I Can't Believe It's Over!

I can hardly believe we're heading into our last class with Tony! Of course, that goes along with the fact that I can't believe this school year is almost over! As we get older, life seems to go faster and faster.

This class has been such a great experience. One of the best things about it is that all of the things we've learned can continue to be enhanced as we discover more and more about the handhelds. It is obviously an area of technology that will continue to expand. I'm anxious to see what the next few years bring, especially in terms of music software.

It was so interesting to see everyone's projects. Imaginative, creative, fun - such innovative ways to capture the students' interests and to spark the desire to learn. It would be fun to be able to visit some of the classrooms next year and see some of the lessons that come out of the technology we've learned.

I look forward to being able to continue to know more about the handhelds and the continuously changing technology. My one fear is that we seem to have so little time to work on things. Tony has worked with us at Willowdale, helping us to develop class and curriculum web sites, but in between the time we spend with Tony, it's difficult to find a couple of free hours to continue. I hope that our district, and other districts, will devote time and staff development to technological advances so that we can continue to grow and improve!

Thanks, Tony, for your insight, your patience, your humor, and your leadership. It has been a great class!

The Pressure's On!

Tony's class has been such a breath of fresh air! Hands-on activities, discovering software, discussing ideas to be used in class - it makes the time go so quickly! But, when the "roving reporter" assignment hits, it changes everything! What if I miss something important? So I brought my laptop to class so that I could write down everything we discussed. And after class I wondered why I didn't bring it EVERY week! What an easy way to keep track of everything. Those of you in class - I know this applies to Rick - that have a mini keyboard for your Palm must find it incredibly helpful when keeping track of class activities. I'm thinking it is a "must" buy this summer!

I wonder how everyone is feeling about our lesson plan assignment. Ideas seem to wander through my brain at the most inappropriate times - during church yesterday, at a rehearsal on Saturday, when I was trying to go to sleep last night! There don't seem to be a lot of readily accessible music programs for the Palm, so I am a bit daunted by this assignment. PLUS, different ideas keep wandering in, so I change my mind frequently on what I'd like to cover in the plan. Today is my personal deadline - I must make a decision and begin mapping out the particulars. On Wednesday, when I suddenly think of an idea that might be better, I'll just have to save it to try on next year's fourth graders!

I look forward to seeing everyone in class on Thursday!!

White Chili and Fried Brains

I'll confess that my brain ceased functioning before class even started last week. Tony and I spent all afternoon in a meeting to discuss Willowdale's action plans, rewrite what was necessary, haggle over wording or concepts, and, ultimately, vote on acceptance. It was a long afternoon!

I loved the concept mapping, especially Inspiration. I've checked the blogs of several classmates and that one seems to be a favorite. Inspiration seems to offer the most flexibility and it's easy to use. Lynne had a good point in her mention that concept mapping on the handheld might be difficult for her kids because you can't always see the entire map. Inspiration scores the highest in that area as well.

By the time we got to ebooks, I flatlined. I honestly have no idea how to start. Midway through, I came to for a few minutes, so I think if I can figure out how to start it all, it might be okay. Ebooks look wonderful! And they offer so many solutions to curriculum - ways to enhance teaching, to emphasize those concepts that are difficult to grasp, better and more examples of concepts, the ease of having it all on the handheld - so many positives! Obviously, I'll be spending some time on this by myself to figure out what I missed during my momentary lapses!

Several people asked for the White Chili recipe, so here it is:

1 pound large white beans
6 C. chicken broth (I used beef because I like the flavor better)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onions, chopped and divided
1 T. oil
2 4-oz. cans chopped green chilies
2 t. ground cumin
1 1/2 t. dried oregano
1/4 t. ground cloves
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
4 C. diced cooked chicken breasts
3 C. grated Monterey Jack cheese

Combine beans, chicken broth, garlic and half the onions in a large soup pot and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until beans are very soft, 3 hours or more. Add more broth, if necessary. In a skillet, saute remaining onions in oil until tender. Add chilies and seasonings and mix thoroughly. Add to bean mixture. Add chicken and continue to simmer 1 hour. Serve topped with grated cheese.

Add condiments as desired: chopped tomatoes, chopped parsley, chopped black olives, guacamole, chopped scallions, sour cream, crumbled tortilla chips, salsa.

See you all on Thursday!

Who Thinks Up This Stuff?

After discovering Easter eggs (one of the coolest, and probably one of the most useless discoveries on the Palm!), learning Quizzler, and discussing ways to download materials, we were turned loose on the computers in the lab. Our job? To explore Palm freeware and shareware sites. It was amazing! I found information on wines and foods, applications that didn't work, a database to keep track of your lovers (which, I suppose, could come in rather handy if you dated a lot of people who looked alike), a database to keep track of your cats (which I completed right away - like our instructor, I do have a love of felines!), and a couple of music applications that I couldn't figure out at all!

Tony's idea of posting a Palm application wish list on his web site is a fabulous one. I think the possibilities are endless and if we could all come up with ideas specific to our field, and give those ideas to those who love to write programs, we could have a continuous supply of ways to integrate the Palms into our teaching.

