:00.002-05:00

I have been lacking innovating ideas as of late. I am going to start pushing the envelope. Yesterday on twitter someone sent me a video.

That was not the video I saw but it is what captured my attention. Kids love Sesame Street. They all remembered different videos from this show that captured their imagination.

Just like their love of tech students love children's television programming. So I am going to harness both of these loves. Their first assignment for me in wrapping up their first unit on Ratio, Rate and Proportional Reasoning is to make a video parody of a Sesame Street Video. They will choose the video, then redo the lesson substituting their topic for the one that Sesame street chose.

Ernie could buy a ratio or a rate, the Martians could find a proportion or a ratio. The Genre is set, it must be a Sesame Street video, topic is set it has to be Ratio Rate or Proportions not it is up to the students to create their videos.

I am thinking we will spend one class taking apart the videos and showing the story arc. We then will substitute our topic into the story line (take out 8 and put in rate).

I will send the students home to choose a video over night. This perhaps will be the hardest thing. Then they will have a week to create the new storyline, and film the video. We will post them to the new math youtube channel we are creating.

There now I am doing something different this year.... it is a start.

Creating your Classroom Blogs Part 2 Personalize and Audience

2010-08-31T08:48:00.000-05:00

Here goes the second attempt at this post. Deleted it yesterday by mistake:(

Kids crave audience. To have a good classroom blog where kids want to work you need to build an audience so they preform. There are many great audience builders.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by batmoo

Clustr Maps

I have been using this service since I started blogging. It is simple and effective. What you receive from clustr maps is a small icon that sits on your blogs sidebar. In the design part of your blogspot blog you can choose "add a gadget". Here you scroll down till you find . You will be posting code in from the clustr map site. Go to clustr maps and fill in the form. Following this you will get a box where the html code is for your blog. Copy that code into your clipboard and then paste it into the "add gadgets" box open at your blog. You now have a map in your sidebar that will show where people from around the world have been visiting from. The beauty about clustr maps is that the map just receives dots. A dot for every visit. You will see after a while that many dots will show up from around the world. Some are legitimate hits but many are just google inquiries. The kids do not need to know this ;) Audience is audience. Soon real visitors will come and leave comments behind. When students have audience they will out preform previous standards of work.

Chat Boxes

I see some of you starting to shake in your shoes. Chat boxes are an integral part of any class blog. This can be one of your greatest teaching tools. Kids use the boxes to help each other out. They ask questions, answer other students questions and...... all when they are not in school. The blog and chatbox or help box do not sleep. This makes your classroom alive 24 hours a day. Kids need to have some ground rules though. Make sure that they are aware that the blog and chat box are extensions of school and appropriate behaviour is expected. In my many years blogging and using chat boxes very few "bad" things have gone on. The worst is juvenile boys being boys and some potty jokes. Simply using this a teachable moment and reexplaining the rules of the blog brings everyone back in line. If for some reason it doesn't work I could remove the chat box for a week and show them why they need it when it is no longer there for them. Students do not view it as an MSN zone but as an extension of the the classroom because of the audience you have shown them.

At the beginning of the year I monitor the chat room. Answering questions and overseeing its use. In recent years an amazing thing has taken place. In about October students start monitoring the room. They by choice make having the math blog open during their evening computer sessions. It becomes one tab on their browser and believe it or not they become the teachers. Students teaching students.... does it get any better than that.

I have used many chat boxes but am currently using cbox. It is easy to set up. One thing I will recommend is to turn off the ability to add URLs. Spammers love to drop URLs into your chatboxes. This option negates the potentially bad links sent by spammers. I wanted to reuse a cbox this year but the spammers had gotten to it and continued to add bad comments. I simply created a new cbox and started over again. Simple process. Once again just use the "add gadget" from your blogger design template and paste the html into the space provided.

Chat boxes can change the way your blog works. I highly recommend them.

What about the Parents?

Part of the blog needs to be for parents. It is a spot where you can direct them to go read when they are interested in WHY kids need to learn 21st C literacy. I found many links from John Evan's in his Diigo account. I chose 3 links for parents and here they are:

THIS is a 21st Century Skill by Dean Shareski
21st-Century Skills: Evidence, Relevance, and Effectiveness by Scott Aronowitz
Create, Collaborate, Communicate: Empowering Students With 21st Century Skills by Chris Riedel
US to back 21st century learning By Maggie Shiels

Parents have never asked me Why we blog but I am ready with answers if they do. This brings to a close Day 2 of Setting up your Classroom Blog or Blogs. Tomorrow we will deal with first posts for you and the students and more about building Audience.

Setting up Classroom Blogs Lesson 1

2010-07-29T08:55:00.000-05:00

This will be a series of posts designed to help teachers set up classroom blogs using blogger.com. It is currently the middle of the summer break. Time to stop totally thinking about relaxation and slowly start the process of getting ready for another school year. It is at this time that I start putting the class blogs together for the next year. It is a simple process that takes a bit of time. So I break it up over a few days. I need to get back into the saddle slowly not all at once:)

Today I cleaned up my blogger dashboard. For those of you that have blogs already you know what I am talking about. I have over 30 of them so I need to clean up my dashboard. This means that all old blogs get "hidden".

When you click the hide button only the blogs you want on your dashboard will be visible. All others will be available to you if you click on view all at the bottom of your dashboard.

Now that my dashboard is clean I choose

Here I now go into the process of making the 4 classroom blogs for the year. It is a simple process. Follow the instructions provided by blogger and there should be no problems. I will give a few suggestions however for those of you that are new to this:)

Blog Title. Keep this simple. I just call mine 817 Math (2010) This is just a room number and a year. The title for the student zones does not need to be fancy (but it can be if you like)
Blog Address. It took a while for me to figure out a few tricks here. I always changed the names of my addresses and forgot what they were called. Now I use a simple url and change the last 2 digits to show the year. spmath81710. spmath817 is the room and 10 is the calender year. Next year it would be spmath81711 and so on. It is a nice way to organize your blogs.

You now have a blog. I always publish something as a first post. Today it was titled Test in the body of the blog I simply typed TEST and labeled the post "first post". This is so I can see what is going on when I preview the blog.

The new blogger offers new templates for beginners. This is a nice touch. I chose a template from the start menu but in the near future will change that design. But for today the generic template will do.

Next steps.

You need to go back to your dashboard and click settings

You are going to change a few things in the settings to suit your needs. The first thing I change is under settings/basic I add a description. This description is part of your heading at the blog. Once again I keep this simple.

You then have to save. Moving over2 tabs in the settings brings you to formatting. Here you need to change the time to where you live. This will provide you with an accurate timestamp on when people comment and post to the blog. Handy when tracking student work. Be sure to save these settings.

Finally move on to commenting. Here you have some choices. I chose to allow all people to comment. This is a bit risky for first time bloggers but in all the years I have been doing this there has been very little spam on current blogs. If the spam becomes an issue I will add comment moderation.

My settings on the blogs are

and until something happens I leave the comments wide open. You have many options from only allowing group members to comment to people with google accounts. The problem with limiting comments is that you shut out audience. Kids want to get comments from abroad. If you allow comments from anyone you will be able to receive information for other students. A way around this is to enable comment moderation. I only use this on old blogs to prevent spammers. But you could moderate comments to the blog.

To moderate comments choose "always" and add your email address. Now you get notified and get to read all comments before the arrive at the blog.

Click save setting on the bottom and voila you have set up your blog. Now for the hard part but.......

that is a different post for a different day.

Help. If you have some time...

2010-04-20T09:06:00.000-05:00

My students have finally finished their first versions of their 2 Minutes to Make a Difference movies for this year. A change from last years movies is that we are encouraging them to solicit feedback from classmates and around the world. It would be great if your spring included having students watch the videos and adding comments and ways in which they would make the video better. I will include the playlist from the spmath channel on youtube. I have also included 2 screencaptures of the rubrics we will be using to make give the final marks.

What is important is that there is a global audience for these videos. Please when commenting leave where you are from geographically so the kids see the power of audience.

