Week before Holiday break

The last week before Christmas vacation is arguably the craziest of the year! There are so many obligations outside of school (parties, concerts, etc.), the students are overly excited for the Holiday break, looming here in New England is the possibility of a weather related closing or delay, and the business of school is expected to carry on as usual! By the last day before break this farce has all but collapsed. I used to wonder why schools would plan a half day on the day before the Holiday vacation, and I now know why! (Although my school district doesn't do this). The only positive, really, is that my online class ended this week for the semester and the next semester doesn't start until 1/27! My online class in VHS ends earlier than my face to face classes each semester which is a welcome break, but the trade off is that the VHS class goes 15 weeks with no breaks for holidays. So there are times when my face to face class is on a break but I still have to check on and "teach" my online class through VHS.

We started the week with the few remaining $35 Dollar Bill presentations. These presentations take several classes, but I always enjoy watching students rise to the challenge and talk about these important people.

Student Dollar Bill design featuring Martin Luther King Jr.

Another Student Dollar Bill showing the back side of a bill

After the presentations we moved back into the tensions of the 1850's. One activity I always enjoy is a role-play of the famous Dred Scott trial. Scott had been a slave who sued his new master for his freedom. The details of his case called into question the constitutionality of slavery in general, and the Missouri Compromise in particular. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court and result in the famous Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

Only photo of the famous Dred Scott

For this role-play I have two homemade puppets that I use (my wonderful wife Erica who is an Elementary School teacher made the puppet for me!). I portray the attorney for both Sandford and Scott and then I use the puppet so the students know who I am speaking on behalf of. The students are role-playing the supreme court and must come up with a decision based on the Constitution. Then we discuss what happened in real life and the significance. It should be noted that the decision of the Court in this case cemented the notion of the slavery being endorsed by the Constitution, which led many to conclude the only way to end it would be an amendment. With the nation so split that would be almost impossible, and so Civil War seemed plausible. The decision is criticized by many legal scholars today.

"Dred Scott"

"John Sanford"

Since we are talking in class about the Civil War, just before the break I always show some of the images and video from my Civil War tour. My colleague Mike Streeter and I were part of a Teaching American History Grant through the Maine Humanities Council in 2008-2010. As part of this Grant, in July of 2009 a group of teachers traveled to Gettysburg, Antietam, Harper's Ferry, Monticello, and Montpelier.

Cannon at the Gettysburg Battlefield

Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg

Myself and Mike Streeter at the famed Monument to the men of the 20th Maine Regiment who defended Little Round Top at Gettysburg

view of the 20th Maine Monument on Little Round Top

part of the Battlefield at Antietam

Me in front of "John Brown's Fort" where Brown was captured at Harper's Ferry

It was a busy week, but we made it to vacation! After the break we will be doing an inductive learning activity that I will blog about and finishing up the semester with iMovie projects in History v. Hollywood. So I will blog again in a couple weeks. Happy Holidays!!!

Too busy to go into Details

Busy, busy... $35 Dollar Bill presentations, and working on projects all week! The highlight of the week came Friday for our annual Kids Who Care event.

For this event we work with our advisee groups to do something to give back to the community. Every advisee group in the school does something to support those who are in need. My group partnered with 4 other 8th grade groups to organize and put on a luncheon for Senior Citizens and some day care kids. It was really nice to see High School students helping and interacting both with Senior Citizens and with Day Care kids. It took a lot of time to prepare the crafts, decorations, and food for the event. It was great, but also was a distraction away from grading studnet work and other things I have to do! One week left before vacation!

Off to the Races

Three weeks until the big Holiday break does not seem like enough time! Throw in the specter of a possible snow day or two, and all of the related Holiday obligations outside of school and it is really a busy time of year!

This past week saw us working on a simulation for the Abolitionist Society Convention and the $35 Dollar Bill project. The Abolitionist Society convention is a simulation. Each student researches a famous Abolitionist and portrays them in the meeting. The meeting uses parliamentary procedure (which our students are familiar with because of Model UN simulations freshmen year and the Model UN project some of them participate in). I love simulations like this and do them quite frequently. The idea started with a lesson I saw published in the journal Social Education which I receive because of my membership in the National Council for the Social Studies.

