I'm movin' on up!

Got the best Christmas gift ever! I'm now blogging on my new 20 inch iMac!! It's great to get a new computer not only because of the new "technology smell", but also because I can reorganize all the "junk" from my old computer. When prompted to connect a firewire and pull in all the files from my old computer, I opted not to because I think this is a great opportunity for me to start fresh and new and only use the things I need. I'll slowly weed out things that are necessary from the old laptop and hopefully, in the end, I'll be left with a nice new computer free of clutter.
Just to let you know how behind the times I was, I am going from a 60 gig macbook to a 500 gig iMac! My macbook was so full, I couldn't save a single thing to it. Now, I have so much space, I don't know how I'll fill it! (I'm sure I will).
Although it's new and exciting, I am finding I have to learn a new operating system (which I think I'll like) and a new Microsoft Office Suite (which I also think I'll like). So, I'll be busy for the next few days, playing with my new toys!

Now entering the land of slow technology

I'm heading home to the great state of West Virginia for the holidays. Now, you know I love the place. It's beautiful in any season and has some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. However, as a technology geek, I struggle with my visits. My mom has dial-up. No high speed here. Don't even think about looking at pictures, let alone virtual worlds! So, going home for the holidays is becoming down time for me. I'm leaving my internet addiction at home and enjoying time with family for a few days. I plan to come back nice and refreshed, ready to enjoy the rest of my break....online! See you then.

Wanted: Technology in Action

I am starting to plan for a multimedia room at my school. My plans for this room include a podcasting booth, an animation design center, a video corner with green screen and a full working lab. Before we get too far into planning, my principal asked me to do a little research and see if I could find a school with a similar (or maybe even a better) situation. We want to make sure we're spending the money appropriately and we want the room to be top notch for our students and staff.
So, this is my challenge to you! Think about any school you may know of that has a similar situation and email me: mrslachance@gmail.com (or post a comment to this entry). We'd love to visit the school to see their resources in action.
Or, if you think there is something different I should be doing, please feel free to comment or email me as well. I'm accepting any ideas at this point.

Share it all with Google

I recently discovered a neat little tool called Google Sharing. It allows you to put a button in your browser and easily share the website that you are viewing with friends. There are several sharing options once you press the button. In one way, you can simply email the link to someone. Another allows you to post to popular social networking sites and the final way is to post to your Google sharing page. With all options, you are asked to enter a brief description of what you are sharing so the recipient knows how it can be used.
Yes, this is very similar to social bookmarking, but the ease of use in my opinion is fantastic! I think that this would be a great option for sharing sites amongst the staff at my school. Once you create your page, all you have to do is share your link!
Happy Browsing! My google shared site

A look into Second Life

I've been exploring Second Life for a couple of weeks now and have learned a lot! I've spent most of my time on ISTE island, which has been great for helping me to learn new things about, not only education, but also how to navigate the program.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the program and have become a bit addicted. I'm one of those people that has to completely immerse myself in something until I learn it.
Upon first entering the program, I was pretty pleased with how easy it was to get started. Successful at navigating and changing my appearance, I headed over to ISTE Island. After a few nights of visiting, I met someone there that invited me to watch a class at Western Carolina University's Island. This class was a group of students that were presenting lesson plans they had created. It was amazing! I knew this kind of stuff happened, but it really took seeing it to totally grasp the concept.
After that night, I started having problems with the program crashing. It wouldn't let me in but for maybe a minute or so at a time. It was becoming more of an annoyance at this point. It took me about a week but I finally figured out that the problem was the video card in my computer. So, I tried it on my Mac last night and it worked fine.
I think this could be a great option in high school for not only staff development, but for classes as well. Now that I know that so many universities and businesses use this, I think it is important to either use it as a school district (you can buy your own island). Or at least talk about it to students so that they will have at least heard of it by the time they have to use it.
My Second Life name is Julie Sugarplum.

Innovation Day

November 18th, 2008 was Innovation Day in the state of NC. Schools were invited to participate in the event by opening their doors to the community in order to see what is changing in the schools in the 21st century. Two schools were selected in my county, one being my own and I felt that it was a success. We applied late, so we really only had a week or so to prepare. Schools are supposed to invite people to attend and because of our late notice, we didn't get many invitations out. We did have a few local school leaders in attendance, though. They were given tours of certain classrooms to see what we are doing that is Innovative at our schools. They were shown the classrooms that have 21st century equipment, classrooms that are using nings and wikis and classrooms that are using interactive games. All said they enjoyed the experience and they were glad to see some of the things going on in the schools. I look forward to doing this again next year now that I know all about it. I think it will grow in its success as each year passes.

