BMS/SHS: Final Student ITL Committee of the Year

Julia Roberts, Staples High School library media specialist, visited the final BMS ITL Committee of the year to recruit students to the soon to be created SHS STUDENT ITL COMMITTEE. This student run committee will focus on the use of information and technology by the SHS community. The committee members will also look at current student use of technology in and outside of school and examine how it could be used for educational purposes. The committee will meet one to two times per month. There will be one or more representatives that attend the teacher ITL committee.

The SHS ITL Committee has a former BMS ITL Student Committee member as the first student on the committee, and a few other SHS students have expressed interest. Two 8th graders from BMS are planning to join the high school committee next year.

Meg Tiley, BMS assistant principal, and I have been co-chairing the student committee for 3 years. The student group meets approximately 6 times during the year... 3 official meetings and 3 sub-committee meetings. Students model and create opportunities for other students to use information and technology. This year students continued an idea from the last two committees, and created a live call-in information literacy contest on BAM, the morning TV news program. Another group created a video on how they use technology at home (including the use of Wii, Nintendo, ipods and iTunes). The video was used to promote a contest in which students would create their own videos about personal technology use at home. There were no student entries in this contest.

Next year most of the 25 student members are planning to continue on the committee. New members will be recruited from the elementary feeder schools. There will be an increased use of web 2.0 technologies including Skype, Google Docs, Scratch and other ITL areas of interest to students!

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.

BMS: Creating Book Trailers

NO, NOT THAT KIND OF BOOK TRAILER!!

Rita Hennessey, library media specialist at BMS, recently challenged students to create a Book Trailer, a movie to advertise a book! The contest was also advertised in the BLAST and Lauren Bullock & Kathy Fleming, technology teachers, also helped promote the contest in their computer classes and in the after school Media Club. This is the advertisement for the contest:

Book Trailer Contest!

Create a trailer (or commercial) for a book. You can use Windows PhotoStory 3, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, or any other technology that can be saved (or converted) to a .wmv or .mov file.

Guidelines:
Minimum length: 30 seconds
Maximum length: 2 minutes

What to include:
The Title and Author of the book are required - everything else is up to you!
Your goal is to convince the viewer to read the book.

Students can submit their videos to the "Book Trailer Contest" drop box
(on the "R" drive).

Finalists' trailers will be shown on BAM, so please use
school-appropriate language and images.

Deadline:
Friday, March 6, 2009

Winners will be announced Friday, March 13, 2009

Prizes: Your choice of iTunes or Barnes & Noble Gift Certificates

First Place: $25.00
Second Place: $15.00
Third Place: $10.00

See complete details at http://bmslmc.pbwiki.com/Book-Trailer-Contest

From the student entries, three were selected as 1st and 2nd place, and a 3rd was given honorable mention.

Honorable Mention to Melissa B. & Will H. for The Wizard of Oz
Runner up to Alex P. for Kensuke's Kingdom
First Place to Caroline S. for 13 Reasons Why (View Below)

CMS: 6th Grade Research Project - Social Studies and ITL

6th grade social studies teachers, Glenn O'Neill and Lucille Hyland recently worked with John Horrigan, LMS, to plan and implement a research project on a disaster. After determining that there were plentiful resources, studens followed their interests around a spcific natural or man-made disaster, such as: the San Francisco earthquake, Pearl Harbor, the Irish potato famine, Hurricane Katrina, the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, the Titanic, or the Love Canal disaster.

Students used the online project guidelines and resources on the LMC page, which included the following:

• Questions to consider
• Disaster project note sheets
  
• A project rubric
• Instructions
• Photostory Tips
• Scanned pictures and music in the R -Drive
• Resources to develop background knowledge
• Specialized resources to develop more knowledge (books, magazines, Internet)
  
• Suggestions for interviewing, viewing videos
  
• Use of Noodletools to cite sources
  

This year was the first year for this Social Studies/ITL project and it was so successful that it will be done earlier in the year next year providing students with the opportunity to become oriented to their new library media center and to both apply and learn new information and technology literacy skills within a social studies context.

Here is one sample by Emily which focuses on the Irish potato famine:

BMS: Student ITL Committee

Meg Tiley, Assistant Principal, and I have been coordinating a student ITL committee for three years at BMS. This group meets before school three times a year with several subcommittee meetings throughout the year. The mission is to increase awareness of the importance of effectively utilizing information and technology at home and in teaching and learning activities at BMS. Currently two groups are focusing on two different initiatives: a call-in information literacy contest held for one week live on BAM (Bedford's TV Station), and a video contest which asks students to creatively focus on the technology that they use at home. The group has an ITL Student Committee Wiki for agendas, and notes. In the wiki each student and teacher is represented by a self-created avatar name and icon.
Meg Tiley said, "Bedford has over 30 students involved in the Student ITL committee. We were able to target those kids with technology interests from their elementary schools and we advertise committee participation school-wide. It has been a wonderful connection between the students and faculty and the needs of our students. Currently, we have one student representative on the faculty BMS ITL committee. As we all know, our students are steps ahead of us with regard to current technology. We have found the student ITL committee to be an invaluable part of the BMS community. Each year, the student ITL committee holds one to two ITL contests to get other students involved in Information and Technology Literacy and what it means to them and to BMS. It is my hope that the committee will continue to grow and that students will feel empowered around some of the decisions regarding technology within the classroom."