In Ethics class this week we had Attorney James Lawley visit as a guest speaker. He came to my U.S. history classes in October to discuss Constitutional Law. This week he discussed his work as a Death Row Lawyer in Alabama and led a discussion of the Death Penalty. It was very fascinating! He talked about recent Supreme Court opinions, attorney-client confidentiality, and what its like working with people who are on death row. The students were captivated!

(James Lawley speaking to my class about the Death Penalty)

Also this week we had a training about eBackpack. This is a great "Workflow" website and app for student iPads that makes it easy for students to submit work and for teachers to take those submissions, grade them, and send them back to students all without paper and without printing anything! This service is provided for free to all schools in the State and its connected to the State Technology Learning Initiative. The instructor was great, I really appreciated how she attempted to meet everyone's needs. I came way ready to use eBackpack in my classes!

Wednesday night was the annual Maine Council for the Social Studies Board meeting. We reviewed the evaluations from the annual conference in November and they were overwhelmingly positive. We also discussed not offering a conference next Fall because the National Council for the Social Studies Conference will be at the same time and right nearby in Boston. We did discuss ways to encourage folks in Maine to attend and other things we can do this Spring and next Spring to keep Social Studies on everyone's minds and build off the great conference we had this year. I am really looking forward to attending the National Conference in Boston next Fall. Ken Burns (famous documentary filmmaker) is the keynote speaker!

(Ken Burns)

Lastly this week I attended a webinar training to prepare for my last webinar at the end of January. The webinar focus is around bringing Common Core and Literacy across the disciplines. We are using the book The Core Six. Our next webinar will focus on the strategy of inductive learning. I can't wait to try it out with my students (though I have done things similar in the past anyway)!

Two weeks left and still a ton to do! YIKES!!!

Historic Week

This week leading up to Thanksgiving we were very busy in class, working on projects, and discussing the 50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination, and the 150th of the Gettysburg Address.

Tuesday the 19th was of course the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. In my opinion it is the most eloquent and timeless speech in US History. Its relatively short, and yet says so much. I continue to be fascinated with and inspired by those words. We will be analyzing and exmaing this speech in my classes in the next few weeks.

This week there some other educational things I was involved in of significance. On Monday I hosted my first Webinar along with 2 other teachers. Our Webinar was around using the strategy of Compare and Contrast at different levels and in different subjects. We had practiced the week before, but it is incredibly stressful to attempt to explain teaching through an online webinar. At one point I was "booted out" and had to log back in, Luckily I made it back just before it was my turn. The strategy I developed through the Cross Discipline Literacy Network sponsored by the State of Maine was around comparing Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and available for download. Despite the stress, the Webinar went well and we received lots of positive feedback about the strategy. The other two teachers were great and are very easy to work with, I really appreciate their efforts! We will be presenting another strategy at the end of January in another Webinar.

(This is from my part of the Webinar, its a student sample)

(This from one of the other teachers, its a screenshot I took halfway through the webinar)

(This is also from the Webinar)

On Friday I attended a training with several other teachers from my School District held at the University of Maine in Farmington. There were a dozen or so school districts there as well. We were there as "Teacher Mentors" with the goal of beginning to understand how Marzano's Standards for Teaching and Learning were going to be incorporated into our new Teacher Evaluation System. I think that Marzano's work makes sense and has merit. It will represent a significant change for the teachers in my district and the thought of this is quite daunting. There are 9 Design Questions which are quite detailed and represent three different lesson segments. However, the presentation at this training left much to be desired. It was so disappointing that I will refrain from mentioning the presenter's name here. She was well intended and well prepared, I just think she doesn't understand well how to do presentations for teachers or even presentations in general. Its always a bad idea to "guarantee" an ending time and then not honor it! Unfrotunately that was the least of my concerns. There was too much time spent on simple ideas, and not enough time to think deeply about complex ideas. What troubles me most is that this was the first of 3 trainings over the next year. I sincerely hope we have a different presenter next time or I may set a rcord for coffee consumption (it will be tough to break the record I set on Friday).

