Not Just Any Map

I’m not often fascinated by trivia, but one of my friends of “tuesdays” sent me this cool site and it just drew me in deeper and deeper.  That’s when I knew I had to share.  I feel most blessed because I have been traveling around our great country quite a bit in the last two school years and have been in many diverse classrooms. Why do people live where they live? Why do you live where you live? Why do people move? Why do some neighborhoods look as good as when they were first built and others are in disrepair?  I traveled to a great city in the Midwest and was saddened by the vibrancy of the downtown, but the decay of the neighborhoods surrounding the city was very apparent. This past weekend I celebrated our family reunion in New Jersey and found great neighborhoods that were alive and well.  My cousin designed a “car rally” where we traveled to places that were important to our family going back 4 generations. It was eye opening and made me appreciate just how important it is to have roots.  My hope for this “tuesdays” is that you dig into this site and share it with your students because it can make a great summer curiosity project.

A creative website

The New York Times is hosting an interactive map of the 2010 US Census that is fascinating. This “tuesdays” comes with a disclaimer: “Warning: this can be addictive. Take special care not to start clicking around in this site late at night!” Census reports can be interesting, but designing a  creative and clickable website to view the data is brilliant. Think about the combinations of maps on this site: there are fifty states and the District of Columbia and 13 different comparisons including population distribution, density, racial/ethnic distribution and even housing units.  That’s over 660 maps that can be zoomed for a county-by-county bird’s eye view.  I went immediately to my county (Osceola) and was pretty shocked to find that we had a 53% population increase since the last census. I doubted that any other county could beat that kind of rise, but was amazed to find two more astronomically higher - Flagler County (92%) and Sumter (75%).  I’m not sure what happened in Flagler, but I know the Villages didn’t exist in Sumter in 2000! 

An image to share

Courtesy of the Census Bureau; socialexplorer.com – The map represents the change in population since 2000. The greens are increases and the golds are decreases.

A proverb

“The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

An encouragement

Please consider showing this 2010 census site to your students before they leave for summer vacation. (Ok, I know a few of you are off already – save it for next year!) There are endless comparison and contrast lessons waiting to happen.  The real world mathematics is crying out for percent increase and decrease lessons.  The population trends suggest migration of racial/ethnic communities and research into what has happened. Opportunities to show this site to parents is very beneficial to begin a family project over the summer to look deeper into where other family members have settled and what their population trends are. I would like to encourage you to share it at any grade level and any subject area because it can be a topic of conversation that can be as simple as a second grade lesson and as intricate as a high school economics class. Creative teachers always come up with unique ways to go deeper.  Please share and great ways you use this site with us on my blog.

How do you do that?

How do you make the most of this great census website?  Click every drop down menu you can find. I would like to suggest that you go naturally to your own county/district where you live. If you are fortunate enough to have an interactive board in your class, have the students come to the board and click on an area other than their own and begin the comparisons. Choose some of the little known states and then the ones the students think are the smallest/largest. I was surprised to find that the total population of Hawaii was 1,360,301 with 953,207 living on Oahu alone.  I would also recommend sticking with one state and then working all the 13 comparison maps. If you can roll computers into your room or have an opportunity to go to a computer lab, pair students up in a 2:1 ratio and have them explore the site.  Give them some guiding questions to get them started because, by in large, when they have someone to compare with, they will motivate each other. My favorite map is the change in population because I wonder why people move where they do.  I know I move to my home 24 years ago and am very happy where I am, but we have a huge mobility rate in our schools.  Where are they all going? I wonder what the students think the best place to live would be after viewing these maps.  Hope you have fun. Kudos to the New York Times for hosting this great service.

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,

K

End of the Year Presentations

Are you are gearing up for an end of the year picture slide show presentation of your students and want to put some music in the background so they would enjoy the show even more? Are you struggling with the dilemma of using all the top hits of the year so that it would be so much more exciting for the students? Hopefully, your copyright conscience kicked in to remind you that you just can’t use popular music in your presentations without breaking copyright laws. The real problem arises when one of your students just loves the presentation SO much that they have to have a copy for themselves.  In your moment of “Oh, they really loved what I made” you become a distributor! No! No! No! Don’t do it!  In this week’s “tuesdays,” I would like to remind you about another FREE way to create your own original music so that you never fall prey to the temptation of using someone else’s intellectual property again. (I know, you would never do that.)

