One area of photography that acts as a bridge between classic still image photography and video is time-lapse photography. Time-lapse photography consists of taking a series of photos at regular intervals and then displaying them one after the other.  The effect can be used to show patterns that are not normally observed in real time.  Clouds make a terrific subject for time-lapse photography as they roll across the sky.  My clouds time-lapse long photo consisted of taking 150 photos using a intervalometer set to take one photo every 5 seconds.  Using QuickTime Pro the photos were converted into a sequence displayed at 15 frames per second in a QuickTime movie with a total elapsed time of 10 seconds.  How long did it take to shoot this time-lapse? Was is worth the time? The first question requires basic math skills the second one is based on opinion.  One stunning use of time-lapse was produced by Dan Chung during China’s 60th Anniversary national day on October 1, 2009.

Helping teachers think through their desire to integrate technology into their classroom instruction requires patience and an attention to detail similar to that required to produce good time-lapse images.  Teachers know that good classroom instruction requires an enormous amount of thought and attention to detail.  Adding technology to the mix increases the demands made on teachers to acquire new skills.   Many teachers are inspired to take the plunge to learn a new technology if it means their students will respond positively to the learning experience.  What technology tool is the most important one for teachers to master? It’s the wiki.  Why? Wikis build on basic word processing skills so you can quickly add text content to a sharable web page.   The sharable nature of wikis make them part of what’s termed Web 2.0.  The key to harnessing the instructional potential of the wiki lies in their ability to show growth.  Think of a wiki as a time lapse learning tool, where learning can be captured and nurtured over a period of time.

Google Analytics Becoming America wiki report map for Massachusetts (8/14 thru 10/17)

A recent example of time-lapse learning can be illustrated through the Becoming America wiki.  Becoming America is a new Teaching American History Grant project that provides professional development for teachers in six school districts.  The end goal for teachers is to create an American history lesson composed of primary sources found in the many libraries, archives, and historic sites located across eastern Massachusetts.  Through this research process, teachers learn to think historically while breathing new life into their American history curricula.   Since the wiki’s launch in August 2009, it has logged 3300 hits with Braintree teachers accounting for 27% of the hit count.   Braintree teachers use the wiki the most because they cannot attend face-to-face meetings.  All teachers use the wiki to respond to questions posed by project historians using the discussion tab.  Historians appreciate being able to view teacher responses before giving their seminars.  As teachers begin creating their lessons the wiki will be a critical resource for organizing primary sources and weaving them into compelling learning experiences.  The concept of wikis as time-lapse learning tools is best seen using the history function for any page.  The Unit Teams 2009 page’s history tab reveals there have been 16 updates to the page since it was created on Oct. 5th.  Clicking on any of the updates shows what changes were made.  Each individual update represents one frame of a time-lapse record of learning.

What time-lapse Web 2.0 tool do you use?

If you are interested in learning more about time-lapse photography visit the DigitalArtworks Time-Lapse Tutorial.

The cloud metaphor is a good one to characterize the current status of educational technology.  I spent NECC 2009 thinking about the creation of compelling Digital-Age Learning environments.  MyWebspiration concept map shows a link between the world icon, NECC 2009, and a cloud symbol containing Digital-Age Learning.  Controling clouds is notoriously futile therefore teachers will get wet.  Your students will benefit from Information Technology experiences such as collecting temperature data with a USB probe directly into a computer and then sharing through the Information Technology in Science Instruction portal.   Social Networking is also critical for making your curriculum global.  Educators are using Twitter and Ning to create social networks that bring students together to design solutions to real-world problems and build their digital literacy skills.

Photography and Collaboration are also given the cloudy treament.  Adobe Photoshop.com enables image editing through the web.  flickr is one of the largest photo sharing communities on the web.  Wikis are the single best method for initiating a web collaboration.  I created the NECC09 wiki page to share information and resources with K-8 educators back home.  To document my NECC experience, sessions and workshops were listed by date with notes posted as text comments and concept maps!  Selected photos were either embedded into the page or streamed from my flickr account.