I've been playing with HanDBase a bit and really like the setup. I'd love to use it with my 5th graders and help them develop a database to keep track of all of the musicians and composers we study during the year. The problem is that it's $30 - and that would be for every student - so the cost is prohibitive. Tony suggested using Address Book and just changing the fields. What I haven't quite figured out is - can you have more than one address book so that one could still be dedicated to actuall addresses and the other turned into a completely different type of database?

Dinner tomorrow night is White Chicken Chili, Mardi Gras Salad, and Kahlua Cake. They're 3 of my favorites, so I hope you like them, too!

A Blogging Explosion

Blogs kind of remind me of reality tv shows. They both seem to represent a microcosm of life that is displayed for the world to see - some parts interesting and others hardly worth our time. There's a blog for every subject and for every opinion under the sun. A local news blog absolutely blasts a couple of morning anchors - in a rather mean-spirited and hurtful manner. So it made me wonder - how will the ability to praise or blast, help or harm, comment or rant, impact on the future of our society?

I think that, as a society, we have become less polite, kind, and tactful in the last 15 or so years. As the internet has grown and blogging has skyrocketed, we have an entire "cyber culture" that is guaranteed anonymity. Anything can be said, however damaging or enlightening. Is that positive?

Many of us grew up in homes that taught "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." That almost seems to be a thing of the past. Is honesty always the best policy if it is hurtful? And is it really honesty, or is it opinion. I worry about the future of our youth. Many at the elementary level don't seem to have a real understanding of accountability and responsibility. We teach the importance of our "Character Counts" system and then our kids log on to the internet and discover a very worldly and sometimes negative view of many things. There's an amazing wealth of technology that is so positive, but my concern is that blogging offers a forum to everyone - and while everyone may deserve the right to be heard, there's little that can be done to validate the positive and discount the negative. The most recent school shooting points to a young man who made comments on a number of Hitler youth sites. No one realized the importance of his musings. How do we help kids? How do we know who needs our help?

It is, at the very least, a conundrum. The world-wide dissemination of information and opinion is one of our greatest achievements and one of our most frightening challenges.

Overload!

During break I thought a lot about the lesson plan I would like to write for this class. I have, to date, 14 post-it notes, 2 notebooks, and 3 pages of last week's newspapers, all with notes about things I could do for this assignment. The problem? I can't decide which one to do - or, more to the point, I can't decide which one is doable. I'm at that stage where "a little information is a dangerous thing." I get stuck on one idea; move to another; don't like that one; retrace my steps on the first one; and then think - perhaps taking a break and having a glass of wine will help. Five days and five glasses of wine later, I'm still no closer.

What's the problem? Are any of you experiencing this? I've finally decided that there are so many possibilities, some of which require more knowledge of handhelds than I've been able to stuff into my head - that I get stuck and get frustrated. So, my job for tonight is to choose one plan and go with it. Don't let those eyes wander to post-it note 12 or page 17A of last Thursday's Weird-Herald. Save it for summer which, amazingly enough, is only 10 weeks away and always offers time for reflection and renewed vigor. And whatever happens, don't cork a bottle of wine!

Skills with Sketchy

I so hated missing class last week; even more so, because of attending the funeral of a good friend I had known since high school. I was glad that you didn't get to HanDBase. I'm excited to learn more about it and happy I didn't miss that class!

I've been spending lots of time with Sketchy, finding ways to incorporate it into music class. One of the things we spend lots of time with is rhythm patterns, time signatures, writing rhythms, clapping them correctly and so on. Kids easily get confused with quarter vs. half notes and so on - and it gets even more confusing once the corresponding rests are added to the equation. With Sketchy, I can give each note and/or rest its own color, and then I can manipulate the animation so that just the eighth note moves, or quarter note, and so on. Patterns can be beamed to students; they can identify the jumping note, or the yellow note, and so on. It creates a sort of working flash card program. The kids can create their own patterns in various time signatures and beam them to classmates and to me. I'm REALLY liking Sketchy!!!

I took my 5th graders to the computer lab this week so they could begin to design their own garage band project. They were SO quiet and attentive! I told Tony I want his job - the kids seem to be really in to anything connected with computers! They had a great time. Tony explained a few things about saving their compositions; I showed them a few different kinds of samples, and then we let them experiment with sounds, instruments, melodies, and patterns as they created their own compositions. We gave very few guidelines - I know that, for myself, I learn the most when I just go in and play around with an application. Their compositions, after only about 20 minutes, are amazing! Tony mentioned that we might come up with a CD of scary pieces, dramatic pieces, comedic pieces, and so on, that could be used to accompany WillowCam and our WebRadio program. The plus of that, aside from learning more about both technology and music, is that music becomes more important as it becomes more closely connected and integrated into other subjects and projects.

I become more amazed with each new application and am in awe of the technology that my students have absorbed. They truly are like sponges; I think, in part, because they don't question why - they just do it!