Next week is my favorite work week of the year... a two day week! So my next blog will be in two weeks. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!

Making changes

These four days weeks are nice in a way, its just too bad that everyone seems to try and squeeze everything they do in a 5 day week into 4 days. So while a short week, it was a very busy one.

Students in US History classes are still working on their Dollar Bill projects. but in addition to this we also started discussing slavery. To help with this, we listened to a former slave talk about what his life was like. Thanks to the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930's and the new technology of the day, audio recording, we have quite a few oral histories recorded in the National Archives that are the words of men and women who had been born into slavery. This Born in Slavery website is wonderful for this. I chose to use the words of one slave in particular named Fountain Hughes. I chose him because what he has to say is interesting and engaging, and he is relatively clear in his speaking. The Site does also offer a written transcript of what the former slaves are saying which I always print and have students follow along with because there are places where because of the age of the former slaves and the old style technology it is difficult to hear what is being said. This is a great discussion starter to get into the basic life a slave. I really like how Mr. Hughes repeats over and over this idea that as a slave "Dogs got it better now than we did then". Which sends a message about the low level of treatment, but very interestingly is not all that detailed. Many of the slave narratives leave out some of the worst details. You do hear these folks says things like "I don't want say too much because it makes folks feel bad." It's just a great resource and I really enjoy the follow up discussions.

(Only known photo of Fountain Hughes)

This week in Ethics we discussed and debated Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare. This led to a discussion of meat eating and vegetarianism as well. For this we used an couple of online articles and videos. This website on the basics, this article about ethical meat eating, this video about the intelligence of Dolphins, this video about the Gorilla Koko, and this video about Temple Grandin and her work in advancing ethical ways of treating Animals (but not Animal Rights philosophy). In History v. Hollywood we finished watching Schindler's List and continued to study the Holocaust and its legacy. In my online class through Virtual High School, we are now discussing the end of the Cold War in the late 1980's and analyzing Gorbachev vs. Reagan. This course will end in 3 weeks and students will be posting their presentations about future American Foreign Policy.

(Temple Grandin)

(Koko with her pet kitten)

I was very proud of myself this week for taking a the "bull by the horns" this week on two different things. I sometimes can get so caught up in my lesson plans, grading, and day to day routines that I struggle to quickly pick up on issues that need to be addressed. Thanks to a conversation with a fellow Advisor that he started with me, I came to the realization that something was amiss in my Advisee group (and perhaps many 9th grade groups). My Advisees have not made much progress in interacting with each other. My theory is that its because of the iPads to a certain extent. With my last group as 9th graders they came in and sat down and looked to me or each other for what we were going to do. Over the 4 years that evolved into time to do homework and having a small laptop device to help with that. Because they had time to get to know each and other and bond as a group before we made changes, the group seemed to come together well. It happened naturally and not something I had to force. With my new group there is a whole lot of individual work on the iPad (as well as games or whatever) and not much social interaction. So I made 2 changes. From now on, the first 10 minutes of every Advisee time will be spent in a circle at the front of the room with no electronic devices. The other change was that every other Friday for the whole 30 minutes I will bring in some type of food goodies and and we will have a discussion in a circle. I purchased something called Table Topics online that has a series of cards with interesting discussion topics for teens. I learend about this during Advisor training on the first day of school from other Advisors. I am happy to report that both of these changes have been well received and dare I say even appreciated by my Advisees. On Friday we had our first Table Topic discussion and I think we learned more about each other in that 30 minutes than we had learned in all the time up to that point! The other item on which I grabbed the horns was in my study hall. Never before this year have a I had a study hall with so many students on silent study (this means no talking, and no signing out to anywhere). I started the beginning of the year with 5 or 6 and each grade check the number has gone up. In order to get off silent study a students can have no grade lower than a "73". In theory silent study should help them get their grades on track and be "painful" enough that they will be motivated to work harder and get off silent study. This theory has not held true as I now have 20 on silent study out of 31! So this week I instituted assigned seats and purposely put students next to people I knew they were not friends with. I have been doing this on the first day of school in all may classes for a few years now with great success. I never bothered with study hall because until this year I only had 5-10 students ever stay in the room and they stayed quiet without much difficulty. This year has been different. So I announced on Thursday a change. There was moaning and groaning and so I said there is an easy solution- do some work and get off of silent study. I offered to help them, talk to teachers, whatever is needed to help them be successful. I am hope to see some progress!

