Technology Lesson Plans

I was exploring the Association for Career and Technology Education (ACTE) website and found this section of technology lesson plans.


Here are a few sample titles with brief descriptions:

• Scale Drawings :Students sketch an enlargement of a cartoon using geometry and ratios. Secondary.
• The Barbie Bungee Drop: To create a mathematical model or equation relating the distance a Barbie doll will fall and the number of rubber bands making up the bungee cord. Goes with Barbie Bungee Drop. Middle school, secondary.
• Cereal for all: Students take a cereal box apart to determine the total surface area of the box and how much material is needed to create the box. Secondary.

The lessons download as word documents and anyone can access this area of the site. Some of the plans have more information than others. I would have liked a bit more narrative and a listing of standards being taught. Overall though, I thought if I were looking for ideas, this would be a perfectly acceptable place to get started.

[Image captured from homepage of ACTE: http://www.acteonline.org]

Funny: Anyone...anyone...anyone?

The famous scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off that makes every teacher cringe and every student say, "Yeah. I had a teacher just like that."

Typing a panagram

If you ever took a typing class than you probably had the experience of typing:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

This phrase is an example of a pangram, a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet. When I taught keyboarding to middle schoolers I often used this phrase to help kids see which letters were giving them problems. My typing teacher back in my old high school did the same thing for me. (To me?)

I used to make up my own pangrams to spice things up a little. It gets boring typing the same thing over and over again. I was reminded of this when I ran across Pangramaday, the website of a person that writes a pangram each day. They are much more poetic than the lame ones I created. They'd be fun to add into your drill and practice. The kids will think you are awesome. Parents will think you are clever. Principals will congratulate themselves for hiring you. All this praise because of a simple sentence that turns your youngsters into speed typists.

Some examples from the site:

• Thunderstorms beat a quickstep across the valley; forget what quiet jazz existed.
• I noticed his glazed pompadour had acquired a killer swoop; a foxy wave befitting a jester.
• Albuquerque nights project fake moonlight over wide expanses of brazen sky.

I got curious if there were any other panagram sites out there as Pangramaday doesn't have a lot of choices as of yet. The author is going to add one each morning but he has only been writing them for a few weeks. I searched and here are a few examples out of the thousands of pages about panagrams available.

• Wikipedia has a page devoted to panagrams.
• Panagram page at Fun With Words.
• The Pangram Page

[Image is my own creation...yes I know I just typed the alphabet in Photoshop and added a triangle. But it's a nice shade of green don't you think?]

Is it possible to multitask?

The video below demonstrates how our brains filter information. It was made to promote cyclist safety. The point being that if you are concentrating hard on one thing, other things, like a cyclist, won't be noticed.

On more than one occasion while my wife has been driving we will pass one of those folks dressed up as a hot dog or a taco or a fluorescent haired clown advertising a local merchant.

After passing the clown, I will say something clever like, "Cute clown?".
She replies, "What clown?"
I say, "The clown on the side of the road waving the big 4-x-4 sign on a stick."
"There was no clown."
"Yes there was."
"No way!"
"Yes way!"

You get the idea. This has happened often enough, that in any similar circumstance where one of us should have noticed or seen something, we often say...."Didn't you see the clown?"

My reason for bringing this up is not to air my marital issues ( I love my wife even if she can't see the clown) but to point out this brain filtering mechanism. And to ask the question, can we truly multi-task? Or are we really serial-tasking very quickly? If this is a skill needed in the workplace, is there a way we can better prepare kids to handle it? Is there a way for me to re-train my 50+ year old brain without some sort of mental implosion?




[Image:Flickr: Bahman: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bahman2005/302426028/]

Bing Bang Boing

Saw this video on Boing Boing about a 70s era toy and wondered how I could not have any memory of it. Granted I was off to college at the time but still.....seems like it's something I would have bought for a nephew or at least snuck off to the toy store to investigate.

It reminds me of the Chaos Toy that came out several years ago which is essentially a kit of various components that allows you to build Rube Goldberg type machines. I had one that I used in my 6th grade tech class. I also have one in storage that my wife asks me every year if we can donate to somebody.

I reply, "No. A thousand times NO. No one will appreciate that toy like me. Perhaps I could be buried with it? Or even better, at my eulogy, set it up to bounce gumballs into my open casket."

I am thinking more and more that most of the mechanisms in a toy like the Chaos Toy or the Bing Bang Boing can be reproduced out of simple materials. Wouldn't it be more fun to construct your own home made kinetic machine? I think so.

After doing a quick search, I found this guy that agrees with me who built a Bing Bang Boing for his kids.




[Image created by Al Gunn to represent the perfect funeral set up for a geeky technology teacher. Better than a Millenium Falcon shaped coffin!]

UK online safety study

Ars Techica had a post about a recent British study that is "an independent review of how parents and children are being affected by the rise of new technology." I particularly like the following analogy. Byron, the author of the study, suggests that parents should treat technology as they do more traditional areas of childhood development, and makes two informative comparisons: crossing the street and learning to swim. Each of these is associated with risks, but parents manage them in stages, with education, followed by supervised exploration that ultimately leads to allowing children to explore largely unsupervised. Technology largely presents a problem because it lacks the intuitive and widely understood aspects of education and risk.

The full text of the article is available here.

