May 7, 2013 · 9:08 am

Whatever happened to Georgia Wonder?

Back in 2009 I was following a band Georgia Wonder on Twitter. I was also teaching a unit on digital literacy for my sophomores. I had a crazy idea to try to connect with people I followed on Twitter to enhance some of the topics we were covering in class. One of those people was Julian Moore of the band Georgia Wonder. He agreed to talk to my sophomores via iChat to talk about the music business.

Here is the online magazine my students produced from that lesson: Chalk: Georgia Wonder issue.

Here is the blog post Julian wrote: Nebraska USA.

But this post is not about that lesson; it is about relationships. Relationships in our digital age.

Julian and I hit it off right away. In fact we both have the same birthday. For quite some time after the iChat lesson we kept in contact on a regular bases. Georgia Wonder was working on a new album, and in fact the class and I got to hear the first single from the album as Julian was working on it. Today it is 2013 and I have lost contact with Julian. There have only been two posts on Twitter from the band since last year. Their blog has not been updated in a long time. Julian is working on a novel, but that blog has not been updated either. So what happen to a friendship in the making? Life.

Let me take a minute to bring in a few ideas that have been on my mind lately. In the TECHS class we have been discussing digital citizenship, and part of that discussion has been the change in our definitions of friendship, communication, and relationships. Yesterday we watched the following TED talk “Alone Together” by Sherry Turkle.

I have been reading the book You are not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier, which discuss many of the same ideas. This blog isn’t about those either.

Now this is a hard truth. I know that if I stopped using Twitter or Facebook, nobody would really care. Somebody might think off hand that I hadn’t posted anything in awhile, but life would go on. I will be starting a new job soon and in a few months after I leave ESU 10 somebody might think about me, but life goes on. But here is the point, the aspect we as a culture and as individuals are discovering and working through; life goes on whether we are online or not. (And I am thinking we need to be offline a little more… but that is for another post) But when we embrace the power to enhance our relationships through technology we create an incredible personal experience that enriches what we do and who we can become. At the moment much of technology discussion feels like technology is a separate aspect to our lives. It is not; it is a tool that can enrich our lives.

So what does this have to do with Georgia Wonder? Good question. I may never connect with Julian again, but the possibility is there because of technology. But just like any friendship, job, or change, life goes on. But my life, and my students’ lives, was enriched by our connection. If we keep the focus on how technology can make our lives better; I think we will do just fine.

By the way, Georgia Wonder, if you get the chance to read this… I’m still listening to your music.

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March 11, 2013 · 11:34 am

Class Research

The TECHS students did a simple Google Presentation on future technology. Each student, across four class periods, were assigned to find something cool happening in the world of technology.

Technology allows any of us to collaborate with ease.

