Will the real wolf spirit please step forward?

Bad news folks. The wolf creature is real. Here she is, howling at the moon with a night spirit on Halloween.

The wolf creature actually exists, or did on Halloween night, at least. She was my costume for The Portsmouth Halloween Parade. Instead of sketching a picture, I thought I'd post a shot of The Real Deal. I think the hairy legs in Bryan's drawing are much more menacing and I may work on that for next year, but as you can see, he did a great job depicting the beast.

Wolf Spirit Revealed

Clearly this is not nearly as impressive as the actual monster, but I tried to capture the fun attitude that the spirit had (as shown by the little smirk).  Well done!  I particularly enjoyed the dialogue between the two!

ECOMP 5004: Something wicked this way comes...just the beginning

From his tiny bed by the window, Lycaon heard the scratching at the closet door and knew it was time to face the inevitable. For a week, the creature had loped into his dreams, night after night, latched onto them with her fangs, and carried them into the realm of Nightmare. In his heart, he’d known she’d continue on until she reached his waking hours.

“Crrrrrrr,” went the door.

“Crrrrrrrrrr.”

And here she was.

In the moonlight he could see the beams on the closet bulge with each lunge, like the lungs of a wounded animal gasping for its last breathes.

Lycaon’s feet hit the warm, plush rug. Odd, he thought, that this cozy room, with his stuffed animals, "Toy Story" curtains and comforter-laden bed, might - no - did harbor a creature such as this.

In his mind’s eye he pictured her, half woman/half wolf, in her fur-trimmed coat - the delicate, feline skull, whiskers curled back around to her chin, a thick, white stole draping her human shoulders. It all belied the strength of her haunches, trimmed with razor-sharp claws, and the deathblow her fangs could render.

“Crrrrrrrr.” Another long scratch.

He heard the wood splinter.

Resigned to his fate, Lycaon padded across the room and reached for the door. Turning the knob, he could just make out a low rumbling. He wasn’t sure if it was a growl or a purr. The door was only just ajar when the light from her slanted yellow eyes cut the darkness. He could see her short pointy ears, standing erect, the white coat, open at the skirt, revealing the pale, white faces of dead – those she had last feasted upon – lining the hem just above her knee in a straight, expressionless line. Towering above him (as tall as his father, he thought) she gazed down. Her thin lips curled into a smile.

“You could have knocked,” Lycaon said dryly.

“Not part of my instincts,” she said, strutting from the closet and taking a seat on the edge of his bed. She crossed her furry, muscular legs, stretching her claws.

“Can I offer you a snack?” Lycaon lifted a tiny plate bearing a couple of leftover crackers drenched with peanut butter and held it out.

“No, thanks,” she purred. “I just ate,” and she gestured to one of the white faces in the row at her knee. As she did so, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror on the wall and gasped.

“What?” Lycaon asked.

She leapt up and strode directly to the glass.

“There’s two things wrong with this picture,” she sighed, more to herself then to the boy.

“One: I am not supposed to cast a reflection. Which is why I’m here seeking your help.” She turned now and looked him in the eye. She crinkled her pink nose, as if befuddled. She sniffed the air. Lycaon felt a bit awkward, so he asked a question with hopes it would divert her gaze.

“And the second?” he queried.

“Oh.” She turned back to the mirror and smoothed back the fur tufts protruding stiffly from her cheeks like a bed of nails. “I just licked my fur and I can’t do a thing with it.”

First impressions

I made my maiden voyage to Survey Monkey to create a quick quiz to help me gauge my students when they come back to school in the fall:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2JST762

Jon Stewart says education is no laughing matter

Here's a clip from The Daily Show. Jon Stewart interviews author Diane Ravitch about the state of schools and teachers today.

Reflection on completing the final project

Phew!

Well, maybe I should reflect a bit more...

Last year Rye Elementary students had the opportunity to not only join in a community service project to save a local lighthouse, but to learn about its history as well.  White Island Lighthouse and Lighthouse Kids added a new chapter to my local history curriculum that has caught the imaginations of my students and fostered more pride in their hometown.

