For this month’s “Teacher Feature” remix or mashup, I thought that I’d attempt to accomplish two tasks – one to inspire and one to remind:

Teacher Feature #28 – Aesop – April, 2013

Following the inspiring pattern that I have established in my previous 27 “Teacher Feature” remixes, I blended a powerful message with a complementary Creative Commons licensed photo, together with its Flickr address. However, I also took the liberty of including a reminder for teachers and students that, each year, the last Thursday in April is reserved as “Pay It Forward Day”. Unfortunately, due to family commitments, I have not recently been blogging as regularly as I would like. As such, I missed giving adequate warning this year of the very powerful teaching opportunity of the “Pay It Forward Day”. It is hoped that teachers will print out this image reminder, or at least mark their calendars well in advance, to take advantage of this teaching opportunity in future years. Perhaps, Aristotle said it best … “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

Take care & keep smiling

Larger Image: Brian Metcalfe’s Teacher Feature “photostream”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life-long-learners/

I was inspired by the “Pay It Forward Day” founder, Charley Johnson’s TED Talk “Simplicity in a Complex World” in which he states that a world-wide universal truth is that “we all want this world to be better”. As a teacher, I encourage you to start by reviewing the “Pay It Forward Day” video trailer or Charley Johnson’s, “Pay It Forward 2013″ message.

To help your students understand the important ripple effect in paying a good deed forward, I recommend the YouTube “Kindness Boomerang” video. I’d recommend exploring the on-line school resources and downloading and printing the applicable grade level “Pay It Forward Day” card as shown below:

If you are unable to act on this opportunity in a timely manner, I encourage you to begin sharing the “Pay It Forward” concept and ideas with your students throughout the remainder of this year. However, make certain that you mark, the last Thursday in April next year (April 24, 2014), as a reminder of the important teaching opportunity that awaits you and your students.

Take care & keep smiling

• search the Internet critically;
• enhance projects with images from Creative Commons; and
• give appropriate credit.

Teacher Feature #27 – Jesse Jackson – March, 2013

To create this combination visual display, I first searched through a variety of motivational quote sites. I particularly like resources such as “Brainy Quote”, “Motivational and Inspirational Quotes”, or “World of Quotes” because it is possible to search for quotations by topics such as “Education” or “Teaching”.

Once, I had selected this powerful quotation by Jesse Jackson, I then began using the Flickr Advanced Search mechanism to search for Creative Commons licensed images that I could “modify, adapt, or build upon”. I entered the terms “reach” and “hand”, into the upper Flickr search field, and was delighted to find this powerful “Reaching Hand” image by Brett Sayer. I downloaded the “large” size of this Creative Commons image and recorded the Internet URL address for giving proper credit.

Although there are many ways that Jesse Jackson’s quotation and the Internet address could be added to this image, I chose to use PowerPoint. I simply start with a blank slide and inserted the downloaded image into the slide format. Once the image was positioned appropriately, I inserted text boxes to contain the quotation, the individual, and the Flickr credit address.

The last step in the process is to use PowerPoint’s “Save as > Other Formats” and pick “JPEG File Interchange Format (*.jpg)” under the “Save as type” category. On the next screen, one need only select “Current Slide Only” and save the resulting remix image to your computer.

Once I publish the remix in a blog post, I usually try to remember to go back to the site of the original Flickr image and enter a comment thanking the individual for sharing her/his creative images with me through the Creative Commons process.

I trust that some readers may be able to use this “Image with a Message” activity with their own students.

Take care & keep smiling

Larger Image: Brian Metcalfe’s Teacher Feature “photostream”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life-long-learners/

Don’t give up on this activity just yet. True, Alec and Dean did an amazing job of encouraging and facilitating the collection of lip dub video clips from individuals in different geographical locations. However, I plan to demonstrate how much easier it is for a regular classroom teacher to create a lib dub activity with her/his classroom than the effort required to produce the more complex #ETMOOC lip dub.