[Image:Flickr: maveric2003:Eric Chan: "Kids on a rope"; http://www.flickr.com/photos/maveric2003/833326910/]

Funny: Fetch

Replace the dog with a robot dog and....

Acid Test for Browsers

The Acid3 test page will check to see how compliant a browser is to web standards. If you are teaching web design, your students will eventually run into a situation where a page will open fine on one browser but will not look right on another. The Acid3 test is a fast way to show your kids these differences graphically. The picture shown here is what the page is supposed to look like. My understanding is that at this point no browser is 100% compliant. Try it with your current browser and see how close it comes.

If you want more details about the organization that put the test together or the whole issue of web standards, check out the Web Standards Project site.

[Image captured from ACid3 Test reference page: http://acid3.acidtests.org/reference.html]

Google on Internet Safety

The Google Blog had a post last week on internet safety with a variety of links. I've included a video they created in partnership with Common Sense Media here that is featured on that posting. If you are looking for some safety related sites you can share with parents or colleagues, this might be helpful.







[Image created in Photoshop. Quote is from a character on the TV show "Hill Street Blues" that aired in the 1980's]

You wouldn't believe me anyway...

I was going to write a long essay on how to solve all the problems facing technology education. But who would believe anything I write today?

Cringly on education

Interesting article by Robert Cringley called, War of the Worlds: The Human Side of Moore's Law. He writes about how technology is forcing education to change and how the institution of education is resistive. His basic premise is that technology could by-pass this whole education thing if there were a standard way of certifying knowledge. For instance, if I can prove that I have the skills and I have a document to prove it and I can get it in alternative ways to sitting in a classroom, why do I need to go to school?

Here's a brief quote:

"I've written about this for years and nobody ever paid attention, but ISO certification is what destroyed the U.S. manufacturing economy. With ISO 9000 there was suddenly a way to claim with some justification that a factory in Malaysia was precisely comparable to an IBM plant on the Hudson. Prior to then it was all based on reputation, not statistics. And now that IBM plant is gone.

Well reputation still holds in education, though its grip is weakening. I know kids from good families who left high school early with a GED because they were bored or wanted to enter college early. Maybe college is next."

[Image: Sheldon, Dick. "Children in the school house." Library of Congress. 1938?. Library of Congress. 26 Mar 2008 .]

Funny: Sweet Home Alabama

Sweet Home Alabama like you have never seen before as performed by the Leningrad Cowboys (from Finland) with their back up group, the Red Army Choir.

Aptera Electric Car

Saw this car on a TV commercial and did a little looking on the web to get more information. It's an Aptera electric vehicle and should be available for purchase next year in California. Found this Youtube video put together by Popular Mechanics that has the CEO explaining all the design features. The video could be used as a lead-in to many different kinds of classroom discussions and activities: design, form-vs-function, environment, transportation, etc.

Or forget the kids and give your inner-geek a little treat and watch the video.



[Image captured from Aptera Home Page: http://www.aptera.com/]

Turing'd

I knew a teacher years ago who was working on developing Computer Assisted Instruction modules. He felt that eventually machines would replace teachers. Initially, he had me convinced. Then I worked through some of his modules and wasn't overly impressed. I've worked with some other products over the years and always felt they were inferior to "live" instruction. Good for drill. An additional tool for teachers. But no replacement. I have very self-righteously stated on more than one occasion that "machines can never completely replace a teacher."

I'm not so sure anymore. I haven't seen a killer program that changed my mind. But, I've been watching the steady progress in computers and programing over the past twenty years. It may not be that teachers are replaced but that education and learning change so much that they don't fill the same role anymore.

Today I read a post by Kevin Kelly on The Technium that discusses the number of professional skills that have been Turing'd . This term refers to the Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing back in the fifties. The test involves a human judge communicating with a computer and a human. If he can't tell the difference, then the machine has passed the Turing Test. If a skill or occupation has been Turing'd, it means a machine is able to do it as well or better than a human.

Kelly's main point is that professionals that have been Turing'd are more willing to accept new technologies. Teachers as of yet, haven't been successfully Turing'd. Using his line of reasoning, this helps to explain why we educators as a whole are slow to adapt to some of these new technologies.

How long do we have before we get Turing'd?

[Image: Robot asimo: Photo en Creative Common importé sur le site Flickr par l'utilisateur xcaballe. adresse de la page : http://www.flickr.com/photos/xcaballe/13403082/)]

Posting a students picture on the web

When I came to my current school district about ten years ago, it was against the rules to post a picture of any student online unless you got written permission from a parent. Needless to say, we had lots of school web pages with few pictures of any actual students. I spent a lot of time blurring out the faces of any students I posted on my class site.

My classroom was different. If a child did anything remotely interesting a picture was taken, usually with the responsible students standing proudly beside their creation. The students then opened it into a publishing program and added dates and names. It was printed out and hung on the wall. Kids loved seeing their projects and pictures of themselves posted. It was a great motivator. (Plus every child was comfortable manipulating digital photos and creating simple desktop publishing documents.)

My district has since become a bit more liberal in their internet policies. If I were running a tech lab now, I think I'd post class related pictures weekly. If not on a school website, than on a classroom blog. Kids could prepare their web page or photos for posting. They could share their work with friends and parents without dragging them into the tech lab. I'm going to be teaching a beginning multimedia class for ninth graders next year and I am already starting to think how I will be displaying their work online.

