Brochure Making on Pages

I was approached by one of the fourth grade teachers to find another brochure making tool that will allow students to create their own brochure and print out the brochure they made for a research project. Last year, the fourth grade class used an old Microsoft program called "Publisher." We no longer use the MS Office Suite with students and instead have iPads available for students to use. What better way to get the fourth graders ready to use pages in MS then to have the students learn how to make brochures on the iPad! I created a lesson to have the students explore brochure making on the iPad, changing the backgrounds, adding images, editing fonts, and organizing their columns and sections for their content. It 's great to allow the students to explore making the brochure on their own before I provide a little more details or specific ways to do something.

Prior to working on pages, I did some extensive work with Keynote on the iPads with the fourth grade class, and many of the menu options and functions transfer pretty well when students switch from Keynote to Pages because of the Apple Work suite.

Toontastic for First Grade

I just started a Toontastic story telling project with the first grade students at Westside. In first grade students spend a lot of time working on their writers workshops and writing stories in both of their classes. I decided that it would be fun for the students to see story-telling through using a new app and applying some technology skills.

Toontastic: School Edition is an application that is loaded with tons of characters and settings for students to choose from. Students are also able to draw their own characters and settings for their stories! Students organize their stories and use the characters to help them tell their story. They will also record their voices into the app so the story is being read out loud to the viewer as the characters move and get acted out by the students. I'm really looking forward to trying this out with the First Grade class! I also used a great resource through the website "Teachers Pay Teachers" on how to organize and plan the activity.

Stephen Colbert Twitter

Twitter Account managed by Stephen Colbert 

Twitter Account managed by the network Comedy Central 

"The Tweet" 

The Context

Video from the Colbert show

Start at 4:50

The Reactions

For the record @ColbertReport is not controlled by Stephen Colbert or his show. He is @StephenAtHome Sorry for the confusion #CancelColbert

— The Colbert Report (@ColbertReport) March 28, 2014

This is a Comedy Central account, with no oversight from Stephen/show. Here is quoted line in contexthttp://t.co/UFnaFfOSpn #cancelcolbert

— The Colbert Report (@ColbertReport) March 28, 2014

My Response

First let me say that I did not know about this event, I was informed by a colleague about Colbert's foundation and was told to check it out. I first saw the clip, read the tweet, saw the reactions.

I presented this lesson with all of the attributes and skills that I have taught my students. To understand the context. First to think about the two separate Twitter accounts. One, managed by Comedy Central acting as the twitter user for the Stephen Colbert Show and the other managed by Stephen Colbert (the character) himself. At first, reading the tweet from The Stephen Colbert show, I couldn't believe what he wrote (not knowing that it was actually ran by Comedy Central). I immediately thought that the "Ching-Chong Ding-Dong" joke was over and definitely over-played, especially after the UCLA girl's YouTube video went viral for what she said about Asian students in the library. Then to see that the tweet had "#Asian" in it to be even worse because anyone who can search on Twitter for Asian, would stumble on this tweet. However, I wanted to learn more about what he was talking about. Why would Stephen Colbert want to show the Asian community he cared? Cared about what?

So here we go...

I watched the episode and I saw what Colbert was discussing. He was discussing Dan Snyder's brand new fund. Snyder is the owner of a billion dollar football team known as the Washington Redskins. The mascot name has racist connotations. Snyder wrote a letter to the fans of the Redskins football team letting them know that he is not actually going to change the name of the Redskins because as he toured and visited Native Americans, he found out that "some" did not have any issues with the Redskins name. However, Snyder found out that many Native Americans are living in poverty. So in order to continue using the Redskins name, while still maintaining honor and a strong relationship with Native Americans, Snyder developed "The Washing Redskins Original Americans Foundation" to help raise awareness and money for Native Americans. A great idea! With a rather silly name, the problem for most people was the term "Redskins" being used as a derogatory or racist label for Native Americans and by using it in his foundation, he pulls out the dichotomy of how he wants people to know that The Washington Redskins care, but they really are Original Americans and this is the Foundation for them... silly enough for satire in my opinion.