On November 8, 2012, I attended a Manitoba Association for Computing Educators (ManACE) Technology Information Night (TIN). I invested $5.00 to offset my supper costs and was rewarded with three different 30-minute classroom-based, professional development sessions shared by Manitoba educators. The one learning opportunity that really resonated with me was presented by Christin Mackay, a Grade 4/5 teacher from Stevenson-Britannia School. In her presentation, “Creativity & Collaboration – Making Video Mashups”, Christin showed her engaging lip dub video that she and her 26 students created. Not only was her class’ lip dup video inspiring, Christin’s “behind the scenes” strategies in this classroom-based collaborative effort, were equally important. To help other classroom teachers, I’ll share Christin’s week-long lip dub activity tips below:

• First, she selected a Sesame Street song which was popular with her students. The “What I Am” YouTube video, in which “Will.i.am” from “The Black Eyes Peas” sings with the various Sesame Street characters, was played for the class. This would become the audio track for the students’ collaborative lip dub video.
• Lyrics for the song were prepared. For example, the YouTube video “What I am by Will.i.am – Lyrics (Sesame Street)” is a good resource.
• Lyrics were displayed on a screen.
• The song was played in class while the students viewed the lyrics and sang along together.
• Students learned the song and were invited to sing along with a partner.
• A student, who was reluctant to sing, was accommodated by allowing him to demonstrate his “air drum” technique.
• Six computers were used on the day of the actual video recording.
• Christin stressed that it is very important that the “frame per second” ratio is set to the same value on all computers being used.
• The camera was positioned behind the lyric display screen.
• Students, in pairs, came up to sing the whole song which was captured as a video clip.
• After the 13 student-pair songs were recorded, Christin selected an “extended” video clip which best displayed the actions of each pair of students. Each “extended” video clip contained extra frames preceding and following the complete line of the song.
• During the compilation process, it is important to ensure that every line of the complete song is represented by a student-pair “extended” video clip.
• The individual audio tracks were removed from each student-pair “extended” video clip.
• Although other movie-making applications would work, iMovie was used to edit and arrange the clips into the lip dub video.
• Assemble all 13 “extended silent clips” into the new lip dub video timeline in the appropriate order.
• Add the “What I Am” audio track to the video project.
• Trim and “tweak” each of the 13 “extended silent clips” so that each video clip synchronized best with the particular “What I Am” audio track segment.
• Add a title and credits to the video and save the resulting movie with a backup.
• Share the final lip dub with students and celebrate. However, in order to protect the privacy of your students, do not transfer this lip dub video creation to an Internet video sharing service like YouTube or Vimeo unless you have appropriate parental approval.

Christin’s tips and strategies helped me better understand the lip dub process from a teacher’s point of view. Although there exist lip dub videos created by older students and adults, Christin shared important steps that demonstrate how younger elementary students can also be engaged in this fun, collaborative, learning adventure.

When comparing Christin’s classroom lip dub with Alec’s more ambitious #ETMOOC project, there are several factors which will appeal to those who might consider creating a class or school lip dub. Some of these important differences include:

• Christin did not need to formally pool her students and engage a survey service to rate which songs were most popular with her students.
• Her students sang the entire song so Christin had much more freedom in selecting a video segment that best showcased each student-pair. In addition, she had much more latitude in trimming video clips since each student-pair sang the entire song rather than the more restrictive single line.
• Classroom or school lip dub activities have much more consistency with regard to video capture hardware and software. Alec had no control over the application or device used to capture the individual participants’ video clip. Nor did he have control over the video image size, resolution, or portrait or landscape formats. Christin, on the other hand, could ensure that all student-pair’ videos were captured in a consistent landscape format avoiding the dreaded “Vertical Video Syndrome” as demonstrated in this comical Public Service Announcement (PSA).
• To accommodate collecting individual video clips (from Smart phones or web cameras on Macintosh and Windows-based computers), Alec had to set up a process for participants, from around the world, to send video files to him and the video editor. On the other hand, classroom teachers need only save consistently formatted student videos to a local computer or server.
• With consistent video format, resolution, and layout, the classroom/school video editor need only extract an “extended” video clip showcasing each pair of students and save them in lyrical line order.
• Based on the large number of video file contributions, Alec had to develop a file-naming convention so that each #ETMOOC video clip could be easily matched with the particular line of song lyrics. In Christin’s case, she did not need to establish a rigid file naming convention because she was working with a more manageable number of video files. Her main concern was to make certain that all student-pair video clips represented all the lyrics and music in the original song.
• Undoubtedly the #ETMOOC video editor had to manipulate a large number of video clips in a wide variety of file formats, resolutions and layout sizes. Compiling and editing such diverse raw video clips required a highly talented video editor familiar with the advanced capabilities of a fairly powerful video editing tool like Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro or Pinnacle Studio. On the other hand, it would be possible for a classroom lip dub to be easily edited and arranged on an iMovie or Windows Movie Maker-like applications with its more limited number of audio and video tracks.