This all leads me to today's link. Brad Moon writes on GeekDad about seeing his elementary age daughter's project posted on YouTube. I thought it was interesting to read a parent's perspective. Don't forget to read the comments from other parents.

[Image: Al Gunn personal collection, "tower competition"]

Popsicle Stick Bridge...again

I was a little curious about popsicle stick bridges after writing about one last week. A young reader asked me if I had any specs (strength, etc) for popsicle sticks. I had a reference like that once but it was in a book, in a lab, that I no longer have access to. Can't recall the title...sorry. Although, creating a table of specifications would be an interesting activity for students to do before starting the actual building.

I went to Google to see if I could find some interesting sites that might be useful to young builders. Here are a couple that I found after an evening of searching.

I like this site, Model Bridge Design, put up by a young man named Garrett Boon. He has been building bridges for seven years and participated in many contests. He is a bit of an entrepreneur and is selling some of his more successful designs. But, I think you can get plenty of ideas and good advice from browsing his articles without buying the plans. Don't forget to check out his link page.

Here is a video podcast by Bre Pettis from Make magazine demonstrating how to build a popsicle bridge and some footage of a competition he set up. (I wish Bre Pettis was my neighbor.) This could be a fun way to introduce the topic. Notice they are testing the bridge by standing on it. Also notice the wide variety of shapes and sizes. I'd suggest some basic parameters for any competition including:

• Length of bridge
• Judged by weight held? Weight of bridge? Ration of the two?
• Does there have to be a road bed and if so, does a model car have to be able to move across it.

Without any guidelines, I've seen students build solid blocks made of sticks and glue that were immensely strong, but used little in the way of design.




I'd also recommend coming up with a method other than standing on the bridge. It's hard to adequately explain to your principal or to a parent how a child sprained an ankle in your tech class as part of their assignment. For large bridges, we used cheap weight lifting plates I bought at a sporting goods store.

I got over 40,000 hits using the search term, "popsicle stick bridge." A lot of the sites were either too technical or relied on a lot of written description with no pictures or diagrams. If you are getting ready to do a project like this in your classroom, there are lots of resources available. Just be ready to sift through to find the good ones. If anybody has a site related to this topic they'd like to reccomend, please add it to the comments.

[Image captured at Model Bridge Design:http://www.garrettsbridges.com/photos/popsicle-bridges/popsicle-bridge-3/]

Funny: Dream Kitchen

Fun mashup created from old kitchen commercials.

Mixing up your own modeling dough

Back in the dark ages when I was teaching Social Studies I was developing a multi-disciplinary lesson with a Science Teacher, Mr. Mancini. We were creating a scale model of an environmentally friendly community and I thought it would be great to have the kids build models of the buildings and terrain out of clay. We had no budget and after pricing the cost of some of the building materials, I was ready to scrap that idea. Mr. Mancini had a recipe for a clay like substance whose two main ingredients were flour and salt. I made up a batch and it had the consistency of PlayDough. It cracked a bit when it dried but otherwise was perfect. It held its shape and could also be painted or the dough could be made in different colors using food dyes.

I was looking for this recipe the other day as a possible rainy day activity for my nephews. Mr. Mancini has since retired and is sitting around sipping cappuccinos in an outdoor cafe somewhere in Italy. Even if I could contact him, I doubt he carries that recipe while he travels. So.....I did a Google search and came across this recipe on Geekdad that looks to be the same as the one we mixed up those many years ago. I love the internet.

I remember building land form maps in my Junior High Geography class using flour paste. It cracked and crumbled and mine didn't survive the walk home. This doughy stuff works so much better. It is a handy formula to keep bookmarked.

[Image captured from Geekdad: Cooking Up Some Home-made Fun: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/10/cooking-up-some.html]

Building your own Lego Temperature Sensor

About 8 years ago, I took a great workshop in Colorado built around Logo and and Lego through the Logo Foundation . It was my first real exposure to Mindstorms. I took many ideas back to my technology lab after that summer including a whole unit on Robotics inspired by the workshop. One of the cool things I was taught by the facilitator was modding Lego pieces to create a light sensor. This was something I taught some of my eighth graders to do and we always had a nice supply of inexpensive light sensors to use in our projects.

This article on building a Lego temperature sensor made me think of that workshop. The instructions are clear and there are lots of pictures. I wish someone would write a book on modifying Lego pieces. I know there are purists out there who think the bricks should never be tampered with, but if I can get a student interested in electronics or design by letting them go at a Lego brick with a Dremel tool, then I think it's worth it.

(Note: This site has other sensors you can build. There is also a link to another site with more modding examples, including the light sensor that is similar to the one I was taught to build.)

[Image captured from Building a RCX compatiable Temperature Sensor: http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/workshops/previous.html]

Puppet Technology

My tech lab had a station dedicated to puppet building. Puppets are a fun way to experiment with simple machines. A puppet mouth is usually designed around a lever. Arms and eyes are usually controlled by a linkage of some sort. Marionettes and shadow puppets have pretty complex mechanisms controlling their movements.

I added this module after I co-taught a technology/art class in my middle school. I had the grand idea of a multi-disciplinary class built around building puppets and then using them as the actors in short videos. I had the opportunity to run this class once with a group of eighth graders. The logistics of it gave us the biggest headaches. Storage of puppets and props. Where to film. How to work multiple groups through scripting, puppet building, video production and editing. I think we could have worked it all out if the art teacher hadn't gone off to teach at the high school. (I don't think working with me drove her away? I'm a nice guy...a little odd...but nice.)