Thank you in advance

Here are all the videos up to Tuesday. These are first versions of the movies. Please use the following criteria if you are interested in leaving feedback behind:

Use the arrow on the right hand side to switch videos. Thank you for your time

Here are 2 screencaptures of the rubrics

Interviewing an expert

2010-04-14T09:46:00.000-05:00

Part of the changes we made to the 2 Minutes to make a Difference movie project this year was an expectation that the students find an "expert" to talk to. What was impressive was the amount of students scouring the internet to find people that might talk to them or correspond with emails.

Out of 75 marks the interview is only worth 5 but many students are having long conversations with people from around the world. They are learning how to ask questions and how to collect information from these experts. It is ironic how many of the "experts" do not have a great grasp on technology. Many use email but when asked to skype or use a different online tool they had little knowledge on how to connect with my students.

Welcome back the phone. Here the students and the experts were comfortable and the information interchange was excellent.

Part of the reflection at the end of the project will be to explain how the students found their expert and how the "expert's" information helped their movie project. I am impressed with my students. They constantly rise to the level of the challenge provided to them. I need to remember this. Set the bar high and they will achieve more than if they had the bar set lower.

Google Docs takes Steroids

2010-04-14T08:32:00.000-05:00

I have loved Google Docs since I first started using it 3 or 4 years ago. Now I like it even better. Up to a gazillion people can edit and work on 1 document at one time!!! This is a change from the past. Long live etherpad.

Combine that with the power of google and.... voila:) More importantly you can create images like in Microsoft Paint. This has been a feature missing from most of the Macs in my room. Now kids can enhance their posts using google docs instead of trying to find other programs on their computer.

Oh yeah and it is saved with the rest of their work, you can pubish it and link it to documents and.... to your posts:)

Google Docs I <3 you

Movie Project Update

2010-04-12T13:09:00.000-05:00

With the days rapidly dwindling before the Movie Project is done crunch time is upon us. It is evident that this years students are different than last years students.... go figure. Some reinventing of the Movie Project has evolved over the year.

More work needed to be done during school time. This is fine. Problem is that most of that time came out of my math classes. The "team" did not figure out that they too had to donate some time to the cause. Oh well. Perhaps next year the "team" will recognize the importance of the project and jump on board earlier... here is hoping!!

We have given the students a rubric for them to use.

They should have a first draft of their movies done by the end of the week. Next week we will use the rubric and student responses to edit and critique the finished movies. My goal is to have the students leave comments behind at youtube. The groups will then have a chance to redo their movie and resubmit it. Peer feedback will be important to a better finished product. The top groups will benefit from this editing time. Last year we found many groups with grammar and topic errors. A good peer edit will eliminate many of these small errors.

A problem will occur when the other groups do not finish on time and hand in inferior work. It is a fine balance with due dates and students. Some make the due dates others do not. With the movie being 20% of the third term I hope this motivates them to complete it on time.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by randomcuriosity

Pi Day Festivities

2010-03-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

I know it is late. Pi day was at 1:59 on Sunday but we have had no school since then. Today was our first Pi day at school. Imagine an "Amazing Race" but with math clues. Nine teams of Grade 8 students, 2 teams of Grade 9 students and 5 teams of Grade 7 students raced around the school looking for clues based on our favorite irrational number!! Pi!!

What I took away from this experience was that kids love competing and some kids love to compete using math. So here was our format if you want to use it at your school:

Each Grade had 5 questions to answer. Here are mine..
Question 1
A) Count the lockers outside the gym and before Room 2.
B) Use that number as the diameter of a circle.
What is the area of a circle that has B as a diameter?
What room is closest to where you have arrived. You will find your second clue there.
Question 2
Use the room where you area now and call it a radius.
Find the are of a circle that has it as a radius.
Your next clue awaits you there. Question 3
Find the median of the provincial basketball banners by the west gym doors.
Divide that year by 100 and round to the nearest whole number.
Use that number as the circumference of a circle. You will find your next clue at the room that is one whole number larger.
Question 4
Use the Room from Question 3 as a diameter. Find the surface area of a cylinder whose length is also the answer from Question 3.
Round the area up to the nearest unit and you will arrive at your next destination.Question 5
Find the Radius of a circle whose circumference is 98432.72 units. When you find the radius you need to find that number in the gym hallway. Good luck!!
Final Clue
Find the digital root of this radius. The treasure awaits you there.

I placed the clues in envelopes at the locations found in the envelopes, (locker numbers, room numbers etc). After each clue was solved the students would race around to the next clue location and have to find in in close proximity to where the previous clue had sent them.

If I was to do this again I would stagger the groups out and have them start with different questions all returning to the final clue and the prize. The way I did it this year all students started at question 1 and went to question 2 etc. It was a bit of a follow the leader instead of solve it on your own. Oh well.

What Have I learned? I have learned that kids love this activity and as a school we will do it again in a month or so. We will do it outside and set it up like score orienteering. Perhaps more kids will try out and have fun. If not the ones who do sign up will have as much fun as the winners from today's Pi event. I guess I forgot to tell you. All kids received a prize (pizza tickets) due to their large smiles and enthusiasm.

I love my job:)

2010/365 the second month

2010-02-28T13:44:00.002-06:00

I have successfully created a second month of 365 photos. For some reason I missed one day... I took the picture but I cannot find it anywhere. Do not know if this disqualifies me but I am loving this project.

Here is February

Created with flickr slideshow.

Darren Kuropatwa Wolves, Russians and Other Stories

2010-02-27T10:01:00.000-06:00

Here is the wonderful keynote given by Darren yesterday at BYTE2010.

Here is his slidedeck

Teaching Interdependence v2

View more presentations from dkuropatwa.

My first month of 2010/365

2010-01-31T15:38:00.000-06:00

I made it a month. I am trying to do a 2010/365 project this year. So far so good. It is really changing the way I see my life and my day. I am always on the lookout for an interesting shot to tell a story about what happened that day or to improve my photography.

Even on runs now I have my DSLR in its backpack ready to be pulled out when the "perfect shot" is possible. Makes running slower but I am having fun. Here is my first month. May the second month be as much fun.

I recommend this to anyone with a camera. Start now and enjoy the story telling potential that your camera give you.

Created with flickr slideshow.

My 250th Post... and a Black Violin

2010-01-28T13:31:00.000-06:00

We saw an excellent performance today. A group called Black Violin. The students loved the performance. They travel all over the place and if you have a chance to see them please go and enjoy one of the best shows I have seen in ages. Here is the slideshow of todays performance.

Here are some videos...

Once again. Go see them if you ever have the chance!

Haitian Relief What Happened

2010-01-26T19:55:00.000-06:00

WE DID IT!!

cc licensed flickr photo shared by charbeck10

Sargent Park School raised $2100 for Haitian Earthquake Relief. When you couple this with the Canadian Governments matching all donations we raised $4200. This is very respectable for a school of only 1000 students. How did this all happen? Let's go back in time....

Earlier in the week I had been showing "The Big Picture" photo essays from Haiti. This started the classes thinking. At a blog post I requested the students to leave comments behind on what could be done at Sargent Park School.

These are the comments they came up with!! Now they had to make it happen!! We had a meeting and the Grade 8 students asked the Student Council if they could use a Fine Friday to help Haiti. The student council agreed and the ball was set in motion.

Three teams of students created presentations to show to the school. Each presentation based on the age level of the students watching. We chose K to 3 for one assembly, 4 to 6 for another assembly and finally we had the Grade 7 and 9 students. The Grade 8 students did not come to the assemblies because they had already had many information sessions about what was happening in Haiti already.

It was great to see the STUDENTS taking charge of the situation. They were empowered to be the ones in charge. Granted I set the ball in motion and planted the seeds BUT they took the initiative to get the whole school involved.

Fine Friday is a great fundraiser. The school suspends "rules" that can be circumvented by paying a fine. We chose 3 rules; no hats, no iPods in class and no stuffed animals in the classroom. All of these school based rules would be waved on the Friday if the students payed a fine of a dollar. This meant that the students bring in $1 to $3 donate to Haitian Relief.

As you can see from the first picture we did it. Every student on average brought in $2. Over 95% of the student participated. There are no costs involved so everything was pure profit as a fundraiser. Both teachers and the students were impressed with the amount of money raised.

All of this activity falls back into the 2 Minutes to Make a Difference Movie Project that will be finished by late April. I hope that the students now realize that One student or person CAN make a difference.

