CMS: Music Movies

Amy Laurino, Music teacher at CMS, recently challenged students to create an iMovie on the Eras of Jazz. Students were required to begin with at least two images dealing with American Roots Music and Blues Music. They then had to cover each of these Eras and present information on each composer and style listed:

1. Early Jazz Era (1850-1910)
Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin

2. Hot Jazz Era (1910-1944)
Boogie Woogie, Swing, and Progressive Swing Music.
Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, King Oliver

3. Cool Jazz Era (1944-1970)
Bebop / Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk
Cool Jazz / Miles Davis
Also Afro-Latin Jazz / Dizzy Gillespie
Hard Bop / Art Blakey
World Fusion / Keith Jarrett
Free Jazz / John Coltrane

4. Modern Jazz Rock Era (1970-2009)
Jazz Rock Fusion / Pat Metheny OR Chick Corea
Neo-bop / Wynton Marsalis OR Wayne Shorter

5. Add a conclusion, where do you think Jazz is headed?

Here is one sample of a final product (it is 29 minutes):

BMS: ART in the MIDDLE [school] AGES

THE BEDFORD COMMUNITY OF

LINE, SHAPE, DIRECTION SIZE, TEXTURE, COLOR, VALUE, BALANCE, GRADATION, REPETITION, CONTRAST, HARMONY, DOMINANCE, UNITY, PERSPECTIVE, ABSTRACT, SCULPTURE, CUBIST, SURREALISTIC, CARTOON, MODERN, COLLAGE, MOSAIC, MULTI-MEDIA, PHOTOGRAPHY, CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING are some of the concepts and skills that students worked with in the creation of the hundreds of art projects on display on two floors in Bedford Middle School.

Of course art is important in its own right, and many students will become "real" artists. But producing and appreciating art plays a role in all of our lives.

Dan Pink says that design is an essential 21st Century Skill. Strong art and design skills when combined with content in other areas (history, psychology, law, engineering, catering, health care, etc.) create new job descriptions and new ways of relating and collaborating. These skills help individuals differentiate their skill sets and special abilities from the skill sets of others. These skills are regularly applied in all subject areas at school (as evidenced by some previous blog posts) when students are asked to synthesize and present their thoughts, research and writing. Tonight's student ART display at BMS is an indication that all students are learning many principles of art and design.


Art and design are essential ingredients in the information literacy problem solving process. Decisions need to be made at all steps in the process which may be impacted by design questions, but especially must be considered in the synthesis/presentation stages of the process.


There was also a multi-media gallery and a video installation called Project Run Away, an animated mannequin fashion video projected on a white abstract human body.

Music was also an important part of the Art Show with two student string groups performing -- one in the library media center and the other in the cafeteria, with plenty of food for the crowd of parents, teachers, administrators and students.


Congratulations to the three Art teachers -- Lynne Karmen, Peter DiFranco and Cecily Cowburn.

Video Contest Evaluation Day

I spent the day with 7 other members of the Area Nine Cable Council's Education Committee (colleagues from Weston, Wilton, New Canaan, Greenwich and Redding). We evaluated this year's entries in the Cable Contest at the Cablevision offices in Norwalk. Each video was scored using a rubric (click on the image for a larger view).

All entries had to be shown on Cablevision's Local Access channel. Westport had 32 videos entered in the contest in four categories: News (high school only), Open Entry, Community/School Story and PSA (Public Service Announcements). After the first round of judging, 21 of the videos remained to be judged with all of the other entries.

The following schools submitted videos in the contest and ALL schools received awards -- either a first, second or third prize. [Awards will be prepared (trophies, and certificates with some equipment packages for 1st prize winners) and officially announced by the end of May!]

• GFS
• LLS
• KHS
• BMS
• CMS
• SHS
  

Our students should have the ability to compellingly communicate ideas in a video format. With this skill students will be more marketable in almost any career imaginable. Hopefully next year we will have another venue to celebrate the art and science of video creation in our schools -- the Westies!

SHS:Dan Geraghty Creates an Amazing Author Visit with Craig Mullaney

Craig Mullaney

Last Wednesday afternoon, March 22nd, Dan Geraghty, English teacher at SHS, interviewed author, Craig Mullaney, via a live Skype connection. Students from Dan Geraghty’s sophomore English 2A, B and contemporary American literature classes, with Christina Richardson’s speech class made up the audience. Craig Mullaney is the author of The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education (Penguin Press) and a U.S. Army veteran.