Next week I will be commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, attending a training on Teacher Obervations as part of our move to the Marzano Teacher Evaluation system and the great pleasure of viewing "The Sound of Music" musical put on by students at my school.

Maine Council for the Social Studies annual conference

I was so excited about the Conference I attended today I couldn't wait to blog about it! Today was the annual Maine Council for the Social Studies conference. I am on the Board for MCSS and so have been a part of the planning for the conference for the last year. Our theme this year was "Content, Instruction, and Technology: Standards-Based Approaches for 21st Century Learners."  We had the largest number of registrations we have ever had! I think we also had the most session options we have ever offered and also had many vendors available selling resources but also giving away a lot of stuff.

(MCSS President Glenn Nerbak)

 

 

The day kicked off with information from Maine Department of Education Social Studies Specialist Kristie Littlefield. Kristie spent some time talking about the C3 Framework (On page 10 of this document you will see my name because I was one of the teacher's from Maine who worked on this document) for Social Studies that is designed to supplement the Maine State Learning Results. Twenty two States were involved in the creation of C3 and so it is hoped this will result in more resources for us. She went on to discuss the law that requires a Proficiency Based Diploma and support available to schools for this. This means the class of 2018 must graduate with a standards based diploma, which also means big changes for my school! At the end of her talk Kristie recognized Maine's last 3 History Teacher of the Year Award winners. This award is given by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. I can't say enough good things about their organization. I attended one of their summer institutes in 2010 and it was tremenodus. They give a lot of money for history education.

 (Kristie Littlefield and the History Teacher  of the Year Award winners)

After the information from Kristie, we had a tremendous keynote speech that centered around the Gettysburg Address and using Common Core standards to analyze it. Jared Peatman, Director of Curriculum, Lincoln Leadership Institute, Vienna, Virginia gave the keynote speech. Mr. Peatman is a Maine native, from Skowhegan as a matter of fact. His speech was outstanding. He discussed strategies for analyzing the speech and using the Common Core to do this. He also talked about his book which gets into the impact the speech had later and in other parts of the world. He raised lots of interesting questions- why focus on 1776 in the beginning of the speech? The Constitution endorsed slavery, the Declaration did not! Why quote Jefferson? Hard for Southerners to criticize a speech based on something Jefferson wrote! What's his message? Democracy doesn't exist without equality! Like I said, it was awesome! There is something Mr. Peatman mentioned I found chilling for some reason that doesn't really make any sense. Mr. Peatman said that President Obama just announced he was declining the invitation to speak at the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. He then mentioned that at the 100th anniversary President John F. Kennedy also declined an invitation to speak because he had already planned to speak in Dallas, TX...

(Jared Peatman discuss the Gettysburg Address)

 

 

 The talk was fantastic! I even attended Mr. Peatman's session on the responses to the Gettysburg Address in other parts of the country. This was also a great activity aligned with the Common Core. I decided to buy his book, The Long Shadow of Lincoln's Gettsyburg Address and he graciously autographed it. I attended a session run by the Choices Institute. They have been around a while and create high quality units around role playing activities. Today's session was on a new unit about the Civil Rights Movement. I got a free copy of the unit which was awesome! I have used other Choices units and they are all well done, I highly recommend them! The other session I attended was about differentiating assessments through technology. It was very interesting and gave me some great ideas for what I can use. The presentation they gave is publicly available here. One of the great draws to these conferences is the possibility of getting new resources form vendors. I got a whole stack of free books and teaching guides. I also got a lot of information about National History Day which is something we have been thinking about for a while and might be ready to take the leap and judge this year so we can see what its like. Fantastic day and I'm happy to have a three day weekend to go through all of the books, resources, and ideas I got today!

