The Gonzo Election Project

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been collaborating with my fellow American Government teacher on an election project. We just launched this endeavor with our sophomores. It is both ambitious and unscripted. Indeed, we are placing a great deal of faith in our students' imaginations. If this faith is warranted the project could be really exciting.

Here's the plan: Each of our four classes (total) will divide up into project teams.

1) An Election News Feed team which will provide up-to-date election news.

2) A Michigan Election Information Team which will research the candidates and issues.

3) A Fantasy Presidential Campaign Team which will launch an imaginary candidate's quest for the White House.

4) A Mock Election Team which will devise a school mock election from scratch.

Now, here's the wildest feature: The project teams will be linked to their counterparts in the other three classes and must collaborate online to construct one central project.

Believe it or not, Cindy and I have pretty clear ideas as to how the individuals can be assessed in terms of their contributions. But we have no idea as to how the four sets teams will operate on their wiki sites. More later!

Election Project Overview

AP Government CBL -- Solutions: A Vibrant Web Site

This is the 6th post in a series on the AP Gov cbl project. The last post investigated a web site that was launched as a demo. I was stunned to find that two groups had produced fully operational sites. This one is called The Ideal Voter. Be sure to go to the Guestbook page and note the comments of some of its many visitors.

Let me allow the Ideal Government group to explain the "mission" of their site in their own words:

The ultimate goal is to not only inform, but excite young (and soon-to-be) voters in America. . . . The ability to vote brings power: power to change the world around us, and power to make life in America better for the future. . . .

The assignment which inspired the creation of this website was to "Create an authentic medium for strengthening democracy." In America, we have the opportunity to take part in politics and truly make a difference. . . . . Thus, we are attempting to promote democracy in America by empowering young voters. Although we have focused on Southeast Michigan, people from across the country are welcome to join in the fun.

The future is ours, and it all starts now. Help us to build a generation of politically educated and opinionated men and women!

Before they even did their presentation for us, the group had attracted over 500 visitors with their information site. The site is exceedingly well designed and is an excellent source of news and facts. It also hosts a lively blog. One of the most impressive links was a portal for actually registering to vote-- something the group succeeded in accomplishing with a few newly-turned-eighteen visitors.

I found the solution to be virtually flawless. Furthermore, the group members had absolutely immersed themselves in their research and site construction. Their passion came through during another wonderful presentation. My only disappointment is to see that the site has now fallen more or less dormant. As you will soon learn, only one group truly built an authentic medium that continues to have a vibrant life beyond the assignment deadline.

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Screen capture from The Ideal Voter "about us" page

AP Government CBL -- Student Solutions: A Demo

This is the 5th post in a series on my Challenge Based Learning Project with AP American Government. As you recall, the five student groups were challenged to "create an authentic medium for promoting our democracy."

The last post investigated the Gov Love Ning which was fully operational. Here we will take a peek at a web site I consider more in line with my expectations for this project. Unlike the ning group, operation ivote created a web site that had not already received lots of traffic. It was more or less a demo. Operation iVote built a web site for promoting demcracy.

Strengths
As this group noted in its assessment, the "project dealt less with voter mobilization and more with an actual change in voting process." The group decided to promote online voting, putting together a site which demonstrated how online voting would work. In fact, the sample ballot was one of the strongest features of this attractive site. Also included were an online petitions and a template for contacting one's representative. The group considered their presentation to the class to be their "launch" and made a tremendous impression. The Q&A was very exciting. The class had lots of questions and this particular group had logical and well researched responses for each one.

Weaknesses
This group embraced the cbl with terrific enthusiasm, but was very quick to jump to a solution. I'm not sure they did their best job trouble-shooting security issues. In addition, some of their online features-- such as a twitter site with one tweet-- seem to have been included somewhat gratuitously.

Conclusion
It was interesting to see a group take the project in a completely different direction from the others. The Operation iVote group delivered an exciting presentation which launched a viable web site for promoting online voting. They were the first group to present and set the bar high for the others with their terrific preparation.

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Screen Capture from Operation iVote web site.