Colbert than takes it to the next level, by trying to make fun of racism, by using racism. He plays an old clip of a character he used before named Ching Chong Ding Dong, that was considered offensive, and decides to create his own fund using the derogatory, racial term and adding "for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." I think Colbert played it wrong by saying Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever, because that takes it away from being a joke about Dan Snyder, which is what I really believe he was trying to prove. Maybe by changing it to The Ching-Chong....Foundation for Sensitivity to Asian-Americans would've made a difference. I'm not sure, regardless I got the joke, but it was distasteful.

If Colbert decided to continue to poke fun at the idea of Dan Snyder's Foundation name being a double edged sword than people would've seen the bigger picture which I believe is that Snyder is using money to continue using the Redskins name by saying "its okay now, because I am giving money to actual Native Americans." By using Asians to help tell his joke doesn't do much to the idea but to perpetuate racism. Which is what happened to a lot of Asian Americans and other activists who called for the #CancelColbert tweet which started to trend.

To wrap up, I didn't like how Colbert used his foundation to Asians as a joke to support Dan Snyder's name for his foundation. Snyder thinks the foundation will help him sleep better at night when he goes home to the fat checks because of the "Redskins" name still being his team's mascot. I am amazed by the power of social media and how movements and actions can change and affect people. How a tweet can be taken out of complete context and turned into a trend to cancel a popular TV show by one person. I think we should all take a step back, Colbert isn't the enemy, I believe he was honestly trying to be funny, without realizing what it is to be a target of racism, as a white man. He struck the wrong nerves in people when he was actually making a good point. Using a term considered racist, to show your "sensitivity" still isn't showing much sensitivity, take note Snyder.

Third Grade Spanish Videos

The third grade class has already learned how to use iMovie, adding pictures, recording their voices, adding text, and background music are all skills that the third grade class has learned. Our Lower School Spanish teacher had taught the students about the weather and clothing with a song, and she thought it would be a fun idea for the students to sing a song in Spanish they knew about a drawing they each made of the clothing and weather, she approached me to think of how to incorporate technology into the project.

Together, we decided that the students would draw a scene of the weather and what they would wear and the student would write down the lyric of the song. Using the iPad, students took a picture of their drawing, and using the app iMovie, compiled their groups pictures and recorded a song. One iPad was used per group of four students. It was a great exhibition of teamwork and using their tech skills to make these movies. I was very impressed!

Here are several examples made by third graders:

Usernames and Passwords... in Kindergarten!

I was recently approached by a Kindergarten teacher asking for some math help for her students. One girl in her class mentioned "IXL" an app her brother in 2nd grade was using to learn more math. If you recall, I have introduced IXL to students in grades 2-4, because of the idea of typing usernames and passwords. Well this Kindergarten student brought the point to her teacher about how her brother uses it, and she and her family would like to use it too. The Kindergarten teacher thought we should teach all the Kindergartners how to sign into IXL. Of course I am up for the challenge!

I have a plan ready, its just a matter of making sure the young Kindergarten students do not get too lost or struggle when we learn our usernames and passwords! I will update this story soon.

"Instagram" Classroom

The power of social media and Instagram has changed the way our students see the world. Social Media sites like Instagram allow people to connect with other people from all over the world. These connections are shared through images and comments. My "Instagram" classroom project idea came from when I posted a picture of nature on my Instagram account. Most of my pictures were usually images of Century Link field, sporting events, friends, or food. The picture I posted though was of a tree that I hugged in the woods. This picture reached out to other nature enthusiasts that liked my photograph and wrote comments to me, people I have never met before.

This reaction reminded me of the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words." As I browsed the popular page on Instagram, I saw an endless amount of selfies, food photos, and pictures of celebrities with thousands of likes. These images are reaching out to millions of people, and the ones that are the most popular are of people that are already famous? It made me think about how a picture can reach out to so many people and how it can mean so much more with a good comment or story.

I challenged the students in middle school to think of a photograph that had meaning to them, we then used the app "SnapSeed" to edit and filter the photograph, similar to Instagram's filters. Once the photograph was ready, the students were to write a story about the photograph and how it was important to them and I asked them a question, "if you posted this photograph in social media, how would you try to explain it to connect to other people?"

The following week, students partnered up and I provided a worksheet. The classroom setup was designed to have students quietly look at each others photograph and have a quiet "reaction" time, where they would write down feelings, thoughts, and ideas about the photo. Then they would hear the story behind the photograph and then react to the story with any connections or write why they didn't share a connection.