The time to choose a final project for our Worldwide Web class coincided with the time I started working to create more opportunities for our school and this nonprofit to work together.  Hence, my project to build a new website for Lighthouse Kids was born. Here’s the finished product: http://www.lighthousekidsnh.org/

My other entries here have shed light on my goal and the process, but now that Weebly and I have finished the site, I can see why “Time” magazine rated it one of the 50 best of the year in 2007 after its debut.

A seal sunbathes on the boat winch at White Island.

Using its widget-style format, I was able to create pages with only a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements - such as images, text, and a slideshow - onto a page and then filling in the content.

Because building the site is made simple, I was able to concentrate on content, which consisted of editing and consolidating information and photos from the existing Lighthouse Kids website. Working closely with the non-profit’s founder, Sue Reynolds, I was able to design an 11-page site to meet their needs, which the current – and expensive – service they were using, did not.

Sorting through the CDs of old pictures then adding them to iPhoto to touch them up was time-consuming but interesting. There were kinks in this process – for example the pictures where labeled in such a way that iPhoto would not recognize them, so they all had to be re-named, and my iPhoto disc reached capacity in the middle of the process – but everything came together in the end. I decided to use just a handful of those pictures because many of the kids' photos were outdated and images were repetitious. I showcased them via a slideshow format.

Weebly Pros: There were dozens of templates to choose from. Also, Weebly lets you create a standing header, then sample how it would look in some of your favorite page designs – just like trying on a dress before you choose to buy it.

The building blocks of the website, mainly text and photos, could be re-arranged in a snap. Photos were also easily uploaded and resized.

I upgraded to Weebly Pro for 1 year for under $50, giving me the ability to create up to 10 websites, and, most importantly for Lighthouse Kids, eliminating a “Create a free website with Weebly” tagline at the bottom of each page. (If I wasn’t doing this for Lighthouse Kids, I would have lived w/ the tagline – that’s the only advertising on this free site.)

Weebly also provides the ability to add blog pages and e-commerce shopping carts. Lighthouse Kids was not interested in the blog – they want control over all the content at this time - but they would like to develop the shopping cart in the future, selling lighthouse related items to raise funds for its maintenance.

Weebly Cons: Photos can’t be dropped into and wrapped around text. This is a basic need for most page designers, so I can’t figure out the rationale behind it.  Using small chunks of the two-column format is a way to get around that design hurdle, but it requires more steps and breaking up text.

The “Create a free Website…” tagline could seem unprofessional to some.

Even though there are a lot of templates, I’d like to see more page design widgets for greater flexibility, like boxed sidebars, or quarter column design.

Getting published:

Weebly gives you 3 options for domain names. You can pick a sub-domain name. You can register a new domain name. Or, if you already own a domain name, you can configure it to point to their name servers. Lighthouse Kids wanted to see the site up and running before switching over to lighthousekids.com, so I bought the domain name lighthousekidsnh.org through Weebly, which was pricy, $40 a year, but I bit the bullet for the sake of getting it done, and keeping everything in the Weebly world for now.

The Powers That Be at Weebly told me it could take up to two weeks for Google to recognize my domain name, so to amp that up I followed their search engine recognition advice at http://kb.weebly.com/webmaster-tools.html. Now it should just be a matter of days.

My students will be using this site as part of a WebQuest in the near future and I’m hoping they find it easy to navigate and pleasant on the eye. I also hope it feeds into their sense of responsibility to preserve the elements of their community that make it special.

Rocking out: Using tech tools beyond the classroom

I was asked to send some pictures of local musicians performing during the year 2010 to a producer who is making a short video for a local show we put on each year at The Music Hall in Portsmouth called The Spotlight Awards. (It's a combination Grammys/Oscars to celebrate and cultivate the arts community here.) I had a bunch so I sent them via a music video on Animoto. A big thanks to Chad - who introduced me to this super simple, handy and fun site. Click here if you'd like to see the video:

Tattoo you

I know a lot of us are constantly striving to be a better teacher so in that vein, to help you along, I thought I'd toss out the latest hint science has to offer: Get a tattoo. At least that's the result of a rather small and eccentric research study.
Gives a whole new meaning to teachers and red ink.