Anyway, after that experience, I was hooked using puppets as an educational doorway to the wonderful world of technology. I was pleased to discover this blog dedicated to puppet building and I've linked to a video from the site that demonstrates how to make blinking eyeballs.



Online Videos by Veoh.com
[Image Captured from Puppetmaking.com: Moving Eyelid Mechanism Video Tutorial:http://puppetbuilding.com/animatronics/moving-eyelid-mechanism-video.html]

Building a Banjo

After writing about tearing a banjo down last week, I ran across this post on Make that had a flickr stream detailing all the steps to building a wooden banjo. Fascinating.

I tracked down the fellow who posted the pictures and he sells handmade banjos out in Massachusetts. His site is fun to browse and if you are interested in instrument building, his blog is filled with information about his methodology.

Someday I am going to build a gourd banjo. I am pretty sure it is my destiny!

[Image: "canarywood2side"; flickr: J.P.Banjo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12786541@N00/sets/72157604084635308/]

Funny: Let me in!

I love this cat. I think he used to live at my house.

Banjo Break Down

I'm a big supporter of folks tearing things apart in order to see how they work. The problem is that sometimes they don't work so good after you put them back together again. No one said learning was going to be easy.

I make it a habit not to tear anything apart that I will need to use within the next six months. This is also a condition of me remaining happily married. So, I was in awe of this photo from Patrick Costello's Tangier Sound, a great website for all you banjo, guitar and harmonica players. Or wannabes! (I'm a big fan of Patrick's site and I visit it daily for an online lesson.) Steve, one of his readers, tore down his own banjo to all it's itty-bitty parts and sent in this picture. He got it all back together again and posted a video of the rebuilt banjo being played. There were no pictures (or video) of a grown man weeping into a crumpled banjo strap, so I am assuming it went back together without a hitch.

I don't have the nerve to do this with my precious banjo. Maybe my neighbors banjo......but not mine.

[Image: Captured from Tangier Sound: http://tangiersound.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/oh-the-humanity/]

Digital Wonderland or Overload?

Interesting and thoughtful article by Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia. He discusses this generation of multi-tasking, digitally connected learners. Two things I liked about this article. First, his description of today's learner.

"Now students in almost any classroom can get directly onto the Internet and, given the shield like screens on their laptops, they can call up what they like. Especially in the big lecture classes now, everyone's flitting from Web site to Web site, checking e-mail, and instant messaging. Do they pay any attention to the class? My students tell me that they're experts in paying attention to many things at once: It's no problem at all."

Second, his argument for exposing students (in his case college kids) to various authors and different points of view.

"The ultimate reason to read them is to see if they may know you better than you know yourself. They may help you to cut through established opinion — doxa — about who you are and what the world is. They may give you new ways of seeing and saying things, and those ways may be truer for you than the ones that you grew up with. Genuine education is a process that gives students a second chance. "

Read the article and see if you agree with his final conclusion. I suspect those of us who are above a certain age will and those who are younger will not.

[Quotes: Edmundson, Mark. "Dwelling in Possibilities." The Chronicale of Higher Education Vol 54,Issue 2714 Mar 2008 Page B7. 11 Mar 2008 .]
[Photo: Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike]

Hacking your bedroom

When I was a kid I always wanted to redesign my room. I wanted to sleep under my bed. I wanted to create a mini-bedroom in my closet. I constructed tents over my bed and at one point suggested at the dinner table that I could build a permanent structure over my bed using scrap lumber. My mother said no. Another time, I wanted to put everything I owned on the floor and get rid of my bed stand, chest of drawers and tables. My dad said no to that one. Once after watching an old Dracula movie, I talked for days about getting an old coffin (used?) and creating the most amazing bed any boy could ever want. I'd be the envy of the neighborhood. Not sure if my parents put an end to my dreams or I finally got a price list for a coffin and realized my allowance didn't quite cover the cost.

So, I was green with envy when I saw this bedroom hack posted on Geekdad. What I really love about this setup is all the floor space created by elevating the bed up off the ground. After reading about this I am thinking about bringing up the coffin-bed idea with my wife. We'd be the talk of the neighborhood!

[Image: Captured from Geekdad: Hacking Ikea for a Cool Kids Bedroom: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/03/re-post-hacking.html]

Excel Timeline

I was helping my wife with a work-related presentation she was creating this past weekend and she needed a timeline for one of her Powerpoint slides. I was eager to try one of the online timeline programs but none quite did what she wanted.

In searching for a way to make a simple timeline, I stumbled across this tutorial that uses an Excel spreadsheet. It's easy and easily modified to fit your needs. Social studies teachers (and students) should love this one.
I put together a quick overview of my life in less than ten minutes. Imagine what you could do with some real content.


[Image: Screenshot of a sample timeline I created in Excel]

Funny: Pay off the Machine

[FunnyTimes:http://www.funnytimes.com/cotw/cotw20070912.php]

Let kids build stuff

Since writing about popsicle bridges yesterday, I've been thinking about all the trash we recycled in my tech lab as supplies for building and prototyping. My students had a material list of items to bring in that was a bit unusual. They had to scrounge up a paper tube (paper towel, wrapping, etc), a small box (cereal, soap, Rice-a-roni, etc) and a clean tin can or a wire hanger. I had piles of this stuff that kids could then use in their projects.