AP Government CBL - The Project Challenge

For the next few posts I will be reflecting on my Challenge Based Learning Project in AP American Government. The challenge:

Create an authentic medium for improving our democracy

As I reported in Leaving the Comfort Zone, my seniors greeted the project with genuine excitement. The first group meetings buzzed with conversation that was remarkably creative an purposeful. But before long, I began to suspect that the students were short-circuiting the challenge process. They were inclined to jump right to solutions, devoting too little attention to guiding questions and research.

Furthermore, after enthusiastically initiating Google Docs to log their progress, some groups were neglecting to record activity. Consequently I started losing confidence that meaningful progress was being made. A day of reckoning occurred when I decided to aggressively question the groups about their assumptions and progress. Later, members of one group told me that this helped "kick-start" them in the right direction.

I have three conclusions from this part of the cbl experience

1) Surprisingly, my first challenge topic was inspired and inspiring. I am already a little worried about coming up with another as good.

2) In the future, I need to set requirements for logging progress on the google docs. Additionally, I should ask groups to highlight text that is for my eyes. (In some cases I had trouble finding key milestones because there was so much text on the google doc).

3) I think it would be helpful to set up formal midpoint meetings with the groups. They were not aggressive about seeking input from me. While the groups need to be student-centered, without greater accountability, a certain amount of drift set in for a couple of groups.

The next post will discuss the kinds of out of the box research that students tried.
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Democracy screen capture from cbl project instructions.

Embracing Failure

As I have reported from time to time in this space, I the centerpiece of my American Government students is "The Game" -- a legislative simulation played toward the end semester. Last year I developed a full fledged online edition, requiring each student to create a web site for the character she portrayed in the game. Going high tech produced a number of successes and failures which I reflected upon in Web 2.0 Simulation Post-Mortem.

My biggest error was unwittingly putting myself in the middle of far too much web activity. I allowed the game and project requirements bombard me with emails and force me to go back to the student web sites again and again. After launching the game with great enthusiasm in all three sections, I barely enjoyed any of the cool things that came out of it. Each night I would respond to numerous student emails and and check dozens of student web sites. Playing the game in three classes simultaneously proved to be overwhelming.

So, here I am again, launching three simulations, simultaneously. But I've learned from the school of hard knocks, instituting three major changes to shift or share more responsibility with the students.

1) Last year I asked students to email me the url of their web sites so that I could post them for the class. Pretty stupid. Utterly confusing and inefficient. This year I created a wiki and listed all the students' names on a page. I asked the students to request an invitation to the wiki which are easy to accept at the Wikispaces site. Students are then required to link their sites to the wiki. It took about five minutes in class to show them how.

2) I am recruiting students to evaluate each other's sites, determining whether the required "stuff" has been posted. This can be done through a blind process (students of one class will check the "characters' sites of another). I am awarding a bit of extra credit for the service. Having those eyes and ears poking through the sites will be a major relief. This year I should be able to look each site over once.

3) Students will complete a check list self-evaluation which they will submit at the end of the project. This is intended to improve responsibility and also relieve me from going on wild goose chases, looking online for artifacts that don't even exist because the student missed a deadline.

I suspect that I will be noting some new failures in my next post-mortem. But it's hard to keep moving forward without having some choice mistakes point you in the right direction.

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"epic fail :)" Flickr Creative Commons photo courtesy of anna

Challenge Met!

While I am somewhat anxious about the full blown challenge projects I launched with my seniors in October -- They have frittered away time and a couple of groups have bounded off in the direction of the expedient and superficial -- the results of my modified challenge with the sophomores are in. And the results surpassed expectations.

The students engaged in a challenge based learning project called "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death". This challenge involved

*Selecting a liberty from the Bill of Rights and researching it.
*Designing a multi-media web site.
*Presenting a slide show to peers tracing the group's process from inception to solution.
*Engaging in detailed self-assessment of their process.

Highlights:
*The students did not use the web site as a "text dump". Even the most modest creations were multi-media.
*With only about thirty minutes of instruction from me, the groups avoided "Death By Power Point."
*Every single student in three classes participated in the presentations, and the vast majority did not read to their audiences. The slides were graphic, and bullet points were used judiciously.
*While less universally achieved than the first two highlights, many groups engaged in honest, constructive self-reflection through their presentations and/or rubrics.
*For the most part, students tapped into each other's skill sets and shared responsibility.