The conference was Friday, so I was in my classroom Monday-Thursday this week and we learned a good deal in that time! I introduced the $35 Dollar Bill project in US history classes this week to much excitement and concern. I am always anxious to see who they are choosing and the kind of creative presentations they can come up with. In addition, we had a spirited debate around the Ethics of Torture and we started watching Schindler's List in History vs. Hollywood. 

We had another Department meeting this week and tried to come up with a plan on how to update and improve our curriculum and begin to align it with Common Core standards. We also needed to finalize our budget proposal to submit to our Principal (which we did) and began to make plans to organize this year's Model UN club. Every year we take about 24 students to Northeastern University in Boston, MA for 2 days to participate with other schools in a simulation of the United Nations. The United Nations association of Greater Boston is also involved in organizing this. We are just starting this process now! We included in our budget proposal funding for the National Council for the Social Studies Conference next Fall which will be held in Boston, MA. We figure its the closest it will be to us for the next 10 years so we can't pass up the chance to try and attend! Even if we don't get funding, I will plan to attend and find other funding if I can! 

 

Technology and Good vs. Evil

My Farm or Factory Fake Facebook pages were presented on Monday and they were quite good! I think the students are not as excited because the real facebook has changed its look so much that they can't relate as well to the template. I need to find one that is setup the way facebook is now and use that in the future I think. Having said that, I did still see some of the creativity in the conversations that gave a sense for the tension over immigration, changing roles for women, and the mysteries of industrialization. It was great fun!

I introduced the $35 dollar bill project this week to US history classes. In this project students must nominate someone to be put on this new dollar bill. Its 35 so we are not kicking anyone off of current money and 35 is half way between 20 and 50. For this project, students need to pick someone who had a major influence on the United States. Then write a biography of them focusing on 3 major ways they influenced the US. Then they have to create the design for the dollar bill, dress up like their person, and deliver a 4-6 minute presentation to class defending their nominee for the bill. While working on this, we study Andrew Jackson and analyze whether or not he deserves to be on the $20 dollar bill. So we spent some time this week getting to know Jackson. Jackson was a wildly popular "Tough Guy" who was in over 100 duels in his life, killed a British Solider when he was 12, and had bullets still in his chest while serving as President. As my friend said in reference to Jackson's life "Man's game". Yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a man like that in the Presidency may not be such a good thing! His interactions with Native Americans and the Trial of Tears is just one such example!

In Ethics we are discussing torture. We explored this week both sides of the debate. We looked at evidence around what can be gained from torture and how important that may be. We also looked at the act of torture itself and delved into an exploration of evil a bit. Here we crossed the Psychology line a little and looked at a couple of famous experiments that shed some light onto evil. The Milgram Obedience Experiment is a classic! Stanley Milgram invited ordinary people to monitor a "Shock Machine" with various switches. The last few switches were labeled "dangerous" and the last one had a skull and crossbones image. The people who were recruited for this would listen to a "learner" give answers and deliver a shock for each wrong answer, increasing the intensity of the shock each time. Amazingly 90% of the people (this includes, women, and all ethnic backgrounds) went all the way to the skull and crossbones. In most cases the learner would cry out in pain and plead with the person to stop shocking them. Because the head of the study was there watching and kept telling the person delivering the shock "It's ok, we are responsible here not you" they kept going. As it turns out the "learner" was an actor paid to pretend they were being shocked and the shock machine didn't actually deliver a shock. But how interesting it is that most people would push the switch that seemed to indicate death just because someone told them they are not responsible! We also looked at the Stanford Prison Experiment whereby College students were randomly assigned to be a guard or a prisoner for 2 weeks to study how prison life effects people. The experiment was stopped after 6 days because of the breakdowns occurring among the fake prisoners. In just a few days the guards resorted to all levels of humiliation, and psychological abuse to get the fake prisoners in line. It was incredible how quickly they lost sight of this as an experiment and how real it all felt. They did these things all seemingly because they were put in a situation with little oversight or training and told to keep the prisoners in line. It was eerily prophetic of the Abu Grahib atrocities committed in 2004. All of this comes out the book The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. His theory is that what creates this evil is the system, not the person. He also concludes that ethics education is the best way to combat this phenomenon so that kids learn about Moral Courage. Great PR for this course!!