Students built robot heads out of cereal boxes and animated them using the pneumatic devices we had at one station. Students building mousetrap cars for their science classes came in after school to try out different ideas using my "junk" before cutting into their store bought materials. My favorite example is when I took my 8 year old nephew in one afternoon and set him loose in the construction area with a small electric motor while I graded some assignments. With just a little help from his uncle, he built a small working vehicle by the time we left. The chassis was made from the box for a bar of soap. The axles were made out of a clothes hanger. The tires were cut out of a piece of thick cardboard. It wasn't pretty but it worked and he built it.

I guess my point is that it doesn't take a big budget to get kids some hands on building experience. Let kids build. Let them fail and not worry about the cost, cause eventually they will build something that works. I think these are all good things. Good for kids. Good for education.

When I was a kid, I spent hours building damns out of dirt and sticks in the gutters on the street where I lived. I created complex series of pools connected with sluices that collected the water coming down the street. I experimented with ways to keep the dirt structures from being washed away. I created simple water wheels. I floated small paper boats. I ran out into rain storms to see how the damns held up under the deluge of rain water. The neighbors always said that Gunn kid was either crazy or would be an engineer someday.

I became a teacher......so I guess that means crazy?

[Image: Palmer, Alfred. "Fort Loudoun Dam Construction." Library of Congress. 1942. 5 Mar 2008 .]

Popsicle Stick Bridge Building

I read GeekDad the other day and Kevin Kelly posted some pictures of a popsicle bridge his son, along with a friend, had built at home.

For around $12 (my guess at what the supplies would cost at my local craft store) the boys built a bridge that was able to span ten feet. In my lab I'd challenge kids to build the bridge and then we'd see how much weight it could support before collapsing. The cool think about glue guns is that a couple of sixth graders can build a bridge (shorter than ten feet) in a single class period. This gives them an opportunity to build more than one bridge and improve their designs.

The first group builds a 1 pound bridge that can hold, oh say two pounds, and the race is on between each group that follows to build theirs stronger and lighter. Each bridge was photographed before testing and then with the important data included was put up on my classroom wall. If I were doing this now, I'd post them on a classroom blog.

I had books and other resources on bridge building laying around the station and while the first group may only have glanced at the pictures, later groups would ask to check the reading material out over night. I know of several groups that met on the weekends to build and test their structures. For best results, I would recommend letting the bridges sit and completely dry overnight (or at least a couple hours). Otherwise, the glue is still pretty elastic and instead of a satisfying break and crack when testing the weight load, the bridge slowly bends to the ground like silly putty.

I had great success with simple bridge building in my tech lab. It taught the kids to use some simple tools. It taught them to problem solve. It taught them to work as a team. It was a fun place to start talking about some basic engineering principles.

I might note that over the years I used other materials: toothpicks, balsa wood, paper, and straws. One year we had a bunch of Knex donated to the lab and I let them build and test the strength of their structures. I should warn you that you will break at least one or two Knex pieces each time you test. Still, I think popsicle sticks and glue guns were my favorite.

The beauty of a project like this is that it, as shown by the pictures on GeekDad, can be done at home. I had a parent tell me her son loved building the bridges so much that she wanted to buy him the same kit we used in the lab for his birthday. I explained that I went to the craft store and bought popsicle sticks and glue guns. He came in a week later and told me that he had a great birthday that year!

[Image captured from GeekDad: Popsicle Stick Bridge: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/03/popsicle-stick.html]

Online CSS Reference

Last year I bought a book on web design through Sitepoint and in the process got on their mailing list. This led to me getting an announcement recently about the launch of an online CSS reference site they've created. I've been poking around the site this past week and have found it informative and interesting.

It would be a helpful site to bookmark for yourself and for your budding web design students. Good reference tool. Little to much for most middle schoolers but a high school student would benefit from having it available. Take a look.


There are also plans for reference sites on HTML and Javascript.

[Image captured from Sitepoint CSS Reference: http://reference.sitepoint.com/css]

Google Sites

Google bought JotSpot, an online wiki service, over a year ago. It has been googlized and was re-released last week as Google Sites. You've probably already heard about this as it seems to have a post everywhere, but if you haven't here are a few links to help you explore this new wiki product.

• Home page for Google Sites
• Example of a classroom page using Google Sites
• Review on Ars Technica: Google relaunches JotSpot
  
• And the introductory video they have on their home page.

[Image capture of sample teacher page:http://sites.google.com/a/googleclassrooms.org/mrs-richau/Home]

Funny: Touch Screen Vows

[FunnyTimes: http://www.funnytimes.com/cotw/cotw20070606.php]

Stratastencil Animation

Stratastencil is a cool animation technique created by adding layers of cut paper. Here is the site of the artist, Javan Ivey, who created the animation with some photos of how it was done.









[Image from the artists website: http://javanivey.com/my_paper_mind.html]

Bookshelves

Saw this page of different bookcases and I thought to myself, "there is always a fresh way to look at any structure". Show these to your students before giving them a design project to encourage their creativity.

I once gave my middle schoolers an assignment to redesign their notebooks. They had a hard time moving beyond what they knew. Once they allowed themselves to be creative and maybe a little crazy, it turned into a project they all enjoyed. I started it off by having them brainstorm answers to the question: What I hate about my notebook!