Technology Enrichment Day a Success

My school district started a new program to educate teachers more on technology. Schools were asked to select three teachers to send to "Technology Enrichment Training" and learn more about SMART Boards, Web 2.0 and more! The three teachers selected would attend the training and then be asked to go back to the schools to present the information learned to the rest of their staff. It really is a win-win for everyone!
Technology facilitators in the county were asked to present the information and the first session, titled "We're So SMART!" was held last week. We started with the basics, such as how to write with a pen and orient the board and by the end of the day, we were doing page recordings and changing themes. We had all levels of learners present from those that had never used a SMART Board to those that used them every day. The goal was to educate everyone on something new.
As a TF myself, I always tell teachers that after 2 weeks of having the board in their classroom, they'll definitely know more than I ever will, just for the simple fact that using every day creates a mastery. This was proven to be so true. There were a few teachers that had SMART Boards in their classrooms and those teachers taught us things we would have never figured out on our own. One of the most helpful was how to change the language of the board so that it would recognize something other than English as it's main language.
This first workshop was a full day from 7:30 to 3:00 and it was packed full of information about Everything SMART (Document Cameras, Boards, Senteos, Notebook, Airliners) all presented by three people. The next two sessions will be all about Web 2.0. Several TF's will be presenting on all types of educational tools available online. More updates to come soon!

A gift exchange....across the miles?

In my family, we have decided to go for the gift exchange thing rather than buying everyone a present for the holidays. I'm sure many others are in a similar situation this year, but we did this last year for the first time and found we actually enjoyed it more than getting a ton of gifts. What made it even more fun was that when we were shopping all the sales (ex: Black Friday), we could buy for ourselves (we normally have a "don't buy for yourself after Thanksgiving" rule.) This brought a whole new excitement to getting up at 4 in the morning!
Now, I know you're sold on the old save money, less stress aspect of holiday gift buying, but what about those families that are all separated by a few states and you just don't have the means to get together to do a "drawing" of names out of a hat? This is the first year everyone in my family won't be getting together for Thanksgiving, so we had to find a way to exchange names without meeting face to face. We all decided that we did want it to be a secret, so the nerd in me decided to go look around online for a cyber-alternative. I found a great website called Secret-Gift.com.
This site gives even more options than I was expecting. You can set up profiles for each person you are inviting. They receive an email, then they fill out information about themselves and answer preset questions about things they might like to receive. Once everyone has accepted the invitation and filled out the answers to their questions, the manager of the group can select those that shouldn't get each others' names. For example: Husbands and Wives don't really want to draw each others' names. Once you set those parameters, you tell the program to draw and it emails everyone with their secret names.
So far it is a success in our family. We all (whether we admit it or not) have a nerdy side, so everyone is excited about the fact of drawing names online too.

How I Became Fabulous

Many years ago I would list "searching the internet" as one of my hobbies. Yes, with weird stares and questions about what I could possibly be looking for. I just liked the thrill of the hunt. You never know what you might find out there.

Well, as the internet has grown and I found myself busy with a job and a family, that hobby was lost until I met a good friend who helped me learn new and interesting ways to find those neat websites. (Thanks Jason)

Now that I'm a technology facilitator and hang out with a "bunch of nerds" (they're aware I call them that and I think they're actually appreciative). They always ask "how do you know all this-you're fabulous!". I may have embellished the last two words on that quote, but I'm pretty sure they were thinking it! :)

Anyway, truth is, I'm not really that fantastic, I just have a few great tools to help me get there. I figured I'd take a moment to share those few things which are so helpful to me.

1. I share. This is probably my biggest resource. You may be thinking that sharing is me giving ideas away, so how on earth can it be a resource? Truth is, once you start sharing, a wonderful thing happens and people start giving back to you! It works in many aspects of life, but I find it works really well on the internet.

2. I use twitter. (www.twitter.com) Twitter is a microblogging site that allows you to share what you're doing with the world (or at least the part of the world that wants to follow you). I have found many great people in technology to follow on twitter and we all share great ideas with each other about new technologies that are available. Any time a great new web2.0 tool is discovered, someone is talking about it on twitter.