(This image is good in that it shows the guards with the sunglasses. Zimbardo's research indicates that the covering of the face with a mask, sunglasses, helmet, etc. can help to psychologically convince one you are no longer an individual but representing a larger organization and just doing what they tell you to do)

Lastly this week in History v. Hollywood, students presented their iMovie Historical Film Trailers. I knew they would be good and they were. But I was blown away by a handful of students who created such an amazing piece of art in 2 minutes! (The trailers are anywhere from 1 minute 15 seconds to 2 minutes long). These few actually gave me a chill I was so impressed with how they connected mood and specific plot points from the film to their trailer and used creativity to make it realistic and easy to relate to. Great stuff! All because of the iPads!! In connection to this, I also stumbled onto a great little media kit that you can snap your iPad into and it becomes a little high quality movie camera!! I'm going to pursue a grant to see if I can get this iographer!

Next week is the annual Maine Council for the Social Studies Conference that I am attending and immensely excited about! I will also be attending the Cross Discipline Literacy Network "Dine and Discuss" seminar to kick off our attempt to improve literacy and implement the Common Core in multiple disciplines!

Apple Time

This was an incredibly busy week which made it also very interesting. We are learning about the Industrial Revolution and we used a unit that myself and the other U.S. History teacher designed, my colleague Mike Streeter. 3 years ago we attended a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History Workshop in Lowell, Massachusetts. Every year NEH sponsors 40 or so different workshops for teachers of the Humanities to apply for. If accepted, you pay for your travel and lodging, but at the end you receive a $1200 stipend. In addition, you can earn college credits. I encourage anyone who teaches Humanities to look them over and apply for one. The options for Summer 2013 are not yet posted but will be very soon and the application deadline is always in March. The unit we created in Lowell is the outcome of that experience. During the workshop we had the chance to experience life on the farm in the 1830's at Old Sturbridge Village. I really love OSV and have been there 4 different times now. Its just like stepping back into history as the whole village is set up like the 1830's with working farms, blacksmiths shops, and more. During the week we also learned about the mills in Lowell and what life was like for the girls who worked there.

 (Mike Streeter observes a lesson on using a Loom at Old Sturbridge Village)

 (Tinsmith at Old Sturbridge Village)

And so we created a project whereby students learn about life on the farm in New England and then life working in the factory. Then they have to create a fake facebook page from the perspective of a young girl in 1848 that reflects the choice she made and how she feels about that choice through the facebook page. We spent a good deal of time during our visiti to Lowell touring the mills and learning about life there.

(Outside of the Boott Cotton Mill in Lowell)

 (Inside of the Boott Cotton Mill where the Lowell girls used to work)

Students have created some interesting fake facebook pages in the past. Here is one of interest. I can't wait to see this year's batch! Students use a keynote or powerpoint file that is a template that looks like a facebook page. They then delete the items there that are placeholders and replace them with their stuff. Here is the Lowell Unit we created. Here is the fake facebook powerpoint file we use to start with.

