technology with intention
Reference
2011 film contest open for submissions
192 days
by Jac de Haan
in Reference
NextVista.org is sponsoring a film contest that is open to all students. This year’s theme is “Made in the Cloud,” and entries will be accepted through August 14th. This is a great opportunity to have your voice heard by a national audience!
Blog for iPad
300 days
Just for fun we installed the onSwipe plug-in on our WordPress blog. This snippet of code re-formats content into a magazine-style layout for the iPad. Screenshots of the results are below:
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JeopardyLabs and Winter Camping
349 days
by Jac de Haan
in Reference
8th grade students just returned from an incredible winter camping experience at Blewett Pass. They employed all the winter camping skills that they have practiced for the last month (snowshoeing, winter tent set-up, snow sculpture and more), along with their research on avalanche awareness and winter first aid.
In lieu of a final test before leaving, students played a grade-wide game of Jeopardy to show off their understanding of the content. In the past teachers have used Powerpoint and created cumbersome, time-intensive Jeopardy boards, but this year Meredith found a great resource in JeopardyLabs, a quick game-builder complete with built-in scoring. This resource is free to use and you can select the number of teams playing.
Test your winter camping skills by playing the same board our students used by clicking this link.
Take control of your online you
359 days
8th grade students at Billings are always involved in helping younger students and each other keep digital identities protected. In the past they’ve conducted surveys, presented to our parent community, built a webpage and created video.
Staying up-to-date with Facebook’s changing privacy policies can be daunting. An 8th grade parent recently wrote in to let everyone know about the new https option for logging in. Mashable just published a new guide to staying in control with Facebook. Follow their advice to stay in tune with the latest Facebook settings, including the https change.
Technology with intention
435 days
by Jac de Haan
in Reference
Middle school students are digital natives – they have grown up in a world where cars can find an optimal route to a destination, where cell phones can announce the score of a sporting event and a click of the remote can pause live television. For older generations, this power is note-worthy and awe-some. For those that have never known anything else, this power can be invisible.
A well-rounded technology curriculum has to address the unique complexities of growing up digital and should leverage this generation’s technological fluency to create meaningful connections to self, environment, and each other. At the heart of intentional use is the ability to recognize how technology allows us to be productive, communicative, creative people with a clear sense of personal and community identity. As technologists, we also have to acknowledge the unintended consequences of adoption.
I recently had an opportunity to share our School’s philosophy of technology with intention with prospective families at an Open House event. Below is one slide from the presentation – feel free to extend this idea, add a comment or send a note to share your adaptations.
Technology with intention
Technology with intention by Jac de Haan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Technology as transportation
454 days
by Jac de Haan
in Reference
On my way to the Goddard flight center for an amazing Eco-Schools professional development course, I found myself thinking about a 6th grade conversation from earlier in the week. In defining the word technology, students attempted to classify reasons that people create and/or use it. So far, students have uncovered uses primarily focused on productivity (transportation, research, communication).
In the course of 6 hours, I travelled on 8 forms of transportation in order to reach my destination – escalator, light-rail, plane, bus, train, car, shuttle, and horizontal people-mover. Each of these technologies requires energy and regular maintenance so that I can get where I want to go. Just because you can get around the world in a matter of hours, should you? What impact do you have on your environment by travelling in this manner?
The amazing folks from the National Wildlife Foundation were organizing this event, and they did a number of things to try and mitigate or offset the carbon footprint of the training: carbon offsets were purchased through Terrapass, food was locally sourced, technology was shut down when it wasn’t in use. Many thanks to the event organizers and to the amazing technologies that allowed me to participate!
The “Green Hour”
460 days
by Jac de Haan
in Reference
At Billings we are lucky, with our proximity to Green Lake and emphasis on environmental awareness. Our curriculum connections and lack of a gymnasium get us all outside significantly more than this average. Here is a partial list:
- Our 55-minute lunch period happens down at the park and in our new West Hall, with a wall of doors that roll up and connect the inside and out.
- Our expeditionary learning program takes every student out into the field multiple times a year – through overnight experiences and community service projects.
- Our Winter Program includes skiing, snowboarding, nordic skiing and winter camping.
- Seasonal PE offerings include soccer, ultimate, parkour, fitness, swimming and other outdoor activities.
- Our after-school program takes students outside everyday.
- 8th grade students take a period every Wednesday to gather water samples for Green Lake.
- 7th grade students have a weekly GO (Green Lake Outdoors) period with the purpose of moving through our community and experiencing seasonal shifts while getting exercise.
- 7th grade students have Thursday FLEX periods, which remain flexible to take advantage of nice weather or hands-on skills for camping trips such as setting up tents or knot-tying.
- 6th grade science students keep journals requiring them to get outside and note seasonal changes and weather patterns.
- 6th grade students have 2 extra PE periods per week, above the regularly scheduled school-wide PEs.
- Advisory periods are flexible – groups can decide to meet outside when it suits them.
