Category Archives: Student Access

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We’ve Had To Stop Skyping Celest Into Class

It’s actually good news.

I was finishing getting ready for students this morning when in walked our counselor, Celest and her mom. They had news,  Celest won’t be needing to Skype into class anymore because as of today she is a showing-up and-sitting-in-a-chair-in-class-like-everyone-else member of class. The doctors surprised them last week with the news and they decided to surprise us. So we’ve gone in a matter of weeks from a possibly life threatening infection. To Here’s your seat right here. How cool is that!?

Heres the proof: Pink shirt, just to right of center.
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A picture I really didn’t think we’d take this year!

And below taken in January.
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Learning is messy!

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The Cost of 1:1

workinghard.jpgWe read all the time about how cost is one of the disincentives to technology in schools, and certainly I don’t know if my current experience is anywhere near what does or would usually be the case, but I left this as a comment on Tom Hoffman’s blog and thought it was worth posting here too:

“My 1:1 laptop pilot is going pretty well so far with old Apple iBooks – 7 years old – we use Appleworks because it “came with” and iPhoto and iMovie and web browsers and Flickr and blogs and wikis and all kinds of free math and language and science software – haven’t paid for anything but new batteries – once (AND I’m rolling this class to fifth grade and plan on using them for an eighth year). I don’t know if laptops will usually last this long – they aren’t the latest and greatest and the screen resolution isn’t fantastic – but I haven’t found anything I wanted to do yet that they won’t do (I expected that to happen by the way – “sorry guys we can’t use Fun Brain, the computers are too old” but that hasn’t happened yet. We paid over $1600 per originally so we’re down to almost $200 per year per computer, but the price has dropped close to half and current computers have more power etc.
Maybe it depends on what you want to do with them??? But so far we’ve done everything we wanted to. I do have to use a newer computer when we video Skype, but how often would you need more than one computer doing that in your classroom at the same time? Not that I would necessarily start a 1:1 laptop program in Kindergarten – but 7 years means our current 6th graders (I’m in 4th) could have received these laptops in K and still be using them today as they leave sixth grade.”

So … how far offbase is my experience?

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Award Winning Students

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Tonight was the 7th annual Lumiere All School Film Fest here in Reno. My friend Paul McFarlane, an English teacher at Hug High in Reno, started and continues to make this superb festival happen (Yes, Hug High School, named for Procter R. Hug, a local judge).

My sixth graders from last year won for best science film for their movie about fossils. And my current fourth graders won for their “Inclusion” movie – (downloaded now over 50,000 times, but only viewed on YouTube about 14 times since I posted it there last week). Congrats class!

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Vidcasts of Grace Corrigan Visit And YouthBridges Skypecast

Here are the links to video of Grace Corrigan’s (Christa McAuliffe’s mom – the teacher in space’s) visit to our classroom. Well worth the time. You will see me occasionally intrude into the presentation because I put the laptop running the Skype feed in the best possible spot if I wanted it to be in the way. In my own defense It’s where it is when Celest joins us and it just didn’t occur to me I know dumb.

Full disclosure – I edited out the 5 minute plus – “school announcements” that overwhelm Grace’s presentation. I also cut it into 2 seemingly obvious chunks. The first is Grace’s presentation to the students – although I didn’t get the camera turned on right away so I missed the beginning – the 2nd part is the question answering part. I think you will agree that Grace connects well with the students.

Thanks again to Lee Baber and her students at YouthBridges who Skyped the event for us and added their questions. All in all a great experience. Enjoy!

The sound is not real loud (but not bad either) because the camera was in the back of the room. I boosted it as much as I could but depending on your speakers, you might need headphones.

Click the photo below to see the vidcast of Grace’s presentation: 13 + minutes
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Click the photo below to see the vidcast of Grace’s question and answer period: 24 + minutes

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Good News All Around

Celest was back today after an almost six week absence. She rang our Skype bell just as students were entering at nine and except for recess and lunchtime – and a short break to take a blood draw, she was with us all day. She got a chance to read the 28 comments left for her by her classmates, and many of you, on her blog (she read non-stop for over twenty minutes – she really enjoyed them – thanks). Mainly for her benefit we spent a little time brainstorming topics for future blog posts, she even started one.

Next, we got her started on our animal wiki pages project, a tie-in to the field trip we went on 2 weeks ago – she’s never been there : ( . We also did some multiplication facts practice and explored angles online. All-in-all a good day.

About 10:30 though Celest dropped a bombshell on us when she explained that she has been told that she will be able to attend “regular school” next year!!!! – we’re not sure where yet – maybe here, her area has been moved to another school’s attendance zone … so we’ll see.

There was one scary part of the day though – not long after Celest came on I noted a mark on her cheek about the size of a half-dollar. It was brownish-red and seemed like a sore. My vice-principal came through not much later and noticed it right away … we gave each other sad looks … and she left. All was well though … when Celest turned her head a few minutes later the “sore” turned out to be a press-on decal of a cat with a red bow. Whew! She let me take a picture of it –

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Fun And Motivation With FD’s Flickr Tools

Years ago I came up with an idea for a writing prompt that I felt was pretty “schema neutral“-  all kids would have experience enough to be able to write a story about this prompt. I call it “A Day As Your Shoes.” Several years ago Corbett Harrison, who among other things had the concept for and started the Writing Fix web site and still maintains it, put my prompt on the site. He made it an interactive prompt to mimic how I have students brainstorm their ideas. Since all students have experience with shoes (at least in this country) and going to school – they will all be able to bring schema for this story.

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This year to add to the motivation and creativity I had the students make the covers for their stories by taking pictures of their shoes and using Fd’s Flickr Tools – Magazine Cover to design their bookcover. We took pictures with a digital camera and downloaded into iPhoto on their laptops. Each student designed several covers so they could build at least some expertise with the software before putting together their final product pictured below.