Dan Geraghty originally read the book because of personal interest, specifically related to his connection to Craig's background: Craig and Dan served in the same military unit on active duty in the 10th Mountain Division. Both are Army Rangers and Infantry Captains. They both left the military after a period of service in order to pursue other interests. Dan was using the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien as a class text and he realized how relevant Craig's story would be as a non-fiction supplement to the text. Dan was able to connect with Craig Mullaney through Facebook, and Craig was enthusiastically willing to "visit" Dan's classes via Skype!During the 45 minute interview Dan Geraghty had prepared his own questions and selected some questions from his students. (The full video interview will be available soon and added to this blog post.) Craig Mullaney reflected on his life experiences at West Point, Oxford University and as the leader of his army platoon in Afghanistan. The interview was riveting and poignant. Craig's story is archetypal and his focus on growing up and taking responsibility for something greater than himself was inspiring.

I do not think that this interview would have been any more powerful if Craig Mullaney was actually at the school. For all intents and purposes he WAS fully present, which speaks to the power of video conferencing and Skype.

Inklings, Staples school newspaper, published an article today with more information on this amazing event.

GFS: TV10 visits McMahon Communications Center at Quinnipiac University

On Tuesday, April 21, 2009 the 5th grade members of the GFS TV10 club visited the Ed McMahon Mass Communications Center at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT. Kelley Auringer, LMS, arranged and managed the visit.

Quinnipiac students in the School of Communication led the TV10 crew through a tour of Quinnipiac's state of the art television studio and broadcasting program. The TV10 crew was allowed to use Quinnipiac's professional level technology and equipment to produce their own news show. The students' favorite part was working with the green chromakey wall and producing the weather. There was a lot of laughter, excitement and fun as the learning took place. By all accounts the field trip was wonderful and will be considered by many to be a highlight of the TV10 year.

KHS: Poetry Cafe

Cats, My Mother Has…, Flags, Keep a Poem in your Pocket, Behind the Eyes of Me, Alex, Blank, Summer, Black Cat, The P---l Family, Water, Snowboarding, Seasons, The Bells of London, Dream, Owl, Dreams, Self-Portrait, Darkest, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Don't Trust the Fog, A Tour of the World, Crescent Moon, Leave it all on the Court, A Nightly Stroll, Paper, Life Roller Coaster, Tree, When Deaf Don Met Talkie Sue, Umbrella, and Live, Laugh, Discover.

Those were the names of the 30 poems read at the 5th annual KHS Poetry Café held in the library media center last night. It was organized and led by Aimee Anctil, LMS. Students registered in advance. Over 20 poems were written by students, and the other poems by well-known poets were selected by students to read.

The library media center was transformed into a cozy, lamp-lit, table-clothed, artsy, café environment filled with cookies, chocolate milk and other comfort foods and drinks. It was conducive to the sharing of personal, family, humorous, serious, happy, anxious, sad and foggy poetry! The standing room only crowd listened attentively to each poet's rendition of his or her poem. Café applause filled the word drenched atmosphere after each mouthing at the microphone. It was an evening to remember!

Information Literacy embodies the use of ALL kinds of information. This Poetry Café event demonstrates that writing, reading, sharing, communicating and socializing with family and the school community are all important aspects of what happens in a school library media center. The Café experience is one important part of a multi-faceted library media program at KHS.

LLS: ITL Committee Meeting

I was fortunate to attend the Long Lots School ITL Committee meeting yesterday afternoon from 3:00-4:00. Steve Cerney, ITL committee chair, and Nick Brophy, Assistant Principal, unveiled the four new ITL committee objectives to work with through the end of this school year, but more importantly, to guide the group for the 2009-2010 school year.

An overview of the current status of the 21st century skills was provided utilizing the Voicethread embedded in the ITL homepage. A discussion by group members determined that grade level teams would decide which 21st century skill to focus on in each unit of study. Strategies for teaching the listed 21st century skills would be documented during the 2009-2010 school year.

CES: Trash and Treasure

Sarah Spencer, LMS at CES, has been working with 2nd grade students on several sessions using the Big6 Trash and Treasure method of note taking. First she showed a Powerpoint presentation to introduce the concept of how you need a question in order to know how to find the treasure! Today's lesson involved reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction books (some wordless alphabet books) in search of treasures to answer the question, "Why is this community an urban community?"

In the lesson I observed today with Karen Nelson and her class, students were asked to use the special note taking sheet to record their treasure words and the pages on which they were found. Each pair worked with a different book with several adults supporting their efforts. They were asked to find at least 10 treasure words before time was called and they shared their treasures.

