ITeam Project Support

Last spring, ITeam built a green screen to support projects. From that modest start, students and teachers across our district have started to use green screen technologies.

Ari Bader-Natal blogged about Education 2.0 being on the Radar. From there, I found Dale Dougherty's blog and links to Make Magazine. We often borrow tripods and make do. Could ITeam members make projects like this, too?

Mobile Document Camera Stand

Jacob and Ian created windblades that were a similar level of complexity for the Maine Windblade Challenge. So, I suspect we need to find the right matches of projects and access to resources. We have a similar challenge in finding ways to support the matching for Capstone Projects. In fact, Make Magazine, or other venues like it, could be both sources of projects and places to authentically share innovate Capstone Projects.

Progress building capacity - Capstone

Met with both Capstone Pilot students and with MAMS ITeam today and got encouraging signs of students developing their understanding and capacity to undertake more challenging work:

Capstone:

• Sara inspired us with her descriptions of Capstone work she already has underway.
• Several students have already sent out inquiry email messages and have been waiting patiently for responses that have not yet come. They are ready to pick up the phone to see whether they can get better responses that way.
• Dan said that his jazz ensemble had just produced a performance CD. They are now looking for more gigs. Noted the challenge of getting members out of school for Capstone performances. We briefly discussed video and other ways to share the performance part.
• Haley described what she wants to do and Sara was able to help her with knowledge and experience that she has developed from her parallel work at Maine Region Ten. Sara offered to introduce Haley to her teacher at Maine Region Ten. We paused to reflect how this is a very important example of how we can scale this operation: share knowledge and share process so that others can appreciate it and extend.
• Nick described his plan to find and execute off-season conditioning but then went on to say that he planned to integrate his work in the WebTeam class with his Capstone Project. He (and others?) will build a web site to share appropriate parts of his conditioning portfolio.
• Luke tried to contact the Marine Resources Officer in order to get expert assistance with learning about and working on the invasive species challenges.
• ...

We are using a Facebook group MTA Capstone Pilot to support some of our work on the Pilot. We chose Facebook because students already use it and check it more frequently than other ways of communicating. Since Facebook limits access, we will need to make a special effort to share with broader communities.

TinEye- Image search for exploring attribution?

I wrote about using Google Goggles to find the source of the image that we used for Capstone visuals. ITeam members were impressed when I showed them how my phone could find the image. But they typically don't have smartphones that are capable of running Goggles.

In reviewing Nevit's contributions to WikiMedia Commons, I learned about TinEye.com, a browser-based reverse search engine. I want ITeam members to get some experience with powerful applications of technologies that will help with a problem they face in school. So, I tested TinEye on the same photos that Goggles found. When TinEye could not find the modified image (arrow added to point to the keystone), I cropped back to the largest part of the unmodified image.

An Awesome screenshot annotated to show the contrast with Goggles results.

Contrast it with the original:



By Shizhao (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

If TinEye can survive the competition with Google Goggles, then I suspect it will be able to locate photos like this. While we wait for the dust to settle, TinEye provides some Cool Searches that illustrate the power of artificial intelligence for current and future challenges.

Professional Development from Scratch

Maggie Wachtl, a chemistry teacher at MTA, wanted to learn whether she could use Scratch to create manipulatives to enhance learning about Dimensional Analysis. Her students needs to understand for stoichiometry calculations. She has laminated cards to create a manipulative that she'd like to implement in Scratch. In two hours, we moved from an introduction to Scratch to code snippets that get sprites to show a proof-of-concept: inversion of fractions to make reciprocals, sensitivity to the color on which the sprite is drops. She seemed pleased with the start and progress.

I introduced and reinforced the concept that we could get students to share our desire to have them experience differentiated learning. At several points, I said honestly that middle school students could answer some of her questions better than I could. I hope we can quickly move to get both teachers and students to recognize the opportunities in developing projects that the probability spinner that Matt Lunt requested and that Coby, Cole and Charlie are developing.

Working Outside the Bubble

We don't have enough time during CET and after school to share as much as some students can. I needed to meet with the volunteer coordinator at the Topsham Library about preparing for Capstone opportunities. I took that opportunity to meet with Coby. We reviewed:

• Attribution challenges and the underlying cause.
• iMacro as an approach for us to implement for ourselves.
• AppInventor with the emulator to see whether we can generate interest.
• David Shenk's approach to developing expertise.

Coby gets the concept of ITeam and is ready to develop more cases.