3. I follow blogs on google reader. (www.google.com/reader) Google reader is a tool that helps you put all your blogs in one place so they're easier to read. Anytime I go to a technology conference and hear a great speaker, I look for their blog and add it to my google reader. Anytime they do an update, it appears in my google reader so I don't miss a thing!

I use a few other things as well, but these are my three main resources. I don't want a lot of stuff clogging up my brain or my computer, so I think it is best to keep it simple. It's hard to keep track of several different tools, so just pick a couple that you like the best and stick with those.

I ask anyone else that reads this post to please comment on any other tools you are using to make you fabulous!

Look out for the Glogster!

I stumbled upon a new web 2.0 tool the other day. Glogster.com is currently in Beta and followed by the tagline "Poster Yourself". I find it an interesting twist on social networking, but also had to explore the possible educational aspects of the tool. Within a few minutes I had signed up and was trying to create my own poster or "glog". There are many design elements to play with on the site to make your glog interesting and unique. It was fun to create my first glog with all the different objects. After I was done playing, I got the basic understanding of how this could be used in a classroom.

1. You could have students create "posters" of the topic of interest which would include links, pictures and videos.
   
2. A teacher could use a glog as a teaching tool. He/she could create a glog with all the different parts of the lesson (again: links, videos, pictures, etc.). Think of it as a new-age outline.
   
3. A technology specialist such as myself could use the glog as an advertising tool for an upcoming workshop.
4. Along the same lines, a club or group could use a glog to promote an activity or even they are planning.
   

After thinking of it's uses on my own, I went out in search of those glogs that were already being used in education. Here are a few good ones I found:

• http://andifeyrtr.glogster.com/The-Civil-War-for-what/
  A Glog on the Civil War
  
• http://joshisawesome457.glogster.com/Abraham-Lincoln/
  A Glog on Abraham Lincoln
• http://cybrarian.glogster.com/glog-701/
  A Glog on technology uses in the classroom
• http://cybrarian.glogster.com/Decisions-Decisions/
  A Glog on travel by 3rd graders-great way to show videos.
  

Administrators Get Organized with Google!

Administrators in my school are constantly trying to balance calendars. In a school with around 2000 students and over 100 teachers, there is always something going on in the school community. How can you keep everything straight and make sure that major events don't overlap? I suggest google calendar.
Google's calendar is not only easy to use and edit, but it is also easily shared amongst your fellow administrators and staff. In as few as 3 clicks, you can share your calendar. Each administrator can have their own calendar and then there can be just a general school calendar that everyone can update. All calendars are separated by colors and are easily turned on or off depending on what information you need to see.
To add an event is as simple as a click. You can create a bubble that allows for basic information such as meeting at 3 or you can even add additional information such as how long the meeting will last and where it is located. Events can be shared too. If an administrator schedules a meeting that is to involve the other administrators in the school, he/she can share the event with the others and they will be notified of the added meeting.
The person that is in charge of the overall school calendar can also publish to the web so that the entire staff can access the information. This can all be shared via hyperlink and does not require a google login for your entire staff.
Google calendar can also be easily synched with Microsoft Outlook, ical and several phones.

Technology Camp is a Success!!

I've been talking for quite some time about our county's first ever technology camp. Today was our first day of it and I was so amazed at how wonderful it turned out. We've been working on this for about a year now and there have been many trials and tribulations, but to hear a teacher say that this is the best thing they have ever attended, really makes it all worth while.
We had very few problems the entire day and every person left with a smile on their face. Every technology facilitator left a little tired as we did most of the presentations throughout the day, but we all agreed that it was a success and we were pleased with the outcome.
Our day started with a keynote by Janice Adams from Apple. She talked about a 21st century classroom and how teachers should change the way they create lessons to better accommodate the needs of the students. It was excellent and most teachers I talked to said they walked away with something to think about. That's what we all want out of a keynote, right? I made sure throughout the day to reference a few of the things she said because I know everyone didn't remember everything, but the constant reminders always help.
The rest of the day was filled with 4 sessions, a lunch break and lots of neat giveaways. Each participant got a ticket for every session they went to. Those tickets went into a box to draw for prizes, so if they attended all four sessions, they have 4 opportunities in the box to win. I wasn't sure if this would work well or not, but it really did and everyone was really excited that there was an extra incentive to go to all of the sessions.
My sessions were awesome. I presented all 4 times today as I picked up a session on conducting successful web searches at the last minute. It was tiring doing so many in one day - and all were in different rooms. I got my walking in, that's for sure!
Many sessions were very full while others only had a few. I had one session with only about 7 people in it and then I had one with people standing out in the hallway listening because there wasn't any space left in the room!
It was all very exciting and I'll have more to post after the second day. Please stay tuned as I'll be sharing a plus delta of my own concerning some of the events of the past two days. If you are interested in viewing our camp wiki, here is a link: cabarrussummertech.pbwiki.com

Clean Up Your Space!!