Seeing old pictures in a new light, & more

Half of the 10 pages for the Lighthouse Kids website are done. I met with the founder of the organization and she reviewed it and was pleased. Today I re-wrote a press release about a fund-raiser they're hosting in the spring and created a page for it, then I added a page for event guidelines. Had to figure out how to link pages, but Weebly has short, sweet tutorials on just about all facets of the page design, and they came in handy.
 The Lighthouse Kids founder gave me 8 CDs worth of pictures and information, so I have plenty to work with, though lots of the photos are old and blurry.
I took a Lesley webinar on Photoshop Elements yesterday. The topic of it was cleaning up old photos and I learned some  tricks that will come in handy, like rubber-stamping and masking.
Designing the pages brings me back to my days editing when I was laying out an arts supplement every week - it's still so much about reflecting the nature of your product and  creating an impression. It's a balance of style and substance.

If Looks Could Kill - Creating an Attractive Website

Step one to re-creating Lighthouse Kids’ website was considering the look. We’ve all seen sites that are too cluttered, or too cheesy, with pictures that either did not aptly represent the content or that were low quality. We hear the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” all the time, but like monkeys attracted to a shiny stone, we go for the eye-catching cover more often than not. Looks matter.

Before

As we discussed during our last class together, the desire for information is what drives a user to a website, but the packaging of that content can make or break the site.

After

The Lighthouse Kids board wanted to have a clean look that was as easy on the eye as it was to navigate. They also wanted to get rid of an illustrated lighthouse logo as their standing page banner and add a real picture of the White Island Lighthouse.  They agreed with our class’s assessment that the automatic audio opening should be eliminated.

I rifled through my photos from past trips to the island, found some artwork, made a new banner incorporating their slogan, “Do What’s Right, Save the Light,” and went to work, using Weebly for the first time.

Weebly is user-friendly, provides a variety of themes and has recently added lots more fonts to choose from. I went with Arial to keep a crisp look and made sure to incorporate lots of white space.  As a former editor I was dismayed by the amount of spelling and grammatical errors on the current Lighthouse Kids site (For example, it’s a “vicious” storm, not a "viscous" one.) and went to work proofing the copy.  They were paying $250 a year, plus other fees, to a company to create and maintain their site and there were sentences without periods on the end. Looks are important, but so is good grammar – especially when your organization is asking people for money. 

Saving a Beacon of Hope

Having tweeked the kink in my WebQuest to a point where it's not perfect but usable, I've moved on to (queque "Stars Wars" theme music) The Final Project.

As a Rye Elementary service learning representative to Lighthouse Kids', a non-profit organization working to save and maintain New Hampshire's only offshore lighthouse, I'm going to re-build their website. I was talking with the retired teacher who started the program and she expressed frustration with the firm mananging their website in Boston. Her nonprofit pays them a flat fee of $250 a year to host it, then pays extra for the introductory audio on the home page that our class gave a thumbs-down to while reviewing websites, then they pay for any changes during the year because they are only allowed to update half the pages on the site themselves. Also, when they do make changes, often during the transition to publishing odd spacing or symbols appear.

As new as I am to making websites, I'm still optimistic that I can present them with a better option. My goal is to improve its look and readability, give the members of the nonprofit ablility to access the site themselves for updating, and make the whole process less expensive so more $$ goes toward improving the lighthouse. Eventually, I want to add a curriculum page for students and teachers, but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew yet.

Straying from the text book to consider this: NY Times asks is Twitter creating twits?

Thoughts on slogging through my text book: I need basic skills, but this book is too basic. The chapter on using virtual worlds to teach was interesting - I like the creativity involved in creating your own avatars and settings. I still would rather have my child playing outside with other kids and making up scenarios that way, but it's a legit form of digital literacy and composition. There's a line or two that addresses concern about how much time kids spend on computers vs. how much time parents think their kids are on computers. The difference between the two was disturbing, however, like most of the points in this book, the surface was scratched but not mined in detail.