How will you share your NECC09 experience?

I’ve been collaborating with several Ferryway 4th grade teachers on a project-based unit designed to lead students through a set of inquiry-based activities on animals and biomes.  The goal is to build higher order thinking skills in our students as they learn about the link between habitats and animal life.  According to our state (MA) curriculum science standards, students in grades 3-5 record details of the life cycles of plants and animals, and explore how organisms are adapted to their habitats.  In 5th grade, students are assessed on their understanding during the MCAS science exam.  OK wait a minute, you mean students take the high stakes science exam a full year after receiving the instruction.  YES!!!  In fact, an analysis of the questions on the MCAS science exam shows that between 10-15% of the exam deals primarily with animals and their biomes.  Additionally, 1 of the 5 open-response questions usually requires a deep understanding of animals and biomes.  To differentiate our instruction and increase the likelihood of student retention we have incorporated new digital media into our biome lessons.  Where can teachers find good digital media assets that aren’t completely off limits due to strict licensing terms?

An excellent, free source for high quality digital media is provided by Teachers’ Domain. Teacher’s Domain (TD) is hosted and maintained by WGBH Boston.  One terrific aspect of the site is the ability to download videos, audio clips, and Flash interactives to your desktop.   In most cases, teachers and students are granted permission to download, share and remix these digital media assets.  I downloaded and integrated a 2 minute QuickTime on Nihoa Island as part of vocabulary lesson (PDF 763KB) using a student response system.  Students watched the clip and were asked which vocabulary words best described the movie.  I think you are beginning to see how useful this can be for teachers.  The interactive Animal Classification Game created in Flash fits perfectly with the goals and objectives of our biome unit.  Students are presented with animals that they must classify as mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian or insect. I also appreciate the citation function that makes it easy to copy and paste the correct reference to the TD resources.

Search Teachers’ Domain before you try to create your own interactives or videos.  Register for a free account to gain access to hundreds of digital media assets.  Let me know what you find and how you used it in a lesson.

During March, I joined a wikispace group called The Gr8Tweets Wiki that welcomed educators to experiment and learn more about the educational potential of Twitter. The Gr8Tweets Wiki was an opportunity to build upon my knowledge and comfort level using wikis on wikispaces.com by adding Twitter. Anyone could join the wiki by editing the Who’s Playing page. Participants were encouraged to post messages, sorry…Tweets, using the hash tag, #gr8t. The hash tag is a method that allows Tweets to be automatically tracked and searched. The home page of the Gr8Tweets shows a stream of the last 15 Tweets tagged with #gr8t.  In the spirit of Web 2.0 openness I set my profile updates to be unprotected to encourage people to follow me. Protecting updates means that you have to approve anyone who wants to follow and read your updates. Issue #2, Twitter spam. I blocked 5 users who started following my updates with the express purpose of trying to sell me a product. Since the bulk of my updates were posted during March, I’ve noticed an uptick in emails informing me that spammeister is following me.  Policing my Twitter account may become annoying if the rate increases.
Issue #3, Useless tweets.  Mixing personal and professional messages is a major issue when considering to use Twitter.  I don’t want to know what you had for dinner, but I would put your professional opinion about the impact of stimulus funding on educational technology in the NEED to know column.  Another aspect of useless tweets is wading through messages that don’t interest or apply to you.  I’ve mainly used my Twitter experience to document my activities implementing technology at the Ferryway School.  I can’t imagine managing a network of hundreds, if not thousands of people.  I do like the ability to stream updates though, especially embedding them on a wiki page because it documents the many facets of technology integration.

My advice to teachers is to spend your time mastering wikis and blogging before committing to Twitter.  No, I don’t NEED Twitter.