On Friday of last week my Principal asked me if someone form Apple could come by on eof my classes on Tuesday and see my students using their iPads. I said sure, why not? We are working on the iMovie Trailer project in my History v. Hollywood project so that would be fine. I walked away thinking it was someone form Apple here in Maine. I soon learned that my visitors would be 2 Apple Executive from California, Brent Frey and Mark Benno! I also discovered they would be accompanied by an entourage including the Superintendent, the Principal, our District Tech Team, and 2 folks representing Apple from the State level. This quickly escalated into a "Dog and Pony Show" and was starting to stress me out. I was up front with the students and explained we had to be at our best for our visitors. They were also quite nervous and speculated what they would ask of them. I am happy to report the visit went very well! The executives walked around and interacted with my students. They told me afterwards they were quite impressed with their enthusiasm for the project. The Executives mentioned several iPad accessories we might make use of. The Superintendent mentioned to the executives "maybe we can get some free samples", and one Executive said "I'll see what we can do". It was a stressful 30 minutes and then they left. I know they also visited another classroom in my school as well and maybe others I'm not aware of. It was really interesting and also stressful at the same time. This visit was followed by 4 hours of Parent/Teacher Conferences which served to totally wipe me out! My students were amazing for the Apple visit and I rewarded them with cookies and other goodies on Friday!

 (One of the much coveted Styluses that were available for free at the Apple training)

On Thursday I attended a training on iTunes U Course Manager. What is this you may ask? It is a web based application for hosting courses for students. It is much like "Edmodo" or "Moodle" or even like an online course program like "Blackboard". ITunes U Course Manager is completely free, and it allows for much more capability than the ones I just mentioned. Any individual gets 20 GB for course content, but affiliated institutions (all public schools in Maine) get unlimited GB of space. The best part about it is that it automatically syncs with student's iPads. You can create your course, all of its content, web links, videos, etc. and then it shows up on the iPad. This training was held at the Apple Training Facility at Pineland in Gray, Maine. If you're not familiar with Pineland it has an interesting history! It is now a burdgeoning technological and business park of sorts. The campus is quite large and very beautiful with ponds, gardens, and rolling meadows all around. The Training Facility itself is what you might expect. Not only do they have HD LCD projectors all equipped with Apple TV and with stereo sound in the room, but the seats are ergonomic and comfy with power outlets nearby. There was some free swag available... USB drives, pens, and the most popular items were the styluses for use on iPads. There are 2 different cafes on campus for food and beverage. Its really a nice place to learn and practice! I had the great opportunity to learn how to use iTunes U Course Manager and then preview it on my iPad. I decided to start with my Ethics course, since it is only one semester. I have it about 75% ready for next semester and my goal is to try it out with students next semester to see how it goes. One other aspect of this is the connection with iBooks Author. This is another application we have on our MacBook Airs and iPads. This application allows you to create your own "book" of text, links, etc. and this can be used within iTunes U Course Manager. I was also happy to learn that eBackpack works well with iTunes U Course Manager (as does Edmodo or any other application like that). I developed a headache around lunch time, just because I was doing so much thinking all morning! However I am very happy with this training and can't wait to do more with it!

(View from my seat at the Apple Training)

(Apple Training Facility at Pineland)

A lot happening in a short period of time

It's always nice to have a day off to rest and enjoy family. The Columbus Day Holiday this week provided just such an opportunity. Unfortunately it always seems like short weeks are the most tiring because we seem to try and fit everything in we normally do, we just squeeze it into 4 days instead of 5. To top it off, we also lost 2 classes to PSAT testing.

While the Sophomores and Juniors were testing, I worked with my 9th grade Advisees on thinking about careers. First they created a Dream Collage, then they took the Strong Interest Inventory which gets turned in and then scored to reveal what the best career choices might be for each of them. After this they downloaded an App for their iPads called "Profile Me" and found what their strengths and weaknesses were pertaining to a career. Finally they had a choice of 3 guest speakers. They could play "The Game of Life" and think about what kind of education and career they would need to live the lifestyle they want, they could listen to a Representative from the University of Maine at Augusta discuss college life and admissions, or they could listen to someone from Americorps talk about that as an option during or after College. I think this was a good start for them to get them thinking about what they might like to do after High School. Our Guidance Department is awesome and they work very hard to help students and seem to be one step ahead in planning these types of days with us. I appreciate the hard work they put in!

