Xtranormal: Do It Yourself Films for School

My brother-in-law just sent me a link to one of the coolest sites I have been to in awhile. I should probably take a day or two and compose this blog more carefully in my mind, but I am too excited to sit on this one. It is called http://www.xtranormal.com/. To quote the site; "if you can type, you can make a movie." All you need to do is write the lines for your script, and the site transforms your information into a mini movie.

I have a project my colleagues and I are working on this week titled Water4Wells to help raise money to build a safe water well in northern Thailand. Now thanks to xtranormal and an awesome screen my colleague Kerry Dyke has set up in the MS/HS cafeteria, my film will now be broadcast to the student body during lunch. This will enable our students to get the word out and hopefully raise a lot of cash for a great cause. The entire film took me less than two hours to make. Now that I know how to use it, the next one will be much easier.

Check it out:


I am so excited about how user friendly this site is, and I can't even begin to list the numerous ways I can implement this in my classroom. You'll love it. Try it for fun!

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Turning a Blog into an E-Folio: Part 2

To continue my exploration into online portfolios, or e-folios, I looked for e-folios that already exist online. Sure enough, someone beat me to the punch and I found a website that creates online portfolios at http://www.avenetefolio.com/. Aventefolio is an online portfolio management system that specializes in student, educator, career and institutional portfolios. To me, it sounds like an online resume to showcase your achievement. I don't believe we need our students to go pay another service to create these documents for them, when we have the power to enable students to have control over their educational presence on the web.

The main teacher I was inspired by was Robin Ulster at International School Bangkok. Her blog is set up with connections to additional information on the various aspects of her Humanities 7 class. In addition to the fabulous resources available to the students at all times, her students all maintain their own individual blogs which can be linked through her main class blog. Many of her students are already writing above and beyond what the average 7th grader would do in a normal classroom setting. For example, the student Nicole has created a place to reflect on her learning and create a space that says something about who she is as an individual and a student. It is a powerful tool for a student to know their voice matters in the world.

Another teacher blog I went to visit is by David Cole at Shanghai American School. His blog is set up logically with pages for the course description, homework, bio, student blogs, and suggested reading. A great example of one of Cole's student's blogs can be found at http://blogs.saschina.org/zachary01pd2014/. Zachary's design and layout put mine to shame, and I am impressed that he has links to other student blogs within his own blog. Students reflecting on one another's work and thinking is something to aspire to on a regular basis. Wouldn't you rather hear your students commenting on poetry than the latest gossip during lunch? E-folios can help lead our students to more meaningful discussions.

So after some more research, I have decided I want to take this one step further. The Nicoles and Zacharys of the world need a place to continue to showcase their learning. Jim Fitzgerald and I are in the unique position of being on the same English team next year and also enrolled in Course 2 of the ISB Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy. Between the two of us, we will have a huge amount of the incoming students (approximately 200 students between the two of us) that we can begin to use e-folios with and help them through the process which will enable them to build a portfolio that will continue throughout their academic career at ISB. We are neophytes, I understand that. But in the world of technology, who isn't? We have a lot to learn about how to make this happen, how to convince students, teachers and parents that this is a good idea, and how it will all come out in the wash. We will engage on this journey together, and as it unfolds, this blog will follow our successes and failures.

Eventually we will have everything linked to a great wiki space titled http://doingstuff.wikispaces.com/. Some of my colleagues have already begun to post their great ideas for bringing technology into the classroom on this wiki (check it out), and I believe it will continue to grow. Jim and I are almost there, but not all the way. In the next few weeks we will post a jing video on how to set up a teacher blog through ISB and link it to your students, and a jing video on how to set up a student blog and link it to your teacher. But we have put the cart before the horse, and technology and our brains need a few more weeks to finish sorting it all out. Please stay tuned for more to come.

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Turning a Blog into an E-Folio

I am in over my head and loving every minute of it. Recently at ISB, Jim Fitzgerald and I have decided to join forces and introduce the power of blogging to our fellow colleagues and students in the high school next year. Our goal is to enable students to have one place to showcase their growth over the course of their education.