At the top of everyones hate list was homework.

[Image: Captured from freshome.com: http://freshome.com/2008/02/25/30-of-the-most-creative-bookshelves-designs/]
[Original source: Neatorama: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/26/a-gallery-of-creative-bookshelf-designs/]

Lecture Tips from Patrick Winston

I followed a link to a YouTube video that was supposed to be a famous lecture about giving effective lectures. Unfortunately, the video had been removed. I suspect for copyright reasons. I did a little searching and found this site through Harvard that has the lecture by MIT professor, Dr. Patrick Winston available online. It is also available for purchase if you would like a copy on DVD.

The video was made in 1997 and is a little dated in places. For example, it uses a chalk board and overheads with nary a mention of the possibilities of powerpoint. It was intended for folks who were going to become college level instructors. Still, I think it makes many valid points useful for any teacher. I have been thinking about one of his points recently as it is something I am guilty of. When we use slides (overhead or powerpoint) it can speed up the pacing of our lecture. Dr. Winston mentions that blackboards have been around for a long time because they fit the pace of our natural speaking voice. Ready made slides allow us to move quickly and dole out lots of information. often faster than our audience can process. There is a natural speed that goes with writing out key points and a drawing on a board. We need to be cautious when using technology that we don't move too fast.

Although, I do remember an Economics teacher when I was an undergraduate that came into the classroom, placed a box of chalk on the desk and then commenced to fill the chalk board completely with diagrams and graphs. He started on the right side and worked his way across the board, drawing and talking the entire time. As soon as he filled the board, he erased it, from left to right, got a new piece of chalk and then began filling it up again. He did this for an 90 minutes twice a week. If that man had used an overhead or god-forbid, powerpoint slides. My brain would have melted.


[Image: Captured from the video: How to Speak: Lecture Tips from Patrick Winston; http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58703/winston1.html

Classroom Activities for the Busy Teacher: NXT

Damien Kee has written a book, Classroom Activities for the Busy Teacher: NXT that might be of interest to those of you who use Lego in your school. He has designed a 10 week set of lesson plans on robotics based on the NXT Mindstorm kit. I haven't seen the book yet but I looked at some of the sample pages provided on the site and if I were still teaching a robotics class at my middle school, I'd purchase the book. It looks like it has some great activities.



Here's a list of the chapters:

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: What is a robot?
• Chapter 3: Flowcharting
• Chapter 4: DomaBot Basics
• Chapter 5: How fast?
• Chapter 6: How many sides?
• Chapter 7: Help! I'm Stuck
• Chapter 8: Help! I'm (still) stuck
• Chapter 9: Stay Away from the Edge
• Chapter 10: Did you hear that?
• Chapter 11: Mini-Golf
• Chapter 12: Dancing Robots
• Chapter 13: Mexican Wave
• Chapter 14: Robot Butler
• Chapter 15: As seen on TV!
• Chapter 16: Student Worksheets

He has more details about what's covered in each chapter, some sample pages available for download and some cool related links to explore on his site. This is definitely going on my list of books to buy.

[Image: Captured from Dombotics: http://www.domabotics.com/resources.php]

Funny: Mouse Love

[FunnyTimes:http://www.funnytimes.com/cotw/cotw20070307.php]

Compact Nomadic Furniture

Saw this video on Make and immediately thought of a book I picked up years ago in a bargain bin called Nomadic Furniture. It had the schematics for all kinds of furniture that could be easily torn down and packed. At the time, we were moving a lot and the idea of being able to easily break down all my belongings into easily transportable components seemed like a great idea. My wife had silly notions about style, color schemes and comfort. I let myself get won over to her point of view by a huge, heavy couch that was ideal for napping.

This concept could be a fun for a classroom design project. Have your students design a piece of furniture on paper. Then mock up a scale model using construction paper. Then create a full size reproduction out of cardboard. Then have your parents come in so they can "ooo" and "ahhh".

I attended a workshop given by a woman who taught technology in the United Kingdom and she had a design unit built around the design and construction of a chair made out of cardboard and paper mache. (Sorry, I can't find her name in any of my notes.) I loved the idea but never pursued it as I had no place where I could work with wet paper mache and then store all the projects in their various stages. If you were working with collapsible cardboard models connected with something like McGroovys Box Rivets, it might be doable in a smaller space.

This brings to mind my two biggest complaints about technology labs. They never build them big enough and they never include an area where you can work with wet and dirty materials. Not all technology education takes place on a computer screen. Some of the best labs I've seen were stuck in old shops or extra storage areas with concrete floors, easy access to the outside and sinks with running water. The newer labs I've seen tend to be smaller and carpeted with the idea that the kids will be sitting at a computer and will never need to get out of their seats or build anything bigger than matchbox.

We work with what we are given but we can dream!



[Image: Captured from Amazon.com: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/02/casulo_your_bedroom_in_a.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890]

Metronome

Need an metronome? Here's one that is online? If you've never used a metronome, this might be an inexpensive (free) way to try it out. My guess is that if you decide it's a tool you would use one, you'll end up buying one anyway. My pocket size metronome is portable and I can take it anywhere I take my banjo. It also has a light that flashes to the beat. I find this helpful as I have a hard time hearing the tick over my banjo.