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March 6, 2013 · 8:11 pm

I hear you…

       Last night I had two examples as a dad on the importance of listening and hearing my children. The first was my oldest son at the dinner table. It wasn’t anything world changing, but he had a rough day at school. My wife and I sat listening to him vent about the day’s activities. We didn’t try to solve all the problems but did give advice.  Mostly though, we just let him talk about his frustrations. By the time supper had ended life was pretty good for him. He had been heard and knew that we understood what was going on, even if we didn’t have concrete answers for him.
     The second example wasn’t so easy. My littlest girl got up at about 12:30 a.m. and we did our routine of getting a drink and sitting in the chair for a few minutes. And then things got a little tough.
      At the moment a part of her bedtime routine is to spend a few minutes in bed with us and then she will say, “I’m ready for bed.” But at 12:30 she wanted to get into bed before she went back to her room. I wanted to make sure that my wife got a good nights sleep, so I told her we would just go to bed or sit in the chair for a few extra minutes.  She wasn’t up to that and started throwing a fit about how she wanted to “sleep with mom.”
      Somewhere I had read that the best thing to do with a child who is throwing a fit is to ignore them. But if you have a strong-willed child you know that they will pay any consequence. And even as hard as I tried, she just continued to throw a fit and scream about how she wanted to sleep in our bed. Trying to keep my cool, I reinforce that she was being disrespectful by being loud and waking other people up. That didn’t help.
       After about 30 minutes or so she moved from sitting on the chair to sitting next to me trying to gain my attention. I was getting frustrated but had one of those father moments where you try something totally new because nothing else was working; I turned to her and said, “I hear you but you are throwing a fit and that is not right.”
      As soon as I had replied that I had heard her, she quieted down and sat next to me. I again tried to persuade her that she didn’t need to lay down in our bed this late at night.  But that set her off. I again replied that I heard her, and she settled down.  (A side note here: we have been reinforcing saying please and thank you.) Well, after a few minutes she asked if she could lay down with a please attached.  Yes, I gave in, and within five minutes of laying down she was ready to go to bed and she slept through the rest of the night.
I had never responded with the I hear you comment to her before, and as I came back to bed after getting her snug in her bed I started to think about a piece of literature that reinforce the importance of hearing children.
     So I’m going to go English teacher here.  If you’ve ever read the book The Outsiders then you know that there is a powerful moment in the book when Johnny is talking about his parents. I don’t have a copy of the book with me right now so I will paraphrase, but he is telling Ponyboy that the worst thing that his parents do to him is ignore him.  Johnny can take the beatings, but when his parents act as if he is not there, it hurts him.
      It’s not just our children or students but everybody wants to be heard.  They want to know that they have a voice and that voice gives them solid ground to stand on in this world. When our voice is actually heard, it means we are known.  We know we matter. Life will sometimes reinforce the importance of things through my children.  Yesterday it was how important it is to hear individuals around us whether they are our children, our students,  or anyone who might need us to hear them.

 

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March 5, 2013 · 8:38 am

This I Believe…Love

Holding Daughter's Hand

Holding Daughter’s Hand

I checked out the book This I Believe: On Love from my library a couple of weeks ago.  The book is a collection of essays written by everyday people.  The book is apart of the I Believe organization that fosters the sharing of our foundational beliefs through writing.  In the spirit of the book I wanted to share what I believe, on love.

Love takes strength, everyday.

Love is reflected in the daily grind of life, it is expressed in soothing a crying child at 1:30 in the morning, and the thirty minutes sitting next to their bed as they fall asleep (and not losing your cool when your knees pop awaking her so you have to sit for another ten minutes).

Love is reflected in making blueberry muffins every Sunday morning.  Sitting with the family at the table. Picking up shoes and coats in the entryway, everyday.

Love is seen in kissing your wife even though it is a bad day and things are not going right.  To show her that your marriage is more important than a bad day. Love drives us to be better next time, and the next time, and to be even better the next time after that.

Love calls us to live with an open heart.  To be strong enough to know your heart will break, because life will break your heart with joy and sorrow.  But love will put your heart back together.

Love calls us to be honest, to have the strength to do what is right in this world.  To stand alone sometimes and hold a candle size light in the dark until others find their way to you.

Love takes strength.  Love takes courage. Love takes everything you have.  And I believe that is the way it should be.

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January 9, 2013 · 7:58 am

“I do it.”

Clip art courtesy of ryanlerch at openclipart.org

This morning my youngest daughter was getting herself dressed. She was having a little trouble with one of her sleeves. Like many parents, my wife said, “Come here, I’ll help.”

Our daughter look at her said, “I do it.”

She continued to struggle to get the sleeve untangled and her hand through the sleeve.  She turned a couple of times like a dog chasing its tail. After a minute she stopped and said, “Need help.”

My wife then helped her get her arm through the sleeve and we continued with our morning routine. The time in between “I do it” and  “Need help” was probably at the most a minute. But in parental time it felt like an hour, especially since we were in the middle of our morning routine.

My youngest girl is a classic strong-willed child. She will tackle any thing she feels like. If this was any of my other four children at this age they would have let us help them get their arm through the shirt right away. We would have justified helping them for the sake of our routine.

It is easy to do things for our kids. Whether they are our own kids or our students. My oldest son is now 12 years old and we are asking him to take on more responsibility. But I wonder if I have simply taught him that dad will do it.  For example, for years I have cleaned the dishes from the table after dinner.  It is easier for me to handle the mess than have a child carry a plate with some uneaten macaroni and cheese on it and have the possibility that the child dumps the food on the floor. Or take their glass, with just a little bit of milk at the bottom, to the counter.  But now that I want my son to do more, there are moments of frustration because he forgets to put his plate in the dishwasher.  But I have done it for him for twelve years.