I've created a project exhibition site for our school's digital newsletter. If you would like check out a couple of exemplary sites, click, below:

Click to Visit Student Web Sites and Gallery

Larry's Learning Curve
* I intend to create a similar assignment, next semester. I will start the next one earlier so that I can better help the kids work through the process (no need for more time on final products, but more time to focus properly on researching information and options.
* This semester I spent a day going over the entire process . . . . and unsurprisingly when the students reached the later steps, my explanations had receded from memory. I will definitely go over these on an as-needed basis, next time.
* I will put even more emphasis on setting goals and self-assessing. Most groups did a great job on this with limited tools.

I'm looking forward to another go round in February.
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Screen shot of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" sophomore challenge based learning solution.

Leaving the Comfort Zone

Oh, yes, I am something of a control freak by trade and have been proud of it. As an athletic coach, I meticulously scheduled each minute of practice time. In the classroom, I can't say every minute of thirty-five years worth of instruction has been planned, but each day there was a plan; and I have never been one to spend the first ten minutes of class shooting the breeze about Dancing with the Stars or giving my class the last ten minutes to "study."

Last week, I let go of the wheel. Boy, did I let go. I launched my AP Gov's (seniors) challenge based learning project and a modified cbl in my sophomore government classes. Strangely, once again I felt like a coach, but a coach during a game, not practice. No clipboard or script for the action; just a game plan, a pep talk, and advice on the fly. It was exciting but a little nerve-wracking. I felt most confident when I explained to the students why we were taking a student-oriented project that emphasized new technologies. I also loved making suggestions and asking guiding questions. But I have to admit that I felt disoriented and anxious. I battled a nagging sense that the groups were "wasting time".

I detected genuine excitement among many of the seniors. On the other hand, some of the sophs were dialing me out, per usual. Of course, it's way to early to reach any conclusions.

As I jokingly told my AP class when I was laying the whole trip out: "Even if we go down in flames, you guys will give me lots to blog about."

Ain't that the truth. Stay tuned.
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"Comfort Zone 1" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by idrehn

Paging All Waivers!

This year I was prepared.

But last time around I introduced WikiSpaces and Google Docs to my students mid-term. My adventures were not without setbacks (see Larry's Adventures in Wikiland), but some of the groups and individuals produced remarkable podcasts, videos, web sites and wikis. So then I decided that I wanted to share, blog about, or just show off their work. Consequently, I was generating ad hoc notifications and permission slips throughout the year.

This summer I whipped up three notification / waivers for my three courses. Check out the one I prepared for American Government (Click for pdf).

The document was made with iWork '09. I used a brochure template and found the banner with a public domain search. The Pages application allowed me to easily match the colors of the banner throughout the document. I thought the coolest feature was my ability to drop the public domain photo of the capitol dome into the background of the document. (A one minute Atomic Learning tutorial taught me this trick). Even a clod like me could produce a slick looking document and publish it as a pdf.

My students' first assignment of the semester was to download this document, get it signed and return it to class.

100% of them have done so, and only one parent declined any of the permissions. Pretty cool.

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Photo is a screen capture of Lit into Film course waiver.

The Old Guy Goes Multimedia

For want of the correct adaptor, I was prevented from showing my Keynote presentation on "Apple Solutions for the 21st Century" at Madonna U. last week. Instead, I improvised, going directly to the Web for a "show & tell" of some online concoctions I've whipped up for my high school courses. I took a more or less chronological approach. It made me realize how I had evolved over the past 18 months. My progression is outlined here:

It all started with podcasts by phone. I made mp3 lectures with Gabcast for my Government class, and I began to require my students to report by podcast as well.

About 14 months ago, I began to integrate hyperlinks into my film study guides, illustrating concepts with photos and YouTube examples.

Exactly a year ago, I began using the Flip Mino I received for my birthday. I turned the camera on myself and started to record video directions for absent students. More significantly, I loaned the camera out to my AP Government students, so that they could vlog opinion pieces. Then their classmates blogged about these vlogs. The blogging feature of iWeb was perfect for this little enterprise.

In November, '08, I began to edit video movies with iMovie. I was very intimidated by this great software, but once again Atomic Learning helped me out.

