Naperville Reads 2013

Posted on March 24, 2013 by jmika

I’m a huge fan of Naperville Reads. The collaboration between Anderson’s Booksellers, District 203 & 204, and the Naperville Public Library has brought some amazing authors to our community. The chance to listen and learn from these talented individuals has proved inspirational for our students, teachers, and parents.

The 2013 selection of R.J. Palacio and her debut novel, Wonder, was an exciting announcement! Many classes were already reading this story since it was on our district Battle of the Books list, but Naperville Reads brought it to a whole new level. Myriad classroom teachers choose to read aloud and had rich discussions surrounding Auggie’s experiences.

A national movement behind the book inspired the Choose Kind web site encouraging others to pledge kindness. In order to welcome the author to our district, the committee suggested we create a poster and have students/teachers sign a “choose kind” certificate. This is where our story diverges.

I don’t know about you, but signing a sheet of paper and making another poster seemed like an empty promise and a disposable thank you. This book speaks to your core. This character wants what everyone wants, acceptance. Part of my drive could be all the similarities I could draw from my brother’s experiences with Down Syndrome and the conversations we’ve had about his struggle to fit in. I felt we could do more.

I believe in the Choose Kind pledge and wanted our students to sign up, but I needed a more powerful and lasting way for them to remember and reflect on what kindness really means. Inspired by the work of Robert Fogarty and the countless others who’ve previously demonstrated the power of photography + words, I finally had my method. Students would write down their pledge and we would document it visually. Thus began our Naperville Reads 2013: Choose Kind video pledge:

ChooseKind from Josh Mika on Vimeo.

*Next installment I’ll share how I made this happen and how you too can do this at your school.

School Librarians, “Okay, how do I step up?”

Posted on May 17, 2012 by jmika

It’s easy to call for teacher librarian reform, but not as easy to give colleagues the tools to remedy. Many progressives call for change but fall short of this crucial transformative step. I want to make this happen and I thought my first step in demonstrating this change might be to promote my Apple Distinguished Educator work.

During the summer of 2011 I teamed with four other amazing educators who all believed that teachers and students needed online, digital research support. We created an electronic booklet (ePub) to support this endeavor and provide best practice guidance along the way. I encourage you to utilize this resource and take the lesson plans and guidance towards digital research into your K-12 district.

There are many more ways to support and engage learners as a teacher librarian. I will continue to blog about those. In the meantime, however, I thought it helpful to promote/share/distribute the work I collaborated on towards this goal with my ADE team. Please download the free activities and guides and begin implementing these as soon as you can!

School Librarians, Step Up!

Posted on April 26, 2012 by jmika

It’s been about three years since I’ve written a blog post on my site, but a recent request from a colleague prompted a thoughtful response that I reposted below. The role of school librarians/media specialist, or any title of the like, has changed. About the time I created this blog and posted regularly was when I started developing this blended role. After sharing my thoughts with my Apple Distinguished Educator colleagues today, I realized I needed to document my thoughts, make it more open, and ellicit feedback from the community. Below are my thoughts:

“I see the librarian/media specialist going around to these resource areas and working with students in research, etc. as well as being a resource for teachers.” –Taken from April email request for clarification on school librarians’ role in today’s schools.

It’s difficult to ignore the tumultuous future of the print industry and I whole heartedly agree that the role of school librarians/media specialists are in flux. In my opinion, the classic image of the librarian should not exist in today’s schools. I actually cringed when a colleague of mine said she aspired to be the lady behind the counter who stamped the due date. That’s so not our job.

In attempt to answer your overarching question about the future of libraries I’ve outlined what I strive to do in my job as the LRC Director in a K-5 elementary school. I’m not about to claim this is “the way” the job should perform, especially on a listerv with such a renowned group of progressive educators! It is, however, a collection of my personal insights supported by research and modeling from other progressives in the field.

