My new MOOC and SCRATCH Intro Coming Soon...

First let me say,  I joined clmooc and I am very excited,Making Learning Connected, how much more can a 21st century educator or self appointed connectivist such as myself ask for.   I see some old faces and connections and many new ones to make, very exciting.

We have some great facilitators and I am really looking forward to it.  I love the concept of Make Cycles as each week/session is dedicated as such. I missed the first weeks session but that's OK, I watched it last night, posted here.

I love the idea of Find Fridays where we are challenged to go out and make connections via blogs, comments, google plus etc.  What a great way to help foster connectivity in a large MOOC.  So I hope to connect with some of you for joint projects soon!  This week I'm playing catch up and didn't want to do my introduction/make in my usual ways, for example, My animoto below, Go ahead watch it if you want.



I'm taking on what I thought we be a new but easy challenge, I have loved Scratch from MIT for years and have actively taught it for four years now.  Well, I havent been to the site or taught it in oh six, seven months and boy have there been some amazing changes.  Maybe they happened earlier and I never looked, I just taught and uploaded off of version 1.4.

To look at the new online interface and new features is awesome!  So While yes, I will be making a Scratch Introduction,  I will be taking the time to learn all the new online tools and am looking forward to the journey.  I'll post as soon as I'm done and let you know what I think.

I am looking forward to sharing and learning with my new clmooc community. As I finish this post I am already pondering this weeks questions.

• What does it mean to be a maker? Why make? Why now?
• What happens when makers converge around shared interests and purposes? What opportunities might we seize? What barriers do we face?
• How do we find and build  diverse and inspiring networks of people, resources, and places that support our making and learning?

Thank you clmooc, I am already reflecting and I love it. :)

I'm MOOCing Again, TeachtheWeb

Logo from http://hivenyc.org/teachtheweb/

Hello fellow, #teachtheweb particants.  I am so excited to be a part of a new MOOC. Please feel free to look around my blog and get to know me. 

 I have to warn you I loved Etmooc!  So I may have big expectations, but that's Ok, I'm a self motivated learner and hope I can share and produce as much as possible.

So, I think I like MOOCs.  This one is different, the format changes but not too much, my google plus community is still there just a new one.  I love participating in online sessions via chat or blackboard, skype etc. but am not able to make the 11am timeframe here in NH.  No problem, I can still watch and reflect but I will miss the live online interaction.  I am not a fan of twitter chats, I get lost down one road and boom, the conversation is over but I will always try to participate and share when I can.

I'm leaving my animoto video here to say hello and introduce myself.  I hope you enjoy it. I'm working on my Mozilla Thimble page and I already love the tool for teaching.  I can see a whole new blog post in the works when I am done playing..  I have taught web design and blogging for a while and it makes HTML so easy!!  I promise to post my new page when it's done.  For now, saying hello to new teachtheweb friends and new connections!

When is it a digital story?

In a previous blog post, I wanted to know if storyboarding takes away from creativity. Feel free to read here if you missed it. I got varying responses but it has been on my mind. I have moved forward as does my digital story for #etmooc. I'm using goanimate.com and it's fun. I think I picked a topic that is well quite revealing and quite personal so I'm never sure how much to add and where it ends. I've changed my storyboard several times so I'm starting to wonder if I should just do something made up? I guess we will all find out. Moving on, I have been reflecting a lot on the concept and definition of digital storytelling.

Alec Couros was kind enough to send me a link for Ira Glass on Storytelling. It was the first movie in a series and of 4 which I highly recommend. It discusses having an antedote ( a sequence that keeps people interested) and a moment of reflection, the point of the story. My question lies in do all digital stories have to true point? Is it OK, as I have been teaching it for a while, to just have a perspective or a sequence that is well predictable? As the technology educator, do I stick to the literary steps I know make up a good story or as a digital technology teacher, am I exempt??

I participated in the great session on digital storytelling by Alan Levine, find here it the #etmooc archives. He also discusses having a hook, "entice me" into your story, yet he also introduced us to "how to tell a story through flickr" where pictures appeared and the participants made up a few sentences on the pictures surrounding the topic "connections". When we did this were we participating in true digital storytelling or were we just having fun?? I again have taught the same but I feel like I'm being hypocritical to the literacy aspect of a true story.

I'll explain, I teach Scratch Programming by MIT, and each story must indeed have a full storyboard, a hook, an antedote and a good conclusion. These stories vary but feel free to take a look at one of the stories HERE.