In February, 2009, I taught my sophomores how to use wikis so that they could host their own multimedia resources. Many groups conducted interesting interviews and created short video pieces. Using iWeb I began creating exhibition pages for my students' multimedia work. I then shared the link with the editor of the school bulletin, The Mercy Memo.

I began podcasting with GarageBand. What an upgrade over Gabcast! ( Thanks for the tip, Andy Mann). And thank you, Rick Strobl for suggesting at Schuste's retirement party that I animate jpegs with PhotoToMovie. This was the best $50 I ever spent on software. Combining GarageBand mp3s with jpegs and turning them into movies has been a fun summer pastime.

Discovering that I could search for Library of Congress public domain photos on Flickr, further enhanced my ability to animate jpegs for instructional purposes.

I finally learned how to use Keynote. I had no idea that what I took to be slide show software could present so many multimedia options. This is my July and August preoccupation-- making moves using GarageBand (for soundtrack) and Keynote.

While I can't prove that my students are learning more after being fed with this stew of media, I know that I have, and I believe that I am modeling communication skills that they will need in their careers.

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"Multimedia Message" (The cover of the May/June Communication Arts Magazine). Flickr Creative Commons photo by mwilke.

Whistling a New Tune on ebooks

When my school first took the plunge into a 1:1 laptop program, the thought of going to ebooks scared the bejabbers out of me. Of course at that time, most publishers (and still many) simply offered pdf versions of the books-- lacking agility and even readability. Often the cost of these electronic versions matched their paper siblings.

I am whistling a different tune these days, offering my AP American Government students the option of purchasing an ebook version of our new text, American Politics Today by Bianco & Canon. The publisher, W.W. Norton charges half price for a year's license to this online text. Its reader merely requires an up to date browser and Adobe Flash Player plug in. It has an atractive and highly readable screen presentation. I enjoy magnifying the text on my computer screen and incurring far less eye strain than the paper counterpart. There are printing restrictions and the inconvenience of needing an online connection. But advantages include "highlighting" and note taking on the pages. I love it, and look forward to getting my students' reactions, which you can be sure I will share in a later post.

I recently read with interest that McGraw-Hill and Cengage are now experimenting with offering rental text books for the coming semester. Perhaps this has been spurred by the Recession, but it seems like a stop-gap measure. It's clear to me that most students will soon be downloading textbooks on Kindles, Sony Readers, iPod Touches and the like. If someone like me, initially so biased toward ebooks, can be converted so easily, I'm predicting that the textbook switch to ebooks-- at least at the college level-- could occur as quickly as consumers went from VHS to DVD.

P.S. Click to sample an ebook chapter of my new text.
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Screen Capture of American Politics Today (W.W. Norton ebook reader).

Food for Thought

Lots of time to read online this summer. Here are some nuggets from my reading. Food for thought.

NCTE Tries to Define 21st-C Writing--- lol

NCTE is trying to wrap their arms around, and control, informal writing styles that predominate Web 2.0 and are labeling them unacceptable. They state that the new generation are learning from,"extracurricular social co-apprenticeship." A term like this will have a typical 16 year old heading for the hills with their iPhones! :-) This sounds like an organization feeling a loss of control trying to control a social phenomenon. Good luck with that.

If We Could Start Over, What Would We Build?

In the networked learning communities of the future, expert learners (we call them teachers, educators, scientists, and researchers today) are going to be recognized for their ability to learn and help others learn, as they continue to construct new knowledge and develop their own expertise.

Why Do I Hate Paper?

Ideas brought forth in a dynamic environment should not be 'written on paper', in the symbolic sense. In other words, they should not be thought of as singular and final products to be graded and filed away; rather, ideas are always in flux and current to debate and change and this is a good thing, an innovative thing, and cooperative interactive online docs with no fixed 'due date' are more natural to use in this environment of thinking -- that is they are more an extension of this type of thinking -- than a piece of paper kept in one's folder smooshed in the grimy depths of one's bookbag could ever be.

Bobb Boots out Top DPS Executives

Our goal is to transform the central office. . . .We want it to be the center of support, not the center of attention for our schools.

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"Food for Thought" Flickr photo available with permission by aporter

If It's not Broke .... FIX IT! (The Digital Anthology)

I have finished my digital anthology, but of course this is just a manner of speaking, since one of the advantages of going digital is that, unlike a printed text, it will never be "finished." It is always updatable, which means I may very well add content before I actually start drawing from my new resource.