Ever since I began teaching, I have kept a writing portfolio for every student each year. This process involves one hanging folder per student, a filing cabinet and various examples of the student's work. Throughout the year, the students reflect on their growth, and use their portfolios to go back and edit and rework ideas and concepts they may not have had time to fully develop in the beginning of the school year. They periodically receive grades on their progress and reflection. I am sure none of this process is new to my fellow colleagues. Yet at the end of each academic year, I find I have a multitude of hanging folders with no home. They become dust collectors. Although the students are more than welcome to take their hard work with them to their next course, I guarantee that their work rarely finds its way to another educator's desk.

If students create a blog with the sole intention of showcasing their learning to a broader audience, they can take their portfolio with them not just to another class, but to another school or as evidence of their growth as a learner to college admission counselors. In some ways, it is the ultimate transportable gift. Students will come with a wealth of information at their fingertips. As an English teacher, I wish I still had my notes from the two semesters I studied Shakespeare's plays. Instead of doing a preliminary search on google, I could look up ENG 610: Studies in Shakespeare and refer to the 40+ page paper I have already researched regarding one of his sonnets. Where is that now? It is probably on an old floppy disk from 1994. If I could even find that disk, my laptop and desktop are incapable of loading that information. Yet if those papers existed on my blog (which I am well aware did not exist in 1994), I would have them at any point I needed them throughout my career. I wouldn't need my flash drive, my desktop, my hard drive . . . just one Internet connection. This is my goal. It is what I would want now and wish existed 10-15 years ago.

We now have the opportunity to provide the students of tomorrow this first step toward becoming a life long learner. To begin this process, we did a simple Google search on online portfolios and e-folios. We realized that Jeff Utecht (from ISB) had already set this concept up with his colleagues at Shanghai American School. Now through the inside.isb website, Jim and I have begun the process of creating a blog for the High School English Department. From there we have created our own teacher blogs (The World of Fitz and D Watts) for our classes next year. From these teacher blogs, we intend to set up student blogs for our students (this technology will be available in approximately one month at ISB through word press). Our hope is that these blogs will begin to serve as their online portfolio (e-folio) for the remainder of their years at ISB. More details on how we intend to do this and how you can do this will be in my next blog "Turning a Blog into an E-Folio: Part 2."

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Learning to Follow so I can Someday Lead

Today I went on another memorable Thailand adventure. I traversed to a fish market with my three small children on the following modes of transportation: car, taxi, railway train, ferry and rickshaw. I thought I was prepared for whatever the day may bring when my 4 year old daughter decided she needed to go to the bathroom, and it was close to being an emergency. I was south of Bangkok in the middle of a beautiful wat I had not traveled to in the past. As I looked around, I saw a dek chia (young boy) and I decided to put my fate in his hands. When I asked him how to get to the closest horng nam (bathroom), he didn't tell me, he led me. I proceeded to follow him down three alleyways, in and out of someone's residence, and down a remote street that had five bathrooms in a row. Along the way I met an incredibly friendly monk and we had a nice conversation combining my limited knowledge of Thai and his more extensive knowledge of English. I reached the facilities, and although I am not new to the different design of a bathroom in Thailand, my daughter most certainly is not a fan. I took hold of her, and configured a way to aid my young child in her minor emergency.

OK great, another travel story that you may have heard a zillion times, but as I was following the dek chai, I thought about how much trust I have placed in my colleagues (Chad Bates, Jeff Utecht, Dennis Harter, and Kim Cofino) to lead me to where I want to go with using technology in my classroom. I have a need and ask for help. They do not tell me what to do, they lead me down a path and I blindly follow hoping for the best. I have always been led in the right direction and reach a point I need to get a job done, and then adapt whatever it is to meet the needs of my beginning level students. My colleagues know a different language and I want to speak it. My students have a basic need (knowledge) and I want to meet it. I am the bridge to making that happen. The problem is that I don't like to follow. I have always wanted to be able to survive on my own if needed. I don't want to only speak a little Thai. I want to be fluent. I don't want to know only a little about technology in the classroom, I want to know it all. I want to be able to lead, and to enable myself to get to that point, I have a huge learning curve I must shorten and I need to catch up. I have not been this excited about my career and the future of education since my first year of graduate school. I no longer just like my job, I love to bring the work home and to explore late into the night. It isn't about wanting to be the best, but about wanting to fill an empty vase with all the beautiful flowers that surround me. I want more, please fill me in.

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