Learning with Mr. Tully

One of the most valuable additions to my PLN over the last year has been Christopher Tully. Christopher Tully is a multimedia technology instructor at Middle Bucks Institute of Technology, adjunct professor, and trainer. By following his blog, Twitter feed, and seeing his presentations, I have learned so much about what it means to be an educator. I have learned strategies that have served me well in the classroom that I have been able to share with other educators.

These are a few of the gems I've gotten from him in the past year:

"Let students learn by failing." This is something that I am still processing and working through but I am learning that students can learn just as much from failure as they can from success.

Responsibility, time management and collaboration are important when using technology in the classroom. Using technology is about more than the tool itself. Teachers need to communicate clear expectations for appropriate use, set guidelines, and allow for collaboration with others to ensure that activities and projects run smoothly.

Career and technical education is so much more than most realize. Christopher Tully is a vocal advocate for career and technical education. Students in career and technical education are not academically challenged. They learn the same standards-required content as those in traditional educational settings but they are allowed to do it in a hands-on and project-based way. 

"Empower students to use technology. You'll never know what they do." Within every student, there is tons of creativity waiting to be unleashed. Giving them a tool plus the freedom to create with it can release that creativity and talents they may not have known they had.

"Teacher behavior impacts student achievement." Every student can remember a teacher that believed in them and helped them to achieve more than they imagined. It is those teachers that sincerely have the ability to change lives. A teacher's attitude, as well as their words, can have great impact on their students and shape how they view themselves as learners. 

Set higher expectations to maximize student potential. It is believed that demanding more from students is setting them up for failure. I disagree. I believe that when students are challenged, they rise to meet those expectation. Students are capable of more than they realize and with opportunities to prove themselves, they often will. 

Success for students should be doing their best work. In a day and age when we are driven by grades and test scores, the intrinsic motivation of learning can easily be lost. Instead, students need to be encouraged to put their best effort into everything they do.

One of my favorite talks he did was on creating engaged and motivated classrooms. I applied a lot of this when I was student teaching and it changed the way my students worked, the classroom environment, and my interaction with my students.

My First Day of School

This is lesson is a digital storytelling lesson for a first-grade class. For the assignment, students will create a digital story about their first day of school. As part of their pre-planning, the students will create story tables. They will draw several pictures and write the sentences that they want to put with their project. Prompts will be provided to the students to help their writing. For example: "Before school I felt...", "I thought my teacher would be..." The students will have two options when creating their story: they could narrate their story or they can type it. The students will use the online software ZooBurst to create their story. The goal of this project is to provide students with an opportunity to articulate their feelings about starting school and, hopefully, find common ground with their classmates. The student's final products will be shared with the class.

The model project for this lesson was created with help of elementary school students. At first, I was concerned that they would have trouble navigating the website but they quickly learned how to move objects around the page and add pages to create the book. Through the drawing tool, students are able to draw their own images; however, the students became very frustrated using the tool with the mouse. To implement this lesson in the future, I would have the students draw pictures beforehand or allow them to upload hand-drawn images. Creating the model lesson was manageable with two students but an aid would be needed to do a project of this size with an entire class. 

State Standards

This lesson meets the following Pennsylvania First Grade Standards:

AL 2 Demonstrate engagement and persistence

1 - Show persistence in ability to complete a variety of tasks, activities, projects and experiences

9.1 Production, Performance and Exhibition of Dance, Music, Theatre & Visual Arts

L -  Recognize color, shape, line, texture, size/relationship (proportion/ scale) and 

pattern (repetition) in visual art

PS 1 Develop Self-Concept

A - Is aware of self and one’s own preferences, strengths and challenges

C - Know and state independent thoughts and feelings

1.8 Research

A - Use a systematic process for the collection, processing and presentation of information

3.7 Technological devices

D - Use basic computer software

1.5 -Quality of Writing

-Progress through the stages of the writing process (e.g., prewriting, drafting, revising,

editing and publishing)

-Write clear and coherent sentences and 

paragraphs that develop a central idea

ISTE Standards

This lesson meets the following NETS∙S:

1b - Students create original works as a means of personal or group expression

2b - Students locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media

2c - Students evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks

5b - Students exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity

6b - Students select and use applications effectively and productively

Rubric:
The following rubric will be used to asses student work:

Here is a model story for this project

References:
This story is based on a true story by Alexander Johnson
Pictures were drawn by 8-year-olds Alexander Johnson & Danielle Whitley

This digital story was made with ZooBurst

NETS∙S were provided by ISTE

State Standards provided by PA Keys

iRig - Microphone for iPod, iPad and iPhone

My Digital Media Production and Storytelling class has been using the iPad for a majority of our media production this semester. One of the issues we ran into was producing quality audio. Then I discovered the iRig. It is an external microphone that can be used with an iPad, iPhone or iPod. The iRig can be plugged in and used with an existing app or used with VocaLive, AmpliTube, and iRig recorder. The iRig creates high-quality audio for narration and singing for a variety of apps. The iRig can be used as a handheld device or placed in a standard microphone stand. It features three sound settings that can capture soft voices or loud speeches making it ideal to use in a variety of settings. Last week one of my undergrads (who worked in film production) said, "The eye can accept bad images and the story will still come through but the ears cannot accept bad audio." Now audio will no longer prevent users from creating powerful stories with a mobile device. With the iRig, students can create audio and video stories on the go. 


The iRig mic can be purchased from the Apple Store

Natural Ability of Storytelling

Image by Gracieli Lisboa

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with one of my undergraduate students about media production (a little background: he worked in LA in film production). He said something I thought was really profound: that we all have a natural ability for visual storytelling. He said that we are capable of seeing a group of images and telling that they make a story. That we can all see moments and the natural story it creates. While I agree with that I think it's easier said than done. I can see a moment and see a story revolve around it but it can be hard to take tools, technological or not, and bring that moment to life or capture it in a photograph, an animation or video. I think that's part of the reason I don't delve into photography as much as I would like. Seeing a story and creating a story, breathing life into an idea and making it something that people can connect to, are two skills that I'm finding myself trying to merge because you can't have one without the other.