As you may recall (see A Digital Anthology. . . .), I decided to replace the $50 reader for my AP American Government & Politics class with a free, multi-media resource which could be entirely up-to-date.

I have now found material that corresponds to each chapter in our text (an ebook, by the way). Granted, I have far less material than the traditional readers , but this is not really an issue since I only used about half the reader, anyway.

Please, be my guest and take a peek at a sample of my D.A.

You'll notice that I have tapped a variety of sources for this sample. In addition to text, I have edited a podcast from iTunes U and linked to some excellent PBS videos. I have found the Stanford University podcasts* to be particularly useful for political science, but they are quite long, and I have reviewed fewer of them than I thought I might (I usually listen to them in the car). Additionally, I have also found some outstanding outstanding video for my anthology at New York Times Video, Academic Earth, and The Museum of the Moving Image.

Unsurprisingly, my anthology is still dominated by text sources. Most of these I come across in my daily reading (though family members have forwarded a couple of gems). I have also researched some subjects. For this, I have primarily used our Media Center's subscription to Gale Student Resource Center . Since all my students are licensed to use this resource, it is fairly easy to share articles.

You may wonder why I have only given you a slice of my anthology. Well, it will be sliced off to students in small portions as well. There is no reason to assign from it weeks ahead. After all, something more interesting and pertinent may appear on the scene in the mean time. The anthology fits perfectly into my scheme of the Tinker Toy Curriculum of modules that can be connected then reassembled from semester to semester.

As I've mentioned in this space before, I think anthologies like these could be constructed with ease by members of academic departments, or interdepartmentally for that matter. I would enjoy your reactions to my sample, and welcome links that I might put into my "book."

I'll be making a presentation on the Digital Anthology to the Michigan Association for Media in Education at Grand Traverse Resort on October 23.

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*visit this link and download 30 free songs from iTunes!

Summer Play with Jpegs

Jpeg Joy
I've kicked off my summer vacation with a flurry of jpeg activity. Before I begin my show 'n tell, I should remark that I received lots of classroom compliments for the iPhoto calendar I whipped up for S-7. This creation came in the wake of the "Ann Arbor" Images book that I described in My Friend, Flickr. Also I am pleased to report that I have now converted all my Lit into Film guides into hyperlink format (See Hyperlink Heaven).

Recent Developments!

For the past two weeks I have been dropping jpegs into movies. My first effort was a film review of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. I enjoyed dropping the jpegs into iMovie so much I have the notion of adding a "Five Star Review" to my web site each month. When I told fellow Web Warrior, Rick Strobl, what I had been up to, he tipped me off on an application that sent me off on a bender. I've completed my last two jpeg movies with PhototoMovie (Check out the free trial). In an afternoon I completed an eight minute movie for my film class on documentaries. Basically it's a podcast with jpeg illustrations. Obviously, for a film class, this has tremendous advantages. But I also wish to try it with my government classes and will check back in next week after I am done raiding the public domain jpegs at the Library of Congress!

Over the Top (The Tech Campaign Continues)

Part 3 of 3 - "Year in Review from the Trenches"

In Part 2, I had a chance to moan about "shell shock." But of course, I am not simply going to stay huddled on the ground holding my helmet. Here's my "battle plan" going forward.

* Focus on building my networks beyond my own building and aggressively seek a role as a Web 2.0 curriculum presenter and consultant. (Received confirmation of an October Mame 36 presentation two days ago. Woo-hoo!).

* Focus on media rich skills. I can make basic podcasts and videos, but I want to develop better technical skills with GarageBand and iMovie. The first weeks of summer "vacation" I am really immerse myself in this wonderful stuff.

* Ask fellow Web Warrior, Rick Strobl, to be my Sherpa as I venture as I get into the rarefied air of web media.

*While I dig into media applications, I will cut down my summer blogging to twice a week. But when I blog, I will naval-gaze less and try to engage my audience more. At the same time, I will more consciously "journal" in bursts through Twitter, giving my "followers" more content.

* I will be sampling academic lectures from iTunes U, to see how I can use the material in my courses. I have already begun editing two of these for the AP Digital Anthology.