All 2nd grade classes are also working with Pam Syndercombe, technology teacher, on trash and treasure activities. Having the same terminology used by the classroom teacher, technology teacher and library media specialist is helping students understand and practice the art of selecting information that is related to the research question.

Blackboard Clinics

Today was my second Blackboard Clinic. I am spending a full day at each school to provide Blackboard assistance for interested teachers -- from setting up the basic menu (Teacher Info, Class Overview, Announcements and Assignments), to a wide variety of additional features, including (but not limited to) adding videos, images and html code. There are many new video tutorials on specific Blackboard features made by Natalie Carrignan, Director of Instructional Technology. These tutorials can be found under the BB tab after logging in.

The Blackboard Clinic Schedule:

• BMS - April 8th
• SHS - April 20th
• CES - April 29th
• GFS - May 6th
• KHS - May 7th
• CMS - May 13th
• SES - May 14th
• LLS - May 19th

To Schedule time: Click on this link
(E-mails are sent out approximately two weeks before the Clinic dates!)

KHS: SEVEN WEEKS OF SCRATCH

(This is a follow up to Blog Post Feb. 26th where we learned that a Scratch group was started at KHS!) -- This morning I had the incredible opportunity to observe the culminating event of a 7 week SCRATCH group of students who met one morning a week before school. Two months ago, two students came to Aimee Anctil, LMS at KHS, to talk about their recent experience at a Saturday workshop in Darien in which they learned how to program with SCRATCH. Ms. Anctil asked the students if they would like to teach her and other interested students how to use Scratch. Now, the first 7-week Scratch course is over... with plans for a second!

Today parents, siblings and future Scratch students (who plan to enroll in the SECOND Scratch series) were in the audience. The presentations were structured to put the students in the driver's seat. They showed their work and talked about creating, remixing and posting Scratch files. They showed the MIT site and talked about some of the projects that they learned from and how they downloaded and "remixed" them. The two leaders are planning their strategies for the next series of Scratch workshops, which will have new students (beginners) and repeating students (advanced). The two student teachers have divided their responsibilities to each be with one of the two groups.

The example below was created by one of the student leaders, whose Scratch name for posting on the Scratch website is Popeyeblack0.

In a rapidly changing culture, Margaret Mead pointed out that the young have to teach the old. Kids regularly learn "games" and the use of certain technologies earlier than many adults. Asking them to teach their peers and willing adults provides them an opportunity for not only learning the content at a deeper level, but also allows them to develop many other important skills, such as collaboration and communication. They are also highly motivated by the passion they have for the subject.

This morning's culminating Scratch sharing BY kids for kids and adults was a great opportunity to view how "old concepts" (independent learning, flexibility, opportunity to fail, design, collaboration, determining audience, critical thinking) are reframed in the 21st century. Great job SCRATCH kids! Great job Aimee Anctil!

... and now school stops (as does this blog) until April 20th. See you then!

BMS: Magic School Bus - 7th Grade Science/English

At BMS each year Science and English are integrated in a special interdisciplinary project where students create a children's book on a science concept modeled after the Magic School Bus series by Joana Cole and published by Scholastic. Today I was fortunate to be in Kimberly Materese's 7th grade Science class held in a computer lab, but you might have thought it was an English class, or maybe an Art class, or possibly a Technology or Library Media class. Wait a minute! It was!

Students were working on the story and layout of their children's book on computers, and each book focused on a specific science topic, such as gravity, Pluto, meteors, black holes, and others. (See topic list below.) In English class students worked on their nonfiction story to entertain and teach others about their science topic. Students were using their checklists and rubrics to self-assess their book. They were extremely excited and proud of their work. All students were focused on last minute efforts to perfect the mechanics, content, story and art work of their book, since the project is due tomorrow, April 9th.

Rita Hennessey, LMS, was also working with students on many aspects of their project, including the use of Noodletools to create a thorough Works Cited page for every book.

Thanks to Mrs. Matarese, here are the rubrics, checklists and other documents used for this project:

• The Magic School Bus Science book revised 08-09.doc
  
• Timeline and checklist.doc
  
• Magic School Bus Topics.doc
  
• Rubric-Science.doc
  
• Rubric-English.doc

... and a sample page from Matt and Jeremy's book on Gravity...

Play with the Solar System

This website allows users to view the movement of the planets over ANY period of time.
Users can control:

• the speed of time passing -- both forward and backward
• the angle of viewing the solar system
• the distance from planets
• the measurements in Astronomical Units, Kilometers or Miles between any two objects
• the playing of existing tours and the creation of their own tours
• and much more!