I have noticed a lot more teachers talking about how kids use technology in a negative way, and saw an opinion piece in the NY Times this a.m. that says, it's not just kids. Here's an interesting excerpt that mentions some books on the subject that might pique educators' interests:

"Evgeny Morozov, author of “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,” said Twitter creates a false intimacy and can “bring out the worst in people. You’re straining after eyeballs, not big thoughts. So you go for the shallow, funny, contrarian or cynical.”

Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” says technology amplifies everything, good instincts and base. While technology is amoral, he said, our brains may be rewired in disturbing ways.

“Researchers say that we need to be quiet and attentive if we want to tap into our deeper emotions,” he said. “If we’re constantly interrupted and distracted, we kind of short-circuit our empathy. If you dampen empathy and you encourage the immediate expression of whatever is in your mind, you get a lot of nastiness that wouldn’t have occurred before.”

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, recalled that when he started his online book review he forbade comments, wary of high-tech sociopaths.

“I’m not interested in having the sewer appear on my site,” he said. “Why would I engage with people digitally whom I would never engage with actually? Why does the technology exonerate the kind of foul expression that you would not tolerate anywhere else?”

Why indeed?

Wrapping up Part 1 of "Teaching w/ the Tools..." MP3 players/Netbooks

I was trolling around ITunes U. the other day, and found Maine’s “As We May Teach” podcasts, which were created as part of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative. These podcasts describe ways to use educational technologies and include hands-on examples. (They can be found at: As We May Teach: Educational Technology, From Theory Into Practice ). I found them short, succinct and handy.  Having come across this prior, it stole the thunder from the chapter on MP3 players.  In my case, Brooks-Young is preaching to the converted when she advocates making content like this available to students, and having them create podcasts themselves.  I particularly like the digital literacy skills involved in making script writing accurate & engaging.

The chapter on Netbooks didn’t rock my world either, though I was intrigued by the laptops’ altruistic origins – the One Laptop per Child initiative. I could relate when Brooks-Young points out how some IT staffs rope off student access to the network like they were armed bandits at Fort Knox. At our school, staff is subjected to the same high security/lower productivity mind-set, adding another barrier for those already intimidated or frustrated as they try to make sincere attempts to integrate technology in the classroom.

A most salient point Brooks-Young makes is that automation is not the key to effective use of technology. The novelty of it wears thin in no time. Educators need to come up with new, imaginative ways of approaching instruction to inspire students to develop their innate skills and talents, and cultivate new ones. Again, not a new idea, but one it’s good to be reminded of occasionally.

First I was mad, then I was sad, now I need an interpreter

After putting much thought and effort into my first WebQuest, which hinges on White Island Lighthouse, I posted it Sunday. In the transition, one of the pages came out wrong - a picture jumped over the type and the typeface came out differently. (See the "Task" page at http://djwbohemia.bravehost.com/LighthouseWebQuest/Introduction.html )

I used both the webpage editor's "visual editor" and "text editor" tabs to remedy the situation, but every time I deleted the rogue  picture it stuck like a bug on a windshield. I trolled around for some insight on why this might be happening and found this note:

"Please note, any changes made here will NOT be loaded into the Website Wizard. If you want to edit your pages from here, you'll need to stop using the Wizard to publish, as this would overwrite the File Manager changes."

As a neophyte, I'm not sure what this means, but I think it means I need to make the changes on a Mac. Will try again on another computer and see if I come up with different results, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. Thanks.

"We are becoming a mean culture, and that scares me. It scares me deeply."

Malcom Smith, a life and family policy specialist and associate professor at the UNH, spoke about bullying in Portsmouth last night, and the title here is a quote of his. What he said was distribing. Here's another  quote. "This generation that's coming up, the generation in school right now ... they are the meanest generation of kids that we've ever had, and they have more ways to be mean to each other than any other generation."
It's a short story but here's a link to the article in today's Portsmouth Herald if you want to read more.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20110204-NEWS-102040393
Smith says the issue of bullying is so important that NH's top children's advocay group, the Children's Alliance of New Hampshire, has made bullying its top educational priority for 2010.
Because bullying has become so complex in the digital age, Smith has developed a 16-page pamphlet through UNH's Extention Department. If your school is working on a bullying policy, it's worth checking out:
http://extension.unh.edu/Family/documents/BullyBro.pdf

Chap. 2 - Reality check: Using cell phones in the classroom

High expectations get in the way sometimes, as mine did for this. I was amped up to have my cell phone bias swept back into the 20^th century where, many would argue, it belongs, but “Cell Phones,” the second chapter in “Teaching With the Tools Kids Really Use,” put up a thin argument for doing so. 

