Draper Elementary Podcast

I had such a delightful experience at Draper Elementary. I worked with Mrs. Valdez's student teacher, Miss Evans and her class in creating a podcast on sound. I brought in 30 headsets so that each student could have their own headset.


We talked about how students would record their script in GarageBand, add photos, jingles, zingers, and sound effects. Students practiced their part so that when they recorded their final version they could do their best.

We found that we needed more than one hour to do a podcast from start to finish because we wanted students to experience GarageBand, adding images, sound etc. We could have just recorded the podcast with an iPod and a microphone, but that would have just been getting the job done rather than have authentic learning going on.

Mrs. Valdez has a great group of students. They were fun, respectful, and very excited about learning something new.

Using Wikis with Radiology Residents

My sister, Susie Muir, MD, PhD, asked me to help her get a website up and running for UCLA radiology residents to share their cases online.

The residents don't have much time to spend on learning how to edit webpages, so we wanted a type of web page that was quick and easy to use. We decided to use a wiki--and over the last few weeks we developed The Pediatric Imaging Wiki.

We iChat quite often at night tossing ideas around, trying to refine the wiki and make the navigation easy to understand. During this process, we realized that a website is a living thing. It will change over time, and we must to listen to the ideas and concerns of the residents who are using the wiki so that we can improve and make it as accessible as possible. To this end, we created several video tutorials for the doctors to explain how they could start a case page, add the radiographic, MRI and/or CT images and how to add links to resources.

Things are coming along. Several very interesting cases have been uploaded. One med student was so excited about the wiki that she uploaded a case, learned to use a software program to create a movie of the MRI images she had taken, and listed some great resources.

Each Thursday my sister chooses a case of the week and presents an award to the doctor who has uploaded the most interesting or challenging case that week. The interest in the wiki is growing as more and more residents hear about it and want to participate.

It has been a really fun project on which to work. I am learning a lot about radiology in the process. My sister is a brainiac and funny as can be, so this project is not work, but fun.

Mrs. Mackay 's Class Personal Narratives

I have had a lot of fun working at Altara Elementary with Mrs. Mackay's 6th grade class on writing projects. Each student in the class wrote a personal narrative in a program called Pages. Pages is one of the three programs in the iWorks suite. The students had fun choosing a template. There are so many beautiful looking templates, it was hard for some kids to choose.
We then printed out the narratives on white cardstock and bound them into a book using the Cerlox binder. the book looked great!

The next week we recorded the narratives in GarageBand. The students burned two CD's. One to take home and another to tape to the back of their personal narrative in the book. The book will be kept in the classroom. Students will be able to listen to their peers' narratives whenever they have free time.



Mrs. Mackay said that her students were so excited to do this project. They liked writing the story in Pages. The loved recording their narrative. They were super excited to be able to take a CD home for their family to listen to their project.

Mrs. Mackay has a wonderful group of students. I enjoy working with students who are so energetic, nice, and respectful. Great job Mrs. Mackay's 6th Grade Class!

Willow Canyon 4th Grade Podcast

Recently I had spent time with Mrs. Morrison and her 4th grade class working on a podcast about the history of Utah. Mrs. Morrison is so willing to integrate technology into her curriculum, and her students are amazingly quick learners. We had some technical problems, however everybody just rolled with the punches, worked through the issues, and came out on the other side intact and excited!

Mrs. Morrison began by creating a general script for the podcast, and each student was given a part. When I arrived at her class, everybody was ready to learn how to record their script using GarageBand. After a 25 minute lesson on how to use the software, each student was given a headset, and the began recording their script.
As students practiced their scripts, they realized that we all use little idiosyncracies in our speech patterns such as “um” , “uhh” and so on. They kept re-recording their parts and working on making their recordings sound natural. Soon the class felt they were ready to record the final version.

Mrs. Morrison had the students record their script in a quiet room. It only took about 30 minutes to record the entire class. The students had their script with them as they recorded, however they had practiced so much that they focused on sounding natural, and most students required only one take. Recording the final take was the easiest part of all because the students we so prepared. What a phenomenal class!

