On Monday, our ABC Movie Collaboration went hot on the web. Kevin and I were both excited to be able to click on our title and move to our project page. Kudos to Kevin for its great html look. It’s still a cyber mystery to me as to how you can create something like that. I’m glad Kevin has the tech magic! By the end of the day I couldn’t tell how many participants we had and what anyone thought about our work. But I am just so excited to be involved in this conference in its second year of existence. I like the pioneering feel to it. Kevin did get the number of hits to our page and that was good. From my own place as a participant in this conference, it’s a bit daunting to participate. It takes time to move through a workshop and leave something or try something. Kevin is great a suggesting new experiments and I usually jump to try them out. Seedlings, located on Classroom 2.0 was an easy community to join. I love that site to begin with and am using it with some of my online communities: my student teacher, our site’s tech team and summer institute ’07.

I am finding though, it is sometimes hard to follow video casts and podcasts when the person presenting is talking on and on just off the top of the head. I think you need to be clear about what you want to present. Someone like David Warlick has this medium down. He seems like he’s written his piece and can share it in a casual manner. I think writing is still critical. I know it takes me a long time to write a digital story. The tech falls into place faster and better when the writing is focused and shaped.

Anyway, I’m glad that we can keep clicking back to the conference even when it’s over.

I listened to the fireside chat yesterday with my mic ready to go, but I didn’t feel comfortable. I think that area needs more work. Most of the time was given to the keynotes and not much time was left for the workshop presenters. But like the whole event, it’s very exciting to participant in something on the cutting edge, something sexy.

I’m glad to see that VoiceThread is getting a lot of notice. I had a question and Ben got back to me immediately.

Gearing up for K12 Online Conference

Bonnie and I are honored to be sharing your stories with the world via the K12 Online Conference and we are collaboratively working on a presentation of the ABC adventure that will show other people who to embark on the the kind of journey that we undertook and then we are going to have folks take part in a smaller scale ABC project using VoiceThread. I just found out today that our ABC presentation will take place on Monday October 22, so we hope you check it out. What? You say you need more info about the conference (which is completely online and involves downloading presentations, online chats and self-directed activities)? Here you go: The K12 Online Conference Weblog The K12 Online Conference Schedule More to come in the next few weeks, including my podcast presentation, Bonnie’s new video overview of the project and much more! Kevin

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  This computer keeps me very connected to life back home: to upcoming projects and the unfinished elements demanding attention.  Somehow the TO DO list grows smaller and then larger.  I finish one digital piece and then there’s another demanding attention.  So here in Israel I’ve been working on one that will become a Voicethread if all goes well.  I’ve been writing drafts, pieces of drafts. a few sentences, then walking away, closing the document, doing something else, returning, writing more, moving to another draft and now I’m almost satisfied with the bulk of the body and working on its conclusion.  I see visuals in my head, I now I have to find the real photos to use.

My digital process is becoming comfortable, knowable.  It’s so powerful to reflect.  And Kevin is out there, ready to complete this project as well.  He’s calling…get it done, get it done.

O KKKKKKAYYYYYYY!

There’s always the next one.  Fantastic!  I spent the weekend working on my big DS piece for our renewal and making time for Tuvia.  After my conversation with Kevin yesterday I had a new piece to create as I began the burning of DVD’s for all the new TC’s from SI’07.  This morning I spoke with Tom and Dana at BOCES and moved the conference for November on and it was good.

I invited a small group of our ABC collaborators to share their reflections on the project and wow, three out of four responded immediately, feeling honored to be asked.  I was blown away.  Kevin too, I’ll bet.

And began my “how it all began” piece.  I have a long first draft, with everything and more that I will soon cut away.  More is better right now. My juices are flowing again.  So , do I take my big computer or small one to Israel?  What do you think?  I love having the choice.

Enough for now.  I’ll be back.

So what distinguishes obsessions? I have this obsession for everything Apple and then I have another for an online jigsaw puzzle site. So let’s take a look at the jigsaw puzzle  first. As a kid, I loved jigsaw puzzles and I was very good at constructing them: patient and observant. I loved it when I worked alone, or with partners who were as serious as I was, like my mom.

I refused to look at the picture on the box which was clearly cheating! As I got older I took on larger and more complex puzzles and this passion continued even as an adult.  I found great artistic puzzle copies that I mounted and hung on my apartment walls. But as  I moved to cross stitch creations, writing and playing guitar, my hands had no time for puzzles.  But recently, Leora, Tuvia’s granddaughter turned me on to the jigzone.com and my childhood passion/obsession returned in spades. Jigzone offers an array of puzzles and you compete with the clock and that adds a new dimension, one that I have loved until now, after hours of puzzling it’s taking its toll and wearing thin. It’s just not the same and sitting with a box of pieces, at a card table, just not the same.

As for my passion with the computer, passion here, more than obsession. It’s about my growth in a very creative endeavor, right on the cutting edge. Recently,  I have been stalling to create some movies on Jumpcut as part of my collaboration with Kevin  and last night and tonight my guilty conscience cried out: TAKE THE PLUNGE, ALREADY!

