NYSCATE 2014 - Simple Ways To Publish In A Paperless Environment

Source: ASIDE, 2014

The increasing use of technology to deliver information means the traditional bulletin board is going the way of the newspaper. While teachers still display student work in traditional venues, they can also seek alternate, virtual opportunities to share projects with peers and parents. Publishing student work motivates them to see, share, and engage in the collective consumption of ideas. Simple, free digital tools make it easier than ever to display content online. Collaborative whiteboards, digital fliers, and virtual pinboards can exhibit student creations with creative design.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Embedding content in a paperless environment promotes active and continuous discussions about accountability and digital citizenship. Our students are growing up in a world that is always-engaged, always-on, and always-connected. We need to foster dynamic learning networks that take advantage of these tools to help them navigate, curate, and publish their work.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

The increasing move toward 1:1 and BYOD programs has also pushed the speed and availability of information to mobile environments. It is important to employ app smashing and other interactive ways to engage with student work that builds on the collective feedback of teacher to student, student to student, and student to teacher.

Free publishing platforms:

• Twitter
• Kidblog
• Tumblr
• Wordpress
• Wikispaces

Source: ASIDE, 2014

 

Free publishing tools:

 

Adobe Voice

For examples of student creations in Adobe Voice for different grade levels, click here and here.

Kidblog

Source: ASIDE, 2014

 

 

To create a free teacher class in Kidblog, click here. 
 

Padlet

Created with Padlet

For examples of student publishing via Padlet, check out this, this, this, and this.

Smore

For examples of student publishing via Smore, check out this and this.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

For further reading and resources, we recommend:

• D-LIT: Transliteracy And Web 3.0
• Digital Humanities - Writing Analytically Across Disciplines

Ten Tech Tips To Spice Up Summer Reading

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Most kids (and teachers) hate summer reading. They view it as a chore, an unnecessary evil, a relic of schoolhouse drudgery. Even students who love to read groan at prescriptive lists of books that will receive little attention once the academic year begins. Even when offered a choice of titles, students drag their heels in completing linear book reviews or reader-response journals.

Click image for larger view

This is because in their active lives, kids are multitasking on social media while setting up Minecraft servers. They don't understand why summer work should force them to take a step back in time and technology. In order to spice up their summer literary lives, why not let students savor some easy tech ingredients, to make reading a zestier part of their wired worlds?

1. Animated book trailers - Instead of a book report, invite students to create animated book trailers to advertise their favorite titles to friends. Adobe Voice and Vine are perfect options for free, fast, embeddable movie-making.

2. Remote book clubs - Children regularly see their parents laughing in living room book clubs. Kids can form their own real-time remote clubs via Skype or FaceTime, to network and debate with classmates even while on vacation.

3. Journal blogs - Rather than relying on paper and pen, kids can publish their thoughts via personal blogs and then comment on peers' posts. Kidblog is a safe and self-contained option, with teacher-controlled classes to monitor conversations.

4. Character infographics - Visual thinkers and graphic artists will love making infographics of themes and events. Easel.ly and Piktochart are flexible platforms to unleash creative potential in ranking events and rating characters.

5. Chapter podcasts - Many learners prefer audio books, so why not encourage students to record their own podcasts? Audioboo, for example, will let kids embed recordings of chapters or reviews, to disseminate to classmates underneath their Beats headphones.

6. Twitter chats - Teachers can set up unique hashtags around specific questions, to unite students in online chats. Twitter will then serve as a permanent archive of notes and quotations, to tap for further discussion once the school year begins.

7. Virtual pinboards - Symbolism and visual metaphor can be difficult to teach. Virtual pinboards such as Pinterest offer fun ways for students to curate and share pictures that connect to specific plot points or motifs.

8. E-reader magazines - Any type of reading counts as reading, so instead of limiting kids' choices to a few books, schools can open up the options to magazines, newspapers, and graphic novels. E-readers like Kindles and Nooks provide portability and bookmarks for easy access.

9. Plot comics - Boiling down a book's plot to a few cartoon panels is harder than in sounds. Web tools like ToonDoo present a range of settings and personalities to capture key events, or even invent alternate endings to a novel's action.

10. Original fan fiction - The best follow-up to reading is writing, and many students love penning their own fan fiction to continue the interplay of favorite characters. Wattpad is a popular publishing site for young wordsmiths.

If you have any other suggestions to enhance summer's literary recipe, please share them. We'd love to hear more engaging tech ideas!