I also teach digital photography sometimes and I have my students do what we call "stories" from a series of pictures. I have embedded one here. Yes it is mine.

See it is cute, but it really is sentences that seemed appropriate for the picture. Does it tell a story?

Last year, I worked on some integration projects with voicethread and students decided to do their essay's on planets in voicethread. Again emebedded below, and begs the question as they are truly giving us facts, are they not telling a story?? It took a lot of storyboarding and collaboration for the students to bring it all together in a logical manner.

So do we stick to the steps of digital stories via literacy practices everytime? Do we hold to the storyboards, the hook , the antedont and the climax and ending or do we in the 21st century decide that we need a better definition for digital stories?

Does Storyboarding Take Creativity Away?

As I pondered the new assignments from #etmooc on Digital Storytelling, I found myself reflecting on the many ways and forms I myself have learned and taught digital storytelling. From Scratch to Animoto, Voicethread, Photostory, GoAnimate and anything really within the web 2.0 realm. I started to ponder a question I would like to throw out to the many.

How important is storyboarding? While I teach Scratch from MIT, you work with character’s called sprites and bits of code that can change your background, move each character, add have them think or talk. This I know I need a storyboard for and have always loved watching students think they have it and start programming then back to rewrite, as they change their minds. Scratch story embedded here took a great deal of storyboarding but it was again, worth the effort and I am not sure with the complexity of the visual components they could have done it without good storyboarding:

I have also taught what I consider to be “collaborative stories” on wikis. In this process, each person, begins a story and then each student in a class from 11-20 middle school students are told to add 5 – 10 sentences to the story. Within a few days you can really see which stories are taking off. So soon we are usually down to 3 to 5 stories which get added to by all members of the same class. They write their comments and then we moved them around to create pages(the full story). Feel free to view my old wiki here, story Mars done by 6th graders. Now look at the history of Mars, it took group effort. I have also left their story Dewey the Alien and the history here, you can actually see how 15-18 different wiki threads turned into some cool stories.

The stories come out really cool or silly but if you think about it no one needed to sit down and think about how many characters, setting, backgrounds or conversations they were going to have. They wrote truly from their heads with no determined plan. Are these methods two different styles both with great results or is it the complexity of move advanced software that will be seen by the eye that lends for storyboarding?

I believe and I may be wrong, that we might be taking away creativity when we ask our students for thought out well planned storyboards before they begin, for some are we losing the creative component that is the strength of digital storytelling? Curious..

Digital Storytelling Resources and Scratch Animation

I'm so excited about our new section in the MOOC I have been a part of, #etmooc. As an educator that has worked at the middle school level, undergraduate and graduate level, there a few things I have found to be more empowering and exciting than introducing digital storytelling to audiences that have not experienced the pleasure before.

What I truly love is the many web 2.0 an free online software applications that are now availabe online. Goanimate.com, Animoto.com, Voicethread.com, Prezi.com and so many much more (please note, each link is an example from myself or student work)

So I am going to start this new blog post by sharing what I have shared and taught so far. First, let me say, Storyboarding in creating a digital story is so important. This is where you should see yourself or students spending the bulk of their time. I do.. See various links I use with my students below:

Integrating Digital Storytellingby Mark Standley, yes it is from 2003, so wow, 10 years ago, they knew we had to give students a new voice, a better or cooler way of communicating.

Digital Storytelling 101 - By Discover Ed. Take a look around.

Digital Story Telling PDF Digital Storytelling in the Classroom, This has some great storyboards!

Education Resources for Digital Storytelling - This discusses some of the basic steps of digital storytelling from developing your story to brainstorying, storyboarding, drafting, revising, editing, timing, images and narration.

Storyboard That - This was a great find gosh back in 2008 by Free Technology for Teachers.

And I cannot forget my absolute favorite. Scratch Programming from MIT. See my example on cyberbullying here.

Learn more about this project

Scratch is a programming language that is free,fun to learn and affords for integration across all content areas. I have used Scratch Programming with middle school students and adults and the inspiration and reasoning skills that are built are truly 21st century skills and the best part is it really is a easy as buidling lego blocks and that's exactly what it looks like. I have so much more I'd love to say and teach you. Next blog post.... For now, I have left the links for the 21st century guide and 1 project done by one of my 7th grader's years ago and one by an student/middle school teacher and can add more. Enjoy.

Scratch Programming and 21st Century Learning.

Weather and the Atmosphere

Texting While Driving