Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Who Am I Kidding Top 28

I erased my January post on this topic since I have updated it quite a bit from the original Top Ten. I'll have to update the logo too: My ideas to improve technology integration in NYC:
1. Archiving posters, along with suggested primary document questions, for museum in a school use. Archiving the digital files so others can use them. Acquiring a plotter and wholesale quantity of foam-board for production to share with many schools. (PS I ran this idea by a Brave New World Network Team Leader, (offering to give away my hundreds of files for nothing). He said, "It's an idea one school could sell to another!"


2. Having a group of teacher/parent volunteers (celebrity guests) provide the voice for digitized read-alouds


3. Providing students with mp3 players with books on tape.


4. Purchasing books that already have an audio and video matching component.


5. Creating smaller imovies with stills and creating contests for kids to see how well they can match up songs with images (either via googling or creating their own via digital photography)


6. Taking a map of New York City and image map the work of students all across the city to show the wealth, vibrancy and variety of life. e.g's: Harlem Live and Tom Beller's Neighborhood.


7. Selecting sites that are important to students in each neighborhood and nominating them as "Places That Matters." (borrowed idea drom Citylore). Image map those sites as well

8. Getting parents and families involved in such a program by inviting them to share their primary documents and link them to the maps. Have scanning stations in schools, "Come one, come all bring us your primary documents." As with idea #1 create "hme made" dbq's to accompany these documents.


9. A kids created mapping New York program with a Neighborhood Map Maker Program.


10. A Timeline of events in New York City History with a Timeliner type program


11. Taking the films available on United Streaming and archiving questions to accompany those films and attempting to match them to various literacy skills.


12. Sharing successes with streaming video of real work in real classrooms and saving tons of money in off site professional development.


13.Making podcasting a citywide initiative. It's easy enough to do. Have kids report on news in their schools or just broadcast 
kids' (and family) created stories. Create booths in schools just as Story Corps did. Likewise make WNYC's a citywide initiative.


14. Piggyback on the media that's current, i.e. If we know in advance that Flags Of Our Fathers is coming out then buy quantities of that book and the accompanying audio tapes. I'm sure the publishers would help with discounted copies. Such a book could engage our high schoolers.


15. Have a citywide story to read (ala Oprah) . I nominate "A Trees Grows In Brooklyn"


16. Make greater use of graphic novels and use comic book maker software to encourage kids to make their own graphic novels.


17. Use PhotoShop to erase the dialogue from scanned comics and then create their own scripts.


18. Take scanned text from stories and then illustrate them with original artwork or appropriate googled images.

19. Make greater use of ebooks so as they can be matched with books on tape.

20. Use the ready availability of onlined song lyrics (including rap) to help with poetry literacy as well as an aid to reading.


21. Use digital movie cameras to recreate scenes from history (you see many illustrations of this on youtube with high schoolers displaying that kind of assignment). This could be modeled after kids see such a money in class, either via a dvd or 
a quicktime version.


22. Flickr has a new Web 2.0 component that allows you to make links from images. This could be done as a challenge to students to make a kind of junior webquest from a social studies rich group of flickred images.


23. For early childhood kids: Using only the video track of digital movies of trips or neighborhood explorations and then have the kids watch the film and supply their own voiceovers. Done with QuickTime Pro


24. Have adults and older kids digitally narrate stories and books so struggling readers can have read alouds.

25. Have the DOE create their own version of youtube to store (and filter) streaming video.

26. Making use of local websites to improve literacy. For exampled,for read alouds, NY1.com has streamed video combined with transcripts.

27. Making quicktime VR movies ( a relatively easy and low tech, low cost, low data task) with kids to show off their communities.

28. Using Quicktime Pro to make movies that combine image, text and narration. Again, a lower data and memory solution than using Movie Maker or iMovie.

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