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

Bringing Blended Learning to RHHS

Blended learning is the strategy of providing students with a combination of face-to-face and online instruction.  Richmond Hill High School has offered online learning opportunities for our students, through Georgia Virtual School (GAVS) and Edgenuity.  These courses were offered to students who had conflicts with scheduling and/or needed a class that we did not currently offer.  Many students at the high school level are not fully prepared to take a strictly online class with no face-to-face time with an actual teacher.  We have had more students NOT succeed in these situations, then we have had succeed.  This has helped us to see the need for a "blend" in learning: offer students face-to-face with online learning.

Much research has gone into the how, why, when, and who for blended learning at our school and for our school system.  Several media specialists, technology resource teachers, and one of our curriculum directors visited Forsyth Co. (GA) schools to see how they have already incorporated blended learning into one of their high schools - South Forsyth High School.  Being able to hear from both teachers who are creating the blended classes and students who are participating in them gave us insight into how to begin our journey with blended.  The students were very positive about their experiences with blended as it allowed them the freedom for work, activities, and sports without missing valuable instruction time.  Teacher training was also emphasized during our visit, as blended learning does not simply mean a teacher uploads a handout online for students to access.  Much preparation needs to go into the blended class.  This is where I learned about Univ. of Central Florida's BlendKit.  Teachers at South Forsyth High School go through a training that is based on UCF's BlendKit.  Armed with new knowledge, we headed back to our schools to see how we could make blended learning work!

We already have many students who are taking advantage of the A/B block option that we have that deviates from our normal 4x4 block schedule.  Students that want to get all of their AP curriculum options in, as well as those who desire to take a certain class that may only be offered in a certain block, have been allowed to use our A/B schedule options, but blended learning would give our students even more freedom and options in scheduling.

Our school has decided to incoporate one teacher teaching three blended courses in the 2016-17 school year.  Mr. Adam Balduff, our AP and Honors U.S. History teacher, is our "guinea pig" for blended next year.  We have a team in place to integrate these blended classes.  As a media specialist, I will work with our Tech Resource teacher to ensure that Mr. Balduff has all of the technology componenets that he needs to make the classes truly blended learning.  All three of us are taking part in the BlendKit 2016 course to give RHHS the start to incoporating blended learning successfully.

Clipchamp to the Rescue!

So this past Monday, I had two teachers that needed my assistance during the same three blocks. Teacher #1 just needed me to review using iMovie on the iPads.  Most of his students had used the iMovie app at some point, so a refresher is all they needed. Teacher #2 needed me to teach her and her students how to use ThingLink, a web app that allows you to create interactive images.  In prioritizing and trying to figue out how to be physically be in two places at once, I realized that Teacher #2 was my top priority since we were introducing a whole new tool.  Teacher #1 could probably get by with a nice little refresher video.

I love my Samsung Chromebook and wanted to use it to make a video, even though I never had made one on it yet.  Why not throw myself a challenge on a Monday morning, right?  And yes, I could have easily used  my iPad, but I just didn't want to.  So, what tool to use to video on a Chromebook?  After a quick "google" on "making videos Chromebook," I found Clipchamp.  The free Chrome app allows you to take selfie videos (using your Chromebook webcam) or to upload videos to then convert to various output formats, save, and share.  I was on a time contratint with about an hour to spare.  I decided it was worth the challenge, even on a Monday morning!

Screen shots of Clipchamp homepage and what it offers.

I thought Clipchamp was super user-friendly in making the actual video.  In less than three minutes, I had a decent review video of filming on iPad and beginning to use iMovie.  Once the video is converted to your chosen output setting, you can save the video as a download to your computer, or you can share to Google Drive, Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo.  I decided to upload to Google Drive to share with the teacher so that he could pull it up from his Drive and share on our projector to the whole class.  Did I say it was a Monday morning?  Well, the 29MB video that I recorded seemed to take a REALLY long time (about 20 minutes) to upload to Google Drive.  Almost too long for it to even make my one hour deadline.  I re-uploaded later in the day, the same video to a separate Google Drive account, and it did not take near as long to upload (about 7-9 minutes) as it did that morning. We will always run into issues with upload times if we are competing with struggling bandwidth.  

Here is the final product with my first attempt using Clipchamp.  The content of my video could have definitely been better rehearsed, but considering my time crunch, I was very pleased, as was Teacher #1, and I will be using and promoting Clipchamp more often.

The Three Ninja Pigs and Ninja School @ RHHS

Our read aloud book for today!

Just becuase I am a media specialist in a high school setting does not mean that "story time" does not still take place.  I LOVE to read aloud to any student who will listen, and I can always count on our SPED students from Mr. Parker, Mr. Evans, and Mrs. Hussein's classes to be active participants when I read.  For #WRAD15, I chose to read The Three Ninja Pigs by Corey Rosen Schwartz and illustrated by Dan Santat.  The ninja parody of "The Three Little Pigs" is a hilarious read with its side-splitting rhymes and action packed pig ninja moves.  The students got in on the action while we read, and then donned their own ninja headbands to practice their moves!

We practiced chops, punches, kicks, and yelling "KIYA!"  These students are all smiles every time we do Story Time, which always reminds me just how important it is to still read aloud, even at the high school level!

And a day is never complete without a few "selfies"!

Skyping with Jo Knowles for #WRAD15

In conjunction with World Read Aloud Day (#WRAD15), the RHHS Book Club got a chance today to Skype with young adult author, Jo Knowles!  She is the author of such titles as Lessons From a Dead Girl, Jumping From Swings, Living with Jackie Chan, and most recently See You at Harry's.  We chose Mrs. Knowles as our recent book club read because her next book, Read Between the Lines, is being released on March 10.  Students in attendance asked questions about the relationships in certain titles, as well as Mrs. Knowles career as a writer.

RHHS Book Club getting ready to Skype in the LiNK

Skyping with Jo Knowles from her office in Vermont

Mrs. Knowles' fiction appeals to teens becuase she focuses on sometimes tough situations that many teens themselves have faced.  Abuse, teen pregnancy, death, and grief are some of the topics that have found their way into her writings.  But her straightforward writing style is what I love best!  It was truly a pleasure to have her visit with our students, and we wish her all the best with her latest release, Read Between the Lines.

For more information on Jo Knowles, please check out her webpage.