My wife says she has a hard time hearing anything over the sound of my banjo.





[Image: Captured from Metronome Online: http://www.metronomeonline.com/]

Photoshop Gradient on a Photo

I was putting together a web page for a class I'm taking and wanted the photograph I was using to gradually fade into the white background. I know how to make solid blocks of color do this using Photoshop and I know that I've done this before with a photo, but I just couldn't remember a key step.

A couple of minutes later after a Google search I found this tutorial that walked me through the process.

[Image: Al Gunn private collection.]

Google Doodle Contest

Google is sponsoring a contest for k-12 students called "Doodle 4 Google". Using the theme "What if...?" students doodle over the famous Google logo to create something unique such as the example I have here for Einstein's birthday. If selected, it will be posted on their site for a day and the student wins a prize as does the school.

They offer teacher resource guides with suggestions for activities to use with your students. If you are going to participate notice that you need to register your school. The topic is so broad it could be tied into a social studies or science class fairly easily. Make it an interdisciplinary project. Venture beyond that dusty old computer lab and talk to some of those other teachers who work in your building. Check it out...it could be fun.

• Register by March 28, 2008.
• Doodle Entry Deadline is April 12, 2008.
• State Finalists and Regional Winners notified by May 7, 2008
• Online Public Vote May 12-18, 2008
• Awards Ceremony and National Winners Announced on May 21, 2008
• Winning Doodle on the Google Homepage may 22, 2008

Video of various doodles that have been used in the past.



Interesting video showing a doodle being designed. When kids ask if anyone uses a program like Illustrator, show them this. (Not sure if it is Illustrator....but it's a vector program of some sort?)



[Image: Captured from Doodle for Google: http://www.google.com/doodle4google/]

Funny: Geek Love

A wedding can be so much more than tuxedos, white satin and bland hunk of cake.



[Story Source:GeekDad: Did You Have a Geeky Wedding?; Jan, 7,2008]

Better photos through composition

Quick tutorial on improving photos through composition. The author give two easy techniques: one with your camera and the other with your photo editor.


Show it to your students and set them loose for a fast lesson on your first day back after suffering the indignities of a nasty stomach virus.









[Image: Captured from Information Addicts: Change Your View, Change Your Composition: http://www.informationaddicts.com/change-your-view-change-your-composition]

I wanted to take Home Economics

When I was in Junior High boys couldn't take Home Economics. We were all funneled through wood and metal shop. I was a klutz in those two classes but am grateful for the skills I learned. I was exposed to some great technologies, for example, we did sand casting in metal shop. Our shop teacher never let us near the molten metal but we did everything else. I probably will never take up sand casting but it helped me to understand the process and a little bit about the properties of metal. I did learn some skills that were more practical. I learned to use power tools safely. I learned the names of common hand tools. I'm not afraid to take on minor repairs in my home. I was taught things in those two classes that I've used my entire life.

With that said, I wish I could have taken HomeEc. I loved to cook as a boy and experimented a lot in the kitchen. I often think that if I had understood that men could cook for a living, I might have picked that as a career path. By the time I was aware of restaurant chefs, my interests had moved on.

I wish I had learned to sew. I don't think I would have taken to making my own clothes but there have been numerous times where it would have come in handy. A design for a tent I would like to have built. Puppet bodies to go over the mechanical structures I created. Costumes for Halloween. Some of the other things those lucky girls learned in class I picked up out of necessity once I left home. Ironing. Washing. Cleaning. I would have sat through a lecture on cleaning products for the chance to cook.

I wasn't given that chance because of my gender. (I wonder how many women from my generation feel the same way about not getting to take shop?)

When I started teaching in the early eighties, HomeEc and Shop had been integrated. Boys and girls took both. I saw guys walking around with their sewing projects. I oohed and awed over the towel racks the girls created from cherry wood. Everyone got to cook. Everyone got to learn about tools and how to use them. I think this was good. Knowing this stuff gives us an understanding of how the world works. Of how people make their livings. Of where the products we buy come from and the labor that goes into their creation. I think it's sad that these classes have been slowly pushed out of the schools.

I don't expect a 7th grade shop class to create a working carpenter. I don't believe that every child that goes through home economics will be able to put a home cooked meal on the table every night. But, they might have the beginnings of the skills needed to do minor repairs. Cook a meal. Sew on a button. Not get ripped off by the plumber or the mechanic. Follow a recipe without fear. Know how to do a load of laundry. Aren't these things we want our kids to know? Don't we gain a broader understanding of our world when we learn how to interact with it in a variety of ways? What happened to the idea that it's a good thing to expose kids to a wide variety of topics and skills?

This is the article that got my mind riding this train of thought. In the UK they are going to require cooking classes for their secondary students. Why? To try and help prevent obesity. The reasoning is that if kids know how to cook they will make better choices when it comes to eating. Will it work? Only time will tell.

[Image: Chili Verde: Photographed by al gunn, 2007]

Historical and Educational Maps

This site, the Perry-Castaneda Library Archive, is for the Social Studies teachers in your building. I used to constantly be on the outlook for maps when I taught American History and geography. Back in those days, the map I am showing here would have cost me around $15 dollars to get something that I would be able to display in the front of the room. Some of the nicer pull down maps that were supplied by the educational houses cost upwards of a hundred dollars. This was for a specialty map you might use one day or maybe refer to for a couple of weeks. It was more cost effective to put our money into a couple generic maps that we could draw on and then some good line masters we could use to make transparancies for the trusty overhead projector.

