World Geography Skypes with the Ukraine

Our Honors World Geography students had the awesome opportunity to Skype with a group of Ukrainian students this morning!  Our teacher, Mr. Keith Forkin, is utilizing People to People International (PTPI) this semester to form a collaboration with a middle/high school in the Ukraine. Nick Burdine is a Peace Corps volunteer working in the Ukraine and has an English Club for students after school.  Through PTPI, Mr. Forkin and Mr. Burdine were connected, and the teachers are using this connection to help their classes learn more about each other's school and community.  To kick off the project, we set up a Skype session with Mr. Burdine's English Club.  At 8:30 a.m. EST, we met the Ukrainian students, where it is currently 2:30 p.m.  Despite a few technical glitches (which always seem to happen when it REALLY matters!), the students were able to introduce themselves and learn how to say "hello" and "goodbye" in Ukrainian - "Привіт" (pronounced "pree-veet") and "до побачення" (pronounced "do pobachennya"), respectively. The students will now work on videos about our school, athletics, restaurants, neighborhoods, and more that they will share with the Ukrainian students. Stay tuned for more of this exciting connection!

Introducing ourselves to the Ukrainian students

Campaigning for Common Sense Digital Citizenship for RHHS

"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education, than to have education without common sense." - Robert Green Ingersoll

Digital citizenship is more important than ever in today's society.  Fake news has become more prevalent and cyber bullying remains a major concern.  I have been able to teach bits and pieces of digital citizenship in with other lessons on research and web tools, but I decided that I want to make it a bigger priority for our school.  I had already familiarized myself with Common Sense Media, both as a parent and a teacher, so when I looked at their materials to become a Common Sense Certified School, I was sold.  Common Sense Education has a complete curriculum for K-12 that is standards aligned and updated yearly.  We all know that there are constant changes in technology and our society, so the materials are updated to stay relevant to these changes.  Oh, and it's FREE!

When I say "complete curriculum," I mean EVERYTHING - lesson plans, activities, videos, assessments, and additional resources - has already been organized.  The implementation then turns to you and your school.  There are many components to the curriculum, so as not to feel overwhelmed, I found their Common Sense Certified Checklist invaluable.  I am a box-checker kind of gal, and the checklist also helped me to see what steps I should focus on first.

Common Sense Certified Checklist

So yesterday was my first step in introducing the idea of becoming a Common Sense Certified School to my teachers and staff.  I gained my Principal's approval a few months ago, so now it was time to get input and feedback from our teachers.  Digital citizenship is not a one-person job.  It involves all stakeholders - teachers, parents, and students, but I needed to at least let me teachers see the need for this (which was not hard) and the materials we (not just me) would be using.  As in every school, teachers are already juggling many items on their plates, so I want the implementation of our digital citizenship campaign to be as user-friendly for them as possible, and also not "waste" valuable classroom time.

We have a Lunch & Learn each month with a teacher or staff member presenting on a variety of topics while teachers enjoy a catered lunch.  Yesterday was my time to shine!  With only 20 minutes for each lunch session (we have four lunches), I had to plan wisely on just the right amount of information without overwhelming.   I made a simple Google Presentation that had links to the Common Sense curriculum that would be most beneficial to the teachers at this point - the Scope & Sequence info that contains the lessons plans and the Suggested Instruction Plan that shows the break down of units and lessons by grades and time requirements for becoming certified.  The time limit did not allow for full discussion either, so I encouraged participants to leave feedback and questions on Padlet, which allows everyone to read, comment, and collaborate as we work on what is the best approach for our school to start its Common Sense Digital Citizenship implementation.  Teachers are not mandated to attend Lunch & Learns, so turn out was very low considering the size of our school (15 out of 115 teachers came).  I am not discouraged by this because the ones who did come were eager to discuss with their departments, and it gave me a handful of advocates for when I do present and/or move forward with the full faculty.  

App Smashing Historical Parodies

Three years ago, one of our World History teachers, Mr. Jeff Graham, Jr., approached me with an idea.  He often showed his classes historical parody videos about the topics he covered in class, but now he wanted them to make their own.  He knew what he wanted to final product to be, but he wasn't sure about the process to get there.  So we brainstormed the tools he was familiar with, plus I introduced him to a few new ones.  We are not a complete 1:1 device school, and although we allow students to BYOD, not everyone has a device to bring.  So we wanted to make the project as device agnostic as possible and accessible at both home and school.  Using Google Drive, Audacity, and iMovie/WeVideo, we were able to get students creating their own historical parodies for a culminating end of the semester project.  Mr. Graham brings his students at the beginning of each semester into the LiNK for me to go over the process.  I use a combination of a Google Slide presentation with an embedded Powtoon with all of the instructions and steps.  In order to check the progress of the projects, Mr. Graham has dates set throughout the semester for a review of the song written and the actual recording of the song before students submit the final video.  This also keeps the groups from waiting to do the entire project the week it is due.  Each year we learn what works and doesn't work, and each year the parodies get better and better.

Here is the Google Slide that I use when instructing the students. It includes examples that Mr. Graham has used to show his classes, how to download instrumental tracks from YouTube, how to record in Audacity, as well as student examples.

Historical Parody Instructions