My Continuing Smartboard Odyssey

2010-01-19T20:35:00.001-06:00

Today the students took control of the Smartboad and the Ustream Channel. They were the ones correcting their work and it went OK. I need to get them to practice writing more on the board. There is a skill to not touching the board with their hand. After yesterdays post on using Ustream I received a comment from Ian H. He recommended Webcam Max as a PC alternative to using Camtwist to stream the desktop to ustream.

The kids took control and here is what they did. I use links and screen captures because the old Macs in my room do not like to wait and process all the embedding.

Correcting Question 1

Correcting Question 2

Correcting Question 3 and beyond

Student Response to the Haitian Earthquake

2010-01-18T21:23:00.001-06:00

We held our student meeting today. The turnout was good and the students were excited to get to work. They decided we would have a FINE FRIDAY. Students can pay a fine and be allowed to listen to Ipods and wear hats inside the school. It allows all to participate for a minimal fine. In a school of 1000 students we should be able to raise up to $1500. We are allowing students to pay a double fine if they wish.

The group decided to create posters to create awareness, get a PSA spot on the announcements and make presentations for the rest of the school. Each group would be responsible for different grade levels. There are many gripping images out there. Some just are not appropriate for the younger students. On Wednesday the groups will fan out throughout the school talking about the earthquake and how it has devastated Haiti.

Here is a draft of the parent letter that have sent for proof reading...

Dear Parents

On Tuesday January 12 Haiti was devastated by a large earthquake. Haiti already one of the poorest countries in the world scrambled to save its citizens. In recent days aid agencies have been working hard to help the people of Haiti. These agencies require money to keep the supplies going to people in need.

On Friday the school is holding a fundraiser. It is called FINE FRIDAY. Students are encouraged to bring a dollar or two and participate. The Elementary students will be allowed to wear a hat during the school day or bring a stuffed animal to school as their "fine". For the Junior High students the will pay a fine to be able to listen to their Ipods or wear a hat. This is a fun way to raise awareness about this important world event.

All students received presentations about what was happening in Haiti. For more information please check out the following websites:

The Big Picture from the Boston Globe Haiti 6 Days Later http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/haiti_six_days_later.html
The Big Picture from the Boston Globe Earthquake In Haiti http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html
2010 Haiti Earthquake from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
The Haitian Earthquake and the student comments Sargent Park Math Zone http://sargentparkmathzone.blogspot.com/2010/01/haitian-earthquake.html

Thank you for your understanding. All donations will be donated to UNICEF. This agency looks after children. The students felt it was important to have all donations go to children. The Canadian International Development Agency or CIDA will match all donations. Any donation is greatly appreciated.

It was great to give the power to the students. See them take charge of the situation and start to get the message out. To often we adults take control, this takes power away from the students when they need it the most. With all the work the students have done on their movie projects this year they are finally learning what it is to be global citizens.

I will keep you updated... thanks for reading.

Using Ustream in the Classroom.

2010-01-18T20:40:00.000-06:00

I love my Smartboard. I use it extensively to connect my lessons to the web. Slides go to slideshare and video is streamed and recorded through ustream.tv. I use ustream instead of the smart recorder because the recording is instant and you are able to embed the video into blogs and wikis immediately. Here is how I do it.

Attached to my smartboard is a Logitech Camera.

I use this as my mic and as my streaming camera. I could use it to capture student work being done in the class. I have had students make videos using this device.

Now I use Camtwist to capture the desktop. This allows me to use the camera's audio and to capture all that happens on the smartboard instead of filming the board from afar.

This is what the camtwist setup looks like for me.

Now I am able to select Camtwist from the ustream menu. This is my video input. I use the camera as my audio and I have an instant screen recorder.

For those of you on PC's I will have to figure out how you use your screen casting abilities. Camtwist is only for Macs.

Tomorrow gets kids involved in the recording process.

Streaming, Smartboards and Mini lessons

2010-01-17T19:21:00.000-06:00

I am going to do some innovative thinking over the next few weeks. Most of it surrounding smartboards and streaming. Hoping to get kids to create mini lessons and post them to ustream, or have their mini lessons done live in class to ustream.

This should be an interesting week. I know this is a small post but I think it is important to get back into the blogging spirit again.

Most of the work will be initally housed at the Sargent Park Math Zone

Haitian Earthquake Part 2

2010-01-17T19:16:00.000-06:00

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Got Phi

I showed the students another photo essay on Friday. I also showed them the comments other students have left behind. All students agreed that something had to be done. As I read the comments to them the more head nodding I was seeing. They have decided to meet a lunch on Monday to come up with a fund raising idea.https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1019297942530526331&postID=7854468568988799374

While we were doing our own investigation of the Haitian Earthquake the other teachers in the school came to the room. They wanted to make what the Grade 8 students had thought of a whole school project. This was fantastic. I was impressed with how the students ideas were spreading already.

Now the students will be running the show on Monday and taking responsibility for fundraising. Here is one way to make students become activists. I will update this post on Tuesday to tell you of how the meeting went and what the students have decided to do.

An experiment with Humanity... and 2 Minutes to Make a Difference

2010-01-13T21:32:00.000-06:00

In recent weeks the students have been working on choosing a topic for their Movie Project. With the recent earthquake in Haiti it is time to see if they are learning that one person can make a difference. I am going to introduce the classes to what happened in Haiti and see if any of the students pick up on the need to do something. Odds are they might not do anything but it will be interesting to see what does transpire. Keep you updated.

Here is the post that the students will use.

Yesterday a great tragedy occurred in Haiti. It was hit by a earthquake that was a 7.0 magnitude on the Richter Scale.

Why is it important to care?
Can you make a difference?
Leave a comment about what you can do.

Starting eportfoios

2010-01-10T11:42:00.000-06:00

I feel very guilty that I have not written in a while. Here is a cross post on the instructions I give my students about getting their eportfolio ready at wikispaces. More content to follow. Sorry for my low output of posts lately.

We are getting ready to do some work on our e-portfolios this year. You need to have certain things done by the end of the week (January 15th).

You need a wikispaces account. Please use a name, email and password that you will remember.
You need to ask to join your class eportfolio wiki. Here are the links to the rooms.
816 eportfolios
817 eportfolios
841 eportfolios
873 eportfolios
At the class site click edit.
The wiki is now a word processor.
You need to find your name, highlight it and then create a link.
Now press save.

Your name should be a red link. Click the red link and you should see this.
Now you will hit the edit button and your eportfolio page is ready to be created.

Now you have your own eportfolio page. You have some small instructions left. Please follow them carefully.

Type [[toc]] and enter twice.
Type your four main subjects in this order each on a separate line Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies. Please add a fifth topic of Other.
After you have typed each of these topics highlight them and choose Heading 1 from the editor bar.
Click save and you should have a framework for what your eportfolio page.

Please do your best to follow these instructions.

A Day at Winnipeg Harvest

2009-12-13T15:11:00.002-06:00

I am truly blessed to work with some incredible students. This year the Grade 8 team decided to take groups of students to a local food agency. Winnipeg Harvest supports food banks, soup kitchens and many other organizations throughout Winnipeg. Harvest feeds over 47 000 Winnipegers a week. This in a city with a population of only 800 000 people.

They are located only a few blocks away from the school.

3 teams of four students and a teacher supervisor went to Harvest for three half day shifts. The first day saw the students work on creating emergency kits for harvest. These kits have one can of protein, one can of vegetables, soup and a grain (pasta or rice). These kits are then placed into a larger bag with 7 other kits. These larger bags are then put on pallets to be shipped around the city.

Here are the students working on that first day. They packed enough kits to fill 1 and a half pallets. Sadly we would have done more but we ran out of protein and could not finish the task.

The next 2 crews of students were on onion and potato detail. Harvest receives produce from local Hutterite Colonies and Peak of the Market. These items come into Harvest in large pallets. They need to be repacked into smaller boxes (banana boxes each weighing 60 lbs). It was fun to go through the large pallets and find mushy onions and potatoes. We even found an Alien Onion and a Heart shaped potato. In the two days the students repacked 4000 lbs of potatoes and onions.

What impressed me the most was when we were about to leave. Onion skins on the floor and a bit of a mess to clean up. No one asked but the kids took it upon themselves to clean up the area for the next crew.