Ban Highlighting, Blackout Instead – Poetry Nonfiction Using Notability

Source: Bit Rebels

If your students are like ours, when they pick up a highlighter to underscore what is important in the text they are reading, they highlight just about everything. We might as well give them the information copied on yellow, pink, or orange paper. Part of the problem is they don’t “clean read” first to understand the context for the content. They just highlight away to the point of distraction.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

The concept of finding select phrases to support the topic does not even occur to them. This exacerbates the problem, leading to paper or electronic notes covered in color. Everything becomes important. They fail to select the main idea and miss supportive evidence for it.

Recently, we started to experiment with the blackout technique that is often used in creating poetry from newspapers and other texts, and we banned highlighting. To our surprise, the blackout process had additional benefits that we did not consider at first.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

In their search for the perfect word choice, students needed to reread the content for the finished product to make sense. In other words, they had to stick with the text. This method alone opened up opportunities for them to think about the information. It was anything but random in selecting the right words or phrases to make their nonfiction poem work.

The process was simple. The students download a PDF from our website and opened it using the app Notability on their iPads. This allowed them to carefully revise selected content, proofread for continuity, and ensure a poetic flow of information before they started the blackout process.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Of course, the anticipation in eliminating everything else was the fun part. It was an excellent way for them to engage with the text, understand the content, and have a blast doing it.

For other resources on using the blackout technique, see:

• Tip of the Week: Blackout Poetry
• iPads X Black Out Poems
• Austin Kleon - Newspaper Blackout Book Trailer
• Austin Kleon - Taking A Peek Inside "The Invention Machine"

Visual Letters: Language In Motion

ALPHABETIC from BlinkmyBrain" on Vimeo.

We came across a visually arresting video called "Alphabetic" that offers a dynamic way to approach lettering with students. Created by Ariel Costa of BlinkmyBrain, the clip presents a quirky, three-dimensional animation of the alphabet. On the surface, it's a fun film with clever transitions and an inventive personification of each character. On another level, however, it offers terrific possibilities for a range of learners.

For Early Childhood classrooms, the clip is a engaging way to introduce letters. Each unique visual cue serves as a reminder of each shape and structure. The peppy electronic music also underscores the figures with zippy sound effects. For older students, it presents a fine complement to phonics, and it would be a whimsical addition to ESL courses.

For graphic design students, the sophisticated video offers a great tutorial in typography. It also reveals the potential of rapidly evolving computer applications. In fact, the clip reminded us of a similar film, "I Love Motion" from Kasra Design. This other animated infographic demonstrates the effectiveness of feisty visual language.


I Love Motion from Kasra Design on Vimeo.

Librarians, Technology, And The New Literacies

Source: ASIDE, 2013

The role of librarians in modern schools is more crucial than ever. In an age of dynamic information and media streams, librarians are uniquely positioned to guide students in research and storytelling tools.

A librarian's role is also evolving as "literacy" in its traditional sense is changing. It's not just that e-readers have joined classic texts, or that online sources have joined traditional journals. It is much more. Multiple literacies are continually growing to require mastery in more than one, and librarians are poised to be on the front lines in delivering instruction and resources to help in this understanding.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

Librarians often know a school's curriculum better than the teachers themselves, because they reach all levels of learners. They have the capacity to enrich daily lessons and educational units.

Because the majority of student inputs these days are visual, interactive tools can help librarians and technology specialists enhance the range of curricular offerings.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

On Thursday, we had the opportunity to spend a terrific day with librarians from the Delaware-Chenango-Madison-Otsego (DCMO) districts in Norwich, New York. Together, we explored ways that technology can help teachers and librarians collaborate by using web tools and iPad apps. We greatly enjoyed meeting the skilled and dedicated professionals from the Board Of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) affiliated schools. We especially want to thank School Library System Coordinator Susan LeBlanc for inviting us to lead the all-day workshop.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

The exchange of ideas throughout the day helped generate project ideas and Internet applications to reinforce the underlying goal of educational design. This goal states that by shaping information in well-conceived, visual ways, students can become motivated, self-directed learners who create their own content and publish their own work. Technology offers valuable outlets for students, because it promotes choice and imagination.

Technology also provides a window for librarians, because it can boost all forms of literacy. We greatly look forward to staying in touch with our new colleagues from the DCMO schools. And if you happen to be in the area, we recommend the warm fire and witty servers at Gus' Steakhouse on Route 12.

