A twelve minute final exam study guide phonecast is available for our course. This audio recording will provide you with specific suggestions for things you’ll want to remember and study for our final exam. Good luck, and I hope this is helpful to you!
I decided to experiment with the “broadcast” block as it can be used for storytelling projects. My 7 year old, Rachel, helped me brainstorm a basic storyline and made suggestions as I created, “The Unexpected Cruise.” We added three random sprites (a cat, an elephant, and a ship) for the characters in our story. It’s not an amazing or particularly compelling tale, but we did learn several new things by creating it.
One of the things I learned about are the different options for rotating sprites, and the need to “design from the beginning” with your sprites and scenes “reset” to their desired, starting values and positions. Since I turned and rotated some of my sprites in this project, when I played the project again from the beginning I had a problem with an upside down elephant.
I fixed this by adding some blocks to my starting script (those which run when the green flag is clicked) which set the costume I wanted at the beginning of the story, and one which pointed the sprite in the correct direction.
In this story, I did not record any voices but did use sounds from the provided Scratch library as well as one imported sound file. Storytelling with different characters (sprites) talking in sequence involved (in this case) a combination of using the wait block (it makes a sprite wait for a specified number of seconds) and using the broadcast block to announce a new scene. Sprites as well as the project background can respond / take action (run scripts containing other blocks) in response to a broadcast message, using the “When I Receive” block.
Another important thing I learned creating this project was to design for “initial conditions” from the start. I found this recommendation in the Scratch forums, but also discovered it through trial and error. There is not a “reset everything” Scratch block, so you need to include scripts for your sprites which establish their initial parameters / conditions for your project.
The Scratch wiki is a great tutorial to use when learning about the features of different Scratch script blocks.
This project took Rachel and I an hour and a half to complete. It’s very simple, but a lot of computational thinking was required to complete it. That’s a big reason Scratch is such a wonderful environment for student expression of both idea mastery and creativity. When you ask, “How can we do such and such?” in Scratch, the answer is always “out there” waiting for you to discover it, and often there is more than one way to do it.
That’s a lot like life.
Thanks to everyone who came to our “open lab” today and asked great questions! Here are few updates which resulted from conversations since we had class on Wednesday, and a few other updates I neglected to mention in class.
- Direct links: When you submit a link for a quiz, you want to use the direct, public link to your blog post. I added two posts to our FAQ blog showing how to do this on Edublogs (9 am) and how to do this on KidBlog (11 am)
- Organize Google Reader Feeds in a Folder & Share a Bundle – Remember the step by step instructions for how to do this (for our quiz due next Tuesday, Feb 22nd) is on our course FAQ blog.
- Scratch Project Won’t Open? I posted some tips and suggestions you can try.
- How to Subscribe to a Website as a Channel in Google Reader, and Categorize / Organize it in a Folder – Check out this three minute screencast (available on YouTube and the Screenr website, as well as our course FAQ blog) about this week’s new skill, making a Google Reader Bundle.
- In the right sidebar of our 9 am class blog on EduBlogs, I’ve added everyone’s userid and a link to JUST that user’s blog posts, under CONTRIBUTORS. This is a feature KidBlog does automatically, but EduBlogs doesn’t. Hopefully this will make it easier for you view just your OWN posts or the posts of someone else.
- KidBlog (and our 11 am class blog on Kidblogs) has had some technical difficulty this week, with the site acting slow and at times not being inaccessible. This situation should get better– if you’ve been unable to post or write a comment on that blog, just save the text you were going to post and give it a try later. My apologies for these technical issues.
- I added a reminder about signing up for a UCO blog buddy at the top of our week 6 assignments, and also writing at least 1 comment this week on your blog buddy’s blog.
If you have other questions please let me know. We will be having some additional “open lab” times on Friday mornings later in the semester. We’ll have at least one more before spring break. :-)
I created the following screencast today during our “open lab” time, demonstrating how to create a link and embed a video in a post on our Kidblog site. The video is 11.5 minutes long.