The next step was to the edit images that Mrs. Morrison and I had collected. The students edited the images in a free online editing site called Picnik. (Side note: Another good free online editing site is Fotoflexer.com) Lastly, Mrs Morrison inserted the edited images into the enhanced podcast track of GarageBand and saved the project as a podcast. The class watched the podcast on their big screen. It was exciting to see how everything came together at last.

Due to a couple of computer glitches and technical server issues, Mrs. Morrison and I decided to upload the podcast to the T4 server. Because the T4 team uses a podcast template, I imported the podcast track into iMovieHD, added some transitions and text as well as the T4 Tips Podcast logo. The podcast can be found on the T4 website. Just click on T4 Tips Podcasts.


A big shout out to Mrs. Morrison and her class for all their hard work. I thoroughly enjoyed each student. They were extremely courteous, hard workers, and a lot of fun!

JOKE FOR YOUR CLASS:
How did the farmer fix his jeans?
With a cabbage patch. (hee, hee)

Crescent Elementary's Smartboards

A big shout out to Crescent Elementary Principal Debbie Shumard and teachers Casey Draper, Angie Drope, and Amanda Oettli for showing me how they are integrating their SmartBoards into their daily curriculum.

SmartBoards? What are they and why do they seem to be popping up everywhere? And more importantly, how are teachers integrating them into their curriculum?

Recently I met with Principal Debbie Shumard at Crescent Elementary to chat about the SmartBoards that have been installed into 15 classrooms at her school. We visited three classrooms to see teachers and students in action. It was really a lot of fun!

First, Mrs. Drope’s 3rd grade classroom. Her class was doing a synonym sort and match. Students were excited to go up to the board, find synonyms, and drag them to the bottom of the page. They discussed why they thought the words were synonyms. The students pretty much ignored the visitors because they wanted to see what was happening up at the board. Mrs. Drope said she really liked using the SmartBoard because her students were so excited about participating during lessons.



Next, Miss Draper’s 6th grade classroom. Her class was learning how to convert mixed numbers into improper fractions. Miss Draper had downloaded the lesson (which was matched to state standards) from the SMART Notebook lesson activities. The lesson included several interactive problems. We watched as a mixed number slowly morphed into an improper fraction.



Students were anxious to go to the board to work on problems. The entire class was fully engaged in the lesson whether they were up at the board or at their seat. Students said they like the interactivity, the size of the text, the colors, and the way the numbers moves around on the screen.

Last, Mrs. Oettli’s 3rd grade classroom. The students used the board to explain multiplication arrays, for example 2 x 3 or 4 x 6. They began by drawing an array on a 3x5 card (no pun intended). Then they created their array on the board with colored dots. All students anxiously watched as one person created their array on the board. They explained to me how to generate another colored dot by clicking on the ‘master’ dot. It was fun watching how excited the students were each time somebody went up to the board.



Some background: Principal Shumard initially introduced the idea of getting SmartBoards to the faculty last year. She asked the faculty to do a little online research about SmartBoard use. At a later faculty meeting she told her staff about classrooms she had visited where the boards were being effectively integrated into the curriculum.

She proposed the idea of purchasing the boards. Five teams indicated that they would all be interested in using them. Currently they have 3 in Kindergarten, 1 in 2nd grade, 4 in 3rd grade, 1 in 4th grade, 3 in 5th grade, and 3 in 6th grade.

The boards had been installed less than a month when I visited Crescent Elementary. I was impressed by how quickly and seamlessly the teachers have integrated SmartBoards and Notebook lessons into all aspects of their daily teaching. What a fun experience! Thanks again for a fun and enlightening experience.

How I embedded the slide shows into a blog post:
1-Download images into iPhoto.
2-Export selected images right from iPhoto into your Picasa account.
3-In Picasa, click on "Link to this Album" then click on "Embed Slideshow".
4-Picasa generates code.
5-Copy code.
6-Return to your blog post. Click 'HTML'.
7-Paste code in desired spot.
8-Preview post.
9-When satisfied with your work, Publish Post.

