Interactive fiction (aka text adventures) is increasingly being used in schools to encourage reading, writing and teach problem-solving skills and logical thinking; it is also approached on digital and new media studies, and used in courses on computer programming and game design.
Through the use of freely available and easy to use software, students can think about narrative in a novel way, because each story can have multiple narratives depending on what the player decides to do, getting students to think in detail about characters and settings.
During this hands on workshop we will explore ways in which good narrative writing and logical mathematical thinking can be combined into a rich, purposeful project. Participants will be able to create their own interactive fiction game and reflect about all the exciting possibilities these environments can offer. No programming experience is needed.
Storytelling is one of the most ancient forms of communication. Before there were cameras, computers, or even books, stories held the knowledge of all civilization.
The story form is problem, resolution, transformation, character development, plot flow, all these things that take the information within a container. The story is an information container and all these aspects are the ones that bring the story together into a form that can be remembered.
This is why a group of our EC/ES teachers got together last week to create something very special for our students, a music video to instill in our community a love for reading. (If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to watch it.)
What a wonderful way to kick off Literacy week while showing students a different way in which stories can be told.
Maybe watching this music video made students feel happier, maybe they felt inspired, maybe they learnt something new, maybe they laughed out loud, (or maybe they cried). But our students love to read and listen to stories, and I know for sure that this one will be remembered and it may also inspire them to tell their own.
This is the power of sharing stories. They invite more stories. And I don’t know of a better way to help our students practice grammar, expand their vocabulary, and share their ideas with others.
Learning 2.0 is an annual educational technology conference for Asian international schools, held this year at UWC in Singapore from 10-12 October, 2013.
This year’s conference had a particular focus on “Design Thinking” and “Maker Culture”, and as part of SSIS’ commitment to providing teachers with Professional Development opportunities, a few faculty members from our school were sent to this event.
After 3 days of intense and purposeful discussion at Learning 2.013, I have come away with an overwhelming sense that all those changes in the educational landscape that we’ve been predicting in the last decade or so, are up to us. And we teachers are the change agents.
At SSIS we understand that education is at the crossroads and technology has opened up new possibilities, both for teachers and students alike. Its pervasiveness is changing how we learn and, by fostering Professional Development in these areas, SSIS is making sure that teachers are trained in how to use technology in a way that augments, rather than distracts students from lessons. It is predicted that in the decades to follow, a majority of students will work in jobs that still don’t exist, so at SSIS we want to make sure that our students get ready for a drastically different learning environment.
One of the highlights at the Learning 2.013 conference was the final keynote by Jeff Utecht, a renowned speaker, educator, and consultant in information technology who showed the Google video about moonshot thinking. (If you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to watch it. It is well worth the almost four minutes.)
“Moonshots live in the grey area between audacious technology and pure science fiction. Instead of a mere 10% gain, a moonshot aims for a 10x improvement over what currently exists. The combination of a huge problem, a radical solution to that problem, and the breakthrough technology that just might make that solution possible, is the essence of a moonshot.”
This is it! Moonshot thinking builds on passion, but goes beyond that recognizing that only by choosing to be bothered by problems that don’t seem to be easily solved and committing to working towards solutions. “People can set their minds to magical, seemingly possible ideas and bring them to reality. That sets people on fire and makes them think about things that were impossible are actually accomplishable.”
At SSIS, we do encourage students to embrace this way of thinking. If we successfully ignite this passion in all our students and embrace Moonshot Thinking, the possibilities are endless.
A couple of years ago I started exploring the world of data visualization and infographics, and how it was starting to move into the way we present ourselves through our resumes. Since then, the idea of infographic visual resumes has exploded. Some careers lend themselves quite naturally to infographic resumes I guess, such as those in graphic design, art or even interior design. But how about the rest of us? Does it make sense to move towards a redefinition of the way we present ourselves or it makes more sense to stick to the tried-and-true traditional resume format.
I got so inspired by Randy Krum’s infographic resume’s data bank that during the last October break I decided to rework my résumé (and the rest of my professional portfolio) and give it a try, since I was thinking in pursuing my next career move. After getting very useful feedback from Kurt Mecklem, my former MHS principal at Cebu International School, and Wayne Demnar, my former Elementary School Principal at Beijing BISS International School, I decided to give my Infographic resume a go.
I also thought that since I decided to explore job opportunities in schools I had the sense that were forward thinking schools, the experiment was worth the risk. A school that would be turned off by my resume is probably not a school I’d want to work anyway.