Since the trips to Harvest students have been asking if they can go and help. I do not see any reason to say no. After all Harvest is just up the street. Kids can be amazing if you let them be. Give them a chance and inspire them to become activists and see their world as something more than just a school experience.

Here is the students take on the experience.

873

841

817

816

Getting a Square Idea.

2009-12-13T14:25:00.000-06:00

Three heads are better than one. I have a brilliant teacher candidate this term. She really knows her stuff. I also have a great mentor at this school that always tells me the analogy of slow learning (drawing a turtle on the board) to make me remember the need to go slow when necessary.

Together all three of us yesterday came up with a great activity to get kids to understand the idea of squares. More specifically.... Can you make a square out of 2 squares tiles, 3 squares tiles etc. What we came up with was a stroke of genius.

Supplies you will need for this activity are a sheep of cm grid paper and a piece of coloured paper. On the grid paper you need to cut out 4 10 by 10 squares. My paper only goes 18 across. You will get one 10 by to and one 8 by 10 rectangle. Take a 2 by 10 rectangle to complete the 8 by 10 into a 10 by 10 square.

When we are all done the students have a great representation of how to create the squares of 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Step 1
Glue one 10 by 10 square onto the large foldable sheet of paper. Get the students to understand the difference between the 100 squares and that this represents 1 whole square.
Once this has been done complete the chart at the top of your paper. Show the side measure of the square and how 1 x 1 is 1.

You now have to use your second square. Get the students to figure out the largest square you can make with the second square that has 100 smaller squares in it. Most students will start to see the pattern of 1.1 x 1.1 is 1.21(11 x 11 =121) and so on. When you are done this part of the foldable your page should look like this.

The largest square is using 196 smaller squares or 14 x 14. This is really 1.4 x 1.4 which is 1.96. Complete the chart like the previous one and have all squares up to 1.4 on the chart.

Continue with the third square. If students have not coloured them yet it might be a good idea. Colour enhances the foldable showing the different squares

You should have completed the blue part of the foldable now. This means that you have made the largest square possible with 3 squares. 1.7 x 1.7 (17 x 17).

Complete the chart to show that you now have 3 new squares possible.

You now are ready for the last square. This is the 4th square. You need to get the students to understand that they now have a perfect square. 2 x 2 = 4. To achieve this they will use the remaining square and all the leftover pieces from the last 2 squares. Adding 111 small squares will give you a square with the area of 400 little squares or 4 larger squares.

Finish the chart to complete it up to 2 x 2 = 4.

This is a great conceptual idea for showing Squares and Square Roots.

Hope you enjoyed the lesson. Now on to the next post.

Storytelling in math

2009-11-15T20:04:00.000-06:00

Sense of wonder by happy via

It was a simple idea. Get the students to write a simple story and use math to solve it. The story premise was that an alien has landed in your back yard. It will call the rest of the ships if you do not answer 3 proportion questions. Sounds easy right!

The students created simple stories and added great answers from the homework they had been doing over the past few days. I also showed them how to find cc images. They are not cited properly yet but at least the images are cc.

Here are the links to the rooms so you can read them your self.

873
841
817
816

Here is the original assignment. Enjoy

Making your own Game

2009-11-08T20:06:00.004-06:00

I have always wanted kids to become producers of games instead of being only consumers of games. My favorite games for kids at school are the ones that are flashed based.

Samorst 1

Samorst 2

or
Machinarium

All of these are brilliant story starters for any Language Arts Class. But how do kids make their own?? Thanks to a tweet from Alec Couros a few weeks ago they can!

FableForge

Here is a sample game made by a member using a well known Flickr Image.

Fable Forge is a site where you can make your own flash games like those in Samorst land. No where near as good but you can make them none the less. It would be interesting to see how many educational games could be made just using simple pictures and hiding things on the screen!! Give it a try and let me know. I will be trying this out with some of my students later this year. Hey it is free and gives kids power to create instead of just playing around. No wait they will be playing around. Hmmm a win win situation.

Baby steps?

2009-10-27T21:50:00.000-05:00

cc licensed flickr photo shared by sean dreilinger

On Friday John Evans and I walked 9 colleagues through an inservice on Twitter, Diigo and other aspects of social networking.

Here is the wiki we created for the day.

They got the message. Great things happened, all participants loved wordle, they really saw the great parts of social bookmarking.... and perhaps twitter might sink in too. It was interesting as the day progressed how many looks of amazement kept on coming. They were really into learning the tools and figuring out how to integrate them into their lessons and with their team members.

What was different this time? The first thing was all participants were keen to learn. Different from other sessions I have done. Secondly John and I gave them small ideas that can be used instead of hitting them hard with How to use Wiki's, blogging in your classroom. This might be what I have been doing wrong up until now...

When you start with these little steps you are able to start the process. Show how easy some of the technology and applications are to make a simple lesson brilliant. Wordle.net a simple application has to many lesson possibilities to count. Start with this instant success, now push participants into a social aspect of the Read Write Web. We introduced Diigo. Here you bookmark, and save to a group. This bonds the group together and shows the power of collaboration.

You see where this is going. Once you have them making a few baby steps, they see the results then......... you go to the big dogs!! You introduce them to wikis blogs, and other pedagogical changing tools.

Enough already it was a great day. Thank you John. Thank you Sargent Park Staff.

Rethinking old tools

2009-10-20T20:54:00.000-05:00

A few things are different at the blog this year. Kids are into doing homework .... assignments on the blog and wanting to do them more frequently. I am accomidating them right now because they can get what they want. Are there negative aspects of kids writing more at the blog? I am not sure yet. Will quality of work suffer because they are doing more assignments.

cc licensed flickr photo by CarbonNYC: http://flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/2281515041/

One of the beautiful things about the blog was that scribeposts were to be done only once every 35 classes which meant that kids only scribed 4 times a year. My students have already in 6 weeks created 6 posts. Twice as many as usual. So once again I ask has the quality of work suffered.

No. Work has not suffered. In fact kids do great are doing even better, good kids are doing great and some just are doing math. Instead of hitting it out of the park on a few posts kids are getting doubles and triples but still scoring the same amount of runs(do you like my baseball analogy?).

A new beast has emerged in this new class set up. Commenting. Kids are commenting so frequently I am amazed by their ability to be an audience. Between the chat room

cc licensed flickr photo by merezha: http://flickr.com/photos/merezha/2668654829/

20 Oct 09, 20:10

laura: yes, because it has 3 parts, but it is still a 2 TERM ratio

20 Oct 09, 20:08

abby: but if theres a comma is that still considered as 3 part ratio??

20 Oct 09, 20:01

laura: and then you just use the last number of the ratio as the denomonator

20 Oct 09, 20:00

laura: but if you add the 2 numbers that have a comma, that becomes the numerator.

20 Oct 09, 19:55

Harvey: laura that isn't a fraction. You can only make 2 term ratios

20 Oct 09, 19:53

laura: ABBY: Unless there is a comma between 2 of those numbers, (4,5:12) you can't

20 Oct 09, 19:39

abby: does anyone know to make a fraction on 3 part ratio??

20 Oct 09, 19:33

Eric.P 8-73: Guys gotta comment on those australian blogs

and leaving 100's of comments every few nights they have got the whole community of learners thing figured out.

So where do I go next. One mainstay of the blogging program over the past few years have been BOB's. These Blogging on Blogging assignments are meant as reviews before a test. Last year they were simply a reflection of a few sentences. This year the assignment was changed. I have included a commenting component. The students will do the BOB and then ask a series of questions as a built in study guide for their fellow students. The other students then will answer the questions in the comments and this will be the studying needed for the test the next day.

Here is their first BOB.

Here are the instructions to complete your BOB on ratios. Remember this is a way of preparing for a test. Please take time to do a good job on understanding your ratio unit.

Title Must include BOB and RATIO.
labels, displayname, bob, ratio
You must include one of the pictures from today's lesson. The easiest way to include it is to use its location address. Click the picture link provided, right click the picture, copy location. Once you have copied the location add image to the blog but use add url not browse my computer. Paste the url into the window and click ok. Your picture should be there. (Just get the picture on the post)
Once the picture is at your blog you must create the following. 3 part to part ratios, 2 part to total ratios and 2 three part ratios. Please for each have a word ratio and ratio notation.
Choose one ratio that you have done and show how to write that ratio in ratio notation, fraction, decimal and percent form.
Choose one ratio that you have written and show how to create equivalent ratios.
Finally create 3 questions that you want people to answer in the comments. Do not make them to hard or too easy.
Answer your questions in the comment section of your post.
Go and answer as many questions as you can about ratio at other posts in your room and the other rooms in grade 8.
Look for cheats in comments. I will post helping hints and questions in comments around the blogs.

