Thinking of sharing your technology projects? Have a Technology Student Showcase~!

photo by Alice Barr
Sometimes you make a plan because you want to learn something new, other times you make a plan and when you learn how much you didn't know you are so glad you followed through! Well, on June 13, 2009, Alice Barr and I drove to Newport , Maine in order to attend the Technology Student Showcase at Sebasticook Valley Middle School or here at Sebasticook Valley Middle School. Am I ever glad we did! Not only did Alice and I have a good time catching up about technology in both our schools, our new superintendents, new macbooks our teachers and students will receive in the fall, but, also we were excited to participate in a student technology showcase and hopefully bring some ideas home to our respective school districts.


We were greeted in the parking lot by Drew and his teacher Keith Kelley, who explained how students chose a project to rebuild an old Mustang convertible. Drew excitedly and carefully explained the steps involved in the rebuilding process, how hard it was, how many times they had to rebuild the steering mechanism and how proud he was to see the finished product. Then Kern Kelley met us at the sidewalk and began the tour of the Technology Student Showcase Spring 2009. He handed us a Scavenger Hunt, so we would be sure to view each project spread throughout the school building. We first ran into a student carrying around an Acer Netbook, headphone and mic attached, Skyping with Cindy Lane, a google certified teacher from St. Louis, who had made an appointment for a 15 minute tour of the showcase event. How many of your middle school students would be comfortable talking to a computer screen, as they video conferenced their way through a tour? Does this sound like a marketable skill for our 21st Century Literate students?

Then we viewed the mock up of the building and school mascot, that the students had created in Google Sketchup. The students had re-created their school building in 3D, right down to the detail of the full size moose in the school library. (after all it is Maine). There was a plugin for Google Sketchup that allowed anyone to hold up a specific piece of paper with a print out of a design in front of the video camera which portrayed a 3D visual of the school mascot or the school. How many of your middle school students would be comfortable designing a mock up of their school or any item related to school? Does this sound like a marketable skill for our 21st Century Literate students?

Then we proceeded upstairs to the Gallery of product designs. This was a gallery of items that 7th graders built in a design class, based on a raw skateboard decks from a local Maine business of a well known skateboard. The students were challenged to use a skateboard or multiple skateboards to design something that they would buy, or others would purchase. Not only were items for sale during the showcase, but if an item did not sell, then the teachers were going to put these items out on ebay to recoup some money for purchasing more supplies, or some student entrepreneurs would actually split the profits after paying for their own supplies. There were skateboard photo frames, skateboard shelves, skateboard push carts and even a very inviting game chair made with skateboards with cushions. How many of your middle school students would be comfortable designing a product for re-sale? Does product design sound like a marketable skill for our 21st Century Literate students?

After that we walked through the darkened gymnasium where several groups were playing Wii bowling, Wii exercise and RockBand. I was disappointed not to get a chance at RockBand, but we were much too busy. We traveled upstairs and found a part-year Art Room, and part-year Technology Education Room. Keith explained that he works at both middle schools for a half year each. He has a specific curriculum for each grade level. 5th and 6th graders work on hands on projects and build self propelled or wind propelled boats, or motorized cars. Then 7th graders begin product design using guitar kits or skateboard decks. Finally, 8th graders spend a half year designing and building their own skateboard from scratch. They use drills, routers and all kinds of paints and polyurethane to complete their projects. The student create and vote on a graphic design for their year as 8th graders. The logo is then transferred to each skate board. The students have skateboarding and skateboard safety in their physical education classes. This is a team effort! How many of your middle school students would be comfortable designing a product for their own use? Does product design sound like a marketable skill for our 21st Century Literate students?