For a more complete explanation including screen shots, visit the Engaged Classroom blog at: http://jsdengaged.blogspot.com/

Mrs. McShinsky’s Class & The Clickers

On a recent visit to Alta View Elementary and Mrs. McShinsky’s 6th grade class, her students shared their thoughts with me about their new set of Senteo clickers. (class response systems)

(can you find 5 things that were not in the picture when it was taken?
If not, you may want to look at www.fotoflexer.com)

After a really fun demonstration of how they use the clickers during Math, I asked the students what they liked or disliked the most about the clickers.
Here is a sample of their replies:

What we like:

They’re a lot of fun

• They simplify work.
• Makes doing math and reading faster.
• Clickers help save paper, go green.
• Saves time, do not need to pass out papers.
• Do not need write all of our answers down.
• Students see their scores immediately.
• The teacher can print off a report telling what kids got right, so it saved correcting time and gives us more time with our teacher.
• Takes off the pressure. When the teacher looks at the results, she can see what we did wrong and figure out a way to help us.

(Do you know why this picture is so puzzling?
If not, you may want to look at www.picnik.com)

What we do not like:
We have to share them with other classes.

Mrs. McShinsky finds ready-made lessons and tests online that are aligned to the Utah core curriculum. She spends less time spent on creating lessons, writing quizzes, and grading paper, and more time on interacting with students.

And best of all,students want to improve their scores. They willingly ask for help on problems they missed so that they can score higher on a redo test. Kudos to Mrs. McShinsky and her class for diving right in there with the clickers and finding wonderful ways to use them.

Check out Mrs. McShinsky’s blog on the right hand side of this page. You will find more great ideas from her there.


A math joke for your class:
Five out of four people are bad with fractions.

Mrs. Watson's 6th Grade Class Learns To Use Inspiration Software!

My shout out this week is to Mrs. Watson 6th grade class at Willow Springs Elementary. The students learned how to use Inspiration software to think, brainstorm, organize, and write about themselves. Let’s take a look: (created in ComicLife)

Teachers like Inspiration because we can see how the program uses Inspiration's ‘inspired standards match’ to support Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Math and Fine Arts curriculum standards and objectives.

Students like Inspiration because they can see how fun it is to think, plan, organize, and write.


The class enjoyed the "Rapid Fire' tool, which allowed them to quickly create sub-categories. They also liked toggling between diagram and outline view because they could see their thoughts organized visually or in outline format.

I overheard one student say, “Hey this is how we can get our ideas organized”. That's what it's all about.

Mrs. Watson and her class did a fantastic job working through a couple of little glitches we encountered. We found that when changing the font, Inspiration unexpectedly quit on several laptops. My colleagues on the T4 team will look into that glitch to see what is causing it.

We also had a teensy bit of trouble logging onto the school folder.

We worked through these little problems, got everything resolved, and even had enough time to download the pictures I took into iPhoto and create a slide show.

Thanks to Mrs. Watson’s 6th grade class for a fun day letting me be part of your class. I enjoyed working with you and showing you how easy-to-use and really fun Inspiration can be.



For more information about how you can integrate Inspiration into your curriculum, check out their sample lesson plans, videos, and the Inspiration "Learning Community", a page with really great lesson ideas created by other educators!

Congratulations to Willow Springs Principal, Sharyle Karren who was recently recognized as Literacy Principal of the Year at the 43rd Utah Council of International Reading Association Convention for her passion and commitment to literacy.

A shout out to Peggy Robison's class at Edgemont Elementary for learning how to use Inspiration software. A few days after our lesson using the laptops, Mrs. Robison's students used Inspiration in the lab for their NOVA (formerly DARE) essay. Awesome job!

A joke for your class:
Why did the whale cross the road?
To get to the other tide!