As I was revising this post, I was delighted to receive an email from Paul Stewart – a Computer Technolgy teacher from Garden City Collegiate. Paul had just read my previous post entitled “Lip dub: I’m havin’ a good time!” and wanted to share with me the invigorating experience that his high school students had as they organized a school-wide lip dub. The following two videos were shot in “one take” and showcase how such a lip dub activity can enhance school spirit:

• Garden City Collegiate Lip Dub – 2011
• Garden City Collegiate Lip Dub – Split Screen – 2012

After viewing both of these videos, I was so impressed with the steadiness from the camera’s point of view. I emailed Paul and asked if the students used a tripod, on a moveable dolly, to capture the video. Paul indicated that in the 2011 lip dub the camera was hand-held by a student for the total duration of the “one-take” lip dub. However in the 2012 lip dub video, students made a home-made steadicam to help stabilize the shots. Paul even checked with the students to find out that they built the steadicam after watching the instructional YouTube video entitled  “Awesome Directors Project : $15 DIY steadicamin 15 minutes!”. This “do it yourself” project is one that students, who are engaged in making videos, might like to attempt. Undoubtedly the resulting steadicam device can be used to make more professional looking videos.

In closing, I will list a variety of different innovative lip dub YouTube videos to motivate students and their teachers:

• Gotye – “Somebody that I used to know” by Two Kids in a Car
• “Stronger” – Seattle Children’s Hospital
• The Making of Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” at Seattle Children’s Hospital
• The first lipdub video with 300 Cambodian kids
• Seven Lakes Junior High Lip Dub
• Cypress Ranch HS Anti-Bullying Lip-Dub
• Archive for Lipdub from Schools
• I’m Just Waiting for Some Miley
• Train – Hey, Soul Sister – LIPDUB UVic University (Official)
• University LipDub Videos
• Lindsay LipDUB: World’s Largest & Canada’s First City LibDub
• The Grand Rapids LipDub (NEW WORLD RECORD)
• Isaac’s Live Lip-Dub Proposal
  

I trust that the information presented by both Christin and Paul will help motivate you to engage the students in your classroom or school to demonstrate their creativity through a lip dub activity. Should you become engaged in your own lip dub learning adventure, I encourage you “pay forward” your tips, resources, and experiences by leaving comments at the end of this post to help motivate and encourage other students and educators.

Take care & keep smiling

Credits: – Flickr – Creative Commons image “singing” by Anthony Kelly
– http://www.flickr.com/photos/62337512@N00/4319350283/

I encourage educators to visit the ManACE web site at www.manace.ca to view the 2013 SEED Grant Brochure and complete the three step application process. So why not give some serious thought on how you and your students can demonstrate the creative use of technology? Perhaps your passionate digital story will be the innovative spark that illustrates how technology can be creatively used in your school. Imagine how your teaching might change if you were awarded one of these $900.00 grants!

Take care & keep smiling

A lip dub is a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. It is made by filming individuals or a group of people lip synching while listening to a song or any recorded audio then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the song.

Having joined the Educational Technology & Media’s Massive Open Online Course (#ETMOOC), I was invited, with other participants from around the world, to participate in a collaborative lip dub.