Source: ASIDE, 2013

Playing Or Paying? The Value Of Early Childhood Education

Source: Sesame Workshop (click for detail)

One potential victim of January's fiscal cliff is Head Start, the early education program for children from low income families. Rarely mentioned in the budget debates are the $590 million dollars that Head Start could lose in federal funding.

Our school here in New York maintains a relationship with two area Head Start programs. Each December, our students visit the centers to play games and sing holiday songs. Our middle-schoolers build toys in the wood shop, bake gingerbread cookies, hand-print wrapping paper, and stuff envelopes with crafts to spend the day with classes of 3-to-5-year-olds. Our students come back with lively stories, but even more so, they come back with a recognition of the disparate nature of "school." It's not just the physical differences between buildings, but it's also the realization of space and resources -- and the critical significance of early education.

Head Start began as an initiative from President Lyndon Johnson's War On Poverty. It has grown through sequentially updated federal grants overseen by the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services. Head Start programs annually reach one million children in inner-city or rural areas.

Source: Citizen Action Of New York

Head Start's crucial mission is to promote school readiness and social and cognitive development through a host of early childhood services. Startlingly, though, several recent Congressional budget proposals have slashed its funding. The risk of the fiscal cliff also holds drastic implications for tens of thousands of children who would lose their access and their teachers.

Source: The Urban Child Institute

Some voices still argue whether the cost of high-quality early education is worth the financial trade-off. Other advocates for homeschooling declare that preschool exposes children to inconsistent discipline and undermines the parent-child bond. A recent New York Times column from Nicholas D. Kristof even explores the extent to which Appalachian families may intentionally avoid early schooling in order to keep their children illiterate and, therefore, receive government disability checks.

Source: W.K. Kellogg Foundation (click for detail)

Most educators, however, agree that early childhood education is more vital now than ever. The dynamic world of social interactions and linguistic guidance means that children can thrive under the stewardship of an experienced teacher. A well-intentioned dialogue does exist about the proper balance between play and academics in the early grades. Most agree, however, that the best teachers bring an invaluable toolkit of imaginative educational ideas to inspire young minds and aid in the joy of discovery.

Here we've gathered a collection of infographics that sum up the current state of early learning. Also, check out this video by designer Alena 'Ash' Heath for First Five Years Fund, an organization dedicated to achieving "better results in education, health, and economic productivity through investments in quality early childhood education for disadvantaged children from birth to age five." The organization even has a customizable toolkit to engage local media and Congresspeople in expressing support for early education up against the financial cliff.


Early Learning Matters from Alena 'Ash' Heath on Vimeo.

D-LIT: Designing Information With Technology

Get kids juiced about creating and publishing their work from writing their own stories to making motivational posters. Easy tech tools can transform learning. There are many web-based applications that allow educators to set up class accounts with privacy settings that do not require student e-mail addresses. These applications work for teachers, too, to publish resources or to show off what their students are learning.

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Source: ASIDE, 2012

Posts and Examples

D-LIT posts and lesson ideas

Resources

Storybird
Bookemon
Bookemon app
Voki
Voki Classroom
ToonDoo
ToonDooSpaces - classroom account
Marvel Superheroes
Comic Life
Comic Relief Wikispace
VoiceThread
VoiceThread K-12

Other Resources

Big Huge Labs
Spicynodes
Visual Poet - app
Snappy Words
Little Bird Tales

Source: ASIDE, 2012

D-LIT: Publishing With Kids Using Bookemon

Source: If You Give a Tiger a Taco

In the library curriculum every year, the students create original works of fiction in the first and second grades. They write and illustrate stories based on author studies or individual books. While the objectives for publishing the different projects remain the same, how we publish the books has changed. Using Web 2.0 technology such as Bookemon makes creating a digital book a snap, easy to share and digitally permanent. The kids love seeing their work published, especially because it can be read over and over again.

One of our favorite publishing projects is the first grade cooperative book. This past year, they based their stories on the If You Give a… series by Laura Numeroff. They analyzed the books for cause-and-effect situations, and they developed a keen sense of the pattern created by the author to bring each story full circle back to where it began. The two books in this post, If You Give a Tiger a Taco and If You Give a Dalmatian a Donut, mimic that pattern and were published using Bookemon.