Finally, Alice and I ended up in the computer lab where the 8th graders one year, built computer towers for a lab for student use. There were some 6th graders explaining their projects, their osprey webcam, their osprey book and their research projects as well as their Kerpoof video projects. Throughout all the projects and conversations we had with students there were 2 common denominators. One, most often the students spoke of collaborating on their projects, not only in the one class, but collaborating with a team who worked asynchronously on the same product. How did they manage? The just wrote notes, said one student. However, when pressed, they wrote notes in Google Docs when appropriate and other times, they left big notes taped to their robots to let their team know what needed to happen next. Or in a research team, the students worked in a google spreadsheet in order to determine the next steps. These students articulated that this is the wave of the future and they are just practicing what they imagine they will be faced with in their workplace someday soon. How many of your middle school students would be comfortable researching, collaborating asynchronously? Does this kind of work sound like a marketable skill for our 21st Century Literate students?

Check out the video for a tour of our day.http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6C2360791F288EFF or view here What are you doing to practice 21st Century Literacy? Will you be marketable in the 21st Century? Oh, BTW, the 21st Century is now.

Where does your library fit in the 21st Century Skills continuum?

This is a response to Darren Drapper's latest post at TechLearning. The post is a collection of quotes from some of our best thinkers and practioners in the field of library media science. Darren's question What is your vision for the ideal school library and what role do Media Specialists play? prompted my response:

"I see the ideal school library media center as the hub of our ideal media literate schools. I take the word media very literally and seriously. The hub should be the life of the school, the staff, the students and the larger community. The ideal school library media center should be the conduit to the world and other library centers. Where better to exemplify the collaborative nature of our lives than the library media center? As many of us know from experience, the virtual resources we have at our finger tips are exponential. We can use them all to our advantage, we can solve problems by interacting with digitized information. However, unless we have that ideal library media center at our disposal and an opportunity for some f2f, face to face, interaction, we will be living in a echo chamber and our solutions and ideas will not resonate with our world. My ideal library media center would have a window to the world where anyone, staff or students could video conference with an individual or group and get out of the echo chamber. What an opportunity! Can't wait to hear some other ideas. Thanks for the post Darren."

What is your ideal library media center all about?
I know our public librarian and I have had this conversation. I didn't have any answers at the time, but I know it is a conversation worth continuing. I am in the middle of proposing a 3 year Technology Plan for our district. I know the time my committee and I have spent working on this has been informative and will change how we go about the business of creating 21st Century Citizens. The consequences are immense, the conversation needs to happen, the disruptive push needs to move our school walls and our library media center walls.

MLTI Student Conference 2009

Please check out the results to our survey questions here http://docs.google.com/View?id=djtmqgv_57cm2k2bf4

A few months ago, I along with Kern Kelley, Alice Barr, and Sarah Sutter, were asked to be part of a presentation to 800 MLTI students at a student conference on the University of Maine campus. After several sessions on SKYPE and planning with conference organizer Jim Moulton, the 5 of us, were going to present to an auditorium of 800 participants in an interactive fashion. How can 800 participants interact with the presentation? With Google online tools! Wait a minute! I know we have a hard time when we get 20 students in a classroom using a wireless access point in one room, we freeze up, have slow speeds getting to a website, but with 800, oh my!
Jim assured us that the University would get their best thinkers and doers working on this. Dr. Bruce Seegee and the fine engineers from CISCO took on this mission and would actually join us in the session to watch the bandwidth use and troubleshoot if necessary. This would be a perfect opportunity for all the conference participants to observe what happens behind the scenes to make things work at their schools and for all to see that when using technology we always have a backup plan.
Our presentation was the final session at the end of a very busy and productive day. Our session was titled (http://archives.mainelearns.org/studentconference/)

Block 3 - Only Google is big enough - Everyone, all together, one room, one session!

o In 2009 Good Questions are More Powerful Than Good Answers - Google Super Session (Alice Barr - Yarmouth High School; Kern Kelley - MSAD #48; Cheryl Oakes - Wells Ogunquit CSD; Sarah Sutter - Wiscasset High School)Maine's own team of Google certified educators will be leading the whole gang through a series of activities that will demonstrate the power of the Google Toolset. Sure, we all use Google, but wait till you see what you can do when you understand how to leverage Google's power to go beyond getting answers and learn how to use Google to ask your own thoughtful questions of people in your class, in your school, around your state, or even around the world!