* When I come beck to my internet classroom projects in the Fall I will focus on streamlined methods of evaluation.

* I will launch the Blog Squad at school in the Fall but will confine my efforts to a pilot approach.

* I am determined to keep pushing into social bookmarking. Sooner or later I will find another Diigo lover with mutual reading interests.

*I will love the heck out of the ADE Institute in July.

The Drive-thru will begin a Tuesday, Friday schedule next week.

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Photo: British soldiers "go over the top" at the Battle of the Somme

Shell Shock in the Trenches (part 2)

Shell Shock (Part 2 of 3 - " Year in Review from the Trenches")

I'm not the first teacher to suffer from shell shock, and during my adventures with tech, I've sometimes wandered the classroom battlefield, dazed and confused.

Most numbing is the continual collision with school culture. Despite operating in a 1:1 school and having put nearly every shred of instruction and material online for my bookless course, a sizable number of my students don't readily tap into the pipeline. As I've remarked before, developing online projects has not sparked intellectual curiosity to the degree I might have hoped for (see The Digital Natives Aren't that Restless). But at our school, there is something else going on. 1:1 has not meant fewer P.A. announcements or less paper. And since students know announcements will be made redundantly (and deadlines nearly always extended), they have little incentive to attend closely to email, web sites, etc. Ironically, in class when the P.A. is squawking, the kids are glued into their screens, ignoring it (My temples are starting to throb). Why can't we all support technology in this area at least?

2) My fellow faculty members may be pardoned if they are suffering from Larry-fatigue. I've been honking on about the wonders of Web 2.0. But some of what I've encountered within the building and even in my own departments is passive-aggressive. I make a presentation, no comment. I win a tech distinction, no reaction (that's cold). I guess I have betrayed some unspoken loyalty to chalk and board. In a detailed, staff development proposal for administration I warned of the obstruction of naysayers. Well, the report got lost in the shuffle, but not the nay-saying. Sort of grinds one down.

3) It was tough to see tech integration cut in our building. I understand that the budget is tight, but without vision and planning we will not truly engage in online learning. This speaks to priorities. We have the hardware, but despite popular mythology, the kids will not teach themselves with them, simply because they are keen on Facebook.

4) I have only myself to blame for this one. It's the blog. I've tried to encourage comments, and I haven't really succeeded. Clearly I am operating at cross-purposes by journaling, sharing, and trying to provoke conversation all at the same time.

5) I loved doing the in-services in my building last Fall. That's history. I aiming seeking new audiences, so good will come of it in the long run. But I've been in No Man's Land for the last few months.

6) This spring I taught AP Government and Film, But the three classes of 87 sophomores in American Government were the ones that put me into full shell shock mode. Foolishly, I targeted them for my most innovative methods. But I became overwhelmed with their 87 web sites. This like the other setbacks chronicled here was largely due to my unrealistic expectations banging into reality.

There are some valuable lessons here, so I will gather my forces and close the school year with -- part 3, "Over the Top! and into the Future"

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Thank you, Mark Berry - Photographer & Graphic Designer for permission to use your fabulous photo, "Crop Circle Maker-- Matthew Williams"

Blogging on Podcasts

The final "project" that my AP American Government class completed is worth mentioning because it produced excellent results and is easily adaptable to a variety of subject areas. It was conducted entirely outside of classroom time, and the kids really liked it.

Students were asked to independently view a documentary film which related to our course. They were then required to produce a ten minute podcast which included a summary and dealt with such areas as

*Did the director betray any biases?

* What important things did you learn from the film?

* Name one or more weaknesses of the film.

* Would you recommend this film to others? On what basis? Explain.

The podcasts were uploaded to an iWeb podcast page. Students were then randomly assigned to review two of their classmates' podcasts and blog the reviews at the site. Here were the instructions for writing the reviews:

1. Whose podcast did you review and what was its length?

2. Was the main theme of the film explained clearly? What did you understand the main theme to be.?

3. How was the general pacing of the broadcast? Was the volume satisfactory? Did the student seem prepared?

4. Did the broadcaster seem informed and confident? Explain.

5. Describe at least two important facts or arguments that the student provided.

6. Did the film sound interesting? What came across as its strengths and weaknesses.

7. What other information about the film did you glean and/or what other stylistic points about the presentation were noteworthy?