I believe school librarians should be:

Collaborative Teacher - you are a teacher, first and foremost. Teaming and/or co-teaching with the classroom teacher is more effective to infuse digital literacy and information fluency into curriculum than teaching weekly lessons in isolation. ”School librarians have to know and understand CCS and not stay back and wait to be asked to help or participate. They have to be assertive and let teachers and administrators know what they can do to help teachers work through the standards. They need to make sure that they are seen as teachers and educators not just book purveyors” (Kramer, 2011, ¶ 13).
Media Specialist - students need guidance navigating information in the digital age and today’s librarian specializes in information (Long, 2009). Students require the tools to find information effectively and efficiently using print and digital media, discern credible information, and cite their sources. ”Information fluency skills and strategies are an integral part of learning in any subject area. They can be most effectively taught by the librarian in collaboration with the classroom teacher, so that students are using these skills to learn essential content” (New York City Department of Education, 2010, p. 1).
Technology Integration Specialist – One common theme emerges from Dewey’s Democracy and Education, Costa and Kallick’s Habits of the Mind, Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the Common Core State Standards, and myriad other credible sources: “…students need to leave school equipped with a set of capacities and skills for functioning effectively in a complex world” (Caine & Caine, 2011, p. 40). Good instructional strategies remain the base, but with the constant evolution of technology educators need support adopting new hardware/software and determining best practice when integrating.
Instructional Coach - you should be a master of the curriculum and support teachers with instruction. Lets be honest, standalone instructional coach positions are awkward for the classroom teacher (e.g., defensive educator commonly thinks, “Why do I need coaching?”). Teachers will naturally gravitate to an effective school librarian seeking resources. This is an easy opening to create those student-centered coaching opportunities! In order to coach and support instruction, modern school librarians should have solid knowledge of the curriculum. This is critical in the 4/5 of our nation following the Common Core State Standards. ”Librarians need to be the gurus of CCS. They need to know the CCS inside out” (Kramer, 2011, ¶ 14).

The best will weave these roles seamlessly in what they do…but I guess you could say that about any educator.

Stepping down from the soap box,

Josh Mika
LRC Director
Beebe Elementary
ADE, Class of 2011

P.S. Doesn’t matter what you call the position (some educators get bent out of shape if you call them a librarian), it’s more about the right work for the students, staff, and school community.

Works Cited:

Caine, R. N., & Caine, G. (2011). Natural learning for a connected world: education, technology, and the human brain. New York: Teachers College.

Kramer, P. (2011, September/October). Common core and school librarians. School Library Monthly. Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http://www.schoollibrarymonthly.com/articles/Kramer2011-v28n1p8.html

Long, C. (2009, October/November). Beyond the stacks: the school librarian in the digital age. NEA Today, 26.

New York City School Library System. (2010, Fall). Information Fluency Continuum: Benchmark Skills for Grades K-12 Assessments (New York, New York City Department of Education, Office of Library Services). Retrieved December 29, 2011, from http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/27A1E84E-65EB-4A54-80DF-51E28D34BF4F/0/InformationFluencyContinuum.pdf

Audiobooks Made Easy

Posted on January 3, 2009 by jmika

Last school year, I told our Student Council we’d be working on getting iPod Shuffles for the LRC to checkout with our minimal audiobook collection. However, the lack of LCD screen to guide a reader is as irritating as the file format issues (an audiobook in iTunes needs to be an .m4b file).

Other schools in my district are using the Creative Zen and other MP3 players which have a bookmarking feature. While I am interested in this, I have already invested lots of time and money getting audiobooks onto iTunes and synced up with our iPod Classics. Unfortunately, the remaining host of audiobooks on CD have sat in a bag waiting for “time” (I don’t have) to change them over.

An early December post from CNet, however, gave me new hope! Taking an audiobook from CD to iPod is now quite easy with iTunes 8. Using their photo guidance I practiced with personal copies of Shel Silverstein audio CDs that came with books and I was up and running in minutes! As a result, my wife transferred all of my daughter’s audiobook CDs onto her old iPod Mini this morning.

iTunes/iPod can Bookmark…sort of

While the bookmarking feature is useful and one Apple should integrate, there are many benefits to using audiobooks with iTunes:

Audiobooks are automatically bookmarked: if you stop an audiobook in the middle and play something else, then go back to the audiobook, it will start playing where you left off – even after resynchronizing your iPod.
The main menu has a direct Audiobooks entry.
You can play audiobooks faster or slower than normal speed.
Audiobooks can have chapter stops within them.
Audiobooks are automatically skipped during all music shuffle.