Because I was stubborn, I often was down in the library using the copy stand and a 35mm camera to shoot pictures of maps that I could turn into slides for specific presentations. Many is the young teacher I have bored into leaving the teacher's lounge with my stories of how hard it was in the old days and how easy they have it with all this new fangled technology. But, Good Grief! It only took me two minutes to find this map and download it!!!

[Image: Captured from US-Territories-1860 (map) Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/us_terr_1860.jpg]

Inexpensive Teleprompter

When I first started doing video with kids in 1985, I often wanted some kind of teleprompter like I saw in the TV studios. Instead we used big cue cards which worked but were time consuming to make and added some annoying background noise as the pages were turned. I think it was in the mid-nineties that I was introduced to using HyperStudio as a cheap teleprompter at an educational conference. There was a function in that program that scrolled text. So, then with any computer, we were able to set up a simple teleprompter with text that could be quickly edited and easily controlled.

Jump forward to 2007 when I started teaching in a high school studio. It had specialized teleprompter software that cost close to two hundred dollars to purchase and could only be used on one machine. I looked around for a cheap alternative but didn't find anything that I liked that was simple or cheap. The kids often created word documents with enlarged text that they printed out and carried outside the studio.

I recently read about this teleprompter that runs online from the web and is free, CuePrompter.com. If your computer can connect to the web, it can run a teleprompter. When I tested it out and was running text at the biggest size, I had to work with the line breaks to keep the words from getting cut off. Other than that, it seemed to work fine.

If you give this a try, let me know how it works with students. If you have other inexpensive options, let me know about those too.

[Image: Captured from CuePrompter.com: http://cueprompter.com/]

Funny: Darth Vader Blues

A Star Wars mashup with blues, harmonica and Darth Vader. How could you not love this?

Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets

I thought I had written about these fasteners before but I found a note to myself this morning reminding me to try them out before writing about them. I don't think I will get a chance to experiment with them until this summer and thought some of you might try them out in your classrooms now if you knew they existed.

They were reviewed on Cool Tools and I when I saw them I immediately thought of several projects I've done with kids where rivets would have been useful. In the past anytime my students built large structures with cardboard, they used either hot glue or duct tape. Usually, I preferred duct tape because it's easier to tear down a structure and rebuild it if there is a design flaw. And, there is always a design flaw.

The web site gives these five reasons to use their rivets.

1. Easier to Use - big projects go together in a snap
2. Stronger - projects stay together and last longer
3. Faster - more time for creativity and enjoying your project
4. More versatile - build with cardboard in new ways
5. Reusable - construct a new project every week

If they work as advertised, I'd have to agree. I had an activity where my students designed a temporary structure that could easily fit into a trunk and be dropped into disaster areas. They built their models to scale or just drew them on paper. It would have been cool to take it one step further and build a full-size structure out of cardboard?

If anyone has had any experience with these rivets, please comment.

[Image captured from website: Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets: http://www.mrmcgroovys.com/]

Improve your videos

Five quick and easy tricks your students can use to improve their videos explained in this short piece posted on Instructables. All cheap. All student accessible. It might even get them thinking about other ways they could improve their videos with readily available materials. Heck, they could even create their own how-to video!



Kipkay's Video Tricks & Tips! - video powered by Metacafe

[Original Source: Lifehacker: Improve Your Videos or Photos with Five Cheap Tricks: http://lifehacker.com/351727/improve-your-videos-or-photos-with-five-cheap-tricks]
[Image: Captured from video: Kipkay's Video Tips & Tricks: Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Kipkays-Video-Tips--Tricks/]

Kevin Kelly: Better Than Free

Kevin Kelly has an interesting piece on The Technium called Better than Free. His premise is that anything that can be copied can be put on the internet. Once it is on the internet it becomes available to anyone for free. Money can't be made from the original item in this new electronic landscape. Money can only be made from things that can't be copied. Here was the interesting part of the article for me. He gives eight possible ways that marketable value can be added. Eight things that can't be copied that are valuable to the consumer. I won't explain what he says, read the article. It's worth it.

In these changing times as major studios are trying desperately to hang onto an outdated business model that doesn't work in this new digital world, we seem to hear from the two extreme camps. "Pay me cause it's mine" or "I can get it for free and you can't stop me." It is nice to read a thoughtful piece that looks at how things might work out.

Good discussion article for the tech classroom. Good debate topic for a social studies classroom. I've already seen this mentioned on three other blogs I follow. It is going to generate a lot of discussion.

[Image: Captured from The Technium: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php]

Color theory you can eat

That creative young woman in Washington is at it again. I blogged about her a few months ago when she was posting her werewolf costume construction process on YouTube . She recently put up a tutorial on cookie decorating but hidden within all that chewy goodness is a wonderful lesson on color theory.

Here is a fun way for all you home economic teachers out there to integrate your curriculum with other subject areas. Your art teachers, your science teachers and even your color deficient, elderly technology teachers usually cover color theory at some point. I think your students will be paying particularly close attention in class if instead of the family dog, they get to eat their homework for a change.


[image: Captured from "How to Decorate Cookies using Simple Materials":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yExHl3sDME]

Funny: Bear with me for a moment

xkcd: A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language