This is my reflection on Darren Kuropatwa’s K12Online video and keynote presentation, “Intersections.” Although I watched this video for the first time in October 2010 when it was published, I took twenty minutes today to watch it again and see what new insights I could glean from Darren. I’m following the video reflection rubric for my Spring 2011 “Technology for Teachers” course at the University of Central Oklahoma as I write this.
1. MOST SIGNIFICANT TAKEAWAY
There are so many wonderful ideas in this video presentation it is very difficult for me to distill my learning points down to a single takeaway. That’s the assignment, however, so as Darren encourages I’ll “give it a go.”
In the video, Darren wisely observes, “Serendipity befalls those who give it a go.” He provides great examples of this with his professional blog, “A Difference.” The story of how Dan Meyer and others chimed in to redesign math lessons he shared is remarkable. Because Darren is so connected to other educators, transparent in his thinking, and generous in the way he shares his ideas,”serendipitous” learning experiences surround him. I’m reminded of a comment Clay Shirky made in his fantastic book, “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.” I’m currently listening to the book via Audible. Shirky observes “human character is the root for explaining human behavior, not technology.” Darren’s stories he shares in this presentation are an example of this. It’s easy for outsiders to point and say, “Gosh, look at all the amazing things Darren can do because he uses technology.” It’s true the connections technology has afforded Darren and his fearless uses of those technologies have been critical enablers for the learning dynamics he uncovers in this presentation. It’s false, however, to conclude technology is the key factor. As Shirky observes, CHARACTER is the key ingredient. The passion, transparency, generosity, and humility which shine through Darren’s work and commentary are the keys. Darren’s willingess to “give it a go” is a key element, and in many ways it’s a key catalyst. Character, not technology, however, defines the relationships Darren continues to build and the learning which is possible for him and so many others thanks to the strength of those diverse relationships.
2. CONNECTIONS WITH MY OWN LIFE
In his keynote presentation, Darren answers the question, “Why does it matter when you connect things?” with the following statements:
Social presence matters because it builds social capital. Social capital provides the interpersonal glue which supports us each and every day in our communities of practice, our communities of inquiry, and professional learning networks.
This resonates with me because I continue to be the daily beneficiary of “social capital” built through virtual connections to hundreds of educators around the world. Another great observation I’ve gleaned from Clay Shirky in the past week is the idea that “going global” isn’t a matter of organizational size today, it’s a matter of scope. Darren’s “scope” as an educator is global. Through his blog, professional wiki, Twitter account, Flickr account, and other virtual spaces in which he “digitally invests,” he’s made and continues to make innumerable connections with other people who share common interests. In some cases, these are people who also share common values about things like learning and education. The opportunity to be influenced on a regular basis by people who share many of our values and professional passions is incredibly powerful.
Darren also discussed in this video how professional, virtual connections can (and perhaps inevitably) lead to personal connections. As I’ve continued to learn and work with Darren (since 2006 when the K-12 Online Conference started) this has certainly been true for me personally. It’s wonderful to have opportunities, even brief ones, to meet face-to-face with people who have become such important parts of our learning network.
3. IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING PRACTICE
I really like the way Darren wove the stories of wolves (about technology and using tools,) thinking Russian (trianglulating on truth,) and Aesop’s fable of breaking sticks (the power of working together) to illustrate the TPACK model of technology, content and pedagogy.
One of the implications of watching this video a second time is a personal desire to learn more about TPCK and integrate it into the courses I teach and presentations I share. I heard Matthew Koehler and Punya Mishra present about TPCK in March of 2007 at the SITE conference in San Antonio, in a presentation titled, “Confronting the Wicked Problems of Teaching with Technology.” I love frameworks which help me better understand complex ideas and identify practical ideas for accomplishing related goals. TPCK is a framework which holds a lot of promise in that regard, and Darren inspired me (through his stories as well as wonderful juxtaposition of media images with his message) to learn more about it.
I posted more of my notes I’m not including in this post to an Evernote notebook I’ve shared publicly.