YouTube: BrainPOP and Google Apps

BrainPOP and Google Apps

How to access BrainPOP once you have installed it from the Google Marketplace and how to send quiz results to a Google Spreadsheet


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCWiKvBUrO4

Buffalo Chickpea Lettuce Wrap

I am starting to try to eat more vegetarian so for lunch today was a Buffalo Chickpea Lettuce Wrap.
Originally from Jenn’s Menu and Lifestyle Blog

This is a very light and tasty vegetarian alternative to traditional Buffalo wings that would make an excellent snack, appetizer, or meal.

Makes 1
Total time: 5 minutes

Ingredients
1/3 cup cooked chickpeas
1 teaspoon + a few splashes hot sauce
1 TBSP Hellman’s olive oil mayo
2 romaine lettuce leaves
Half ounce blue cheese crumbles

Instructions
Mix chickpeas and mayo together; salt + pepper optional
Add to middle of lettuce leaves
Sprinkle with blue cheese crumbles and a few splashes of hot sauce to taste

Additional notes
I had to double it to eat for my lunch. I also used a tortilla instead of lettuce.

My highlights from chapter 1 of  Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform by David Tyack and Larry Cuban

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002P6886A?ie=UTF8&ref_=r_soa_w_dMy Notes Link: https://kindle.amazon.com/work/tinkering-toward-utopia-century-ebook/B000B3CFHM/B002P6886A

Change where it counts the most-in the daily interactions of teachers and students-is the hardest to achieve and the most important, but we are not pessimistic about improving the public schools.Read more at location 123

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Basic to their conception of educational science was a conviction that children had different abilities, interests, and destinies in life. hence schools should treat them differently; this was their concept of equality of educational opportunity. They gave different labels to students who did not fit their definition of "normal," and they created tracks and niches for them. Progress to these experts meant a place for every child and every child in his or her place.27 Read more at location 238

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President Lyndon Johnson declared that proper schooling could prevent poverty, not merely ameliorate the lives of the poor, echoing a claim made by Horace Mann more then a century before.Read more at location 336

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Although Johnson's War on Poverty relied heavily on schools as an agent of reform, actual redistribution of educational resources lagged far behind need, for "savage inequalities" persisted, particularly in urban and rural schools that enrolled the poor and people of color.Read more at location 345

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Parents who have children in public schools tend to rate public education much more highly than the average respondent, and those polled have a higher opinion of local schools than they do of schools in general. Parents give high ratings to the particular schools their children attend.Read more at location 391

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Because nonparents rate schools significantly lower than parents do, changing demographics help to explain why the public ratings of schools dropped so precipitously between 1974 and 1983.Read more at location 399

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When teachers were asked why they became dissatisfied and left the profession, their top two grievances were "public attitudes toward schools" and "treatment of education by the media."Read more at location 412

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The historian Lawrence A. Cremin questions the assertion that bad schools are responsible for a deteriorating economy: "to contend that problems of international competitiveness can be solved by educational reform ... is not merely utopian and millennialist, it is at best foolish and at worst a crass effort to direct attention away from those truly responsible for doing something about competitiveness and to lay the burden instead on the schools." WeRead more at location 427

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David C. Berliner, an educational psychologist, argues that "the public school system of the United States has actually done remarkably well as it receives, instructs, and nurtures children who are poor, without health care, and from families and neighborhoods that barely function." For all their defects, schools may still be the most positive influence many children encounter, given the turbulence and dysfunction in many impoverished neighborhoods.Read more at location 479

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The public schools, for all their faults, remain one of our most stable and effective public institutions-indeed, given the increase in social pathologies in the society, educators have done far better in the last generation than might have been expected.Read more at location 492

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The key problem is to devise plausible policies for improvement of schooling that can command the support of a worried public and the commitment of the educators upon whom reform must rely.85 Read more at location 509

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Last Space Shuttle Launch

This is where my family watched the very last shuttle launch.

Not my photo

Chromebook and Video Editing

Crossposted at: http://mcdowellcountyschoolstechnology.blogspot.com/2011/07/chromebooks-and-video-editing.html

About two weeks ago I purchased a Samsung Series 5 Chromebook.  Eastfield Global Magnet School has expressed some interested in purchasing them for their new 8th grade class.  I like the idea of the Chromebook, especially since both staff and students are now using Google Apps.

One of my main concerns was video editing.  I wasn't really sure that editing video online was feasible.  Today I decided to give it a try using nothing but a Flip Video Ultra, a Chromebook, and Jaycut.com.  I recored a short video of the Chromebook booting up, it is fast!  The file ended up being 16 seconds and was only 10 MB.  Uploading to Jaycut was easy, the flip video was recognized as an external device.  I had ideal conditions with no students on the network.

I have used Windows Movie Maker and iMovie in the past, so I am familiar with movie editing.  Jaycut is pretty straight forward. Drag the video you want to the time line.  I was able to add text.  I played with the transitions, but decided not to use any.  I missed using the spacebar to start and stop the video like in iMovie.  

I published the movie straight from Jaycut to Youtube.  Overall, I am impressed with the Jaycut and editing on the Chromebook.  Again, this was a short video but Jaycut never crashed.  I could never say that using Windows Movie Maker.  Overall,  Jaycut was a quick and easy way to edit a video.  It lacks the polish of iMovie, but it is a great web app.  You can also add Jaycut in the Chrome Web Store. but they do not offer Google OAuth.  Students would have to create accounts.

Somethings I want to test in the future.

1. Longer videos

2. Upload speed when a bunch a students are trying at the same time, especially on wireless.

3. Adding Voiceover

4. Recording from the webcam.
5. Green Screen

A Day Out with Thomas

Jude, Christy, and I spent a day with Thomas the Tank Engine at Tweetsie Railroad.

America’s Teachers on America’s Schools

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-states/Pages/americas-teachers-report.aspx

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic surveyed 40,000 American teachers in order to find five ways to address the challenges facing today's schools.

The first recommendation was to establish clearer, tough academic standards, common across all 50 states.  I wouldn't call anything in this groundbreaking.  I am beginning to like the idea of common standards.  This would allow teachers across the county to collaborate.  I don't fell making the standards tougher will help anything.  I think we need to look at the types of assignments give.  Students need more rigorous assignments.  

The second recommendation was to use multiple measures to evaluate student performance.  The foundation states that teachers value the role standards play in improving academic achievement but are clear that standardized tests should not be the sole measure of student achievement.  Among the recommendations are formative, ongoing assessments during class, performance on class assignements and class participation.  Again, I see nothing new in this suggestion.  I agree that standardized testing should not be the the sole standard.  I would like to see project based learning and portfolios, where students display their own learning.  

The third recommendation was to innovate to reach today's students.  Specifically, students must see real world importance of a lesson.  Technology is suggested to keep the students engaged.  I agree with showing the students the real world importance and technology is a great fit.  A laptop in each student's hand is the perfect tool to complete projects that fit their learning style and interest.  It also gives them a platform to collaborate and share with the world.

The four suggestion is to provide supportive leadership to teachers and more collaboration time.  Principals should be the instructional leader of the school, they should have the ability to step back into the classroom and teach.  I would like to see more art programs available to students, giving teachers more collaboration time.  We also need to reduce the amount of other responsibilities and paperwork.

The last suggestion to bridge school and home to raise student achievement.  Parents are the first teachers and the most influential person in their child's life.  Same as it ever was.