Ms. Nancy Online

FREDERICK from Maria on Vimeo.

This is an well-done video. Too bad it is not in English. Let your kids watch and see if they can understand the story just by looking at the pictures and listening to the music. How does the mood change throughout? How good are you at understanding meaning without words?

Now get the book and read it to your kids. It provides lots of ideas for discussion. Here are some we have used in our beginning philosophy explorations, taken from a site created by Jake Wartenberg’s students at Mount Holyoke College.

Summary

Winter is near and all the field mice are busy preparing and gathering food for the cold months ahead – all except for Frederick. Always the daydreamer, Frederick is preparing a small surprise that will warm the hearts and feed the spirits of his fellow mice when they need it most.

Philosophical topic: The Nature of Community
…”I am gathering words. For the winter days are long and many, and we’ll run out of things to say.

1. What makes a community?
2. Try to think of some communities you are a part of. How do you know they are communities?
3. Your school is a community and everybody contributes something to it. The mice have a community, too, and everyone is contributing something. What and how do the mice contribute?
4. Does everybody have to do his or her part in a community?
5. What does Frederick contribute?
6. Frederick is a part of the mouse community. Does Frederick deserve to get some of the food even though he didn’t gather any of it?
7. Do you think it’s fair that he gets some of the food? Why or why not?

Philosophical topic: The Nature of Work
“I do work,” said Frederick. “I gather sun rays for the cold dark winter days.”

1. Do you think Frederick is working?
2. When do you feel like you’re working?
3. If you like something is it still work?
4. Do you think going to school is work?
5. Is your favorite subject work? What about your least favorite subject?
6. Does work have to be hard? Why or why not?
7. What is the difference between work and play? Give an example of something you do that you think is work and something you think is play.
8. Do you have to be paid for working? Why or why not?
9. Some people play professional sports and they get paid, are they working?
10. Do only adults work?
11. Does work have to be physical? Why or why not?
12. What can or can’t be work?
13. Is thinking work?

Philosophical Topic: Value of Work
“What about your supplies, Frederick?”

1. What makes a type of work important?
2. Do you think Frederick’s work was worth as much as the other mice’s work? Why or why not?
3. If something is not important or not as important does that mean it’s not work?
4. Can they both be equally important, but in different ways? What are the differences?
5. What would have happened to the mice if Frederick hadn’t written poetry?

Philosophical topic: Nature of Poetry
“But Frederick,” they said, “you are a poet!”

1. Do you like poetry? How about Frederick’s poem? Why or why not?
2. Why do people write poetry?
3. Is being a poet a job? Why or why not?
4. Is poetry work or play? Why?
5. Do people need poetry? Is it important? Why or why not?
6. Was having poetry as important as having food for the mice? What about for people? Why or why not?
7. Why is it important for people to have art such as paintings, poetry, and music?

Retrieved from “http://www.teachingchildrenphilosophy.org/wiki/Frederick”

After discussion about the topics above, have your student write a persuasive paper defending his ideas. Remember you must explain why you agree or disagree with the questions and give reasons for your point of view.

For too long I’ve neglected this blog. I’ve want to continue to make it a resource center for homeschooling families. You’ve chosen to enrich your child’s education by giving up a salary and time, and I want to make that job easier for you. For those of you on my roster, we’ve continued to communicate and learn together, and I know our instruction has been informed by our learning community. Increasingly, I feel the urge to get back to a more public presentation for those who aren’t in my immediate loop.

A number of my students have experimented with edu.glogster.com this year. It is an online digital poster tool that my students have used for book reviews as well as presentations about subjects of interest to them. I think this has great potential and we’ve just skimmed the surface of possibilities. Just make sure you and your student are in the educational version of glogster which was just created in September 2009. You have the ability to control the audience and your student can safely post. I will make public some samples shortly.

http://juliantech.edu.glogster.com/one-eyed-cat/

Another great tool we’ve used this year is Voicethread. It is not new to the education world, but we just hadn’t played with it until this year. Fun! Interactive! Like glogster, we still haven’t used it to its capacity. I’m looking forward to the time when my students have a larger audience and can interact with students all over the world. Here is a great place to get samples of what you might do with Voicethread: http://voicethread4education.wikispaces.com/Best+Practices.

Students from Julian entered the contest this year and learned so much! Besides developing writing skills, we experimented with various technology programs and reviewed virtually every subject area. And we learned so much from each other! The awards presentation will be on May 30th at the Huntington Beach Library and Cultural Center. Come see the winners and be inspired to enter next year!