[ETMOOC Lip Dub: http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=cxwbdLMt_Bo]

I admit that my knowledge of the lip dub process was limited. In early March 2011, Andy McKiel and Darren Kuropatwa hosted a professional development session entitled “Social Media: Challenges & Opportunities for Education”. Not only were they willing to motivate their own teaching staff, they also extended an invitation to educators outside their Division. As this previous link indicates, I left this P.D. session reflecting on the power of one’s Personal Learning Network (PLN). This focus was the result of Dean Shareski’s lip dub video in which he invited 75 friends from around the world to help create a 40th birthday video entitled “Happy Birthday Alec Couros”.  I envied the organizing strategies together with talented movie editing and the commitment of hours that went into creating this masterpiece. It was evident that Alec’s friends were having so much fun engaging in this collaborative lip dub that I knew that the process had potential for students. 

I was delighted when Dean Shareski took the time to share the important “behind the scenes” processes involved in his “Happy Birthday” lip dub. Although his blog post entitled “So I started this Google doc..” shared many of the critical steps, I still felt that the steps outlined were still somewhat theoretical for me because I had not invested my energies or passion into the process. The key part that was still missing in my learning journey, was to be more actively involved in either participating or making a lip dub.

Imagine my delight when I signed up for the Educational Technology & Media’s Massive Open Online Course (#ETMOOC) to find that Alec Couros was planning to create a lip dub, with collaboration from people around the world. I decided to sign up. as a participant, so that I could get a better understanding of the mechanics involved in organizing and creating a lip dub.

To help my readers gain a better appreciation for the steps involved in organizing and creating this #ETMOOC lip dub, I’ll outline the steps below:

• Alec first invited #ETMOOC participants to consider taking part in this crowd source lip dub activity. Information was sent to participants by both email and through Twitter. Members were given ample time to consider how they might like to participate.
• Using a Google Docs spreadsheet, Alec invited members of the #ETMOOC community to suggest the name of a song whose lyrics promoted or provided meaning to this special collaborative “singing” experience.
• Once several songs were suggested, Alec used the “Poll Everywhere” survey process to gain feedback as to which of the 10 most popular suggested songs would become the actial audio track. All members of the #ETMOOC community (regardless of whether they wished to actively participate or not) were encouraged to vote for their favourite. Through continuous tweets, Alec kept the ETMOOC community aware of the the voting results.
• Once Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” was chosen as the most popular, Alec then provided the #ETMOOC community with a specific YouTube video of a Queen performance so that participants could practice singing along with the performer or refining guitar solos.
• I found Alec’s “Lip Dub Project” instruction document to be a key ingredient and insight in the organizational requirements of a lip dub with so many participants, from so many different locations, with so many different combinations of hardware and software. This is a “must read” for teachers who are considering creating a lip dub activity. True, you may not need all the extras that Alec has considered (in that his participants are from around the world), but Alec has identified key items that all teachers will find beneficial.
• In his instruction manual, Alec printed line by line the lyrics to the  song “Don’t Stop Me Now”. After each line, a space was left where a participant could add his/her name indicating that they would sing this specific line. Alec even suggested lines where he encouraged more participation that just one individual. Furthermore, participants were encouraged to engage others  (as well as pets) in creating their video segment so that the fun and laughter could be shared.
• Participants were encouraged to showcase images to represent the community where the individual was located. If you look closely, at my participation in this #ETMOOC lip dub, you will note that I am wearing a red jacket with the letters CANADA displayed across the front, with a Manitoba flag hanging in the background with an NHL “Jets” cap positioned proudly on my head.
• Alec suggested that participants make a video of them singing their selected lines(s) of “Don’t Stop Me Now”. To facilitate merging the individual participant clips, Alec suggested participants capture themselves singing their selected line as well as the previous and next lines to allow for trimming during the challenging editing process.
• The key to working with so many different video segments is to determine a file-naming code or convention. Alec insisted that each individual name his/her video as a combination of the participant name/twitter, geographic location, and the song line number. Following this important advice, my video file contribution was named:

Brian Metcalfe-@bkmetcalfe-WinnipegCanada-Line5.MOV

• Alec set up a mechanism so that the respective video clips could be sent to him using the Dropbox and DropitTome services. An alternate email process for sending video files was also included so that all participants could send their song snippet to Alec by the stated deadline.
• Alec then shared the collected video files in Dropbox with Josh Stumpenhorst (@stumpteacher).  Josh volunteered to use his “magic” with Pinnacle Studio to create the resulting #ETMOOC Lip Dub.
• Once the video was created, it was shared on YouTube with the #ETMOOC community and the world.