While vacationing on the Big Island of Hawaii, I visited the active lava fields of Kilauea to witness the birth of new land as lava meets the Pacific Ocean. The incredible plume that rises into the air is created from the instantaneous vaporization of water into steam as the hot lava hits the ocean water. Learn more about Kilauea at the United States Geological Survey’s website. http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/
I used a digital SLR camera and a small pocket-sized FlipVideo camera to capture the action.

Slide show images of the approach to the Kilauea lava flow. Watch a time lapse view of the violent interaction of lava and water. Look carefully and you can see rock exploding out of the ocean.

Watch a two minute video from the “safe” viewing area looking out to where the lava meets the ocean.

Kilauea Lava Meets the Ocean from Robert Simpson on Vimeo

1) The main toolbar cleverly conceals plenty of content with submenus that popup when your mouse cursor hovers over them.

2) Simply type in your email and push the Get Updates button to automatically receive emails whenever new content it uploaded.

3)  Displaying a rotating stack of pictures is a popular technique to share content without forcing users to click through tabs.  Only four featured headlines is just right in my opinion.

4)  That little RSS icon may be small, but it’s quite powerful.  Saving this feed to your browser means that updates come to you as soon as they post to WhiteHouse.gov.

5) Search is definitely the center of attention.  It invites users to the content.

Now back to the Washington Mall…  One of the hallmarks of the Web 2.0 world is the ubiquitous nature of digital recording and communication devices.  Unlike our penguin brethren, we occupied our time texting, calling friends and family on the cell phone, and taking pictures and videos while we waited for the ceremony to begin.  My inauguration photo slideshow was created using Adobe’s Photoshop.com.  Photos were uploaded using a free account, added to an album, and then I copied and pasted the embed code into this blog post.  Photography sharing sites like Photoshop.com and Flickr are the life blood of creating media rich blogs.  As we learned on the WhiteHouse.gov site, sharing video is another good way to communicate.  Watch the citizen penguin’s stir as they watch Obama take the presidential oath of office.  The embedded video recorded using a FlipVideo camera streams from Google video NOT YouTube so it should work in school districts that block YouTube.  How can Web 2.0 transform the American Government?  Hey teachers, does this sound like a neat student project?

One key to creating a truly student-centered learning environment is to ensure that every student is heard.  In traditional classrooms, teachers never have the time to call on every student, leading to disengaged learners or dare I say, bored.  The student response system solves this problem by creating a classroom in which every student responds using a hand-held remote.  At the Ferryway School, where I work as a technology specialist, I’ve been helping elementary teachers make their instruction interactive with the Qwizdom student response system.

Think about how many PowerPoint presentations you have sat through where you wished that the presenter would tune into the audience.   Now consider a third grader stuggling with new vocabulary words.  We’ve been able to transform vocabulary instruction using a response system — here’s how.  Students view a presentation projected on the white board at the front of the classroom controlled using a special teacher remote.  The lesson begins by showing students a list of the unit vocabulary words.  The teacher uses her remote to randomly select students to read the vocabulary words aloud, their names flash on the screen.  A nifty feature for keeping students on their toes.  Hey, better pay attention, you could be next!  We then provide a subset of 4-5 vocabulary words asking students which word they can easily use in a sentance.  Students write descriptive sentances on paper and then send their chosen word to the computer.  The teacher displays the classes’ responses in the form of a bar graph.  This technique gives teachers immediate feedback on which words students don’t feel comfortable using in a sentance.  Teachers use this real-time assessment to immediately adjust their instruction.  Next, traditional worksheet exercises such as select the best definition or identify the parts of speech, i.e. noun, verb, and adjective are converted into multiple choice questions.  Send responses, share, and discuss results.