Now if you have read this far. CONGRATULATIONS!! Here are 2 examples of the BOB's on Ratio.

Bob 1 Bob 2 Bob 3 Bob 4

The Coin Problem

2009-10-12T20:34:00.000-05:00

Today was my first attempt at playing with one of Dan Meyer's lessons. I put up the image that Dan had provided on his blog.

I then had the students brainstorm questions about the jar of coins. We sorted them into questions that could be solved using 4math and those that required different ways of solving. Next I gave them some information about the jar. I told them that it was all American coin. This then had them think about the differences between the jars of coins from American Currency to Canadian Currency. We then brainstormed questions knowing that there was $100 in the jar.

Students had to go home and answer 2 questions over the weekend. Some got it right away and created wonderful answers to the questions posed in class. This was a cool attempt. Most just did a simple explanation and did not answer the question correctly.

No matter what if a kid posted online over a long weekend a victory was won. On Tuesday we will go over the questions and posts in class and use ratio tables to help students understand the depth of the questions they created. Sometimes students need a first draft before they understand the depth of a question.

Slow and steady wins the race and when money is concerned... all are hooked instantly.

Thanks Dan for a great lesson Idea.

Coin Ratio

View more documents from charbeck1.

Nothing like jumping in the pool with cement shoes on!

2009-10-04T19:36:00.000-05:00

cc licensed flickr photo shared by contraquien

Well September is over and October begins. With a new month begins new challenges. 3 to be precise.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Hollywood Poodle

Ready Fire Aim

Elluminate with Pennsylvania
On Monday the ever popular 4 fours will playout again in my classroom.

Four4s

View more documents from charbeck1.

This time we are going to talk to Stacey Clark's Grade 8 Room. We will get together in my first period and connect through an Eluminate Vroom.

Thankfully it is not blocked by the school division (skype, slideshare, blogger are:( )
The students will listen to the story of the 4 fours and then work out solutions on our linked smartboards. Hey you just have to try and let the kids have fun.

Sister class in Australia

cc licensed flickr photo shared by vtveen

I have known Russel Montgomery for a few years on twitter, and K12online. What he did the other night was mindblowing. He commented on 50 blogs and got my students totally stoked about commenting on blogs. The day after the comments were posted my students started commenting like sharks around a chum bucket. That night I received 60 comments. I pointed out this act of community learning to them the next day and they stepped up again and commented over 90 times that night. Russell started something in this years students that hasn't stopped yet.

We got to talking and decided to pair up our classes. He now has access to all of my blogs and I have access to his blog portal. My students will cross post to his site and his will cross post to mine. Due to the lovely 13 hour time difference (they already know what is happening tomorrow!) synchronous meetings might not be possible. But through the power of posting, commenting, and video we should give this a go.

Cross hemispherical collaboration has been a dream of mine for many years. His students are going into term 4 and almost at the end of Grade 8. Mine are at the beginning of the journey. We will be able to help each other. His are veteran bloggers with a knowledge of most of the math we have not yet learned. Mine will be able to help his new students out next year after their "Christmas Summer Break".

This is going to be a great experience.

Doing math the Dan Meyer way.
If you missed the presentation the other day please watch it here.

Dan is one of the few math teachers in the world who gets it. He knows how to make kids figure out answers and ask better questions.

Dan walks a fine line between using a textbook and tweeking images to get kids thinking. Once they start thinking mathematically they understand the knowledge more. As I start into this second unit of rate, ration and proportion I will attempt to do what Dan does in his class.

WWDMD (what would Dan Meyer do) is my new mantra and will say it at least one day a week. Use image and video to stimulate questions in students and push them to learn math.

It is going to be a busy week but at least cross country wraps up!! That will gime me more time to fill up with other stuff. Now what else is on my bucket list!

Comments at a Class Blog

2009-09-30T20:09:00.000-05:00

It all started with a call out to my twitter network the other day. Can anyone leave comments behind at my class blogs.

A few of you answered my call and from the bottom of my heart I thank you.
Russell Montgomery from Western Australia went overboard though. He commented on everypost that the students had completed. I am forever in his debt for commenting on over 25 blog posts. I pointed this out to the students who were amazed that someone would care about what they were writing. I just told them that people care about what you do. People enjoy reading about your math journey.

Since that night the students have become commenting monsters. My email box is filling up with comments at a rate that I have never seen before. Some times I am receiving 4 comments a minute. I shared this with them today. I did not know what to expect..... tonight the comment barrage continues. They have left over 65 new comments at the time of this post. Hey perhaps they get this whole idea of community, of helping each other out.

What else are they doing you might ask. They are using their cbox on each blog to the max. Each room seems to have designated a person to be the go to person in the chat box every night. They are teaching each other what to do and how to complete assignments. Wow it is only September!!

I am going to push their comments to be more than just a congratulations on completing a post and giving formatting advise. I want them to start having conversations on line. Ask questions of the person who is posting and to push the conversation of learning further. If they can comment they can conversee

A final note tonight before I create the assessment for tomorrow is that the students from last year are starting to blog in grade 9. The first 2 scribe posts are up for one of the grade 9 rooms and are really good. Their teacher is seeing the power of the blog, chatbox and commenting. Each of the posts have numerous comments, but not as many as what my 8's are doing. Wow Wow and Wow. It is going to be a tremendous year.

What does this say about teaching?

2009-09-27T12:08:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I watched this video as it was making the twitter rounds. What does it say about teaching and your pedagogy?

Do you give students the answer, do you push them in the right direction or do you just let them struggle. Just thinking.

A post is a post

2009-09-21T20:48:00.000-05:00

I was looking somewhere or listening somewhere that a post is about 3 paragraphs. I will do my best to do at least one weekly post about life at the blog.

I am receiving 2nd year bloggers this year. Only the new students do not have google accounts. Boy this has sure sped things along. Anyone out blogging and the younger students are not I recommend getting them started and giving them the google account. Students this year will use Google Docs and Blogger extensively in Language Arts and Math.

I am also pleased to announce that the Grade 8's that I had last year will be blogging in Grade 9. I have convinced one to the teachers to blog and have helped him set up his class. I will help them get set up but after 3 years of blogging this should be a snap. I hope that all goes well for the Grade 9's.

Also on a positive not it looks like the Video Production students are going to have a blog too. I have convinced the teachers to use a variety of technology to help them showcase their students work online. I am looking forward to them seeing the potential of the technology to help students learn more from each other and other experts online. Yeah Progress.

If this does not reinforce what we do....

2009-09-14T20:50:00.000-05:00

If this does not get the point out to parents nothing will. Wow what a great update of Karl's original. I will be using this at Meet the Teacher Night tomorrow. I will tell you how it goes.

Playing with Pixelpipe

2009-09-01T11:45:00.002-05:00

I was playing with my iPhone and pixelpipe. Hmm thought they were going to flickr but they came to the blog. Interesting. The first picture is of Alex at the store with a set of ginger antlers. The second shows Colin explaining the fact that boxes are still the best toys ever.

The Great Movie Project Year 2

2009-09-01T08:19:00.000-05:00

Last year all Grade 8 students chose groups and created student movies.
the project was based on the student videos created at Maybry School in Georgia. The students chose the topics, they did this work on their time and it was a success. It is time to reflect on the successes and failures of that project. Why you ask? Simply because it is about to begin again and changes and tweeks will be made from our experiences last year.

Things that worked

Topics The Students really liked the wide variety of topics available. The whole idea of the project was to have students become aware of issues in the world and locally that were important to them. Once they found a topic that was interesting to them they had to try to "Make a Difference".
Student Presentations To start the project off we had the students prepare presentations for the rest of the school. They were to give presentations about a variety of charities that the grade 8 students and the student council had chosen to take donations for. All the 8's made posters and pamphlets talking about the charities and one group of students from each of the 4 rooms made presentations to the rest of the school.