(These ideas and direct quotes taken from Ed’s Tech Tips)

Recommendations

Regardless of what route you take, I think the following are useful ideas:

IF you’re using an MP3 player with a simple LCD screen, it can be helpful to label your tracks with information about the book: title acronym, series number (if applicable), chapter number, and chapter title/description (e.g. Ranger’s Apprentice, Book One: The Ruins of Gorland by John Flanagan = RA_bk1-ch00-Prologue).
If you’re using a video capable MP3 player, I’d add “artwork” for the cover of the book.
If a chapter is several tracks long, you might want to combine the tracks into one file. This requires another program to manage, but in iTunes, you can highlight the tracks then choose Advanced menu → Join Tracks

Enjoy!

Share Music

Posted on October 26, 2008 by jmika

I completely miss making mix tapes for people, so I have been ecstatic to find that there are sites which allow you to draw from existing music and mix it like I used to back in the 80s & 90s. The multimedia capabilities of today make me wonder what mixed media I would give a friend or girlfriend if I were in high school today?

Unfortunately, sites that allow such online compilations try to keep Kosher with copyright laws, but at the same time…can’t. An exciting site called Muxtape halted service (lengthy explanation on the front page of the site) due to pressure from the recording industry. I’m hopeful MixWit won’t fall to the same, but after looking for popular artists and creating my own mix (below), you’ll see that copyrighted music is very easy to find and add.

I’m not proud of this effort in it’s ease to find and compile major label artists, rather, I see it as yet another message to the music industry. Times have been a changin’ and we need to work together to create a way that this can exist and artists can be paid for their work. Muxtape failed in that, but maybe MixWit can succeed?

Can a one year-old use an iPhone?

Posted on September 13, 2008 by jmika

Yes.

I knew I couldn’t be the first one to capture this, but the following video might be one of the first to capture a one year-old (dark hair) teaching a two year-old (blond) how to use the iPhone/iPod Touch photography feature. You’ll notice the blond watching the younger, dark haired child scroll, double tap, and drag pictures around the simple touch screen. By the end of the video the blond tries applying the skills she’s learned, only to conflict with the other user.

I suppose what intrigues me so was witnessing a one year-old, who just learned to walk and has limited verbal skills, use an expensive piece of technology. If nothing else, this and other videos available on You Tube (this video is private, sorry) demonstrate how intuitive Apple’s touch screen is. However, the other videos I’ve viewed only demonstrate a child interacting with the iPhone/iPod Touch alone or with their parents. In this video we witness a child learning from another child.

I’m not well read on how children learn from each other, but after witnessing this teachable moment, I’m intrigued. Children often mimic what others say or do. As an experience educator, I have witnessed students teaching other students how to use technology quite often. Inevitably this same situation would occur when I would take our class to the computer lab to create PowerPoint, PhotoStories, or MovieMaker products. One student might ask another how they were able to create an effect or they would simply watch and mirror what a neighbor has done.

Confident teachers who are cognizant of this, welcome the student leader and use them to help the class. Not only does this recognize their strengths, but it increases their self-esteem and confidence at the same time helping the class progress.

It also reminds me of a TED Talk I watched recently. During Sugata Mitra’s 2007 presentation, “Can kids teach themselves?“, he places automated, internet kiosks in various towns around India where students haven’t surfed the internet before. He found that without English language skills, inexperience with technology, and only using trial and error or peer teaching techniques, students learned to surf the web effectively. Through his “hole in the wall” experiments, his hidden videos found that students picked up basic English (typically web browsing words) and began teaching each other in groups.

The other day my principal called me down explaining how she wanted to do something on our district portal, but didn’t know how. After she finished explaining the ideal, she asked if I knew how to make that happen. I simply replied, “Not yet, but if I can borrow your computer, I can try.” My curiosity, the challenge of the task, and my background of experience using a variety of user interfaces helped me to reason through the process. A few minutes later I explained to her how I had accomplished the idea she voiced. “I don’t understand how, Josh. You just get it!” she exclaimed.