This morning my three-year-old daughter reminded me that building any foundation takes a lot of time and energy. It might be easy to do things for our kids for the sake of time or ease. But the foundation will not be there when it is needed most in life. When we are not there.

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January 8, 2013 · 8:53 am

Happy New Year

Happy New Year… a few days late but the year is still young.

The lines, “As I playback now, the tape of the year / Its not where I thought we’d be, still not where I feared” from the song above, “3 Days Till Next Year” by Keith Ward, is fitting for how I am feeling today.

Just like many people, there were too many things that I didn’t do.  Too many things that I took for granted because I was worried or simply complained about life not going the way I wanted.

January 1 gives all of us a symbolic moment to “replay the tape,” but what matters more is what we will do today.  And it is not the big things that we should focus on but as the song says, “Remember that friend, that you meant to call.”  We let too many small moments pass by, too many letters or emails not sent, smiles kept hidden and then wonder why the past year feels just like the last; filled with regrets.

Life is going to happen.  Whether I complain or accomplish a new goal.  January 1, 2014, will allow me another moment to replay the tape.  I am striving to have that tape filled with friendships, great moments, and new adventures.  But most importantly, not matter what struggles life might have in store for me, to have a year filled with joy and love.

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December 18, 2012 · 10:14 am

Plateau?

I was talking to my colleague Deanna Stall when she brought up an interesting point. She asked, “What if the system has plateaued? That this is the best that we can expect from school.” Good question.  It got me thinking about all the talk about changing school, from Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk “Bring on the Learning Revolution” to the book I am currently reading by Salman Khan, The One World Schoolhouse. One of the main points about education is how it must change, that it is broken.  But maybe Mrs. Stall’s question is more accurate.  Let me talk about the bench press first.

Not to get into the principles of conditioning, but I want to use the bench press to highlight the idea of a plateau. The bench press is a great exercise. But if you do the same rep set or keep the same weight everyday, you will soon hit a plateau in your development. The easiest way to break the plateau is a change in reps, weight, or the training cycle.  Change something, not stop doing the bench press.

School is a great place. Teachers work hard to provide an education for every child.  Activities, from sports to FFA to a school play, provide unique opportunities for students to express their talents. There are too many positives about school that get lost in the discussion of change.  Many times it feels like the discussion is centered on the idea we trash the whole system and start over.  But what if we think about it from the position of the plateau?

Change is growth, but the change is in the approach not the foundation.  An athlete will not stop doing the bench press when they hit a plateau; they change their training.

The question for a school, or even a teacher, is what to change to reach the full potential of the school or the classroom.  What can we change to break through the plateau?  Because the worst part of a plateau is the false perception that it is the best you can do…

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December 14, 2012 · 8:37 am

Bad Day

Did you ever feel like nobody listened to you? Or that what you were doing didn’t really matter? Or that you just felt tired of fighting the system? Yeah, I’m having that kind of bad day.

Now there are all kinds of factors in play; I am overly tired (little one is still getting up at least once during the night), it is the end of the semester and didn’t go as planned, and little things just don’t seem to be going my way. We all have had these bad days. But it’s important to know one thing.

No matter what job you have or what you’re trying to accomplish, you always have hurdles. Days where it just doesn’t go right. Sometimes these bad days make you feel like giving up. But it is in the habit of dealing with these days that matters.

There is a famous quote by Wayne Gretzky that says you miss every shot you don’t take. There’s a ton of other inspirational quotes that I could use here. But it’s not about the quotes (plus I embedded a good speech remix below done by Vulture from Coach Taylor of the TV show Friday Night Lights ).

It’s about recognizing the importance of what you’re doing. Of moving toward whatever goal that you have set. Bad days are tough. But see them as those intense training days of life.  We learn more, improve more, become stronger on those days that we are tested.  Bad days are those days; use it to strengthen your foundation.