We are in a time that most of the "brand new" teachers have a social site somewhere and probably login every day. More and more, though, we hear of teachers being reprimanded for their antics on their social networking sites. This article from the Washington Post sums it up quite nicely. Is this a problem that should be addressed? I am very aware that some counties draw a line that no teacher can have a social networking site where other counties don't have any policy. So where do we draw the line, or do we need to draw any at all?

This research article on student and faculty relations in facebook found that there were no positive or negative effects on how students viewed the professor after finding he/she was on a social networking site. But, I found it interesting that students had mixed reactions about faculty being on the site. I found similar feedback on this in the article "Is My Space Your Space As Well" by Andy Carvin. Students didn't really like the fact that teachers might be viewing their profiles. One student even comments that people have things on their myspace page that they don't want other people to see such as those with alcohol and smoking. (A whole different blog post on that comment later!). That student, however, does go on to say that having a teacher as their "friend" could be nice when she had questions about homework.

We know that social networking can be a great way to communicate with students. Why not tap into what they already know and use it for meaningful education? New facebook applications are coming available every day including many geared directly toward education. You can do anything from create a wiki within your page to linking your students together to have a group discussion.

I went searching for some school districts that have rules for social networking accounts posted online. I found a list from the Jefferson County Board of Education that deals mostly with blogs, but social networking would fall under many of the same guidelines. You may notice that many of their guidelines include "informing" people of what they are doing and how they are doing it. Education is key. If everyone understands what is going on, they will be more receptive to the new technology. This is true for anything-not just blogs and social networking. I can imagine the difference in reactions if a teacher informs the parents that she has a facebook page set up for her class rather than Johnny coming home and telling mom that Mrs. Smith is on facebook!

I truly believe that training is important with this sensitive issue. Teachers need to be informed of how social networking can negatively effect them and how they can prevent that from happening. Most all of the situations that cause a reprimand of a teacher involve inappropriate material on their site which could easily be avoided. New teachers are in a generation of folks that aren't making the connection of internet and real world. All too often I hear of young kids commenting that "oh, that's just on myspace, everyone knows that doesn't matter". Teachers need to be well informed that "oh, yes it does matter". In my opinion, this training needs to be extensive for first year teachers to your district and then a refresher every year after. So much changes with technology and the internet from year to year, everyone needs to be reminded of the importance of not only internet safety but protecting ourselves as teachers.

All this in mind, there are social networking sites available specifically for educational purposes. One, Elgg, is highlighted in this article, titled Don't Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace Myspace. Another, that is growing quite rapidly, is Ning, which is also a great resource for teachers including many specialized groups for sharing ideas in education.

Mixbook makes an A+

I discovered mixbook.com, an online book creation tool, few months ago. I was instantly hooked, but wanted to see what the teachers thought. I pulled in a select few teachers that I knew were interested in technology as this would be the first introduction of a web 2.0 resource. Not only were they hooked, but they made plans to use it in their classes and produced some interesting projects.

Mixbook is very easy to use and the best thing about it is all the different layouts it includes. Teachers tend to like those colorful additions and Mixbook has a ton of them.

If you are just getting started, you can search the listing of books that are already published and use them as a tool to get started. One that I often use to get teachers excited is one on World War I created by a high school class. This is just one example of how a class could use mixbook to cover a topic. If you look at the book, you'll notice that each student was assigned a page to do on their own.

One of our students created a piece on "All Quiet on the Western Front" as part of a project in her English class. This one has already received good feedback from other mixbook users! This brings me to the next great feature of Mixbook. I had this book printed for use in my training sessions. You can print your finished copy for as little as 12.99. That's a pretty good deal and the quality is great.

Are you hungry for Timetoast?

As my husband is a social studies teacher, I tend to pay close attention to new sites that cater to some of the things he does in class. One thing he always mentions is that kids really don't like to do timelines. I recall not enjoying them in school either-not to mention then are a huge waste of paper when done the old fashioned way (which is how most teachers do them).

