Building
Learners
Project

I just want to check and find out if we are continuing using this site for another school year?

There are now almost 100 different text and video tutorial files on TR’s new Help site, as well as links to useful TR blog posts.The materials are organized into the following five main groups.

Creating Screens & Projects
Uploading & Organizing Resources
Working with Groups
Using the Calendar
Better Design

An important new addition is the search box. Type in any topic for which you have a question, and a selection of appropriate materials appears to offer you answers.

Under the “Creating Screens & Projects” section, dig into “Get a Good Start.” It contains most of the current videos, but its title may be a bit deceptive. It offers more than just a good start and will introduce you to valuable design strategies, shortcuts, and techniques.

We wanted the layout of the site to have a Google-like simplicity:

You can access the Help site in four ways:

1) Go to www.trintuition.com/help

2) Click on the button in the top left corner of your workBench screen that says “Help Building Projects”

3) Double-click on the “Quick Start Menu” in your Resource list

4) Click on the “Support” button on the TR website.

It would be very helpful to us if you would give us your impressions of using the new site and its materials, so that we can evolve and continue to improve it.

Just wanted to say hi to everyone… I am sure everyone else is recovering from the holidays. I look forward to getting back to work on my many projects. I clicked around earlier and found some new stuff…and i discovered Wordle which is “way too kewl!!!” as my students would say!

Happy 2009 to all

It was the stretch before Christmas,
And all through our blog house
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a mouse.

Bytes were left hanging in rows of sleepy storage,
As holidays minds turned to hot, tasty porridge.
But back in the cozy Boston workshop,
The TR Elves are all ahop and aflop,
They’re building the new zippy HELP scheme
That will make creating more a Web 2.0 dream.

So, New Year’s projects will tumble and flow,
Out of student head’s like cookie dough.
And we’ll all newly awaken
To share our best pedagogical baking,
And have our blog house rocking and quaking
With our New Year’s Building Learner’s show.

The best holiday delights to you from the TR Elves!

I am back for more help. I am taking part in a collaborative project called How Tall is a First Grader? I made a chart in excel showing the results in my school. I took a picture of my screen and tried to put it on a blank screen in my site. But it opens with a launch screen. Is there another format I can save my file in so it is easily viewed by the children?

Sue

The folks at TRintuition and TeachersFirst have been talking about this project and the fact that many teachers and students are just getting their feet wet (while some are still scanning the waters from the hill above). We have therefore decided to EXTEND the Building Learners Project timeline through the end of the 2008-2009 school year (until your school ends in May/June).

 Our hopes in extending the project:

• More students and teachers will be able to produce more projects- or decide to get started!
• Students will become more familiar with all the tools and possibilities, producing more sophisticated or better projects after the “bells and whistles” phase passes by
• Teachers will discover more of the tools to manage groups
• Classes may be able to collaborate on a project with another school (post on the blog if you seek such a contact)
• The project can document the best ways to support teachers in this three-way collaboration of teachers/web tool/teacher resource site
• This documentation can lead to a “model” that we can share with others at conferences, etc. And we might ask you to join us in presenting (teachers and/or students!).

TeachersFirst’s promise to you:

We will award prizes to the most effective projects completed by students (and teachers) involved in the Building Learners Project. Bells and whistles are not nearly as important as evidence of learning. The name of the project is, after all, Building LEARNERS. Keep the prize possibility in mind, but know that learning is the best prize of all.

If you have a teacher-colleague who is not involved with BLP but would like to join you in the project, email me. We have room to add some others. Perhaps there is a classroom down the hall or across the community from you with a teacher-friend you would like to invite to collaborate. Just let me know: cshively(at)sflinc.org

The problems in Firefox with bringing in remote images got us investigating. We haven’t been able to replicate the problem but have a few additional suggestions that might help.

When you get the results of an advanced search for Creative Commons images in Flickr, you’re shown a page (or pages) with large thumbnails of pictures on the left. If you right-click over one of the thumbnails and go to “properties,” there are two web addresses given, one for the link that the picture contains and one for the image itself, and it is easy to mix them up. Best to  follow Candace’s direction. Click on the thumbnail, and it will take you to a larger version of the picture on a new page.  It’s really valuable to get the bigger picture with its higher quality rather than the largish thumbnail anyway, so go for big! Be sure to copy the entire address. You may have to make the “Properties” box a little bigger to easily copy it all.

When you click on “Properties” for the large version of the picture, only one web address is given, and that’s named “Location.”  That’s what you want to copy and paste.

If you are moving through this whole process in Safari on a Mac, right-clicking (control-clicking)  over a picture brings up a menu that doesn’t contain “Properties.” Click on “Open image in new window.” If you isolate the picture so that it is the only thing in the window, the web address you need to copy is in the address bar for that window. Copy and paste that, and the image will open remotely in the workBench screen.

An important additional note, if you are as much of a fan of the Eyedropper in the Color Chooser as I am. After you bring a remote image into a project, you can’t use the Eyedropper again in that project. It’s not a bug. Flash has built-in, complicated security features that are triggered in the presence of remotely loaded content. Those features block the Eyedropper code. We haven’t found a way to work around that security block, so that the Eyedropper can continue to function with remote images.