October is cybersecurity awareness month
481 days
The folks at StaySafeOnline.org are back with a bunch of tips to help keep you and your home computer safe. Their website has a bunch of information about how to get involved and protect yourself. Copied below are some of their social networking tips, originally from this download-able file.
- Privacy and security settings exist for a reason: Learn about and use the privacy and security settings on social networks. They are there to help you control who sees what you post and manage your online experience in a positive way.
- Once posted, always posted: Protect your reputation on social networks. What you post online stays online. Think twice before posting pictures you wouldn’t want your parents or future employers to see. Recent research (http://www.microsoft.com/privacy/dpd/research.aspx) found that 70% of job recruiters rejected candidates based on information they found online.
- Keep personal info personal: Be cautious about how much personal information you provide on social networking sites. The more information you post, the easier it may be for a hacker or someone else to use that information to steal your identity, access your data, or commit other crimes such as stalking.
- Know and manage your friends: Social networks can be used for a variety of purposes. Some of the fun is creating a large pool of friends from many aspects of your life. That doesn’t mean all friends are created equal. Use tools to manage the information you share with friends in different groups or even have multiple online pages. If you’re trying to create a public persona as a blogger or expert, create an open profile or a “fan” page that encourages broad participation and limits personal information. Use your personal profile to keep your real friends (the ones you know trust) more synced up with your daily life.
- Know what action to take: If someone is harassing or threatening you, remove them from your friends list, block them, and report them to the site administrator.
- Be cautious about messages you receive on social networking sites that contain links. Even links that look they come from friends can sometimes contain malware or be part of a phishing attack (attempts to collect personal information: log-on and password and other identifying information by pretending to be a message form a friend or a business). If you are suspicious, don’t click contact your friend or the business directly to verify the validity.
Lab expectations defined
508 days
Students spent a period setting boundaries to work within while in the TechLab. We started with our 3 rules, and then defined what that behavior would look like in specific settings. It turns out that sometimes focused computer work is an expectation, and other times it can be a distraction. We’ve posted this table in the lab so that it can be referred to as necessary.
| transitioning to class | presentation or lecture | discussions | independent time | end of class | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| be awesome to each other | *treat others as you want to be treated nicely
*be flexible *be calm *talk to each other |
*listen
*assume others are trying to help *take turns *offer compliments *agree/disagree respectfully |
*listen
*assume others are trying to help *take turns *offer compliments *agree/disagree respectfully |
*work quietly
*compliment others work *help others focus *give suggestions if asked |
*treat others as you want to be treated nicely
*thank others |
| participate | *log in to computer
*paper, pen(cil), planner *write agenda in planner |
*eyes on speaker
*take notes *ask questions *share ideas *stay where you are meant to be |
*eyes on speaker
*take notes *ask questions *share ideas *stay where you are meant to be |
*stay focused
*try new things *use time wisely |
*leave on time
*take your stuff *help clean |
| respect the lab and equipment | *use technology as appropriate
*control your body *no food/drink *wash hands *use cubbies |
*use technology as appropriate | *use technology as appropriate | *use technology as appropriate | *log off computer
*hang headphones *push in chairs |
Techers use technology too
509 days
by Jac de Haan
in Reference
Technology is everywhere at Billings, but it’s not just students that find ways to innovate and use tech to be productive. Teachers have been looking for an easy way to take attendance and get a view into records by grade or student.
Goals of the new system:
- easy to use – teachers are busy, we need to enter an “A” or “T” and move on
- ‘live’ view of attendance – once a student is marked absent or tardy, all teachers have access tot he information
- student trends – an alert system that uses color-coding to spot absence or tardy trends by student
- grade trends – an alert system that uses color-coding to spot absence or tardy trends by grade
- daily trends – an alert system that uses color-coding to spot absence or tardy trends by day
- accessible – from anywhere on campus or from home
- automatic backups – version history is important for record keeping
- levels of access – summary pages should be locked down, daily records should be editable by teachers
We found an answer in Google Spreadsheets. Beyond meeting the above requirements, the solution is a free one. After creating a few formulas, it was just a matter of copy & paste. Some of the more interesting formulas:
=countif(L3:BC3, “a”) + countif(L3:BC3, “e”) – this counts up all “a” (absent) and “e” (excused) marking across a row (for an individual student)
=countif(P2:P31, “a”) + countif(P2:P31, “e”) – this counts up all “a” (absent) and “e” (excused) marking down a column (for an individual date)
=SORT(FILTER(’7th grade’!C2:E ; FILTER(’7th grade’!K2:AZ;’7th grade’!K1:AZ1=G1)=”a”), 3, TRUE) – this formula was created with help from Ahab, a Google Groups community member who volunteers to assist others with Google Spreadsheets. The filter figures out today’s date, searches all columns for that date, and then returns all students absent in that column. Definitely a nice feature…with this formula our Spreadsheet Sheet 1 displays all students absent for the day along with the number of previous absences each has.