My goals were:
My Resume shouldn’t be longer than 2 pages and everything included in it should be worth reading.
It needed to enable a school administrator to visualize my career history, education and skills within a 10 seconds reading.
Showcase my tech skills and creativity, showing that I can actually walk the walk so to speak.
It needed to stand up among the rest of resumes.
I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve got, but I am still struggling with some of the graphs. How do you measure and visualize things like interpersonal skills?
It all ended up being a very successful experiment since I was offered before Christmas a Technology Resource Facilitator position at Saigon South International School. Just the right job, at the right school and back in the Tropics. A perfect match!
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What do you think? Is it too risky to send a resume like this? Is there something missing? (I haven’t included a professional development section due to lack of space). Is it giving enough information about the candidate? Does it make you want to know more about the candidate?
BISS Elementary School presented last month a candidacy for the Barrie Jo Price Award for Innovative Technology Use in International Schools (BJP-IT) with the aim of highlighting best practices concerning the use of technology in a global context. Although we didn’t win, we came up as a very strong candidate and the evaluation team has commended us for it.
It is amazing how this team has totally embraced an seamlessly embedded in the curriculum our philosophy of technology integration: “being able to read and write multiple forms of media and integrate them into a meaningful whole is the new hallmark of literacy.” How at BISS, the elementary team has adopted “the multimedia collage” and the command of the visual language as a foundational literacy, integrating technology through an authentic culture of collaboration, and combining it with the world of web 2.0 and social and participatory media.
This is the documentary the Elementary staff has put together to participate in this initiative. (You’ll need to let the video load completely before hitting the PLAY button).
Congratulations to the BISS Elementary School Rock Stars!…you have made the learning with technology REAL!
Watch it when you have the time, it is really worth it! And many of the practices highlighted in the video can easily be extrapolated to the Secondary School!
Being able to read and write multiple forms of media and integrate them into a meaningful whole is the new hallmark of literacy.
At BISS we are a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) school, and although I know how challenging it is at times to make sure students use their personal gadgets in a way that supports their education, I am hoping to convince you that what we basically see as communication devices can turn very easily into places where students go to paint. Jason Ohler calls these devices Screasels: Screens that can easily become a new easel, a new place where students go to “make stuff”, not just to “consume stuff”. A lot of us grew up just looking at media as something that we consume, but media is now something that we make.
And the bottom line here is that literacy means consuming and producing the media forms of the day, whatever they are. And it’s been always like this! If you have a kid that just reads but doesn’t write, would you consider that student literate? NO YOU WOULDN’T. You would consider that student half literate, since he/she can only do half of the literacy equation.
And we are absolutely at that point where students need to be able to write well whatever it is that they read. And it hasn’t been until a few years ago that we have those tools that are widely distributed, very cheap and easy to use that are allowing us to produce the same media that we all used to just consume!
Essay writing vs. the multimedia collage
Essay writing was the baseline literacy that I grew up with. That is when my teacher said: “Ok…your assignment is to write a 1000 words essay, and it needs to look like this”:
And this is the new baseline literacy. Look at all the different literacies that it implies: organization, color, text, navigation, sound.
And I am not saying that essays are not important anymore. The essay is still very important, but it is just not the only option on the palette anymore, and as a teacher, I really want to make sure that my students are able to express themselves in ways that truly make sense in this day and age.
Value writing more than ever
Last year our Grade 5 students embarked in a multimedia project as part of their PYP Final Exhibition. The theme for the Grade 5 exhibition was “Conflict Resolution” and students had to create a digital cartoon to explore local conflicts at school and possible resolutions. Their audience once the cartoons were ready, would be our Lower Elementary students. Gradeb5s had to create a Story Arc made up of 5 types of scenes: Setup; Conflict; Challenge; Climax; and Resolution, and each scene needed to represent an independent event in the story. They also had to define and illustrate their cast of characters, design the backgrounds choose the audio to add emotion to the scene and write the script.
During our first session I told my students: hey guys, don’t worry…I’m not going to make you write for this project… you will have to do something more fun you will create “A MOVIE SCRIPT”. And then they wrote…and wrote…and wrote….and they loved it!
By the end of the project I came to the conclusion that reluctance to write is not a cognitive issue, because if it was a cognitive issue they wouldn’t have been able to write under any circumstance. This is clearly an inspirational issue.