For an unusual tour of our solar system, check out this website:
http://www.gunn.co.nz/astrotour/

Take the introductory tour to learn some of the shortcuts (such as press the + or - keys to zoom in or out; use your left mouse click to move the solar system around; hold the shift key down while you move the solar system and rotate the entire solar system on an axis).

Repeat POST: Please fill out Google Doc Form below!

If you go to Google Docs (enter your login and password or create an account) then go to NEW/ FORM, you will be creating a new form that allows you to collect data from as many people as are willing to respond. The data will automatically be entered in a Google spreadsheet in your Google Docs account with the same name as the name you gave the form, and each entry will be recorded in a separate row in the spreadsheet.

The form can be embedded (SEE SAMPLE BELOW) in most digital communication systems, including Blackboard, a wiki, an e-mail or a blog. If you are doing this with a full class and you have the spreadsheet open on a screen or Smartboard, as each student answers questions on the form, they will appear in the document when you refresh the page. Since the information is in a spreadsheet you can sort the information based on any criteria.

In this case I am collecting information on readers of this blog. Your answers will go into a spreadsheet in my Google Docs.




If you would like to utilize this tool for an activity in your class or school, and you would like more help in setting it up, please contact me:
Email: Bill Derry

Use Google Docs to Collect Data- PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM IN THIS POST

If you go to Google Docs (enter your login and password or create an account) then go to NEW/ FORM, you will be creating a new form that allows you to collect data from as many people as are willing to respond. The data will automatically be entered in a Google spreadsheet in your Google Docs account with the same name as the name you gave the form, and each entry will be recorded in a separate row in the spreadsheet.

The form can be embedded (SEE SAMPLE BELOW) in most digital communication systems, including Blackboard, a wiki, an e-mail or a blog. If you are doing this with a full class and you have the spreadsheet open on a screen or Smartboard, as each student answers questions on the form, they will appear in the document when you refresh the page. Since the information is in a spreadsheet you can sort the information based on any criteria.

In this case I am collecting information on readers of this blog. Your answers will go into a spreadsheet in my Google Docs.




If you would like to utilize this tool for an activity in your class or school, and you would like more help in setting it up, please contact me:
Email: Bill Derry

Leo the Lion Tours America -- When Will He Return?

Long Lots has celebrated reading all month, and their school mascot, Leo the Lion, has traveled around the United States sending postcards along the way. Michael Brownstein, technology teacher, Barbara Eilertsen, library media specialist, Becky Laus, 1st grade teacher, Kendall Alderman, music teacher, and others have monitored Leo's travels on their daily television program. A Google Earth file was created to show a photo-journal of the places that Leo has visited in America and it can be downloaded ( and it will automatically open in your Google Earth -- IF you have it on your computer) [You can download it here as well as on the Long Lots School HOME PAGE.]

Students have read hundreds of books to celebrate Leo's journey across America, and the entire school will be gathering tomorrow at a community meeting to celebrate all of the reading done in the past month.

This project promoted school spirit, met many ITL objectives and developed social studies and language arts skills.

No Future Left Behind

Marianne Malmstrom, a technology teacher at Elizabeth Morrow school, created the video below with Peggy Sheehy, the media specialist at Suffern Middle School in New York. Peggy and Marianne are both leaders in working with students and teachers in virtual worlds. I first met Marianne (aka Knowclue Kidd) when she was presenting student machinima at a lecture in Second Life. I then asked her to present her machinima work with students virtually with me at a conference in Florida last November. We have continued to communicate via Skype and Second Life, and I was very impressed with the video when I previewed it before it was presented. Although I shared it with ITL staff in early March, I wanted to share it with a broader audience.

Marianne and Peggy created this video as a keynote for the Net Generation Education Project: http://netgened.wikispaces.com

When kids at the Suffern Middle School Tech Club were asked to talk about education and their future, they gave Peggy Sheehy, the SMS media specialist, an earful. Other students heard about the project and joined in. They brainstormed the script and started filming. Listen and learn the bits of wisdom that can be gleaned from the students, if we only dare to ask them.

Students from The Elisabeth Morrow School Tech Club contributed machinima created in Quest Atlantis.

Marianne Malmstrom (aka Knowclue) worked remotely with the students of Suffern to create machinima of their avatars.

Original music, "Harpsicord" was created by a former Suffern Middle School student, Larry Bordowitz.

All editing was done by Peggy Sheehy and Marianne Malmstrom.