However, there is a good alternative to the Eyedropper in these cases. We just revised the Color Chooser palettes, which are collections of five colors that are fed into the Color Chooser from the colourlovers.com website. You can now even pick a color that you like and find matching pallets that artists and graphic designers have created. We have a new post up about the palettes, where you can experiment with these new features:

http://blog.trintuition.com/?p=146

Of course you can experiment as well with the Color Chooser when you open your own workBench.

Just a quick note on additional accessible and usable images. In addition to shapes, repeating patterns, shadows, several buttons, picture frames, and one falling-leaf animation, the workBench Library has between 50 - 60 images that you can use in any project. They’re grouped into three categories: Nature, People and Places, and Abstract. Double-click on the icon for any image to preview it.

If you haven’t made your way to the workBench Library yet, take a quick look at this tutorial page:

http://www.trintuition.com/tutorial/wkbchlib

I was so excited to try out Candace’s Visual Poem template. I signed up at Flicker and found all the photos I wanted. Then feeling all excited I uploaded them and not a single one was visible. Frustrated, I kept trying and sudden I had a brain flash. Once before I wasn’t able to do something on my site and it turned out it was because I was using Firefox. As soon as I uploaded the pictures using Internet Explorer it worked fine.

Hope I can save someone else’s frustration

Enjoy, Sue

I have just shared more templates with the entire group so you can do “Quick Projects.” Not only are these adaptable across the curriculum, they also teach basic skills within the workBench as you use them, so the next project can be even more adventurous. The templates I shared are:

stepbystep template (a multi-screen template with one step on each screen). The hyperlinks  between screens are already done for you using the forward and back arrows. Ideas for how you might use it are below.

simplecycletemplate (a two screen template, one with the cycle diagram using text boxes and telling you to drag in images, the second with a Credits screen so students will give proper credit for the source of their images).

watercycle (an example of the simplecycletemplate being put to use. I gave it to you in case you teach this content and want to use it with adaptations for your curriculum)

Both templates use the following basic workBench skills:

1. Teacher skill in “Make me a copy” and sharing the template with your class (See Managing Resources video or my TIP below)
2. SAVE AS!!!- do this when you start so each student or group has their own copy of the template before changing it
3. Typing into a text box
4. Dragging and resizing images and text boxes as needed
5. Deleting items, such as the instruction boxes telling how to use the template (a MUST-have skill, but be careful… there is no “undo”!)
6. Changing the order of elements to they overlap the way you want them to (”Shift layer”)
7. Changing color of the background (optional)
8. Rotating the arrow image (simple template)
9. Copy/pasting the arrow (simple template)
10. Using keyboard commands for copy (CTRL+C)/paste (CTRL+V, think of  V for VELCRO to “Stick it there”)
11. Moving between screens by clicking them in the Site Map and knowing which screen you are working on (especially when using the multi-screen  stepbystep template)
12. Rotating images (optional)
13. saving and (if you wish) sharing via URL

You could actually start with the simplecycletemplate for a first project then move to the longer one if you are concerned that your students will have trouble mastering the skills. But, honestly, we adults are the ones who need the practice. The kids “get it” much faster. The NEXT skill you will want them to learn is hyperlinking, but first things first.

Some examples of the simplecycle template in use are here:

http://tf.trintuition.com/cshively/watercyclesimple  A very basic water cycle using the images I SHARED with all of you ( remote images from Flickr–see this explanation to learn how I found them in five minutes).

http://tf.trintuition.com/cshively/watercycle a slightly more elaborate version of a water cycle diagram, using the same set of images, but more of them. Note that YOU may use these and adapt at will.  Simple image credits (links) for all the water cycle images are there for you.  Simply delete the ones you aren’t using. This is a simple way for you to share images with your class but still offer them the choices about what they use.

TIP: I actually went to Flickr and “harvested” all the image URLS onto the Credits screen, THEN added then to the workBench using copy paste from that screen. Sharing them with the BLP group was easy. Click Manage Resources and DRAG the images on top of the group you want to share with!

************

How could you use these?

In language arts/speech class, use the stepbystep as a visual aid for how-to speeches, for making sequenced plot summaries or discussing o the development of the conflict in a piece of literature. Or simply use stepbystep for digital story-telling of any kind, including autobiographies or biographies from research projects.

In social studies, use the step by step for student groups to explain the lead-up to a war or other historic event.

In science,  have students explain photosynthesis, animal or insect life cycles, or chemical reactions. If you permit them to use Flickr images, you will find that they can be very imaginative in “showing” as well as “telling.”  Or use digital pictures you and the class take to document a step by step, such as how your class garden progressed or the physics lab your students conducted. Use step by step as a visual “lab report” done in small groups.

In math, explain the steps to a certain type of problem solving or the Order of Operations.

In health, explain the steps of human development.

And so on…any cycle or sequence will fit these.

Adapt the templates with as many prompts or hints as you need to make ESL/ELL or learning support students successful. It is easy to SAVE AS multiple versions to share (and differentiate) for different students or groups.  You can even add a word bank so they have the required terms handy.

************

How is this different from just making a PowerPoint?

1. Can be shared on the web– with changes showing LIVE as they are made
2. Can be created by students in multiple locations at multiple times
3. Can have embedded (but remote) images from elsewhere on the web
4. Teacher can manage group collaboration
5. Not automatically “linear” in navigation…though these templates happen to be
6. No software required (except Flash– free!)
7. Students can show people at home without special software

Now…go try them! Please comment or ask questions here!