Enter Timetoast. Your online timeline creation tool. www.timetoast.com

I ran across this neat little tool by accident, but it is proving to be a great addition to my collection of web 2.0 resources. Not only would it be a great tool to use for individual or groups of students in a classroom, but also an awesome tool for your interactive whiteboard. Find a great example here of a timeline for NASA:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/86

In 10 minutes time, I signed up and created my first short timeline (5 entries). It was quite easy to get one started and even easier to add entries. I was pleased that the popup box with the entry information was short. All you need is the title, date, description and an optional picture for each entry. This is great for students and teachers that want to do a quick timeline and don't need a lot of fancy options. You can also write a long description because it is hidden until you click on the entry in the timeline.

Another great thing timetoast does is organizes all of your timelines on one page-with pictures (that you add of course). So, from semester to semester or year to year, they are organized on your main timeline page in an easy-to-find format.

Technology Camp-No Bug Spray Needed!

As a technology facilitator in Cabarrus county, I am faced with the task of presenting several sessions at our first ever technology camp. We are now past 600 participants (no, we weren't expecting even half that many) so we know that this is our shot to really make an impact on the teachers and administrators in our county. I have volunteered to do 4 sessions.

One session, luckily, I get to do with another person. We will be doing something with Mixbook and Toondoo. We have a lot of great mixbook examples because once I found it and showed it to a few tech facilitators, it was being used like crazy! ToonDoo didn't take off quite as well, but I still think it's a great program and now I know how to promote it a bit more. The people coming to these sessions will most likely never have heard of these tools, so we're basically going to do a quick demo of each and give some educational examples of how they're used.

The second session I'm doing is for administrators (yikes-not sure how I got myself into this one). I'm a little excited and a little nervous all in one. It's a little scary doing a presentation for administrators only. It's titled "Let's Get Organized - Digitally". I created a neat little thing on the SMARTBoard that allows principals to do the schools master schedule using smartnotebook software. Before, they had these crazy magnet boards with magnets that I found out cost 1400.00!!! That's insane and I told them so-and then created the notebook. Well, it's a hit in two schools now and I'm hoping with this presentation, it will be a hit in the other schools as well. In this session, we'll also go over the wonderful world of google and I'll show them igoogle and google calendar specifically. I'm going to focus on the sharing part and help them realize it could be an awesome tool for working together.

The third session I'm doing is on Google Apps. This one is for teachers and we'll just go over igoogle and all the neat things that integrate with it like reader, calendar, bookmarks, etc.

My fourth session I adopted after someone wasn't able to do it, but the more I think about it, the more excited I am to do this one. It's called "Using the SMARTBoard in High School". I'm thinking that I'll show several different lessons that I've collected, some lessons from the SMART website and give them a few interesting uses of some of the things in the gallery.

I'm going to be quite busy, but I think it will be a great thing in the end. I'm also thinking that once I have all of these set, I have something to present at several conferences this year! Looking forward to that! NCETC, NCAECT and FETC-here I come!!! Oh wait! Can I fit NECC in there too?

www2.0 (wonderful world of Web 2.0)

While perusing the wonderful world of web 2.0 this evening, I found a couple fantastic sites that I thought were worth sharing. I really tend to get into the nitty gritty of websites and I throw out probably 95% or more that I look at -specifically if I can't figure them out within a minute. So these are simple, time saving sites that I found very helpful.
1. http://whenisgood.net/ We've all had the problem. You exchange emails, comments, posts, phone calls, calendars, etc. looking for a good date for a meeting or even. This site eliminates all the craziness. You simply fill in the dates that are good for you, it creates a link that you send to your colleagues/friends and they fill in the dates that are good for them. Eventually it gets narrowed down to some workable dates and voila, you have a date picked without frustration! I love it!
2. http://www.groupcard.com/ This one is awesome and I can't believe everyone in the world isn't using it. This site allows you to send a group card to someone. Yes, you pick the style, pick where you want to sign, sign it and even add a picture if you want. Then, you simply pass it on for the next person to sign! I sent a few of these within minutes of finding the site and they were a huge hit! Oh, and a nice little bonus is that you can even get your card printed. Someone can actually sponsor the printing so the recipient doesn't have to pay themselves. It really is a great concept and very easy to use.