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A Grace – Full Visit

Update: 4/29/07
Find a link to the podcast below (my first ever podcast btw).
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Friday, Grace Corrigan “graced” our classroom with a visit, and that might seem like just a cute play-on-words, but if you had been there you would agree. Grace is Christa McAuliffe’s Mom (Teacher in Space tragically lost on the Space Shuttle Challenger debacle). I was told to expect her about fifteen minutes after school started and she appeared about fifteen minutes before school started, so much for my, “We’ll get the students in and settled first” plan. But it didn’t matter. They came in and found their seats, some said hello – I had explained to them the day before that because we were Skyping her visit and trying to record it and video tape it, that I would be busy and they would have to monitor themselves and each other – they did a great job!
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Lee Baber and I (mainly Lee) got the Skype connection to work – we had planned on meeting over Skype the day before to check the connection and discuss what to expect etc. –  but both of us were so busy that that never happened. We did manage to connect about an hour before, after I managed to interrupt another Skype session her students were doing.

We had a bit of a tentative start, I intro-ed from my end and then one of Lee’s students did an intro for the podcast they were doing – and Grace was off – well for a few minutes anyhow. Right as Grace was engaging the students, our school’s morning announcements began. But that didn’t stop Grace, she just kept on going right through – today’s lunch menu, Thought-for-the-Day, and a scolding for leaving too much trash outside after, “outside lunch” the day before. I noticed at this point that Lee had sent me a text message on Skype, “Brian, we seem to be picking up some kind of noise; what is that? “Just morning announcements,” I texted back. “Oh,” replied Lee, who I’m sure was really impressed at this point at the professional manner in which the presentation was going. And that impression was reinforced a few minutes later when the office called me over the loudspeaker to tell me to do my attendance (even though it was done). You have to understand that we complain all the time how loud things come across our PA system, but there is no way to adjust it or turn it off.

Anyhow, undeterred Grace continued – she showed them a short film about Christa and continued on her theme of  “Reach For The Stars!” She took questions for about 25 minutes, took a photo with the class, shook hands with any student that wanted to, autographed a picture of Christa for us, and was gone. I scanned the picture and printed out a color copy for every student in my class. 18 of my students were able to ask her a question, and at least half that number of the YouthBridges students asked a question too.

I want to thank Grace Corrigan, Lee Baber and her students and Paul McFarlane a high school English teacher that started and runs the Lumiere Film Festival – and he teaches our school district’s Digital Video Class with me – he chose my class as the one for Grace to visit.
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My class began blog posts about the experience and their field trip the day before to Animal Ark. Lee emailed me that she thinks the recording went well – thanks to her and her students. All-in-all a super experience for all involved. As soon as the podcast is edited I’ll put a link to it here. Once I get a chance to edit the video, and if it is any good I’ll post it. I just wish Celest could have been a part – a few students mentioned that too.

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Podcast – Click here for podcast of Grace’s visit.

Recorded 4/27/07 Length: 31:51

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Microsoft Windows XP, Office, Live Mail All For Only $3 – Legally!

The Indian Express Newspapers today announced in an article titled “Microsoft to sell govts $3 software package” that Microsoft:

“will sell a $3 package of Windows, Office and educational programmes to governments that want to load the software onto personal computers for students. The package, called the Microsoft Student Innovation Suite, will include the Windows XP Starter Edition operating system, Microsoft Office and Live Mail email software, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in a speech at a conference for government leaders in Beijing on Thursady.”(sic)

Obviously the thought of a billion or two potential customers being introduced to computers running Linux and open source software have them scared:

“…The company (Microsoft) also wants to ensure that countries that offer free or cheap personal computers (PC) to students will choose Windows instead of the freely distributed Linux operating system. Microsoft will start selling the $3 software package in the second half of 2007, it said.”

Interesting …  very interesting.

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Maybe My Class Is Doing The $100 Laptop Pilot For The US

Will Richardson and Chris Lehmann have posts today about the $100 laptop program in Nigeria. I commented on Will’s blog that it reminded me a lot of what and why I’m doing a pilot 1:1 program in my own classroom with 7 year old iBook computers. The screens are small and the screen resolution is even smaller and the CD player covers fall off occasionally, and they’re not “wicked fast” – but we are using wikis, Skype, Flickr, blogs, and much more. And actually we probably have a lot in common – 90% of my students receive free and reduced price lunch, few have access to technology at home, and the laptops we are using probably aren’t worth much more than $100.

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See any parrallels here? Hmmm … do you think they have access to Skype? What’s the time difference between Nigeria and Reno?

We have all lamented and wondered when the US will see the light and begin to implement 21st century tools in education at a much higher level than we do presently. I wonder if this program in Nigeria just might help us here. If the $100 laptop initiative begins to take off and the media covers 3rd world children using 21st century tools in meaningful ways, maybe, just maybe, people in this country will wake up and notice that it is not happening here and that will be the catalyst to jump start us on our way.

Learning is messy!

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Send Celest A “Cyber Get Well Card”

Celest has not been feeling well for weeks now. The doctors have changed her chemo and apparently it is not sitting well with her. Thusly we have not had her “join” us via Skype on a very consistent basis lately : (

We decided today to send Celest a kind of “Cyber” get well card – so most of the class managed to post a “feel better” comment to her lone blog post. They think it would be helpful if as many people as possible would also leave comments – so if you can leave her a short “get well” comment and/or a word of encouragement and tell her where you are commenting from It would be appreciated. You can read the comments her classmates left her so far also.

We have been blogging and commenting quite a bit this week also, so check out some of the other students’ posts as well if you have the time.