I did, and it was good. Okay, not too hard, just time consuming as usual to experiment a bit.

Now I’m waiting to hear from Kevin, but yet again, a challenge that I am beginning to find my own way through and around. YES!

I LOVE THE WEB!

All our letters have been completed so I am free of T.  Barbara sent in her piece and a fresh voice has been added to our group.  So, where do we go from here?  I can’t wait to follow Kevin’s lead.  I think I was dreaming about this last night. Jumpcut visions appeared.  Timelines, voices, music… I am insane!

I’ve been writing this one for a few weeks and really had it kick in when I was away in China, early in the morning. Back home now, feeling pressure to finish this piece for Kevin’s ABC movie project and the coming of my DS course beginning ahhh, this week, I am writing up my process, step by step for the course. I just completed the voiceover and am ready to lay out the photos. I have the music on already from Fame, a piece I used when I created a slideshow piece for my students. I didn’t have text then so I’m not sure I will keep the music. It would be cooler to use a Garageband track so I can show the class.

As usual, as I created the VO slowly, one short segment at a time, I revised the text.

I want to be able to clean up the vo pops etc. How? in Garageband?

Back to the piece…

Here’s the text:

K is for KEY!

A new draft:
It’s 3AM here in Shanghai and I am tormented, forced  out of bed to try again at yet another draft of K is for Key.
K is still for the key to my classroom, but digging down deeper, the key to my classroom is my life on the high school stage directing plays.
After just two years of teaching I remember my principal, Joe Wolfe, knocking on my first classroom door, gently urging me to take over the drama program and direct the school plays. He was desperate for a teacher to take charge of the theater program.
But I didn’t have a theater degree, never directed before, unless you count a few camp shows.   Sure, my best friend Steven was a trained director and the music teacher, Bob Oheme was dying for a partner to direct a spring musical. And I loved plays reading them, attending performances and after all I did teach English.   So why not?  I was single and ready for adventure with kids outside the confines of the classroom and first and foremost a learner.
Little did I know that The Tavern would lead to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, to at least one play each year for the next 30 years. How could I know then that what I loved about working with kids in the classroom would mirror what I loved about working with them on the stage.  In fact, the freedom of creativity on stage allowed for more freedom in my classroom, after all just the mere association with the stage, put me in my own special category with the rest of the school community, oh noise in her classroom, that’s okay, she’s the drama teacher.
On stage we used theater games to get the cast up and moving and vulnerable, open to reawaken their spontaneity, that after the 7th grade starts to be hidden away.
And before tackling the script, came the creation of a cast community through breaking down the barriers of grade, the size of a part and the pecking order of experience. I couldn’t keep that same process from logically seeping into my classroom. New students arrived in the fall, and the community began.  And the role of director as facilitator and collaborator with the cast and play team also fit with the way I saw myself in the classroom. Moving from center stage to the sidelines was liberating. I could be a learner right along with my students.
The stage informed my classroom, my classroom informed my work on the stage. And who better to inspire me, than William Shakespeare, throwing down the gantlet.  Once I broke through my own intimidation and directed  his Midsummer Night’s  Dream on stage, my classroom work with his plays felt more authentic.
Much Ado, followed Midsummer, then Twelfth Night and a few years later, Romeo and Juliet. My theater work in classroom became as action oriented as my stage process. Soon all 8th graders were creating and performing original monologues instead of the usual final exam.
Here, in China, away from my reality, the power of reflection is  sharp.  What a wonderful discovery I just made about the key to my own teaching life.  K is for Key!

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/WpMtVvv41eE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

  I wasn’t planning to return to my classroom.  I have China to plan for, last minute things to take care of, but dedicated to the ABC movie, I have K now in the back of my mind.  So…K…key (inspired by Tuvia)…key…unlocking…minds…teaching….me…And so I raced for my backup photo disks and started scrolling for inspiration.  It didn’t take long…I actually began documenting my teaching life when I began with the writing project and it was easy to hit the GOLD!

The key for me, the key for me the person, me the teacher…play…drama…creating a place of comfort…I have downloaded the most wonderful photos that reflect what I most cherished about teaching…the pure joy of participating with kids coming out of themselves…their surprise and my applause, what a perfect combination…and this is really the text for my K piece…

WOW!

I am up early, compelled to work on my X is for…piece.  It actually forced me out of bed.  And I’m moving pieces around in my Imovie software and realize that these animation pieces are not photos and can’t be manipulated.  I start an email to Kevin, complaining about the software and I’m ready to switch everything to Final Cut Express, the better software, but I know that the course I’m teaching will only have Imovie for the students.

As I’m writing the email, I realize that if the animation pieces are JPEGs I can probably import them into Iphoto and then work on them in Imovie because all the Ilife applications work together and YES, it’s true.  Just the process of writing to Kevin, to a particular person, forced my process.  Writing is amazing for thinking.

Bonnie