I think that Alec summarized the intent of this lip dub project when he stated:

Let’s have fun with this! Show some of that joy and exuberance that many of you have shown thus far. I hope that this results in a great bonding experience, more familiarity with community members, and an artifact that helps to represent the experience of #etmooc.

Although many would consider the uploading of the lip dub to YouTube as the final process in this creative endeavour, I am so thankful that Alec took a most important additional step. Alec found the time to reflect on this lib dub project in his post “Making of the #etmooc Lipdub”. I find that I always learn so much from educators who are willing to share tips and strategies to improve projects with the benefit of hind-sight.

I encourage readers to check out Alec’s reflective post to learn how using a file-name convention starting with the line # (rather than at the end) allows one to automatically sort video clips in order of the songs lyrics. In addition, I particularly liked Alec’s reminder of how he added a “+” sign alias to his Google mail “couros+etmooc@gmail.com” so that he could more easily filter email related to this innovative project. However, without Alec’s reflective post, I would not have realized that my “Don’t Stop Me Now” video clip (which was my first video attempt on our iPad Christmas gift) was suffering from the dreaded “Vertical Video Syndrome”.

In conclusion, I was so delighted to be an active participant in this engaging and fun activity. Furthermore, having the flexibility and freedom to choose which of the Queen lyrics I would sing was very important to me. I felt that as a Life-Long-Learner and recent MOOC participant, I was proud to sing “Don’t stop me now … don’t stop me … ’cause I’m having a good time … having a good time!”

Take care & keep smiling

Teacher Feature #26 – Tom Bodett – February, 2013

As educators perhaps we might strive to make our teaching more engaging and life-like. Having participated in two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), I realize that there is considerable difference from the way I learn today and the way I prepared past lessons for students and teachers. If we closely examine how students learn outside the classroom though searching online and sharing and collaborating with friends, perhaps we can improve their classroom learning experiences.

Take care & keep smiling

Larger Image: Brian Metcalfe’s Teacher Feature “photostream”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life-long-learners/

Alan Levine (aka @cogdog) has challenged DS106 and ETMOOC participants to share “True Stories of Open Sharing … examples of times when there was an unexpected positive outcome after sharing something openly online.”

My inspiring story starts with a serendipitous visit to 10-year old Laura Stockman’s blog entitled “25 Days to Make a Difference”. Through a blog post, I shared Laura’s passionate quest “to make the world a little better”. In turn, two amazing educators Chris Harbeck (of Winnipeg, Manitoba) and Karl Fisch (of Centennial, Colorado) challenged their students to contribute funds in December to be shared with different charities. I have tried to capture this story of concern, caring, and connection in the following “Sharing Is Caring” YouTube video:

 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P16Nf7YaX6I]

I have included resource slides at the end of this video which list the 10 respective Internet addresses of important components of this inspirational story. However, I am also including them below, as active hyperlinks, to make it easier for readers to examine this story in depth:

• Laura Stockman’s post – “25 Days to Make a Difference”
• Brian Metcalfe’s post – “How to Make A Difference in December”
  
• Chris Harbeck’s post – “Would your students donate $0.25 per day?“
• Chris Harbeck’s wiki – “25centsaday“
• Karl Fisch’s post – “A Quarter is More Than Just a Fraction“
• Brian Metcalfe’s post – “December Charity Challenges for Students“
• Chris Harbeck’s post – “Teaching Citizenship – Part 2 – Pay It Forward“
• Chris Harbeck’s post – “Teaching Citizenship – Part 3 – 25 cents a day“
• Chris Harbeck’s Vimeo video – “Why Digital Citizenship Matters“
• Brian Metcalfe’s post – “We Day: A December Charity Challenge“

I encourage educators to bookmark this video and review it each November so that you and your students can consider making your difference in December.