And now we are writing for media. George Clooney was once asked: “what makes a great movie?” His answer was: “I have no idea, but I’ll tell you something, you can make a really bad movie out of a good script, but you really can’t make a good movie out of a bad script – it all starts with the screenplay.”
Grade 5 Cartoons on Conflict resolution
Art as a foundational literacy
This is absolutely upon us! We need to adopt ART as a foundational literacy. And with ART I mean the command of the visual language. In the past we have perceive art in terms of expressing our feelings and getting in touch with ourselves. But now, we are living in a very dynamic and aesthetic age. To be literate in this day and age, we all need to be creative and be an artist at some level. And we are ignoring this at our own peril in terms of our potential for financial success!
How soon do we start?
At BISS we are currently embedding into our Elementary School curriculum activities and projects that help students build their command of the visual language as soon as in Pre-K.
During March 2012, a dedicated team of teachers and Pre-K students undertook a digital storytelling project based on one of the Pre-K’s favorite books “Brown Bear”.
The focus of the Unit of Inquiry where this project fit in was on feelings, and the goals for the students included learning simple vocabulary and sentence structures while getting familiar with the digital landscape and its possibilities. Since at this level it is so important to emphasize on modeling and repetition, an adapted version of the “Brown Bear” book gave us a perfect framework. In this case, all characters in the original book were replaced by our students, and instead of focusing on colors we targeted a set a common feelings (anger, sadness, happiness, etc)
During Ms. Aurora’s Art class, students created a big book made of student’s original artwork using cardboard sheets, colored papers and crayon.
With Ms. Jenny’s and Mrs. Hawk’s help (our wonderful Pre-K teachers) students planned, created and performed in front of a video camera their original story using a wall painted in green as a background, which allowed for “chroma key green screen editing”. At the post production level, Grade 6 students scanned copies of the Pre-K big Book which were “slid behind” their video recorded performances using chroma editing on iMovie. A truly collaborative project!
Pre-K, Who Do You See project
We have actually found out that in many cases, through the development of projects that involve multimedia in the early years, reluctant speakers have significantly improve their communication skills.
Ms. Jenny’s Pre-K Students performing “Silly Sammy”
Students can learn a lot about persuasive language, filming techniques and digital editing while sending a message to their peers.
As a part of the PYP Exhibition, a group of Grade 5 students sent a very strong message to our School Community on how to stay healthy at School by creating a Music Video.
Grade 5’s “Wash Your hands”
In the example bellow, a dramatic documentary presented to Beijing FLUX Film Festival, where Grade 5 students at BISS combined dramatic techniques with documentary elements to depict a story about bullying.
A Bullying Story
At BISS, Ms. O’Dwyer’s Grade 4 students created this environmental message, they were inspired by Joni Mitchell’s original classic “Big Yellow Taxi”.
Grade 4’s “Big Green World”
In this video, our Grade 4 students took the role of Scientists explaining natural disasters. Students developed core skills such as script writing, storyboarding, and oral communication.
BISScientists Explain the Earth
Green screen, voice over narration, student made documentaries, e-book creation are just some of the many different media techniques to use, and you don’t really need a budget these days. Which strategies do you use to create multimedia lessons that help engage students and keep them interested in the content?
When nine-year-old Martha Payne set up the blog Never Seconds a few months ago, to show pictures and write reports of her daily school lunch in Scotland – sometimes not as healthy as one would expect– it was meant as a personal writing project that would be seen by only her aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas.
But the word spread out over social media, and in just a couple of weeks, thousands of people had viewed Martha’s posts and pictures of her school lunch, sitting on a white tray.
She managed to use the attraction her blog was causing all over the world to not only improve her school meals, but also to raise more than £100,000 for a charity providing school food for impoverished children worldwide.
Blogs are a very powerful tool to empower student action and help students reflect and share interests, hobbies, learning experiences while building writing abilities.
I am a blogger myself, and what I love the most about blogging is knowing that I am actually writing for a Global Audience. That means that anyone in the world at any time can read what I write, leave positive comments and discuss these ideas with me. It helps me understand my own thoughts better while challenging my own perceptions.
At BISS we believe in 21st Century learning, and blogging is getting viral through our new BISS Blog Network (http://blogs.biss.com.cn). Through our Blog Network, students and teachers are expanding their learning experiences beyond the classroom environment and traditional school schedule constraints.
Blogs are allowing BISS teachers and students collaborate in cross-curricular projects and provide the opportunity for feedback from anyone in the world, creating limitless collaborative options and improve student writing.