A creative website

UJAM is a FREE music creator, editor and mixer has features that are totally new. What fun!  I’ve tried it a few times made five little mp3 files in no time at all. As I work with teachers and students on digital projects, they are always looking for background music that really helps engage the message of the video or presentation.  UJAM is definitely the answer! With very little skills, a novice like me can create a song in minutes, but the best news is that the students, who have a lot more time and energy than we do, will inevitably create some incredible compositions.  There is so much more to UJAM, but what impresses me the most is that you may even be turning on your students to a future in music.  With each song you create, you can change keys and understand exactly each note that you have sung or created because UJAM generates the notation.  It’s amazing.  It’s ONLINE, FREE and available to everyone.  Go for it.  Make your own JAM!

An image to share

Piano.  Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

A proverb

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.”  Victor Hugo

An encouragement

Probably the scariest part of creating music is thinking that you have no musical talent. That’s the best part about UJAM.  I have never created anything musical in my life until Apple’s GarageBand came along (free on every Mac).  Once I learned a few techniques, I showed my students the little I knew and they just took off. Most people do not have GarageBand so the creation of UJAM levels the playing field.  Since it’s totally online, access to the interface is a website away. Songs and recordings are easily downloaded as mp3 files and inserted into presentations, videos and mp3 players.  Check out this You Tube video of the progression of two artists who started with a simple song recording and converted into a composition using UJAM.  It’s just unreal what our students have at their fingertips today.

How do you do that?

How do you use UJAM? You will need to create an account that is FREE. You can choose to just go right to the application and start playing or click the Full Menu for Song Creation.  I recommend that you just start playing because they have made their interface brilliantly simple, yet complex enough for real musicians. Not only can you create background music for your presentations and videos, but you can also record your voice and put it to music! UJAM will allow you to record right on their site, through your computer’s mic or upload a file that you have already prepared. It automatically figures out what tones you did or didn’t sing and aligns your voice with the most logical chord. You then have the option to customize it in categories like: happy, sad, blues and many more. Try it and if you don’t have the time, share it with your students. They’ll know what to do. Hope those end-of-the-year presentations are great!

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,

K

What Every Graduate Needs

‘Tis the season of graduations! I was most fortunate to attend an “Honor the Graduates” ceremony last night and was so impressed with the testimonials from the students. To hear these students share what high school has been like and how they overcame some of the trials of their lives was humbling.  We have a great generation coming behind us.  I wished I could give them all some gift, but realized that would be impossible until I thought about the one tool of technology that has helped me more than any other.  The best part is that I can afford to give it to them, in fact, we all can give our graduates one of the best presents ever! EVERNOTE! This single gift may make the difference between floating through college or accomplishing the goals and dreams of graduation night. This “tuesdays” is a revisit to Evernote, but I specific intend it to be for the graduates.  Congratulations, class of 2012.

A creative website

Evernote, available online, app format, and in a downloadable desktop version, is the first product I have experienced that allows me to enter my most important cares in one place and then they are automatically synchronized to any and all of my devices.  In other words, when I put a task for myself in Evernote on my computer desktop version of the program, I click sync and then I can immediately walk over to my iPad – it’s there, pick up my iPhone – it’s there, look at my iPod Touch, it’s there or log on to my internet account for any computer and it’s there!  That’s very cool. It doesn’t even matter which device I enter the information in – it’s there on all of them!  Evernote describes the use of their product as “save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see.” I am really tickled by the ability to be on a website and capture it to a note. My favorite use of that to date is to capture flight itineraries and car rentals.  When I get to the airport, I simply take out my iPhone or iPad and have everything I need in the palm of my hand.  Remember, even if you don’t live in the handheld device world, your students do and I would recommend this tool to high school and college students especially.

An image to share

This file is from the Open Clip Art Library,

 which released it explicitly into the

 public domain, using the

 Creative Commons

 CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

A proverb

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”  Winston Churhill

An encouragement

In these last few weeks of school there will be so much to do and so many events to attend.  I would like to encourage you to put all your important “hats” in one place. Staying focused is the only way to accomplish all those things you are dreaming about. In order to be successful as an educator, time-management is the most important skill.  I’m still not sure why they don’t teach that in college, but Evernote can help you manage your world – your way. Not only do we have busy lives, our students do also.  Why not tell them about this great gift of organization and of course, the best part is that it is FREE.  What a great graduation gift! You can always pay for the service, but the FREE version is more than adequate. The only difference I can see that I might want to do is share collaboratively with another Evernote user. Right now I can share and they can view only, but if I paid they could enter more “stuff.” Not a major need for me.  I’ll stick with FREE! Stephanie is the most avid classroom user of Evernote with students. If you want some serious advice, check out her blog.