Take care & keep smiling

The Back Story
“What prompted this focus on problem solving?”, you ask. This past Christmas, my wife received an iPad as a gift. One of the first free apps that we installed was “Draw Something“. This problem-solving activity asks participants to draw representations of one of three different words. In our case, the drawing was then shared online with a particular family member. The recipient watches a short video of the drawing being created, together with clues as to the number of letters in the word as well as a variety of letters that may, or may not, be part of the word.

For example, our older son sent us the following picture which represented a seven character word which might be considered as a “university activity”.

Now both my wife and I attended university but struggled to figure out what the person was holding. We utilized a popular problem solving strategy in which we dialogued and thought “out loud”. Our conversation went something like this …

Wife: Do you think it’s a coil ring binder?
Me: No there is not a “B” as one of the 7 letters.
Wife: Maybe it’s a sheet of music held by a choir member?
Me: Well if I had drawn the picture of a person singing, I’d have included musical notes.
Me: I know. It’s a beer tankard.
Wife: Well there are two “E”s, but no “B”.
Me: I note that there are two “E”s and two “O”s. Perhaps they are double letters as in “beer” or “food”. What do you think?
Wife: With only seven letters in the word, both double “E”s and “O”s cannot be included together.
Me: Well … we’ve successfully solved the previous 19 games so I hate to give up.
Wife: Why don’t we press the “crossed-arrows” button (on the right) to rearrange the 12 letters in a different format? Perhaps we will see a new letter pattern.

We repeatedly clicked on the “crossed arrows” and no matter how those twelve letters were re-arranged, we did not get any inspiration or clues as to the nature of the drawing.

The critical “Oh” or “Aha moment” occurred for me when I turned off the iPad (by holding down Wake/Sleep button) and restarted it. When I selected the “Draw Something” game, the same “university activity” challenge picture was still displayed and the following 12 letters were offered up as clues.

However, the important clue was that they were not just the original 12 characters, in a new, scrambled layout format as generated by the  “crossed arrows” button. Rather, this new set of 12 characters were different from the ones presented in the original drawing shown above.

This revelation was a problem solving break-through! I wrote down the above 12 characters and repeated the process. Each time the game was re-booted, I wrote down the new 12 character display and repeated this five more times.

My wife and I wrote down the six sets of 12 character clusters as shown below:

Our next step was to identify which characters were common to all six sets. To illustrate this process, I have coloured in red the seven common letters that appear in all of these 12 character clusters. We finally were making headway as we identified the following seven letters that needed to be unscrambled to solve the picture:

U   L   O   O   S   P   C

My wife and I looked back at our son’s drawing and started to rearrange these seven characters. I finally thought that perhaps the last three letters might be “C U P” and suggested that perhaps there was a Norwegian trophy known as the “O S L O C U P. Unfortunately, when we dragged the seven letters into the available spaces, the application prompted us with “guess again!” My wife took over and after several minutes, she dragged and arranged the letters to spell the word “S O L O C U P”. The “Draw Something” app congratulated us and my wife and I looked at each other with a dumfounded amazement. While we share a total of 11 years of university, we were never exposed to this activity. In fact, I had to search Google to find out what the term “SOLOCUP” meant.

However, the challenge of this “Draw Something” activity got me thinking about the different ways that people, and in particular students, solve problems and how we, as teachers, might foster thinking “outside the box”.

How does this relate to the classroom?
As a former Mathematics and Computer Science teacher, I have always been passionate about puzzles and problem solving. In fact, I still maintain that my high school Computer Science students focused not so much on proper syntax of the Fortran programming language but more importantly on the task of problem solving. In the early 70′s, my students had only one “run” a day (as I took their punched card programs to the university each night), so they focused on attention to detail and the art of problem solving.