816 Charity

View more documents from spmath.

Google Documents The ability for students to work at home and collaborate on the same document was brilliant. Each group created a Google Presentation and each group member took control of different slides. They also invited their homeroom teacher and myself to the presentation so we could see progress and add our 2 cents to the mix. If there is one thing that I would suggest to anyone doing a project like this is to build in these collaborative tools. The kids were more productive because they could participate with each other at home at the same time. We pushed the limits of collaboration when we created 2 Google presentations as notetaking devices for a movie on Child Labour we had been watching. Over 30 kids were collaborating at one time in the lab. Google Docs is a must for any teacher

Pay it Forward Over the Christmas break we expected the students to do an activity that was similar in nature to the movie Pay It Forward. Students were expected to do a random act of kindness over the break. They had to write about it at their blog.
Awards Presentation Having the students chose winners was motivating for the students. As teachers we decided on the 6 movies that would be in the award categories but the students decided who won the "prize". It gave them ownership over the finished project.

Things that need to change

timing We started this project before Christmas last year. The goal was to have the project done before our Student Led Conference in April. That did not materialize. Movies were not done until the beginning of June. To allow for speedier editing and to allow students to complete the movies on time this year the team has booked a pod of laptops from the division. During February to April this year the students will have a set of laptops and other equipment to complete the primary production on their movies.
more time for editing You could really see the lack of editing on some of the videos. The students just did one draft and did not spell check, edit pictures and well..... just slapped something together. This year the students will spend more time of editing and will be taught more techniques about successful movie making.
post a first draft and a final production More student evaluation and feedback is needed. We will use your youtube channel to put up the drafts of the movies and elicit feedback. Based on the feedback students will be able to improve their movies.
music Students often chose music that was non CC. This caused many problems. Audio tracks were wiped by Youtube when their spiders determined that copy write had been broken. This year I will find sites where you are able to use CC sanctioned music. Less Itunes more ambient sound to get the idea across.
Teamwork A different goal of this project was to bring my other team members into the blogging "read write web" universe. This met with limited success. I seemed to be the go to guy all the time. Most of my other team members seemed reluctant to use these tools and learn how they could transform their teaching at the same time. It was not a total loss though. Two team members are game to try this again and students and teachers will once again be making movies at Sargent Park School.

If you are looking to try a project like this please contact me or use these helpful links:

Sargent Park Mathzone The grade 8 blog hub where instructions for the project were given. This link houses all posts with the label 2minutes.
Make it Interesting My personal blog where reflections on the project are housed. This is the link with 2minutes attached to it.
Sargent Park Wiki One of my school sites where the project was hosted. It is not add free anymore so the information will be moving soon.
Maybry Online The inspiration to get the whole project. Met Dr. Tyson at a PD event and from there a kernel grew into a whale of an idea.
50 Ways to tell a story Simply one of the best sites explaining the different ways to use the web to tell a story. A must for storytellers.

Just Enjoying Ingrid Michealson's New Album

2009-08-31T07:44:00.000-05:00

This does not fit in my sidebar easily so I will post it here. Simply one of the best albums of the year. Independent, Awesome, Amazing. Thanks for making the last few weeks of August so pleasurable.

Things are going to change this year?

2009-08-30T13:58:00.034-05:00

For the first time in years I am using a textbook. The rest of the junior high bought books in the past years and we are now all using the same book and perhaps this is a good thing.

I have not used texts before because there are so many options out there that are more cost effective. Also no text gave me freedom to use the best practices from many different sources including the web.

The text the school has chosen is MathLinks from Magraw Hill Ryerson.

It has some interesting additions that make it very school 2.0 friendly. Each text book has a number that allows students to access thier homework from home on the net. They will have access to a textbook 24 hours a day without bringing the textbook home. With over 90% of my class having internet access at home this allows me to weave the homework into blogging easier. Assignments for scribes can change to not only include what happened in class today but examples of the homework that has been assigned.

Each chapter is broken up into interesting sections too. They start off with a foldable (notetaking device that uses a sheet of paper in interesting ways) I have been using foldables for the past 3 years. Now there is a text that employs teaching techniques that I use and embeds it in each chapter. The rest of the chapter is the usual drill and practice laid out in an interesting colourful way. (Doing a small google search I found this site that shows and explains what foldables are!!!)

The book also features mental math strategies and problem solving strategies that are crucial these students having success on their final exam. All of this is will be avialable online. I am thinking parents will enjoy having the work to see as well.

Other interesting aspects of the text are built in math games and challenges in real life. Anything that pushes students to realize the importance of math in the real world works for me.

Having said all of that above that does not mean that the rest of my teaching will change. We still will use a wide variety of materials to push conceptual understanding of the math being taught. All my lessons will be streamed and saved at ustream. Lessons will be done using the smartboard and saved at slideshare.

I think what I am looking forward to the most is using the textbook to organize my teaching. I am all over the map and sometimes to scattered to get maximum understanding out of my students. I plan on using this more focused approach to push my students beyond where I have taken them before. If this textbook organizies me and keeps me more focused .... then amaizing things will happen.

Anyways that is just one of the new things happening to me this year in my classroom.

New Beginnings for a Good Friend

2009-08-18T08:20:00.003-05:00

cc licensed flickr photo shared by dkuropatwa

Today my mentor, the guy who got me hooked on blogging, starts a new job. Darren Kuropatwa is starting to work for the Provincial Government. He will be spearheading the High School component of our Literacy with ICT for the provincial curriculum and training branch. He still will be a snowballs throw away but in a westerly direction this time instead of east.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Nautical9

With Darren leaving the Division this leaves myself as one of the few blogging teachers in a division of over 33 000 students. For the past four years I have felt that Darren and I are on two islands in an ocean. We can see each other on a clear day but there is a lot of ocean out there. Now he has left the School Division and taken on a very noble challenge. Still I will miss the ability to say to my students .... "You know you will be blogging in Grade 12 math. These skills will be important to you."

Darren now has a chance to spread all of his goodness to the entire province. Find more people like me to hook into changing ones pedagogy to infuse technology into our curriculum. He is a master presenter and can convince many people to try and use the new tools to enhance education. While I will miss him at my feeder High School I know he will be doing important work that will help many people.

I look forward to seeing his new ideas and know that John Evans and the rest of the ICT crew will keep him in check and moving in the right direction.

Break a leg Darren. Enjoy your new challenges.

Is Education going the way of Newspapers?

2009-08-17T07:38:00.005-05:00

Will Richardson, @willrich45 just tweeted about a post he was reading at Seth Godins Blog

Seth Godin is talking about the changes in post secondary education....

Should this be free or expensive?
Wikipedia offers the world's fact base to everyone, for free. So it spreads.
On the other hand, some bar review courses are so expensive the websites don't even have the guts to list the price.
The newly easy access to the education marketplace (you used to need a big campus and a spot in the guidance office) means that both the free and expensive options are going to be experimented with, because the number of people in the education business is going to explode (then implode).
If you think the fallout in the newspaper business was dramatic, wait until you see what happens to education.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by iirraa

So what does this mean for us teachers out there. For those of you who are reading this not much since you have embraced change and see a new model being available for students. But what about our colleagues who still refuse to change or see the change coming. Is the newspaper analogy strong enough to bring about change.

Most teachers understand the death of newspapers in their current form is imminent. This article might push a few more teachers to explore the possibilities of the changing educational world around them. I have passed the article off to a few of my teacher colleagues hoping that they come back to me and ask questions.

What do you think about the article?

To Ning or not to Ning

2009-07-29T10:17:00.003-05:00

I am getting ready to start the set up of the class blogs for the upcoming year. As usual I will have the blog hub which needs very little tinkering but I will have to create 4 class blogs from scratch and place 4 more in the archives!!!

Last night got me thinking though. I was listening to a PLP group present their projects from Australia. It was a wonderful experience seeing these educators talk about their growth over a year long journey. Key to their success was the Ning that PLP created for them. They were able to network and have input from expert voices to guide them on their journey.

Do students who have blogging experience need a Ning to nurture their learning and educational experiences? What is the value of using a Ning over blogs and wikis.... Do students need another learning environment or is this going to be the straw that breaks the camels back?