How do you do that?

How do I use Evernote? It’s my absolute favorite app at the moment. I can honestly say the I use it every single day and at least 10 times a day.  After I wake up and do my Bible study and prayers, I open Evernote to see what my priorities are.  I have a running list of things to do that I easily reorder each day and sometimes many times during the day.  I also created different “notebook” for the hats I wear: Personal, e-Cubed, CEAI, Discovery, FDE, etc.  When I travel for Discovery, I simply clip an image of my rental cars, flight info, hotel reservations or whatever I want to save from the web. When I write “tuesdays”, I copy and paste it into Evernote and then have it speak it back to me.  It’s the only way I can attempt proofreading. I do all my planning for trainings, keep logs of what I do with my teachers, keep a record of all my accounts, passwords and memberships.  With one click of the mouse, I have all this information anywhere, anytime and on any of my devices.  Evernote has made me much more efficient and that sense of crossing things off the list is very soothing to me somehow.  Are you a busy person?  Get Evernote and you will still be busy, but peacefully accomplished. Most of all, your students need it too!

“tuesdays with Karen” is a weekly newsletter/blog designed to encourage, equip and empower teachers to be creative with educational technology.

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,

K

Mystery Skype

I was blown away last week when I worked with one of my favorite schools and their instructional technology specialist, Lynda. She began sharing a Skype project that sounded interesting, but my foolish first reaction was that Skype has been used, what could be new?  Silly me!  As I really listened in, I was intrigued by the mystery she built into this meaning study. Teachers are so creative and have an inherent need to connect to others. Skype provides such a wonderful platform for bringing the outside world safely into our classrooms.  It’s not just for personal use, but it’s FREE and a readily available platform that opens doors for students to explore under the protective umbrella of their teachers.  This “tuesdays” is a direct result of experiencing a new Skype project created that gives students a sense of inquiry, mystery and curiosity all rolled up in one.

                         

A creative website

Skype is FREE software that you download to you computer so that you can talk, chat or even make video calls for FREE!  Skype in the Classroom makes video conferencing simple, challenging and relative to any classroom setting. Most states/district require a global project at some point. Skype in the Classroom offers countless opportunities.  Lynda submitted her Mystery Skype idea and was accepted.  This is her description: We are an arts-based, bilingual K-8 school in Miami, FL. Our 4th grade classes have been studying about the US in terms of geography and culture. We are looking for similar classrooms around the country who would be willing to Skype with us, asking and answering a series of yes/no questions, to determine the location of the mystery classroom. Ideally we will do one Skype session a week for the remainder of the school year. Presently they have three schools from around the country who will be participating in the Mystery Skype and naturally we are hoping that for a whole lot more.  What a clever idea, Miss Lynda.  It’s fun to share original ideas.

An image to share

4^th grade class in Miami, FL guessing the mystery location of another classroom in Forest City, IA.

A proverb

"We have just started, and if you compare the number of people using Skype to the number using a telephone network around the world, we're still just starting.”

Niklas Zennstrom

An encouragement

I would really like to encourage you to become a Skype user because everything we do in education really comes down to relationships.  If you could make a quick Skype call to an expert or another classroom to collaborate, you will bring an engagement level to the classroom unlike mere text.  Please understand that most districts still are unsure of how to handle Skype. Does it require a lot of bandwidth? Will it affect the network? I would like to see teachers utilize Skype like a field trip with permission slips and preplanning so that everyone is aware that a Skype interview/conversation/collaboration is happening on campus and test its potential first before blocking it immediately. As a teacher, make sure that you clear this with your administrators before doing anything at school, but in the meantime, try it at home with family and friends and think of the possibilities! Let us know some of your ideas for classroom uses of Skype on my blog.

How do you do that?

How do you get involved in a Skype in the Classroom project? Research Skype classroom projects or visit a few of these ideas from others that I’ve compiled for you.

50 Awesome Way to Use Skype in the Classroom

Using Skype in the Classroom

Cool Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom

An International Social Network for Teachers

Project Collections on Skype – projects from Skype ready to join

You can even search for certain teachers, projects or just areas of interest.  The bottom line is that Skype in the classroom is the most amazing way to collaborate and learn from others. 

Please consider joining Conchita Espinosa Academy’s Mystery Skype for 4^th graders where you have your students try to guess where they are from before you reveal who they are to each other.  What fun! To get involved, please contact Monica Valdes at  mvaldes@conchitaespinosa.com  Great idea, Miss Lynda!

As always, I am

Ubiquitously yours,