Below you will see a variety of sites published by the Tech Department at University of Michigan. Many I have cited in the past, but the organization and presentation is so complete, I copied and pasted the whole list. I know many of you are already using some of these, but if you are looking for a particular reinforcement tool, you might find it here. Think about adding some of these to your toolbox.

Language Arts

• Into the BookThis site is great for learning about the many different reading strategies.
• Starfall This site has a lot of learning activities for beginning readers. Students can listen to stories to learn vowel and consonant sounds, practice their ABC’s and lots more.
• BookPALS Storyline This site has a variety of popular children’s books read by different actors that students can listen to. It’s a great way to provide students with a chance to be read to by many different people.
• Dance Mat Typing This is a fun way to learn how to type correctly on a keyboard.
• Look Out Below This is a fun game where you get to see how many words you can make using a larger word.
• Critter Jumble This game helps you practice spelling different words.
• Voice Thread This is a great tool to use to create collaborative reading and writing projects and much more.
• Kerpoof Kids can create and share online stories, greeting cards, pictures and even animated movies with this tool.
• Comiqs This site allows you to create your own comics using either your own photos or the clipart and images provided on the site.
• SillyBooks Students can upload their own writing to this site and read stories uploaded by other students as well. Each month a student story is selected and then turned into an animated movie and featured on the site.
• Big Universe This site allows students to create their own online picture books as well as explore books that have been created by other users. You can embed your finished products in different websites and blogs once you are finished.
• Tikatok is another tool that allows you to write, publish and embed your on book online. You can also order a print copy of your book for a price.
• Lulu is another online publishing tool with an interesting twist. This site allows you to upload your story or book and then sell it either as a printed book that people order or as a download. They set the publishing price and you decide how much above that price you want to charge. You can actually make money by publishing your writing!
• LookyBook This site has a great collection of children’s picture books that you can view in full color online. You can embed the books in your own website or blog and virtually flip through the pages whenever you like.
• Shelfari This site allows you to create a virtual bookshelf where you can keep a list of recommended books for others to see. You can see what other people are reading and recommending as well.
• myWebspiration is an online version of the popular Inspiration tool. The one big difference with this online version is that you can easily collaborate with others to create maps and other graphic organizers.
• Scholastic Story Starters is a tool designed for 1st-4th grade students to help generate ideas for stories and guide them in their writing.
• You just can’t beat the School House Rock video library when it comes to finding ways to reinforce concepts from across the curriculum.
• SpellingCity allows you to create your own list of spelling words for your students to use to test and prepare for the ever popular spelling test…or celebration that takes place in elementary classrooms across the country each Friday.
• Roy the Zebra has a variety of interactive games to help kids learn and practice reading and writing skills.
• Pikikids is one of the many online cartoon/comic strip creation tools that students can use to make their own comic strips about a wide range of topics.
• PBS KIDS Island is a great tool for helping kids practice different reading skills. Kids get to play a variety of games that feature different PBS characters and you can even track their progress to see what they have accomplished.

Here are some sample books embedded from LookyBook and Big Universe.

Read this children’s book and hundreds more on BigUniverse.com

Math

• Crack Hacker’s Safe In this game you have to find the pattern to open the safe.
• Test the Toad This is a fun adding game.
• Spacey Math In this game you have to solve the math problem in order to keep the alien spaceship from attacking.
• Tangrams This site has different tangram puzzles that you have to solve.
• Buzzing With Shapes This game is like Tic Tac Toe but you have to identify shapes to make 4 in a row. It works best to play with a partner.
• Counting Money This site will help you practice counting money.
• Money Practice In this game you drag coins to a cup to equal the amount shown.
• Math TV is a series of videos each of which first presents a problem and then goes through the process of solving that problem.
• HippoCampus has a great selection of resources for math, science and social studies that are geared towards middle and high school students. The material is arranged much like a multimedia textbook with narrative videos, timelines, images and more.
• Math Arcade from the Fun Brain site is a nice collection of math games for 1st-8th graders.