Honestly, I’m just like the blond. I’ve had experience with technology since my extreme youth. I watch and learn, try…fail…try…fail…try…succeed, and consider how other pieces of technology I’ve used might help me reason through the current problem. Maybe that’s all you need?

iPods in Education Video Launches

Posted on July 28, 2008 by jmika

When I began working with iPods at my school, I had little knowledge and many people helped me along the way. After the presentation this May, I wanted to give back. It’s taken three months and hours of work to fine tune my production. Most of my time was working diligently to follow copyright guidelines and be a model for other educators. Unfortunately, my interactions with Apple were less than productive (see timeline below).

Regardless of this rough patch, I feel confident that this video will inspire others to the possibilities of using an iPod Classic in education. Please feel free to comment and stop by the iPodject Wiki (currently under construction currently) to expand the collective knowledge on how iPods are bridging the gap between school and home.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by jmika

The iPods in Education video by Josh Mika is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Copyright Timeline:

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May 2008 – My NEF Breakfast presentation was composed of student video, student presentations, and inspirational PowerPoint put to last 1:40 of Vanessa Carlton’s Home (permission from Universal Studios granted for one time use only).

Early June 2008 – Reworking and expansion of the inspirational portion begins. Two weeks of searching for copyright friendly music yields nothing viable. Eventually a piece is found off of the open source page of the Internet Archive. I wrote the artist and was granted permission for this educational video.

Late June 2008 – Classes start up again and progress on the video slows. I refer to Apple’s Legal page and follow their guidelines on copyright and trademarks. I then asked the musician and my district public relations department to look over and critique my production using a private wiki.

After trying just about every email available at the Apple Legal page and only getting automated responses, I call Apple Corporate and describe my frustrations. The switchboard operator put me in contact with Sue Carroll (Marketing & IP Legal). Our initial interaction on June 26th (phone tag ->voicemail ->emails) are positive. She promises me that direct my “…request to the appropriate teams at Apple for their review” (Carroll, 26 June 2008).

Early July 2008 – Classes continue and I near my comprehensive exams (don’t pass ‘em, don’t continue with the doctorate). My lead with Sue Carroll has led nowhere. I email her once(7/5) and call her twice more (7/1 & 7/9). We finally connect late on July 1^st. During this conversation she again promises to pass me onto the proper departments and also says she will email me with Apple’s response. While she cannot give me a “blanket approval”, she says she will put this noncommittal response in writing.

Mid-July 2008 – I never hear from Sue Carroll after our July 1^st phone call and I don’t receive the email statement she promises. On July 12^th, I attempt one more email, complaining about the misplaced hope from her initial June 26^th promise. Without any help from Apple, a mutual decision is made to distance this production from my District and release it independently.

Late July 2008 – I finish my last required class and pick up my comprehensive exams. Two-thirds of the way through my son is born. I work nights in our hospital room to finish my comprehensive exams and finally get to spend time with my new family member.

July 28, 2008 – I’ve already reserved myself to the fact that I won’t be celebrating my birthday this year. I’m thankful for my wife’s healing, my daughter’s adjustment, and my healthy, six day old son. While this is enough of a present, after all this work, I thought I might give myself a present. Thankfully after a few minor adjustments, the video is ready for release this evening.

References
Carroll, Sue. “Re: RP3463.” E-mail to the author. 26 June 2008.

iPodject Successes & Future Video

Posted on June 21, 2008 by jmika

Second School Presentation – March 28, 2008
I haven’t had much time to blog since March because the end of the year was quite the whirlwind! After a few successes with a handful of teachers, I asked my principal for time to present the iPods to my staff again. This time I had more experience, practical examples, and a host of other ideas on how to use them. I also had the additional twenty 30GB iPod Classics a local Beebe family donated to the cause, bringing our total to 25. This completely changed the game now that each student could have their own iPod. I also presented for the second time without PowerPoint, using my private wiki Beyond4Walls. Several teachers were more interested and more receptive afterwards and I was happy to hear their ideas and support them in the classroom.