As part of the preparation, the five of us, created a series of questions in a Google Form, and sent the questions out to our worldwide networks, in 10 days we collected information from all our personal networks, and after some clamoring this information is published for all to share and use. Thank you to all who participated in our survey. We hope you will create a survey that we can participate in at some point in the future.

Why are Vernal Pools so Important to Our Environment?

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

My favorite school project cross posted at techlearning.com

Staying in Character for Sarah Brynes
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My favorite project is gearing up. How can it be my favorite, it is only the second time doing this with students? Well, the energy the project created and sustained, the comments from students, and the story all rolled into one, it is my favorite project. There is so much crammed into this project! There is something for everyone, including students, teachers, administrators, parents and students!

You can follow these guidelines and create your own social network project with any book you are using with your students. A NING, is a great social network to use with students ages 13 and older. NING is a very supportive site, and if the project is for an educational institution the NING folks will remove the ads from your ning site. All you need to do is email them, tell them your NING URL, say you are a school and ask for the ads to be removed.
The full directions are at posted here. Please try this out. We have been very happy for years with our free Ning service. The whole process took me 1 minute to fill out the form, and then wait 2 days for the ads to disappear. It couldn't be easier!

The eighth grade teachers, I am working with, chose a book for all 120 students to read. Part of the writing the students are asked to do is about writing in character. So, for this book, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, all the students read, choose a character they want to be, create a page in the Ning site and then blog, answer questions, create an avatar all in character. The name we chose for the Ning is, Staying in Character for Sarah Brynes. We hope by adding this piece of technology the students will feel free to write with purpose, share with purpose and think outside of themselves. By adding this work to a Ning, we create a social network where students can work while in class and continue conversations outside of the school day.

When our students join the ning they must fill in a profile with required questions. Sometimes this part takes a lot of thinking since we are asking them to respond in character immediately. This sets the stage as they answer questions about their zodiac sign, their moods, who they would like to meet, etc. Here is my profile:
About Me: Ms. Lemry Moods:empathic, supportive, futurist Who Would I like to meet?Eleanor Roosevelt Interests: gardens Zodiac Sign: Gemini Describe your life-changing moment and how it changed you. My life changing moment each year, is when I meet students who have grown another year older. I love hearing student ideas about school, technology, the future. I think it best when I attend 8th grade and 12th grade graduations and see what wonderful young people you have all become. Once the students get past the profile page, they head off and create an avatar of their character. We use this free avatar service. This is always fun for our students to compare their avatar with all the other Ms. Lemry's and avatars their peers have of the same characters in the book. After their avatar is posted they begin answering 3 prompts left by their teachers. The students/characters are also encouraged to comment to the other characters at they populate the Ning and as they answer the prompts.

When we started this project last school year in May, we had 4 weeks of school left, we will be in a similar position this year. I was sure that the students would start out in character, but soon would revert to themselves and comment about their dances, weekends, and their own 8th grade graduation. However, that did not come to pass. The students stayed in character for the entire project. The students had very thoughtful comments and blog responses.

This year I hope that the author, Chris Crutcher will check out the Ning and see how he has positively affected the students in our school. After all, by posting in our Ning we will have a wider audience. Check out Chris Crutcher's myspace. Our Ning will have opening day June 6, 2009. You can check out the main page from last year for an idea about what this looks like http://gr8litourspace.ning.com/ What is your latest book project?

cross posted at TechLearning.com

This is the perfect letter that we are all waiting for. So, we are sharing this with all of you who are intrepid technology users, early adopters, keep trying things, keep taking risks.

