Ramblings on Shelf-life and FB in the Afterlife

I have the attention span of a gnat until a thing grabs me and pulls me along with the gravitational force of the sun. Things capture my attention and I follow them like Alice through the rabbit hole until I realize I am lost in time and must escape before I become a permanent part of the matrix. On one such excursion I was following the growth of online freely available courses. I attended a webinar on the subject, browsed and clicked my way though the MIT open courseware offerings and something struck me. No, I wasn’t hit up the backside of the head by my dear neglected husband! It occurred to me that lectures have a shelf life as do videos or moments captured in any venue. Food for the brain may grow stale over time and we may become ill if we imbibe that rancid milk and honey. So what is the solution? I propose expiration dates for lectures. Just as with food or aspirin we all know the expiration day is vigilantly in favor of the short term usage but may still be good for a length of time thereafter. So too, information.

My other fleeting thought was just the pie-in-the-sky hope for the future when science(or religion establishes that our very existence is just like a nonlinear graphic organizer and that time is ever-present and not on a linear continuum. Non-the-less, I would like to suggest that social networking span the afterlife. It’s silly, really, to keep out our friends and family members simply because they no longer reside in physical form on the planet. Now that would truly make technology ubiquitous, although contact lists might become a bit unwieldy. Writing prompt: What are the pros and cons of expanding social networking to people in other dimensions?

What do you think about on rainy days?

This is just a portion of the twists and turns in my thought process. (Let’s not call it procrastination) It all started with a search to establish the best possible was to introduce division to 3rd graders. Still looking!

Mathcasts 500 Project from Math Playground

Tuesday evening with Women of Web 2, yielded the usual rich chat room conversation and engaging speaker content. Colleen King a math teacher/consultant and the host of Math Playground talked about the Mathcast 500 Project. Her tagline rings true for me, “When students become teachers, learning become inevitable.” The Mathcast concept makes full use of Voicethreads technology. User friendly, this web-based teaching tool can turn students into effective peer teachers. This new project promises to become a repository of student created resources. I did some experimenting today and my students seem to be very receptive to recoding their reflections about math activities. I did run into a technical glitch. In some cases the recording cut off after only several seconds so I wasn’t able to complete the project. Here is an example of what some students created to explain how they use Rocket Math. If Voicethreads can be this effective for math, just imagine the numerous other ways it could be used by students to reinforce and extend learning. Colleen’s Math Playground is deep and wide. I plan to return regularly for the latest math tools.

Kindergarteners Design Virtual Snowflakes

Yesterday I was particularly happy to receive my Kathy Schrock update and a link to the Make a Flake website. Georgia kindergarteners have been studying patterns. I have been trying to relate patterns to just about everything we do including our multicultural holiday study of Kwanzaa. Just discover the Ashanti symbols and the patterns in Kente cloth and you will see how the ‘talking cloth’ not only tells a story it beautifully illustrates patterning in the weave. Armed with my snowflake discovery, I proceeded to the computer lab, demonstrated how to use the virtual scissors and the students were off and running! In fact there was tremendous excitement in the lab. “Look at mine, Ms. Shields!” I heard in a pattern that repeated like a chorus in a familiar children’s song. They could barely contain their enthusiasm. It’s one thing to organize some blocks on a table but when students were able to clip and drag etching intricate designs in virtual paper, a new world opened up to them. I quickly posted a link to the snowflakes page from our school home page and informed the other kindergarten teachers. The link is also a portal to Build a Bear although the advertising is very low profile. In fact my kids didn’t even notice it…yet. Thanks again Kathy Schrock for calling my attention to a terrific example of a math extension activity.