Presenting a Paper at Duke University, June 17, 2009 - and Other Summer Plans

In June, I'll travel to Duke University to present a paper at the Alice Symposium (Alice is a 3D animation program), and I'm very excited about this opportunity. I've never been to North Carolina! My goal is to develop collaboration between teachers to create Alice 3D animiation tutorials that can be used by middle school teachers to help engender critical thinking in core subjects that relate to standards. I'd also like to stimulate partnerships between the developers of the Alice program and tech schools that teach 3D animation modeling. In this way, perhaps we can develop a larger bank of 3D objects that the Alice program can use that include characters and environments middle school students encounter in their core subject areas.

During the summer, I have also applied for an IISME fellowship to work with Adobe in order to gain a better understanding of the business world, in hopes of bringing this knowledge back into the classroom next fall. I will also be teaching some classes at RAFT during the summer, so it's shaping up to be an exciting next few months!

Journal Article on My New Learning Theory

The April/May 2009 issue of Innovate Journal (an online, peer-reviewed educational magazine) published an article on the new learning theory and instructional design model that I developed over the past four years while working on my doctorate. The magazine held a Webcast last week, and have now archived it, so by going to the Webcast link and logging in, you can hear it for yourself. Just go to Innovate Journal to view the article and to navigate to the Webcast. You just have to sign up (free!) to log in.

SVCUE Silicon Valley CUE Conference Feb. 28, 2009

For those of you in the Silicon Valley area, join us Saturday, Feb. 28, at The Harker School, 8am-3pm for a mini-CUE conference. More information is available at svcue.org. Besides the great sessions available to you, there will be over $7,000 worth of door prizes given away! Workshops include sessions such as PBL with Office, Google Docs, Moodle Basics, Geocaching, Geography Awareness, Document Cameras, and many more. Hope to see you Saturday!

CUE Palm Springs, March 5-7 '09

The theme for the March 5-7 CUE conference in Palm Springs is "Driving Student Success." I'm looking forward to hearing the Keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Marzano, and attending many of the great sessions that will be offered. See for yourself at http://www.cue.org/conference/schedule/.

I will present a session on the free 3D animiation program, Alice - and how teachers can learn to use the program along with their students, as students work through a tutorial on critical thinking. The tutorial can be re-vamped to use with any grade level, 4-12, in any subject that has a controversial issue. For a download of the PowerPoint and handouts I will use in the session, see the links on www.timetrek.org.

Jigzone.com - Make Jigsaw Puzzles for Free

pedagogy19k Jigsaw Puzzle
I just heard about a Website that will enable you to make your own jigsaw puzzles for free! Click on the picture above to see how the puzzle works. The site is called jigzone.com. Simply upload a picture file, and you will get a link to a puzzle of your picture that you can post anywhere. I heard about jigzone while listening to Joan and Ben's SMART Board Lesson Podcast. Students can then manipulate this puzzle on the computer to complete the picture. If you have a SMART Board, the picture could be on the SMART Board as students walk in, as a way to introduce a lesson. Those who come in first could go up and manipulate the pieces to put it together. If you don't have a SMART Board, have the puzzle on a computer in your room for students to manipulate.

I'm going to use my puzzle on a SMART Board at the beginning of a teacher training on Word, where we will discuss the different tool palettes. A way to use this puzzle idea in Language Arts would be to create a picture with two or three vocabulary words, and align pictures above the correct words. Having students put these puzzles together gives them some time-on-task with viewing the vocabulary words and thinking about their meanings, while they have fun putting the puzzle together at the same time. You could also challenge students to create their own puzzles, typing in vocabulary words and finding pictures to accompany the pictures. I created my pictures and text using Photoshop. The person who shared this idea said he created his picture by using a free photo editor called PhotoFiltre. This application, however is only for PC. Go to Google's Piscasa for a free MAC photo editor.

Jeopardy PowerPoint Class at RAFT

I had the privilege of teaching a great group of teachers at RAFT on Saturday, Aug. 2. One teacher came all the way from North Carolina! Actually, she was in town for the week because she was going to a workshop in San Francisco, and came to RAFT in San Jose for our Saturday class. By the end of our session, teachers were creating their own Jeopardy PowerPoint games to use in their own classrooms.

We made some corrections to the Jeopardy Directions, so I told the workshop attendees that I would include a download of the new directions on my Blog. Even if you didn't attend the class, you're welcome to download the handout. I'll also include a download of the template here too.

Alice 3D Animation Storytelling Class

From July 14 through August 1, I took a workshop to learn the 3D Animation/Storytelling program called Alice. Alice is a computer program developed by Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)and a team from Carnegie Mellon University. Alice is a free educational software that teaches students computer programming in a 3D environment. We learned the program the first two weeks from two men who have worked with Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon. The last week of the session, we taught a group of middle school students how to use the program. Our group of 24 middle schoolers quickly learned how to use Alice and were programming wonderful 3D animiated stories in no time. It's a great way to integrate problem-based learning and project-based learning into the curriculum. The program can be downloaded for free from the Alice site.

If you haven't viewed the inspirational youtube video clip of Randy giving his "Last Lecture" at Carnegie Mellon, you need to see it. As of today, it has already been viewed over 5 million times, and it was only posted last year. Don, our teacher from Carnegie Mellon, had a difficult time teaching the last class with us on July 25, because Don told us that he had just found out that Randy had passed away that morning. Randy, age 47, died from pancreatic cancer that was discovered in his body in 2006. For more information on Randy, see "An Enduring Legacy" posted by Carnegie Mellon.