Is there a way that K-12 teachers today can introduce engaging, problem solving activities/projects into their teaching. I admit that we all require some rote, lower-level thinking and learning. However, if today’s  Kindergarten students are going to be successful when they graduate from high school in 12 years, they must acquire critical, higher order thinking and problem solving skills. Certainly we cannot imagine what new technologies and jobs will be created and evolve over the next decade. However, I think that we can be quite confident that graduates that have practiced and honed their problem solving skills will be much more successful.

Audience Participation
Here is where I ask my readers to help me. I will list below a series of problem solving activities that I think educators should adopt/adapt for their classrooms. To enhance each entry, I’ll provide a hyperlink to more adequately describe the problem solving endeavour. I encourage readers to add their favourite problem solving activity/project, together with a descriptive link, in the comment area so that this post can benefit others through our collaborative actions:

• Alice Programming in 3D
  http://www.alice.org/index.php
• Balloon-powered Car
  http://teachers.egfi-k12.org/activity-ballon-powered-car/
• Can you balance 10 nails on a single nail?
  http://www.metacafe.com/watch/500585/nail_magic_trick_balance_10_nails_on_1_nail_head/
• Creating Designs Using Logo
  http://www.terrapinlogo.com/why-use-logo.php
• Designing and Navigating with a Robo-Critter
  http://www.mbrobotgames.ca/Images/RCinstructions5.0.pdf
• Egg Drop Challenge
  http://www.beyondthechalkboard.com/activities/the-incredible-egg-egg-drop-challenge/
• Foil Boat full of Pennies
  http://www.ehow.com/info_8074272_science-can-hold-100-pennies.html
• Leaning Tower of Pasta
  http://teachers.egfi-k12.org/class-activity-leaning-tower-of-pasta/
• Lego – Mindstorms Robots & Programming
  http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx
• Mousetrap-powered Cars
  http://auto.howstuffworks.com/mousetrap-powered-car.htm
• Navigating With a Bee-Bot
  http://www.terrapinlogo.com/bee-botmain.php
• Paper Airplane Challenge
  http://teacher.scholastic.com/paperairplane/
• Participation in the Manitoba Robot Games
  http://www.mbrobotgames.ca/
• Popsicle Stick Bridge Challenge
  http://www.tryengineering.org/lessons/popsiclebridge.pdf
• Scratch Programming Creations
  http://scratch.mit.edu/
• The Spaghetti Bridge Contest
  http://start.sd34.bc.ca/sd34careers/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/SpaghettiBridgeStudent09.pdf

aTdHvAaNnKcSe for sharing, in the comment area, other favourite problem solving activities/projects with an appropriate hyperlink.

Take care & keep smiling

While the newbies struggled through DS106 “Boot Camp” and established their own domains and WordPress blogs, I verified that my blog category feeds were being received into “The DS106 flow” and continued on my amazing learning journey.

The Daily Creates (TDC)
Each Daily Create is listed below in two lines. The first line indicates the date, TDC number, and link to the item that I created. The second line, in italics, is the prompt that was used on TDC blog site to initiate the task.

• Jan. 7, 2013 – TDC365 – “DS106 – Daily Create – Air”
  “Crank up the music and make a video showing us your best air guitar action.”
• Jan. 8, 2013 – TDC366 – “DS106 – TDC Birthday #1″
  “The Daily Create is one year old! Share a photo of a gift you have for us.”
• Jan. 9, 2013 – TDC367 – “Creative Application To Storytelling (C.A.T.S.)”
  “Write a poem about cats – Make a poem that paints cats in a glamorous light.”
• Jan. 10, 2013 – TDC368 – “TDC368 – A Blur of Speed”
  “Use camera panning to blur the background behind a moving subject.”
• Jan. 11, 2013 – TDC369 – “Blizzard Warning: Be Prepared With An Emergency Kit”
  “Dig into the oldest files on your computer. Write a story based on the strangest file name you find.”
• Jan 12, 2013 – TDC370 – “Adventure To The Future”
  “Create a video about an item you own that has an unusual story attached to it.”
• Jan. 13, 2013 – TDC371 – “Seven in a row makes one ‘weak’”
  “Write an excuse note for why you didn’t do your Daily Create assignment today.”
• Jan. 14, 2013 – TDC372 – “Favourite Workplace”
  “Take a picture of your favorite place to work (desk, comfy chair, etc.)”
  