Web 2.0 – May 2, 2008
The following week I presented Web 2.0 to our district Library Resource Center (LRC) Directors and some of the technology department heads. As David Jakes said when he visited last summer’s doctorate technology class I took, Web 2.0 is not something he felt he could give us a grasp of in two to three hours. Unfortunately, I only had twenty minutes with the LRC Directors, and they walked away humbled. It probably didn’t help that i had decided to drink one of those Monster energy drinks for the first time, although it did help me to cover ground quickly! There were several requests for follow-up meetings discussing specific applications we could use in the LRC.

NEF Breakfast – May 8, 2008
The largest of the three presentations was my presentation on iPodject before the entire district at the annual Naperville Education Foundation (NEF) Breakfast! Two students and I worked through a three tier presentation: 1) video montage of interviews with staff and students using the iPods in their classrooms, 2) two students shared their personal projects and learning using iPods, and 3) an automated PowerPoint I made sharing other possibilities on how to use iPods in education. I’m happy to say that all three of these went well, but the last one inspired me to think that maybe I could use it to share our successes?

iPodject Video – Currently Testing
With that in mind, I spoke with the students who helped write the grant about releasing the last portion of my presentation (the automated PowerPoint) to TeacherTube or YouTube. I worked on this the last two weeks of school and the past three weeks of summer break. The most difficult part was not expanding upon the idea (I already know a variety of ways to use the iPod for educational purposes), it was following copyright rules! Originally the music I used was the last segment from Vanessa Carlton’s Home, which I wrote Universal Studios and asked permission for this one time use. I spent the first two weeks looking for copyright free and/or noncommercial music. Thankfully I found the works of John Holowach on the open source audio page from the Internet Archive. He was very receptive to my inquiry about using his music for an educational video about using iPods in education.

My second problem was taking an automated PowerPoint presentation and changing it into a video with high quality music. I tried several methods, including Window’s Media Encoder to make this transition, but none of the free or trial programs I used worked…well. Strangely enough, I found that the free site, authorStream, and it’s free companion software, authorPoint Lite, did the best job and could distribute my video through their site, send it to YouTube, and allow you to download it in iPod format all from the same place. Perfect!

At the moment, the video is privately uploaded and being reviewed by the musician, my district PR department, and Apple for copyright compliance. This has been the largest step thus far and slightly irksome, if you consider all the red tape it takes to reach that moment of self-publishing gratification. I was thinking of creating an additional wiki to publish some of the schools I found who do use iPods and encourage others to share/edit the list if they do too. Seems kinda like what Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod did with their video Did You Know? The link to their shifthappens wiki generated a lot of discussion in the educational community and is still impacting us today.

Who knows where this will go, but it’s a worthy discussion and one I would like to continue. If the video goes over well I’ve already asked John if I could use another one of his songs for a follow-up video. Here’s to hoping!

Visual Learning Company

Posted on March 21, 2008 by jmika

This is a big week for iPodject. On Friday, March 28^th, I’ll be presenting the iPods to my school for the second time. This time I’ll be backed by an additional twenty at our disposal, a bit more practical experience, and a plethora of educational examples. Using ideas collected from Learning in Hand, Apple, and my own collection of ideas, I hope to persuade more teachers to use the iPods in their classrooms.

From this perspective I welcomed Tony Vincent’s recent blog and podcast on iPod photo ideas. This collection of freebees (phenomenal choice to spur invention by demonstrating it) encapsulates the educational heart of what I’m trying to accomplish by using iPods in education. I commend you on this work and I will be happy to share my uses/creations as well. Sometimes I wish I had Tony’s job…learning about a subject you’re passionate about, helping other teachers and students, and creating content! Now that’s a good gig, people.

VLC's Digital Science Video Library My final component is one I just recently read about in Multimedia & Internet @ Schools. The Visual Learning Company recently launched the Digital Science Video Library. This collection of elementary and middle school science videos is one of the first formatted specifically for iPods. According to the representative Stephanie, customers can either purchase a VHS/DVD for $89 only usable in one player/classroom at a time, or for the same price you could have the video streaming from your school server and download content onto as many iPods as you want (via iTunes).