An exciting new project has kept us busy in the Elementary School during our last month of School. This time we wanted to bring a robotics pilot program to our elementary school students. Our goal was to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics irresistibly FUN for the lucky students participating in the program while having a first taste on how a Robotics Program might look like next school year at BISS.
For this new pilot project, we purchased three Lego Mindstorms robotics kit, and with only one month of school left and no previous experience of my own I had to quickly figure out the best way to try out our new robots as a starting point for a more formal program next school year. After informally approaching our wonderful teachers in the elementary school, I came across Mr. Hawke, our Grade 2 teacher, who had just started a Unit of Inquiry about “Simple Machines”. The Grade 2s were investigating how simple machines make work easier. They were looking into the form and function of the lever, screw, inclined plane, wheel and axle, wedge and pulley. What a perfect opportunity to introduce these no-so-simple machines as an extension of the Grade 2s enquiry! After considering some pros an cons we decided to venture into this brand new world for us, and give the Grade 2s the challenge of building the robots and seeing what they can do.
The students worked in teams to build the kits according to the instructions and undertook different roles such as instructor, finder, builder, checker and helper.
Given the complexity of the task, the teams have done a great job in constructing the robots and programming them to perform simple functions. Here are a few of the achievements of this very young group of students:
Students have been challenged to think like scientists and engineers since they have learnt how to build a robot from scratch, and program it.
Students have explored basic computer programming maneuvers and learnt how to use the servomotors and the four main LEGO sensors: light, ultrasonic, touch and sound.
Along the way they have developed skills in cooperation, through sharing roles and helping one another.
The last day of school Grade 2s performed an Open Floor Demonstration where they had to show their newly acquired skills and apply them to solve missions that simulate real-life engineering problems.
After one month of intense work, I believe that we have successfully introduced Grade 2s to the fun and excitement of science and technology while building self-confidence, knowledge, vocabulary and life-skills.
Well done boys and girls!
Open floor demonstration:
The line follower: In this challenge students created a robot that follows a line on the ground . They had to use one light sensor to sense where the line is. The objective was to complete the course tracking the course line from start to finish.
The Sumo challenge: The goal is to push the other robot out of an hexagonal ring or flip it upside down. Students needed to program the robot using a light sensor and an ultrasonic sensor (optional).
The long wait is over and we are already offering Kindle eReaders for circulation at the BISS Library-Media Center!
The BISS Library-Media Center has purchased 6 Kindle touch reading devices that offer 3G and wireless access to ebooks. We are implementing the e-reader program to provide our students the opportunity to read on a device that they otherwise might not be able to access. We are hoping that we can meet the needs of all students by offering an alternative reading experience. This project will also provide an opportunity to interact with information technologies, and will allow the media center to increase access to high-demand titles on the spot.
After reviewing the pros and cons of this pilot Kindle project, Dr. Zilber, our Head of School, agreed that the potential benefits outweighed any drawbacks, and I am thankful for her support in this endeavor. I am truly excited to hear our students’ feedback on their experiences with ereading and the Kindles. Their input will be used to guide future steps in our efforts to provide reading materials both in print format as well as digital.
Next Steps
Intense data has been collected within the past couple of months in order to explore how the use of an e-reader affects reading behaviors, attitudes and comprehension versus the use of traditional books. In addition, and to further explore this device’s usage among students; we have designed a mixed-method, teacher-action research focusing on the difference between independent variables: the mediums being read (print and non-print).
A total of 12 fourth-graders from Shannon’s class (ages 9-10-years-old) have made up the participants of the study. All participants are from the same fourth-grade classroom. Of the twelve participants, six are boys and six are girls. The participants in the study represent a wide range of reading abilities and different ethnic backgrounds.
In order to carry out this experiment, a treatment group and a control group have been defined. The control group is being used as a baseline measure. The members of the control group will be very similar to the members of the treatment group with the exception that they will not have access to the e-readers.
As the Library-Media Center collects data and student permissions to share their insights and experiences of reading on the Kindle, I will share that data with you in this space. We will also collect data on students’ reading attitudes, behavior and comprehension with ereaders vs. paper books, and on the types of books students are requesting and reading.
An exciting new project has kept us busy in the Elementary School during our last month of School. This time we wanted to bring a robotics pilot program to our elementary school students. Our goal was to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics irresistibly FUN for the lucky students participating in the program while having a first taste on how a Robotics Program might look like next school year at BISS.