• Jan. 15, 2013 – TDC373 – “The Trike Tike”
  “Find nearest over-looked everyday object. Fabricate a story about it being a key part of your childhood.”
• Jan. 16, 2013 – TDC374 – “Learning & Sharing”
  “Take a picture of your favorite thing in the world to do, however simple or complex.
• Jan. 17, 2013 – TDC375 – “Whistling Baby”
  “Draw a picture of one of the first memories you have growing up.”
• Jan. 18, 2013 – TDC376 – “Ben’s Banana Banter”
  “List 20 uses for a banana.”
• Jan. 19, 2013 – TDC377 – “Love is holding hands (even at our age ”
  “Capture love in a photograph. Give it a title.”
• Jan. 20, 2013 – TDC378 – “The Clock Torture”
  “Tell us a pun that will cause the biggest groan.”
• Jan. 21, 2013 – TDC379 – “My “PC” – Pepsi & Computer”
  “Take a photo of the ONE thing you MUST see, do, eat, hear, etc. everyday!”
• Jan. 22, 2013 – TDC380 – “2001: A _ Odyssey, HAL _”
  “Submit a favorite monologue from a movie with every third word removed.”
• Jan. 25, 2013 – TDC383 – “Barometer Falling!”
  “Describe the sky in a single sentence without using any color words.”
• Jan. 26, 2013 – TDC384 – “Tree’s a crowd!”
  “Contre-jour it, make a photo where subject is silhouetted by shooting into bright light.”

Assignments
Ds106 participants are encouraged to complete activities from an extensive data bank of assignments. “As of Jan. 28, 2013 this collection includes 521 ds106 assignments and 4116 examples created from them.” With such a wide choice, individual students can meet course outcomes through varied and unique learning journeys. Each assignment has been given a difficulty rating (from 1 to 5 stars). As the course proceeds, students will be challenged to complete, for example, “15 stars worth of assignments in a particular week”.

Although the DS106 course has just started, I have written the following extensive blog posts and have documented my learning journey as I have improved on the process to create animated GIFs from video clips.

Here’s an outline of the assignments and posts that I have shared. Entries beginning with “DS106″ (in bold face) and ending with a star rating, have a link to the actual assignment on the DS106 web site. Entries immediately following (with the date in bold face) provide a link to my post containing my actual assignment submission. The remaining non-bolded dates and entries provide links to DS106 blog posts that I have written in addition to specific assignments.

• Jan. 7, 2013 – “Get Animated in the New Year”
• DS106 – “GIF Me Again About My Eyes”  (2 stars)
  Jan. 11, 2013 – “The eyes are the windows into the soul”
• Jan. 13, 2013 – “Learning – Motivated by MOOC Madness”
• Jan. 16, 2013 – “Are eight-letter words twice as offensive?”
• Jan. 19, 2013 – “Free Motivational Educational Posters”
• DS106 – Visual Assignment – “Say It Like Peanut Butter”  (3 stars)
  Jan. 27, 2013 – “DS106 Tasks: You Snooze – You Lose!”

Value Added
Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed), who has been actively engaged in DS106 since the summer of 2010, mentioned in one of his posts that he was hoping to join the Educational Technology & Media MOOC, known as #ETMOOC. Furthermore, Alan Levine (@cogdog) who is the Spring 2013 instructor for the DS106 course was instrumental in getting the #ETMOOC “Blog Hub” established so that participants could more easily share their posts.  Thanks to the willingness of these two dedicated individuals to share information about #ETMOOC, I signed up as well. For this reason some of my posts may be written in such a way to appeal to both #DS106 and #ETMOOC participants. However, the key issue is this “Value Added” paragraph is to encourage all participants in both learning environments to share ideas, tips and resources to help one’s readers improve and move along their own learning journey.

aTdHvAaNnKcSe to those who care and share.

Take care & keep smiling