The exercise produced excellent blogs, and once again I found that podcasting produced excellent writing. (Just listen to Allegra's superb review of The War Room).

The students responded to the transparency of the work and sampled each other's work beyond the requrirements. Each watched a worthwhile film, and quite possibly some have been enticed to watch a few more that their peers recommended.

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P.S. If you missed it due to the holiday, take a peek at "Rick's Off to College Computing Tips" and forward link to families of graduating high school seniors. The post now followed by some worthwhile commentary from college students.

We Have Ignition! (Rocketing AP Gov into Cyberspace)

I am preparing to rocket my AP Government and Politics course into cyberspace. A number of factors have converged to make this possible and desirable:

* This year's group has just completed its experience blogging on vlogs. I think the results have been terrific. Students were allowed to produce 3-5 minute videos on a political opinion or observation. Then classmates blogged on the vlog. (If they posted at least five blogs they were allowed drop one of their 2 page analyses). My Flip Mino camera was used to produce the video and iWeb created the vlog/blog pages. We completed seven of these, second semester. A representative group of the girls (and their parents) gave permission to me to share a small slice of our activity with you: Click to visit.

* In an upcoming post I will describe my second fling with podcast/blogging mini-project. It produced excellent results last year and is even more tightly organized with the help of iWeb, this go-round.

*I just discovered that David Canon, the marvelous professor at Wisconsin-Madison, who co-moderated the AP conference that initiated me into this course, has published a text with an impressive ebook option. Additionally a very cool blog serves as a companion to the text.

*Next year, all the students in the course (seniors) will have laptops, meaning they can more reasonably do online collaborations and use the money-saving ebook at school.

*I'm embarrassed to admit that on recently have I begun foraging in the political science section of iTunes University. I will definitely dip into the free lectures provided by Stanford for some aspect of my curriculum.

My ambition to send the AP course into full cyber-launch is contingent on having my preps reduced from four to three as I have requested. (Big "if" at this point). Regardless, I intend to continue designing curriculum that employs blogs-on-vlogs and podcasts for my studetns and the ALI. As always, I welcome your suggestions and reactions!

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Screen capture of Emily's vlog page.

Tooting Your Horn

WHY NOT?
In early February I shared MHS staff development recommendations with the Technology Integration Committee and school administration. Some of the proposals called for organic change to the school culture. I think I made a strong case, but experience tells me that this kind of institutional change of course is rare in an organization of any size.

Nevertheless, I can't for the life of me see why one of my recommendations hasn't been seized upon. I suggested that we take on the school-wide project of creating "a virtual exhibition space for student performance / exhibitions". Why not? Our students respond with exceptional motivation to performance. Parents and alumni would be pleased. And if we were even somewhat selective about quality, how could this not be an effective marketing device? I really can't see a downside. But rather than railing against the the lack of impact this recommendation has had on the school, I have decided to whip up exhibitions from each of the courses I teach this semester.

Wiki Hall of Fame
I recently sent a press-release of sorts to our communications coordinator with the object of getting my American Government classes' civil rights/liberties wiki projects published in the parent newsletter. After creating the wikis, students then taught this portion of the curriculum to their classmates. I created a web page attached to my course site for a Wiki Hall of Fame featuring three wikis. Of course the kids were thrilled to be photographed and selected. And less the others feel left out, all the other wikis were linked to the Hall of Fame page as well. So please check out the wikis and give us your feedback!

Shameless Self-Promotion?
Old school sorts may react to the school newsletter "press release" and web site as an exercise in Larry Baker self-promotion. Fine. I plead, "Guilty with premeditation." First, I am consciously trying to define myself as a "go to" educator whose practical classroom experience, creative curriculum development, and enthusiasm for Web 2.0 technologies give him a special skill set. I am certainly not going to let others define me as "techie", "traitor to Luddite cause", "Shakespeare lover", Washed up Basketball Coach" or whatever. (Schools are keen on slotting people that way). And secondly, as I expressed in "Geometrically Progressing. . . ., I am determined to seek multiple consequences from any project that I adopt. In this case, I am executing one of my own proposals (no hypocrite, I!) and doing some branding of "Larry the Consultant" at the same time. TOOT!

