Agenda for 2/10 PLC Face to Face Meeting

Greetings,

As we begin to approach our next PLC meeting, I thought I'd send out the call for agenda items you'd like to talk about.  There has been a lot of discussion about what everyone's plans are for this semester with your students and I didn't know if you wanted to build from that or take it a different direction.  Also, if there is any technology you'd like to know more about, I'd be more than happy to facilitate that during the meeting.

Like I said in the past, these face to face meetings are for you, not me.  So let me know what's on your mind that you'd like to talk about and I'll throw it on the agenda for the 10th.  Please post your items as a comment so everyone can see.

Have a good day,

Dan

Digital Learning Day Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the first ever Digital Learning Day.  There will be a series of webinars discussing topics from Leadership to Instructional Strategies.  You can find out more information here: http://dmourlam.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/digital-learning-day/.

Ha! I feel like a Blog hog... but I just finished posting when I saw an article on my email about ipads in the classroom. Check this article out!

Comic Life

I'm not sure if this will help Sarah out with her graphic novel project but Comic Life is a great software program that makes comics. You can use drawings by scanning them in, or take your photos as my students did.  I used it last semester to make social justice comics at East High. This program could be used by 6th graders and put on power point to be viewed- instead of printing them and copying them into a comic book. The software costs around 20 dollars though. 
Check out Comic Life

This is an example an East High student created.

Hey everybody! Right now I am teaching my teacher candidates at Lincoln Elementary School in Cedar Falls as part of a Professional Development School Partnership. We have class at the school and my students work approximately 3 hours a week with the sixth-grade students and teachers there. Our goals this semester are blogging for reader response, using the iPads and laptops, creating digital graphic novels, and doing image-enhanced podcasts. Right now we are doing literature circles and the sixth graders are blogging their reading responses. It's been a bit of a rough start because one class of sixth graders has been blogging for several months (they are great!) and the other class is just getting started now with us, so my students who are new to this are having to think through it like teachers. A great learning experience, but a bit challenging considering that they are more novice than I expected and we are using kidblog.org and it hasn't been working well lately.

Any suggestions for our graphic novels? Last spring we just made these in PowerPoint, which was rather basic, but went really well. I actually found that the sixth-graders lacked skills using PowerPoint, so it was helpful for them to to try to use it in a more creative way. We've looked at Pixton, but it requires you to pay as you start to dig deeper in it. My 6th grade colleague has suggested doing Google Presentations. I'm just not sure what platform will work best - the graphic novels are about historical figures and movements and so we include a lot of cited digital primary sources in them. Thanks for your help!

What's up in Art Education...

Hi everybody!

 I have been blogging with my students for two years now in my Issues and Theories in Art Education course. We have a very short amount of class time since it is only a 2 credit class. So to continue the conversation and to share resources on the issues we are discussing, I post it all on the blog. My students each have a blog that is linked to the main blog and they must comment on each other's as part of their grade.
See http://issuesandtheories.blogspot.com/
I also use Edmodo over e-learning for my classes because it looks like facebook and it is very user friendly. It has a library for the articles, links, and handouts. My students often post questions on the page for everyone or anyone to answer. It seems to have more of a community feel to it then our e-learning page did.
What I want to learn this semester is Voicethread as a new assessment tool in art education. Anyone familiar with that? 
 Thanks,  Wendy

New for Spring 2012

Here is list of things that I will be trying new this semester with my students.
1) E-portfolio- Using the UNI Teacher Ed Portfolio site. In the past my students have done a binder version.
2) We will be spending an entire class sessions (3 hours) talking about technology in the Social Studies Classroom with NU High teacher Courtney Claussen.
3) Pairing my students up and having them write a true differentiated lesson plan. Not a traditional lesson plan with adaptations for one or two students but for the many different types of learners.

Subscribing to this Blog

Want to make reading this blog easier?  Who wouldn't!  All you need to do is click the subscribe button (look for the icon above) on the right side of your screen and begin following this blog in a RSS reader of your choice.  A common RSS reader you may already have access to is Google Reader.  All GMail and Google Accounts have access to Google Reader without needing to create a new username and password.  You can also create a bookmark in your web browser that will indicate when a new post has been published.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or even better, leave a comment!

PLC Field Trip Opportunity

I received an email today indicating that there is an open house at Waverly-Shell Rock Middle School around their implementation of a 1:1 iPad initiative.  I think this would be a great opportunity for us to get a better sense about what a number of schools are doing to promote learning in the 21st century through these types of initiatives.  If anyone is interested in attending, there are three times to choose from on February 7:

• 8am - 10:30am
• 10:30am - 1pm
• 1pm - 3:30pm

If you're interested let me know so I can register us.

Dan Mourlam

Welcome to the TQP PLC Blog

Welcome to the TQP PLC Blog!  This blog will be used by UNI faculty as they participate in a professional learning community to improve student learning and their practice in their courses.