Wii Fit

My husband surprised me with a Wii fit today. I have to say that my nerdy side was quite interested in trying it and my non-fit side was really interested in seeing if it would get me moving. Of course the first time we turned it on was a learning process so we didn't get a lot of "exercise" out of it, but the 2nd time was all work! I was sweating, having trouble catching my breath and all out exhausted after only 20 minutes of exercise. The two person run was quite interesting as my husband and I were side by side doing an "in place" run. If someone happened to walk by our window at the right time, they'd have thought we were complete idiots.
I sat a goal to lose 5 lbs using the wii fit in a two month time span (all done within the software). I'll fill you in on how well it works, but from what I've seen tonight, the cost of the program is totally worth it. Fun and hard work all in one!

Watch out-Summer Ahead

Today was my last day of school for a while. I'm sure I'll be in next week because I can't stay away, but I don't HAVE to go.
I had a few interesting things happen while talking to everyone at the end of the year banquet. First of all, had a great conversation at my table about how important technology is in the lives of students today. I tried to just sit back and listed because I didn't want to be the one to initiate any interesting ideas on this one. It was really interesting to hear the teachers talk about how they knew technology was one of the best ways of reaching students. A couple of teachers even mentioned that technology projects they implemented this year were viewed as "best projects" by their students. I'm really interested to see what these teachers come up with over the summer. The excitement over the county technology camp is overwhelming and I truly believe it will affect how lessons are developed in the coming year.

As the year comes to a close.....

I've been working a good part of the last few days to "tie up loose ends" around here. Cleaning the labs, FINALLY getting a chance to organize my office and pulling in all the borrowed technology equipment from throughout the year.
I always find myself reflecting on what I did right/wrong and what I'll do for next year. To be honest, I started thinking about next year several months ago. So, you may ask, what are some of the changes I'll make? Here's my list:
1. I sat down one day and picked dates for the entire next year and planned workshops-with topics too! I turned that list in to the office so they know to plan around those dates as best they can. I think that if I have the dates posted at the beginning of the year, teachers will be able to plan for them better. After I made the list, though, I realized that I could totally offer a workshop every week to cover all of my material. So, still working on whether or not I can handle that.
2. I will be working most of the summer to get a lot of handouts and maybe even some step by step videos on my website so if teachers have questions, they can go to there for help.
3. I want to get into the classrooms more to observe technology being used - specifically with our smart boards. I had a goal this year to go and watch and something always came up to prevent me from going. Next year, I'd like to actually get that done-my goal is to see all the rooms with smart boards at least once.
And, I'm sure I'll add more. There's always room for improvement and I like to re-evaluate from time to time to see what needs to be changed.
Looking forward to a summer of planning and a new year ahead!

2+2-a+b=Photostory?

I was asked a couple of weeks ago to do a quick presentation on how to use photostory for a group of students taking a statistics class. I thought "hmm, wonder what's going on here"? So, I showed them how to create their story (mainly a 5-10 minute overview of the program) and told them to go for it! I walked around for a few minutes to see exactly what they were doing and I heard the following topics being passed around : Growth Hormones, Video Game Violence and, the oddest, Cheese. I figured I must not know much about statistics and I'd just wait and see what the final outcome was.
Over the next several days I had random questions like "Can I borrrow your microphone?" and "Why isn't this saving correctly?" but never totally got the overall idea of the project. I was getting excited to see what they were doing with this.
Today was the day to watch the movies they had created. I was excited as I had no idea what I was in for. I thought I'd go watch the first presentation and then head back to my office to finish up a few projects I was working on myself.
The first presentation started with the photostory itself and the topic was about growth hormones. The students had beautifully selected appropriate pictures featuring cows, music of "cotton eyed joe" and text explaining why growth hormones are used. Then the music changed, got a little slower and the photos changed to pictures of little girls. The text started explaining how hormones in meat effect menstruation cycles in girls. My eyes welled up a little and I knew I was hooked!
I ended up staying the whole period and thoroughly enjoyed watching everyone's project. And I was even intrigued by the one on how cheese relates to "#2"! And hey-it really doesn't cause constipation in everyone!
The best part of all this is how well it integrated with the statistics curriculum. Students were using terminology as if they truly understood it, used graphs to show the survey data they had collected and even commenting on what they learned and what they would have done differently a second time. I was very impressed with these projects and I look forward to seeing more in the future.
Getting Math to integrate technology like this has proved to be a challenge at all schools I have worked in, so it was extra special to see something like this work out so beautifully. I hope to be able to share a couple of these shows once I get permission from the students.