I am still struggling to figure this out. I love the blogs because it gives the students a genuine audience that promotes growth and quality of work. Wikis offer a space for collaboration. Nings are enclosed communities where only group members have access. This goes against the entire notion of audience. I need the work the students do out there. Not in there.

Gate on Flickr
by fensterbme

With all of that said. It would be interesting if more of my team members at school wanted to blog. Creating a community where many different to create a Ning community. Here there would be groups for different types of work, math, language arts etc. Having a platform for all to participate in ...... Once again the only problem would be audience. Do I want to put the walls up or keep them down for all to see.

Crumbled Houses on Flickr
by Kanmuri

I think I am seeing this properly or have I missed something.

The Movies are DONE

2009-06-10T21:53:00.006-05:00

I have been a delinquent blogger. May and June have been very busy months. But my students have finished their movie projects. You can find them here:
There are 6 categories,

The top 25 movies made this list. On each page you will find a google form. Fill out the check box and submit. Your voting will be passed on the the film makers.

It is June. For us in North America the school year is winding down. If you find yourself with time on your hands and a class needing something to do..... watch some movies.

Thanks for your time.

Kids need Passion

2009-05-27T21:22:00.007-05:00

I just wrote a post for my students. It is hopefully going to light a fire under some of them. Spring fever has hit and school is not a priority. Perhaps in the near future something will come back.

Here is the post I gave them....

Learning is about passion.

Flickr attribution http://www.flickr.com/photos/tyla/3196687667/ by Tyla'75

You need to have this passion to succeed in life. In recent weeks I have seen many of you get spring fever and lose your will to learn. Many of you are going goldfish,

not asking questions and just wanting answers. This passiveness needs to disappear and you need to rekindle your passion to learn.

We only have a few weeks left in school. Take everyday as an opportunity to find new things to learn and use this knowledge to succeed on your final assignments and exams.

Watch this video and listen to these Grade 5 students. They are part of a noon hour club in New York City. These kids have passion. They want to sing, learn be active in society. Watch their faces as they sing and the passion in their voices. The students have sung onstage with many performers and will be singing with Fleetwood Mac at Madison Square Gardens infront of 18 000 fans on June 11th.

Find your passion and succeed.

Harbeck

2minutes Final Instructions

2009-05-18T10:44:00.002-05:00

Here is a post I have just given my students. The movie project is finally coming to an end. I hope that there are some films to share with my network. From how the kids are talking we should have a few to share.

Oscar Wagon by grebo guru

The time has come for you to have a completed video. So the logical question is now..... Where do I put it!

You must upload the video to

or There is a spmath login for both of these sites. The password is the same at both. Email me if you do not know the password. Please use it so that I can create a channel and keep all videos organized. Both sites allow HD uploading so please use youtube if possible.

Once you have your video uploaded please embed it at your blog. Create a post

Title ________ 2 Minutes to Make a Difference
In the body give a 2 to 3 sentence explanation of your video.
Embed your video
label your post in the usual way, name, 2minutes, spinquiry

Your movie is to be 2 minutes in length. I will give you an extra 30 seconds to add the credits at the end of the movie. The credits are important because it informs the viewing audience about your sources of music, photos and information.
Please make sure that you have added into your credits all information about

photos
music ..... make sure you have permission to use the music you are using. If you have asked for permission and no one has replied back use up to 30 seconds and you should not have too many issues with copywrite. Make sure you state in the credits that you asked for permission.
websites Inform the viewing audience where you found your material. They could then go and learn more about the topic.

Last Movie Post

2009-05-10T20:12:00.002-05:00

Here is the last post for the Grade 8 students on their Inquiry Project 2 Minutes to Make a Difference. It is posted at the Mathzone. The movies will be posted on a youtube channel and hopefully at itunes.

The last stages of your 2 Minutes to Make a Difference are almost over. You should be making your movie as we speak. The final deadline for your movie will be on May 20. On that day I need access to your movie, you can burn it to a cd or use a flash drive.

Your movie projects will be marked on the following criteria, Length of movie, script, do you make a difference, production quality, direction and credits. Here is the rubric that will be used to mark your movie.

The final part of the movie will be a day where we will watch all of the movies as a grade. On June 15 we will use periods 2 and 3 to screen the movies. You will have a chance to vote on the ones you liked the best. Following the screening you will be served lunch and we will have an awards ceremony during period 4.

Red Carpet by jeffbalke

This will be a great way to get ready for your math exam which will be on June 16th!! Be sure to study!!!!!

You have had many months to create these masterpieces. Please take time to finish them to a standard of excellence that will make you proud. Following the ceremony we will unveil your iTunes channel and youtube channel. You will be able to

2009 Student Led Conferences

2009-04-24T08:17:00.003-05:00

Student-led Conferences have been a staple of Manitoba Education for over a decade. It is a valuable experience for parents. Student-led conferences put the student in the drivers seat. They show their parents a portfolio of their work that shows how they have grown as a learner. I love student-led conferences. Students and parents interacting about learning. Think of these conferences as intensive dinner conversation answering the question, "What did you do in school today?"

Dinner Table
http://www.flickr.com/photos/niinac/2873854975/

Participation in Student-led conferences are higher than in traditional parent-teacher interviews. Students enjoy showing their learning to their parents. Parents enjoy seeing what their students have done. Many more parents are able to attend Student-led conferences because of the flexible timetable. We provide access to the school and the parent and child pick the 30 to 60 minute slots that they need. Often we will see up to 90% of the parents on these nights.

For the Grade 8 students they have created Electronic Portfolios to showcase their work and learning. This provides flexibility for parents. Those who cannot come into the school have access to the portfolio at home. Now these conferences are available to all students. Having access available to parents at home is important because many of the parents at our school work shift work or multiple jobs and freeing themselves up for up to three hours if they have more than one student is hard. Believe me I know with three children of my own.

The conferences are over and 24 of the 35 students attended from my home room. Overall we had over 110 students attend out of 145. The remaining students will receive a letter home explaining the student led process to parents. Students will participate at home and bring back confirmation to us that the conference took place.

Now to finish the year and prepare for next year. A job well done.

Windows to the World

2009-04-16T08:10:00.004-05:00

A fun evening of Cheesies and Licorice Nibs was had by all listening to some of the greatest edutecnologists around. Ben Hazzard, Lisa Kolb, Rodd Lucier, Ryan M, Clarence Fisher and others all skyped into a room of eager and raw teachers. Now by room I mean at least there were 20ish of us. But hey we had twice as many people in the ustream chat room.

It was a nice culminating event of the rant that I had a few weeks ago. Following that rant Andy and Darren met me for a coffee. From that conversation Windows to the World was born. I would like to thank John Evans and Andy for working so hard to make things work out.

Here are some of the tweets using the #wttw.

For the people in the room it was nice for me to see some new faces. I set up a wiki for Manitoba teachers who use twitter. I called it http://mbteacherswhotweet.wikispaces.com. It is the same idea as the terrific pbwiki twitter4teachers You will find all of the participants from the f2f listed there. Also at this wiki you will find the chat log from the ustream.

I still find it amazing that an evening like this will bring together over 40 people in the ustream chat room and in a city of 700 000 people and a gazillion teachers we are only able to find about 20 to partake in the evening. I personally tried to get 5 people to come to the evening. None showed up. Some had legitimate excuses but still one would think that learning and experiencing this Koolaid is important to teachers today.

I have not stopped trying but it is getting frustrating when so few care about changing their pedagogy. I guess I will wrap myself up in the fuzzy blanket of happiness that is my PLN and the knowledge that WE get it. Thanks Andy, John, Darren, Ryan and Clarence for joining me in understanding the importance of what we do for the future of education.

Kids get it, we get it...... when will THEY get it. A Monty Python song comes to mind

Something about Always looking on the bright side of life!!

I love my students Part 2

2009-04-16T07:56:00.002-05:00

This is how it all started

This is too cool. I am here Windows to the World and I have a student chatting with me. This is a true story. Really it is. I am not making it up.

Student: Harbeck!

8:17 PM me: Hey

Liem: I have a really cool idea

8:18 PM me: Ok what!!

Student: http://www.youtube.com/user/NationalGeographic

I was wondering if we compose a letter of everybodies ideas to make our community a Greener PLACE

8:19 PM theres a prize for $20,000 but i don't know this could be fun

me: Hey yeah lets do it and talk about it

8:20 PM Student: okay cool tomorrow?! in class.