Goals get accomplished because you work through the bad days. And you keep in mind what you are doing. Because it matters. It matters to you. And it matters to the people around you. Your students, your family, and your coworkers. So if you’re having a bad day. I hope you turn it around by remembering that what you’re doing right now matters.

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November 15, 2012 · 10:38 pm

Aurasma

Overview:

Aurasma Lite allows you to create and view augmented reality tags, or Auras as they are called, in the world around you. The app allows you to create your own tag with premade Auras provided in the app (Aurasma animation, images or 3D models), or leave your own photo or movie file from your photo stream.

There are two options for making an Aura with the app, regular and local (published in a channel). A regular Aura is usually connected to an image that you place the Aura on.  You can then share that Aura through social media or email.  When someone clicks on the Aura link they can see your tag if they have the same image. A quick example would be leaving an Aura on a newspaper photo.

A local Aura is placed in a physical location.  This is great for creating tags for schools, or museums.  The difference is that the user makes a channel to share the Auras left at that location.

Aurasma also has a studio to create layered Auras.  The picture in the “Why I like it” section will give you an example of how the studio works.

Why I like it:

Steps to View:

1.Download the Aurasma Lite app.

2. Create an account.

3. Search for  “Jamey Boelhower ” with the search option and subscribe to my channel.

4. Point mobile device at the picture below to activate the Auras. Double tap the video to go full screen, tap the A to go to Aurasma’s site, and tap the Twitter icon to see my profile. Video was made with ScreenChomp.

Try to have iPhone in the full screen, might have to move your device to start the Auras.

Use in the classroom:

I think the power of Aurasma for educators is in the studio creation of Auras.  Below is an example of content I have tagged in a social studies book.

Map of Mayan Civilization

Auras include video and picture of temple.

Like the location Auras, the studio allows you to have a channel that you can update at anytime.  You can leave instructional videos, websites, and other material tagged in traditional books.  Many students use the calculator on their phone to do math problems, imagine, though, that they can review a lesson because it is tagged to an image in their textbook.

Using the app to create Auras can be a great way to make posters or bulletin boards interactive in the classroom.  Students can make review videos for books and leave Auras on book covers.  There are some many ways to use Aurasma in the classroom.

Share your ideas with me via Twitter (jdog90).

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November 14, 2012 · 10:00 pm

Coursebook

Overview:

Coursebook is a personal video textbook.  Coursebook features videos from Ted, Khan Academy, Stanford eCorner, Yale, Railscasts and other educational sources.  You can also connect your Facebook and Linkedin accounts to see what your friends are studying with Coursebook.

 

Why I like it:

Coursebook is a simple idea, but designed so well that it is easy to get lost in learning.  The idea is to build your own learning path by selecting videos to watch.  Coursebook then keeps track of what you have watched, which ones you have tagged to watch later, and even which videos you have started to watch. The app then gives you recommendations based off your course work.  You can share your videos through Facebook and Linkedin; also you can share with the Coursebook community.

You can access your course work on their website, too.

 Use in the classroom:

This app is perfect for flipping your classroom or enhancing your curriculum.  At the moment Coursebook is just over two years old and you can’t just type in any keyword and get video results.  But I see great potential in what they are developing, and it can release the ownership of learning to the student.

For example lets use the study of cells in a high school class.  How can Coursebook be used in this situation?

First, I did a keyword search with “cells” and Coursebook provided 11 results.  The top three videos are “Using nature to grow batteries,” “Transplant cells, not organs,” and “Printing a human kidney.”  What an interesting way to enhance information about the importance of cells in our life!  What if there was a day or a project in the science class that allowed the students to connect the classroom lesson with a video of their choice?

OK, now let’s expand that science class to the whole year.  The student can build a coursebook with videos of their choice for the whole year.  If there were videos you wanted to use in your class, you make sure all students add it to their playlist.  This is the power of the flipped classroom idea.  It’s not about just watching a video, but about watching something that sparks the students’ imagination and you, the teacher, providing them the freedom and time to work with their ideas and questions.  With Coursebook the videos can be watched anytime and anywhere, the classroom is where you take that spark and ignite their learning.

Share your ideas with me via Twitter (jdog90).

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