Brooks-Young’s suggestions for using cell phones productively in the classroom focus more on the bells and whistles that accompany a cell phone - such as the camera, voice recorder and web access - than actually using the phone as a two-way communication device.  Having read her treatise on the subject, I still think it is safer to have kids use a laptop and share digital cameras than it is to police use of cell phones and risk cyber-bullying and invite obsessive texting into the school day.

Excuse me, while I step onto the soap box:

Since much of parenting has evolved to a “be your child’s friend, not their first teacher” role, and teachers don’t yet have the tools, time and authority to teach/police proper phone etiquette, I’m not ready to acquiesce to cell phones in class.

I can see the plus-side of the designated adult in the classroom using them. For example, I’ve read articles that espouse the rewards reaped when teachers texted students and parents reminders about upcoming tests or homework assignments.  Plus, this role models productive use.

Brooks-Young also failed to address one of the leading concerns of teachers, “What about students who do not have a cell phone?”  There are solutions to this, and here are some suggestions:

ttp://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/2010/10/solutions-for-teaching-with-cell-phones.html

The gold nugget to be panned from this chapter was a paradigm shift in teaching Brooks-Young gleaned from an Australian study:

“It’s more important to measure modern students’ abilities to find information than their abilities to memorize information. "

Now that’s an idea I can get behind.

Web App presentation

After much deliberating over Starbucks' varietals, Chad and I have decided to do our web app presentation on Animoto. Holly recommended I post this so we can avoid duplication, so consider the word out.

Distractions

Wimpy Rutherford of The Queers, 1/24/11

Last Monday night I photographed a rock show in Portland featuring a punk band that hails from Portsmouth, The Queers. Photography of local musicians - and the beach - are two things I find tugging at me when I should be doing my course work. This is an ode to my first profession as an arts journalist, I guess, and occasionally I still sell stories or photos to keep my hand in it. (This week NH Magazine will run a couple of pictures I took when the lead singer of Godsmack was in the area.)

Here comes the sun, 1/10/11

    This made me wonder what acts as siren calls distracting - or providing a break for  - my fellow classmates. Time management is among the biggest challenges I've found with  going back to school.  Anyone else out there feeling that?

A new chapter in my reading life - "Teaching w/the Tools Kids Really Use," Take 1

I read kids books, newspapers and CD/album covers.  Apple’s Mac was being introduced to the world and dirt was still clean when I last cracked a textbook. But Chapter 1 of “Teaching with the Tools Kids Really Use” is behind me, and I leave it feeling optimistic about the pages yet to come. Yes, it’s got jargon and reads with only a bit more luster than, say, a manual to assemble a playpen. But no one expects a textbook read to be a nail-biter.  The redeeming reason to plow forward w/ “Teaching With the Tools…” is that it’s so relevant to our lives and will be useful in the toolbox we lug around as educators re-working a system built to accommodate Industrialization.

The author, a Ms. Susan Brooks-Young, is savvy enough to break down her chapters into short sub-sections for the A.D.D./raised on sound-bites/caffeinated-ferret-like generation we’ve become.  This adds to the book's readability, and I am grateful for it.

Brooks-Young advocates meshing 21^st century skills with some traditional core content to adequately prepare students for the digital age work place.  She suggests sites to visit, such as ISTE and Partnership for 21^st Century Skills. (I liked the assessment strategies page, called Route 21, and promptly sent it to my assistant superintendent, even though NH is not among those signed on as a 21^st Century State.)