Source: If You Give a Dalmatian a Donut

The original books the students wrote and illustrated were published traditionally on paper, using standard word processing software for the text and a scanner for the images. The document was printed, bound and cataloged as part of the permanent collection of the school library. This same document was uploaded directly to the Bookemon website to make the digital books in this post. It’s that simple. In fact, it takes more time to fill out the publishing information and to create a cover design than it actually does to publish the final copy on the web.

Bookemon offers many other features. You can publish directly from scratch with complete functionality for adding images, using templates, and selecting pictures from its clipart files. It also offers the opportunity to upload your own photos, use different page layouts, or select from different themes.

Source: Islamic Calligraphy

Teachers can use it to create their own publications, too. The sample below, called Where Do People Live? Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities, was produced using Bookemon. This book was written and designed to better meet the curriculum needs for the second grade study of communities. The Islamic Calligraphy book celebrates the workshop our students participated in as part of their study of the art of calligraphy during the Islamic Empire in the Middle Ages. This publication features all of the students' names in Arabic.




Best of all, with Bookemon educators can create secure and private environments, called edCenters, for their students to create and share books. This type of account allows teachers to control access only to members, to receive discounts on purchased books, and to add student accounts that provide privacy and oversight of their work.

Check out our other D-LIT posts on design, literacy, information and technology.

Voice and Visual Vowels

Source: echo enduring blog

Literacy and phonics are the bread and butter of early classrooms. The thread of language subsequently loops through all age levels. If you haven't yet seen this hypnotic clip about visual vowels, it's worth a look. Shared by Studiocanoe, the film is based "on an archival sound recording taken from the 1945 Linguaphone series." The soothing, illustrated sequence emphasizes linguistics through snapshots and crisp voicing. Teachers can use the video to reinforce word choice, self-expression, spelling, and vocabulary. The clip is somewhat hypnotic, with accented speech and intriguing word selections to highlight each vowel sound. Ambient piano chords underscore the unexpected image pairings. This type of simple movie would also be an easy project for students to recreate. They could choose their own pictures to link with their words of the week.


Vowels from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

An interesting tie-in to the role of vowels in everyday discourse is Matt Ward's write-up about "The Vowels of Design." He uses the five phonic building blocks to point to key criteria for visual design: Aesthetics, Experience, Information, Organization, and Understanding. These principles are ideal for students when creating multimedia projects. As a freelance digital artist writing at the "echo enduring blog," Ward explains that, "there is a strong connection between language and design through the art of typography." He makes an interesting and compelling case for clarity in information design.

Graphicacy: Infographics As Literacy

Graphicacy is the realization of information in a visual format. It is a literacy on par with textual, oral, and numerical skills. Graphicacy often takes a backseat in traditional classrooms, because understanding pictures is thought to be a natural consequence of basic vision. The conventional wisdom says that if people can see, then naturally they can comprehend what they see.

Parents, however, know this is untrue. They know children must learn to decode images and connect the visual parts to the cognitive whole. Mothers dedicate evenings to paging through picture books with their toddlers, pointing out clouds and jackrabbits and smiling moons. Fathers gesture at illustrations to connect colors to words, pigs to oinks, and cats to hats.

Adults know, too, that graphic interpretation is not automatic. Many times they themselves have cocked an eyebrow at a line in their Charles Schwab BAC EPS mountain graph. They've reread a GOP primary cartoon to locate the pun, or they've scanned Zimbabwe to pinpoint their safari.

Source: ASIDE

Teaching graphicacy is crucial in our schools. Infographics can offer engaging examples of graphic instruction, because they often combine data, images, symbols and lettering. Listed below are some of the resources we've found useful in approaching graphicacy in the classroom and using infographics to spur visual thinking:

• Visual Literacy in K-8
• Understanding Graphics: 10 Reasons to Use Color
• An Infographic a Day for Teachers
• Developing Visual Literacy Through Infographics
• Data Visualized in Infographics Teaching
• Getting Started Teaching with Infographics

Literacy, Numeracy and Graphicacy

Sometimes it's the simple thing that brings an idea to life. Check out this video presentation Tommy McCall gave at the TEDx East conference in May 2011 on Literacy, Numeracy and Graphicacy. He founded and operates the data visualization agency in New York City called Infographics.com. McCall sees himself as a producer, designer and data editor. In all these roles, he believes he “must understand the information, question its veracity, and convey its core message.” This is exactly what we want our students to do and is at the core of information literacy. For McCall, “graphicacy, the ability to communicate visually, will be an important skill set for future generations, just as literacy and numeracy are today.” It is clear, concise and worth the watch.