Science

• EdHeads Simple MachinesThis is a great site to help kids learn about simple machines and be able to identify simple machines in everyday life.
• Here is a link to a site that provides a panoramic view of the moon along with audio clips from the real astronauts as they toured the moon’s surface. http://www.fullscreenqtvr.com/moon/
• Google Moon is much like Google Earth but it provides images of the moon instead. You can find information about the different Apollo missions that landed on the moon and see pictures that were taken during those missions.
• The Volcano Explorer allows you to learn more about volcanoes by creating your own volcano and watching it erupt.
• This site has an interactive diagram of the rock cycle that you can use to learn more about the different types of rocks and how they are formed.
• Geo Mysteries has some neat scientific mysteries for kids to solve that include animations, photos, explanations and more. Check it out and see if you can help Rex the Dino solve some mysteries.
• The Solids and Liquids Module provides you with the chance to see what happens to different objects when you heat them up and cool them down.
• Click here to see a variety of cartoon animations that help to explain solids, liquids and gases and their different properties.
• Build Your Wild Self is a great site to help students learn more about different types of animals and their various characteristics. Students can design their own animal and even download an image of it to their computer.
• ARKive Education provides access to a wide range of modules on different science related topics. Each module contains images and videos pertaining to the targeted topic or concept. The modules download as complete Power Point files that you can use and modify as needed.
• TestToob is a YouTube style site that is focused on student created science videos. Students can upload their videos, watch and comment on the videos of others and even enter contests with their videos. The site is monitored for appropriate content.
• Fantastic Contraption is a great tool to use to help middle school students better understand physics. You use a variety of tools to build different contraptions in order to accomplish a pre-determined task.
• HippoCampus has a great selection of resources for math, science and social studies that are geared towards middle and high school students. The material is arranged much like a multimedia textbook with narrative videos, timelines, images and more.

Social Studies

• Virtual Earth is an alternative to Google Earth that doesn’t need to be downloaded but still allows you to do many of the same things such as search for different locations and view them as a map or satellite image.
• TerraClues is a tool you can use to create geography-based quizzes or scavenger hunts for students. You can create clues and tag the answers to different locations on the map or even have students create their own maps.
• Mapwing can be used to create virtual tours of different geographical or physical locations. You can upload your own images to use in a tour add comments at each stop of the tour and much more.
• CircaVie is an online timeline creation tool that students can use to learn about sequence of events and to create their own timelines.
• Dipity is another online timeline creation tool where you can include images, videos and text in your timeline. You are also able to embed your finished timeline and share authorship with others so that they can add events to is as well.
• AllofMe is one more timeline tool to check out.
• ILike2Learn provides many different map and geography based quizzes that you can use with students.
• This Lewis and Clark simulation allows students to travel along the same trail with the famous explorers and learn about their trip.
• Mapness allows you to create your own online travel journal complete with images and embedded videos. You can plot your route across the map and create a trip representing all sorts of journeys.
• HippoCampus has a great selection of resources for math, science and social studies that are geared towards middle and high school students. The material is arranged much like a multimedia textbook with narrative videos, timelines, images and more.

It seems incredible that I haven’t written since February. Once I got behind, I just couldn’t catch up and I didn’t want to leave anything out. In retrospect, that seems ridiculous. So now we are getting ready to start a new school year and I’m not even going to try to catch up. We’ll just start where we are.

This has been a busy summer for me. I attended the NECC 2008 conference in San Antonio where I was inundated with information and products. I’m still getting floods of calls/emails from vendors that want to sell me something. In spite of all that, it was instructive to see what other educators were doing all over the country. They say 18,000 were there. I believe it! Some sessions were too crowded to get in, but the great thing about this conference is that they archive a lot of the sessions online. So I will continue to learn/attend throughout the year.

NECC 2008 in San Antonio

Then a few weeks after returning from NECC, I attended the Discovery Education National Institute in Silver Springs, MD, just over the river from the capitol. That was an incredible experience. The Discovery people prepared an action-packed week of activities and sessions. I learned so much and am still processing the tips and tricks and figuring out ways to implement the training this year with our students. One thing I am sure of: we have not used Discovery Streaming to its capacity and I want to take advantage of that valuable resource this year. In the coming weeks, I will be passing on as much as I can for you to implement with your children.

Rube Goldberg machine in Discovery lobby

Dinosaur in Discovery lobby

Has your child danced today? Invented something? Painted? This morning I listened to an interesting presentation given in 2006 at the TED conference by Sir Ken Robinson. You can view it here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66. Aside from being very entertaining, this “creativity expert” discusses how schools “educate people out of creativity.” You don’t have to do that to your children! You have a major role in finding your child’s unique talents and cultivating them. Unlike many public school teachers, you and your child have the gift of time. While you may feel the pressure of the curriculum and all you need/want to accomplish by the end of the year, you are in charge! Make time for dancing!

