COMICS in the classroom

Through one of my graduate courses I was made aware of the site www.bitstripsforschools.com

They are kind enough to offer an instant 30 day free trail, so if you think you might use this for you, sign up. If you are going to use it with your students, review the site and pricing and decide when the best time to sign up is.

I found it a great way for my students to express themselves as they gave some answers. To use the content correctly in their comic, they really have to understand it. I also saw they liked sharing their comics with each other.

A really nice feature, I found this very impressive, they make a comic avatar of themselves and can appear in their own comic, or their classmates comics. If the teacher makes one, they can appear too!

This is my actual 7th period class 'comic' photo, produce on the site, each of my students avatars and mine.

So my first assignment was: using the science classroom background, make a comic with at least for panels explaining the difference between physical and chemical properties. Most of my students can easily identify a physical or chemical change, but describing the properties was a bit of a challenge.

Here are two sample products produce by the students:

Making a Splash in the classroom with Splashtop!

This is not a commercial endorsement, this is a product I just found out about from another teacher when they saw I had an Ipad.

If you visit www.splashtop.com you find a website that make various products for the classroom that integrate iPhone/iTouch/iPad as remote interfaces to control your 'teacher' computer, whether it be a PC or Mac.  It can not only control but stream some items, or let everything that would happen on the remote computer happen on your remote device.  This is really powerful when combined with an iPad.  Even video can be streamed to the iPad.  Or you can consider your remote screen now having a touch screen interface.

Your iPad can display FLASH based site, but your computer can.  So when you hve your computer screen redirected to your iPad, you can see and interact with FLASH based sites.

The software you need to run on your PC or Mac, they actually give that away, aren't they nice?  You just have to buy the application you would run on your remote device.

Depending on the technology and connectivity you already have in the classroom, an investment between $0.99 and $9.99 could have a beneficial impact in your classroom.

The key program you may want is Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad.  The good news is, at the time of this posting, it is on sale for $2.99, down from $19.99, the latest version just being updated on 9/27/11.
You can practice at home, and then if allowed to install the desktop client at school, you are good to go!

  The $9.99 Splashtop Whiteboard price is also a special for October, then it goes back to $19.99

Splashtop Whiteboard Demo video


useful for you?


Splashtop Remote Desktop






I'm going to the APPSTORE and getting Splashtop Whiteboard now!

Update: 10/26/11
I got the program for my Ipad2. I can make it work just fine at home on a laptop and dekstop machine. It worked much more accurately on the Windows host machine when doing the whiteboard stuff, when I drew it was right under my finder. When I used with my Macbook, the finger was below where ever it drew, so making lines meet was very difficult, as was clickign on small things. Didn't see any way to calibrate.

Tried on one machine at school and just not finding the machine yet. Looking for work around.

Techno Tip - Making Movies in Class?

I been shooting videos of various sorts in my classroom the last few years, using my iPhone and now the iPad2 since it has camera capabilities.  In general, you can hold when its appropriate, but often you want it just to stand there by itself.  I'd like to recommend a solution for each that I personally have found to be well worth their investments.

For the iPhone, they make a tripod mount you can find all over Ebay for under $10.  Get one!  I use it with my iPhone when I want to make normal movie or time-lapse movies.  Here is a basic review of one to watch on Youtube.



The for the iPad2, there are all kinds of cases you can buy to make it stand/lean.  However, those usually have 1 or 2 angles and that is it.  Joby, of the GorillaPod fame (the tripod that can grab that is popular with photographers) came out with a case that has two gorillapod style legs on it.  Because of their flexibility, you can get any angle or orientation you desire.  You can even hang your iPad2 on things and record video.

Let us take a look:

The Joby site for more information

I own and use both products - great investments! Good News - No Batteries Required!

The Digital Native meets the Hammer?

From the Digital Natives blog:

"To be sure, the term “Digital Native” is misleading, because no two Digital Natives are created equal. Each of them has varying degrees of access to digital technologies, literacy skills, and participation within their peer culture. What’s more alarming is the “divide” opening up between those that have access to the network and those without. But that in itself isn’t the whole problem, because having access alone isn’t the solution. While access speaks of the stark contrast amongst the haves and have-nots, digital literacy reveals the difference in those who have the skills to navigate this new landscape and those that don’t.
Like many other crucial skills, digital literacy needs to be taught and learned through constant practice. Naturally, this doesn’t explain why some Digital Natives will get more out of their sessions than others do. But what about those who get much more practice? Its estimated by Professor Urs Gasser that for kids who turn fifteen in 2016 or so, “they are likely to spend somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 hours per year on digital technologies.” Going onto say that, “Five years later, at age twenty, they will have accumulated at least 10,000 hours as active users of the Internet, if the current statistics still apply.”

I have been thinking a lot about this, because its a very hot topic.  All those hours they state the youth spend on digital technologies, how many of those are listening to music.  I listened to music when I was a kid, through headphones too.  Whether is was from a cassette recorder, or an iPod, that doesn't affect their or my skill level.  Watching kids fighting or people falling of skateboards on YouTube, I don't think that affects their skill set either.

I was thinking of an analogy that might show the flaw in the logic people often use in the 'digital natives' preaching...

