Art Room 161: Edscape 2012

Monday, October 15, 2012

Edscape Conference 2012 Recap

I attended my first Edscape conference yesterday which was put together by "the twitter principal" Eric Sheninger at New Milford High School in New Jersey and it was really a pleasure to be part of a conference that was focused specifically on innovation and creativity which incorporated so much classroom technology in meaningful ways.

The keynote speaker was Vicki Davis, the co-founder of Flat Classrooms, and I only managed to catch the end of her talk thanks to the nightmare that is the Cross-Bronx Expressway (even though I did leave at 6:20am) but luckily the talk was streamed on Ustream so I had a chance to see it thanks to technology. I did attend a number of sessions which were both informative and intimate including a session on Digital Storytelling by a Teq, a classroom technology support provider that ironically is a few towns over in Huntington Station, which was really right up my alley as a media arts teacher. I was also really impressed with Inanimate Alice which I learned about in Laura Fleming's session on Transmedia LearningWorlds, something I had never heard of previously but which relates directly to the classroom. I also had a chance to participate in a fun and educational Mystery Skype with Bill Krakower (along with Jerry Blumgarten and Paul Nagle virtually).

I ended the day by presenting my own workshop on global education and technology along with Robert Fish from the Japan Society in NY and we spoke about the Going Global project that we've been working on with students from Japan, Pakistan, and the US along with a few other global resources such as Skype in the Classroom and some of my other favorite classroom technology tools. I've been to a good deal of professional development conferences in my years so my goal is to come away with at least one real thing that I can actually put to use in class in each workshop and happily this conference exceeded expectations.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Edscape Conference 2012

Edscape Conference 2012- How to Go Global: Connecting and Motivating American, Japanese, & Pakistani Students Online Tim Needles October 13, 2012- New Milford High School

Since Fall 2011, my students and I have been participating in the Going Global Social Network run by the Japan Society which has connected my students to classrooms throughout the United States, Japan, and Pakistan. It has been particularly successful in creating connections across disciplines, sparking interest in world affairs, and engaging all students.

Going Global Projects:

What's My Sentence: An idea taken from Dan Pink's terrific book Drive modified for the classroom which asks students to write in one sentence what they accomplished 30 years from now.

It works both as a motivational tool and as an icebreaker in the Going Global project plus it's interesting to see the similarities and differences in students goals across cultures.

Favorite Foods: An icebreaker which asks students to share their favorite foods, recipes for those dishes, and expands to ask their favorite foods around holidays.

Everyone loves food so it's an easy introduction that can be approached from different angles depending on the class subject. I did it with my photography class as you can see above (most delicious project ever), the cultural differences are evident immediately as you can see in the comparison with the photo below.

What is Beauty: A project that asks students to think about what beauty means to them and create an image in any media then share it explaining what makes it beautiful.

The project was a success in that the work the class did was strong and they had a virtual audience to share and discuss it with which helped them understand what they were doing a bit better. It also gave a glimpse into some of the different values of the cultures as a whole as well as the individual students as you can see from the comparison with the photo below from a Japanese student.