To differientiate instruction, pictures are displayed and students asked to select the best word(s) to describe what they see in the image.  In one lesson, students viewed an ape hoarding food in his zoo enclosure.  [Picture credit: Patries71, Flickr, Creative Commons license] Which word would you choose?  A) care  B) attention C) probe D) enrich E) saving.  As you can see in the picture, student responses were well distributed as represented by the bar graph on the right-hand side.   Students then justify their word selections in writing and share their reasoning with classmates.  This approach enables students to master unfamilar vocabulary words through writing, reading, discussion, and visual analysis.  A detailed answer report on student performance generated after each lesson is used by teachers for grading purposes.

The excitement students feel about being heard is confirmed as I walk the hallways,  Mr. Simpson when are we doing the next Qwizdom lesson?

First, teachers and administrators have to understand the difference between a web 1.0 and 2.0 school.  I explained this difference during a recent early release professional development session at the Ferryway School.  Read the blog entry, Early Release Launches Ferryway 2.0 Tech Plan. Most teachers learned that Web 2.0 is a two-way street when it comes to the Internet.  Second, schools need to build out a web 2.0 infrastructure.  It sounds complicated, but really it just involves knowing how to assemble content inside a framework that anticipates that students, teachers, and community stakeholders will participate in the 2.0 version of your school.  For instance, the Ferrway School has been profiled in several movies by the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s Edutopia site.  Visitors to the Edutopia site can leave comments about the videos, but if they want to learn more they can check out the Ferryway school website.  The current Ferryway site is a traditional web 1.0 site since visitors simply browse the content that was posted by a few teachers with the magic keys to update the page.   The Grazr box below is an example of using a web 2.0 tool to display those Edutopia comments.  You can read the latest comments without leaving this blog post by clicking on the titles.  Go ahead, try it!

Friedman is best known for his 2005 book, The World Is Flat.   The book was a major influence in the world of educational technology since it effectively outlined the connection between education and the ability to prepare people (especially students) for 21st century jobs.  There was an explosion of “flat” references in education journals and magazines, and education conference sessions.  I created a Apple Keynote presentation, Malden Could be Flat, to introduce educators in Malden Public Schools to the major concepts in the book.  The presentation was converted to run in Flash and streams from an Adobe Connect Pro server account.  The first slide includes a brief audio introduction and then it’s up to the viewer to click through the content. The World is Flat is currently available as a 3.0 version.  Friedman uses the same version protocol favored by the software industry to provide updates to his books.

Back to Hot, Flat, and Crowded.  As I try to explain the world of web 2.0 to teachers, it is important to understand the major shift occuring in the world of book publication.  Namely, books must adapt to new patterns of information consumption.  Teachers have increasingly experienced this shift when they open new boxes of textbooks to find multimedia DVDs and instructions to access online content.  Like Friedman’s new book, modern textbooks have entire websites backing up their static, printed content.  What types of web 2.0 examples are found on Friedman’s site?  If you don’t have time to read, but would like to listen to Hot, Flat, and Crowded while stuck in traffic you can download an audio version of the book.  An audio preview is provided as an mp3 download.

Chapter two makes the distinction between “fuels from hell” and “fuels from heaven.” How is your life fueled by both categories? What would it take to transition completely to “fuels from heaven”?    -Hot, Flat, and Crowded discussion guide

Teachers will appreciate the Discussion Guide that provides thought provoking questions about each chapter.  High School teachers could turn these questions into a web 2.0 assignment by having students read the book and share their responses with international students.  [The flatclassroom project is great model.]  The right sidebar contains the most relevant web 2.0 content since it appears based on the actions of people that Friedman doesn’t control.  At the top of the page, Steps in the Right Direction are links to sites supporting the themes in the book.  I still can’t believe that you can wash a load of clothes with a cup of water!  The article titles are most likely selected based on a set of filters Friedman uses to consume RSS feeds.  The Chapter 18 comments are posts from readers who have been asked to contribute ideas for the 2.0 version of the book.  I would like to see students post comments here.  The final web 2.0 example involves embedding what is known as a widget to display the top five web-based articles under the topic of the environment.   Digg is one of several popular social bookmarking sites.   What ideas do you have for helping students make their own web 2.0 books?