Dear Mr. P and Mrs. O,

I just wanted to let you both know how impressed I am re: the Ning Our Space site and the Our Tube site. Ted was very anxious to share his site with me.
The poetry video was a wonderful surprise, I watched many of the students and really was surprised @ the level of confidence some of the students showed.
I also think that this is a wonderfully safe way to introduce our children to Social Networking sites.

Thank you for allowing them this opportunity and for communicating this project so well through my child.

Have a great vacation week,


a parent



This was the best way to begin my spring vacation and will provide the motivation to keep using these new Web 2.0 tools with our students.



If you have followed my blog entries this entry is a follow-up to my Meet a 21st Century Learning, a Prosumer, a Student! post.



As teachers, we create projects, invest our time and our students' time in the projects which really are about the process of learning and demonstrating new skills. The project that our 8th grade language arts teachers and students have worked on all year, OurSpace, is about to come to an end. If you have followed my posts I apologize for this quick summary. We created a ning, kept it private-or a walled garden, as a place for our students to live in a social network where we demonstrate cyber-netiquette, appropriate chat, non-cyberbullying, copyright, creative commons with photos and music and finally uploading of a video poetry project. There is one more piece to this year long project, the piece that started the project, a pilot-an idea that blossomed to this full fledged project, one year ago this month. Next week, the teachers and students begin working in the Ning and take on a character in the book Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher and actually live out the book through a series of descriptions, dialogues and predictions. It is a clever project enhanced by the social networking tools of the day.Since the projects are in a walled garden I captured a page from last year and published it here for you to view. (https://sites.google.com/site/wjhsartifact/)

Often times we rely on our students to 'promote' what we are experiencing in our classes. In theory that is a practice we would like to continue, however, in our busy times we need to be explicit about how that happens. In our case, a note when home to all parents explaining that the students' culminating poetry video project would be published on their web (ning) page. The projects are a glimpse into what is happening in our classes, a glimpse into what is happening in a teen's life, and a glimpse into how each individual student added to the quality and intensity of the grade level poetry project. When we make our classrooms transparent, we take a risk. This is what we must model for our students, the risk is part of the learning and the experience. A note from a parent is worth the risk. Listening to several students who personally thanked me at the end of multiple classes is worth the risk, the student who began her own ning site is worth the risk.



I must thank our school community for taking a risk using Web 2.0 21st Century Tools to enhance literacy. I must thank our principal who champions the use of technology and takes a risk every day promoting these different tools. Of course the teachers are very high on my list as they struggle, with me, through the newness of the landscape. The students did all the work, so a huge thank you to them for paving the way for newer projects to continue in years to come. These skills will keep them on the cutting edge of our ever changing work and career environments. Finally, our parents, I must thank them for attending the Internet Safety evenings, listening and trying out new challenges with their very savvy Internet students, keeping up with the new paths of this digital world. A huge thanks to a parent who found the time to write a note expressing what many parents are thinking and experiencing as they take this digital journey with their students. This makes it all worth the risk.

Oh, this stirred things up!

After reading David Warlick's blog post , which was a response to Wes Fryer's blog post, and having left a comment for David, I had to post myself and continue the conversation!

David and Wes were both blogging about Solutions for Dropout Prevention and the recent Dropout Prevention Summit that Wes attended in Oklahoma.I recommend these blog posts as great reading and fodder for an even greater conversation. Include the students in this conversation.

When I put myself in the place of a student in college, high school, middle school and elementary school, what are my eyes be seeing? A time to be f2f with my people. A time to text about what happened last night. A time to share a youtube. A time to wonder about some of the usefulness of some assignments. When I listen to what excites our students what am I listening to? My professor emailed me some really constructive comments for my essay. She really used the technology. I learned how to use the copy machine to scan a document to my email!(A really useful skill for this time!IMHO)Thanks for teaching us how to blog on a ning, it is the coolest part of my day, I can't believe I am in school when I am on my blog! We are playing a math game and giving feedback to the developers!
Have you seen such things in your school? Have you heard such things in your school? What can make the difference?