8:21 PM me: Sure or before. YOu could make a blog post about it and post it. I would add it to all the other blogs. What do you think. Make a blog post and see if people want to do something!!

Student: Okay Yeah!

me: thx for learning

Student: haha, your welcome.

8:22 PM its cool, how your can take learning outside of school(:

Wow I get paid to teach these kids ;) Life is good

Here is the students post. I cross posted at the other student blog and the mathzone. Let us see what happens here.

A Post From Liem

The Green Effect!

Okay guys! I found this really cool idea! Its called the green effect.National Geographic with Sun Chips are joining forces to inspire people to make a change in their communities. We need to compose a letter to National Geographic of 250 words or less explaining what we can do to make our community a GREEENER place. The five best ideas will win $20,000 dollars to help make their community a greeener place.

Some ideas would be like making a garden, putting recycling boxes around parks, making our school more green and other stuff! Imagine if what we can do with $20,000 dollars to make our community more GREEN

For more information please visit http://greeneffect.nationalgeographic.com/
Online voters will choose one winner, and a panel of judges will select the remaining four.

I love my students

2009-04-15T20:24:00.003-05:00

This is too cool. I am here Windows to the World and I have a student chatting with me. This is a true story. Really it is. I am not making it up.

Student: Harbeck!

8:17 PM me: Hey

Liem: I have a really cool idea

8:18 PM me: Ok what!!

Student: http://www.youtube.com/user/NationalGeographic

I was wondering if we compose a letter of everybodies ideas to make our community a Greener PLACE

8:19 PM theres a prize for $20,000 but i don't know this could be fun

me: Hey yeah lets do it and talk about it

8:20 PM Student: okay cool tomorrow?! in class.

8:21 PM me: Sure or before. YOu could make a blog post about it and post it. I would add it to all the other blogs. What do you think. Make a blog post and see if people want to do something!!

Student: Okay Yeah!

me: thx for learning

Student: haha, your welcome.

8:22 PM its cool, how your can take learning outside of school(:

Wow I get paid to teach these kids ;) Life is good

Examples for your movie project.

2009-04-14T20:10:00.003-05:00

This is a cross post with the Mathzone. I will use these examples and another post that deals with creating storyboards and writing a script.

Public Service Announcements or PSAs are examples of movies and slidecasts that are similar to the movies I expect you to write. Please use these examples and find others help you create your movie. Remember to "Make a Difference"

Kids See Kids Do

Quit Smoking

During this video count all the factual points brought out. You will be amazed at how many were squeezed into this video.

Think about the script of this video. It is only 30 seconds but it packs a powerful punch in combination with the music and video footage.

Hmm How about some bottled water

Here are some slidecasts. They are powerful presentations with a voiceover and soundtrack. They can be powerful movies that make a difference.

MADD PSA

View more presentations from alyssamarie0x.

Food and Nutrition

Psa Fruits And Veggies

View more presentations from Biray .

Look at the use of text slides and images. Imagine if there was a script and voice!!

Canadian Seal Hunt PSA

View more presentations from bkind2animals.

A cool math video

2009-04-05T10:56:00.001-05:00

This is a really cool math video. Not bad for 1 minute. What do you think. Thank you @courosa for tweeting about it.

On the Radio With Darren Part 2

2009-04-01T11:35:00.007-05:00

It was a fabulous day yesterday talking with Darren, the host Richard Cloutier and his audience.

CJOB has the largest marketshare in Winnipeg so a guest spot on this station speaks to a wide audience. To hear the interview you can go to the Audio Vault and search March 31st 9 to 11 AM.

It is interesting to watch a radio show take place. All of the juggling the host has to do to stick to a time frame that allows the commercials to run, the information to be broadcast it was interesting to see.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

So there we were in the studio working twitter, the chatroom and interacting with callers and the host. Multitasking at its finest. THERE IS A WIKI WITH THE ENTIRE CHAT AND LINKS CAPTURED.

The night before the show I ventured into facebook where I rarely go. I put my status to online and started asking students questions. After doing this for a few minutes one of my former students told me to create a "note" and they could leave comments behind as their answer. Once again the student teaching the teacher. I created that note and some interesting results came in. 31 of my present or past students responded to the note and I thank them for giving me some really interesting information that I could share with the audience.

1. Are your parents on Facebook. If Yes are they part of your "Friends" and can see what you are doing?
22 students said that their parents were not on Facebook but 9 said that they were. Those 9 also had their parents as friends. Here were some of the responces from my students:

yes they are on facebook, and my mom is my friend but I'm not going to add my dad lol
No, but my mom uses my facebook, so basically yes she does see my profile and stuff I do and say.
No, my parents are not on Facebook, although other members of my family are.
Yes, my parents are on facebook, and they are a part of my friends list, but on limited profile .. teehee. ONLY because when they could comment on my things, the ALWAYS did and it got kind of annoying.

When Richard asked the audience to call in 3 members called in all with 13 year old teenage daughters. All three were into Facebook, and all 3 parents were at a different level of interaction with their teens Facebook use. The conversation steered around how as a parent you can keep track of your teens online use. Google Alerts was one suggestion by Darren.

My conversation with students on Facebook also revealed some new infromation.
2. Do you use MSN still? Is Facebook a replacement for MSN especially the chat part?
All still use MSN because of the chat feature. It was unanimous that the FB Chat was not as good as the MSN. They also served 2 different purposes. MSN for communicating and FB for glitz.

I would of thought that MSN was obsolete. The kids all used it for the ease of chat and the speed at which you can communicate. At school this year there seems to be less "MSN" related incidents. I might be wrong but I have not noticed "rumbles" or the administration dealing with students who have aired their beefs on MSN.

I also asked my students this:
3. Do you hide your computer use from your parents.... Do they know what you do online!!
Most of the respondents did not hide their computer use from their parents. But I would guess that parents have not seen what they have been posting online. MSN still is a place to chat, FB is a place to have a space. Both are used for communication but the missing piece in all of this is the cellphone. As smartphones become evermore popular they will take over the computer as the tech tool of choice. Already kids use them more than computers and as they become technologically more advanced they will shift many activities from the computer to the phone? I would also hazard a guess that students and laptops will be roaming the house working where it is convenient now where the "family" computer is. The callers also mentioned that they watch their kids on the computer. They asked what was going on but do they "really" know? Unless parents and teachers actively participate in social media they do not understand about life online.

3 computers - 3 geeks Flickr Photo by Dr Phil

Perhaps the most interesting part of the show was talking about this clip from Youtube. David after the Dentist. At the time of this post it had 17.5 million views!

The conversation steered from "How could a parent do this" to "Who Cares" the video will die and its 15 minutes of fame will disappear.

Let's look at the 2 points of view. Darren did a good job at a recent post. David's father took the video to show his wife who was unable to attend the event. He posted it up on youtube not thinking that there would be a problem. The problem occured when the video went viral. One innocent event now multiple repercussions. What could the parent of done differently?

choose a less popular site to post the video.
not posted the video.

The list is endless. How is David going to deal with this later in life. Will he always be known as the "Dentist" kid? One of the analogies used on the show was to think about village life. Up until a few years ago the village where we lived in was different that what we live in today. Back then very few people knew about your life in the village. Your sphere of influence was spread by word of mouth or perhaps radio or tv. Now in the world of the internet the planet is the village. Everyone anywhere can have access to you and your digital identity. David and his trip to the dentist is know from Winnipeg to Timbukto.

Uttercasth Target Practice Flickr Image by doughaslam

How are our students treating their digital footprint. They post pictures, and videos and use language that some find inapproptiate. The students digital footprint was the last question I asked them to comment on in my Facebook note.
4. Are you worried about the footprint you are leaving behind at facebook... the language, the pictures etc? The mighty armour of youth. Everyone replied that they did not care about the digital footprint that they are leaving behind. They did not think that what they were doing had relevance in the world and their future self. I hope they are right. I can only continue tell then how do be better digital citizens and hope some of them hear what I am saying.

North Sea (Sankt Peter Ording) Germany Flickr Image by Paraflyer

It was a great day on the radio. Thank you Richard Cloutier for getting it. One of the few who do!!