If I showed my students a hammer and asked if they knew how to use it, I think the majority would say, yes.

If I showed my students a saw and asked if they knew how to use it, I think the majority would say, yes.

If I showed my students a brush and asked if they knew how to use it, I think the majority would say, yes.

Then if I asked them could they make this for me if I gave them the wood, I doubt any could.

So just being experienced with a tool or technology doesn't mean you can use it skillfully.

The Digital Native Blog can be found at : http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/digitalnatives/

Yet another class project

Sorry about the 'uhh's

I had to make a 4 minute video that had three subtopics. Being that the whole thing was done with Apple hardware, I shot much of it in my garage, as a tribute to the late Steve Jobs, who started Apple in his parents garage.

This one is about solids, liquids and gases. I borrowed the particle viewer from Harvard University. By the way, I hate having to star in my own movies when I am the cameraman too.

Powerpoints in the classroom

So administrations are using the phrase "no PowerPoint" in the classroom. I don't think they understand what they are saying. Firstly, I think the biggest misconception relating to this is that teachers use them the way people try to use them on teachers. For example, I went to a training today and on the 56 slide PowerPoint (first thing they did wrong) was they had slides like this:

I didn't want to count the words, but I knew it is 10 times too many. Then when adults show a PowerPoint to adults, and they are not professional speakers, they read the PowerPoint almost word for word (third mistake).

I recently used a 17 slide PowerPoint that didn't have a single word on it, all images. I know that is not what they are trying to ban. They are worried about lecturing, which they are already against for some reason, and think the PowerPoint are lecture notes.

From the Texas Collabrative website, we find this quote "Active Learning is, in short, anything that students do in a classroom other than merely passively listening to an instructor's lecture". A peek at other web references includes other definitions that include classroom discussions. So if a teacher is lecturing, seeding questions, answering questions, then it is active learning. PowerPoint provide content the whole class can see, including visuals, and the teacher can 'point' and ask.

In Texas, ELL (English Language Learners) are in high quantity in many classroom in many districts, big clear letters (not sloppy teacher hand writing) are known to benefit students, a task PowerPoint does so well.

This is definitely a case where a non-generic term, "PowerPoint", is being used in a generic way, and used incorrectly. I am sure they surely don't mean a presentation using PowerPoint is frowned upon, but one using "Keynote" software is somehow acceptable.

As teachers, when you hear someone slam 'PowerPoint in the classroom', put them on the spot, ask them to elaborate, justify and explain themselves (higher order Blooms questions, bad joke, I know it) - show them they aren't saying what they think they are saying!

Classroom Management 1947

Have things changed much since 1947?  Let's watch the video and see what still applies in 2011.






Many of the same issue will raise their ugly little heads 60 years later, but the fixes the video demonstrates still will work too.

The teacher's negative speech and attitude create an environment that makes the students uneasy, which is not conducive to learning. 

The video does well when they demonstrate the better way to do it.  The teacher brings real world examples in, beyond what ever the book had so the students have more interest.  When he has to leave the room, he gives them a task instead of a threat.  When there is improper behavior instead of barking like a drill sergeant, he makes a joke about it and then reminds the students what the better behavior would be.  The big thing that really works and you see at the end was the teacher going to desks working with individual students.  

So, sixty years later, some of the same problems exist for teachers, and most of the solutions still apply.

Video in the classroom

If you have an LCD projector and a good set of speakers, you need to take advantage of that hardware!

Don't be afraid to show videos in your classroom.  I'm not talking about a movie that might be related, but video content.

Here an interesting video that is a mix of classic film projector movie and modern video, content made for the classroom.

Video in the classroom 

Sites like youtube.com and teachertube.com  will supply you with clips of various length, and you want to do your searching at home, not in front of the students.

For strictly educational content you have choices like Discovery Education and Brainpop.  Many districts may have subscriptions, so check with your school.  Some free high quality resources for video content include PBS Teachers and STEMTube student photos & videos for Science, Math, Engineering, Technology.


Is there a benefit to showing videos in the classroom?  Research says YES!


Here a wonderful excerpt from this article : No Child Left Behind: Scientific Research Indicates that Using Video in the Classroom Improves Learning
Additionally, teachers overwhelmingly reported "positive student outcomes as a result of using instructional television and video." Specifically of note are the student outcomes in which 85% of the "frequent user" teachers surveyed said that students comprehend and discuss content/ideas presented, 69.1% reported that the use of TV and video increased motivation and enthusiasm for learning, and 66.3% said that students learn more when TV or video is used in the classroom.


Now that should make any principle or AP happy.  Print the article, and keep a copy under your projector, and if they ever come in and give you the "eye" grab it and put it in their hands!


Administration is worried about movies used to waste time, like when the student came to me a few days after TAKS testing complaining they had already seen Finding Nemo three times that day! 


Find a movie editing program you like so you can cut the parts you really want.  I think VLC from Videolan.org supports this feature (beautiful lesson here) and its a free program, works wonderfully on Windows or MAC and is probably one of the best players too!


The article You Can Take It With You on the site Tech & Learning summarizes the benefits and methods for using and getting video into the classroom.