The discussion points she tosses out at the end of the chapter are a nice touch. She tries to nurture the seeds she’s sown by asking questions such as, what are the most important new skills to teach?  While it seems counter intuitive to separate any from the pack, or create a pecking order, her query does promote the sharing of ideas. I’m a big fan of critical thinking, though viewing failure as an opportunity to learn (a part of creativity and innovation) is a great one as well. Anyone else out there got a favorite?

When Google Earth needs directions

Tried some apps I'd never played with before  - Google Earth and iWeb. I hoped both would help me add a community service element to a N.H. history unit, and that my webquest project could be anchored on that. My focus was on White Island, and the lighthouse there, currently owned by the nonprofit organization, Lighthouse Kids. Only Google Earth, with that majestic globe that awes the viewer with its dynamic drops and sweeping views, says there is no White Island in N.H. and places it in Kittery, ME. I sent their "Help" department a note, so, with any luck it will be cleared up before I do a presentation with my class and take the kids out there in the spring. (If any of you have been at the mercy of a GPS only to be lead to a snowy, mountainous goat path like I once was, you are not bowled over by this.) I'll be curious to see how quickly they respond to the note.

First a tanka poem, now this...

OK you people who gave me a tanka to write the other weekend during our maiden voyage on The Webquest. I'm on a roll! I expressed my students' delight for the Books of Umber  recently, but I have to admit I was taken with the series as well. Not only for their intrigue and wonder, but especially for the unusual characters the author crafted. They range from truly disturbing to achingly vulnerable and I, who has read much and become hard to sate, now remain at the table waiting for the 3rd and final installment to be served. Instead of slamming my fork and spoon up and down impatiently, I entered a contest the author hosted on his Facebook page. He asked for short poems inspired by his books. Winning authors would receive a signed 1st edition of the final book when it comes out. My poem got picked!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1078675731&ref=profile#!/PWCatanese
Will I ever be able to cultivate a techie mind with my wussy poet's heart? My finger's are crossed.

New books currently winning over the 9-to-12 crowd

  While I'm not sure he can take down the "Wimpy Kid," "Captain Nobody" is showing his literary muscles in the Rye Elementary School library.
  The book follows the adventures of Newt Newman, a young boy who feels like sliced white bread in the bakery of life. When his football star brother falls into a coma, Newt devices a Halloween costume out of his  brother's old clothes, and a new identity emerges.
  "School Library Journal" says the humorous novel "reads like a summertime feel-good movie. Kids who have longed for their own superhero will eat this up."
All hail the power of white bread!

  There will be beaucoup tears to dry when that last "Harry Potter" movie comes out this July. What will little Muggles do without the Hogwarts crew to conjure excitement? They could venture into the world of "Umber" - if they dare. P.W. Cantanese has written a 3-book fantasy series that brings readers from one run-in with widely imaginative characters and creatures to the next at a heady pace. In a starred review of the first book, "Happenstance Found," "Publishers Weekly" said, "Cantanese packs a lot in... rich characterizations, well-choreographed action sequences and genuinely surprising twists." If you're not floored by the stunning beasts of book two, "Dragon Games," than your imagination has dried up and blown away, or you are not  of this world. Book three comes out Feb. 8.

As part of their environmental unit, fifth graders viewed the migration of a plastic bag as it makes its way to The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I don't want to be a spoiler, but use your own clothe bags at the grocery store kids!

Where are the starfish going?

  During our fifth-graders' studies of sustainability and the environment, publisher Deb Cross spoke about her book "Wallis Sands Beach Revisited." She commented on the vast amount of starfish children collected decades ago. Several students noted that they rarely see starfish there now. How might this change tie into our unit? Where have the starfish gone? Any guesses?

Source: Flicker.com/kevinzim

Self-portrait

I have a dream...

I work in a well-funded elementary school where the majority of kids come to school dressed, fed, and ready to learn. But a revolution is going on in the world around us. The world is changing and our school is not changing with it.  It’s a broad goal, but what I hope to learn in this course is how to engage in the revolution so my students are prepared for a world reeling with rapid-fire change. I want my classes to engage their minds and senses of wonder, humor and curiosity.