Whether I have one or twenty-five iPods, this is the choice to go with! Multimedia & Internet @ Schools (2008) reports that, “Teachers have the option to play the clips and full videos at individual computer workstations, project them to a larger screen, or sync them to an iPod”. The Visual Learning Company (2008) also notes that “each title includes a full show, 7-10 content clips, metadata for enhanced search capability, and a teacher’s guide”. With research I’ve noted in the drafts of my dissertation, Mayer (2001) suggests guidelines on students receiving multimedia instruction. In the area of video, he suggests “a shorter presentation primes the learner to select relevant information and organize it productively”. With this study in mind, it appears that shorter clips (like the ones offered through United Streaming and VLC’s Digital Science Video Library) are the way to go.

While the collection boasts H.264 format, the blogs and news updates I’ve read haven’t persuaded me that THIS format is all that it claims to be. I’m currently awaiting a sample which is being sent to my school, and I will update this entry as I find out more. The representatives were extremely helpful and had loads of information about their products and the new iPod features. As an additional educational selling point, I give the Visual Learning Company props for noting a top five reasons “why teach with iPods” at the bottom of their page. You had me at iPod…

Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Multimedia & Internet @ Schools. (2008, March 6). News & xtra features. Retrieved March 19, 2008,

from http://www.mmischools.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=13575

Visual Learning Company. (2008). Digital Science Video Library. In Visual Learning Company.

Retrieved March 19, 2008, from http://www.visuallearningco.com/ipod_video.htm

Flow, Learning, & Video Games

Posted on March 1, 2008 by jmika

During a recent class my professor brought up the works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the book Flow. While I only had the chance to read chapter three, I quickly agreed with the simplistic nature of flow, “joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. xi as cited in Smith and Wilhelm, 2002, p. 28). Many of his later works detail this “state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter” (p. 4).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi When we began to look at the concept of flow and how people learn, I realized the true engagement that was inherent with this state. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that more than anything else, men and women seek happiness (p. 1). They do not seek happiness through pleasure alone, rather through enjoyment. For “after an enjoyable event we know that we have changed, that our self has grown: in some respect, we have become more complex as a result of it” (p. 46). Whether through sports, reading, cooking, or a myriad of other activities, people can and do experience flow.

Could this enjoyment in learning be created in today’s classroom? Smith and Wilhelm investigate young men, literacy, and what gives them the flow experience in Reading Don’t Fix no Chevys. Near the end of chapter two, they discuss video games, sequencing of experiences, and flow. Think of the steps that go into creating a video game: conceptualization, developing, playing, sharing, and revising. Creating a video game has the same higher order thinking skills that many of our school seek today. Couldn’t creating a video game become a final project to apply or transfer learning? In some high schools and technical colleges it already has. Sample of Scratch Character and Programing Blocks

After presenting at ICE this year, Mother Mika told me that the conference was a buzz about Scratch. This simplified video game creation tool makes “programming like playing with Lego bricks“. To understand more, I suggest a short article from the Chronicle of Higher Learning or simply watch the video report. After a few minutes to download and go through a brief tutorial, I was creating a moving object. I stopped my progress and looked at the completed games others had done with the simple programming language. Amazing!

What does this have to do with iPods? I don’t want “creating a video game” to be one of the many things David Warlick, David Jakes, and Alan November say kids do outside of school. Mihaly says, “to improve life one must improve the quality of experience” (p. 44). Scratch has the possibility of making learning an enjoyable and truly a flow experience for many of our students. Playing Scratch reaffirmed the reality that our clientèle and world has changed and we need to adapt our instruction as well (see Did You Know and A Vision of Students Today).

At the end of our discussion my professor summarized the experience of flow as just the right balance of ability and challenge tempered with appropriate feedback (Thomas, 2008). Can educational use of video games create flow for our learners? Thanks to the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, I think so.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Enjoyment and the Quality of Life. Flow the psychology of optimal experience (pp. 43-70). New York: Harper & Row.

Smith, M. W., & Wilhelm, J. D. (2002). Reading don’t fix no Chevys literacy in the lives of young men. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Thomas, J., Dr. (2008, February 2). What is flow? Class discussion presented at Aurora University, Institute for Collaboration.