One of our technology teachers came into my History v. Hollywood class this week and taught my students how to use the iMovie app for their iPads. He was fantastic! I then explained the Film Trailer project they are doing. It requires them to create an original film. Thanks to Donors Choose I received a grant for a Panasonic HD Camera. Students will be able to use this camera as well to create their Trailers. I found a few great websites to help me with this. This iMovie site has great downloadable storyboards to help students plan their project. This how to website was also helpful for thinking about teaching students how to use the app for this project. The Tech teacher who helped me also shared this video tutorial on YouTube that students could refer to as well. I can't wait to see what kind of original trailers for historical movies they create!

The early days of our Republic and the growth of Federal power at the expense of the States was a theme in US history classes this week. Students analyzed 3 Supreme Court cases to show how the Judicial Branch established it power of Judicial Review and the power of the Federal Government. To do this, students had to research and explain the cases. We looked at Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Dartmouth College v. Woodward. Students created keynote presentations with their iPads in small groups and used my Apple TV to project right from their iPads.

Also this week we had Parent/Teacher Conferences. If there was a way to do them differently I would like to explore this. As it stands now, we do them for 4 hours after a very long regular school day with a regular school day the next day. These Conferences never fail to wipe me out for the week and have an impact on my family as well as my teaching! I recognize the need for the parents to touch base with teachers, but I wonder if this is the best way? I do not have a clear cut answer for this, but am exploring ideas. When this concept began, the only communication parents had from teachers was a phone call in a dire situation or the old fashioned "snail mail" paper progress report. Conferences were set up to give an opportunity to go further. Now we have email, school websites, and all grades are online and accessible 24 hours a day. Those kinds of discussions that used to happen at Conferences are happening in other ways much sooner in most cases. As a result, I find myself having very little to talk about with parents other than "hello, how are you?" and reconfirming what they already know about their child. This is fine by me, I'm just not sure if its really very helpful for anyone. I wonder if we should look into Student-led Conferences or some other format that might make them more useful for parents and students. In addition, perhaps we can find a format that won't have such a negative impact on my teaching. Those 4 extra hours just seem to sap my energy for the week! Having said this, I always enjoy visiting with the parents, especially when I get to see them more than once because I have had their other children or their child in multiple classes.

(For the record: I have never had this type of situation with a parent, I just thought this was funny!!)

We lost some class time on Friday this week for an Assembly, but it's for a great cause. Every year the whole school participates in a food drive for the week and Friday was the kickoff assembly. it started with a thoughtful and interesting student made film from the Drama Class about hunger in our community. We then had a "game show" with student representatives trying to guess food item prices to give students a sense for the types of food they could donate. There was a brief speech from 2 different folks representing the Good Shepard Food Bank encouraging students to donate and helping them to understand the nature of the problem. Students also found out that for every item or dollar donated they will be awarded a point. As a whole school, if we earn enough points there will be a day with no homework. More points, and it will be a weekend. Even more, a 3 day weekend, and an insanely large amount and Christmas break will be homework free. While the students are very excited about this and the Staff support it (including myself, wholeheartedly) I feel a little like I'm not really sacrificing much because I never give homework on White days anyway! I don't give homework over Christmas break, and there aren't many weekends when I give homework either (except maybe the AP class). It makes me wonder, is there some unwritten rule that I should be giving more homework (I hope not)? Anyway, it's all about the cause of battling hunger and helping our food banks to be stocked for the winter and I am a happy supporter of this incentive! It will culminate next Friday which happens to be Make a Difference Day.

Next week there will be some high level executives from Apple's Education Division visiting my classroom (as well as the classroom of at least one other teacher) to observe my students using iMovie on their iPads. They will be accompanied by the Superintendent, the Principal, and some others. That should be interesting, but wildly stressful!!! I warned my students on Friday they were coming. I will also be attending a training at Apple's Pineland Training Facility here in Maine on using iTunes U Course Manager. I am very excited about this and will blog about what I learn!