On deck?
I have asked my AP students (and their parents) to lift password protection of their Vlogs/blogs, and I am collaborating with another teacher on exhibition of work from Lit into Film students. If all goes according to plan, you'll be able to sample this fare before the school year is done. Stay tuned for more tooting.
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"Toot Your Own Horn" with generous permission of 11:30am

Larry's Adventures in Wiki Land, part 1

I've been eagerly looking forward to my Civil Rights/Liberties Project with my Am. Gov. class. I tweaked it for my Apple ADE application and loaded the instructions with my beloved hyperlinks. In past years I had tried different kinds of research projects on this issue with dreary results, so I have been ready to launch full bore into a Wikispaces collaboration.

First, I presented my 85 students (three classes) with an orientation, let that sink in, and couple of days later formed groups and chose topics. Having been recently tipped off by a fellow wiki geek, that I could bulk load all the student registrations to the wikis, I required the students to format their user names, etc. so that I could easily register all of them with a few copy & pastes . Cool. I also had the students create "action plans" for their group meetings. This was great because the meetings were purposeful-- no aimless yacking.

Well....when we next met, I requested students who had not gotten into the site to email me. Good Gawd! The emails started pouring in. That evening I went back to the wikis and tried to make some general adjustments. A day later, I asked the students to see me one at a time if they were still shut out of the wiki. After a few minutes I had students crowding my desk, holding their laptops, lamenting, "I can't get in, I can't get in." The reasons ranged from the ridiculous to the utterly mysterious (I think our spam filter was intercepting some of the messages). By week's end, I was beaten down, but had worked out the bugs. It occurred to me how happy some of my peers would have been to see Mr. Web 2.0 techie under siege.

As the debacle was ending, I ran into my pal, Alison, who informed me of a much simpler way to register my kids. I should have consulted her, first. Lesson learned and a good reason to further urge administration to develop a plan for creating staff resource hubs to facilitate such sharing.

Any good news? Absolutely. It's simple for a teacher to monitor activity on Wickispaces and when mine got up and running, they really started buzzing. Granted, most of the initial activity was posting messages like, "Woohoo!!!!" on the home page. But I heard some great plans for podcast interviews and videos. Our kids are terrific with PowerPoint and most of the groups were making detailed plans to collaborate in this area as well. I don't anticipate again coming under siege as I was during the registration process. But I'll keep you posted. Check back in a couple of weeks when the wikis will be done.
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"Why Wikis" Creative Commons Flickr Photo by Blogefl

Four Twitter Reads

Curious about Twitter? As I noted in Serendipity , I'm into it for a specific reason. The great majority of my professional reading is derived from "tweets." I dip into my Twitter stream three or four times a day and usually reel in a blog or two. I generally tweet once or twice a day, recommending an article or offering up personal tidbit.

The following short articles are recommended reading for anyone curious about or experimenting with this red hot micro social media phenomena.

Twitter? It's What You Make It . I was amused by this New York Times piece, because David Pogue was as puzzled by Twitter as I remember being three months ago. But Pogue has already correctly determined that Twitter provides different strokes for different folks. If you are patient, in a few weeks, you can easily mold it to fit your needs. It requires far less attention than Facebook, but is a fascinating way to connect to strangers with common interests.

Well Connected Parents While teachers may be able to stave off technology because their job security does not depend upon it, many of our students' parents have become adept at using social media. As this Washington Post article indicates, they are already effectively employing it to lobby the schools. A 21st Century school should be interested in getting ahead of the curve with a social media design which includes parents. Schools should be friending, blogging and tweeting to stay ahead of the curve (see Staff Development, part 3).

GOP Is All Twitter. Anyone who followed the Obama campaign realizes that he absolutely smoked all comers with "Netroots" deployment of Social Media tools. This article indicates that Republican bigwigs already are determined to play catchup. I discussed the article with my AP Gov class and they felt that outreach through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. would be absolutely essential to Republican cultivation of youth vote.

Text Remains King For my fellow English teachers out there who are rattled by the tech onslaught, Steve Rubel reassures that "Text is still king of the Web." The kind of text he rates important may not warm a lit lover's heart, but he certainly values facility with words, pointing out that Twitter is 100% text.

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"My Social Network . . ." Flickr Creative Commons Photo by luc legay