Aunt Martha Wants to Know.

What's the point?

Castle Hayne Elementary

@DavedGlenn and Students at NCTIES17

Two of my incredible PLNs are PasstheScopeEDU and NCEd. They are filled with talented people who, seriously, I’m privileged to learn with. Over the past few months, Kyle Hamstra, Ron Madison and Brendan Fetters have been urging, encouraging, suggesting, use whatever adjective you want to, that I write about Periscope. But, I’ve been too busy. Too busy working. Too busy Periscoping. Too busy doing … life!

Enter stage right.  Mom and Aunt Martha.

My amazing mom, who is turning 79 this year, told me about a conversation she had with my Aunt Martha the other day.  Mom was giving her an update on the family and what everyone has been up to. Apparently, when it came to me, the question that came up was, “Why?”

Why, at this point in my career, am I investing so much time and energy in all these crazy new things like Periscope and virtual reality?  Why not relax and enjoy just teaching?  It all seems so stressful. What's the point?

There are probably several blogs wrapped up in that paragraph, but I’m going to start here.  Why should teachers invest time and energy in all these crazy new techie things? I have an answer. Because, these techie tools enable us to see the point of everything we do.

IT'S THE POINT OF EVERYTHING WE DO

I’ve needed to write about Periscope for a while.  This is the first in a series about the power of Periscope and live streaming in general to capture the point of what we do in education.  The first one is how Periscope amplifies student voice and how we can use it to capture authentic learning. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic.  Next, I'm going to write about why I choose Periscope over other live streaming platforms. Other blogs will be more practical and “how-to” oriented.

I would love your comments and feedback as I write these blogs and become a more active blogger. Thank you for reading!

Periscoping Young Innovators

I'm on a mission to listen to kids tell me what they know.  After Periscoping NCTIES17 I had a thought-provoking Voxer conversation with Kyle Hamstra about the value of giving students this type of platform and what comes next.

Mountain View Young Innovators
Student Interviews & Teacher Resources

Next. 

That brings me to Mountain View Elementary, one of the schools that I serve as an Instructional
Technology Facilitator and one of the busiest schools in our district. There are amazing things going on in every nook and cranny of that building.

For the past few weeks I've been working with the students in Teresa Costner's class. Teresa is a dedicated, talented math teacher who is a magician when it comes to empowering her students to take the lead in their learning.  The project that was appearing before my eyes was the 6th grade's Young Innovators and Inventors Impacting the Future project.  Students took a closer look at their own world to discover an area that they could improve or change. They researched to discover more about the problem and to find ways to enhance an existing concept or to design a creation of their own. Students created a marketing plan that included an advertising poster and an infomercial. I got to help them use Aurasma to create augmented reality with their marketing poster and infomercial. They presented their plans to their classmates and to school officials and community members in a Shark Tank-like competition.

Periscoping the Semi-Finals

Sometimes the best ideas come to you in the shower. Well, for me the best ideas come to me when I'm lugging a huge Google Expeditions case out of my car and down the hallway.  What if I Periscoped the semi-finalists after their first round of Shark Tank presentations?  They would be prepared. They would be excited after surviving the presentation in front of the judges and a Periscope interview would capture their invention and a little bit about the story behind how they came up with the idea.

The kids knocked it out of the park. They were excited to be broadcasting LIVE on Periscope (or, as I explained it - Facebook Live for Twitter). They were articulate and every one of them told an amazing story about a problem that concerned them in their own life that they solved by inventing and creating something new. The results of the interviews are on this Young Innovators project website.