Our next performance at Cerritos, Tuesday, January 29th at 11:30 is a 45 minute opera based on Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Aimed at grades 3-6, students will be transported to colonial America where our wily hero, Figaro, with his band of sneaky barbers and mercenaries, leads us on a delightful musical goose-chase. Ultimately, he outsmarts his adversary and love triumphs as his friend, the Count, wins the hand of his beloved.

The program, produced by the LA Opera, features seven professional opera singers and an orchestra of four. This company, which performed The Prospector for the last two years at Cerritos, has been a Julian favorite and has brought the sophisticated art form of opera to a level children can appreciate. While drawing together the elements of narrative, visual, and musical to tell a dramatic story, themes such as perseverance, class struggle, trickery and women’s rights are discussed. Students attending the performance will be given support documents and assignments.

This year there is something new at Julian for parents: Professional Learning Community Forums! I think I talked to you about these at our monthly meetings, but if not, they are meetings grouped around specific topics in our school. They occur every five weeks in Murrieta at the meeting center (and sometimes in San Diego). While this is our staff meeting and the room is filled with EF’s, we are aware that parents are doing the bulk of the teaching and need support. For that reason, the 1:10–2:00 time frame has been opened to you. Sessions have included: educational technology, student motivation, personalized education, an art project a day, keys to success for math, direct instruction for struggling readers. The leadership team at Julian is interested in your reflections on these sessions and is conducting a survey to get your views. You can find it on the school web site. In what areas do you need help? This is your chance to have a voice. Speak up!

“If your vision is for one year, plant rice; if your vision is for 10 years, plant trees; but if your vision is for 100 years, educate children.”
-Chinese Proverb

Aren’t you happy you are doing so much more than planting rice? Yesterday I talked to a mother who is weary. Her child has definite handicaps emotionally which influence his ability to learn…at least in the traditional way. For years now she has worked with him daily, following his interests, giving him materials above or below grade level, and constantly reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. She wants to see more fruit from her labor. And yet, as we talked, all I could see was the remarkable salvation of this kid! In a traditional school in a special ed classroom there is no way he could have had this personalized, custom-fit education, tailored to his needs and interests. There is no greater sacrifice than this, that a parent would invest time, salary and emotional energy into a child’s future. You are all doing such a fine job and I trust you will be given the strength to finish the race!

A number of Julian teachers recently attended the CUE conference in San Diego and we were able to gather at our staff meeting to talk about those ideas that had the most application to our particular world. Most of you homeschool educators have heard me talk about these ideas, but if you haven’t, just ask! My hope is that next semester I can have a few sessions where you can learn how to use some of the technology tools to make your child’s education more creative and fun. In response to the request of the teachers in this meeting, here is what we discussed.

“If you’re not networking, you’re not working,” or you are as strong as your strongest link. This has been a revolutionary idea for me. When budget constraints eliminated our professional development funds several years ago, I was very upset as I felt the classes I took really added to my performance as a teacher. While I would still like those funds back and appreciate having the money to take classes or attend conferences, Web 2.0 has changed how I approach professional development. I can frequently learn new tricks by “tuning in” to the movers and shakers of the ed tech world. NECC holds a national conference every year and the handouts from the sessions are archived for a year on their web site. You can learn a lot just by reading the handout! Sites like twitter.com allow you to be proactive. If you don’t know something, ask, and someone will probably answer! Web 1.0 is a powerful resource for teachers and students but the information moves from publisher to consumer, is read only and is not interactive. Web 2.0 makes it as easy to create as to consume. Anyone can publish, share or exchange information.

Free software for creating digital stories or projects is available. Highly recommended is audacity, photostory and moviemaker. All are PC friendly so you can use your work computer. All that is needed is a microphone. A great source for learning these programs is ilife4windows.wikispaces.com.

Google continues to develop new and useful tools for educators. One teacher has developed a site to feature google “lit trips” where a book is studied and the places in the book are “pinned” into googleearth with commentary (googlelittrips.org). Googledocs was discussed as a way to edit documents online with a collaborative group. It saves time and energy.

Both blogging and podcasting were discussed and samples of programs available were displayed. There are a few available on our school web site right now, but wouldn’t it be great if we could see what everybody is doing in our school?

We discussed the virtues of unitedstreaming and developing a way to share our lessons. There is no reason we should duplicate our efforts. Free professional development is also available through unitedstreaming. Becoming a DEN educator is another way of expanding your reach and learning new applications.